We disagree on what is
a beneficial education
Every school system claims
that their courses are beneficial.
For example,
Central Michigan University has a document entitled, " Why Study
Philosophy", and it claims
that studying philosophy will help a student in many ways, such as
developing an " ability to
reason
clearly, to distinguish good from bad arguments".
James Madison University also has a document entitled "Why Study
Philosophy", and they claim
that it " helps us to enhance
our ability to solve problems, our communication skills, our persuasive
powers, and our writing skills."
Are those schools correct that their philosophy courses are truly
beneficial to the students? How do we determine if a particular school
course is beneficial?
Unfortunately, there is no way to determine this. We simply have to
make a judgment, and every person will come to an slightly different
conclusion. For example, the religious fanatics will tell us that the
courses about the Bible, Koran, or some other religious document is
beneficial to students, and that the courses on evolution are
detrimental and idiotic.
In the USA, everybody is free to create whatever schools and
educational courses they please, and this results in children receiving
different educations.
It also results in different schools and teachers with different ideas
on who among us should be considered intelligent and educated, and who
should be classified as ignorant or stupid. For example, the professors of the Department of
religion at Rice
University believe that they are intelligent and educated, and that
they teach such
"useful" courses as Judaic
Studies and Biblical
Studies, but this constitution regards them as mentally inferior people
who are teaching nonsense.
We all have a different idea on what type of education is useless, ( this
page has a list of 30 college courses that some people regarded as
worthless). The democracies and free enterprise systems provide
everybody with the freedom to create schools and educational
courses, but if that freedom was beneficial, then the American people
would be the most educated of all people since we have the most variety
of public and private schools, and homeschooling.
The School Ministry has
control of education
An education requires a lot
of time, resources, and effort from a lot
of people, and a useless
education wastes
some of
the best years
of a child's life. Therefore, we should pass judgment on which
educational courses are beneficial enough to justify them.
This creates a dilemma that is similar to selecting people for top
government positions. Specifically, how do we determine who will make
the decisions about which educational courses are beneficial?
This constitution gives the Schools Ministry
total control over the school courses, so the education that Kastron
provides the children will depend upon who the voters choose to be the
president of the Health Division, and who the president chooses to be
the Schools Minister..
Furthermore, all of the citizens are permitted to post suggestions on
how to improve the school courses, and they will get credit if they
find improvements to the curriculum. Therefore, the education of
Kastron will also depend upon the desire of the citizens to participate
in analyzing the schools, and their ability to provide sensible
complaints and recommendations.
This is another example of the concept that is repeated throughout this
constitution. Specifically, an organization can only be as orderly,
efficient, honest, and pleasant as its members are capable of making
it. We must be finicky about who we accept into an organization, and
that includes the children, which is why the children must be put on probation.
The School Ministry must
experiment with the curriculum
We do not yet know which
information is the most useful and important
for young children, so this constitution has the following suggestions
to start the process of developing a better curriculum:
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Children do not
have a good understanding of the past or the future, or any interest
in, or use for, history, so this constitution advocates leaving history
for the older teenagers, and for documentaries for adults. (This
is discussed later in this document.)
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Children must be
taught to read, write, pronounce words properly, and do arithmetic, and
the Schools Ministry is
required to develop software to handle those monotonous tasks. This
requires teaching the children how to use educational software, and
providing the children with assistance in using that software.
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The children need
to learn how to safely use the city's recreational centers, and the
typical items that they will experience encounter in their life, such
as phones, electric vehicles, and bicycles. This requires teaching
children about the dangers of electricity, medicines, knives,
mechanical devices, electric vehicles, and swimming pools.
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The children need
information about their body. This requires the officials of the
Schools Ministry to be able to control their inhibitions and provide
the children with useful information about digestion, ear wax,
perspiration, waste products, sexual organs, bacteria, menstruation,
and tooth decay.
The Schools Ministry cannot assume that parents can or will provide
children
with such information.
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The teachers should
help the children learn about relationships and manners by arranging
social and recreational activities for them, and helping them to
interact with one another. The teacher should help them understand that
every person is a unique jumble of genetic characteristics, and that
none of them are perfect, and that they should refrain from feeling
superior to other children, and from tormenting the children they
believe are inferior.
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Teenagers must be prepared for
adulthood
The military schools do
more than teach information to their students. They also are concerned
with the behavior
and attitudes of the students. For example, they put a lot of time and
effort into helping the students learn how to work in a team and follow
orders. The Teentown ministry is required to have a similar attitude.
When the children become
teenagers, they are sent to Teentown. The Teentown schools must do more
than provide the students with information. They must prepare the
children for adulthood by ensuring that they
have a useful skill, and by putting them through exercises to prepare
them for life as an adult, such as practicing leadership, speaking to
groups of people, working in teams, and learning how to control their
emotions.
More details in the Teentown document.
Education must be adjusted
for each student
Since each child is a
unique jumble of genetic characteristics, a
school should provide each student with an education that is adjusted
for his particular mental and physical characteristics. It is
impractical to expect human teachers to be able to do that, but as
artificial intelligence software becomes better, it becomes
increasingly practical for a computer to adjust the education of a
student.
A computer can keep track of a child's learning abilities and desires;
his ability to sit still at a computer and pay attention to it; which
teaching methods are most effective with him; and how
his desires and abilities change through the years. That information
will allow the
computers to continuously adjust the curriculum, tests,
and teaching methods to
fit each child.
Praise should be counteracted with constructive
criticism
The social animals have
intense cravings for status, and this results in us frequently
looking for ways to boast about ourselves and insult other people.
Furthermore, we want other
people to give us praise, and to treat us as if we are high in the
hierarchy. This results in our tendency to admire and trust the people
who praise us. This in turn allows salesmen, political candidates, and
potential spouses to deceive us into trusting them by giving us praise
and making us feel important.
Since free enterprise systems pander to the people, this results in
businesses treating their customers as if they are important, such as
by thanking them for purchasing their products, and by promoting the
attitude that "the customer is the King".
Businesses also pander to our desire for status and praise by
organizing contests that provide us with awards, attention, and praise.
Schools are also under pressure to provide students with praise.
Our craving for status and attention is so strong that many parents
believe that they will improve their child's life by giving him
lots of praise and making him feel important.
Unfortunately, what we want is not always what we benefit from. Praise
is analogous to sugar;
a small
amount occasionally is pleasant, but we need to counteract it with
"nutritious food", such as constructive criticism. If a child is only
given praise, he is likely to become a selfish, arrogant brat.
One purpose for the emotional development programs
in Teentown is to help the teenagers realize
that everybody is an imperfect
variation of a monkey with a lot of
limitations. That should dampen the arrogance of the teenagers who
have above-average talent in some area.
I suggested here
that schools experiment with grades like those below:
A The least stupid
B Less stupid than average
C Average stupidity
D Below-average stupidity
F More intelligent than a monkey
Although that was intended to emphasize a concept, it might be worth
experimenting with. Perhaps that would help dampen the arrogance of the
students who do the best in school.
Praise should be kept at a minimum
We enjoy praise, and are
easily manipulated by it. Political candidates and government officials
take advantage of this characteristic by routinely praising us, and
usually to such an extreme that people should be embarrassed by it. For
example, political candidates and government officials frequently
praise the American people as being " the greatest people in the world,"
and they frequently praise the United States has been " the greatest country."
People should be embarrassed by such extreme praise, but very few
people are. Instead, they applaud and cheer, like children who have
been who have been told that they are such wonderful children that they
can have as much candy as they want.
Likewise, many of the people who are creating television news programs
and YouTube videos are thanking us
for
watching their video. They are treating us in the same manner as a
government official who tells us that we are the greatest people.
Most of the people who are thanking us are undoubtedly doing so because
they want to attract more viewers. If they were honest, instead of
thanking us, they would tell us something
like: " Continue to watch my
programs so that I can continue feeling
important and/or make advertising money."
Since people have a desire to mimic one another, as more people thank
us for watching their videos, other people assume that they should also
thank us. This is another example of why government officials need to
watch for and dampen our tendency to mimic stupid behavior.
Imagine
people thanking
us all day, every day.
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This is also another example of how some people are doing something
that is acceptable only when a small number
of people do it.
If the majority
of people were thanking us throughout the day, as in the image to the
right, we would
quickly become annoyed by it.
The only people who would enjoy that type of environment are people
suffering from low self-esteem or mental disorders.
It is possible that very young children cannot handle criticism very
well, and need a lot of praise, and that girls need more praise than
boys, but by the time they are teenagers, they should be given practice
in dealing with criticism, and the praise should be reduced
significantly.
Children need an understanding of
their emotions
This Constitution put
schools into competition to prepare children for society. The schools
are judged according to what happens to the students after they
graduate. In addition to comparing how productive the graduates
are in
their jobs, the schools are also judged according to how well the
students can form friendships and marriages, and how well behaved they
are, and how well they understand the culture of the city, such as how
to use the transportation system, job listings, and social clubs.
This type of school system treats students in a similar manner
as the dogs that are trained to assist blind
people. The schools for dogs are concerned with the behavior of the
dogs, and how the dogs interact
with other creatures. This Constitution
requires schools for humans to have the same concerns.
In order for the schools to help the children develop appropriate
behavior, the schools must teach children about their emotions, and
their animal ancestors.
One of the concepts that the schools must teach children is that our
arrogance can easily distort our opinions and our scientific research.
This Constitution recommends the schools use heaven
as one example, and the grunting
of prehistoric humans as another example.
The schools are also required to teach boys and girls about sexual
cravings, and give them practice in dealing
with overly aggressive boys.
The “dumb” students should not be tormented
Humans enjoy and benefit
from competition, but the existing school systems are putting children
into a competition that resembles a group of monkeys that are fighting
for dominance. Specifically, it causes the students to stratify into a
hierarchy in which some of them are considered excellent students, and
at the other extreme are the students who are considered failures.
That type of competition encourages the students who do good in school
to become arrogant and insulting, and it causes the students who are
below-average to develop bad attitudes and low self-esteem. The "dumb"
students are tormented, rather than encouraged to develop their skills
and talents. Nobody benefits from that.
What is an “intelligent” person?
The existing school systems
regard the students who get good grades as
being the most intelligent, but if school grades were an indication of
the quality of a person's mind, then we could easily solve a lot of our
problems simply by restricting the influential positions to the
people who had the best grades in school.
However, most of the influential people have been the best students in
school, so they are proof that the best students are not the best
leaders. Many of the best students turn out to be criminals,
pedophiles, and alcoholics, and many are suffering from serious mental
disorders.
Our brain is designed by a lot of different genes, and that
makes it likely that there are different types of intelligence.
Therefore, it is possible for a person to excel in some particular
intellectual activity while having serious problems with other
intellectual characteristics, and with his emotions.
This concept is more easily understood with our physical abilities. If
schools put students through a variety of different physical
activities, such as running, swimming, climbing ropes, juggling, riding
a bicycle, gymnastics, and throwing a baseball, and if the students
were given a grade from A to F for each activity, most of the students
would get a C in all activities, and some of them would have a A
or B in one or more activities, but none
of them would
have an A in every activity.
It is possible for a person to be ordinary in all physical activities,
but it is impossible for a
person to excel in all
activities because
to excel in one physical activity requires characteristics that
interfere with certain other activities.
Our body is designed by lots of different genes, and each of us is a
haphazard jumble of genes. Therefore, each of us has slightly different
set of physical characteristics, and nobody is the best in every
physical
activity.
It would be detrimental to encourage the students who got an A or a B
in a physical activity to boast about themselves, or to insult the
students who got a C, D, or F in that activity. We do not benefit
from
boasting about ourselves or tormenting other people.
The School Ministry is required to put students through a lot of
different physical activities, but the purpose is to help them discover
their talents and limitations, not to encourage the talented students
to boast about themselves. The students must be taught to accept their
particular abilities and limitations, and to accept the characteristics
of other people.
The School Ministry must also follow this concept with mental abilities. Specifically, the
schools must put students through a variety of different intellectual
and emotional exercises, but the purpose is to help the students
discover their abilities and limitations, and learn how they compare to
other people. The schools must teach the students to accept what they
are rather than create a phony image of themselves, and to accept other
people's mental characteristics rather than torment them for being
inferior.
Our brains are designed by lots of different genes, and all of us are a
haphazard jumble of genes. Therefore, each of us has a slightly
different set of mental abilities and limitations. It is virtually
impossible for somebody to have a brain that is the best in every type
of activity.
It is obvious that some people excel in art, music, and math, and that
we differ in our ability to memorize information. If we had a better
understanding of our mind, we might also discover that we differ in our
ability to do chemistry, carpentry, mechanical engineering, computer
programming, identifying patterns, manipulating 3D objects in our mind,
and dealing with invisible concepts, such as magnetism and electricity.
Instead of boasting about ourselves and insulting other people, we
should be grateful that each of us has slightly different physical and
mental
abilities because that allows us to do different jobs. A modern society
needs people to do a variety of different jobs, so we benefit from
other people's talents.
Schools must provide analyses of students
The school ministry is
required to do more than teach information to the students. The schools
are essentially a factory in which a child enters at one end, is
processed in the factory for many years, and comes out the other end as
an adult who is prepared for society.
During that processing, the schools must provide analysis of each
student's physical and mental characteristics for the People
database.
It is similar to how the schools that train dogs to become assistants
to blind people are judging the dogs throughout the training process.
Each of the teachers is expected to provide his brief opinions about a
student's physical or mental characteristics, such as how the student
treats other people, whether he sets a good example for other students,
and how he compares to other students in whatever physical or mental
activity the teacher is familiar with.
By the time a student has graduated from school, his entry in the People
database might have a brief analysis of his characteristics from
several dozen different teachers. Each analysis would be an opinion, and some opinions might
conflict with other people's opinions, but it is better to gather
opinions about all of the students than to allow the students to be
secretive
Democracies and free enterprise systems put teachers under pressure to
give the students and emotionally pleasant review, but the School
Ministry requires the
teachers to be honest. The
teachers cannot pander to
students or
parents. Rather, their goal is to provide an analysis of the students
to help the
businesses determine who to hire for a particular job, and to help the
government officials determine who should have restrictions on his
reproduction.
It is also possible that the information will help the Courtship
Ministry
determine which couples might be the most compatible, thereby reducing
the number of failed relationships. Since the People
database is available to
everybody, the students can look through it, also, and that might help
some of them find more compatible friends or a spouse.
Eventually the AI software might be able to analyze the information and
help people determine who might be a compatible spouse, or what type of
job they might enjoy and be good at.
The People
database allows us to get
a better understanding of who we are living with, as if we were a
small, nomadic tribe who know all of the intimate details of
everybody's life.
By judging students according to their behavior, a boy who excels in
math or chemistry will not be
regarded as an excellent student if he
has so little control over his sexual cravings that he pesters the
girls, or if he insults the other boys for being stupid, or if he
doesn't like to clean up after himself, or if he is caught cheating on
his
tests.
Conversely, a student who does terrible in math and science will be
considered an excellent student if he learns a useful skill, such as
farming, carpentry, or machining, and if he is responsible, treats
people with respect, and can be trusted.
A student with ordinary intellectual abilities is superior to a
student with above-average intelligence if the ordinary student is an
honest, responsible team member, and the intelligent student is
diabolical, anti-social, or dishonest.
We need people with different
talents
The Diversity document
points out that we need to keep the differences between humans within a
certain level, but we don't want people to be identical because we
benefit from people
who have different physical and mental talents. A
society needs people with a variety of physical and mental talents
because different jobs require different physical and mental abilities.
We also
benefit from having people who have different opinions about life,
assuming
that we can discuss our opinions and compromise on policies rather than
fight incessantly with one another.
We are such arrogant creatures that we tend to regard a person as
inferior to us
if we are better than him in some talent, and we tend to become envious
of people who are better than us at something, but those are
destructive reactions. We must learn to enjoy the differences between
us, and the people who are more talented than we are.
Pity and pandering is
detrimental
As mentioned at the
beginning of this document, the military does not give
pity to the students who have trouble with the courses. For
example, in this
video, the instructors of a Navy SEAL training program are forcing
one of the students to quit. The student does not want to quit, but the
instructors are forcing him to do so, and in front of the entire class.
The military expects their students to figure out whether they have the
talent to graduate, and they don't have any pity for the students who
are too arrogant or stupid to realize that they need to quit. The
students are not allowed to pretend that they were discriminated
against, or they were victims of bad luck.
They are forced to be realistic and honest.
By comparison, the public and private schools do not want any of their
students to quit, so when a student is failing, they either make him
remain in the school for another year, and give him another chance, or
they provide him with easier courses, such as
Freudian psychology. In either case, the student wastes some of the
most precious years of his
life, and even if he graduates, he will not have any useful skills.
Furthermore, some of those students develop a bad attitude as a result
of feeling inferior to the other students, or from being ridiculed by
their parents or other students for wasting their time on worthless
courses. That emotional torment can cause them to become envious,
bitter, sad, angry, apathetic, or rebellious. It can also result in
them joining a gang.
This Constitution requires the Schools ministry to promote the same
attitude as the
military training programs, and the school teachers are expected to
behave like the military instructors. Specifically, school courses must
be designed to teach children useful skills and information, and if a
student cannot handle a particular course, the instructors must force
him to acknowledge
and accept
his failure, demand that he to quit the course, and then help him
choose another course that might be more suitable to him.
There is no pity for any of the students. Instead, every student is
told to discover his abilities, limitations and desires, and find a job
that he can do properly. Students are told to experiment with
different activities to discover their abilities, and if they are fail
the courses to become a plumber, scientist,
farmer, technician, or carpenter, they must try some other field.
Computers can assist with
analyzing the students
Preteen children benefit by
being in a classroom with other children, and by having human
teachers, but as the children get older, they should get more of their
lessons
from computers. ( This was described here.)
By the time they are teenagers, the teachers should be in the role of a
supervisor who help the students
use the computers, arrange for the students to be put into
competitions, and help the students figure out what type of courses and
jobs to consider.
By having children learn from computers, the computers will be able to
gather information on what each child is good at. That data
will allow computers to help students figure out their talents and
limitations, and which jobs they
should consider preparing for.
By making the educational computers observe the students with cameras,
the computers will eventually be able to notify the teachers
about
potential physical or mental disorders in the students. For example, a
computer might notice a particular student is falling asleep
frequently, or going to the bathroom
more often than he did in previous years, which could be a sign of a
medical disorder. Or the computer might notice that the student is
becoming less accurate with the mouse or touchscreen, or that his
responses are becoming more sluggish, which could be a sign of a
neurological problem.
When computers can keep track of what the students eat, the weather
conditions, and allergens in the environment, the computers will be
able to notice that a student's mental or physical performance
decreases with certain foods or environmental conditions. This will
help identify the students who have trouble with allergies, hormone
problems, foods, or fluctuations in temperature or humidity.
When robots or computers are capable of observing children at during
recreational activities, they will be able to identify potential
problems with joints, muscles, energy, and stamina. An example is that
the computers would have noticed that I was running slower each
year.
Eventually the software will be able to notice behavioral
problems during the recreational and social activities, such as
children who are overly aggressive, violent, submissive, introverted,
lacking in self-control, noisy, or easily frightened.
Computers will eventually help
arrange relationships
People today are making
terrible decisions on who they should get
married to, and a lot of the friendships are failures, also. I
predict that the future software will be so much more advanced, and
will have access to so much data about people's lives, that it will
make more accurate guesses on who would form the most compatible
friendships, marriages, and coworkers.
The people in the future might not bother trying to determine who they
should get married to. They might instead just casually flirt with one
another at the courtship activities, and let the computers figure out
who they should marry.
It is conceivable that computers will also eventually make better
decisions than people about who will form the most pleasant and stable
friendships. Computers might also be able to create better businesses
by identifying the people who make the most compatible and effective
team of engineers, carpenters, construction workers, and computer
programmers.
If we could travel into the distant future, we might be shocked to
discover that software is making a lot of the decisions for people
about how to live.
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