Re: What's MEXT in English?

From: Don Kirkman (spambuster_at_covad.net)
Date: 08/17/04 

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:32:29 -0700

It seems to me I heard somewhere that Kevin Gowen wrote in article
<2oerdhF9p3diU18@uni-berlin.de>:

>Kevin Wayne Williams wrote:

>> Problem is that one of the chief motivations for home and private
>> schooling is for the parents to ensure that their own particular brand
>> of delusional fantasy is imposed on their child as a world-view, without
>> an opportunity for the child to realise that there are opposing views
>> with merit.

>That's why it's much better for parents to send children to government
>schools to ensure that the government's particular brand of delusional
>fantasy is imposed on children as a world-view, without an opportunity
>for the child to realise that there are opposing views with merit.

Perhaps we could gather all the children into government-operated
nurseries, removing them from all contact with the parents (thus freeing
the adults to enter into rational, non-emotional relationships, allowing
them to dedicate themselves to working, voting, and paying their taxes).
Education would be the province of a class of quasi-slaves (we might
call them pedagogues) who as part of the resources of government would
be assigned to the academy and would be expected to teach the approved
curricula. Of course language would be only one subject; mathematics,
logic, rhetoric, politics, and ethics would also be required areas of
formal education.

The academy grounds should contain a cave in some convenient nearby
location so that groups of children could be taken to there
periodically, seated around a fire, and urged to pass an appropriate
amount of time silently contemplating the shadows cast upon the walls,
following which the head pedagogue would lead the class in discussing
the implications of the shadows.

The world could be so much better a place.

Or, in the alternative, we could adopt some other modest proposal. 

-- 
Don
Old age is when you start saying "I wish I knew now what I knew then."

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