Statue of freed slave kneeling before Lincoln is removed in Boston

The iconoclasm and damnatio memoriae of our time continues! It is medieval ages or totalitarianism of the 20th century all over again! And this is happening repeatedly in America in the 21st century! Very appalling!

This ridiculous iconoclasm in the U.S. needs to stop!

The mayor of Boston Marty Walsh, what a wimp! Hope, he never runs for president!

Unfortunately, the Boston Herald article does not say what will happen to the statue after removal.

"A statue of Abraham Lincoln with a freed slave appearing to kneel at his feet — optics that drew objections amid a national reckoning with racial injustice — has been removed from its perch in downtown Boston.

Workers removed the Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Emancipation Group and the Freedman’s Memorial, early Tuesday from a park just off Boston Common where it had stood since 1879.

City officials had agreed in late June to take down the memorial after complaints and a bitter debate over the design. Mayor Marty Walsh acknowledged at the time that the statue made residents and visitors alike “uncomfortable.” ...
Freed Black donors paid for the original in Washington; white politician and circus showman Moses Kimball financed the copy in Boston. The inscription on both reads: “A race set free and the country at peace. Lincoln rests from his labors.” ..."

Statue of freed slave kneeling before Lincoln is removed in Boston

China Labor Camp Survivor Details Government Organ Harvesting

If only half is true of what this lady had to say about her first hand, horrific  experiences in labor camps and persecution in communist China, then it condemning enough! This is the 19th year of the 21st century, when will humanity finally get rid of such totalitarian, brutal dictatorships!

Gender Power Struggle In The 21st Century

Posted: 1/4/2018

Utter Gender Confusion

For the past several decades, the confusion about the ever and faster changing gender roles and relations among the genders has significantly increased, but one should not miss to notice an enduring power struggle between the genders. Bisexual, homosexual, transgender etc. are more like red herrings to obscure the underlying power struggle between the gender.

Women Are Neither Angels Nor Saints

Women are as power hungry as men. Feminism or similar forces are not merely to establish equal rights between men and women. While men tend to use more brawn and violence to achieve their goals in history, women resorted to more refined techniques to achieve theirs.

Unfortunately, too many men in Western countries are too chivalrous and too naive to fall for the cunning of the other gender.

Vanishing Genders

Will there still be a recognition of different genders by the end of the 21st century? Doubtful

If indeed the distinction of gender will be extinct before this century ends, then who will have more influence on how gender will disappear, women or men?

Education Reform In The 21st Century

Imminence & Scope Of Education Reform

In the meantime, most people who follow the news and recent technological advancements have come to realize that the pressure of radical reform of how individuals at any age will educate themselves or will be educated is imminent.

For over three thousand years human education has evolved. The transfer of knowledge from great teachers was enhanced by permanent storage of knowledge, the fast and widespread dissemination of knowledge, and constant discourse about knowledge by humans.

The Status Quo Of Human Education

The education of humans has evolved to become highly structured, sequentially phased, specialized and institutionalized. The class room setting is still the most common, standard mode of teaching. There are numerous barriers to entry. Education is largely organized by tracks.

Some typical characteristics of current education of humans:

1.       Students meet in a group at a specific physical location, at a specific time to be taught by a specially trained human professional.

2.       Students have to or need to specialize in some discipline fairly early on.

3.       There are certain times during a human’s life when they are expected to have completed a certain education.

4.       The progress of a student’s education is measured sequentially or certified in some prescribed way, e.g. by examinations, grades, degrees, certifications etc.

5.       Teaching is conducted by specially trained and certified people who often do this for a lifetime

Private education has been too a large extent displaced by public education with all its negative consequences. Government in many countries has essentially nationalized education.

Tabula Rasa Approach

People, who follow my blog (if there are any such people) know that I like this approach also called Gedankenexperiment (German for thought experiment). It opens up the mind and frees up the mind from unnecessary constraints. It allows e.g. to question anything in existence.

Some examples:

1.       College education in the US has almost become prohibitively expensive no matter how much federal government tries to subsidize it. During the Great Recession it became noticeable that a fine MBA or law school degree is not necessarily advantageous, but very expensive.

2.       What is the current measurement and certification of someone’s educational attainment useful for? We know that many high school/college drop outs are among the smartest and most accomplished people on earth.

3.       What does it prove if a person who has once in his life time written a doctoral thesis for which the person then received a Ph. D.? We know that many Ph. Ds. over their entire lifetime will achieve little more than an average non Ph. D. or they may turn out not to be really qualified for what they are doing.

4.       To be a professor is often a lifelong tenure. What is really the justification for that?

This list of examples could go on.

An Exciting Hypothetical New World

In the age of the Internet and the Cloud, the availability of ubiquitous computers of various sizes and power it would be conceivable that:

1.       Each child and its parents can be educated wherever they are, whenever they wish whatever subject over the Cloud and Internet

2.       For any adult of any age anywhere in the world to learn any subject at any time at any level of depth over the Cloud and Internet.

3.       Self education by any child or individual anywhere, any subject, and anytime will be available

4.       Educational contents can be prepared and delivered by anyone, anywhere, at any time who wishes to do so

5.       A borderless global marketplace of education evolves. Such a marketplace would certainly help to reduce the price and cost of education.

What are some of the implications?

·         Many, e.g. traditional brick and mortar schools (including universities) are kind of obsolete.

·         Just imagine potentially one single educational entity could provide and deliver the educational content for any conceivable discipline for the whole world.

·         Why should not educational content from Mongolia be available to children in Paris?

Premise Of Education Reform

Too many people on this planet, especially in Western countries, are still not well educated. They do not understand well the principles and benefits of individual liberty and responsibility. They do little understand freedom of contract or free market economy.

Bread and games (panem et circenses) are still too common in our societies since before the Romans. Too many people may have resigned or are apathetic about education and its many benefits. Or do powerful, vested interests think it better that way to leave many people uneducated?

Primary Goals Of Education Reform

1.       Significantly reduce the role, control, and influence of government in education. More private than public education. Government should not be in the business of providing or delivering education.

2.       The role of government should be very limited to e.g. quality control, minimum standard curricula etc.

3.       We need more experimentation and trial and error to figure out the future of education. Government, in general, is not helpful.

4.       More personalized, individual education instead of mass education. E.g. more home schooling than public education.

5.       Less emphasis on traditional measurement and certification of educational aptitude.

6.       The traditional distinction between institutions like primary, secondary education, high school, community college, university etc. are outdated. There should be fluid educational providers of any kind.

7.       Education in a linear, sequential, and track like fashion is outdated. E.g. there ought to be more fluidity between generalization and specialization and between disciplines or subjects at any time in an individual’s life.

8.       The traditional distinction between teacher/professor and student is outdated. Potentially anybody can be a teacher and any student can be a teacher. Thus, role reversals ought to be the norm. Probably, we ought to aspire more to mutual teaching and learning at any age, mix of ages and backgrounds.

Other, Related Blog Posts By This Author

Here about high school curricula. Here, here about history as a critical subject of education.