Internet Forum: a catalyst for change I claim that the educational institutions of all Western democratic nations are very conservative. They are designed to foster the status quo. As such they are focused upon graduating individuals with the means to maximize production and consumption. Our technology has provided us with the capacity to easily slip into a condition that will end human life. We must provide a means for our citizens to quickly recognize this fact and to develop a new path for human enlightenment following the end of school days. Only with a significant advance in our general intellectual sophistication can we hope to develop a basis for restructuring society and thereby save humanity from a quick extinction. I see no other vehicle than the Internet discussion forums presently available to provide that catalyst for change. If you find merit in this claim I would like to discuss it further.
Modern humans have two imperatives; both must be met if we are to survive. The practical imperative is the necessity to produce and consume, the moral imperative is the necessity to live together in harmony. Pre-bomb humans could ignore the moral imperative but modern humans cannot; we have created a technology that illuminates the need for the moral imperative. Our educational system is designed to solve the practical imperative and ignore the moral imperative. The only way I see that we can solve the moral imperative is that we become self-actualizing self-learners after our schooling is complete. If we do this we can develop the understanding required to solve the moral imperative. Solving the moral imperative is a long range goal; we cannot continue in our childish manner of indifference, ignorance, apathy, and skepticism. Keep hope alive by awakening from your childish slumber. You are no longer a child; you are men and women with a big job to do. Are you up to that challenge? Keep hope alive!
I disagree. Often, academics at educational institutions are the first to speak out on issues such as the environment, as well as social issues. We only know about global warming because of people at educational institutions.
Stupidly happy .... It will be tough for me to to dig up the citations at present, but as I recall, public education was not founded in the United States to enlighten, inspire, or otherwise, but in fact to maintain the status quo. (I recall being surprised once to find such sentiments in a letter by Leland Stanford, Jr., but, to be specific, this is the very citation that will be hard for me to find.) The place of academic institutions in the U.S. as social bellwethers and activist inspirations is part of an inevitable evolution that balances at once the increasing number of educated people in the U.S. and the restlessness these people feel when there's nothing to do. There's a great bit in a Mark Steel Lecture on Sylvia Pankhurst where he cites a typical British textbook of the time: "... a few bananas will sustain the life of a Negro. He is quite happy and quite useless ...." It would seem that there is some benefit to be had when the educated feel restless. As much as I hesitate to use the term because of its political impact, it would seem there is benefit in the liberalizing of education.
There's a big difference between compulsory schooling institutions and colleges. And even within colleges and universities there's a big difference between the bulk of the education of the students and the productions and research of the faculty that is aimed outward. Still on the college level there is a great deal more freedom and a deeper understanding that socialization is not a core goal of the institution. Unfortunately this is all rather late in the game for the now indoctrinated young adults. Further even at under- to post graduate levels old ideas about how 'knowledge' is transfered between humans reign. The individual's sense of suberversive creator is hardly fostered.
