Only young children need teachers
Young children cannot read or write, and they are not capable
of thinking very well. They need a lot of adult supervision. They benefit
from schools in which they are in a classroom with other children and a
teacher is always present to supervise them. However, when children know
how to read and write and use computers, they don't need the constant supervision
of a teacher.
Our current school system requires a lot of labor. Without a peasant
class, who will do the manual labor at the schools? Who will do the janitorial
work? Who will provide meals and clean up the mess afterwards? Some people
believe that classrooms should be smaller, but the smaller the size of the
classrooms, the more teachers we need.
I think schools need to be redesigned for this modern era. One change
that I would make is to have the children participate in keeping their
school clean and maintained. Parents expect their children to help with
the cleaning at home, and I think it would be best to get the children
accustomed to the idea of cleaning up after themselves at school, and contributing
to the maintenance of the school. This also provides adults with the opportunity
to notice which of the children are resisting this responsibility.
I think we also need to redesign the manner in which children are taught.
The current method of educating students is for a teacher to stand in front
of a group of students and talk to them. The problem with this technique
is that the teacher has to repeat the same lessons over and over, year
after year. This can be extremely boring for the teacher. This technique
seems to be well suited to young children, but once children learn
how to read and write, it would be better to make a video recording of
the lectures and put them into an "educational database". The students
would then be able to watch the lectures on their computer by themselves,
and they would be able to go forward or backwards through the videos. Furthermore,
the videos can be "interactive" so that the students can click on words
or items in the video to get more information about a particular issue.
By switching from human teachers to computers, the students would need
teachers only to answer questions and to provide them with advice, constructive
criticism, and suggestions. The teachers would be "educational advisors"
or "educational guidance counselors" who help the students decide
which of the thousands of videos to look at, and in which order. The teachers
would also put the students through a variety of tests to help them figure
out what they are good at, what they like and dislike, and what their limitations
are. The teachers would also provide the students with projects to work
on, and they would help them figure out how to find the information they
need to do the project.
We should switch to electronic
education
When schools first developed, perhaps 6000 years ago in ancient
Summeria, there was very little history, almost no science, and only simple
arithmetic. It was possible for a school to provide their students with
all
of the information that was known to the human race. Today there is so
much knowledge that a student can learn only a fraction of what is available.
This creates a serious dilemma. Specifically, which tiny fraction of the
information should each student learn?
With knowledge accumulating every day, it is becoming increasingly ridiculous
to expect students to make decisions on what to focus on. Students need
help in figuring out what they like and dislike, which subjects they are
good at, and - most important of all - what type of jobs will be
available to them when they are finished with school.
When a school is designed with teachers who talk to a group of students,
every child in the classroom has to learn the same lesson at the same pace
as the other students. If, in the middle of a course, a student decides
that he is no good at it, or that he doesn't like it, he cannot switch
to another course because the other courses are already in progress.
By comparison, when the education is electronic, each student learns
whatever he pleases at his own pace. The students are independent of one
another, so if a student decides that he doesn't like a particular field,
or that he is no good at it, then he can switch to another subject immediately.
He doesn't have to wait until the beginning of the next school year in
order to change subjects. Each student can also browse through other subjects
whenever they want to see what else is available. The students do not have
to commit to taking a formal course in order to find out if they are interested
in the issue.
An electronic education allows every student to be independent and wander
off on his own. It is similar in concept to browsing the Internet. Students
with exceptional talent or learning abilities would be able to learn at
a rapid pace rather than being held back by the rest of the class. Students
who needed more time to learn a particular issue would be able to take
the extra time without being ridiculed by other students.
Videos and simulators would allow students to learn how to use certain
types of equipment, or do certain types of laboratory procedures. We already
have flight simulators to teach people how to fly airplanes, and we could
have simulators to help students learn how to perform a DNA analysis, operate
a CNC milling machine, or remove an appendix with a CNC surgical or dental
device. We could also use robots to demonstrate the use of certain types
of equipment and procedures.
In the world today, a phenomenal amount of computer programming and
engineering talent is being wasted on video games, Hollywood special
effects, electronic gambling, and other forms of silly entertainment, but
if we were to alter society and shift some of our technical talent into
more productive activities, we could develop software, CNC machines, and
robots to make our schools more productive, our cities more beautiful,
our factories more pleasant to work in, and our medical procedures more
precise, safe, and rapid.
We should create an "Educational
Database"
Most people put up a significant resistance to learning while
they are in school, and they rarely learn anything once they get out of
school. Our schools aggravate the problem by giving a bad image to education.
For example, human history is fascinating, but I don't have any interest
in the history classes that our schools offer. Our history courses require
we sit in a classroom with other students for a specific period of time,
and memorize a certain amount of historical information. What is the point
of that type of education? Who benefits from that? Furthermore, our history
classes are full of Jewish lies about 9/11, the world wars, and
possibly thousands of other events.
There is a sensible reason for putting technicians, engineers, scientists,
doctors, and other people through tests to make sure that they are memorizing
information correctly, but unless a person is getting a job as a historian,
it makes no difference if he forgets historical information. Certain educational
fields should be treated differently by the schools. History, art, music,
and certain other fields should be available to everybody at every age,
and the only people who need to be tested are the people who want to get
a job that depends upon their understanding of those fields.
By putting all of our knowledge into an educational database, all of
us would be able to learn whatever we please, at whatever pace we want
to, as simply for the sake of curiosity. We would not have to take any
formal courses, or commit to anything. We could learn about something simply
for pleasure.
For example, imagine yourself taking a stroll through a park
and encountering a flower that you are curious about. Imagine using your
cell phone to take a photo of the flower and sending the photo to the electronic
database to find a match. You would then be able to access whatever level
of technical information you wanted, and you have access to documents,
videos, and images. This type of database would make education simple and
effortless, and it would be available 24 hours a day, and anywhere you
have a connection to the Internet.
At the moment, we do not have software that can identify plants or animals
from photos or videos, but if we had not been wasting a lot of software
talent on idiotic projects, such as electronic gambling, we might have
it by now. The company that makes the Angry Birds game made $100
million in 2011. Imagine if that amount of money and technical talent
had been put into more useful projects, and then consider that Angry Birds
is just one of many silly projects.
You might respond that we can already access educational material on
the Internet, and that the software for the Internet is becoming increasingly
more advanced. However, the Internet is not an educational database. It
is an
unorganized collection of information, propaganda, pornography,
deception, scams, and the ramblings of children and lunatics. It is an
electronic garbage dump. An enormous amount of time is wasted sifting through
its electronic trash. By comparison, an educational database would be under
the supervision of the school system, so it would be entirely educational
and very well ordered and indexed. It would be useful simply to satisfy
your curiosity about issues, or you could use it to learn specific skills.
It would be of tremendous value for the people who enjoyed learning on
their own.
Our video documentaries need
revision
A lot of the videos on the Internet and on television are considered
to be "educational", but I think all of those television programs need
to be revised and improved. For example, there are dozens of videos in
the Nova series,
and although I've only seen a few of them, I think that we should redo
the narration for all of them to make them more serious and informative.
In some cases the dialogue has idiotic remarks that are intended to entertain
the audience rather than educate them, and in some cases the dialogue is
an attempt to manipulate us, such as when they promote the concept that
our production of carbon dioxide is causing global warming.
As I mentioned in other files,
for all we know, we are having more effect on the weather as a result of
our replacement of plants with roads, parking lots, and buildings. The
people who are promoting the concept that our government can improve the
climate by controlling carbon dioxide production are either naive, or they
are criminals who are trying to manipulate us. We are fools for
allowing this type of "educational" television program.
I recently saw a portion of a Nova program called "Secrets Of The Sun".
I was too irritated by the dialogue to watch more than a few minutes at the
beginning, and a few minutes at the end. The show started in a somewhat
serious manner, but it soon focused on the potential danger
of solar flares. That particular television show was not an
educational program about the sun. Rather, it was some type of propaganda.
I suspect that the Jews promote the fear of solar flares because they fantasize
about cutting off our electricity and blaming it on solar flares. If you
think I'm exaggerating, watch a preview of Secrets Of The Sun here,
or the entire program at their website here.
There are lots of videos on the Internet that are trying to be educational,
such as the videos that show how corn chips are made, or how automobile
tire rims are produced, or how carbon nanotubes are manufactured, but their
narration is of limited value, and sometimes nonexistent. Some of these
videos have music rather than narration. These videos are not very educational.
For example, here
is a video that claims to show how M&Ms are manufactured, but what
do you learn from that type of video? That video needs to be provided with
some useful narration.
Imagine living in a society that provided itself with truly educational
videos and documents, and imagine that all of this material is placed in
a database that was free to access. Imagine that people were encouraged
to contribute to the educational material by making suggestions on how
to improve the material, thereby causing it to become increasingly
better over time. (This requires eliminating copyrights and
royalties and treating educational material as a free public resource,
which I'll describe in Part 4 of this series.)
Furthermore, imagine that this computer network is connected to the
television and phone networks, and that all of these networks are under
the supervision of the government and treated as a public resource, rather
than as a bunch of separate, independent networks under the control of
independent businesses. This would allow you to use your computer to arrange
for a video to be displayed on a television monitor at a particular day
and time.
For an example of how this would work, if you were interested in learning
about the sun, you could use your computer to look through the available
videos and documents, and select the technical level that you were interested
in. You could watch the videos on either your computer, or you could send
them to a television at a certain day and time.
This type of educational database would be useful for both satisfying
your curiosity about the universe, and for learning useful skills. For
example, an adult might want to access some information or videos about
CNC sewing machine simply to satisfy his curiosity on how they operate,
and another person might want to access information on how to use them
because they were interested in making some clothing. A teenager might
be interested in accessing some of the technical information about these
machines because he is considering a career in engineering or computer
programming.
In a "City of Castles", there would be lots of free recreational centers
that have high quality video monitors and audio systems. You could wander
into one of them and take a look at what the other people are watching,
but this society encourages people to socialize, so the emphasis would
be on people forming social clubs and arranging for events and videos.
You would be able to look through the scheduled events that the different
clubs were promoting. One club might be offering videos and educational
lectures about carbon nanotubes, for example, and another might be showing
videos of the land, animals, and fish that live on the little islands off
the coast of Alaska. Another club might show videos on how matches are
made today, how they were made in the past, and what they might be like
in the future.
If you were not interested in any of the scheduled events, then you
could reserve a social center for you and your friends, and select your
own videos. There would be plenty of social centers, so it would be unlikely
that all of them would be occupied.
Do you
use the Internet for research?
Millions of people have already proven the value of
an electronic educational database because we have a crude form of it today;
namely, the Internet. If you have ever used the Internet to learn about
something on your own, as opposed to using the Internet because
you had to do so for your school or job, then you have proven that when
people are provided access to electronic information, they will voluntarily
take the initiative to search through that information and learn about
something.
Some people use the Internet to access information about Hollywood celebrities,
sports events, or food recipes. Some people access information about products
they are considering to purchase. Some people have done research into the
9/11 attack, the Holocaust, or the Apollo Moon landing.
The Internet is proof that the concept of electronic education is valid.
It also shows that there are subtle differences between us in regards
to how we use electronic information. Most of the population is using the
Internet for their own entertainment and personal benefit, such as learning
about Hollywood celebrities or analyzing products that they are going to
purchase. Only a small percentage the population is using the Internet
to learn something that doesn't directly benefit them, such as how we have
been lied to about the 9/11 attack, or what life was like for people in
ancient Rome, or how rainbows are created.
Furthermore, the Internet shows us that a lot of people refuse
to learn about the world. For example, some of us have told other people
to look at the information about the 9/11 attack or the Holocaust, but
most people will only glance at that information briefly, and then find
excuses to avoid it. They resist learning about society's problems. They
want to entertain themselves. This behavior can also be seen in schools.
Most of the students in schools are not interested in learning. They go
to school only because they have to go to school, not because they want
to.
The Internet is not an electronic educational database but, despite
that, some of us have the desire and initiative to use it to educate
ourselves about issues that don't directly affect us. We use the Internet
to learn about the world because we want to learn about it. Nobody
makes us do it. The majority of people, however, have not used the Internet
to learn much of anything about the world. We have to accept the fact that
the majority of people do not have much of an interest in society. Our
natural tendency is to feel sorry for them and try to help them to learn,
but why do some people need help but not others? We have to face the fact
that some people are more like primitive savages than modern humans.
Imagine dividing the world up into two groups; namely, 1) the people
like you and me who have been using the Internet to learn about 9/11 and
other issues, and 2) the people who do not use the Internet to learn about
the world. Then imagine putting these two groups of people into separate
and independent societies.
I think we would discover that those of us in the first group would
create a society in which everybody is learning on their own, and
we have a much greater interest in our society and the world. We would
also be interested in observing that second group of people. However, that
second group would have almost no interest in learning about the world,
and they probably wouldn't even use the Internet to see how you and I were
living. That second group would behave exactly like our neighbors and relatives
are behaving right now; specifically, spending their lives titillating
their emotions with pet dogs, television, video games, gambling, drugs,
and toys. Crime networks would have an easier time taking advantage of
those people because there wouldn't be people like you and me to help them
realize that they are being lied to and abused. By comparison, corruption
and crime would have a much more difficult time in our society because
we would have a much greater interest in learning about what is happening
around us, and getting involved with society.
If you think I am exaggerating, take a look at the people around you
right now. How many of them notice or care about what is going on in other
nations? How many of them care that their schools are teaching propaganda
about 9/11 or the world wars? How many of them notice or care about the
corruption in the banking system, financial markets, or government? Most
Americans are European, but some of them do not even know if Europe is
a nation, a region, or a flavor of ice cream. If you think I am exaggerating
about that, there is this
very amusing video of a woman on a game show who wasn't sure what Europe
and France are. If you didn't have any experience with the "ordinary" people,
you might assume that she was doing a comedy skit. These people are nice,
and many of them are honest, but being nice and honest is not good enough
today.
Every day is a learning experience
Every day you are exposed to some aspect of this universe,
and you
interact with it. Every day you interact with sunshine,
flowers, insects, people, clothing, food, and weather patterns. All of
these "ordinary" events in your daily life are opportunities to learn about
yourself and the world around you. However, whether you learn anything
from these ordinary events depends upon your mind. At one extreme are the
animals; they don't learn much of anything from their experiences. For
example, when animals eat, they merely fill their stomach with food. They
do not learn anything about food.
At the other extreme are the people who are very curious and experimentative.
When they eat food, they notice the different flavors, colors, textures,
and smells of the food. They might also notice that different foods feel
different in their stomach, are digested differently, and pass through
the digestive system in a different manner. Some of them might occasionally
experiment with their meals, thereby giving them more opportunities to
learn about food.
For another example, animals don't notice, care about, or learn anything
about the plants around them. At the other extreme are the people who notice
that some plants need more water or sunshine, and some plants are more
prone to mildew, and some plants grow at a much faster rate. Some people
also experiment with the plants.
The point I want to make is that every day we have the opportunity to
learn a bit more about our bodies, our mind, people, sunshine, plants,
insects, food, and everything else in this universe. The "ordinary" events
in daily life provide us with opportunities to learn, but there are differences
in our ability to learn from these events. Some people go through life
without learning much of anything about it.
For a personal example, I grew up in America, where a lot of the automobiles
are in bad mechanical shape, and some of them are damaged from accidents
or rust. The first time I visited Europe in the 1980's I landed at the
Frankfurt, Germany airport, and was picked up by some other Americans who
had arrived earlier, and we then drove down the autobahn. I was out of
the airport for only a few minutes when I noticed all of the cars seemed
like they were new, and I made a remark that was something to the effect of,
"Why are all the cars so new?" The other Americans in the car, who had
been to Europe more than once, considered my question to be silly, and
they responded that there was no difference between their cars and our
cars.
Eventually I found out that Germany has laws that require all of the
automobile owners to have their cars in good working condition, and they
must also fix all visual damage. I was told that if a rusty spot is larger
than a few centimeters in diameter, it has to be fixed.
I had noticed the effect of those laws after only a few minutes of traveling
down the autobahn and casually looking out the window, but some Americans
had been to Germany many times and they still had not noticed that there
was a difference between our automobiles. I was even more shocked that
I could point out to these people that the German cars are in better condition
than the American cars, and they still could not see it.
Of course, there have been lots of things that were obvious to other
people that I didn't notice. Nobody notices everything. Actually, even
the most observant people notice only a tiny fraction of the details of
this universe.
Every day is an opportunity to learn something. When you ride on a train,
you have the opportunity to learn about trains, and you have the opportunity
to learn about whatever is both inside and outside of the train. When you
take a walk, you have an opportunity to learn about shoes, clouds, sidewalks,
and whatever else is in your area. For example, people who take walks at
different times of the day might notice that snails and worms are more
common at certain times of day, or during certain weather conditions.
Most of the information that we learn from our daily lives has no significance
to us, but our ability to notice details in the world around us has a profound
effect on our view of ourselves, our society, and the universe. The people
who are not very good at noticing the details of the world around them
will be more like animals. These unobservant people will not notice
many differences between themselves and other people, or between their
nation and another nation.
People who are not very observant will not have a good understanding
of the world. For example, they will not see any significant difference
between a factory in Japan and a factory in America, whereas someone like
me will notice that the Japanese factories have much more advanced equipment,
more robots, fewer employees, and fewer managers. The unobservant people
will likely come to the conclusion that America's failure to compete with
Japan is because the Japanese are an evil race that is cheating America,
whereas people like me will come to the conclusion that the American businessmen
are incompetent, selfish jerks who are wasting their time with fights over
money and status rather than in modernizing their factories, and that the
union leaders in America are so corrupt and stupid that they are inadvertently
hurting themselves and their workers by resisting modernization.
For another example, during the 1970s I made a remark to some people
that if America continues the policy of using Mexicans as a cheap source
of labor, then Mexicans will eventually dominate America and Spanish will
become the national language. I was not the only person to notice this,
but most people couldn't see it. Their response was that the population
of Mexicans would stay virtually the same through time.
The Americans in the 1970's could see the Mexicans working on the farms,
but they could not see that their population was slowly increasing.
A person has to be more observant in order to notice whether a population
is increasing or decreasing. In the case of the Mexicans, I noticed that
some of the farm workers were occasionally getting other jobs or starting
businesses, thereby creating vacancies on the farms, which were
filled by bringing in more Mexicans. I also noticed that most of the Mexicans
were having families.
Most of the human population is only slightly more observant than animals.
They have a very simplistic view of life as a result. These people should
not be influencing society.
"The teacher was a great
inspiration to me!"
Some people might object to electronic education because they
recall teachers who were incredible inspirations to them, but it's not
correct to give the credit to the teacher. Every teacher is in contact
with thousands of students. A few of those students will regard
the teacher as an inspiration, and some of the students will consider the
teacher to be terrible, and most of the students will not remember much
about the teacher. If a student considers a teacher to be an inspiration,
it is because the student reacted to the teacher in a positive manner.
This concept applies to everything, not just teachers. Every day we
encounter plants, animals, weather, and people. However, the manner in
which we react to these things depends upon our mind. For example, some
people react to a rainstorm with complaints about the weather, and other
people react by observing the rain and noticing the shape of the rain droplets,
or by noticing that the cities were not designed to protect people from
rain.
Every day is full of experiences, and we can react to those experiences
with anger, pouting, apathy, or contemplation. We can learn from our experiences,
or we can have temper tantrums. When we encounter a person, we can learn
from him, hate him, be envious of him, steal something from him, lie to
him, or ignore him. Each of us is free to interact with the rain, people,
flowers, and sunshine in any manner that we please. We can also react to
our own body in whatever manner we please. For example, a person with diabetes
might react by hating the world, and another might react by observing his
body and providing medical researchers with valuable information about
this particular problem.
Some of us learn about ourselves and the world as we go through life,
whereas other people learn virtually nothing because they merely exist
from one day to the next like an animal. If you learn something from a
teacher, it is because you have that particular quality. Don't give
the credit to the teacher. A teacher cannot make you learn anything. A
teacher can only help you to do whatever it is that you are capable of.
If you learn something from the teachers or other people that you encounter,
or if you learn something about the weather, or if you learn something
about the food you eat, it is because you have the mental ability
to learn from your experiences. It's not because you encountered a special
teacher, or because you ate a special type of food. All of us have virtually
the same experiences every day. There are subtle differences in the plants
and animals in our particular area, and there are subtle differences in
our weather, and the people in our area are slightly different, but we
all experience virtually the same things. However, there are significant
differences in our ability to learn from our experiences. To rephrase that,
our minds are more different than our experiences in life.
Teachers can only help us
to help ourselves
A teacher cannot give us qualities that we were not born with.
Consider some extreme examples. For example, teachers can help students
learn
how to run faster, but they cannot help students learn to fly like
Superman or do witchcraft, as in the Harry Potter movies.
The opposite is also true; specifically, teachers cannot remove
a quality that we were born with. For example, a teacher may be so incompetent
that he cannot help us to learn anything, but no matter how terrible a
teacher is, he cannot take away any of our talents or intellectual abilities,
and he cannot reduce our memory, and he cannot make us less coordinated.
A bad teacher can give us false information about 9/11 and the Holocaust,
and a pedophile can irritate us and cause us to develop a bad attitude,
but no teacher can turn us into an idiot.
It may seem that I am stating the obvious, but we are not putting this
philosophy into practice. When students do terrible in school, parents
have a tendency to blame the teachers. Parents do not want to face
the possibility that their children were born stupid, or are more irresponsible
than normal students, or have less of an interest in learning, or have
significant mental disorders.
The teachers who are not very good are simply those who don't help us
learn very much. They will not ruin our life. Likewise, the good teachers
cannot make us into something that we are not. They simply help us to learn
at a more rapid pace.
The people who train dogs vary in their ability, but no matter
how good one of those teachers is, he cannot teach a dog to read
and write a human language. The best dog trainer can teach a dog only as
much as that particular dog is capable of learning. Every animal and human
has limitations.
The parents of children who do not do well in school need to face the
possibility that their children have mental qualities that are below average.
Society has to face the fact that half of the children will always
be below average. Our current philosophy is to feel sorry for the students
who have trouble in school, and to provide them with special assistance,
but pity doesn't help them. Feeling sorry for a dog that is not learning
how to read and write is not going to help the dog. Feeling sorry for a
human who is not learning how to perform the magic spells in a Harry Potter
book is not going to help that human learn to do magic spells. A school
system has to develop more sensible policies regarding the below-average
students. For example, we could teach them a skill and give them a job.
We could also prohibit them from reproducing.
Schools give special preference
to the losers
The American school system, and I suppose schools around the
world, have a tendency to give special help to the worst students.
Some schools provide counselors for those students, and some offer special
classes for them, and some allow the students to come in early so that
they can have some extra time with the teachers before the classes start.
The coach of a football team doesn't give special treatment to the worst
performing athletes of the team. Rather, he concentrates on helping the
more talented members, and he tells the worst performing people to find
something else to do with their life.
The schools are doing the opposite of what they should do. School
should concentrate on educating the better students. The dumb students
should be treated differently, such as giving them a job and getting them
out of school. We shouldn't waste time and resources on futile attempts
to transform the dumb students into scientists.
Electronic education makes
analysis easier
Electronic education makes it easy to gather data for an analysis
of which materials are most effective at teaching. Computers can keep track
of which education materials each student is looking at, and for how long,
and even the order in which they look at the materials. The software will
not know when the students are actually reading the material, and when
they are taking a nap, but the students could help by signaling the database
when they are walking away from the computer. The students could also help
by identifying the materials that they think are helping them the most.
When the students are in a conventional classroom, they all read the
same book at the same rate, so there is no way to compare the effect of
the educational materials. However, when they are free to learn on their
own, every student will browse through slightly different material. Some
of the students will learn at a more rapid pace, and some of them will
learn information that is more useful. The teachers would be able to do
experiments to determine which materials are more effective.
For example, when a student learns some information very quickly, the
teachers could tell some of the other students to try looking at the same
material and in the same order. This would allow the teacher to determine
if the material was doing a better job of explaining the concepts, or if
that particular student was simply better at learning. Over a span of many
decades, the teachers would be able to create increasingly more effective
educational materials.
I suspect that the "educational" television shows, such as Sesame Street,
are entertaining to some children, but the children are not learning
much of anything of value. When we put all education materials in a database
for all children to access, then we can get a better idea of which of these
programs are teaching children something of value, and which are merely
entertaining them.
We should analyze students
for their skills
Students need to be tested periodically so that teachers can
determine that they are learning something of value, but the schools today
are not checking to see whether the students are learning something useful.
The entrance exams for college when I was in high school were concerned
only that we could perform math, had a large vocabulary, and had memorized
lots of historical facts and figures.
When schools first developed many thousands of years ago, the students
only needed to learn arithmetic, reading and writing, and a few other bits
of information. It made sense for those schools to test their students
in math and language. Today, however, students need to learn specific
skills, and so schools should test them on their ability to do something
of value and function properly in society. It is especially ridiculous
to expect students to have large vocabularies. Large vocabularies are of
value only to intimidate or entertain. We don't need them
for communication. In fact, large vocabularies are detrimental to
communication. When we want to express intelligent thoughts, we should
be clear and precise.
For example, when the people on television are giving weather forecasts,
they should stop referring to the temperature as "mercury", as in,
"the mercury hit 108° today". How many thermometers are using mercury
today? Even if thermometers were still using mercury, the mercury doesn't
"hit" anything. They should tell us what the "temperature is", not what
the "mercury hits". This may seem like a trivial complaint, but it is just
one of thousands of examples of people in the media using language
in an idiotic manner to entertain or titillate the audience.
For another example, the news reporters frequently tell us about the
stock market "crashing" or "soaring", even though it changed by a tiny
percentage. Remember to ask yourself, "Who benefits?" Who benefits
when journalists tell us that the stock market "crashed" when it changed
by only a tiny percentage? The journalists are trying to attract your attention
and titillate your emotions. You do not benefit from that type of
manipulation.
Using words in inappropriate manners may seem insignificant, but over
long periods of time it can cause words to develop multiple, confusing
meanings. For example, referring to a 2% change in a stock market price
as "crashing" or "soaring" creates a situation that is similar to the the
story "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". Specifically, after many years, the words
"crashing" and "soaring" will be regarded as a trivial change in
something. Some other words will then have to be used to express what we
considered "crashing" and "soaring" to be today. I think it would be better
if schools taught children to use language in a clear and precise manner,
and if schools stopped emphasizing large vocabularies.
To add to the problem, we are allowing businesses to use common words
as product names. Microsoft, for example, is using windows, excel, word,
and other common words as names for their software. This is idiotic. They
should pick words that are not in common use, or create a new word. We
need to change our economic system so that we don't have to be concerned
about the names of products. And how about that telephone operating system that's referred
to as an "ice cream sandwich"? How ridiculous does this situation have
to be before we wonder where we are going? What would you think if BMW
called their new car the "BMW Turkey Dinner With Cranberry Gravy". Of course,
that car would have a special slot in the dashboard for the "Ice Cream
Sandwich" phone.
There is also no reason to test students on their ability to memorize
historical facts and figures. Unless a person wants to become a historian,
it makes no difference if students forget historical facts. It would be
better to test the student's ability to locate information in the
database. For example, instead of testing a student's ability to recall
the year and location at which the iron plow began replacing the wooden
plow, the students would be tested on their ability to find that information
in the database. Every year it becomes less important and less practical
for students to memorize information and more important for them to be
able to rapidly locate information. They need to memorize the techniques
to find information, not memorize the information.
Students should also be tested on their ability to function in jobs
and society, and that means that the tests have to be different for
different students according to the type of jobs they are considering.
Students who will never need to use advanced math do not need to be tested
in math, for example. Schools should test a student's ability to do whatever
jobs they think they might do. If a student is planning to get involved
with farming, then he should be tested on his ability to use the equipment
that the farmers are using, and his ability to do the type of analyses
that farmers must do.
What makes one teacher better
than another?
I think the reason some teachers are better than others is
because some people are better able to analyze students and determine their
particular abilities, desires, limitations, and confusion. The more accurately
a teacher can understand his students, the the better he will be at figuring
out what to say to each student. This is true regardless of whether the
teacher is teaching math, dance, gymnastics, skydiving, boxing, sailing,
cooking, or engineering. Imagine two extreme examples. One extreme would
be a robot.
The robot teacher in the
photo is being tested in a Japanese school.
Robots are capable of demonstrating the use of equipment, providing
tests for the students, and giving lectures.
However, a robot cannot analyze any of the students. Therefore,
a robot will teach every student in exactly the same manner, regardless
of the student's age, abilities, and state of confusion. |
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At the other extreme would be a teacher who has the qualities
of the mythical Christian god who knows what each of us is thinking. A
god-like teacher would understand each student so well that he would know
exactly where each student is confused, what each student already knows,
and what all of their abilities are. He would be able to provide every
student with a slightly different lecture that is perfectly
tailored to fit their particular abilities and level of education.
Some people give me the impression that they think a good teacher is
a person who the students enjoy. Those people promote the philosophy
that a person will become a better teacher by learning how to make is classes
more fun. However, I don't think teachers should be entertainers
or clowns. I think a person will become a more effective teacher when he
becomes better able to analyze his students.
People who are good at understanding students would be especially effective as teachers
if we switch to electronic education.
The reason is because the students would be independent, and so a teacher
with an exceptional ability to understand students would be able to analyze
each of the students and provide each of them with unique guidance,
tests, and projects.
By comparison, when a teacher has to teach an entire class at the same
time, then he must teach all of the students the same material at the same rate.
Schools realize that this is a terrible method of teaching students, and
so they compensate by creating classes in which the students are very similar
in abilities and desires.
The more similar the students are, the more effective this type of classroom is,
but students are never going to be truly identical.
Therefore, it would be better to switch to electronic education and allow
each student to be completely independent.
This allows the teacher to analyze each of them individually and provide each
of them with unique guidance and testing.
We should not
pity the students who need teachers
If we switch from human teachers to electronic education, a
lot of the students would waste a lot of their time because they would
learn about issues that entertain them but have no value in getting a job,
or they would play games rather than learn. Parents would react by feeling
sorry for their children and demanding that we bring back the human teachers.
A better solution is to consider what we want the human race to become.
I don't think it's a good idea to continue the policy of human teachers
who stand in front of a classroom of students and repeat the same lessons
year after year. I think it would be much better for the human race to
evolve into a creature that is better adapted to this modern world. Children
should be provided with an electronic education, and the teachers should
only guide the children as they learn on their own.
The students who don't have the initiative to learn something useful
should be described as unfit for this modern world. Feeling sorry
for them will not help them, or the human race. The teachers should not
go out of their way to help them, either. The teachers should regard them
as savages in a human world. The teachers should be guidance counselors
who help the students learn. This would make the job of the teacher less
boring, and it would eventually result in the human race evolving into
people who enjoy learning on their own.
Imagine providing all students
with drugs
It might help you to understand these concepts if you imagine
what would happen if we designed a school system that provided every student
with a free package of drugs every day. Imagine yourself as a high school
student, and imagine that every morning you find a package on your desk
that contains some cocaine, beer, LSD, heroin, and whiskey. Imagine that
your teacher tells you that you can use these drugs if you please, but
whether you do or you don't, there will be a fresh package of new drugs
the next day, and the day after that, and so on. What would you have done
if you had been provided with a free package of drugs every day of high
school?
If schools were to provide all students with a package of drugs every
day, some students would experiment with a few of them, and some students
would become addicted to some of them, and some students might die from
overdoses. Who would be hurt by this policy? Only the students who had
trouble controlling their drug use. Giving students free access to drugs
is probably the fastest and simplest ways of determining which of them
has the ability to control their drug use. It is similar to the concept
of putting rocks into an acid bath to determine which of them are diamonds.
This same concept applies to electronic teaching. If we provide students
with electronic educational materials, the students who have the ability
to use that technology would become educated, and the others would remain
uneducated. Rather than feeling sorry for the students who cannot learn
this way, we should simply regard them as not being worthy of reproduction.
Educational materials should
be useful, not "fun"
In a free enterprise economy, most educational books, videos,
and supplies are produced by businesses rather than the government.
Since businesses must make a profit from their work, they design the educational
materials to be appealing to teachers, parents, and students. They want
their educational materials to be exciting and "fun".
In a better society, educational materials would be designed from the
point of view of their ability to quickly and efficiently pass valuable
information into the mind of the student, and to help the student use that
information in a useful manner. The people designing the material would
not care whether the student likes the material or considers it to be "fun".
Educational materials would be judged according to their ability to educate,
not on their ability to appeal to people.
In one of my previous
documents, I pointed out that humans are very sensitive to the way
information is presented, and that if we figure out how to provide information
in a proper manner, people will be interested in learning it. However,
we have to distinguish between presenting information in a useful manner,
and titillating obnoxious or mentally ill people. An example is the manner
in which we present food for dinner or parties.
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We do not want our food to be dumped into a bag and put over our face,
as we feed horses. We want our food to be arranged in a visually pleasant
manner. However, is the cake (to
the right) presented in a pleasant manner? |
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Update 24 November 2016:
originally I had a photo of a cake that was in the shape of a black
woman, but I have since been informed that that particular cake was not
intended to be amusing or artistic. It was supposed to be an attempt to
show people how idiotic and painful it is to perform female
genital mutilation. So I replaced that image with the cake above, which
is supposed to be artistic. Some people are describing it as "spirit cooking". You can find hundreds of images at this page (scroll down the page to find them).
I would not describe this as presenting food in a pleasant manner. I
would describe this as "toilet humor to titillate lunatics".
I think that a lot of the artists are mentally ill, and that
some of their material is disgusting or detrimental. We should not be
afraid to pass judgment on their artwork. For another example, the
displays of preserved human and animal bodies are an excellent way to let
us see the muscles, bones, blood vessels, and other parts of our body.
It is also an excellent way for us to compare the bodies and brains between
different people; between animals and humans; between men and women; and
between people of different ages. For example, compare the head and neck
in the photo below to the head in Part 2 (here).
The Body Worlds
exhibits are excellent educational displays.
These displays are valuable educational tools, but what do
we gain by putting them into ridiculous positions, such as idiotic sexual
positions or playing poker?
If ww are going to put them in sexual displays, why not something
realistic? Or am I too naive to realize that those two are demonstrating
a very popular sexual position?
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I think a lot of the people who end up as artists are people
who are suffering from some type of defect that prevents them from fitting
in with the rest of us and enjoying life. We are not helping the artists
when we let them do whatever they please, and we are not helping society,
either. We have to pass judgment on what is and is not "art".
The sexual displays might titillate lots of people, but if we are going
to put dead bodies into sexual displays, why not pick something more useful
from an educational point of view, such as a display of a government official
at a party who is raping a young boy? Or how about a policeman or a
doctor at a children's hospital, raping a child under anesthesia?
A video monitor would be provided with that type of a display to explain
that it is based on actual rapes.
Or how about a display of Josef Fritzl while he rapes his daughter?
Or a display of one of the events in the life of Jaycee Dugard and Philip
Garrido, such as a display of an adult man raping a kidnapped teenage girl
who is pregnant with his first child. The video monitor could point out
that up until the 22nd century, the majority of people were so much like
stupid
animals that they didn't care that kidnapped victims and sex slaves
were scattered around the planet, or even living in their neighborhoods.
I may seem to be making a sarcastic joke, but decades ago it occurred
to me that it would be useful for future generations if there was a special
museum that had displays of actual rapes, obese people, Siamese twins,
and other retards and freaks. This museum would help people understand
the importance of maintaining the genetic quality of the human race. This
museum would be required study for people who wanted a leadership position,
and it would be required for anybody who proposed reducing the restrictions
on reproduction. I think these displays would have a much greater emotional
effect on people compared to reading words in a document.
School courses should be
practical,
not fun
Just as museums and other educational material should be designed
to be useful, so should school courses. We should not be concerned with
pleasing the students. For example, consider robotics. With robotics becoming
increasingly important, a lot of high schools and colleges are now offering
classes in robotics. There are also lots of contests in which the schools
put their robots into competition with one another.
I don't know what those robotics courses are like, but after watching
some of the videos on the Internet about their robot competitions, I suspect
that the robotics courses are similar to all other American school courses.
Specifically, they are designed primarily to entertain
the students and their parents. They are not designed to be job training
programs.
The students are certainly learning something of value when
they design robots to throw basketballs, but I think we could redesign
these courses to provide a much better education. I suspect that the courses
are designed primarily for entertainment, not job training. Many
of these courses also seem to be designed to help businesses make money,
such as the competition in the photo that is supported by NASA and which
allows corporations to advertise their names on the basketball robots.
How is that any better than encouraging the children to wear company logos
on their clothing?
The high school that I went to, Dos Pueblos High School, now has a robotics
program, and one of the teachers said in an interview that he has been
trying to get more girls to join. Schools should encourage all boys and
girls to try different activities so that they can discover their talents
and desires, but I don't think our schools are trying to help the students
understand themselves. Rather, I think they are trying to lure girls into
the engineering and science classes in order to appease feminists.
The schools boast that they are training girls to be scientists and engineers,
but in reality, we are wasting our time and money. Most of the girls do
not have the desire or talent to do those jobs. The schools are also giving
false hopes and expectations to these girls. The schools could be described
as abusive because they are causing a lot of girls to waste their
youth in the pursuit of a career that they either will not like, or will
not be successful at.
From my own casual observations of girls, many of those who took science
or engineering courses in college failed to complete the course, and of
the ones who succeeded and got a job as a scientist or engineer, many of
them ended up getting fired or demoted because they didn't have the necessary
talent. And of the girls who were successful as a scientist or engineer,
many of them got depressed by the time they were about 30 years old because
they wanted to have a family. Many of them quit their job to have babies.
Businesses should work
with schools to give students real
tasks
In a free enterprise system, the businesses are not allowed
to give jobs to students because it would be considered as either exploiting
children, or as an unfair competitive advantage. Furthermore, businesses
do not want to give tasks to students because they do not want anybody
to have access to their technology or upcoming products. They want to keep
everything a secret because most businesses are involved with plagiarism,
sabotage, and other diabolical attempts to destroy one another. They do
not compete in a fair manner.
However, in the economy that I'm describing for the City of Castles,
the businesses and scientists would be encouraged to set aside some simple
tasks for students. For example, instead of students designing robots that
throw basketballs, engineers would provide students with some real tasks
that need to be done, but which are simple enough for students, such as
designing the fixture to hold a pressure sensor that goes into the finger
of a robot, or designing the software to control that sensor.
Some people might respond that giving the students a simple task of
a large project would be very boring, but it is not boring. It is
realistic.
If a student gets a job as an engineer, he is going to be a member of a
team, and he will have to work on a small part of a robot, a railroad engine,
or a telephone network. I think it is better to give the students real
work experience rather than titillate them with silly entertainment, such
as fooling them into thinking that chemical engineers spend their time
making explosions, and that engineers spend their time playing basketball
games with robots.
For another example of what students could do, there are some products
that are simple enough that businesses could set them aside for students.
For example, the knife sharpeners that are available for home use are terrible.
I have not yet seen a knife sharpener that truly works well. Recently I
got so fed up that I removed the abrasive wheel from a knife sharpener,
cut off the blades on a blender component, and then attached the abrasive
wheel to the blender component with epoxy. Then I used epoxy, a rag, and
a plastic bottle to make a threaded shell that screws into the blender
base to hold the abrasive wheel.
The blender base. |
I removed the blades and attached an abrasive
wheel with epoxy. |
I used a rag and epoxy to form a threaded
shell that screws into the blender base. |
This allows the grinding wheel to spin at a high speed, which
allows it to sharpen knives very quickly and without any effort. Unfortunately,
my particular design is not ideal for a product that people would actually
use. The threaded shell that I made from a red and white rag should completely
enclose the grinding wheel, and it should have a slot in it so that the
knife glides along the grinding wheel at the proper angle.
This knife sharpener is technically simple enough for students
to work on, and it would provide them with useful work experience.
They would have to learn about the difference between centrifugal and centripetal
force; how to design molds for 3-D plastic parts; how to design abrasive
wheels that can sharpen steel knives without shattering or clogging; and
how to design components that are simple to manufacture and assemble.
The teacher would provide guidance to the students, and with the businesses
working with the schools, the teachers could get assistance from the engineers
by arranging for a time for the engineers to connect to the classroom via
a video link. The different schools could compete to see who could develop
a knife sharpener that uses the least resources, works the best, and is
easiest to produce and assemble. The schools could also arrange for trips
to factories and research labs to help the students get a better understanding
of what the engineers and scientists actually do.
When businesses work with the schools and provide the students with
realistic projects, then the students graduate with real job experience
rather than what we have today, which is students who need a lot of on-the-job
training in order to become useful.
Schools should not be pressured
to fill classrooms
Our school system is designed to teach a group of students
at one time, and therefore, every school course must attract a certain
number of students in order to justify its existence. There is no shortage
of students applying for courses in music, art, or sports, but not many
students, and especially not many girls, are interested in engineering
or science courses. The schools react to the lack of interest by making
the classes appear more fun. Professors who are struggling to get tenure
are tempted to lower their standards of performance in order to keep the
mediocre students in their course.
I think that students should be pushed into trying different activities
so that they can understand their talents and limitations, but tricking
students into thinking that engineering is just a form of entertainment
is wasting their time and wasting our resources. It is even more destructive
for a school to lower the standards for students and allow them to graduate
from a technical course when they don't truly have the ability or desire
to perform that type of job. This results in engineers, scientists, and
technicians who are mediocre or incompetent, which in turn means that they
will not be able to compete with the nations that have higher standards
for students.
It is also destructive and cruel to fool girls into pursuing careers
that are so technically advanced that they require many years of education,
training, and practice. By the time the girls become productive in those
type of careers, they are nearly 30 years old, and they start becoming
unhappy because they want to have children. Many of them quit their jobs
to have children, which means that all of the training and education has
been a waste.
If you believe that making classes more "fun" is the proper method of
teaching students, imagine an extreme example. Imagine if schools purchased
sex robots for their robotics courses, and imagine them setting up competitions
between the schools in which students competed in having sex with their
robots in various positions. Or how about a school luring children into
the cooking classes by concentrating on the making of candy? Or how about
a chemistry class that focused on making LSD and other drugs?
We are not helping students or society by tricking students into taking
science classes. I suggest the following three techniques to improve this
particular problem of students who have no interest in science or engineering.
1) Switch to electronic education. This
allows each student to learn whatever he pleases, and at his own pace.
A student can learn about robotics even if he is the only student in the
school who is interested in that issue. Furthermore, an electronic education
can be part time, and it can be done anywhere there is a computer. This
makes it easy for adults to take courses simply for curiosity, or to learn
a new skill in order to try a new job. Electronic education is also more
practical for mothers with babies.
2) Restrict reproduction. The human
race must evolve into a more intelligent creature, and we must also develop
more advanced emotional qualities. It is no longer possible for a man to
make a living by chasing after pigs with sharp sticks, and women must be
able to do more than groom themselves and have babies. The future generations
need to be more intelligent, have a greater interest in learning, have
more of an initiative to do things on their own, and be capable of working
in a team for the benefit of society.
3) Modify society so that we can treat men
and women differently. We need to design society to deal with
the fact that women must have babies, and we need to treat men and
women differently because we have different personalities. For example,
our current philosophy is to encourage girls to go to school, get a career,
and have babies later in life. As I will describe in more detail in Part
4 of this series, I think it would be better if the women had their babies
at a younger age.
Educational courses need
performance
reviews
When I was in elementary school, the teacher taught us how
to do division by giving us simple problems that always divided evenly.
This gave me the impression that division was simple. When we later started
doing division that had remainders, I felt as if we had been cheated. I
felt that we had been tricked into thinking that arithmetic was very simple,
and now that we are older we are discovering the cruel reality that it
is actually quite difficult. I was thinking that they should have given
us a realistic view of division from the very beginning. They could have
given us some numbers which divide evenly, and some numbers which do not,
and told us to ignore the remainders until we get into a more advanced
math class in the future.
I don't actually know the best way to teach arithmetic to children.
I am assuming that it would be best to let children experience remainders
when they learn division, but perhaps the best method is to give them simple
divisions that don't produce remainders. The only way to determine the
best method is to experiment with different methods and observe
the results. By teaching arithmetic in different manners to different children,
we can compare the children after they finished their courses to see which
of them has the best education. We would not be concerned about whether
the students "liked" the course. Rather, we would look at how well a course
educated the students. The courses would be judged according to their ability
to educate, not according to their ability to please the students.
When education is electronic, it becomes very easy to experiment with
different teaching techniques. For example, one teacher might create a
series of videos to explain a particular aspect of geometry or optics,
and another teacher might put together a slightly different series of videos
on the same topics. The different, competing courses would be put into
the educational database. Students interested in those subjects would be
told to try one of them. This would give us the opportunity to compare
which of the courses was doing the best job of educating the students.
The school officials would test the students to figure out what sort of
an education they were getting, and the teachers would be able to use that
type of feedback to improve their courses. Since the courses are electronic
rather than as paper books, the teachers can instantly make changes to
the material, at any time of the day or night, and they could make what
would be considered an insignificant and expensive change for a paper book,
such as changing a few words or images.
The teachers would be in competition with each other, but they would
not be like businesses in a free enterprise system that fight to attract
students and profit. Rather, they would be trying to impress the school
officials who are doing the performance reviews. They would be competing
to continually improve the educational value of their courses. They wouldn't
be concerned about pleasing parents or students, or attracting donations.
These type of experiments would allow the teachers to develop courses
for different age groups, and they might discover that the courses need
to be slightly different for boys and girls. They could also create educational
courses for adults who are simply curious about a subject but not
interested in getting a job in that field. For example, there could be
some adult educational material about robotics that provide adults with
an understanding of the issue, but without getting into the technical details
that a student would need in order to get a job in the field. These adult
educational materials would be similar to the science documentaries that
we see on television. Over time, this type of electronic educational database
would evolve into a wide variety of courses for different age groups and
purposes.
Unfortunately, I don't think any of our schools are experimenting to
make their courses more productive, and I don't think they are doing any
type of performance review of their courses. Our universities are the best
example of this problem. They show no concern for whether their education
is helping their students to get a job and function in society. The universities
seem much more concerned with improving their advertisements so
that they can attract more students and more donations. I suspect that
the universities would resist doing a performance review because
I think that the university officials are fully aware of the fact that
they are not providing much of an education, and they would not want to
conduct a study to prove it.
We don't need to protect
children from reality
Most parents refuse to face the possibility that the majority
of children are "ordinary", and that half the children are "below average".
Most parents, especially mothers, insist that their children are "above
average". As a result of this attitude, when one of their "above average"
children has trouble in school, the parents want the school courses to
become easier. They want their brilliant children to get a diploma. Most
parents do not want the schools to tell them that their child is doing
poorly in school.
I have heard parents complaining about their child being bullied by
other students, or insulted by the teachers, but do parents ever complain
that their child just graduated from college without any useful skills?
Or that he is so unprepared for society that he still doesn't understand
credit card interest rates or how to purchase a house?
Some of the parents who advocate the philosophy that schools should
give good grades to all students will point out that there have been many
children of previous generations who were criticized by their teachers
for being stupid, but those children ended up as adults with impressive
talents. Those particular children are used as examples to support the
philosophy that teachers should never criticize students or give them bad
grades because the teachers may simply be unaware that the student actually
has talent.
However, I would say that these children are actually proof of what
I'm saying; specifically, that it does not hurt children to be told the
truth. If a child is doing poorly in school, it does not hurt him for the
teacher to scold him and give him bad grades. If he is truly talented,
his talent will show eventually. A teacher is not going to transform an
intelligent student into an idiot simply by telling him that he is an idiot.
It is possible for a teacher to interfere with a child's education,
such as by giving him a bad attitude, or by teaching him worthless material,
but a teacher cannot rewire a child's brain. The stupid children will be
stupid no matter what the teachers do, and a talented student will remain
talented regardless of how often the teachers and other students criticize
him.
Americans have a very strong "feel sorry for me" attitude, so they have
a tendency to feel sorry for the children who have trouble in school.
They want to blame the child's problems on the teacher or the other students.
They don't want to face the possibility that the child was born with
a primitive or low-quality brain.
The parents who have defective children tend to react by protecting
and pampering them, but we do not help children by feeling sorry for them.
Children need to be protected from razor blades, bleach, and other dangerous
items, but we do not have to protect children from learning the truth
about themselves. Quite the contrary! I think schools should encourage
children to try lots of different activities in order to understand themselves.
We are not going to hurt children by letting them discover that they are
only ordinary in some abilities, and below ordinary in others.
Instead of protecting children from criticism, it would be more useful
to tell the children that if they believe they have been underestimated,
then they should prove to the teachers and other students that they made
a mistake. Children should be taught to earn whatever they want
rather than beg for pity or handouts.
We are also not going to hurt children by letting them know the truth
that most of them are only ordinary in their visual appearance, and half
of them are below average, and some of them are ugly. Most parents,
especially mothers, routinely lie to their children about how nice-looking
they are, but we are not helping children by lying to them. The children
who cannot handle the truth about themselves should be described as freaks
who are
unfit for this modern world.
Children are not harmed by "bullying", either. We have to remove the
psychotic and violent students who torment both students and teachers,
but we do not have to protect children from the "normal" bullying that
is a necessary part of childhood for all animals and humans.
I doubt if our prehistoric ancestors tried to protect their children
from nudity, sex, or work. I suspect that fathers encouraged their
sons to learn how to make tools, hunt animals, and make fire. I don't think
the teenagers were pampered, and I doubt if fathers gave their children
unrealistic and entertaining tasks to practice on. I think parents expected
both their sons and daughters to help with the work that needed to be done.
I also doubt if parents in prehistoric times considered their 20-year-old
children to be "children".
We should not
mix retarded and normal children
Some parents insist that their retarded children be allowed
in classrooms of normal students, and that both the teachers and the students
tolerate their horrible behavior. A recent example is the father
who put an audio recorder on his retarded child. This gave him a recording
of a teacher losing her temper with his retarded child, and he posted it
on the Internet as evidence that his child was being abused by the teachers.
I would say that these parents are abusing the teachers and the
other
students by demanding that their retarded children be placed in classes
of normal children. They think that they have a right to force their retarded
children on us, but I would respond that the parents of normal children
have a right to put their children in a classroom that is free of the destructive
influence of retarded, violent, and psychotic children.
It is impossible to please everybody. No matter what decisions we make,
there will always be people complaining. Americans like to feel sorry for
the underdog, and so Americans have a tendency to give special preference
to the retarded, dishonest, psychotic, anti-social people, and we have
a tendency to make the healthy people suffer. We should reverse that situation.
We should design society for the healthy, respectable people, and tell
the rest of the people to deal with it.
We don't owe anything to retarded people or their parents.
The retarded people should be thankful that they are alive. During prehistoric
times, they would have died or been killed at a young age. They should
be grateful that there are non-retarded people to provide them with abundant
supplies of food, advanced medical technology, clothing, houses, electricity,
and other items.
Schools should be allowed to deny entry to students that they
believe are destructive or inappropriate. Schools should also be allowed
to separate students into different classes according to their abilities,
ages, sex, or whatever else they feel is appropriate. They should even
be able to separate homosexuals from heterosexuals if they decide that
it is better for the students. There is no rule in this universe that says
teachers or students must tolerate retarded children. I would go even further
and allow teachers to remove students that they don't like, and allow students
to switch classrooms if they don't like the teacher.
Furthermore, we don't have to tolerate parents who complain about the
words
we use to describe their defective child. Some parents, for example, complain
that the word "retarded" is inappropriate, but what difference does
it make if we refer to them as retarded, autistic, schizophrenic, or bipolar?
When scientists are analyzing their retarded children, they can be descriptive
about the child's mental disorders, but the rest of us shouldn't be concerned.
The parents who complain about these words are not upset that we
are using the incorrect word. Rather, they are trying to push us into using
a word that they feel makes their child seem more normal. To restate that,
they are not concerned that we are using the wrong word; rather,
they are trying to make themselves
feel better about their retarded
child.
The word "retard" evokes unpleasant images in our mind, whereas
some of the modern words, such as "bipolar", don't evoke any images
at all. Therefore, people with retarded children prefer using words such
as bipolar. However, eventually the word bipolar will develop unpleasant
images, and so parents will switch to some newer word which doesn't have
any unpleasant images associated with it. We are not improving society
when we allow retarded parents to switch the words we use to describe their
retarded children.
Actually, we are causing more harm to society when we encourage people
to whine about words. As I described in other files, such
as here, every language is a chaotic jumble of words that developed
inadvertently and haphazardly, and all languages should be improved upon,
but we are not improving our language when we allow people to make idiotic
complaints. For example, there are some people whining that they are "Asian"
rather than "Oriental", and some people whine that they are "Latino" or
"Hispanic" rather than "Mexican" or "Brazilian". These people are not suggesting
intelligent
improvements to our language. When we pander to these people, we are encouraging
idiotic whining.
We should make products that
are more compatible
Incidentally, my knife sharpener brings up another issue. I
could have designed it with its own electric motor, but I chose to make
it as an attachment to a blender that I already have. In a free enterprise
system, there is no incentive for businesses to design their products to
be compatible with the products of other businesses, or to use parts that
are already in production. For example, there are lots of different kitchen
devices that have electric motors, such as blenders, meat grinders, and
mixers, but in a free enterprise system, there is no incentive for the
engineers to use an electric motor that is already in production. As a
result, there are thousands of trivial variations of electric motors.
There is also no incentive for businesses to design products with interchangeable
accessories. For example, the businesses that make blenders could use the
same style of base as their competitors, but instead there are a variety
of incompatible bases between different brands and models. As a result,
when you need a replacement part, or when you want a different accessory,
you have to find one that fits your particular base.
From the point of view of society, it would be better if we produced
a smaller variety of electric motors so that we could increase the production
of those motors, and to make it easier for the technicians to maintain
and repair the items. It would also be better from the point of view of
society if the components were more compatible with one another so that
we could easily exchange parts.
The situation with automobiles is even worse. We are producing thousands
of variations of v-belts, air filters, oil filters, mufflers, shock absorbers,
and tires. There are also lots of variations of computer components. We
don't need so many variations.
In a free enterprise system, the engineers are not concerned about making
society more efficient or simplifying life for the people. However, when
government officials are reviewing prototypes, the businesses have to please
the government officials. If we can provide ourselves with intelligent,
responsible government officials, then the pressure on the engineers would
be to reduce the resources that society needs, and make life simpler for
the users of the products, the people who have to build the products, and
the technicians who have to maintain and repair the products.
The Bosch company produces an electric motor that has
such attachments as a meat grinder, food processor, mixer, and grain
grinder. The engineers at Bosch can do this with their own products, but
they cannot coordinate their activities with the engineers of other companies
to make all of their products more compatible.
When engineers are under pressure to make products that benefit society,
then it becomes practical for them to specify new products that use some
components that are already in production, even if it is a component made
by an engineer who is competing with them. They would also be allowed to
make products that are compatible with their competitor's products.
Over a period of many decades, this would result in a society that looks
different than a free enterprise society. They would produce fewer
products overall, and the products would be more compatible, easier to
maintain, and easier to build.
Teachers for teenagers should
be older adults
I don't think it's a good idea to let people become teachers
immediately after they get out of school. For one reason, teenagers are
very flirtatious, and if the teacher is single and not much older than
the students, we increase the chances that relationships will form between
the teachers and the students.
A more important reason is that a person who has just graduated from
school doesn't have a good idea of the real world. The teachers for very
young children don't need much education or work experience, but I think
we should restrict the teaching of older students to people who are older
than perhaps 50 years of age, and who have already had jobs. Those older
adults will have a much better understanding of the skills and information
that will be most useful for the students. They will also have a better
idea of how the jobs that exist today will change slightly because of advances
in technology, and that can help them prepare the students for the upcoming
jobs.
When we switch to an electronic education, the job of a teacher becomes
less physically demanding because they no longer have to stand and talk
for hours in front of a class of students. The teachers provide guidance
to the students as they learn on their own. It is physically easier to
provide guidance, and older people are better at providing guidance, so
when we switch to electronic education, it is more appropriate to restrict
teaching to the older adults.
We must experiment
with schools!
How do we know who has the best proposals for schools? What
is the best way to teach robotics, history, or math? Should boys and girls
be separated into different classrooms? If so, at what age should we begin
separating them? Are there certain classes where they should be mixed together?
If so, which classes?
Unfortunately, there is no way for us to figure out what the best school
system would be. We have to be willing to experiment. We have to
look at the proposals, and then select some of them for experimentation.
Then we watch the results.
The people who are afraid to experiment should be regarded as stupid
animals who are inhibiting progress.
We will not hurt ourselves by experimenting with our culture... unless,
of course, our society consists of criminals, pedophiles, and irresponsible,
selfish freaks. If, instead, we raise standards for both citizens and leaders
and create a society of responsible people, then we simply watch the results
of our experiments, and if a particular policy doesn't seem to be beneficial,
we terminate that experiment and try something else. There is no reason
to be afraid. We are not going to hurt ourselves!
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