Civil war in USA

[Belinda]

Do qualified educationists not control the curriculums in the USA?

No. Educationists don't control anything in the USA. Let's put it this way: When trump took office, one of his first appointees was a enemy #1 of public education to Secretary of Education. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -secretary.
Beyond that, schools are under state jurisdiction as to policy and funding, and each district has its elected board of education to decide on things like staffing and textbooks.
And, of course, children's experience in school goes far, far beyond the curriculum.

In any efficient modern industry that produces stuff, including agriculture and tourism ,there are three avenues of production. The management, the workers, the experts.These all get together and use each others' experience.

[Skip]

In any efficient modern industry that produces stuff, including agriculture and tourism ,there are three avenues of production. The management, the workers, the experts.These all get together and use each others' experience.

That would be nice. I'm not quite seeing the connection to America's civil unrest.

[Belinda]

In any efficient modern industry that produces stuff, including agriculture and tourism ,there are three avenues of production. The management, the workers, the experts.These all get together and use each others' experience.

That would be nice. I'm not quite seeing the connection to America's civil unrest.

I am viewing education under the category of an industry . In the case of the education industry the workers are the people who pay fees or taxes, the goods are more educated persons, the managers are the politicians who make ensure the capital for the goods to be produced, and the experts are the educationists.

I can see a national health service in the same terms. Also any infrastructure that benefits the public, such as transport, or drainage.

After what you wrote about how US education authorities don't use experts very much if at all, I tentatively generalise US civil unrest may be at at least partly caused by distrust of experts who in modern times are intellectuals. This would tend to divide political allegiances according to whether the voters were urbanised or rural. As I said, I am being tentative and trying to understand the situation.
I realise there are other parameters for civil unrest including lack of social mobility for African Americans, and unemployed people who used to work in defunct industries.

[Skip]

I am viewing education under the category of an industry . In the case of the education industry the workers are the people who pay fees or taxes, the goods are more educated persons, the managers are the politicians who make ensure the capital for the goods to be produced, and the experts are the educationists.

You forgot the raw material. That's one view of a nation's youth - industrial product: toddlers fed in on one one conveyor belt; workers trundling off the other end of the assembly line. I think even ants are a little more sentimental about their young. I believe raising good citizens is a tad more complicated than efficient production --- even if the production actually were efficient, which I doubt.

I can see a national health service in the same terms. Also any infrastructure that benefits the public, such as transport, or drainage.

It's one model to contemplate. Thing that's different from industrial production: human services require a principle or philosophy upon which to base all of its structures and organization. One reason the US is so fucked up: they're trying to apply two opposing principles to human services: public benefit and profit. This makes co-ordination of efforts impossible. This is the source of unending, irreconcilable conflict.

After what you wrote about how US education authorities don't use experts very much if at all, I tentatively generalise US civil unrest may be at at least partly caused by distrust of experts who in modern times are intellectuals. This would tend to divide political allegiances according to whether the voters were urbanised or rural. As I said, I am being tentative and trying to understand the situation.

Yes, anti-intellectualism is part of The Rift. You need to understand that the concerted dumbing-down campaign has been going strong for three generations (that I know about) . From the Nixon campaign strategists onward, the right wing has used every lever of division, suspicion and alienation between interest groups to very good effect. You have to realize, too, the scope and power of the propaganda network.

[Sculptor]

The civil war is by and large manufactured by the media.
Not just social media, but MSM too.
Whenever you see a bunch of nuts on TV in camo gear in the woods on a shooting range "preparing to protect themselves" from blacks, or jews or democrats, or commies just remmber that you are actually seeing a handful of people in a country with 360 million.

Sadly potential nutters also see this and think they might be necessary or a good idea, and form their own little group of nutters; and so it grows. Fear. Before you know it there are mobs of shouting people waving their torches looking for Frankenstein's monster.
I just saw a program on TV about Trumpanzees, waving banners repeating "election fraud" lies from Trump. Just a few 100 in any state, but the media loves it, and so other nutters see it and it grows. If you repeat a lie enough times people start to beleive it and it becomes true. Trump knows this only too well. Thanks Joseph Goebbels.

But the MSM are also contributing in this process

Without care the predictions become true.

[Belinda]

I am viewing education under the category of an industry . In the case of the education industry the workers are the people who pay fees or taxes, the goods are more educated persons, the managers are the politicians who make ensure the capital for the goods to be produced, and the experts are the educationists.

You forgot the raw material. That's one view of a nation's youth - industrial product: toddlers fed in on one one conveyor belt; workers trundling off the other end of the assembly line. I think even ants are a little more sentimental about their young. I believe raising good citizens is a tad more complicated than efficient production --- even if the production actually were efficient, which I doubt.

I can see a national health service in the same terms. Also any infrastructure that benefits the public, such as transport, or drainage.

It's one model to contemplate. Thing that's different from industrial production: human services require a principle or philosophy upon which to base all of its structures and organization. One reason the US is so fucked up: they're trying to apply two opposing principles to human services: public benefit and profit. This makes co-ordination of efforts impossible. This is the source of unending, irreconcilable conflict.

After what you wrote about how US education authorities don't use experts very much if at all, I tentatively generalise US civil unrest may be at at least partly caused by distrust of experts who in modern times are intellectuals. This would tend to divide political allegiances according to whether the voters were urbanised or rural. As I said, I am being tentative and trying to understand the situation.

Yes, anti-intellectualism is part of The Rift. You need to understand that the concerted dumbing-down campaign has been going strong for three generations (that I know about) . From the Nixon campaign strategists onward, the right wing has used every lever of division, suspicion and alienation between interest groups to very good effect. You have to realize, too, the scope and power of the propaganda network.

I did think about the word 'industry' in context of education. It's true there are experts, the teachers and psychologists, producers of text books and other materials. The raw material is people and their offspring i.e. consumers who want to be wiser or trained in a skill. In education the workers and the experts are or should be identical. So the structures of education and say agriculture, are different. However I think profit making industries are more and more structured so that the workers are also the experts.

This has happened in the fighting services where soldiers are trained in specialist techniques and theories. There is a parallel between the NHS and the fighting services. This was begun by Florence Nightingale who modernised the army and the hospitals as the same effort and aim. Thereafter the army and the hospitals have each become less disciplined forces and more professional forces. I think this may be happening in profit -making industries .

The National Health Service structure has a managerial column that is sometimes at odds with the medics; I agree human services unlike other 'industries' cannot be geared to profit. If workers in all industries were generally highly educated or highly trained then the gap between the workers and the experts would be much lessened. The incentive has to be political.In the cases of human services the managerial role is undertaken by the government and so the government must not be allowed to be dictatorial. The era of dictatorial management was 19th century and has been surpassed by a democratic model.

[Skip]

I did think about the word 'industry' in context of education. It's true there are experts, the teachers and psychologists, producers of text books and other materials. The raw material is people and their offspring i.e. consumers who want to be wiser or trained in a skill. In education the workers and the experts are or should be identical.

Maybe so, but that's not the main point of an educations system. Schools are about very much more than learning to be specialists in some vast array of specialities.
The school is where children form their attitudes to other people; where they learn the relative value of things, ideas and individuals - including themselves - and the rules of morality, commerce, governance and interaction in their society. It is where they learn to be friends, enemies, lovers, haters, builders, destroyers, buyers, sellers, servants, bosses; members of clubs, outcasts, elites, coteries, teams, couples, gangs, classes and castes.

The National Health Service structure has a managerial column that is sometimes at odds with the medics; I agree human services unlike other 'industries' cannot be geared to profit.

In the USA, it is. So is the "corrections" industry (prisons), while jurisprudence and law-enforcement are political -- but politics are heavily monetized.

If workers in all industries were generally highly educated or highly trained then the gap between the workers and the experts would be much lessened.

That gap has never been a problem. Workers respect expertise in their own fields. What they reject is expertise in areas they don't understand - also general knowledge that doesn't immediately translate to dollars or tangible goods. This conflict is not a question of better training or education; it's the alienation of practical people from theorists. Part of this, of course, the enmity of religious institutions toward secular ones.

The incentive has to be political.

And where is that to come from. The politics are already compartmentalized, customized to bloc interests and marketed in pre-packaged "policies", promises, slogans and merchandise.

In the cases of human services the managerial role is undertaken by the government

In the USA??? Unlikely.

and so the government must not be allowed to be dictatorial.

Where is the force and mechanism to stop that?

The era of dictatorial management was 19th century and has been surpassed by a democratic model.

The little cardboard model on the tabletop? Maybe. In real life, no.
In America, even more than other parts of the world, people are valued and empowered according to their financial means. The CEO who receives 265 times as much salary as the average worker in the same industry https://www.statista.com/statistics/424 ... y-country/ also has 265 times as much physical security, political power and access to services - including education and health-care. The shareholder who rakes in the profits may wield many times the clout of the CEO; he can sell government posts and buy licenses, decide to replace thousands of workers with robots, or move the whole industry to a vassal country and leave them all stranded. There is nothing democratic about it!
What's happened to produce the present state of tension is that decisions made by the owners-of-everything adversely affected the working and agrarian classes: devastated their communities, deprived them self-esteem, security and stability; pushed them, in many cases , into poverty and forced them to compete for the crumbs of a prosperity they can plainly see other people enjoying.
And the very people who did this, convinced their victims that it's all the fault of liberal government.

[Belinda]

I did think about the word 'industry' in context of education. It's true there are experts, the teachers and psychologists, producers of text books and other materials. The raw material is people and their offspring i.e. consumers who want to be wiser or trained in a skill. In education the workers and the experts are or should be identical.

Maybe so, but that's not the main point of an educations system. Schools are about very much more than learning to be specialists in some vast array of specialities.
The school is where children form their attitudes to other people; where they learn the relative value of things, ideas and individuals - including themselves - and the rules of morality, commerce, governance and interaction in their society. It is where they learn to be friends, enemies, lovers, haters, builders, destroyers, buyers, sellers, servants, bosses; members of clubs, outcasts, elites, coteries, teams, couples, gangs, classes and castes.

The National Health Service structure has a managerial column that is sometimes at odds with the medics; I agree human services unlike other 'industries' cannot be geared to profit.

In the USA, it is. So is the "corrections" industry (prisons), while jurisprudence and law-enforcement are political -- but politics are heavily monetized.

If workers in all industries were generally highly educated or highly trained then the gap between the workers and the experts would be much lessened.

That gap has never been a problem. Workers respect expertise in their own fields. What they reject is expertise in areas they don't understand - also general knowledge that doesn't immediately translate to dollars or tangible goods. This conflict is not a question of better training or education; it's the alienation of practical people from theorists. Part of this, of course, the enmity of religious institutions toward secular ones.

The incentive has to be political.

And where is that to come from. The politics are already compartmentalized, customized to bloc interests and marketed in pre-packaged "policies", promises, slogans and merchandise.

In the cases of human services the managerial role is undertaken by the government

In the USA??? Unlikely.

and so the government must not be allowed to be dictatorial.

Where is the force and mechanism to stop that?

The era of dictatorial management was 19th century and has been surpassed by a democratic model.

The little cardboard model on the tabletop? Maybe. In real life, no.
In America, even more than other parts of the world, people are valued and empowered according to their financial means. The CEO who receives 265 times as much salary as the average worker in the same industry https://www.statista.com/statistics/424 ... y-country/ also has 265 times as much physical security, political power and access to services - including education and health-care. The shareholder who rakes in the profits may wield many times the clout of the CEO; he can sell government posts and buy licenses, decide to replace thousands of workers with robots, or move the whole industry to a vassal country and leave them all stranded. There is nothing democratic about it!
What's happened to produce the present state of tension is that decisions made by the owners-of-everything adversely affected the working and agrarian classes: devastated their communities, deprived them self-esteem, security and stability; pushed them, in many cases , into poverty and forced them to compete for the crumbs of a prosperity they can plainly see other people enjoying.
And the very people who did this, convinced their victims that it's all the fault of liberal government.

I'd be surprised and sorry to learn that US school teachers train children in specialisms all the time. Curriculums and methods should include educational approaches to learning.

I hope democracy is not a lost cause in the USA. Do conversations like this change anything? The US plainly is a disaster area.

[Skip]

I'd be surprised and sorry to learn that US school teachers train children in specialisms all the time.

I never said they did. You seemed to imply that they should - here:

The raw material is people and their offspring i.e. consumers who want to be wiser or trained in a skill.

and here:

If workers in all industries were generally highly educated or highly trained then the gap between the workers and the experts would be much lessened.

Curriculums and methods should include educational approaches to learning.

Sure. Lots of shoulds. And I'm sure the teachers are doing the best they can within the rules and resources they're given. But, as I keep saying, curriculum is only a small part of the education of a good citizen. Teachers are not solely responsible for the learning that goes on in a school; the peer-group often has a greater influence. (So does mass entertainment, fashion, technology and social media, which cannot be kept outside of school.) There are all those non-classroom situations: hallway, detention room, cafeteria, playground, auditorium, washroom, gymnasium, football pitch, locker room, field trips, committees, student elections and dances - they all leave their mark.

I hope democracy is not a lost cause in the USA.

It's been under siege for some considerable time, and it's still breathing, though gravely wounded. Maybe now, after this blatant attack, more people will come to its defence.

Do conversations like this change anything?

Like democracy, I hang onto hope, however faint.

The US plainly is a disaster area.

It's in danger, yes. Of course, we have to accept that everything has a life-span, and since history has been very much accelerated in the past century or two, perhaps the USA is due for a major --- what? overhaul? renovation? re-organization? I have an idea what would best serve the majority of its people, but I don't know what they want.

[Belinda]

Skip wrote:

Sure. Lots of shoulds. And I'm sure the teachers are doing the best they can within the rules and resources they're given. But, as I keep saying, curriculum is only a small part of the education of a good citizen. Teachers are not solely responsible for the learning that goes on in a school; the peer-group often has a greater influence. (So does mass entertainment, fashion, technology and social media, which cannot be kept outside of school.) There are all those non-classroom situations: hallway, detention room, cafeteria, playground, auditorium, washroom, gymnasium, football pitch, locker room, field trips, committees, student elections and dances - they all leave their mark.

I agree, and have been presuming the individual's social context as a whole is the 'teacher'. However there is also the formal, explicit, and deliberate effort of society and in many cases parents and other individuals, to educate mainly children and young adults. I agree with you about the primacy of the worldview of the society, its culture of beliefs and practices. However that is as it is unless some revolution, or more gradual evolution, shakes the kaleidoscope.

Sometimes, and sometimes in the face of a contrary world view, teachers manage to be objective and to teach objectivity regarding the culture in which the student is immersed.Teaching arts is the accepted formal means to this end. History and the human sciences too, but primarily arts such as novels, plays , poetry, reportage, popular cultural as well as posh culture. Vicarious learning has to be important when the world is so large and complex that tribal initiation is not enough.

[Skip]

I agree, and have been presuming the individual's social context as a whole is the 'teacher'.

Okay, but that's not a definable 'curriculum'; that's a cultural milieu.

However there is also the formal, explicit, and deliberate effort of society and in many cases parents and other individuals, to educate mainly children and young adults.

Certainly, and many kinds of knowledge are passed on by those routes - unfortunately, superstition and prejudice included.

I agree with you about the primacy of the worldview of the society, its culture of beliefs and practices. However that is as it is unless some revolution, or more gradual evolution, shakes the kaleidoscope.

It changes all the time. There are gradual shifts and minor ructions in every society. Twice, three times in a century - roughly every second generation - there is a major break that changes the interrelation of people and governments: a war, plague, revolution, flood, conquest or economic collapse.

Sometimes, and sometimes in the face of a contrary world view, teachers manage to be objective and to teach objectivity regarding the culture in which the student is immersed.

Yes. One student in a hundred comes away inspired by a new vision. He may become the leader of a movement or get snuffed by the authorities. https://kairoscenter.org/original-rainb ... n-seminar/ Or both.

Teaching arts is the accepted formal means to this end. History and the human sciences too, but primarily arts such as novels, plays , poetry, reportage, popular cultural as well as posh culture. Vicarious learning has to be important when the world is so large and complex that tribal initiation is not enough.

Indeed! Why do you think the humanities in general and the arts in particular are systematically defunded under all - all, without exception - conservative governments?

[attofishpi]

ON HOW MANY FRONTS IS THIS AMERICAN POLITICAL CRAP GOING TO CONTINUE?

[Skip]

ON HOW MANY FRONTS IS THIS AMERICAN POLITICAL CRAP GOING TO CONTINUE?

FOUR UNTIL MID-JANUARY
AND THEN TWO

[gaffo]

There is still plenty to worry about. The propaganda network that lifted an evil clown onto the platform whence he could throw a six-year-long tantrum on behalf of all the - um - deplorables is not going to be dismantled, nor change its message very much. The invertebrates of the republican party will not suddenly find a rational champion to save them from ignominy: they'll slither to the feet of any old white man who claims he can make them walk again. And, of course, the hateful slogans and ammunition generate a lot of easy revenue for a lot of opportunists.
Like covid-19, the sickness of America is still a long way from a cure - longer, the more people remain in denial.

All you say is true and the 5th column will remain for the next Huey Long, but at leest 1/4 of REpublicans - Romney-its, are now registered independents and so will side with sanity - our side in the future.

- small comfort in a land where 3/8th prey for a dictator to fix them, but i welcome the former REp refugeees - and understand their exile - myself being exiled from the Democratic party (being a 70's assimolationist - universal humanist) - and NOT a tribal PC types (i.e. valuing our common humanity and not fixation on the .0001 differences which to me are irrelivant).

----but me being "class minded" - and the Dems left that in the 70's at the same time they left universal hu8manism, i have no rfuge in the modern dem party, nor the reichbugican party - which rdenies class and affirms triclkedown. - and is now fully rascist to boot.

and why i have been a registered Independant thouugh Libertarian minded.

The Libertarian Party has moved too far to the Right post Iraqnam, so while they and i were in accord 20 yrs ago - we no longer are sadly.

[gaffo]

The civil war is by and large manufactured by the media.
Not just social media, but MSM too.
Whenever you see a bunch of nuts on TV in camo gear in the woods on a shooting range "preparing to protect themselves" from blacks, or jews or democrats, or commies just remmber that you are actually seeing a handful of people in a country with 360 million.

Sadly potential nutters also see this and think they might be necessary or a good idea, and form their own little group of nutters; and so it grows. Fear. Before you know it there are mobs of shouting people waving their torches looking for Frankenstein's monster.
I just saw a program on TV about Trumpanzees, waving banners repeating "election fraud" lies from Trump. Just a few 100 in any state, but the media loves it, and so other nutters see it and it grows. If you repeat a lie enough times people start to beleive it and it becomes true. Trump knows this only too well. Thanks Joseph Goebbels.

But the MSM are also contributing in this process

Without care the predictions become true.

1000 agree. three is a City/rural divide - but thre always has been, and never a war of that divide.

and ya the media is all about foster that divide - if it bleeds it leads "is the head ded yet" to quote the former Eagles siinger Don Henly. follow the $$$$$$$

my advice, - turn off your computer/TV/phone - and read a fucking book on history. maybe some Tasidous, or Gibbon's rise nad fall of the roman empir.

"media" - outside of actual news like say reuters - is for shumps.