Ask Lemmy

If people are emotionally hurt, they abuse themself (throw themselves into work etc). What do you think would stop people from hurting/abusing others?

That, I could not tell. What I can tell is that education was supposed to help fight that by helping all of us (not just 'them') learn to think more... adequately when faced with a problem. ie, to not decide on anything based only on...

Base instincts to hurt others are just too strong.

Here again, the only tool working against our instincts, all of them, is... education.

So, the failing of the public educative system that has been happening in the USA for the last few decades, a very similar failure to what is happening right here in France (since approx. the 70s-80s) and what is happening in way too many other democracies too, is the real issue.

At least, I think so. People not being educated in school is what's making the situation real dramatic. And it could even be hopeless.

The school has been increasingly failing at teaching kids much of anything, and even less so how to properly think by not being taught:

1. how to properly read books, aka being able to access and understand nuanced/complex information and ideas, and being to properly listen to people expressing nuanced ideas.
2. how to write, aka how to properly express their own nuanced ideas and how to properly share them with one another.
3. how to do math, even simple calculus, aka be able to manipulate basic logic and abstraction. Heck, how many kids are not even being taught how to properly read a clock anymore (the one with hands and numbers written all around... sorry, my English is really lacking here and I’m not sure what terms I should use) or even funnier how to read roman numerals on a clock? It’s obviously very symbolic but by not teaching kids how to read time on a clock, we’re kinda leaving left out of time trapping in an endless and formless present.

When you remove reading, writing, abstraction and thinking in a nuanced fashion from education, you stop creating citizens that will be able to manage living together in society, including with people they disagree with. All you're left with are... basic instincts and gut feelings. And, like a wrote in another thread a few days ago: we all know that what usually come out of guts of our guts is not bright ideas, right?

Heck, I would even say that not properly teach them how to speak foreign languages we’re betraying kids. Including what we now wrongfully call dead language, Latin and Greek.

How many US citizens have no idea their precious Founding Fathers they’re so proud of were indeed real intellectual, real nerds that enjoyed books and could read them in a few languages, including Latin and Greek (including my own French, in which so many essential ideas were formalized around that time too, ideas that helped shape the revolutionaries ideals)?

Why is that not a requirement anymore? Do we really think we’re so much smarter than them, that they were too dumb to realize it was ‘a waste of their time’ to read dusty Latin and Greek, or some other language outside of English? Or can we start considering the idea that maybe, just maybe, they were reading those texts in the original, not in translation, because they realized it was giving them a direct, unmediated, unfiltered, uncensored access to essential ideas and thoughts that helped shape their own?

So to get back to your question, how could that trend change?

I have no certainty but I do think that if people started asking question about the failing of their public education, the damage that is being to their own kids. If they started investing their energy into educating again (there was a time back then when it meant something to get a diploma and, nope, it was not all about getting a better paying job). If they started doing that today, then in a few years maybe things could start moving in the right direction again.

But this would still take years and, what an odd coincidence, it happens we're now being intensely educated to not tolerate being asked to wait a few days, or even a few instants, to get what we want. So, the idea of working for a few years without getting any immediate feedback is rather unlikely to happen, I'm afraid.

Meanwhile, while the public education, the one that is accessible to all kids no matter how wealth their family is, while this school is collapsing under its own and unprecedented level of stupidity, the private education system, the one that is accessible only to wealthy kids, is doing quite ok. But, obviously, than can only be another odd coincidence we should certainly not worry about: elites kids being properly educated while the wider population is being intensely un-educated.

I'm now waiting to see who will first explain it will be a good idea to suppress teacher's jobs from the education as it will save so much money (like if school was supposed to be a business making money) and to replace them with AI... Another thing that is 100% owned by a handful of elites that will now also get to decide what and how kids will be educated... just not with their own kids, mind you, as those privileged few will keep on receiving proper education, aka human-made, in their fancy private schools.

So, putting books in the hands of kids. Even more so difficult books would be a good starting point.

Go read a biography of some of those founding fathers I mentioned, see what they were studying and reading when they were kids and compare that to the absolute garbage and pure non-sense today’s kids and teens are expected to… no even read anymore, because it’s too demanding to read. Well, it happens making a revolution (against the world first or second empire of back then, Britain), and creating a new republic based on democratic principle was a also quite demanding too. But here again, that is obviously just a mere coincidence and those people created the USA by sheer luck.