Our Schools & Colleges are Graduating Animals

I had once concluded it to be natural that when confronted by a new idea humans tended to do a turtle; withdraw into their shell until the coast was clear.

After some time posting in cyberspace I have modified my view somewhat. I think that we tend to display two types of turtle responses to our encounter with new ideas.

The terrapin withdraws quickly into its shell and the snapping turtle hisses, spits, and snaps when such an encounter happens. I suspect that cyberspace has allowed many people to display a more vulgar attitude than they would in face-to-face encounters.

I think that age is a factor in this equation. The young tend to be snappers and the older tend to be terrapins. I think that our teachers and professors have imprinted on the minds of their pupils that there is a legitimacy aspect to knowledge. That knowledge introduced by the teacher is legit and the rest should be avoided when possible.

Instead of graduates eager to learn and to earn we have constructed an educational system that qualifies citizens for a life of mindless production and consumption. Instead of turtles we need cats as a model for schooling.

A cat travels through the forest alert and curious to all that is in her range of perception. Instead of withdrawing into a shell the cat stealthily examines everything in its path. After a quick examination the cat very well may dart away for cover. The cat is, I think, more likely to survive in a dynamic and dangerous world than is the turtle.

Everyone is ignorant of 99.9999…% of the knowledge in the world. Understanding this fact I think is the first step toward setting each one of us free from any embarrassment we might feel about our ignorance. We should use our ignorance as a catalyst for discovering the joy of learning to understand what ever portion of the world’s knowledge that interests us.

What evidence do you have for this behaviour?

That people react in the ways you describe when you put forward your ideas?

Can you think of another possible explaination, other than them being ignorant by nature?

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

Coburst, just because we still generally don't agree with you doesn't mean we'd been withdrawing from your "new" ideas like your metaphorical turtle. It just means we generally don't agree with them.

And it isn't like we haven't heard your ideas a few dozen times already. We get it already. You don't like college educations. Time to move on, buddy, and stop this obsessing with book learning. It's just not healthy.

[Edit: Verbs good. Must more often.]

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

emphasis mine...

The wording is "slightly" different, but you've posted this before...

I know it's (almost) summer, but must you post re-runs???

edited to add (almost).

It seems obvious to me that we are all ignorant of at least 99.999...% of the knowledge in the world. Does it not seem obvious to you?

As far as the tendency to withdraw from new ideas I shall have to depend upon my experience in the matter. It is all a matter of judgment. There are bad, good and better judgments and only someone with Critcal Thinking skills will offer a better judgment.

I have been navigating cyberspace for three years and everything I experience indicates that this is a human characteristic.

Since my sample is a small one there is a wide possibilty for error. I would just guess that my error range might be plus or minus 20 %.

There are no doubt other possible judgments and explanations. I would be interested in reading yours. Take some time and consider the matter and prepare a short essay of your thoughts on the matter.

No, I think that there are people who don't want or desire to learn much more about the world. There's a lot to it. I don't think anyone woul be able to learn everything there is to know about the world. Most of the college students I deal with (myself included) want to be more aware of the world around them. Even if the world around them means the city they live in. And then there are those who just don't care.

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"4th Law of Modern Thermodynamics: Where Mihoshi is, Chaos Reigns." ~W. Hakubi
"Gun control is hitting your target; Recycling is reloading your brass." ~ Lex of Dirty Work.

You seem to have missed the irony there. Isn't just believing what is 'obvious' just the kind of ignorance you claim to dislike?

The phrase 'selection bias' mean anything to you?

1. Size isn't the problem
2. 20% of a qualitative personality trait? eh?

I was kind of hoping you might have another theory why you see people rejecting your ideas a lot.

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

This is like the "do you still beat your wife" question...

If I answer yes, then I am agreeing with you that it is "obvious".
If I answer no, then I am still agreeing with you (about ignorance of knowledge) just that it wasn't obvious to me...

The way you've phrased your question, I can't disagree with you...

Maybe you should judge humans by talking with actual humans, instead of judging them by your sampling of cyberspace. I personally don't find it insulting to be called an animal (I'm not a plant and I like most animals), but I take your use of it to be insulting. I personally think todays graduates and college students are no better and no worse than those of the past several decades. In fact, there was an article in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer (sorry, couldn't find a link to an on-line copy) that talked about current college students and grads and talked about that they are more politically aware, more willing to volunteer, and more tolerant than those from the past decade or two.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

How do you get "99.999...%" without knowing exactly how much knowledge there is to know? It would be just as accurate (or inaccurate) to say 90.126%, or 83.275%, or 3.6789...%, wouldn't it?

If you don't know what there is to know, how can you know what you don't know? Y'know?

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

There are several times in the TV series Cosmos where Carl Sagan makes reference to our animalistic nature. In one part, he goes into detail about the three brains that we all have, pointing out that the oldest and innermost brain, the one we inherited from reptiles, is the seat of some of our darker behaviours.

The thing is, not everyone is under the blind control of his instincts. There are people who are able to rise above that. But in our society, I don't think that we reward them. We have this "no child left behind" mentality. No matter how slow or unteachable a kid is, we insist on slowing the whole class down to his level because we just can't bear to leave him behind.

If school wasn't manditory, if it was possible to kick people out, then I think you'd find that we graduate far fewer of what you call animals. Unfortunately, we just don't have the strength to make hard choices like that. We'd feel too guilty about it.

Now that is obvious to me.

Out where I live, the philosophy in the local schools is “Most children left behind.” The teachers teach some of the most modern and progressive information which only about 10% of the local kids understand and can keep up with. These are the kids who will eventually become the doctors, lawyers, scientists, and top businessmen in life. The other 90% don’t get it and don’t learn it, mainly because it is too complicated, too much, and too fast. And of course the school principal claims that the school participates fully in the national “No child left behind” program.

Part of that federal programs requires that parents be notified by mail if any teachers are “unqualified” under the new federal standards. My neighbors received an official school letter about one of their kid’s teachers, saying she was “unqualified” to teach under the federal standards. A few weeks later the kid told the parents that the teacher had announced to the class that she had legally changed her name and the kids had to start calling her by a different name. The parents figured that that way, her new name does not show up on the current “not qualified” federal list.

If .99 repetend equals 1.0, then 99.99 repetend equals 100.0

Therefore, nobody knows anything.

I've been cobersted.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I have no information as to the comparison with earlier generations. Your guess is as good as mine. One problem is that each generation needs to have better judgment than the generation before because the world is becoming more dangerious every year. New technology makes better judgment mandatory for survival of the species.

Bootstrap is defined as: designed to function independently of outside direction—capable of using one internal function or process to control another.

For a 12 to 18 years period from the age of 6 to our mid twenties we have lived constantly in an educational system wherein we seldom if ever learned to function intellectually independent of outside direction.

How is it possible for such an individual to develop the internal processes (bootstrap) that allow him or her to become an independent critically self-conscious thinker?

Like the PC setting in front of us we seem to have an automatic default position. Our default position is ‘reject’ when encountering any idea that does not fit in our already learned patterns and algorithms.

Somehow the individual must find a way to change that default position from ‘reject’ to ‘examine critically’. Of course—how do we every not reject this message?

These following definitions come from: http://www.criticalthinking.org/reso...glossary.shtml

And the answer is...

Read more books and stop spending so much time on the internet.

So sayth me...

Now there's a story we should be hearing more about. This is in your school district, huh?

This does not make sense to me. Surely a legal name change would also affect the list, as it affects what name the federal government knows you by.

Coberst, most of my friends, by your definition, would seem to be avoiding new knowledge, because pretty much what we do is sit around and read, and we went/are going to college. But we are all also fascinated by new ideas. We still don't agree with yours.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"