The following is a sample of Unit III: Burn Libraries found in my upcoming book, TANGENTS, about the state of our education system and the ways we can turn it around.
In the classroom, teachers stick to the approved curriculum. They guard their words and opinions for the safety of not only their own careers, but also for the preservation of their school, and the paternalism of their students against a hostile opposition intent removing key elements of the human experience. Opportunistic politicians pass laws in search of problems, use the voteless population to maintain power, and sacrifice children as pawns for political gain.
This was the realization, when the valedictorian told me during the last week of their high school career, that they did not know how to vote in the upcoming election. Eighteen without the challenge of interpreting legislation, formulating personal opinions over controversial topics, and even being presented with the reality of the world they are inheriting. This is the forced failure of education.
This push toward bland and boring lessons, under the guise of protection, is to make intellectualism daunting and dull, to stereotype academics as nerds. Constructing content-heavy homework that has no attachment to the practical application means the: When are we ever going to use any of this? is by design. This persistent push towards anti-intellectualism ultimately generates disinterest in politics. Sterile social studies courses portray political engagement as drudgery instead of providing invitations to immediately participate.
Education is not to create critical thinkers but to discourage participation due to perceived personal inadequacies, overall ignorance, and overwhelming despair.
The opiate of the masses is defeatism.
The equation below is an idealistic representation of the process. Carbon monoxide (CO) is an unwanted byproduct of incomplete combustion. This odorless but poisonous gas attaches with greater affinity to the hemoglobin in red blood cells. As a result, oxygen gas (O2) cannot bind, and one suffocates molecularly while poisoning themselves. Oxygen gas becomes a limiting reagent causing toxins to build in the body since respiration cannot complete the reaction. This is the same way candle snuffers work.
By giving them an incomplete education, you are setting the students up for failure. Yet, this is the nature of reality, the idealized balanced equation above, is far from the actual outcome of education. Chemistry through stoichiometry calculates the actual percentages of the products using molarity. Public education could aspire to balance equations between schools, but this is beyond idealistic. A balanced equation in chemistry is actually math. It holds no practical application until it is connected to the physical world.
Cooking and baking are chemistry. Similar to spoons of sugar, chemical engineers use stoichiometry to maximize profits while eliminating excess and reducing pollution. Equality treats all the same. Equity considers the circumstances, and meaningful equality of opportunity treats some differently. Equality wastes sugar. Equity maximizes the size of the pie.
Balanced equations are an unobtainable idealistic equality. Stoichiometry is actionable, pragmatic equity. This is why we calculate and measure reactants to maximize the desired products from the limited resources available.
Schools must be the graduated cylinders from science classrooms: transparent and equitable.
Graduated cylinders meticulously measure resources with accountability, not to redistribute wealth equally but to maximize products through equity. The maximization of the entire system across the country requires avoiding the waste of reactants, or resources because other limiting reagents produce unwanted outcomes.
Basing public education funding on the taxes of the community increases performance for those with the wealth to acquire the resources. Schools require equitable distribution without preference of location or the benefits of birth.
By graduation, students reach the previously ascribed defeatism and embrace survival under the crushing debt of each attempt to attain the dwindling opportunities for success. Instead, they must bear their own fire, and become their own Prometheus, redefining personal success by avoiding the ghosts of idealism and subsequent defeat.
Instead, the kings of dust must be removed from government by students determined to be activists rather than serfs. Instead, to avoid removal, nonvolatile reactions to the oppression must be taught within these Crucible Schools.
Otherwise, traditional education graduates cylinders who fall in line.
Comments