The Struggle for the Soul of America

[Nick_A]

The essence of the struggle: liberty vs restraint and slavery in the cause of equality

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

Progressive education has taught that restraint and slavery serve the greater good. After all, who needs freedom of thought? If the Great Beast decides that 2+2 is now 5, why argue with progress? In matters of equality, big brother knows best.

There is permanent tension between equality and liberty.
I and my fellow students were progressively educated and I was certanly not lead to believe "restraint and slavery serve the greatest good". I studied education as an academic discipline and I can inform you progress in education at the time I studied it veered towards child -centred i.e. the opposite of restraint and slavery.
Intellectuals and well- intentioned others are right now struggling to protect education against restraints and slavery imposed by regimes and lying media.

We need both a definition of education and indoctrination. IYO does progressive primarily serve the purpose of education or indoctrination. When we don't recognize the difference we cannot distinguish between the two and indoctrination becomes confused with education.

[Belinda]

The essence of the struggle: liberty vs restraint and slavery in the cause of equality



Progressive education has taught that restraint and slavery serve the greater good. After all, who needs freedom of thought? If the Great Beast decides that 2+2 is now 5, why argue with progress? In matters of equality, big brother knows best.

There is permanent tension between equality and liberty.
I and my fellow students were progressively educated and I was certanly not lead to believe "restraint and slavery serve the greatest good". I studied education as an academic discipline and I can inform you progress in education at the time I studied it veered towards child -centred i.e. the opposite of restraint and slavery.
Intellectuals and well- intentioned others are right now struggling to protect education against restraints and slavery imposed by regimes and lying media.

We need both a definition of education and indoctrination. IYO does progressive primarily serve the purpose of education or indoctrination. When we don't recognize the difference we cannot distinguish between the two and indoctrination becomes confused with education.

Indoctrination can't be progressive because successful indoctrination stupifies the recipient so he cannot progress.

Successful education does the opposite of stupify because successful education alerts and creates.

[Belinda]

Belinda wrote:There is permanent tension between equality and liberty.
I and my fellow students were progressively educated and I was certanly not lead to believe "restraint and slavery serve the greatest good". I studied education as an academic discipline and I can inform you progress in education at the time I studied it veered towards child -centred i.e. the opposite of restraint and slavery.
Intellectuals and well- intentioned others are right now struggling to protect education against restraints and slavery imposed by regimes and lying media.
[/quote]

Nick_A wrote: We need both a definition of education and indoctrination. IYO does progressive primarily serve the purpose of education or indoctrination. When we don't recognize the difference we cannot distinguish between the two and indoctrination becomes confused with education.
[/quote]
Indoctrination can't be progressive because successful indoctrination stupifies the recipient so he cannot progress.


Successful education does the opposite of stupify because successful education alerts and creates.

The Great Beast is probably not so inefficient that it would try to do away with the non-creative language of mathematics, which is tool that the Great Beast itself uses.

[commonsense]

The essence of the struggle: liberty vs restraint and slavery in the cause of equality



Progressive education has taught that restraint and slavery serve the greater good. After all, who needs freedom of thought? If the Great Beast decides that 2+2 is now 5, why argue with progress? In matters of equality, big brother knows best.

There is permanent tension between equality and liberty.
I and my fellow students were progressively educated and I was certanly not lead to believe "restraint and slavery serve the greatest good". I studied education as an academic discipline and I can inform you progress in education at the time I studied it veered towards child -centred i.e. the opposite of restraint and slavery.
Intellectuals and well- intentioned others are right now struggling to protect education against restraints and slavery imposed by regimes and lying media.

We need both a definition of education and indoctrination. IYO does progressive primarily serve the purpose of education or indoctrination. When we don't recognize the difference we cannot distinguish between the two and indoctrination becomes confused with education.

You are the one who conflates indoctrination and education. Study the experts and you may learn the distinction.

[Nick_A]

Belinda wrote:There is permanent tension between equality and liberty.
I and my fellow students were progressively educated and I was certanly not lead to believe "restraint and slavery serve the greatest good". I studied education as an academic discipline and I can inform you progress in education at the time I studied it veered towards child -centred i.e. the opposite of restraint and slavery.
Intellectuals and well- intentioned others are right now struggling to protect education against restraints and slavery imposed by regimes and lying media.

Nick_A wrote: We need both a definition of education and indoctrination. IYO does progressive primarily serve the purpose of education or indoctrination. When we don't recognize the difference we cannot distinguish between the two and indoctrination becomes confused with education.
[/quote]
Indoctrination can't be progressive because successful indoctrination stupifies the recipient so he cannot progress.


Successful education does the opposite of stupify because successful education alerts and creates.

The Great Beast is probably not so inefficient that it would try to do away with the non-creative language of mathematics, which is tool that the Great Beast itself uses.
[/quote]

Let's explore the difference. The first paragraph is a description of the aim of Platonic education while the second explains child education. My question to you is the objective value of child centered education which intentionally avoids inwardly turning towards the light?

The object of education is to turn the soul towards light. Plato once stated that the main function of education is not to put knowledge into the soul, but to bring out the latent talents in the soul by directing it towards the right objects. This explanation of Plato on education highlights his object of education and guides the readers in proper direction to unfold the ramifications of his theory of education.


Progressive education, movement that took form in Europe and the United States during the late 19th century as a reaction to the alleged narrowness and formalism of traditional education. One of its main objectives was to educate the “whole child”—that is, to attend to physical and emotional, as well as intellectual, growth. The school was conceived of as a laboratory in which the child was to take an active part—learning through doing. The theory was that a child learns best by actually performing tasks associated with learning. Creative and manual arts gained importance in the curriculum, and children were encouraged toward experimentation and independent thinking. The classroom, in the view of Progressivism’s most influential theorist, the American philosopher John Dewey, was to be a democracy in microcosm.

America once offered the unique opportunity to turn towards the light without opposition from government. Something worth the struggle.

[Belinda]

Very good Nick

[Nick_A]

Very good Nick

It is the essential question of liberty.

John Adams in a speech to the military in 1798 warned his fellow countrymen stating, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

If John Adams is right, America needs enough people to inwardly turn towards the light. If education or the secular church doesn't support it, the goal of America as a free country will become a distant memory sacrificed to human passions

[Nick_A]

Very good Nick

It is the essential question of liberty.

John Adams in a speech to the military in 1798 warned his fellow countrymen stating, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

If John Adams is right, America needs enough people to inwardly turn towards the light. If education or the secular church doesn't support it, the goal of America as a free country will become a distant memory sacrificed to human passions

Simone Weil put it well:

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation
Profession of Faith

..........Just as the reality of this world is the sole foundation of facts, so that other reality is the sole foundation of good.

That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations.

"At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world."
Those minds whose attention and love are turned towards that reality are the sole intermediary through which good can descend from there and come among men.

Although it is beyond the reach of any human faculties, man has the power of turning his attention and love towards it.................

Child centered education reveals useful facts while Platonic education is concerned with experiencing the values facts can be placed in. I don't see how liberty is possible without it and how it must devolve into tyranny.

[Nick_A]

Here is a good article which questions progressive education

https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/pro ... erspective

The struggle for the soul of America will be lost as the old ideas concerning the source of "meaning" are rejected. Here are the concluding questions:

.........................First, working backward, Progressive theory places extreme emphasis on "consequences," especially as they are measurable, related to application, and affiliated with power.

Second, it displaces contemplation, because contemplation is rooted in the notion that there is something other than me worth knowing, something that is stable and knowable. You see the diminished value of contemplation in the tendency to avoid geometry in modern math programs and in the tendency to approach literature as samples to be collected instead of embodied ideas to be meditated on.

Third, the grand scale of the experiment leads to a quasi-standardization and the overthrow of uniqueness and personality. This is ironic, because Progressive educators clearly value uniqueness and personality development, but because they see education as a vast socially funded experiment they are continually bound by the bureaucracies they create.

Fourth, an excessive emphasis on "appropriate instruction for the developmental stage" leads to the loss of great ideas, great books, great works of art, and great discussions.

Fifth, an excessive emphasis on methodology arises from the need for controlled, measurable, and predictable outcomes.

Sixth, the formal side of learning, in math, language (e.g. grammar and usage) are dismissed as mere conventions, thus undercutting the child's faculties in these areas.

Seventh, the will is neglected, disregarded, and even overthrown. After all, the will is a spiritual faculty and cannot be controlled by material and efficient causes.

Finally, while multiple theories have come out about learning styles and intelligences, these are usually a response to the sameness inflicted on the American classroom by the general standardization of education.

The Progressive educators had much to teach American schools. They challenged the Idealism and hyper-rationalism of 19th century thought. They tried to bring the teachers attention back to the individual, specific realities and experiences that made up their worlds and relationships. They wisely noted the radical changes going on in society and technology and raised the concern that religion and moral theory were unable to deal with these changes. They made a noble effort to rescue children from poverty.

But their ideas failed them. Now we need to return to the permanent ideas that always work, no matter how the environment changes.

[Belinda]

Here is a good article which questions progressive education

https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/pro ... erspective

The struggle for the soul of America will be lost as the old ideas concerning the source of "meaning" are rejected. Here are the concluding questions:

.........................First, working backward, Progressive theory places extreme emphasis on "consequences," especially as they are measurable, related to application, and affiliated with power.

Second, it displaces contemplation, because contemplation is rooted in the notion that there is something other than me worth knowing, something that is stable and knowable. You see the diminished value of contemplation in the tendency to avoid geometry in modern math programs and in the tendency to approach literature as samples to be collected instead of embodied ideas to be meditated on.

Third, the grand scale of the experiment leads to a quasi-standardization and the overthrow of uniqueness and personality. This is ironic, because Progressive educators clearly value uniqueness and personality development, but because they see education as a vast socially funded experiment they are continually bound by the bureaucracies they create.

Fourth, an excessive emphasis on "appropriate instruction for the developmental stage" leads to the loss of great ideas, great books, great works of art, and great discussions.

Fifth, an excessive emphasis on methodology arises from the need for controlled, measurable, and predictable outcomes.

Sixth, the formal side of learning, in math, language (e.g. grammar and usage) are dismissed as mere conventions, thus undercutting the child's faculties in these areas.

Seventh, the will is neglected, disregarded, and even overthrown. After all, the will is a spiritual faculty and cannot be controlled by material and efficient causes.

Finally, while multiple theories have come out about learning styles and intelligences, these are usually a response to the sameness inflicted on the American classroom by the general standardization of education.

The Progressive educators had much to teach American schools. They challenged the Idealism and hyper-rationalism of 19th century thought. They tried to bring the teachers attention back to the individual, specific realities and experiences that made up their worlds and relationships. They wisely noted the radical changes going on in society and technology and raised the concern that religion and moral theory were unable to deal with these changes. They made a noble effort to rescue children from poverty.

But their ideas failed them. Now we need to return to the permanent ideas that always work, no matter how the environment changes.

I find it difficult to comment on what you wrote, as you tend to not specify what it is you object to. Is it something about curriculums you disapprove of? Or classroom management?
I suspect you would like humanities to be taught as if human nature is fixed by God, eternally. If you were God, I'd agree with you . But you are just a man with a computer.

[Nick_A]

Belinda

I find it difficult to comment on what you wrote, as you tend to not specify what it is you object to. Is it something about curriculums you disapprove of? Or classroom management?
I suspect you would like humanities to be taught as if human nature is fixed by God, eternally. If you were God, I'd agree with you . But you are just a man with a computer.

The question begins with comparing the aims of progressive child centered education with Platonic education

Is the universe absurd? From wiki:

In philosophy, "the Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless or chaotic and irrational universe.[1] The universe and the human mind do not each separately cause the Absurd, but rather, the Absurd arises by the contradictory nature of the two existing simultaneously.

If the universe is absurd then education is subjective. society teaches or indoctrinates what makes sense to it. If the universe makes sense but we don't understand, then the purpose of education is to awaken to understanding. As previously quoted by Plato:

“having first attained to self-mastery and beautiful order within himself, and having harmonized these three principles, the notes or intervals of three terms quite literally the lowest, the highest, and the mean, and all others there may be between them, and having linked and bound all three together and made of himself a unit, one man instead of many, self-controlled and in unison, he should then and then only turn to practice if he find aught to do either in the getting of wealth or the tendance of the body or it may be in political action or private business, in all such doings believing and naming the just and honorable action to be that which preserves and helps to produce this condition of soul.”

If the human organism is a tripartite soul that has become out of balance, then objective education begins with striving for balance which can begin to understand objective purpose.

So my question to you is if you believe the universe is absurd or only seems absurd because of the unbalanced human condition? If it is absurd, then education creates our own absurd reality. If the universe has objective meaning and purpose, the primary goal of education is awakening to it or "remembering it.

[Belinda]

The best sort of education is not about transferring knowledge. We have search engines for that. Education is for making people wise and skilled. You don't have to be a Platonist or a mystic to be wise or skilled. You can have a very lowly job and be wise.

[Nick_A]

The best sort of education is not about transferring knowledge. We have search engines for that. Education is for making people wise and skilled. You don't have to be a Platonist or a mystic to be wise or skilled. You can have a very lowly job and be wise.

Learning a skill takes place in the world. The essence of higher values leading to adopting obligations resulting in liberty comes from beyond the world.

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It.

Does progressive education distinguish between the wise man and the fool? If they don't and are unable to, how can they teach it?

[Nick_A]

Indoctrination: "Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing." George Orwell

Education in contrast is the process of enabling a student to harmonize his tripartite essence into a harmonious whole. The modern public educational trend supports the struggle for external power over internal harmony. This assures the loss of the soul of America

[Belinda]

Indoctrination: "Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing." George Orwell

Education in contrast is the process of enabling a student to harmonize his tripartite essence into a harmonious whole. The modern public educational trend supports the struggle for external power over internal harmony. This assures the loss of the soul of America

The theory of tripartite essence is one theory among many others of human nature. It's best to flavour all theories with scepticism, as we are subject to confirmation bias, including those of us who are not obsessed.
You think the soul of America is bound up with the theory of the tripartite soul. You may be right. Or you may be right to some extent. However you are not credible unless you produce real life evidence with statistics.
Educationists have studied these questions for decades, and have done so as objectively as they could.