Josh Bradley wrote:
>> go here and vote against creationism
(snip)
>"public" school? what the heck is that for? frankly, i don't get it.
>
>Yeah, I know, the argument you might return is that public schools and
>policy and government laws exist and we have to work with them.
Nothing quite so banal, I promise.
What I /would/ say is that public schools and policy and government
laws exist for a /reason/: technology. Think of technology as
an expressed trait. As much as "opposed-thumb" is an expressed trait
of the interaction of a number of genes (call it a gene-complex),
technology is an expressed trait of a meme-complex called "science".
Technology is more formally referred to as "applied science", but it
might be helpful to think of it as "expressed science". Science, in
turn, is part of the meme-nome (i.e. "genome") of the organism called
"culture".
Way back in pre-history, a pre-Australopithecine species accumulated
just one more gene/mutation that, when interacting with other existing
genes, produced a gene-complex whose expressed trait was an opposable
thumb. This one extra change allowed it to easily out-compete other
species in a common environmental niche.
By the same token, the establishment of public schools provided an
incremental change (mutation). This change manifested as a pool
of /common knowledge and skills/ which, interacting with existing memes
(tool use, written language, etc.), created a meme-complex (science)
which expresses as "technology". Technology allows a cultural organism
to out-compete other cultural species for resources (physical,
cognitive).
The upshot here is that, much as the benefits of an opposable
thumb provides selection pressures that (on a genetic level) feed back
to further select for even more and better manual dexterity, the
benefits of technology to the cultural organism provide selection
pressures that feed back to select for even more and better public
education.
So, in answer to your question: "public" school? what the heck is that
for?, it provides an evolutionary advantage to the cultural organism.
However, in an individual human context (i.e. one cell in the organism),
I'd say that the expressed trait of technology co-opts your basic
drives/desires (protection from the elements is good, modern convenience
equals free time equals time for rutting which is good, etc.) to
support the meme that comprises the meme-complex that expresses the
trait called technology....your drives/desires are part of the feed-
back loop.
In other words, most humans in a technological culture realize,
at some level, that public education is an integral part of the
infrastructure that gives them what they want. The environment works
on the cultural organism to select for incremental memetic changes
that perpetuate and reinforce beneficial meme-complexes such as
technology.
>Well,
>I'd prefer to devote my energies to the root of the problem:
>institutions whose purpose is to limit the freedom of the natural
>development of ideas.
The root of the "problem" is evolution.
If I may make a suggestion: Assuming some facet or facets of a
cultural institution bother you enough to dedicate a large
portion of your life energies into forcing an /incremental/
memetic mutation, try to come up with, and promote, a change
in how the institution operates that both eradicates the
things you don't like, /and/ provides at least the same
(preferably better) benefit to the cultural organism. Remember
to use human nature rather than fight it (i.e. use the
drives/desires or "motivator" aspect of the human mind to
promote and perpetuate the change), that is, make it good for
the human cell /and/ the cultural organism. In business jargon
this is called a "win-win" situation.
Say, for instance, you're a case worker in the government's
Welfare Department. One of the bottom blocks in the pyramid.
Aren't you lucky. You've got way too much work to do, and
it's a thankless job with little or no satisfaction and lots
of stress. You know what needs to be done, what will work
and what won't work, and why. You have experience in the
field. You're an expert. But your bosses don't get it,
and, because they are in a different level of the pyramid,
they have a different personal mandate than you. So, when
they're not completely screwing things up, they're taking
credit for your good work.
The basic problem here is that most of the decision-making
authority rests at the top, but most of the knowledge and
expertise rests at the bottom. So, frustration at the bottom,
and corruption at the top. Keeping human nature in mind, it
seems that the best thing to do in this case is to make it
so that the decision makers at the top /have/ to confer with
and take into account the opinions of, the experts at the
bottom. The best way to do this would be to leave the
decision-making authority at the top (too many cooks spoil
the broth), but make it impossible for them to implement
their ideas without the OK from the experts, by giving the
people at the bottom the power over the Departmental
budget. Dole it out evenly to everyone at the bottom,
and they can vote for each idea from management by placing
monies from their portion of the budget into whatever
plan they think will best serve their needs. The mountain
is then forced to interact and solicit support from the
experts who have to deal with their decisions on a daily
basis. In return, management gains a working knowledge
of what it's like at the bottom of the food chain, whether
they like it or not. You've just created a feed-back loop
(internal checks and balances) that derives effectiveness
and efficiency from the tension between the two ends of
the ladder that now have no choice but to convince each
other about the efficacy of their plans, or /nothing/
will happen.
So, now you have a (possibly) working model, but how do
you implement it? You realize that putting a letter in
the Departmental "suggestion box" is a joke. Management
doesn't have to listen to you, and therefore almost always
doesn't. Dead end.
Well, changes in how beuracocracies are run has happened
before, they like to call them "paradigm shifts". Where did
they come from, and how did beurococracies come to implement
them? If you follow the papers and trade journals, you'll
find that they were adopted after they were shown to have
some efficacy in the /private/ sector (i.e. the sector that
already has built-in checks and balances of its own). Only
when an observable and quantifiable /precedent/ has been
set in another organization, have top-level bureaucrats
and politicians seized on it as a pet project to elevate
their profile in the hierarchy.
So, "all" you have to do is set up a business (or society,
or whatnot) that implements that model, take advantage of
the "press-release" and "local news sound-bite filler"
mechanisms to raise awareness of your (presumably) successful
management model, and let evolution take its course. Too
easy, eh? Like I said, it depends on how much of your life
you're willing to spend on it.
Dan