"There is a form of mind control that is really mind-chaos. It
shatters the processes of thought into, at best, vaguely related
fragments. There is no direction, no development, no progress along a
line of reasoning. This is how you disable a person. You disrupt his
ability to move from A to B to C. At that point, he becomes passive.
He's willing to be programmed, because it's easier. He wants to be
programmed." (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
"I learned twenty-four new things today at school," the child said.
"One right after the other. I felt so happy. My teacher told me I was
learning accelerated. I wrote on my iPad. I saw pictures. I did group
harmony. I added. I divided. I heard about architecture. The
teacher said we were filled with wonder at the universe. We solved a
problem. We're all together. I ate cheese. A factory makes cheese."
The new education
is ADHD.
It's a method of teaching that surrenders ground on each key concept,
deserting it before it's firmly fixed in the mind of the student.
It hops around from idea to idea, because parents, teachers,
administrators, students, departments of education, and educational
publishers have given up on the traditional practice of repetition.
Repetition was old-world. For decades, even centuries, the time-honored
method of instruction was: introduce an idea or concept or method, and
then provide numerous examples the student had to practice, solve, and
demonstrate with proficiency.
There was no getting around it. If the student balked, he failed.
There were no excuses or fairy tales floated to explain away the inability of the student to carry out the work.
Now, these days, if you want to induce ADHD, teach a course in which
each new concept is given short shrift. Then pass every student on to
the next grade, because it's "humane."
Think of it this way. Suppose you want to climb the sheer face of a
high rock. You know nothing about climbing. You engage an instructor.
He teaches you a little bit about ropes and spikes and handholds. He
briefly highlights each aspect and then skips to the next.
So later...while you're falling five hundred feet to the ravine below,
you can invent stories about why the experiment didn't work out.
Since the advent of organized education on the planet, there has been
one way of teaching young children...until recently. Explain a new
idea, produce scores of examples of that idea, and get the students to
work on those examples and come up with the right answers.
Subtraction, division, decimals, spelling, reading---it all works the same basic way.
For the last hundred years or so, however, we've seen the gradual intrusion of Teacher ADHD.
School text ADHD.
Not enough examples. Not enough exercises.
Education has nothing to do with a full frontal attack to "improve the
self-esteem" of the student. It has nothing to do with telling children
they're valuable. And it certainly has nothing to do with trying to
embed social values and team spirit in children.
No matter how many fantasies educators spin, schools can't replace parents.
If what I'm writing here seems cruel and uncaring...look at the other
side of the picture. Look at what happens when a student emerges from
school with a half-baked, "dumbed-down" education.
He can sort of read. He can sort of write. He sort of understands
arithmetic. He tries to skate through the rest of his life. He fakes
it. He adopts a front to conceal the large territory of what he doesn't
know.
He certainly can't think straight. Give him three ideas in succession and he's lost. He goes on overload.
He operates on association. You say A and he goes to G right away. You
go back to A and he responds with R. He's up the creek without a
paddle.
That's what's cruel.
Forty years ago, I was on the verge of landing a lucrative job with a
remedial education company. The owner gave me a lesson plan and told me
to write a sample program.
I did. He looked at it and said, "There are too many examples and exercises here. You have to move things along faster."
I told him the students would never comprehend the program that way.
They had to work on at least 20 exercises for each new concept.
He was shocked. "That's not how it's done now," he said.
"Oh," I said, "you mean now the student and teacher both fake it?"
And that was the end of that.
Several years ago, I explained much of what's in this article to a
sociologist at a US university. His response: "Children are different
now. They don't have patience. There are too many distractions. We
have to operate from a new psychology."
I asked him what that psychology was.
"Children are consumers. They pick and choose. We have to accommodate them."
While I was laughing at his assessment, he capped his display of wisdom
with this: "There is no longer a division between opinion and fact."
Perfect.
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