Education Brainwashing.

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You mean they're more civilised now? There's a greater acceptance of boys and girls who are different?

Of course they are. That's the direction every institution has moved in.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/e ... upils.html

Not that long ago.

A while back I watched both Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's and Henry Giroux's criticism of education.

What was fascinating was that both speakers made similar observations, had similar concerns, but they ascribed them to entirely different causes:
Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt - to socialist or communist mentality.
Henry Giroux - to neoliberalism / corporate mentality.
Of course, we're talking about two people who professed during different times and had different political orientations.

My take on it is that it's not necessarily one or the other: it's the plague of our modern culture which cultivates an overtly rationalistic, concrete, left-brain type of thinking, and neglects intuitiin.

Some trace it's origins to the French Revolution, others to the protestant reformation, others to the Ancient Greeks.

For younger naive people yes.
Not so much for older people with a greater life experience.

I am beyond feeling appalled by the depravity of the human animal.
I see this thinking/behaviour more as a natural gravitation towards exploitation, general corruption and self-serving ratbaggery.
It is a result of the evolution of humanity/huwomanity in a hostile, dog-eat-dog life system.
It is after all, what I rational person would expect to happen with the parameters available.
Meh. <shrug>
Anything else on the channel?

Dumbed down right wing drivel .

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... neffective

As that article shows grammar schools do little to improve social mobility .

What are grammar schools?

Primary schools in the US. An old-fashioned term for schools which went from first to eighth grades. Old people still use the term to mean schools which are lower than high school.

Then how is their existence connected to social inequality, as the Guardian article seems to suggest?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34538222

UK grammar schools

I was going to let Firemonkey give you the British conception.

“Grammar Schools” there are “higher status” than most regular schools. So are “public schools” like Eton. They have long been associated with children of “higher” social status. Many require the taking of entrance exams.

I was really glad I could go to an academic-oriented high school that required an exam to enter. Finally found a place where nerds like me were the majority, not a bullied underclass.
I don't know, I probably miss something UK-specific - in Eastern Europe social classes are not income-centered.

That certainly wasn't my experience.

Religious education at secondary level could have be said to be Marxist in the looser sense of the word, but it was much more favourable of religion than Marx.

My history classes were Western-centric and very pro-British but I certainly wouldn't say they were Marxist. They were generally pro-monarchy and pro-empire, and certainly enthusiastic about the advantages of modern life and industrialisation. I didn't do GCSE or A Level where things might have been different but certainly my friends who did History tended to be sceptical of Marxism.

I didn't study sociology, but I know from friends who did that they were encouraged to study four perspectives: Marxist, feminist, modernist, and postmodernist. I don't think they were taught very well (the number of painful times I heard someone give a terrible definition of one of those philosophies...) but they were taught nonetheless. The current syllabus seems to be much the same.

I did Philosophy and Ethics A-Level. Despite a module on business ethics, we didn't study any Marxists at all. A few existentialists got mentioned in passing but only for their views on free will. The most left-wing thinker we were exposed to was Robert Freeman.

In the UK, social status was, until the late 19th century, primarily on how much land you owned, and how much yearly income you earned from the land.
Plus the social status of your parents and ancestors.

And whether you owned land at all.

In the US, until 1840, people couldn’t vote unless they owned about 50 or so acres of land.

In the UK, one had to own land in order to vote for Members of Parliament until the late 19th century.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 22 Sep 2019, 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

I had to take what's called the common entrance exam to go to my public school. My brother failed the common entrance exam. He then was sent to a private crammer school which had very few pupils to try and get him up to the required standard. He hated it. In the end he went to a council/state run boarding school .