[WS:] I doubt. America is clearly going down the drain, and the deeper it goes the more reactionary it becomes. A more likely outcome is increased importance of formal credentials and the commercialization of these credentials (e.g. more degrees purchased on the internet.) Actual education is important only in upwardly mobile societies (such as India or China.) In societies that have nothing to offer anymore and merely coast on the previously accumulated wealth and status - it is spurious, or even an impediment for grabbing the slices of a shrinking pie.
Wojtek
On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 1:46 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> Carrol writes:
>
> "It is always worthwhile at least _to consider_ that the apparently
> unintended consequences of a policy are in fact its intended effects. I
> think, for example, that this is the case in reference to the War on
> Crime and the War on Drugs launched during the Nixon Administration,
> part of his 'Bismarckian' policy of concessions (OSHA) combined with
> heavier repression., Whether this is the case with No Child Left Behind
> and Race to the Top needs at least, as I say, to be considered. "
>
> Could not agree with you more. Having spent the last forty years engaged
> with the koan "knaves? or fools?", I've come to the "knaves" conclusion
> simply because, after a certain age, you don't get to be a fool.
>
> Some cause for optimism: a society that no longer has anything to teach and
> no longer wants to teach in any meaningful way, is a society in deep
> decline. One outcome of this could be a grass-roots education movement (a la
> Freire) that redefines what it means to be educated and distinguishes the
> meaning of an education vs the meaning of a degree. The more expensive (and
> substanceless) the degree becomes, the fewer people will go for it and the
> more likely hiring will shift to some other standard. Who knows.
>
> j
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