Underground University
One thing my new boss has done is really inspired me to accomplish my full potential. To become the person that I really want to be. She is a real awesome personality. One thing that I have been thinking of and I totally know that there is no money in it. Is I have been thinking of starting an underground university. A place for teachers who love to teach and I will begin with some very simple rules, but first and foremost this will NOT be about money. Teachers can use any location that they so choose to use. They can use any books, any references any props, anything of anything within their realm to teach. I will have sponsored events with sponsored speakers but mostly just focus on teachers who love to teach. The challenge will be how will teachers get students to return to the place of lecture in order to receive the necessary lessons.
This will hopefully create an environment that is conducive to learning. I think that it will be much more effective learning environment when students are engaged in an environment of people who are motivated to learn. It will enable healthy competition and generate genuine scholarly interest from all participants involved.
Just imagine if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer an engineer a computer anylyst it is much more provocative to work with leaders of the industry in workshops and work groups. Traditionally education was just the basics reading writing and arithmatic. After the rudimentary lessons were learned then you would apprentice in the field that you wanted to master in. What this kind of environment will allow for is a dispersed learning platform that is open and geared for genuine experimentation and inquiry and a chance to truly challenge the minds of students of all ages in developing greatness.
I know that out there somewhere someone has a model of such a thing, but my vision for it is very simple provide a platform of mutual sharing and scholarly inquiry of learned professionals and hobbyist to link up with students of all levels to reach new levels of excellence in education. I believe such a platform of learning will develop a wellspring of intellectuality that has not seen a precedence since the beginning of this country. Based off of the comment of John Taylor Gatto "that genius is as common as dirt" this type of University will challenge this statement and look for excellence under every rock of human existence.
The systematic dumbing down of students and faculties across this great nation and throughout the world must stop. The only way to do that is to ratify the educational process by making the terms and processes relevant to the learning process. Quadratic equations do not receive their necessary attention without the relevance that must be necessarily attatched to justify its existence to the inner-school student or the student from the suburbs for that matter. The fact that we live in a capitalistic economy yet there are no truly capitalistic programs taught in school. The fact that true craftmanship has been vacated from almost every American industry is evidence of travesty of the American capitalistic experiment.
In this school I will encourage that peoples jobs become relevant and human by offering the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience and techniques to the swelling masses of available and open minds that are prepared to grasp all that they have to offer. Through an intricate network of clubs and events I believe that a well rounded open curriculum that will at any point along its course bring any individual regardless of age to a point of intellectual excellence with minimal policing by any pseudo authorized establishment. The days of read this and answer these questions will be successfully supplanted by genuine challenges and relevant opportunities to prove intellectual intelligence every day.
Responsibility will return to the next generation of students and pride in self and in personal ability. I have made up my mind now all I have to do is start. I will keep you posted.
This will hopefully create an environment that is conducive to learning. I think that it will be much more effective learning environment when students are engaged in an environment of people who are motivated to learn. It will enable healthy competition and generate genuine scholarly interest from all participants involved.
Just imagine if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer an engineer a computer anylyst it is much more provocative to work with leaders of the industry in workshops and work groups. Traditionally education was just the basics reading writing and arithmatic. After the rudimentary lessons were learned then you would apprentice in the field that you wanted to master in. What this kind of environment will allow for is a dispersed learning platform that is open and geared for genuine experimentation and inquiry and a chance to truly challenge the minds of students of all ages in developing greatness.
I know that out there somewhere someone has a model of such a thing, but my vision for it is very simple provide a platform of mutual sharing and scholarly inquiry of learned professionals and hobbyist to link up with students of all levels to reach new levels of excellence in education. I believe such a platform of learning will develop a wellspring of intellectuality that has not seen a precedence since the beginning of this country. Based off of the comment of John Taylor Gatto "that genius is as common as dirt" this type of University will challenge this statement and look for excellence under every rock of human existence.
The systematic dumbing down of students and faculties across this great nation and throughout the world must stop. The only way to do that is to ratify the educational process by making the terms and processes relevant to the learning process. Quadratic equations do not receive their necessary attention without the relevance that must be necessarily attatched to justify its existence to the inner-school student or the student from the suburbs for that matter. The fact that we live in a capitalistic economy yet there are no truly capitalistic programs taught in school. The fact that true craftmanship has been vacated from almost every American industry is evidence of travesty of the American capitalistic experiment.
In this school I will encourage that peoples jobs become relevant and human by offering the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience and techniques to the swelling masses of available and open minds that are prepared to grasp all that they have to offer. Through an intricate network of clubs and events I believe that a well rounded open curriculum that will at any point along its course bring any individual regardless of age to a point of intellectual excellence with minimal policing by any pseudo authorized establishment. The days of read this and answer these questions will be successfully supplanted by genuine challenges and relevant opportunities to prove intellectual intelligence every day.
Responsibility will return to the next generation of students and pride in self and in personal ability. I have made up my mind now all I have to do is start. I will keep you posted.
The term "University" implies the acquisition of knowledge that culminates in some sort of certification/degree that attests to ones knowledge and abilities. That becomes a sort of sort of currency with which you can negotiate future employment and support. Are you proposing something like that? If you are, then I have a few questions:
ReplyDeleteIf it's not about money, how would someone have the time to teach in your "underground university" while teaching in a paying job to support themselves. Also, who would decide who is qualified to teach in a certain field? Do you have the experience in Higher Ed, including relevant degrees, to really put this together? How would you handle assessment and standards?
Please accept these as questions geared at helping you think through things and assess the legitimacy of this idea. Education is a very serious undertaking in one's life and you would owe it to your students to make sure you were contributing to their future, rather than trying to replace a legitimate working system with one that may not benefit them at least equally in their futures.
My personal advice would be to focus on your own education first and then consider ways to start providing educational support with primary and secondary schools, as well as high school drop-outs who do not have good access to a real university education, helping them get into good job training programs or community colleges. This is a real under-served population that needs help to get their lives on track.
But then, I am an educator, so you know I have strong opinions ;-)
Eid Mubarak,
PM
Not to run on or run down your experience as a school educator and certainly not offend you as a useful and constructive member of my friendship circle I thank you for your comment and I would like to respond with this information.
ReplyDeleteIt is painfully obvious that the modern school construct throughout most of the world and especially those places dominated by western influence and predominately those dominated by eastern superpowers that the educational system that is freely provided to the masses is not one that has been designed to teach anything.
In the country that you reside you are in the presence of a superflous amount of engineers of all types, doctors, nurses, and other professionals of all types however even with all of the massive amounts of highly schooled individuals the intellectual contribution to the overall of society is actually very small. There are only a extremely small handful of individuals that can possibly be characterized as forward thinkers and with all of their education are content to do exactly what they are told. Yes Schooling in its current modern form serves this purpose quite well.
If your assumptions and position was valid then Switzerland (or Sweden) a country that is one of the wealthiest in the west should technically be one of the poorest however they are one of the richest and only 1 in 5 people actually attend school past primary school IF that.
School has nothing to do with education. If anything school kills the desire to learn. Education comes with passion and school for the most part makes people dispassionate with the mandatory idle time that must be expended in its acquisition of the endless acquiring of useless disconnected facts that supposedly make up one presently calls an education.
In your profession you know personally those who hold much higher credentials than yourself but are completely inept. So it can be firmly established that the ability to sit in a class and then regurgitate information in a parroted manner only to be promptly forgotten has nothing to do with genuine knowledge that is acquired through the passionate analytical process of personal trial and error.
My post of Good Will Hunting says it best. I love that quote from that movie. It is here on my blog somewhere. Obviously it is apparent as if we look at a bachelors degree of 120 credits as a collection of forced cursory study of 40 books at the minimum. A feat that can indeed be easily obtained in great detail at any public library. Furthermore an intese study can be obtained by limiting or expanding oneself to differnt areas of the library. More advanced study can be obtained by just spending more time in one section or going to a local barnes and noble, or Amazon to purchase the book itself.
You would become a more adept writer by simply blogging or writing grants or letters to the editor on a fairly frequent basis. I have been looking back at my blog and I have been averaging 700 to 1500 word essays a week. Follow that up with public speaking and an intense review of the masters and getting a couple of works published and that would create a more proficient and accomplished English Professor would it not?
The massive fear is why waste all of this time if it is not going to go anywhere however the reality is if you are an active doer in your practice of learning if you did so decide to work for someone else rather than striking your own way, your quality of doing would be more valuable to any corporation than all of the fresh year graduates of any if not most universities.
To be self-taught is the epitome of what education should be because it is the truest form of education because it is done true to the person persuing it. That person knows what it is that they want and they have a practical application for the knowledge that they are applying.
If you want to design a website it makes no sense to spend a year and a half in school taking senseless exams and tests. It would be much more efficient to grab a book and join a webdesigners club and put the thing together within a couple of weeks and through experience and training refine your skills for future products. Your piece of paper may get you through the door, but it is capability that will keep you there and furthermore you will love what you do so you will be more complete at it.
If you take anyone who is passionate about what they do, chances are they will make a much better teacher than anyone who learns the subject matter to recieve a check. This is the essence of what I intend to capture in Underground University. That and to wake up and capture those "at risk" youth who have become so disgruntled with the trial imprisonment of compulsory schooling. To end waiting for life to begin all the way until 22 - 24 until after you have completed schooling. Is to their credit arguably a great waste of time, when all of the applicable skills needed to do MOST of the professions that they are going into only require a couple of weeks or a year or two tops depending solely on the intensity of study.
Read more here
'Captains of industry'
"The best schools probably draw on ten to 20 percent of what young people are [intellectually] capable of," Gatto says, "and they're intended to do that. They want to train you to move inside a very narrow compass; it's what they're set up to do. And they want to train you inside the narrowest compass to be a specialist and waste your life mastering an extremely narrow bit of a whole so that you never, never, never will tamper with policy."
Writing in Harper's magazine in 2003, Gatto explained how "mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for through most of the nineteenth century." He notes that throughout most of American history, children didn't attend public schools, "yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry, like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead."
Gatto explained that the Canadian public education system, which since 1867 has been under provincial responsibility and control, was developed in tandem with its fundamentally identical American counterpart to "convince the majority of people that their economic lives hang by a thread, and if they don't do what their told to do, they'll be doomed and ostracized."
Chomsky's filter
Gatto is by no means alone in his claims. Noam Chomsky, the great linguist and political activist once called "arguably the most important intellectual alive," by the New York Times, writes in Understanding Power that public education is a "system of imposed ignorance," that was instituted in the United States and elsewhere as "a technique to beat independence out of the heads of farmers and turn them into docile and obedient factory workers."
"In fact," Chomsky writes, "the whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions."
In his Harper's article, Gatto draws from a number of sources in explaining how the North American school system was adapted from a 19th century Prussian system and was "intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table." The system was to "make sort of a surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant ranking on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever reintegrate into a dangerous whole."
Taken from here: http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/12/16/Unschooling/
I confess I did not read your post, or your whole comment, but I did glimpse at this:
ReplyDelete"School has nothing to do with education. If anything school kills the desire to learn"
I'm not sure what school you went to but I am in graduate school and I have never pushed myself so hard (and I used to spend over 3 hours a day reading for fun).
I also make sure my kids are challenged at their school.
I think PM was trying to say that proper educational institutions are set up for learning in a way that build upon centuries of learning before us.
I did not write this post to offend, only to open up the avenues of true learning. First of all I am going to take a wild guess that you are a woman and before I venture off the deep end I would just like to say that I if I get around to it am about to do some serious investigation how scientifically probable is it that women in the standardized school setting excel men by leaps and bounds. I have no verifiable data as of yet, but I would concede that is a very probable reality.
ReplyDeleteIf my hypothesis is correct we would have to ask ourselves why has this come about by design? Nothing in the west happens out of thin air. Everything happens because of Money. We are a capitalistic nation.
I congratulate yourself on your study and more importantly your book reading. I would probably venture to say that if you wrote comparatively a thesis everyday as well or at least an analysis of what you read that graduate school would be a breeze. Basically if you wrote as much as you read, and further if you spoke publicly about what you read and in review, it would be subsequently easier still. The major contributor to it being hard is the fact that your practice in conveying thought probably as most Americans from public school has been sorely challenged. I am not in graduate school so I will have to tell you if I was correct when I get there.
I realize that I am really putting myself out there and taking a lot of wild assumptions and I will take the full brunt of any rebuttal on your side.
I will ask you this about your childrens' schooling what do you define by challenged? What types of activities are those?
I have a hypothesis that states that women are currently excelling at school because they are inherently obedient and cause for managers less hassle as they by nature are pleasers. Men comparatively are usually less obedient in the grand scheme of things and pose a greater risk of striking out on their own and becoming a part of the community of competition. Women are more loyal if rewarded with inexpensive gratitude, while it works for both women and men, women are more appreciative of attention and work harder to secure a constant stream of it. Couple that with the current mindset of the attack of the female identity by the mass media and women fall more closely in line and are surpurbly more manageable. The end result is corporations that work more efficiently and achieve results faster with less managerial problems. In effect a complete revisitation of the Amazon Warriors. If I get or make the time I will have to study that deeper. All in all it is a coupe de gras of the complete raping of the American Family.
I realize that it is probably problematic to come to a end solution before doing the work, but it would be a interesting study and from a capitalistic viewpoint it makes a lot of sense.
Ah let me go on before I surely piss off all of the women out there. If you are a man then congratulations on your studies. Either way congrats.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would like to respond with is PROPER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS as you so aptly put it are charges for those who control them. Take to point that up until mega factories new inventions were coming out practically daily. Tucker built vehicles that didn't break and many other private Coach Builders built supremely reliable automobiles however through the centralized control of power the creative genius has been severely silenced by patents, payoffs and murders. Leaving the planet in peril because I surely know that a better solution to the problems we have today have been thought of before. It is no doubt that vehicles can conceivably get 300 miles to the gallon or some other substance that is more or less free to come by. The education establishment by in large is only a cog in the overall machine that is keeping America and the rest of the world underfoot.
Now I don't want you to confuse what I am saying in my post. There is a difference between EDUCATION and SCHOOLING. Education is about knowledge and the acquiring of it through the curious spirit and that is something that is free and is open to anyone. SCHOOLING is about behavioral adjustment and is about making everyone accept your place. If your children are going to a place to expand their creative intellect and master deductive reasoning then you are well ahead of the pack. If on the other hand your children are going to a place where they are mastering fixed behaviours to random stimuli then they are lab rats and you need to remove them before they become brain dead.
Muhammad,
ReplyDeleteI'll say one more thing and speak straight: I think you need to expand on your own formal education (as well as informal education) before you can be in a position for anyone to take your ideas seriously (even when you do regurgitate Chomsky, whose work I often respect).
I think you are grasping at straws now that many things have collapsed in your life and you are casting about to figure out how to define your future. Finishing your own education geared towards good employment would put you in a much better position to support all your children and even support your dream of polygyny in the future. I honestly in my heart do not feel that "this" -- which is a bit like intellectual masturbation -- will do that for you.
Salaam Alaikum,
PM
I will finish my formal education. I shall be starting back next semester. I would have went this one but I missed the boat. I only have a few credits to finish before I have the degree. I'm not far off, but I can assure you that as many Americans are finding out currently that little piece of paper doesn't secure emphatically for me as a Black man any rainbow dreams. What will secure for me that which I wish is hard work, honesty and dependability in any field I may so choose to enter.
ReplyDeleteIt is the works of John Taylor Gatto that I am regurgitating, but if he hadn't said it. I would have still believed it although I wouldn't have understood all of the mechanisms that brought it to its place.
Grades don't really mean anything as we can reference our own lives and ask ourselves when was the last time we asked anyone for their grades in reference to anything, except you because you are a teacher. Not our Doctors or lawyers, bloggers, maids, sales clerks or any other person that we come into contact with on the street that we may enlist the services to employ. The certification that is before any of us is for the most part just a piece of paper which can only be proven by our actions, and anyone of us can possibly list a few names of several individuals that excel in their fields that have no formal education.
I was in the IRS the other day listening to a 70 year old woman tell the clerk behind the counter possibly in his Mid forties shuffle about papers and procuring her the necessary forms and I asked myself how much schooling had they had? In fact they were all in their 40's white and black doing a job that a teenager or less could do, and I wondered how all of that school benefited them. I should graduate about a year after I start this winter term. Then I will be better prepared to answer you on the job market. We will see.
I'm glad to hear you are going back to school. I would then suggest getting into graduate school. That is where you will really rely on the critical skills you have developed in your educational foundation. If you picked up the idea that education is about regurgitating meaningless facts then that train has gone on the rails.
ReplyDeleteIn grad school you should be reading, listening, and absorbing information. Then you should be questioning, challenging and responding to it. That is the only way you can really add anything significant to the discourse that shapes our intellectual development and underpins our progress as a society.
Salaam Alaikum,
PM
I understand the importance of EDUCATION PM, but I am going to have to jump off this Popsicle stand that you are on along with the institution that backs you up. I beg your pardon. I do not need a piece of paper to let the world know that I can think critically. I do not need a piece of paper to tell the world that I have something valuable to bring to the table. I do not in any way shape or form need to WAIT until I get into grad school to bring a challenging dialectic to the table.
ReplyDeleteThe relegating en masse intelligent thought to those who have weathered the hoops imposed by the machine until Most of them not all are in a position of looking no further than a paycheck that becoming a waiter practically necessitates all of that intelligence is for naught for the most part in terms of the greater helping of society. For the most part those graduates slink silently away into refined cubicles and collect a check just as those at McDonalds or Burger King. They have been conditioned at times up to 30 years to wait and do exactly what they are told. This can be readily seen as in American Muslim society a practical nation of engineers and doctors have so passionately been removed mentally from the community that very little if anything outside of a nice looking mosque gets contributed to the society and practically NOTHING gets contributed to the society at large. Due in part to silence agreements and fear of lawsuits. A cornucopia of knowledge silenced and that in and of itself is an oppression.
You insult me, as you are unwittingly no doubt trained and I say this with the utmost respect for you as a person. I love you like a sister fisabelillah seriously. However the contention of life being held by the supposed validity of a piece of paper, one which no one will so much ask to see UNLESS you have it proudly displayed in your office that my future rest on a printed page. No I have to wholeheartedly disagree with you. Yes there are obvious economic advantages to receiving a myriad of pieces of paper that can add a multitude of combinations of letters behind my name. However none of them state my worth as an individual nor do any of them express my aptitude or ability.
Regurgitation for 3 years of my college career and ALL of my military career have been my reality. Monkey See and Monkey do. Read this answer these questions and take this test. All of which I could have accomplished in shorter period of time in self-paced study.
Do you even hint to express that "intellectual masturbation" formerly called philosophy is out of reach of the common man who sits and reflects upon the world around him unless he has studied intently those 40 - 80 college books written by those who have something to gain financially which hoops he jumps through, as incapable? What of the intellect of Malcolm X who intellectually ran circles around all of the intellectuals with Doctorate degrees of his day. Should he have been told to wait and speak? What of Marcus Garvey the political reformer. Huey P Newton and H Rap Brown (currently incarcerated indefinitely) because of the voices that he raised. What of the genius of Prince, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis (it may be the other brother) whose teacher told him that he was awful scholastically and completely embarrassed when he found out the value of his already published music. Should those individuals have waited a lifetime for the stamp of approval from some distant school administrator before they finally decided to live life?
Maybe those figures are too contemporary maybe we should go back to figures such as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Edison for examples all of which had no SCHOOLING to speak of and definitely not any worth wasting 30+ years over. Maybe even we can bring in the Entire country of Switzerland whose entire population BARELY goes to school past elementary school. Do we say that they have nothing to contribute or maybe they should wait before running off and making a million plus dollars until they have finished this prison sentence of 20 - 30 years of schooling?
No my intellect stands on its own with real reflection, self motivated study and active argumentation of the points that I have to make. The true school is if you are dropped off in the middle of no where can you with your hands and your mind make a living for your self and those whom you love. How many an American in this current financial crisis sits twirling their hands as they have been trained to do and wait patiently for the supposed leaders to tell them what to do next. Commerce is there in even the most debilitating times there is commerce. There are hordes of wealthy and uber-wealthy people who have no idea what to do with their money and hordes of poor people who have absolutely no idea what to do with their time.
I'll finish school when I get around to it, for now I am sharpening my arguments and my tongue and my pen so that I will be able to clearly and succinctly express all that I have to offer, and with hard work I will truly succeed whether I have a piece of paper that says I can or not.
I love you Sis fisabelillah.
P.S to your credit I can't stand my run-on sentences, but that was to be perfected in 3rd grade not college.
You misunderstood what I was getting at as I NEVER said anyone had to wait to speak up or that one is useless with out a degree (or advanced degree). I was actually making a suggestion that I thought would help better you, nut as much as I care about you it seems you are too egotistical to accept it so I am done.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do hope our 'friendship" is in tact.
Salaam Alaikum,
PM
You misunderstood what I was getting at as I NEVER said anyone had to wait to speak up or that one is useless with out a degree (or advanced degree). I was actually making a suggestion that I thought would help better you, nut as much as I care about you it seems you are too egotistical to accept it so I am done.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do hope our 'friendship" is intact.
Salaam Alaikum,
PM
You once had an idea I believe it was about alternative fuels.
ReplyDeleteI had an engineer look at it and he said you are a critical thinker, but mathematically, your ideas or either flawed, or based on incorrect (you lack education on the subject).
Engineers with PHD's know a little bit about what they are talking about.
I am sure you know what PM is talking about, I don't think you would let a surgeon who hadn't gone to medical school operate on your or your children.
I knew people like you when I was in high school, they though formal education was "over-rated". Well some of these same people either earn significantly less than the ones who went to college, or decided to go back to college in their 30s.
It does not mean that you can't make it in the world without a degree, but a degree is still worth a lot, brother. If it is so insignificant, why don't you just get it? People will then listen to all your great ideas.
Having said that, I don't respect people because of the degrees they have, I respect them for other reasons.
I once said that your choosing to be in the military was a difficult choice as a Muslim. You answered that paying taxes, etc. made us all a part of "it".
I'm sorry brother, but you entered the military voluntarily, unless you were drafted, while the rest of us still fight to elect people that will actually use our taxes (not a choice-they'll take it anyway) for uses rather than war. Your argument was flawed on many levels but I let it go.
It's your blog, but you are not always right.
I promise you brother that engineers and doctors ( i know plenty of them) study and work hard for many, many, hours. They build on the knowledge of those before them. If they are well-trained, very intelligent, and very dedicated (enough to study for doctoral degrees) the DO have to add something new to the field they are in, it's called a dissertation).
ReplyDeleteAny if there is no "cash incentive " to getting a higher education, then you would need to provide the "respect" incentive. Which basically means, that others will respect the person's ideas as an expert in their field because they know what they are talking about.
This conversation could go on forever, I am just "hanging out" after a long EID weeked full of parties.
I am going to get off the computer now, and do my "useless grad school work".
First guys let me say this, I am not disagreeing with you for the sake of disagreeing with you. It is not my intention nor desire to be a quarrelsome person just for the sake of it. That would be pointless. We write to convey ideas and engage in exchange of those ideas and beliefs. We then challenge and test those ideas and practice on making those ideas palatable and acceptable to others and persuade them to be open to our ideas. It is of no benefit to be relegated a fool and then lose both the argument and friends.
ReplyDeleteThis whole silly nonsense started out of a series of misspoken words which to my fault did not seek clarification before fully explaining myself and opening up the argument. So key words and phrases were taken completely out of context. First I was thinking primarily to call it Underground High School, but I felt since I’m talking about learning in the first place why not aim for the stars. PM responded and in her first paragraph I had no problems and agree with totally, a point which we then went on to argue quite extensively. The second paragraph there comes a question that only came because I hadn’t fully explained myself. The third paragraph actually went straight to my point which is in the communities of the under privileged by design it is NOT working or rather it is working but not as we have expected it. The education system for the African American (and correspondingly the rest of America) is not working in any way shape form or fashion to an alarming level and it is by design. That however was because I left out why we need an Underground University in the first place. Then there was a probable misunderstanding that she told me to wait before getting started helping others which I am sure that she didn’t mean as she has stated. From here we went off debating whether or not Formal University Education was important or not and that wasn’t my argument to begin with.
We then basically debated on both sides of the coin the methodology for acquiring the knowledge and not whether or not the knowledge of its essence was important. The knowledge is important we are not in disagreement about that in the least. Whether you attain knowledge by going to classes and having it certified or you strike out on your own and ratify it yourself and prove that you know what you are talking about. In the end it is the knowledge that has actually been attained. It is the old plumber story that goes basically like this, a whole lot of insignificant items are listed with very meager prices and then the 15 minutes of work that the plumber does to fix the problem, and at the end the statement defines that you have paid premium fees for the plumber knowing where to look and then taking the 5 minutes to actually fix the problem. Our arguments on both sides of the coin end up in experience. Whereas if you sign on as a journeyman and apprentice at a engineering firm for 8 years or you go to school for 8 years you will still possibly be at the same level of knowledge, The person learning and studying on the job will be more capable, but the person coming out of the University will get paid more off hand due to many corporate pay structure schemes not because of individual ability. I take for instance my ex-wifes Brother Chuck. He is dyslexic and has not completed any formal school, but he is a senior engineer for Easton products. He designs baseball bats and bicycles and he is very good at it. He does it because he loves it. He does it in his spare time and that experience is what makes him awesome at what he does.
I then made the mistake of introducing too many other arguments into the original argument that took us wildly off track. I apologize about that too, because that would have been avoided I believe if I would have just stuck to the facts and properly built a case for Underground University. In the paragraph where she starts “If it’s not about money…” needs to be explained. How I expected this University to be run is by those with experience. I can’t teach advanced mathematics yet, I can’t teach biology outside of reading a book and regurgitating what I read, but that isn’t my ideal here with Underground University. I can teach electronics and programming basics and Arabic foundation. My ideal is to take those people who have studied in their fields people like you and PM and have something to offer and then giving them an audience to impart that knowledge. A platform where they can free of institutional guidelines transmit knowledge in ways that they know works and benefits the students that they genuinely have concern for. Children do better when they are looked after with love and understanding. It is a symbiotic relationship where the older generation is allowed to reconnect with the younger generation. I want to make a place where young people can learn that older people aren’t all stupid and to bring relevance to subjects like math advanced math and science, deductive reasoning, literature and rhetoric then make learning a real experience. If children can make their experience relevant and important then they would be more motivated to continue that education and learning. Who uses geometry and trigonometry? Architects and surveyors so shouldn’t children be able to sit down with these people and explore the wonders of these concepts in real life? This is how professions were taught in days of old. You apprenticed for years until you gained mastery, and apprenticeships were highly sought after. You practiced and then honed your skills by reading and such, not the other way around in which leads you to forget much of what you learned before you actually start working. My example is if my daughter were to right now shadow her mother as a nurse at 14. She knew that is what she wanted to do and she went around with her and helped her and did the stuff that LPN’s do and then performed her studies of formality on the side, how much better a nurse or doctor would she be?
A mechanic raised in a family of Race Car drivers runs circles around any other mechanic just coming out of an ASE course who has never turned a wrench. That ASE mechanic will get paid more than the race car driver’s son all the way up until the world finds out who is the more talented mechanic. My point is that if you learn how to fix your car from your father you are in fact learning principles of engineering. Soap box racers are exercises in physics and calculus. You are then able to bring out the beauty by design if you are doing something that you love. You take care of it and our children are being robbed by not caring for anything in this modern challenge of parenting that we are experiencing. PM is an English Professor I believe and obviously if she truly wanted to she could probably give me an entire course of up to a professional level with only mild encouragement. I am averaging more than 1000 words a day essays so gently guiding me to write a book or write the editor, correct my construction of ideas in text would be more advantageous to me as an individual, because I am certain that I am definitely writing more than most of her students probably. How difficult would it be for her to use her expertise to hone my writing capabilities? Argument analysis, Argument construction, premise, APA/MLA style reference all things that will make it a breeze in writing my graduate thesis. Hint hint? LOL. I do take the time of my own to look over my work and read and reread it, check for grammatical errors. Not my strong point. Make sure that it is addressed to my audience etcetera. If she loves her Job (which I am sure that she does) when someone says that they are open to criticism then that is an opportunity to help. She is of course under no obligation.
Anyway that is why I was saying I would take people who love to teach and have them teach because learning isn’t about money and in fact it is money that has cheapened the value of education. That is why diploma mills make such high profits. Why do the work when I can pay for it? Socrates objected highly of being accused of teaching for money and the West has taught us that the value of everything is Money when we know that it isn’t. A quality education doesn’t cost a dime, but it does cost time. To spend of one’s time is to show feeling and empathy and it is that selfless acceptance that engenders exceptional learning. Learning from someone who cares about you goes a long way and you will remember it longer.
In reference to the students, it is known for quite some time that the school system is failing Black America. Failing them miserably on any human standard and Black boys in particular are receiving horrible failure rates of aptitude and ability. So something must be done. What is happening to the black community is in fact happening to all of us whether you live in Watts or the Upper East Side of Manhattan everyone going through the school system is being sorted and ranked not on their ability but where they are designed to be in the social experiment. It is this construct that I seek so passionately to destroy not the institution of learning itself. So I want to make that distinction. We are not arguing the fact that learning is or isn’t important. We are arguing that point at all. This is where I allowed myself to become undisciplined to the argument placed before me. Not again, but that is going to take practice in not mucking it up again and I will keep having to do it until I learn not to run out in the snow with my boxers on.
These African American boys in particular need an education intervention and the rest of us need to pay attention because the experiments that are done in the black community are being done to all communities it is just that they are first perfected there. Why do you think that second and third generation families of immigrants are falling apart? The techniques that engineer those types of family failings were mastered in the Black community first. The problems that White America are now experiencing socially were mastered in the black community so it is essential that a comprehensive change towards community based schooling is put in place by the families and community personnel that surround the children.
Immigrant communities could conceivably put these types of initiatives in place much quicker than the rest of us, but it is important that all of us understand the problem and not just give it new window dressing.
This gets into the last question of which comes first the chicken or the egg. The house is burning down and there isn’t enough time to go and get a fire fighters certificate to address the problem. Something needs to be done now. That is why I chose the position that I did in that there needs to be inroads to effective change for all Americans as a people.
Now this is the point in STUDY where I ask if I made myself and my points clear and if not I have to go back and redo it, write it over scrap it altogether etcetera.
PM and Anon we are still friends. Well at least PM is cause I know who she is actually. :)
ReplyDeleteAnon thank you for having an Engineer look at those ideas and he came to the conclusion that I came to myself. I know for a fact that I don't have the education around that subject, but I know that there is a mathematical process to make it work. A V6 engine needs approximately 70lbs of hydrogen a minute in order to power a car effectively. The problem to the puzzle is how to get the hydrogen out of water on demand. Now that is the answer to the problem how that is done is the equation. Which process releases the greatest amount of hydrogen from water at an instantaneous rate. That is a calculus question and I suck at calc. I didn't need an engineer to tell me that, and I don't need to go to grad school to figure it out. It may help to be in an environment with others who are thinking at the same level, but it is not absolutely necessary. It will help when I get ready to go and explain how it works, but it is not necessary to build it, in and of itself.
About the surgeon, it is not his schooling but his experience that makes him valuable. His knowledge is important yes. It is very important. His work ethic is important. The most important thing is his track record. The fact that he continuously studies is important, but surgery is a skill and like all skills it can be learned and what I am saying is that you don't need a huge building with thousands of departments to learn the things that are important.
Yes choosing to go back into the Military was difficult and that is why I chose the Coast Guard. While although the military technically I don't recall them being in a position including today of being an aggressive force since Vietnam. That is why I chose them. We were in a hard time at the time, but I felt it was a much better decision than the other services. Yes I will let this argument go as well, as we all find ourselves daily forcibly doing things that contradict our faith and as such we often decide to take the lesser of two evils.
No what I was talking about the doctors and engineers was this. Not that they don't make valuable contributions to their fields, but that them like so many of us our fields and the knowledge of our fields is hemmed up in the institutions that carry them. What I mean is actually broader than just the fact that they are engineers.
How much more useful would it be (and I am not accusing anyone individually) to take that knowledge and freely disseminate it to the masses of school children that attend our Masjids? I realize that the fact that they don't is connected to a much larger picture, but that is what I am talking about. If knowledge is not exchanged freely to those who need it then of what use is it? So take the doctor for example and this has been proposed by many before me so I am not a maverick by any means in this. You take a doctor which we have many of them in our communities and you say ok we are going to hold a free clinic (and yes I do know some doctors do this) and in that clinic you can hold internships that teach primarily basic and advanced first-aid, CPR, symptom recognition and so on. My wife a nurse is an incredible value to the community, because people call her whenever someone is sick it seems, so she is always consulting. The problem per-se because I know that there are many engineers and doctors who would love to help out, but really don't know where to start and schools Underground University is that type of place.