Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-L] Economist Kern Alexander Explains the Problem with School Choice

On 2/4/2013 8:39 AM, John Clement wrote:
Let us not fool ourselves, all societies are based on the idea that the
individual is supposed to obey the rules which are good for the society.

Indeed. Obey the rules of, contribute to, etc. But this is very different from "educate to serve" which is precisely what Tarara & Denker suggested:

"This is why public education exists--to serve the society...NOT THE INDIVIDUAL" (Tarara, caps in the original)

"This is why public education exists -- primarily to serve the society...NOT just THE INDIVIDUAL. (Denker, caps in the original)

Please don't fuzz and try to gloss over what they actually proposed. "Educate to serve the society" is very, very, different from what this country was founded on, and it *is* at the core of every totalitarian regime.

Jefferson is supposed to have said that an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people. I agree with this sentiment. But educated citizenry is *not* citizenry indoctrinated to "serve the society."

The early history of our schools was blatantly aimed at inculcation our
society's morals into the youths. This included the majority religious
values.

Indeed. That is a major reasons why the founders shied away from mentioning education *anywhere* in the constitution and placed their hopes in the plurality of -- frequently conflicting -- educational goals as reflected by the localized nature of education. One can only imagine the horror and the revulsion that *mandated* centralized education "to serve the society" would cause them.

Fascism and Communism are what one would call the extreme forms of social
control gone wild, and both had a strong component of monarchy in the
presence of a single powerful leader. The opposite where individuals are
totally set free is anarchy with the attendant rise in murder and mayhem.
But the belief that individuals serve the society is actually very strong in
internally peaceful societies such as England or Japan. Japan is probably
one of the strongest in this regard.

Actually fascism, in its primacy of state over the individual, is not an extreme form of "social control gone wild" and had been tried in one form or another for centuries. Modern mass media and mass educational system just allowed it to become ever more encompassing and controlling, and ever harder to resist. Communism is its younger and more extreme brother that added the abolition of private property. Neither has a "strong component of monarchy" but both are strongly hierarchical putting the "good of the state" (or "the good of the people" as crystallized in the "good of the state," for communism) as their primary criterion to distinguish between desirable and undesirable behavior. Bot seem to -- quite inevitably -- evolve towards a totalitarian state.

Placing anarchy as the only contrast to fascism/communism is quite typical of people who have sympathies for the latter yet feel uncomfortable supporting them explicitly. A more reasonable contrast in this country would be our Constitutional Republic. It recognizes the primacy of the individual and the nobility of setting him free, yet also recognizes the importance of a civil society and seeks means to promote it not through coercion and indoctrination but through structured synthesis of the multitude of conflicting opinions and enlightened self-interests of free citizens.

Fascism is unlikely to flourish where the government requires the consensus of a large number rather than rule from above by the few.

This is incorrect as a matter of historical facts. Most 20th century totalitarian regimes were highly popular for very long periods. That includes Soviet and Chinese communism, German, Italian, and Japanese fascism, and even later milder fascisms like in Argentina, the Arab Ba'ath movement, etc. The key seems to be their ability to control education and the media.


Again, one should not use terms like Fascism because they are basically
calling the other person ignorant and are saying that you have the TRUTH.


I obviously disagree. I tried to be careful and not call anyone a Fascist, but it is important to understand how superficially-benign ideas like "education primarily to serve the society" almost inevitably lead to fascist societies. This has nothing to do with any truth -- in caps or not -- but with knowing and understanding history and political science. Which, unsurprisingly, many physicists seem to posses no more than the next guy.

Ze'ev