06 October 2005

Education For Us

What is an educational system for? What is the highest purpose for an educational system?

Based on historical trends and evidence, it seems that Puerto Rico's educational system has a goal of creating sheep meant for government and industrial corrals, also known as "offices," "pensions" and "marginal salaries." And sheep, as anyone who has been around that farmyard animal knows, don't need to be too bright. Most of what they need to know--eat, sleep and poop--is already hard-wired into their little brains, so all you have to teach them is where the barn is, where there's food and water and to stay away from the fences.

Yup, pretty much the description of the ideal government or factory worker.

In theory, and let Us make a note of stressing in theory, an educational system is supposed to prepare a person for contributing to the best of their abilities to the overall development of their nation. In fact, the educational system has become a complex form of domestication, of imposing subservience, of beating the brains into mushy pulps so that other, mushier brains with hard reptilian nodes, can pretend to lead them.

Sounds harsh. But can a system so inept, so utterly out-of-touch with modern reality, so rife with idiocies and--at the government level--corruption, be tolerated any longer?

Seems so. Instead of a concerted effort to fix the system, We choose to vote with Our wallets and purses and steer Our kids to whatever oasis seems economically palatable. There are good schools and some that are great; there are good teachers and some that are great. But they are a decided minority and all-too-often become arenas where education takes a back seat to "image," arenas where flashing cash means more than flash cards.

Solution? It will come from the private sector. Only the private sector has the flexibility and the focus on problem-solving that will make a true difference in Our educational process. And why will they focus on solving the problem? Profit.

If education-for-profit upsets you, but education-for-propaganda doesn't, then what follows may convince you otherwise. The government has no real purpose in education other than perpetuating itself: not to benefit the nation (other than their little pigsty) and certainly not to develop individuals who can challenge the status quo. Why should they? Their positions of "privilege" are not sustained by merit, but by fiat.

Where the private sector can solve the problem and secure profits is by aligning the needs of future growth for the individual and the nation with new educational models that deliver the needed/wanted results. In short, educate for potential rather than against it.

The global economy of this century is not a preserver of status quos; in truth, it destroys them with chaotic speed. A nation educated to bow to stasis, to "follow the lunkhead" misery is not now or ever will be a true global economic player. But a nation is not an entity: it is a collection of individuals united by common characteristics and sharing, often unconsciously, common vision and goals. To develop the nation, develop the individual. To develop the individual...well, that's Our job.

Let's get to it.

The Jenius Has Spoken.

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