Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Response to John Robinson Videos

This speaker was able to hit on so many points that I agree with it was unbelievable.  I have a lot of problems with the way the country relies on pharmaceuticals and has to "diagnose" everybody.  It is my belief that the time of geniuses, people like Einstein, Picasso or Jerry Garcia, has passed us by.  Those individuals would simply be placed on medication now due to their eccentricities that parents or teachers would find to be abnormal.  It goes back to the idea that Robinson spoke about, the government, both world and the United States, wants to create individuals that will go to work and become cogs in a failing economy.
I particularly enjoyed the comparison that Mr. Robinson made between education, the world and fast food.  Everything in this country has become standardized, nothing is unique and things that are unique are quickly eliminated and purchased by larger conglomerates.  I'm not entirely sure how this trend will ever end, but I am hoping to be a part of it as a teacher.
A last thing that I find unsettling about America is the promotion and cultural acceptance of tobacco, alcohol and prescription drugs.  All of these items have killed people prematurely, created higher medical bills and continued to dumb down this country for as long as it has been around.  As long as social norms like getting blacked out drunk every Friday night continue to exist, America stands little to no chance of regaining its place as a world leader.

2 comments:

  1. Several contemporary philosophers and writers--including Charles Taylor, Alastair McIntyre, and Wendell Berry--worry about malaise of modernity as it is expressed in a culture that obsessively medicates and entertains itself in an endless effort to JUST GET THROUGH the perpetually-boring now. That's why our culture is like fast-food, standardized and designed for instant gratification, not thinking properly of the future or the delight of the unusual... the unusual that might take some effort to appreciate, but always creates the best sorts of innovations and insights.

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  2. "Everything in this country has become standardized, nothing is unique and things that are unique are quickly eliminated and purchased by larger conglomerates." I love this sentence in your post because it shows 100% how and why our educational system is the way that it is. We have been shown in our education classes how to differentiate for different learners. All of this is seemed to be shoved aside when it comes to the actual classroom because of the way everything is currently set up.

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