Let the backlash continue please!!!

been seeing a lot of backlash against ‘experts’ and certifications and other things of late.   That whole top-down control function that defined the fifties forward to current day.    Prior to the fifties, things (so I understand, wasn’t there so this is just extrapolation on my part) tended to “SHOW ME” vs show me your papers.   You knew it or you didn’t and if you didn’t you didn’t last long.  

Sarah mentions in this post how she went to University in Portugal, and how the test was a administered with blinds so that any bias’ were null.   The test takers were nothing but a number and the grading was done in a different district so handwriting couldn’t be identified, and results were listed only as number, not a name, age, sex, breed or religion.   Totally merit based, That is TRUE diversity.  Ya know it or ya don’t, didn’t matter who daddy knew or blew.

Total Meritocracy there, not what we have in our current day and age, where “its not what you know, but who you know, or what family you grew up in”.  That is Aristocracy, and that is completely opposite of what the founders were striving for.   The arguments for and against can be found throughout the Federalist/Anti-Federalist papers: it was one of the key points fought, to include an amendment that didn’t make it to the final draft; one that restricted “Titles” in the public servants, to include ‘Esquire’.    Now, wouldn’t that be a change of pace in this day and age, where lawyers weren’t allowed to hold public office?   Hell, DC would be empty!!!!

My education was in the public spheres, and in hindsight, woefully lacking.   I learned more, WAY MORE, after leaving than I ever learned while in, and much of what I learned, needed to be unlearned because it was ‘massaged’ or altered to fit a certain agenda.   The only things that weren’t were the maths.  Even some of the science programs were being twisted to fit a narrative at that time. (chemistry was the only one not twisted up, and I feel that was more the teacher than the program.)  

This is why I wanted to teach.  I knew, deep down, that what I was being taught was manipulated to some end, not ‘education’.   There was only one TRUE teacher in my past and she was my reading teacher:   She didn’t teach me to read, she taught me HOW TO LEARN, and that is what I think is NOT being taught in any way these days.  Not that the teachers don’t want to, the calling is there: but if they aren’t taught how, they can’t do,,, 

And from current reports (biased of course, so take it with a grain of salt.  I did) there are many in the institutions that have another motive altogether: Grooming.    Grooming for sex, Grooming for Political reasons, Grooming for mindless automatons,,,grooming for whatever, but the ‘education’ evolved into ‘indoctrination’. 

And I see how it has fallen so low even from my time in, to present day.   One fo the guys on my current crew can’t do basic math without a pen. paper and a danged calculator.   And I am talking basic like 2X4=,,,,   I asked him three times and he had to sit with a pencil and figure it out before he could answer.   Lord forbid I need him to handle fractions,,,,   This guy isn’t dumb, but he does suffer from Mal-education and the ‘no child left behind’ dogma that started under a republican (uniparty member, not a true representative IMO) 

Where am I going with this,,,,   Y’all know how enamoured I am with Kayaks.   Now take that draw and amplify it and that is the draw I feel towards teaching.  What blunts me is current regulations and societal ‘rules’ that won’t let ‘some un-educated rube’ teach the kids (personally, I am probably better qualified than some of the local teachers, just by the fact that I have REAL experiance, not some parchment saying ‘I be teacher’ (which is about the level of grammer some of them show.  My use of it is colloquial.))

One of my crew said to me “we can’t all be like you, Dio” and I agreed with him.  Kinda caught him off guard when I did.  Then I folllowed up with “but you can be better than you are and that is what I am trying to push you towards.”  Most people are strapped in place by ‘teaching’ that they aren’t capable, or that something is to difficult for them: and they get locked into that thinking. 

It seems to me the last 30 years has been ‘Coddling’ the young, maybe longer than that even going back to my younger days (though I think growing up in my days wasn’t coddled: we didn’t have bike helmets or shin gaurds to protect us from the ‘owies’, and most of us sport some pretty decent scars from those days, and recall how we got them quite well.)  We protect the kids from themselves and that leads to risk adverse adults: if you aren’t willing to take some risk, you can’t improve but you WILL stagnate.  And I think we are seeing that stagnation across the board.    Looking at the local schools, it seems like the only ‘teachers’ pushing the kids are the coaches, and those only on the feild:  the rest just ‘kick it down the road’ as someone else’s problem.

Well, Someone Else’s problem is rapidly become EVERYONE ELSE’S problem, and while I think the kids are capable and will be alright, the learning curve gets steeper every year.   That learning curve will be reflected when those kids are our age and they are going to be taking care of US, as we are now taking care of our ‘rents.

Don’t let your kids, or your grandkids, fall behind in the world.   Get thier attention in some way, get them to start ‘thinking’ in some way, and help them over those humps that the “schools” create by NOT doing what they are supposedly paid to do.  The eariler you can start the better, since the really young ones are literal sponges for learning. (its when that drive has been blunted by a few years of ‘don’t question me’ public schooling that things become a problem.)

If it feels like ‘ too much’, start small, start with reading, especially in the younger ones: get them reading and the learning will happen by osmosis.   The best way to get them reading is to read to them, read around them, and let them see that reading can be a pleasure, not just some task that “teacher said I must”.  Turn the tOOb  OFF, get a book and start reading aloud; some off the wall story of whatever (Dr Suess  is a great start.  Funny word plays and all) and make it FUN.  The kids will pick up on it naturally.  Reading is one corner of the Trivium that USED TO BE the foundations that were taught in the lower schools.  (the Quadrivium was higher education)   Reading, Reckoning, Rhetoric,,,, those are the REAL three ‘R’s    start there; reading to fill the brain, reckoning (math and logic) to build its ‘muscle’ and Rhetoric to flex those muscles.

No, they won’t.  You have to reach out and grab that sort of education for  yourself.  We have to teach the kids what ‘They” won’t.