State Education: A Modern Cargo Cult

I'm back. Setting the world to rights. The GREAT WORK continues..

A few weeks back I was having a conversation with a friend about education. My argument was: sending people to school doesn't make a blind bit of difference in regards how well-educated they are.

He wasn't buying it.

I was stating my case a bit extremely (as I'll no doubt do in the following paragraphs), but essentially I was giving my true opinion. I've made the argument before. That mass literacy is a consequence of the printing press. Not a consequence of the introduction of formal education. I've likened it to mobile phones. Most people in today's society are mobile phone literate, yet no one is having formal lessons in how to use a mobile phone.

People have access to the technology. They want/need to use mobile phones for various reasons. So they learn to the standard required for whatever it is that they want to do. Naturally some people are smarter and more able than others. Likewise, some will be more/less interested in using a mobile phone than others. So there's a natural variation in ability/mobile phone literacy.

I would make the observation that it would be similar with reading and writing. If school was completely abolished tomorrow, people would still learn how to read and write. As they'd just take it upon themselves to do it. As they do with mobile phones. Again, they have access to the technology (books, laptop keyboards, pens, paper, all the written words that surround them from birth, on shop fronts and t-shirts, and so forth). And they would naturally want/need to read, to enjoy all those things, and engage with the world that surrounds them. Again, with some people naturally being more able than others, and some needing more informal help than others. Just as an old person may need a family relative to help them out with their smartphone now and then. I think it's even possible that without formal education getting in the way, society would be even more literate as a whole.

Now this is a hard thing for a person to grasp. My friend definitely wasn't swallowing it. However, it betrays a real lack of faith in human capacity on the part of people who can't grasp it.

Do you really think people wouldn't want to learn how to read a letter or type a text? That they'd happily go through life not knowing how to text a friend, or a member of the opposite sex?

They take it upon themselves to learn how to send one, why wouldn't they take it upon themselves to learn how to read one?

Do you really think people wouldn't want to know how to read the latest news headline, or the names on the shirts of their favourites footballers - or their own name even? And do you really think parents wouldn't want their children to know how to read and write; and that, in the absence of school, they'd simply not bother trying to help them learn?

In fact, even now schools still place responsibility for reading and writing squarely on the parents. "You need to read to little Billy more at home," etc. Parents, in turn, often sit back, thinking, "I send them to school, I do my bit. The teachers know better than me, so I'll leave it to them." A fatal mistake. As the correlation between homelife and success in school is all too apparent. (Or to a parent perhaps you could say.) The kids with pro-active parents doing well; the kids with feckless parents faring badly - and the kids from feckless parents generally remaining feckless themselves, in spite of ten years of schooling.

If you consider what the average person leaves school with you'll see that it's just the basic stuff they would've needed anyway in everyday life. They are able to read and write well enough to read a magazine or send a text. They can do maths well enough to pay for their shopping, or to tell the time. And little more.

For example, people often spend five years learning French. Yet can't actually speak French to any real degree when they leave school. Why is this? It's because they have no need/want to learn it. It's not useful for everyday life, so people don't make the effort to take it on board. Meaning it's all pretty much a pointless going-through-the-motions exercise. I would bet good money that things would be little different were there no formal school at all. That people would still reach adulthood with the same basic levels of maths and English needed in everyday life. As it's everyday life that drives people to learn these things, not school.

Again though, this will be hard to swallow for almost all people. As we're so ingrained with this idea that general literacy is a gift of the education system.

I would say, try this thought experiment:

Imagine you live in a world where everyone has an hour of 'mobile phone lessons' each week, from the moment they enter the school system. Then imagine someone like me coming along and saying, "Y'know, all this is pointless. You could scrap all these lessons and people would still be just as mobile phone literate as they are now."

What would you think?

Would your reaction be, "No, but how would anyone know how to send a text or install an app if we didn't have lessons teaching them!" ?

It Really Is Like Religion

Take praying. Praying is good, and doing it - and encouraging others to do it - is good. However, society/states see this goodness and then try to force everyone to do it. For example, Muslims have to pray five times a day. I would argue that you can't really force people to pray though. Sure, you can force people to turn up at a church or mosque. You can force them to get on their knees and do some of the performative acts associated with praying. But, you can't force their mind (or perhaps soul) to contemplate God. That's something that a person can only do themselves, through choice and desire. It's internal to the person.

It's similar with education. You can force someone into a classroom. You can force them to sit at a desk in front of an open book. But you can't force the mind inside that person to seek that knowledge. Yes, some of the people in the classroom may be choosing to learn whilst they're there, just as some of the people in the church may be choosing to pray. But those people - who are choosing - would be doing it anyway. So they don't need to be forced.

Everyone else is just doing a performative act. It's a counterproductive charade of true learning. A cargo cult false imitation, of what genuine learning (or prayer) actually is. People are so enamoured with the cargo cult charade though that they cannot disassociate actual learning from the appearance of learning. Hence, when someone like me steps up and says, "This is all pointless." The cry comes back, "So you think people should just stop learning?! That it would be better if no one learned anything!"

As if I'm arguing against learning (or praying) itself.

"If we didn't force people, no one would do it!"

Yet none of those people are actually doing it. They're just going through the motions. It's a silly dress-up cargo cult. That educates people in actuality about as much as a straw aeroplane flies.

Fools' Harbour

You could take a pair of scales; put a woman on one side and the whole world on the other, and they'd perfectly balance out. I think this is how God calibrated the mind of Man.

It really is awesome the power a woman can have on a man. I've said before that true love is the devil, and the devil is the human heart. When a woman captures your gaze, and the fever takes hold, everything else in the world - in its entirety - can't lift the captivation. The spell, charm, trance, attraction. Food loses its taste. Fascinations with the world fade. World affairs seem nothing. World War could break out, and it wouldn't cure the sickness. Woman is a spectacular creature.

I feel my own life has been an ebb and flow of love sickness. I'd like to write these posts completely openly, like some failed Casanova. Pouring out all the awkward moments and delusions. The meaningful looks and glances. Like some font of catharsis and record. But it's all too personal. Naturally it intrudes on other people and their lives too.

It's painful how meekness and goodness can be loathed by a woman's eyes. Their disappointment in your weakness. The soul's battle between pleasing a woman and being a good Christian. The pull of the woman versus the pull of the world.

It's inspirational, for sure. The artist, wallowing in obsession, aching to match or echo the beauty that plagues him. The push - the hard kick to the stomach - to be strong and good. To become a Man. To become a King. Embodying both greatness and goodness. TO BECOME WORTHY.

The princess, anointing you, as you make your lonely way to slay the dragon. The desert girl, whose gentle eyes, like water, sustain you on your long journey. The moody blonde, demanding victory with her swan-like beauty.

One Staffroom or Many?

One more point and post, before I move onto playing everything with a straight bat again.

I likened the ruling class to a school staffroom, but is there just one group of "adults," or are there many? Essentially, are there different factions at the top? Or is it just one group of people, who are all on the same page?

In my personal opinion, I think there are different factions. (Though, no doubt, the lines naturally blur somewhat.) I think this is to be expected whatever the situation. There are always factions at court, even if it's just a single court.

Looking at the "riots" through this lens the single group notion would suggest a Hegelian dialectic type thing. The David Icke classic line, "Problem, Reaction, Solution." Meaning the riots were stirred up completely to manufacture calls and justification for the response - facial recognition and whatever else.

The factional view would posit something different though. That the faction stirring up the riots were trying to put pressure upon the faction running the current British government.

Again, it could be a complex mix of these things. Such is the 'wilderness of mirrors' nature of our modern political world.

One thing that lends weight to the different factions idea is the heavy-handed way Keir Starmer's government has dealt with the rioters. (If reports are to be believed.) This suggests that the government wants to nip the riots in the bud and quickly put a stop to them. Personally, I think the response has been disproportionate and unfair to the individual idiots caught up in these riots. However, anything other than a heavy response would give the green light to further protests. So the government has to do this really. It's the right thing to do from a pragmatic point of view.

Fortunately, things seem to have calmed down now. Hopefully, they stay this way.

Potemkin Riots

I haven't posted on here in a while. In that time it's been eventful, so you would expect I would've done so.

We've had riots in the UK.

Including in my own town: Middlesbrough 😡

I haven't posted as I knew it would be wise to wait until I'd chilled out a bit and gathered some perspective. My general view is that the riots were djinned-up i.e. that they weren't entirely organic. I had my little hissy fit about that on Twitter at the time though, so now I want to leave any 'conspiracy theories' behind and get back to playing things with a straight bat.

I do try hard these days to avoid poking behind the veil online. Sometimes though, these things go far too far, and I get sucked back in. The fiery big-mouth of my younger days suddenly reappears. I think when houses, cars (and sometimes people) in your own home town are being damaged it's probably justified, but now the moment has passed it's probably also time to let sleeping dogs lie. (Or lying dogs sleep maybe.)

On here before I've compared governments (and the media) to school headmasters.

The school headmaster steps up during school assembly. He tells a sombre story about some serious event.

In a faraway town, in another part of the country, 'little Billy' and his friends thought it was funny to go and play games down by the railway lines. Unfortunately, one of little Billy's friends didn't realise a train was coming when he jokingly pushed Billy onto the tracks..

The story itself is made-up. Little Billy never existed. His tale entirely fabricated by the headmaster.  However, the headmaster doesn't tell this story in order to mislead the children. He's not rubbing his hands together like some evil genius in the school staffroom behind the scenes. He tells it as he doesn't want the children playing on the railway tracks and getting hurt. Yes, the made-up "Billy" doesn't exist, but elsewhere, other children - real children - have fallen victim to such tragic circumstances. It would be somewhat morbid and disrespectful to use those actual examples though. Dramatising and sensationalising a real child's death, just to make a point in a lesson or school assembly would be quite crass. So the tale of "Little Billy" serves as a more appropriate stand-in. And the headmaster presents it as real to the children listening, as a real story has a much more emotional impact than one that is admittedly fictional. So will be much more likely to dissuade the children from heading down to the railway tracks.

From Headmaster to Music Teacher.

We can take this example further. Let's say you're a child sat in that assembly, and you don't quite believe the tale your headmaster told. Maybe there were inconsistencies, or the plot just didn't ring true. Perhaps the headmaster hammed things up a bit too much in his dramatic performance of it.

You then cheekily ask the music teacher about it in your following lesson. "Sir, the headmaster just made that story up, didn't he."

What does the music teacher respond with?

Obviously, he isn't just going to say, "Yes, the headmaster is a liar." For a start, he wouldn't last long in his profession if he was going around calling other teachers liars. But more importantly, he understands perfectly well why the headmaster was telling the story. It was done with a wider good intention in mind. The point of the story much more important than the white lie it contained.

So he gently tells the child off for accusing the headmaster of lying, and advises him to focus on the actual message of the story.

[Incidentally, (and I am poking behind the veil a little bit here 😈), when people ask, "How could so many people take part in such a BIG conspiracy?!" This is part of the answer why. Because all those people are teachers in the staffroom, so to speak, who understand it's perfectly normal and routine for adults to tell stories to children (the public) to get children to take on board a message, or behave in a certain way.

It's just the way of the world to some extent. A thing most people only learn when they become parents themselves. If you get my drift.

Likewise, just as real children sometimes get killed playing on train tracks, there are sometimes real terrorist attacks too. Carried out by real terrorists. And similarly, it's difficult to use real, actual examples to promote awareness, or to help the public understand the dangers.

- (As with earlier) it's distasteful using real deaths.

- The families might not want the deaths being used in such a way.

- The families might not want the public attention.

- They might not be very good at speaking in public, or appearing on camera (as most people aren't).

- Publicising a real terror event may compromise spies/whistleblowers/informants/witnesses/etc.

- It may take years for such crimes to be processed through the courts, meaning they can't be publicised immediately.

- Real life is often very messy. So it's much harder to present the public with a clear, easy-to-digest narrative when using real life examples. With a simplified, scripted imitation of a real event it's much easier.

- And so on.

So there are logical reasons why "tales from the headmaster" are sometimes used at the national or international level. Again, it's not because the headmaster is evil, and enjoys deceiving people (though he might take it to an art form at times). It's because he wants to protect the children or maintain order in the classroom. The only problem is, we, the childlike public, have to trust that the stories are solely being used as illustrations to inform the public about similar, real life situations. And aren't just being used to push the interests and personal politics of the people telling them.]

Anyway, that big detour aside, this is where I find myself these days. Do I want to be the honest, but brattish child, disrupting the class, and pointing out holes in these various dramas? Or do I try to be more like the sensible, but slightly less honest music teacher? Paying lip service to the stories of the headmaster. Understanding that this is just the normal way people higher-up in the social hierarchy manage those that are lower down; and that they're trying their best to manage difficult and sometimes dangerous situations.

Personally, I don't agree with it all in principle. Adults shouldn't be treating other adults the way adults treat children. Especially in supposedly democratic countries. Were I school headmaster I wouldn't be doing it, and I'd get the cane out and ban all the other teachers from doing it too. However, maybe I'm just naïve. Perhaps the response would come, "Ha, good luck with that, you try managing and keeping safe millions of sheep-like and emotional people without using these techniques."

Either way, I've reached a point where, though I discuss the wider methods, I never discuss the specific individual events anymore ..unless those individual events are happening in Middlesbrough, that is.

Boom Boom Boom

So Biden has dropped out. In a whoosh everything has happened, rapid fire.

June 27th: Trump/Biden debate - which led to the clamour for Joe to go.

July 13th: Trump assassination attempt.

July 15th: Trump VP announced

July 21st: Biden out

It looks like Kamala Harris will take over. So now the last slot to be filled is the Democrat VP pick. Which should tell us a lot.

Obviously, with the Trump brouhaha, it seems Trump is nailed on for victory. That these stars are being aligned directly for that. The powerful people at the top have made peace with him, and now we're all going to get some type of closure. A release valve. Discontent pacified. A great smoothing-over. The cancellations of leftists adds weight to this notion. The people at the top now willing to pull their levers on behalf of the right. A visible shift. The talk of prison sentences for Trump gone. (And, of course, the simple fact that they could've gotten rid of Joe long ago, and stuck an A-list Democrat candidate in, but didn't.) So the Hollywood stars align.

It makes so much sense. I think it's totally wrong to be cancelling Home Depot workers because they've said something nasty about Trump on Facebook, but that aside, the general trend I can applaud. It's the sensible course to chart.

Having seen so many twists and plots, I always feel like I'm sat at the Red Wedding though. That I'm sat hearing Hulk Hogan tell me how great I am, with a big smile on my face, as daggers hide beneath cloaks. Ready, not only to do me in, but to mock my naïve stupidity as they do it. My mind can't help but go to the worst case scenario.

So, at the moment, I think the best, but fear the worst. Some of the instant cope I've seen from people on the right lends itself to the fear. People saying that Kamala will be easier to beat than Biden, which obviously isn't true. Biden was literally senile. Anyone, even Kamala Harris, will be an improvement. How can they not be?

Kamala Harris actually reminds me of Rebecca Long-Bailey. Likeable, but a bit light in the head. The Labour leadership contest seems such a long time ago now. As that was taking place, Covid was springing up from the ground, like a maleficent aether. On this very blog those two things overlap. The one seeming so very innocent compared to the other. I remember typing those Labour leadership blog posts at the time. I had the dread of the coming Covid nightmare all through January and February, but I was trying so hard not to be a conspiracy theorist. This time I'm also trying hard not to be a conspiracy theorist. Though with Covid there was instinctive dread in my stomach, here there's instinctive hope. My instinctive judgement - my reading of the tea leaves - says things will indeed be smoothed-over.

Is it any wonder my mind can't help but race towards Red Wedding scenarios though? We've seen so many events, moments, and shakedowns - and three months is a long time, so a lot can happen. Plus, the world - and human culture - is a complex thing. So organic events can overtake written scripts. When the right surrendered the moral high ground, by advocating the cancelling of people on the left, they made a big mistake in terms of culture war. They surrendered moral authority. You'd think people wouldn't be so stupid to do this when fighting a culture war. You almost assume it must be deliberate. However, people find it hard to read culture - it requires a bit of female-brain. Men tend to be analytic. They love rules and theories. "Machiavelli said this ..therefore we must take this course of action." Ideologies are always inferior to real life though. And they dull the senses. A person operating on instinctive real-world judgement instantly sees that harassing a middle-aged woman who works at Home Depot makes you look like an idiot, but if you're subsumed by a set of rules that says you must do it, the instinct takes a beat seat. And real life takes a back seat to memes and theories.

I'm getting a bit far from the original intent of the article, as I often do, so I'll leave it there.

Learning To Lie

It's super hot. Sleep is a virtual impossibility in this heat. I was in work today, so last night I had to force myself to sleep through it. From a possible eight hours I think I got about three. However, I'm off tomorrow, so I have the luxury of not caring tonight. So, with tired eyes, I'm posting..

I'm not sure what I have to say, but I feel I should post. Over the last few days or so I've been a little arsy and impetuous over on Twitter. Watching the right behave as badly as the left in response to the Trump brouhaha was annoying. Of course, I also promised to try to show goodwill towards the new Labour government as well, but seeing the media love-in over that has made that difficult too. I think I've exhausted my humpiness now though, so my pragmatic self can regain control of the wheel. I must admit it was nice to shoot from the hip a little. You feel so much more alive and youthful when you're acting on your actual emotions.

It stills amazes me how much I care about the truth. I always wonder where this feeling comes from. Is it something innate I was born with? Or is it a consequence of how I was raised? Was the importance of honesty just drilled into me? Did all those Christian school assemblies I scorned make a difference after all?

I really hate lies. Though, saying that, what actually triggered me was seeing lies being enforced. I watched one livestream where audience members in the live-chat were shut down pretty aggressively by the talking heads taking part. I just can't stomach it. The desire to dumb the inquisitive senses of others. That a course of action has been taken, and everyone else must pay lip service to it. The pecking order is never more visibly apparent than in moments like these. Suddenly the talking heads that feign friendship and common cause show their teeth.

Also, this idea that, because the lies are being told by people on your side, you'll be cool with it. Like this idea that it's now somehow okay to censor the left, "cos they're the enemy." It almost goes beyond right and wrong. The ego takes over. It's an insult to me personally. I don't want to be a snake.

I'm getting hyperbolic again now ..and I shouldn't. I know how the world works. I've learnt that we live in an imperfect world. I've even written pieces like this one: The Spring, showing how natural and inevitable (even necessary) systems of secrecy and lies are. Yet still, I hate it. I just want to live in a world where I can have honest, open conservations with other humans, without having to worry about hitting the tripwire.

Manier Things To Discuss

On election night there was a moment that summed up post-Brexit politics quite neatly for me. Alastair Campbell corrected the grammar of Nadine Dorries live on air. The classic, "It's not less, it's fewer."

https://x.com/lemonadelush/status/1808976529440878641

There were subsequent back and forth points made on Twitter about who was correct, as though Nadine was talking about numbers, she used less in the phrase "less than a handful" - and a handful isn't a discrete amount. Personally, I don't care. It's a silly language rule that I just completely ignore anyway. I'm not bothered about the brownie points.

(You can kind of see how silly it is by the fact that we don't hear similar debates when people use more. If someone says, "there are more people," no one interjects, "Akhschully, it's greater people." Which wouldn't work anyway. Many is pretty much the opposite of few - too few, too many - so we'd probably need to invent the word manier. "..Akhschully, it's manier people." Imagine how annoyed these language nerds would be if we just started inventing words though.)

Anyway, it was just the latest example of people on the anti-populist side of the divide making appeals to technicality. It's been a recurring theme, that I've mentioned on here before (The Remain Brain vs The Leave Perceiver - 2019, didn't realise it was so long ago!).

Seeing the media coverage, and the number of seats the Lib Dems won, got me thinking about this class of people once again. I'm not quite sure how to box them. Remainer is a bit specific, and doesn't fully capture it. I was thinking unserious people that take themselves seriously, but that's probably unfair - and incorrect too. What inspired that descriptor was another media snapshot. This time an exchange involving Steve Baker, Ed Balls and George Osborne.

https://x.com/GMB/status/1809114873894228261

Osborne and Balls were laughing and giggling, like it was all just a big game, as Steve Baker was making a serious point. To be fair, their party had won, and Baker had lost his seat, so naturally moods would be different. And yes, Osborne and Balls are of the same party. Technically Osborne is a Conservative, but these party structures and labels don't reflect actual political reality anymore. This is another theme I've touched upon before.

https://x.com/NeilSco17180435/status/1759197809515925952

I feel like this election finally crystallised many of these things. Which, I guess, means it's the end of one era and the beginning of something else..

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More, More, More

This is a bit off topic for this blog, but I can't help but make mention of the words less and more in regard their mechanics. That is, the way we make these words using the mouth.

More is a very natural word. We make the "M" sound by simply opening and closing the mouth. It's an easy consonant to make. I'm almost certain that this is why so many words denoting mother begin with M. More is the sound a child naturally makes when it wants more milk.

Likewise, less is similarly fitting. We make the "L" sound by lifting our tongue to the roof of our mouth. We have lots of lifting type words beginning with L - lift, lower, level, levitate, layer, lever, etc. The word less begins with us lowering our tongue from the roof of our mouth to make the L sound. Then ends with us bringing or teeth together to make the "S" hissing sound. Making our mouth smaller - almost closed. (If you make these words in your own mouth and note the position of the tongue and the lips this becomes easier to understand.) So, with less, we lower the tongue, then make the mouth small. So the physical action of the mouth mirrors the actual meaning of the word.

I should really do fewer for thoroughness. Here the "F" sound is made by biting the bottom lip (again, try it with your own mouth to see). I guess you could say that grabbing the bottom lip fits neatly with the idea of something being lower or less. With the "R" we then curl the tongue backwards, though often people don't pronounce the R. (With my terrible Teesside accent I pronounce it few-a.) So the R doesn't really add too much in regard mirrored mechanical meaning - though you could maybe make the claim that bringing the tongue inwards - the recoiling motion - naturally implies a lessening or retraction. (The "W" in the middle, though technically considered a consonant, is actually just a transition between two vowel sounds.)

Vowels are open mouth vocalisations. Essentially letters/sounds we can sing or sustain. Aaaaaah, Ooooo, etc. So the relative openness of the mouth could also be said to carry meaning. With "Aaaaaaah" we open the mouth wide - so it's fitting for big or wide things. With e or i sounds - "eehhh" - the mouth is smaller. So you could say the "eh" in less and fewer also fits with the concept of less-ness.

(Actually, phonetically we pronounce the word fewer very differently to how it's spelt. For a start, that initial "F" is immediately followed by a "Y" sound. Then, the first e is pronounced more like an Ooo. We write fewer, but we say F-you-er. Written language is messy.)

In regard the mechanics of the mouth the word less seems more apt and pleasing than the word fewer. Perhaps this is why people naturally reach for it. Maybe it just feels more intuitive.