The Foul Stench of Higher Education

[underdog]

What's wrong with education today? Living in time when the world has more educational resources then ever before it seems the universities and colleges have turned into cess-pools that promote and reward greed and class division.

 

instead of educating and enlightening the knowledge-hungry students on matters that will not only benefit them but the society in general as well as future generations, it seems that the corporate mentality has taken root. Like the Movie "Matrix" where humans were farmed as an energy source feeding the machines, it looks like today's institutes of higher education are Corporate sponsored factories mass producing the fuel for the industrial giants that continue to exploit and plunder the planet in search for higher profits. Education is there primarily to provide the ruling corporate class with people who have the skills, knowledge and behavioral attitudes that will help them make a profit and make the conditions and relations in which they make their profits secure. There are lots of ways of doing that, both positive and negative. The positive are pretty obvious, how you teach people certain things: ideas, skills, and attitudes which the capitalists can make use of. The negative are just as important as the positive. The negative ways are not always so easy to recognize, but they have a lot to do with what you make sure people don't learn. One of the best examples is how people are kept from finding out that there is another way of doing things, that there are alternatives.

 

So here we are with an ever widening gap between the haves and have nots and most of us are taking the "logical" choice and educating ourselves and join the ranks of those who have...and then move out of the lil nomad ghettos that are popping up all over the globe.

 

So my question is this;

Is this modern education a solution to the world's problems or part of the problem that blinds us to the real issues and gives us a false sense of individual achievement?

[Khayr]

Salamz,

 

blinds us to the real issues and gives us a false sense of individual achievement?

False sense of individual achievement is what I got when close to min'm wage jobs is all a degree guarantees, if u don't have employment experience.

 

False sense of individual achievement is what I got when Student Loans called me up to COUGH UP money that I used for a 'Honor Degree (no spelling error)'. I was set up for Failure and I bought into DREAMS.

 

But how do you stop this MACHINE when it is best

 

TeleMarketers are Family and Peers?

 

Its a farm system that leads to no where!!!

[Baashi]

Is this modern education a solution to the world's problems or part of the problem that blinds us to the real issues and gives us a false sense of individual achievement?

Education not only enlightens us but it also empowers us in so many ways sxb. Unless the qualifier "modern" implies something, the answer of the firt part of your question is in the affirmative. Education is a solution to the world's problems. From medical advances to engineering marvels, knowledge gained through educational institutions is enabling us to understand and tame nature.

 

I once read a qoute (by Twain or Waldo I'm not sure who said it) that says and I'm paraphrasing it..don't let your schooling get in the way of ur education. I guess that sums the whole thing up. By schooling he meant the school rituals and the very culture that's prevalent in these institutions. And by education I guess he meant the ability to question, to examine, to doubt, and to arrest premature judgments and instead base conclusions and beliefs on facts by employing critical thinking.

 

I think your criticism is valid as long as it is directed at human greed and the capitalistic mindset that puts high premium on bottom line. The educated or rather talented professionals who achieve upward mobility and enrich themselves do so by making sure that the bottom line of the entity that employs them is met by any means necessary. These able folks do what they do best not because they are "educated" but rather they think as Michael Douglus in Wall Street the movie argues in his speech to shareholders that "greed is good". If anything they are well informed, well read, and capable of weighing pros and cons on any decision or choice they may make but some of them chose to live la vita dolce by compromising their moral ethics.

[Yoonis_Cadue]

Education is very important nowadays and as already our brother Baashi put it, it is also a tool for empowerment and betterment of one's social and intellectual status in society.

 

However education can become meaningless if you don't have a purpose in life and you don't know what to do with it.

 

I believe that most things that come out from so-called professionals and scientists is utterly rubbish however they sometimes come up with good ideas.

 

Our conscious should be that we should lear from the west in order to profit and better not only ourselves but also our relatives, clan, nation and religion.

 

If you're a medical student your ambition should be how you could help your people, nation and religion there are so many muslim people who can't afford primary health care.

 

Education is useless when one only get's to educate himself so he/she can work as a slave to better the lives of the immoral capitalist oppressors.

 

Educate yourself and join your muslim brothers. We need more politicians and people who can deliver our people from the ignorance we're currenlty finding ourselves in.

[Caano Geel]

burn 'em all down