Timothy Birdnow

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children."

Hosea 4:6

Here is an interesting and ridiculous development; customized schools for the masses.

Bruce Deitrick Price gives the details:

"So forgive my hesitation when I read praise of "mass customized learning,” which the developers hail as "the only way to achieve true education reform. We have to redesign student learning from class time to curriculum and from teaching styles to learning spaces.” Translation: throw everything out the window and start anew with a big blank check."

[...]

Mathiesen claimed that, no matter how much you spruce up an old model of car, no one would want it because "there’s always a maximum capacity… and the same applies to education.”

[...]

"All instruction will be customized. Students may sometimes be in the same classroom but each will be attending his own separate school. Each will, in effect, have what schools now call an IEP, individualized education program.

Why is this such a great idea? What about the responsibility of the school to identify those things which everyone should know and then teach those things? In other words, what about the classical concept of a shared community of knowledge??

Taken to its logical conclusion, customized learning means a different academic experience for every kid. That might sound fun and exciting for a time. But surely there are things that everybody should know. Who is Shakespeare? What’s a hypotenuse? Why do people still talk about Julius Caesar?"

End excerpts.

Now, this is an attempt to keep the Teacher's Unions relevant in the era of home schooling. Home schoolers learn in a customized setting, and it works far better than the mass public education offered by those who want to "re-educate" our children. But there is a huge difference between customized schooling at home and an institution where everyone is learning something different.

If you want to understand why public education is so horrible, read Daren Jonescu's The Case Against Public Education online.

Home schooling started in modern times precisely BECAUSE the schools were failing to teach the basics, to educate children with facts. It became a place for promoting attitudes and values outside of the norms favored by the very taxpayers who were paying for the schools, and little effort was taken to actually teach subect matter. When it was, it was endlessly redesigned to promote a breech between the traditional America and the children's parents and the children themselves.

And home schoolers have to follow a lesson plan as outlined by the state in which the student resides.

Price continues:

"ASCD, a big voice in the Education Establishment, concluded: "Mass customized learning is about each learner becoming an active, engaged partner with real voice in how he or she learns and how he or she demonstrates knowledge or skill.”

In other words, students decide what they should know and how they will prove that they know it. How convenient for the students. The Education Establishment gets "competency learning” or "standards-based learning” all in one swoop."

End excerpt.

In other words it's a back door version of Common Core.

I have a question for the Progressive educrats; if it's not o.k for people to utilize alternative news sources (like Breitbart or Fox News) and everyone should be part of the "common culture" of mainstream media gatekeeping, then why is it a good thing for students to not subscribe to a commun education? If Mass Customized Learning" is a desired approach to teaching children who know nothing at all of the world then isn't it a good thing that people can customize their news sources? Yet Progressives rail against this, demanding that the Right end this folly of actually persuing news rather than swallowing the liberal propoganda. Funny how this doesn't matter when it comes to teaching children.

Liberals want people ignorant of basic facts so that they can tell them what to think. It really is that simple. If you don't know history and think we learned everything in the last fifty years you will believe what you are told by "experts". If you can't do math you can't calculate how badly you are getting cheated by the government on taxes. If you don't know how to put thoughts down into words you cannot explain a concept to others or even to yourself. You are then a blank slate to be filled with the thoughts of those ruling over you. School is supposed to teach you basic facts so that you may learn to think. Liberals hate the idea of you thinking, and seek to teach children how NOT to do it.

That's why they hate alternative media, too; they want to manage the information people receive so that they can only think what they allow them to think.

This atomization of education into customized learning is intended to do precisely that, to not force the ignorant to learn what they do not know. A big part of education involves making the student aware of his own ignorance and forcing him or her to learn something they aren't interested in learning.

I was taught the New Math growing up, and never did learn to do any but the most basic arithmatic in grammar school. As a result, I had a strong dislike for math and hated that it was required in both high school and college. But you know what? After stumbling around for a long time I learned to do it and in some ways am better than many of my fellows who took to it naturally. I owe a debt of gratitutde to the teachers who made me learn it against my will, because I have done a number of things using math that I would never have accomplished, written some very well received articles on science precisely because I did the math - something I would never have been able to do had I been allowed to follow my natural inclinations.

Greatness may involve natural talent, but it also involves work. As Edison stated, it is two percent inspiration and ninety eight percent perspiration. In our modern public schools the little darlings don't perspire - and in the end wind up snowflakes.

Price concludes:

"The Education Establishment, for the past century, has relentlessly tried to chip away at traditional content. Less and less is taught. Customizable learning achieves the same goal in a different way. Each child learns a different set of facts. In total, more might actually be taught. But the facts are all Balkanized, atomized, divided into small parcels. There will be less and less shared knowledge, and therefore less communication within the society. That seems to me a weakness."

End excerpt.

That describes the problems with most Americans; you can explain x or y or z to them and they will understand, but then you ask them to put it all together and you get a blank stare. That's because the concepts of causality and process aren't there, because there were too many gaps in their public school education and they never learned to apply what they were taught. This has served the Progressive agenda well, because the public can be trained to do jobs but not to understand the workings of things, so they don't delve into what the self-anointed rules are doing. Let the "big brains" run things and enjoy the fruits provided by their betters, is what is taught to so many. This is a result of a failure of education, and it was intentional.

If America, indeed, if the world is to be restored, we must start by actually educating our children. As long as Progessives control the educational process we will never accomplish this.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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