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Re: MeToo Children's Program

mdj wrote:

On Jul 20, 7:29 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:

Bill Buckels wrote:

"Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote in message
gNydnbbdG90UXRzVnZ2dnUVZ_ojinZ2d@comcast.com">news:gNydnbbdG90UXRzVnZ2dnUVZ_ojinZ2d@comcast.com...
David Schmenk wrote:

I view this essential dysfunction of the educational system in the US as
the most fundamental problem facing the country--in the sense that if we
don't fix it, nothing else will be fixed.

You can extend that to the other parts of the world that I have seen lately
like Italy and England and of course Canada which is where I am. The US can
think that they are insular or can determine their own destiny if they like.
Unfortunately I fear that world will need to be fixed, and you are only part
of that solution and the rest of us are tied to the larger view as you are,
I think, despite the usually narrow notion that you folks there have always
had.
What do you think Mike?

I agree that the problem likely extends far beyond the US.

But I have to think that the prominence of US media on the
planet makes us at least one major source of "attention
pollution".


It extends at least as far as Australia, where the television is
drenched in banal (mainly US produced) pop media that numbs the brain.


I think that the transformation of the media world into one huge
Short Attention Span Theater is most associated with "modernity",
and the US has always been a big purveyor of modernity, for better
or worse.  ;-)


Perhaps the problem is that we have learned to make devices
to saturate our senses before learning the discipline not to
overuse them to the point of desensitization.


Maybe I'm just too cynical, but it seems to me that societies power
brokers have always preferred a quiet, compliant population that
doesn't think too much. From the original broadcast medium of
clergyman on pulpit, through newsprint and to television today, there
has always been a steady supply of mind-numbingly vacuous
'information' for the unwashed masses to consume.

I think you're spot on wrt education though - it's only through the
application of critical thinking that the mind becomes enlightened and
then demands quality. The problem is, how do you get a society to
value something the majority of people simply do not have?


IIRC, Socrates devoted much of his life to a search for a way
to "teach virtue" to the citizens of Athens...

It didn't work out too well for either Socrates or Athens.  ;-)

Perhaps we can do better this time--the stakes are certainly higher.

I would superficially expect that the technorati (like us), with
their engineering-discipline backgrounds, would tend to be quite
good at critical thinking on the scale of the problems that confront
us, but apparently "detailed thinking" and "global thinking" are
different substances.  Studies have shown that the majority of
engineers are rather narrowly focused, and prone to dogmatic belief
rather than to critical examination of data and careful conclusion.

-michael

AppleCrate: An Apple II "blade server"!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
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