Three Brilliant Missing Links to Education Reveal Themselves: liberals, evangelicals, and media

Posted by Buck68 on March 7th, 2010 filed in Uncategorized

by Buck68™, March 7th 2010
©2010 by Buck68™, all rites re-served. Each use whatsoever requires prior written permission from the author [email: abuck68@yahoo.com]

It is a sobering illustration of the power of human nature that any of us, via any topic or label, can convert our continuing need for education into a pissing contest. Yet we rarely tire of di-verting from our common need, into the same old games of blaming and impositional maneuver. For illustrations, please first read Dylan Lovan’s article carefully, then put it side by side with the questions about Dylan’s first 12 paragraphs, below.

URL for Dylan Lovan’s AP article, “Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100306/ap_on_re/us_rel_home_school_evolution

Questions about each of Dylan’s paragraphs, in his order:

Do we educate or discuss education by “wishing”? Do we “take a friend’s advice”; or, to learn, consider the CONTENT of any input? Is education valued by “popularity”?

Is education based on “excitement”; or, does that more accurately describe emotional attraction? If a person responds to a new or different concept, thing, or object with “confusion”, what does this suggest about their understanding of education? Human limitations? Things greater than our selves? If a “dispute” produces “confusion”, what does this rationally suggest about that person’s use of reason?

What does a Mother’s emotional hyperbole response to her perception of her daughter’s response, suggest about their method of learning? What kind of reasoning is “she’s like, this is not true”?

Do “materials”…”dominate”? What assumptions are necessary for the statement “for most home-school parents, this is [materials]… exactly what ‘they’ want” to be accurate? What do “Federal statistics show”? What is the educational relationship between 83%, religious or moral instruction, and…learning?

What does “most …will definitely …have a sort of” mean?

What does an “often feeling” response to “doesn’t have” something, suggest about how that person responds to inputs? What are we defining when we “try to find a textbook that fits my beliefs”?

How does “best-selling” value education? What debating term[s], describe the phrase “stack the deck against”? What quality of attribution is “some science educators said”?

What does the strength of a “feeling”, and applying that emotional strength to education…produce? What does a person have to know, on what authority, to know for a fact that a book is “promulgating lies to kids”?

Would you expect a publisher to “defend their book”? What educational and rational issue does this illustrate? Does any person know what a “book doesn’t attempt to mask”?

Does a text premise here [Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God] rationally and necessarily cause “many puzzling points” in a text? Does an author control who can read his book by whether or not he “wrote it for them”?

Is an assertion in a book an “ultimatum”? Is just saying a source, providing specific attribution for a statement from that source? Does one person, or a book, control what another person understands…sees…believes?

Does a “sentence make it into a book”…or do people decide and choose? Does “an editing error” cause an inclusion or omission…or do people? Would a person who “truly sees the world as it is” …make an irrational or fallacious statement… or one that the Inerrant Word of God contradicts?

OK, enough is enough…or do you see these kinds of silliness and much more daily, across the political, social, religious spectrum? A few thoughts – seeds for future discussion about education.

Education is the continual pursuit of knowledge by applying reason, empiricism, and spiritual means of “how to learn”. A philosophical term for this process is “epistemology”.

No imperfect person possesses knowledge, education, ideas, facts, or how to think. OK, a few other things too…but how easily we forget!

Must any person who would “learn”, first become as a student of life and begin his search about first things? For example, who am I and why am I here? We can answer reasonably in the negative: the continuing consequences of avoiding basic questions, is a lack of perspective, and that lack degrades our ability to put things in reasonable relationship. Rationally, it degrades our ability to compare and contrast – the basics of building on prior learning.

Are our animal selves naturally selfish and competitive? Why are animals ‘not responsible’… but human beings are? If human beings are ‘responsible’, then why do we avoid/deny/project our responsibility?

Finally, what is greater than us and how do we approach and search that question?

Our common, definable means of learning is by applying logic or reason. Mathematics is a basic example. This suggests that ‘how to think’ is universal to education. And its opposite, ‘what to think’, or “indoctrination” …is the chief means of abusing reason for purposes of deception and manipulation. For example, consider the very popular saying, “celebrate diversity”. Literally, the English meaning defines these rational opposites: Uni-versity is the common pursuit of knowledge; Di-versity is dissembling for selfish advantage. One unites in accepting responsibility for common purpose and pursuit; the other divides and conquers by inherent conflicts and blame.

For some time now, it’s been increasingly popular to celebrate whatever while we murder our selves and our posterity … “educationally.” And EVERYBODY has been doing it. So, to address ‘education’, a person must first, and ever, look first into his own mirror.

Whenever you feel right in your own mind…you are feeding your animal. Animals don’t need education.