Curiosity-based smaller-scale educational opportunities facilitated by a car-free environment

Education is unjust in today's society  and the solution lies in creating car free communities We need communities where children can walk free This requires a complete rebuilding Since we do not have that yet  the outline of what it would look like  will have to suffice and the plan will have to be developed piecemeal based on local conditions and desires
The injustice of education is the result of stratification and discrimination in the use of resources But the real problem of education is not just this injustice Education suffers from the defeat of choice and curiosity among all who would learn Education suffers from a one size fits all approach  when the truth is we all learn differently Education suffers from the creation of classes where individual attention is  scarce of nonexistent   Education results from the gratification of curiosity Education occurs when curiosity meets resources  A walkable community would have multiple educational  cyber-nodes Education would be everywhere - a permanent fair  whose booths or kiosks attract on the basis of interest  Teachers would be guides with the world at their fingertips and the capacity to field questions  and mentor the interested
Even such elementary things as learning to read and write and do elementary mathematics would benefit  Imagine a car free community of at least 10,000 persons  where students number a third of the population  Students could walk to the Math Kiosk and find the best instruction in the world on a large screen a whole group could see Iterations of learning centers for all ages and all interests would turn education from its present stratified one-size car-dependent retro state to a vital community-based enjoyment based on the presence of all concerned  living and working and re-creating in one community
Curiosity should lead education Achievement should be determined  by meeting benchmarks gradually Success should be a satisfactory exchange between teacher and curious child
In a car-free urban environment security would be ensured by the rules of the community  which could mandate that residents not own guns and that bullying require immediate remedial intervention Such seemingly draconian steps represent the trade off between the violence prone  society we now have and a car free cyber-society whose  economy supports radical shifts such as one from  today's stratified factory schools  to the voluntary curiosity-based smaller-scale educational opportunities facilitated by a car-free environment

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What nobody gets about the future

For what it's worth here is what I would sayNo one is getting about the futureThat the day of driving our lives away will endThat the day of building detached houses will endThat the race to save these things will impede the futureThat the future will be either necessity or choiceWe could freely decide to move to car free communities and a high tech alternativeTo today's sclerotic and impossible transportationOr we could be forced into ultimately conceding the conclusions aboveChoice is vastly better than necessityWe could create multi-zoned car-free cyber-communitiesWith modular spaces build within an eco-sufficient matrixWith reformed education because the neighborhood becomes a schoolBy accepting their ultimate necessityAnd modeling new forms of social beingWhere we could walk to everythingWhere the need for  necessary travel is trumped by technologyWhere the need for urban in gratified in the micro environmentWhere cyber means that we utilize cyberAs communal experience via kiosks staffed and placedThroughout the cyber-communityAnd so forth and so on as noted hereAnd in the blog complex
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Birth is your basic integral education, followed by life, death and whatever might come then. It is free. Deducible from reality.   It is not a business. It is owned by no one. 

Everyone has to eat. But there are limits.

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None of these education solutions will work

What's Your Single Best Idea For Reforming K-12 Education? - Yahoo! News: "But while plenty of wealthy businesspeople agree the education system needs their support, there is little consensus on what to do. Some people like the Waltons are big supporters of charter schools, which now represent 5% of all public schools, up from 2% a decade ago. Others like Michael Milken and Bill Gates think hiring and training better teachers is the best solution."

Create a cyber city that is secure and pleasant to be in

Car free

With diversity and room for work and commerce

Entertainment and play

Turn everything into kiosks operated by one or two persons

Make curiosity the reason why education works

Make the student seek it out by offering

Choice and freedom to move in one's own way

In short a society must function to make education possible

Ours functions as a product of our advertising corporate melange

A society that functions propery will promote community

Community can hardly exist in a sprawl culture

Therefore education fails not merely because kids can't read

But because the ones who can are indoctrinated

By advertising to idolatry of consumption

That is a lethal value

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Facebook teacher-student communication upheld in Missouri

Mo. judge blocks Facebook limits for teachers - Yahoo! News: "JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A new Missouri law prohibiting teachers from having private online conversations with students suffered a double setback Friday. First, a judge blocked it from taking effect because of free speech concerns. Then the governor called for its repeal."

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Most of what I read on education is teacher-centric

The Schools We Need | Erik Reece | Orion Magazine:

Most of what I read on education is teacher-centric. In my understanding, this is a major error. Education is driven most effectively by a single simple thing. The curiosity of the student. The desire to follow a certain line of interest. This is why I see the reforming of education in terms of freeing students to follow their own interests. The whole notion of school as a class which depends on a teacher to maintain some sort of order while somehow eliciting the interest of each student is absurd. The notion of attending a school which looks more like an office complex than a place to settle in and learn is inherently defeating. I would move in the direction of kiosks with large screen presentations of the very best of everything curated by people who know whatever the subject is and can answer the questions of interested students. I would measure progress by the quality of conversation between a student and a curator. I would close the cover of any book that suggests that the teacher is the main key to educational reform.

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Moronic Behavior By Those Who Should Know Better

Moronic behavior by those who should know better

Led to our stratified society

Sprawled out and now in economic fetters

Due to forces we all could plainly see

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Why Education is Moribund

Education is moribund in nearly a thousand ways

The categories of moribundity include warehousing of "students", impossible modes of instruction, bullying culture, massive failures and scale problems of prodigious scope

Warehousing is a function of our sclerotic and reified cultural matrix which is auto-centric and doomed to expense itself out of capitalist possibility

The impossible modes of instruction begin with the notion that one teacher fits all with all being an impossible number in most cases - education should begin and continue with the desires and interests of children as they grow and they should have the power to choose how they learn

The bullying culture is reinforced by the notion that herding, with no options or escape, is a proper social objective - it also stems from the failure to teach democracy, tolerance and helpfulness or even to understand the ontological reality of these three active values

Prodigious scale problems relate to our enslavement by sprawl due to the lordship of the private automobile which is retro, obsolete and hardly a basis for robust economic recovery

Proper scale is four-level car free cyber cities of 10 k more or less living within a square mile or so where urban amenities and most functions of life, work and education are carried our within walking distance

Short Form Content at Blogger: Why The Automobile is Moribund

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What is illegal is a country preventing free entry to anyone who has a legitimate reason to flee his or her own country

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed a bill that will let students who entered the country illegally receive private financial aid at California's public colleges, even as debate continues over a more contentious bill that would allow access to public funding.

via Law opens private aid to Illegal college students - Yahoo! News.

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Wisconsin teachers give Walker a big no confidence

Teachers will not join Walker in education effort - Yahoo! News

"While the governor's group includes organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers, the School Boards Association, and district administrators, it wasn't enough to sway WEAC, which represents more than 66,000 teachers and 98,000 members."

Scott is not your most trustworthy person when it comes to serving all the people.


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We need a return to the Middle Ages

Atlanta and New Orleans schools show the many ways administrators cut corners | The Washington Independent: "“When high stakes are attached to tests, people often act in ways that compromise educational values. High-stakes testing incentivizes narrowing of the curriculum, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests and cheating.”"

The Middle Ages may have its bad points but its best points instruct us. We need a return to gilds, to face to face, to car free communities, to a micro scale that is not built on the model of contemporary Meis-generated factories.

What we produce is what we'll get unless a spark of rebel freedom says thus far and no farther.

Oh and the best point of all. Philosophical realism (Scotus minus Mary) to replace the reductionalist nominalism (Ockham minus aerialism) that has characterized modernity.



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My goodness Florida is actually making strides

Some States Still Leave Low-Income Students Behind; Others Make Surprising Gains - ProPublica: "All told, half the public-school students in Florida qualify for subsidized lunches. Many are the first in their families to speak English or contemplate attending college." Hey. Credit where credit is due.


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Most current schools are dismal factories

Most current schools are dismal factories
In coming days we'll walk to where we learn
And we'll be seen for who we might become
And follow lights that in each of us burn
Most current schools are dismal factoriesTheir aim is to skim cream from off the top

Just pass the test and maybe get a job
Forget about the millions they thus rob

Within each person is a great answer
But schools do not frame questions properly
They think there is just one proper response
That's hardly a proper philosophy