Toribash
Original Post
Is school compulsory (sorry)
So I just passed 10mins writting something, and at the same time the thread got closed for no apparent reason.

So I'll just post it here !

Originally Posted by SkulFuk View Post
Interesting, so basically you're talking about computer reliant basement dwellers incapable of doing anything? Ha, people who claim they're above education are hilarious.
I love mocking them with big words that they can't understand.
I love seeing the look on their face when they take stuff to a till & discover they can't afford it.
I love the way they've condemned themselves to a life of poverty because no one will ever hire them...

...I also love that their scabby scruffy unwashed asses can't afford the very objects that they've became reliant on.

I short: Get an education or remember that there'll be people like me saying "I told you so" when you're picking your dinner out the trash. Mmmmm half eaten burger, tasty.

Hmmm, don't mix education and school : when one can be educated without following the classic schooling system, one can go to school and stay a dumbshit without a clue about life untill the end of his.

Education is indeed necessary, that's what make us "civilized", we pass on our history and knowledges because we haz thumbs, that's our "weapon" to survive.

But most actual scholar systems are stacks of shit. The main goal of the actual schools is to shape the minds of young people to prepare them for their following life of work enslavement, to make them enter the "mold" our actual economic system wants them to fit in. Our schools emerged from our political conception, if our political system is rotten, schools are rotting with it.
It's not really helping people to develop critical thinking and objectivity.

Hell there even are some schools that refuse to teach evolutionsim.

The fact that you need to finish school and get a degree to have a job doesn't prove that people with a degree are well educated. It's just prove they did their scholarship like good little soldiers.

So my point is : education and remodeled schools to give students the means and knowledges to think by themselves, express themselves properly, and be better person : yes

Actual brainwashing school systems : no
Last edited by deprav; May 8, 2013 at 09:50 AM.
Hah... this is classic. Ya, you can become educated without a formal education but how do you plan on getting a job based off of that? If corporations just took your word for it, I'd be CEO of every company known to exist.

Yes one can go through school and not learn anything... we call those people lazy or failures. It is entierly up to the individual what they take from school. If they choose to believe their "talents" will be acquired after dropping out of high-school then they are free to try. And if you want to live by the idea that you're too good for school, then teach yourself, and see where you get. Who's to stop you?

Your first sentence kinda proved my whole point that School actually aim to create good working ressources that fit the actual system, ready to enter the meat grinder without asking too many questions.

People who go through school and do not learn anything are just people, they're not lazies or failures... they're human beings who didn't fit the actual schooling system, because it's stuck and "broken", it's a relic from the past, probably back to the start of the industrial era.

I don't know what that means, thumbs are most defiantly not weapons. Nor, are they necessary for survival. Education serves many purposes but belive it or not, education wasn't always mandatory, it was sought after. People wanted to learn (imagine that). Education isn't inteded to make us civilized, it is intended to progress civilization. It is too expand on cultural arts, to help address problems we have, are, or may face. Schools are a tool not a burden.

from an evolutionary point of view : no thumbs = no tools, no tools = no hand-writting, no hand-writting = no history, no knowledges = no civilization. That's something you don't learn at school ;o
Then I don't know what you're arguing for about education... I said it's indeed necessary, you say it "isn't inteded to make us civilized, it is intended to progress civilization", which kind of doesn't make sense in itself.
Of course people want to learn, who would like to live a life he doesn't understand. You're mixing school and educations, I'm not arguing against education.

I'm going to stop you right there. What is a "scholar system"?

Also, can you site any of those outrages accusations to a reliable source? You seem to be talking out your ass because you're not a fan of school.

"scholar system", schooling system I guess, english isn't my natural language.
And no, I can't "cite" those "outrages accusations to a reliable source", it's the fruit of my own thinking, experience and observations : actual schools suck, that's a fact.

What? Critical thinking and objectivity are the essence to change. The very thing you propose to do. If you want to change the present day schooling system, then you need to think critically about how it's done now and how it could be better.

You need to question what schools teach us and think.. "is this right?".

Yep, so why are we not changing ? If most of people were able to be critical and objective I think we'd know it by now.
I did think critically about how it's done and how it could be better, I thought about it numerous time actually...But I'm not gonna write you an essay about schooling, we're here to discuss not to reform.

[Umm, not in America. Schools (public or private, even home schooling) must follow an established curriculum. They may include their own opinions but they must teach the curriculum. Not only in America, probably close to all developed countries have an established curriculum that teach evolution.

You don't just "include your own opinion", religious or political, to children barelly in age to understand and reason logically, with critical thinking... Their "source of informations" needs to be neutral. As a figure of authority, one just can't simply say "Evolution is bullshit because jesus blablabla...".
Here for instance, teachers shut the fuck up about their own opinions, I'm not saying we have a good education system, we probably have one of the worst in Europe, but at least we have the neutrality of informations.

Actually it does, how else do you propose to evaluate potential workers for job openings? Again, "did their 'scholarship'"? You don't do scholarships, you earn them.

Evaluation of future potential workers shouldn't be something School "worries" about; Its goal should be to educate logic conscious minds, the "evaluation for potential workers" part should be entirely up to the companies/corporations/whatever work place...
But once again, if the political system is rotting, its educational system is rotting with it.

Yep, you earn a scholarship, like you earn a pay raise or a promotion... that's exactly my point, school makes workers, not "clever people".

I... I don't... I really don't follow what you were trying to convey here. Please, go back to school and finish the 8th grade. Then, come back and tell me what you were trying to say.

You not getting my point is not up to me. Look at Cow, he understood me perfectly.
And what If I tell you I went through my whole scolarship, and still have an acerbic opinion about how shitty actual schools are...

You should cut the elitist assumptions and the condescending tone, it makes it harder to take you seriously.

I even have a funny video to show you that people, who doesn't seem to be lazy homeless failures, can make their way out of school and society and still be hardly educated.

vid



If people were educated and responsible, we'd have real democracies.
Last edited by deprav; May 8, 2013 at 09:44 AM.
To say we dont need our thumbs because of our brain power is stupid. We're one of the only species to have thumbs. And as cavemen without our thumbs we would be feeding off grass and trees and not using rocks, bones, and sticks to hunt. Hell, holding a baby with out thumbs running from predators is stupid when we can club it to death with our sure grips with sticks and stones. Which would later turn into hammers, clubs and spear. We wouldn't be able to properly throw, or even punch properly. The thumb on the human is one of the most important traits the specie has. Try not using your thumbs for a day or a couple.

Also you must look pretty stupid writing without your thumb. How do you hold the pen? With all fours or just two? You wouldnt be able handwrite as fast and efficiently. As I type on my iPod I'm using thumbs, would you type wig your index finga's?
Last edited by T0ribush; May 9, 2013 at 08:59 AM.
What you call a "meat grinder" is what most call a career. No one is going to force you to choose a career or a specific career. If you want a job, take classes, learn, apply yourself and perhaps you can get it. There's nothing wrong with raising school standards, but to say school is useless is just ignorant.

Nop, what I call "meat grinder" is the entire system we agree to live in. It requires an entire post to explain what the meat grinder is but lets describe it briefly like this :
Some people waste their life working a job they do not particulary like, a job that -in the absolute- is not particulary useful for the well being of humanity, to have the right to live and purchase not so useful consumer goods to make the economical system work like some people want it to work. Some other people have less luck and live in less rich countries, work their whole life for a misery to please the consumers of richer countries, and the world wide meat grinding economical system. Some others just starve to death because rich countries consider it's ok to let them starve to buy their raw material for very cheap.

You live your life telling yourself you have to earn your scholarship and get a career, I've asked myself other questions apparently.

I never said "school is useless", I've learned some cool stuff at school, and it would be worst if we didn't have any schools at all. That doesn't make actual schools less of a pile of turd shit.

Seems to work for millions of students that graduate every year. Sound to me you're making excuses for those who don't wish to apply themselves. I see them everyday at school. Both high-school and college. Kids that think their future is entitled to them.

And seems not to work for the other millions of students. If you want someone to be taught you make him interested, if you just want someone to be able to work like an ant, you just keep the ones that follow the line.
And people doesn't necessarily think the same way, we're not all identical. Intelligence takes many form, but we're somehow all taught the same way.
Some really brilliant people were terrible students, even mediocre. Einstein for instance was dyslexic and had been considered a "dunce" for a big part of his scholarship.

Again, how do you plan on rating potential applicants?

Why should I care about rating people. Rating people makes no sense.
School is supposed to teach people, not "rate" them for their future job. Maybe post-graduation schools ye, when you specialized. But before this point it just makes no sense but preparing yourself being judged during the rest of your life.

Reform seems to be what you're after. Why not share your ideas on doing so instead of declaring the present system as garbage? Besides, there isn't any change to school because there need not be. Millions of people graduate high-school and go on to get a job or additional schooling. Why should we think the few who don't aren't lazy but just don't "fit the system".

Maybe I'll share my ideas later but that would take me a shitload of time, I'd better write a book.

"there isn't any change to school because there need not be"
That makes no sense. Changes happen when you realize it needs to be changed. Things don't just change and then you go like "oh well, I guess it needed to be changed". You're trying to outsmart the Time itself, and put consequences before causes. It's like defying all logic. Haven't you been taught to be logic at school ? ;o

Why should we think the few who don't aren't lazy but just don't "fit the system".
Why shouldn't we ? They're human after all, ain't they aspiring for a good life like everyone else as well ?
I don't think people who fail school just tell themselves "fuck it I want a crappy life and to be rejected"

if you can't reason between opinion and fact you're a moron. If you need teachers and parents to tell you that what they're saying isn't fact but is only an opinion, you have no hope for the world outside.

Go explain that to a 12 years old kid. Most of the things we learn under 16, we learn them without real critical thinking but mainly by heart to "succeed" school.
For exemple: the history programs are so big you only touch on all the periods, without grasping the entirety of the consequences of the events and numbers you learn. It goes the same for any discipline.

It isn't what school worries about, it's what it tests for.

It's exactly the same thing, if it tests something it's because it gives it importance.
School shouldn't be a place to rank and test (at least before you specialize and you're conscious about life, aka. being a grown up), it should just be a place to learn.

I'm confused by your logic. Earning a scholarship makes kids into hard workers, which is bad because somehow that takes away from their intellect?

Nop, that's not what I'm saying your taking it the other way around.
What's bad isn't that it makes people hard workers, what's bad is that it mainly aim at making hard workers not asking themselves too many questions.
Meaning it emphasis on the aptitude to work and please a "higher judge" (marks at school, employer at work) instead of making people conscious, responsible and educated. Being conscious, responsible and educated doesn't necessarily make you the opposite of a "hard worker", whatever that would be (a lazy bum maybe ?)
That doesn't "take away" their intellect, that sacrifices possibilities for higher intellect and "self opening up".

Because Cow makes sense. Although the way schooling is done today isn't ideal, Cow understands there is no efficient way to mass produce knowledgeable students without doing in like an assembly line.

"Production line style schooling is terrible. There's no real way to mass produce educated children."
He actually said the opposite, "assembly line" schooling is terrible and there's no way it produces educated people.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but merely pointing out that there is no other way to effectively teach the masses as of now.

There are many ways of doing so if we take the trouble to change it. Saying there's no way is just not bothering to try and think differently.
We had numerous technological advances in a brief amount of time. We can access to free infinite knowledge from anywhere now. So now that we have access to any knowledge we want it would be time to start sharpen our minds and conscious instead of passing on mindless informations.

Makes me think of Descartes "science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme."
["science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul"]

______________________________________________

As for the thumb thingy, T0ribush was right is not making things up !

See it this way (i'm over simplifying) :
At first were life forms living in the sea. Then, some started living of the sea and grew legs to adapt to their environment, on millions of years. They also developped the prehensive ability (later thumbs), probably to climb on vegetation and escape their natural predators. Millions of years passed and they're still climbing vegetations, but they're now bigger and they climb trees. But food being scarce for big animals on trees, they started going back to the ground but developped the ability to walk on only 2 legs to see predators more easily in the high vegetation (no lawn-mawer back then). With their 2 free arms with prehensive ability (thumbs) and they're tiny brains, they started using tools to fight the difficulty of wild life, hunt etc... from here it's pretty easy to follow. Later we made tools to communicate and write, allowing us to keep track of a shared knowledges about our environment and educate ourselves. The very thing that separate us from the rest of the animals (knowledge and education). Our brain wasn't as big as it is now when we were apes; our skull and brain changed while we were accumulating knowledges.
That's not something we're making up, it's a thought process many had before us and that people generally simplify by "no thumbs = no conscious."


suo says: Drop the subject.
deprav says : Well, I think it was interesting for Jay to see this. It's semi off-topic but it explains how education is the base of human civilization; and how the fact that we can educate ourselves holds to some random evolution factors (we're lucky). That said, we'll stay on topic ;3
Last edited by deprav; May 11, 2013 at 02:59 AM.
It's bright morning and I haven't slept yet so I'll try to cut it to the minimum before I go to bed ^^

I also don't exactly understand where schools limit a person's ability to think for themselves

It doesn't "limit" : actual schools "waste" the possibilities of a greater state of the human mind (considering what is, and what could be). That's an idea about humanity in general, staying still and refusing to change such things as School (or economical systems etc...) is a waste of our possibilities, because that's what Life is about, possibilities.
Things can evolve in so many directions : some directions are taken out of random factors, some other directions are taken by choice.
Plus as I said, there are many forms of intelligence. Which means "assembly line" schooling might be beneficial for some people, and some other might stay totally deaf to the same form of teaching, and maybe we're missing brilliant minds that would help make the world better.

Reforming school implies that we want to reform the rest as well. Changing the education means changing the way future humanbeings will conceive the world. Maybe we shouldn't be working the way we actually do (I'm sure we shouldn't).
Yep "enslavement" and "soldiers" are what life is for the moment... but maybe educating the minds of the future generations, to make them realise Life is all we want it to be and we're not naturally born to be soldiers for the precious life-time consuming meat-grinder ;p

I'm glad you like my statement. But I'm disappointed you think things can't changed.
I'm not talking shit and hold utopian illusions : "utopia" is a bullshit word that the "Newspeak" uses to make people think we can't aim and hope for a better future. Or that life can't be good in general or I don't know... I hate this word.
"Utopia" is a goal we have to try to reach, just trying is enough, for the future of our specy. And some people need to fight for it since most of the population seem resigned to live in absurd conditions, and even let it rott for the next generations.

As Idontrememberwho said, "what's the point of living to work and get money to survive, if all you ever going to do is to keep on working to do the same thing a bit longer". The world is large and awesome; and there are plenty people to share it with - why wasting your only life for a system you don't like? As a living organism, you're supposed to be born free.
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I randomly found this video, I thought it'd be a cool add to this discussion.



Cause that's part of the problem, how the way we concieve work makes awful teachers, and how education systems are generally fucked up and push teachers to just "mindlessly"teach.
Last edited by deprav; May 10, 2013 at 05:08 AM. Reason: <24 hour edit/bump
Thanks for the brick Juntalis ! it was somehow nice to read tho

Jay :

Because most of what you said is crap (call it my opinion but I think most people here would agree)

hmmmm, so should I deduce you evaluate the veracity of your opinions based on what you think most people seem to agree on. That's not particulary productive you know; that might even be seen as a lack of critical thinking. lololo

Read my posts carefully next time. I never said schools rate people. I said the people that hire students want to compare one to another. Not schools, but corporations, businesses, etc.

I do read carefully, but the more I pay attention, the less sense it makes.

Perhaps that's something we should be explaining to 12 year old kids. If that's the sort of "reform" you want, I'm all for it. But so far, you haven't offered one bit of change to the schooling system, all you're doing is bitching. This is what pisses me off, if you have a problem, don't just cry about it, try and offer change. If you can't find a way to change it, maybe you're the problem. In this case, in my opinion, you and those kids who choose to think they're above school, are the problem.

It's a discussion forum to share ideas and point of views. It's already a pain in the ass to expose a state of mind on here, so I wont bother writting pages of hypotethical reforms on the whole schooling system to prove you something.
I offered different feelings (than yours) toward school, to which you answered in a previous post :
"Besides, there isn't any change to school because there need not be."
I don't see why I should even bother trying to show you alternative solutions, since "there need not be" (I don't think that's english by the way). Beside, as brilliant as I might be, I don't hold all the answers . That's how society works and progresses, people put their thoughts together and figure things out together... kinda hard to do when people can't properly think by themselves.

"
If you can't find a way to change it, maybe you're the problem. In this case, in my opinion, you and those kids who choose to think they're above school, are the problem"

The "problem" ? and what should we be the problem of ? School ? society ?
Are we the scum of humanity because we ain't following the line and yearn for changes.
I think you haven't quite understood the concept of "democracy" yet : changes and reforms don't come from one person "knowing the ultimate truth"... Changes require shared thoughts and discussion, if you're just gonna wait for someone to propose a miraculous world changing system -well I hope you're comfortable- because "you might as well lay down and die."

If changes happened when we're living as we told and not questioning the actual system, I think we'd know by now.
Last edited by deprav; May 12, 2013 at 10:55 PM.