#education system

“You cannot get educated by this self-propagating system in which people study to pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.

You learn something by doing it yourself, by asking questions, by thinking, and by experimenting.”

― Richard Feynman

“School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn’t worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave. This was a Catholic School in Munich. I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement. How can a teacher understand youth with such a system? From the age of twelve, I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers.”

― Albert Einstein
(In a conversation with William Hermanns)

stellarrrluna:

justsomeantifas:

[full article]

An Ohio public school has been giving students extra credit for watching videos from PragerU, a right-wing website that produces clips of talking heads such as Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro discussing conservative viewpoints, HuffPost has learned.

The PragerU videos — with titles such as “Build the Wall,” “Why the Right Was Right” and “The Left Ruins Everything” — were assigned to a 10th-grade history class at Maumee High School, along with a series of questions about the videos’ “most important messages.”

The assignment came at the same time that the website has tried to gain further influence in K-12 classrooms. Earlier this month, the organization launched a program directly aimed at parents and educators, complete with study guides with sections such as “Conservatives Are the Real Environmentalists” and “The Ferguson Lie,” based on a HuffPost review of the materials.

…

The homework assignment appeared unrelated to PragerU’s latest venture, called PragerU Educators and Parents, or PREP, which launched several weeks ago. The inception of such a program suggested that these types of assignments may become more prevalent in schools. 

Already, “2,000 parents and educators have already signed up for PREP,” Craig Strazzeri, chief marketing officer of PragerU, said in an email to HuffPost.

“We constantly hear from educators and teachers who use our videos in the classroom,” Strazzeri said. He declined to disclose how many public school teachers specifically joined the new program. “Ideally, every school in America would show PragerU videos in the classroom on a regular basis to help educate the next generation.

”PragerU started the PREP program in response to COVID-19-related school shutdowns, which “forced us to take a closer look at what is being taught and not taught across the country,” said Adrienne Johnson, PragerU’s chief of staff and lead of the PREP platform, in a video interview with conservative news channel One America News Network. “America is not being fairly portrayed.

If your teacher seriously assigns you a PragerU video please dunk of their ass so hard 

Hi, social studies teacher here: if your teacher assigns you one of these videos in any context except for the following, drag them to hell. Call your principal, sure, but also. Ruin them on twitter. Make it a big public stink the whole district has to scramble to hush up. Complain to your local news if you have to. Complain to the ACLU– they have a whooooole department on education. Make that teacher a liability to the school. See how fast their shit changes.

Now, exceptions include:

- you are studying propaganda and these videos are an example of such

- you are studying conservatism (alone or as compared to other ideology) and the videos are a case study in alt right thought

- you’re studying things like media literacy and critical media consumption and this is one of the examples you have to deconstruct

- you’re making comparisons between the message of the videos and other messages in history and whether they’re coming from the same root

- basically ask “am I being given this video to inform me or have I been given this video to analyze?” and if the answer is inform, as in your teacher is using this shit as part of introducing new info, FUCK that. Drag them to hell. This shit cannot be used as direct instruction. But if the answer is “critically analyze the video” or “the video is an example of something really happening that we are learning about” then that’s actually very useful to you to learn because it will help you identify this thinking when you see it and understand how conservatives you’re up against are coming to their conclusions.

Basically, videos like this are only good for studying the alt right like the wacked out, neurotic, inbred lab rats that they are at heart. Teachers trying to use them as factual direct instruction need to get as fucked as possible as soon as possible.