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Friday, May 16, 2014

Education

I was wondering why Syria is having a civil war and we (the USA) are not. While there are armed conflicts going on all over the world, I think I picked Syria because
  1. It is a somewhat civilized country. I mean the airline pilots (or owners or something) association is/was based there.
  2. The intensity of the conflict is relatively high.
My conclusion is our educational system, and I'm not talking SAT scores or which schools are doing better at math or reading. I'm talking about universal, state run, free, public education.

The big thing our schools "teach" our children is our culture, whatever that is. I think the Constitution and The Bill of Rights are part of it, but I think a general Christian attitude is part of it as well. I don't know, maybe "Christian" isn't the best term for it. Maybe it's just good manners, or how to avoid getting your block knocked off. Or maybe it's just concern for your fellow man: We're all in this together and things will go better if we can all get along.

Those nut-cases in the Middle East bring up their kids teaching them that their way is the only way and everyone else's way is the way of the devil and they should all die. Maybe the heat warps their brains.

On the other hand, we kind of teach our kids the same thing. Only thing is we have big oceans between us and all those foreign devils. Picking a fight overseas takes considerably more effort.

We do have Mexico, which thanks to their Spanish culture of rich folks first, everyone else doesn't count, hasn't amounted to a hill of beans. At best they give our coppers something to keep them occupied.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe this is tangential to your point, but I worked with a guy from Nigeria who told me that the greatest thing about America was all the laws. "In America, there's a law for everything. In Nigeria, there's only one law: the president gets whatever he wants. Everything else is up for grabs."

Chuck Pergiel said...

I think the two go hand in hand. You can't have the "rule of law" unless most people agree to abide by it, and you get most people to agree by subjecting them to 12 years of indoctrination, i.e. school.