OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

For citizens only... with tuition from foreigners at a level that reflects real costs to help offset tuition for our citizens.

WHILE FREE EDUCATION SOUNDS GOOD, THERE IS SO MUCH MORE THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE. EDUCATION HAS BEEN BASED ON GREED FOR CENTURIES AND NOBODY GETS IT. THE FOLLOWING ARE IDEAS FOR IMPROVING EDUCATION:

1. NO GRADES (and therefore "no competition" which is teaches greed.

2. Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult as conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long as we worship success.

3. Therefore, keep grades out of the system, only the teacher should keep a record of how the child is progressing.

4. There is great need for independent thinking to take place. The urge to be successsful, which is the pursuit of reward whether in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere, the search for inward or outward security, the desire for comfort--this whole process smothers discontent, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds fear, and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life. With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.

5. This fear of life, this fear of struggle and of new experience, kills in us the spirit of adventure; our whole upbringing and educagtion have made us afraid to be different from our neighbor, afraid to think contrary to the established pattern of society, falsely respectful of authority and tradition.

Fortunately, there are a few who are in earnest, who are willing to examine our human problems without the prejudice of the right or the left; but in the vast majority of us, there is no real spirit or discontent of revolt. When we yield uncomprehendingly to environment, any spirit of revolt that we many have had dies down, and our responsibilities soon put an end to it.

6. There is an intelligent revolt to the status quo, which is not reaction, and which comes with self-knowledge through the awareness of one's own thought and feeling. It is only when we face experience as it comes and do not avoid disturbance that we keep intelligence highly awakened; and intelligence highly awakened is intuition, which is the only true guide in life. Those who are willing to examine their human problems without the prejudice of the right or of the left will prosper greatly.

7. Though there is a higher and wider significance to life, of what value is our education if we never discover it? We may be highly educated, but if we are without deep integration of thought and feeling, our lives are incomplete, contradictory and torn with many fears; and as long as educaiton does not cultivate an integrated outlook on life, it has very little significance. Education should should bring about the integration of the separate intities that reside within us because without integration, life becomes a series of conflicts and sorrow.

8. We have been educated for various professions within a system, which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear. Such training must invevitably bring confusion and misery to ourselves and to the world, for it creates in each individual those psychological barriers, which separate and hold us apart from others.

9. A mind that has merely been trained is the continuation of the past, and such a mind can never discover the new. This is why to find out what is right education, we will have to inquire into the whole significance of livng.

10. Therre is an efficiency inspired by love which toes far beyond and is much greater than the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which brings an integrated understand of life, efficiency breeds ruthlessness. This is actually taking place all over the world. Our present educaiton is geared to industrialization and war, its principal aim being to develop efficiency; and we are caught in this machine of ruthless competition and mutual destruction. If education leads to war, if it teaches us to destroy or be destroyed, has it not utterly failed?

11. To bring about right education , we must obviously understand the meaning of life as a whole, and for that we have to be able to think, not consitently, but directly and truly. On the other hand a consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern, he repeats phrases and thins in a groove. We cannot understand existence abstractly or theoretically. To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.

12. The function of education is to create human beings who are integrated and therefore intelligent. We may take degrees and be mechanically efficient without being intelligent. Intelligence is not mere information, it is not derived from books, nor does it consist of clever self-defensive responses and aggressive assertions. One who has not studied may be more intelligent than the learned. We have made examinations and degrees the criterion of intelligence and have developd cunning minds that avoid vital human issues. Intelligence is a capacity to perceive the essential, the "what is", and to awaken this capacity in oneself and in others, is education.

13. Education should help us to discover lasting values so that we do not merely cling to formulas or repeat slogans; it should help us to break down our national and social barriers, instead of emphasizing them, for they breed antagonism between man and man. Unfortuantely, the present system of education is making us subservient, mechanical and deeply thoughtless, though it awakens us intellectually; inwardly it leaves us incomplete, stultified and uncreative.

14. Without an integrated understanding of life, our individual and collective problems will only deepen and extend. The purpose of education is not to produce mere scholars, technicians and job hunters, but integrated men and women who are "free of fear"; for only between such human beings can there be enduring peace.

15. It is the understanding of ourselves that fear comes to an end. If the individual is to grapple with life from moment to moment, if he is to face its intricacies, its imiseries and sudden demand, he must be infinitley pliable and therefore free of theories and particular patterns of thought.

16. Education should not encourage the individual to conform to society or to be negatively harmonious with it, but help him or her to discover the true values, which come with unbiased investigation and self-awareness. When there is not self-knowledge, self-expression becomes self-assertion, with all its aggressive and ambitous conflicts. Education should awaken a capacity to be self-aware and not merely indulge in gratifying self-expression.

17. What is the good of learning if in the proces of living we are destroying ourselves? As we are having a series of devastating wars, one right after another, there is obviously something radically wrong with the way we bring up our chidlren. I think most of us are aware of this, but we do not know how to deal with it.

17. Systems, whether educaitonal or political, are not changed mysteriously; they are transformed when there is a fundamental change in ourselves. The individual is of first importance, not the system; and as long as the individual does not understand the total process of himself, no system with whether of the left or of the right, can bring order and peace to the world.

Both Hitler and Mao are credited with saying, "Give me the child at three and he's mine for life. Maybe we should give the child more education at home before we let the government have him.

Education should be 100% government subsidized for private sector and plain free through public sector. But I say give 100% loan forgiveness for all past student loans for everyone. Start clean and then help those going forward so we don't get harmed for the future.

Absolutely. It is clear from this forum and the BC kooks here, that education and critical thought are woefully lacking in our country and our democracy is at risk from fascism, not by Obama, but of people who aren't even educated enough to know that fascism is a right wing ideology.

There is no question that there is a lack of education and critical thought in this country. It has been replaced by indoctrination in the schools and a conditioning of the mind to shutdown when it encounters concepts not endorsed by our rulers. As an example I would cite the knee-jerk reaction by the well indoctrinated parrot when he/she encounters a BC kook with an explanation of events and history not approved by the mind molders in charge.

The word spectrum usually refers to wave lengths, such as light, and runs the gamut from the shortest to the longest. When used to describe politics, logic dictates that the political spectrum must run from totalitarianism on one end to its opposite extreme, anarchy, on the other.

Regardless of on which end, left or right, that we put totalitarianism, it follows that all forms of totalitarianism must be on that end. Communism, Socialism, and Fascism are all forms of totalitarianism and, therefore, the logical mind must place them on the same end.

The official spectrum that has been inculcated in the minds of the well "educated" only includes one end of the spectrum, the totalitarian end. "Educators" and the media offer us only a choice between Communism on the "left" and Fascism on the "right" leaving us Socialism as a proposed "middle of the road." The choice of the many forms of limited government, such as our Constitutional Republic before the "living" Constitution came into play, are not offered. We, the American people, are given a choice of totalitarianism, totalitarianism, or totalitarianism.

If this doesn't make sense to you, don't be concerned. I'm just not as well educated as you. Once cradle to grave "education" is in place, BC kooks will be eliminated and we'll all be of one mind. One big, happy Borg.

Rick

18th Century Liberal

21st Century Reactionary

http://PhreedomPhan-lostliberty.blogspot.com

http://phreedomphan-americasenemies.blogspot.com