I still think religion is the poison planted long ago and soaked up by the roots American culture which continues to make it difficult to impossible to awaken people to the many cold hard truths of life, without offending their sense of community and traditional values. Religion does a lot of damage to people's ability to think introspectively. The rest is just a clustering phenomenon, where you have a schism between the people who finally "got it", left the country, and relocated to more industrialized areas, and... everybody else. Convince those remaining rural residents that the city slickers are "elitists", etc., and you have a winning strategy for highly successful divisive politics.

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Yes, but the best students may not return to their hometowns after graduating from that Ivy League university if the pay is better in more industrialized, better networked cities. I don't have statistics for this.

I'm reading an interview from Talk of The Nation earlier this year about incentives in South Dakota to encourage lawyers to start a practice in rural areas. The internet is a great equalizer in that it allows mentoring and close collaboration across vast geographic areas. This could be applied in education as well.

From the program:

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That video could have been edited a bit better. The audio levels were quite low.

It seems to me he is emphasizing individual discovery in education. I can't disagree with anything he said on a philosophical level since he seems to be quite the idealist.

He also seems like a typically insular academic. Teachers tend to overemphasize their own importance, especially regarding their capacity in certain rituals like giving static, old fashioned lectures, in person.

He said (in so many words) that the internet can't solve the problems of the masses without a guiding framework (presumably provided by somebody like himself). And yet the internet also provides an alternative to the paternalism of educators.

Whether or not the internet is more or less effective an actual teacher than somebody like Chomsky is irrelevant anyway when the brightest students don't come back (brain-drain).

The possibility of the internet to better networking people within rural areas and with the world seems to me the more promising tool in "saving" rural America.

Sorry if that came off as negative, but I'm grasping at straws here to relate the video to the thread.

I actually would like to question now what seems to be an implicit assumption of yours that the educational system is the place in which young people are culturized. In my mind it clearly starts in the family and (very) local community. Where, then, does the average rural family look to for guidance and leadership? I would hazard to guess that the answer is: from church, and from each other. What happens in a situation like this after several generations of brain drain?

It is very difficult, and probably foolhardy, to try to change people's worldviews through public education. Notwithstanding the possibility of "indoctrinating" students into believing the truth, the quality and breadth of education certainly can accomplish this to an extent by fertilizing minds with sheer facts. But, let's not be shy in admitting that the average high-schooler (nationwide) will hardly be much influenced by the curriculum more than she/he is influenced by her or his peers, and that most high-schoolers would rather drop out (were it socially acceptable or economically viable) than give a damn about class.

We also have to ask ourselves why the U.S.A. is ranked so low in education compared to other first world nations. Perhaps this is why you mentioned funding?

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Ah. I see. You are quite the idealist as well as Chomsky. Congratulations: it is good to see somebody cut to the chase and state the root of the problem. I basically agree with you; our educational system has major institutional problems that are rooted in its assumptions and are exacerbated by those who seek to use education as a practical tool to further their industrial goals. For what it's worth, I foresee massive changes in the role of institutional education in the future. At least, there should be massive changes; dinosaur institutions like education seem to be perpetually 50 years behind the curve.

I may also point out that, for all the shortcomings of Western educational institutions, what exists in Asia is much, much worse. To them our curriculum looks like fun and games, with our emphasis on creativity and individualism.

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The simple fact of the matter is that every single thing in society is designed to take away from you the fruits of your own labor. It is a constant upstream slog to retain even fractions of it. They make saving money pointless with rates handily outstripped by inflation. Banks make up fees and take your money for no reason. They make owning property practically impossible for anyone under the age of 35. Plenty of time for them to funnel you into their for-profit prison system that incarcerates as many people as China does. If they haven't thrown you in prison yet, then they've already trashed your credit score, so you can't even get an apartment, a car, or a job. If you do get a job, you're producing like crazy and your company just pockets insane profits instead of paying you more. It's just ****ing pointless.

I pretty much gave up a long time ago. I no longer waste my energy on this abhorrent excuse for civilization.

hey man if you ain't part of the solution

That's being more depressing than Strongsad, Free.

Maybe our expectations were too high? I don't think we can assume the post WW2 economic boom in the U.S. (and the middle class that grew up with it) to be the norm. It was only a matter of time before those at the very top caught up in their task of vacuuming up all the wealth. But, at least we're not where Egypt is right now, right?

Furthermore, I'd like to suggest that Western economic progress has always been helped along in one way or another by its dominion of foreign peoples. The British empire was sustained by its domination of India, the American South by imported African slaves, and the 19th and 20th century U.S. by near-slave labor in/from East and/or South Asia.

But yeah, in a global economy, material wealth is no more than a temporary quantum of dominion over somebody else's labor. It isn't surprising that it gets drained when you hold on to it without using it.

Instead of throwing up your arms, when I realized how fleeting wealth is in today's world, I decided that the most reliably long-term investment is in yourself (e.g., education, skills, deep thought, intellectual "property", as well as personal connections). If you put resources into things that aren't tangible, they therefore cannot be taxed or stolen, but can nevertheless one day multiply your income.

As an aside, I remember hearing on NPR at the time of the 2009 financial debacle that those with no assets at all (e.g., the poor) were (relatively) unaffected on account of having nothing to lose in the first place.

But then again, how can you invest in yourself when you live in a poor, urban ghetto*....

*not saying that I do

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...and I suppose that's where public education comes in. Because: were it not for being told so (or reminded), I'm pretty sure many kids wouldn't even know the library exists. Many probably don't. Hell, I didn't used to even think there was much out there not available on the `net. And I was legitimately trying to better myself -- let alone considering somebody fighting off her/his own urges to merely be another 24/7 consumer of corporate trash. I wonder: what's the smartphone to library card ratio across the nation?

This is one of the few instances in which "invest in yourself!" isn't just the sales pitch for an outright scam.

Sure, you can learn a lot in a library, but if you don't have any papers to show, employers are going to laugh in your face when you tell them how you learned things. It's not all that simple.

Absolutely true. But it beats spending six figures to have those same employers laugh in your face anyway, and you probably won't have accidentally enriched a rentier in the process. At least, not to any meaningful degree.

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I'm always astounded by the number of 'disadvantaged' people I encounter (or have tutored) who simply cannot write a cover letter without making glaring grammar or typographical mistakes. It really is a serious barrier.

English professors often let their students know that the ability to do your own research and to write well may well be among the most valuable skills learned in school.

Although -- speaking to Reid's last post --many who (eventually) learn to write still talk like they're in the `hood.

I agree with this. Even if we set up workshops to teach every 'disadvantaged' kid to write cover letters, we still have to confront the fact that nobody needed to do this for those from wealthier families.

(It's better to treat the illness than the symptoms.)

...which is why I think learning to think critically and independently is probably more important than communicating. Although without attaining the latter along the way at some point, all is lost.

Which is one of the reasons why I have so much respect for successful immigrants from Asia. English is like an alien language to them.

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As an interesting anecdote, my mother, a school teacher, can get very defensive when I suggest alternate forms of education that don't fit the mold of traditional education. She still thinks my brother should go back and finish his MIS degree (or whatever it was) from nearly a decade ago, instead of investing his effort in getting his business off the ground, which he actually cares about. She doesn't even realize that it's insulting to him to suggest it, and doesn't recognize that it wouldn't even be useful or impressive to employers.

She also doesn't seem to like the idea of breaking up traditional schools in favor of a more distributed, self-learning and tutoring model.

I'm sure none of this has anything to do with you being incredibly cynical and depressed and is obviously just the result of society ****ing you over.

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I know it's real, but his opinion is also really skewed in the worst possible way.

edit: from a life-long not-happy person

I'm much more astounded by 'advantaged' people with poor grammar and spelling, or who pad out their resumes with paragraph-form job descriptions instead of explaining what they actually did, because privileged people have no excuse for it.

I've never met a professional teacher who was capable of any amount of professional introspection. Just a bunch of pissing and moaning about how bad education is getting because now, instead of following a healthy curriculum, they have to "teach to the test" (except they actually aren't supposed to, because the tests exist to evaluate the teacher's performance, not the students', so "teaching to the test" is entirely self-serving). Lots of whining about how they're required to teach certain subjects now, like mathematics and physics. Oh, but you want to homeschool your kids? That's child abuse!

In what other field would you find a special lecture about the pedagogical ineffectiveness of the lecture format??

Um, but most of what he said is true?

Wages have not kept pace with inflation. Banks really do change their fee schedules and card/account-holder agreements essentially at random, and they rearrange transactions in order to maximize penalties, and there are class-action lawsuits about this. Savings interest rates have been declining for 30 years, and is now far lower than the inflation rate, with the best bank offering 0.958% pa not including fees. The mass proliferation of debt and accelerating urbanization has caused rampant housing price inflation; with a good job, no matter where you're living, you're looking at 20 years of savings in order to accumulate the standard 20% down payment (not that there's a safe haven for your savings in the meantime). The stock market is rigged, large brokers and investment banks have been caught front running, and the funds hit hardest by CDO ratings fraud were the sorts of small, local mutual funds where an average person would have savings. The entire economy and government has been aligned to transfer as much wealth as possible from our generation to the boomers.

It's not like he's literally saying he doesn't participate at all, since he obviously isn't a weathered skeleton in a desert somewhere.

For the record: I didn't intend for the quotes around 'disadvantaged' to be scare quotes.

It's not ideal but it's not as if society is nothing more than a massive factory churning out terrible depression. The system "works" in so far as plenty of people manage to leave reasonably happy lives, and even people who are disenfranchised have some hope of a future (and I'm not talking about rare rags-to-riches success stories). Even in recent economic and political downturn it's still better than it was say, a few hundred years ago. That doesn't help anyone right now but neither does doing nothing.

I know one, but he got so fed up he quit and became a stay at home dad. He was tired of the district's ineptitude and being strong armed into teaching algebra to freshman instead of growing the district's computer science program (which didn't exist).

Does this suggest widespread (but coincidental?) personal failings, or systemic problems in the way teachers are recruited, trained, supported, and evaluated?

There are (hardly, if at all) any taxes on self-sustaining sustenance farms. Let's be honest here, your whining is hypocritical.

And you even included that stupid for profit prison myth/circle-jerk. It's even worse than that the stupid myth about Monsanto suing innocent farmers for cross-pollination. Just people people say it on reddit doesn't make it true.

Property tax.

Most for-profit prisons are local public jails operated by rural sheriffs, who use the proceeds to finance local law enforcement. Whether privately or publicly owned, 39% of all prisoners in the United States are in a prison which is operated for the maximization of profit. At the federal level, both CCA and the GEO Group lobby heavily for new laws and harsher criminal sentencing, and at least one private prison magnate (Robert Mericle) has been proven guilty of bribing judges directly to hand down prison sentences. It's not a myth.

Monsanto has stated that they do not currently intend to sue farmers growing RRR crops so long as they do not take advantage of glyphosate resistance, but they reserve the right to do so. The "myth" is that the lawsuits have happened, but the reality is that Monsanto has every legal right under the current patent system to file and win such lawsuits.