THE DISASTER THAT PASSES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE US TODAY

A SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH MODERN EDUCATION

? ? ?

There is a troubling trend in education that warrants further discussion because it is symptomatic of a very serious problem: The failure of our institutions of higher education, from high school on up, to distinguish between “being exposed to” and “actually learning”. As a result, we have people with diplomas and even advanced degrees, who have obtained them by parroting back statements and memorized procedures without ever having understood them. This is not just the dumbing down of public education, which has certainly been happening over the past fifty years due to over-crowding and lack of qualified teachers and the lack of physical facilities, but it goes much deeper than that.

This problem affects all fields of education, but let’s talk about mathematics, because that’s a discipline where ignoring the basics should never happen, and because math is one of my areas of interest and expertise. During my years of teaching mathematics, first at the secondary school, college-preparatory level, then at the college and university level, and later, teaching systems analysis math and optimization techniques to post-graduate scientists and engineers, I discovered that advanced math courses were being taught by people who had missed, or not understood some the basics during the early part of their education. It is possible to learn to apply mathematical formulas and procedures without understanding the basic concepts upon which they rest.

I was fortunate to have had a professor, Dr. Floyd Helton, the chairman of the Math Department where I earned my degree in mathematics, who emphasized understanding the basic concepts underlying mathematics. In calculus classes, e.g., he would not allow the class proceed until he felt that everyone who was capable of understanding, understood the basic concepts of enumeration, equivalence, inequalities, identity, constants, variables, functions, infinitesimals, and limits. And he discouraged students from enrolling in advanced math courses, unless they had more than a passing grade in college-level algebra, trigonometry and analytical geometry. This is apparently not often done in colleges and universities today, because there are hordes of people out there with advanced degrees in applied math, science and engineering who, surprisingly, do not understand the basics.

There are levels of understanding in any discipline, and it is especially important in mathematics and science to understand basic concepts. But the way math is taught in our schools today, forgoing thorough learning for expediency in processing students through the system, and confusing memorizing formulae with understanding logical processes, is a formula for disaster!

ERC July 19, 2017

IS THE HUMAN RACE CAPABLE OF SURVIVING ITS OWN SELF-IMPOSED IGNORANCE?

A WORD ABOUT WORDS, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND HOPE

Children sometimes enjoy repeating a word over and over again, until it becomes nothing more than meaningless sound. One may still do this, even as an adult. Try repeating aloud any word, say, for example: “politician, politician, politician…“100 times in rapid succession. Granted, this is a relatively meaningless word to begin with, but it becomes a truly meaningless series of sounds when one’s ability to think is overwhelmed by excessive repetition. This is what has happened today on a broad scale to a number words in the English language.

A good example is the word ‘awesome!’ Originally, this word was only applied to something truly amazing, something that caused you to stop and stare in awe and wonder. Now, people regularly have awesome haircuts, awesome underwear, and awesome bowel movements… awesome everything …every day! The word has become almost completely meaningless, -just a filler, like ‘well’, or ‘you know’ or ‘… uh’!

Another such word is ‘university’. Originally, a university was an awesome institution of higher learning. A university contained many colleges, each representing a well-defined field of learning, with eminent learned professors, each teaching a series of increasingly advanced courses in their chosen fields of study. Today, a storefront with a few computers can call itself a university, and anyone can buy a degree.

The word ‘educated’ used to mean having a certain degree of learning, and most importantly, a significant depth of understanding about a number of subjects. Being awarded even elementary-school and high-school diplomas meant that you had mastered the subjects and material taught at those levels. Today, after decades of excessive societal concern that everyone should be entitled to an education, such diplomas have become almost meaningless, documenting nothing more than the possibility that the ‘student’ may have spent a certain amount of time in class or on line. Today BS, BA, MS, MA, MBA, and even PhD degrees can be obtained on line. Unscrupulous individuals can, and do, hire or persuade another with the appropriate knowledge and understanding of a given subject to take the on-line exams for them.

Originally, if you could not show mastery of the subject matter, you were not advanced to the next level. This has not been the case for a long time now in public education in this country. In the early 1960s, after earning a bachelor degree in mathematics with a physics minor, and completing 12 hours of ‘education’ courses (which, in my opinion, were a joke, even then), I decided to seek a teaching job in a ‘secondary school’ (formerly ‘high school’) in the public education system of my home state. I was appalled when the HS principal, also the basketball coach, told me that I could not fail any of the basketball team members enrolled in my algebra and geometry classes, no matter how poorly they did. The reasons given were: the already over-crowded classrooms, and the ‘fact’ that everybody is entitled to an education.

This mistaken philosophy that everyone is entitled to an education, whether they want it or not, and whether they are capable of learning or not, has penetrated our institutions of higher learning to the extent that even 20 years ago, when I was in a position to hire entry-level professionals, I had applicants with degrees from colleges and universities who were functionally illiterate!

This deplorable state of affairs has penetrated even to the level of MS, MBA, MD and PhD recipients. Fifty years ago, someone with these letters after their name could be expected to possess a significant depth of understanding of at least one complex subject. Today, anyone can find a way to legally represent themselves as a ‘master’ of science, ‘master’ of business administration, or even a ‘doctor’ of philosophy, whether they actually know anything or not. Sadly, public education in America today has largely become a case of the blind leading the blind.

Another word that, tragically, has become virtually meaningless in today’s society, is the word ‘truth’. Thanks to trial lawyers who grossly over-populate American politics, and have even become President, truth is believed to be anything you want it to be.

The point of this little essay is that the deplorable state of our country today, economically, morally and politically, is no accident. It is the result of more than 50 years of the deliberate ‘dumbing down’ of public education. We have ‘university’ graduates, people who think they are educated, who don’t have the basic understanding of reality our great-grandparents had with eighth-grade educations. Yes, they may have been exposed to more ‘information’ than existed in the world of our great-grand parents, 75 or 100 years ago; but do they really have any understanding of that information? Many don’t even know the basic realities of human history, the basic grammar of any language, or understand much of anything they have supposedly learned obtaining their degrees. One dangerous result of this pseudo-education is the proliferation of so-called experts, gurus, and ‘life coaches’ who can’t even manage their own lives. Even more dangerous is the fact that we have politicians who actually believe they are qualified to run our country just because they can win a popularity contest with voters who know little or nothing about anything.

This downward spiral is exacerbated by the wedding of Western science to the spiritually bankrupt metaphysics of materialism. The spiraling of science into the dead end of materialism, punctuated by misguided statements by mainstream scientists like “We are nothing more than debris flying away from a big explosion!” and “The more we know about reality, the more meaningless it becomes.” is closely related to the  spiral into social chaos and violence we are witnessing today. A science that preaches there is no meaning or purpose to life and the universe, fans the destructive flames of self-centered desire for fulfillment in the moment at the expense of others and the future of the human race.

Is this situation of wide-spread socially-engineered ignorance and scientific atheism utterly hopeless? No, I don’t believe so. I still have faith in the underlying human desire for justice and equality, and the basic honesty and goodness of human nature. I believe that common sense, uncommonly absent today, will eventually emerge from the mess and confusion of political correctness that is part of the divisive pitting of various classes and ethnic groups against each other by politicians seeking personal gain and power.

I predict that, slowly, and probably with great difficulty, the human race will pull itself out of this self-destructive tailspin created by misguided science and political ‘activists’ pushing social agendas. This can, and I believe will happen as more and more people begin to realize that mainstream science is wrong, and that the social agendas forced upon us by political activists have repeatedly failed historically. With these realizations, more and more people will turn toward the truth and light that still exists in the heart of every soul, and in the teachings of the great spiritual masters of all times.

A FEW MEMORIES OF A LIFE WELL LIVED, SO FAR

MEMORIES OF A GOOD LIFE

Memory from one year ago today: A post from Victoria Duff asked FB friends to do the following: “Write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you, and at the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.”

25 random things seemed like a lot, but I did it, and here is an update:

First, and foremost, the smartest thing I ever did was to marry Jacqui. She has gone with me to the ends of the Earth, and she has supported me and believed in me beyond all reason, when others thought I was crazy, and she continues to do so today. She is the light that lights my way, and the living energy of the wind beneath my wings. Through loving her, I have learned to love life and all living beings.

1.) I love people, and I love animals, often more than people.
2.) I was an only child, but had 55 first cousins by the time I was in High school.
3.) I was speaking in complete sentences by the time I was one year old.
4.) I have vivid memories that have been verified, back to the age of nine months, and even earlier.
3.) I solved puzzles that stumped most adults, spoke two languages and a little of a third, had written a book of poetry, and could multiply two and three digit numbers in my head by the time I was nine. My maternal grandmother said I was too smart to live!
4.) I find chess boring.
5.) My parents moved to Phoenix when I was a ninth grader. I didn't like the large classes at North Phoenix High, so after the first day, when my dad dropped me off at the front of the campus, I just walked through the campus, and out the back and found an archeological dig where I spent the day every day. I got away with this for half a semester! We moved back to Missouri when I was 14 and  discovered Einstein's theory of relativity.

6.) When I received the letter "Greetings ..." from Uncle Sam in 1961 for induction into the Army, I reported to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. When I finished the IQ test, they made me take it again, with a proctor standing right over me, because they had never seen a score that high, and thought I must be cheating somehow! Of course I scored even higher the second time.
7.) I have a large collection of American Indian relics.
8.) I love swimming, camping, hiking, spelunking, and just being alone in the wilderness.
9.) I quizzed out of freshman math and English in college and took creative writing classes.
10.) My college roommate and I dropped out in our Junior year and hitch-hiked to Los Angeles where I met several movie stars including Jayne Mansfield, Bob Hope, Charles Bronson, Jack Kramer, Producer-Director Alfred Hitchcock, writers and artists including Henry Miller, Eric Nord, Shell Silverstein, Jason Pollack, Jon Raymond, and other famous and semi-famous people.
11.) I worked as an actuarial mathematician, writing programs for the Univac computer in Los Angeles in 1960.
12.) I have lived and worked in 12 states, two foreign countries and the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and visited all but three or four states and seven foreign countries.
13.) I was a charter member of a US Government Systems Analysis Group where I worked with some of the nation's brightest mathematicians from Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Stanford, including Nicholas Matalas, David Moody, and David Dawdy, modeling complex environmental systems.
14.) I knew and worked with Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractals.
15.) I have studied all of the major religions, and I have studied and practiced several forms of consciousness expansion since 1959.
16.) I play the guitar and harmonica moderately well.
17.) I read poetry and played guitar in coffee houses in Venice and Topanga, Canyon California at the end of the Beatnick Era, and the beginning of the Hippie Era.
18.) I have had several near-death experiences and at least three out-of -the -body experiences.
19.) I was environmental engineer and hydrologist on the MX-Missile Prototype Project at Vandenberg AFB, and Project Engineer for the US Army Base Closure at the Presidio in San Francisco.
20.) I was Caravan Priest-Physician on the documentary film "The Gift" on the
Frankincense Trail in Egypt and Jordan in 2010.
21.) I climbed and camped on Jebel Rhadwah in Saudi Arabia in 1981, only to learn later that it was one of the two Holy Mountains where Mohammed went to pra, y, As a non-Muslim, I could have been beheaded if I had been caught there.
22.) I discovered and helped preserve a pre-Mohammed village in Wadi Al-Farrah in the Hejazzi Region of Saudi Arabia.
23.) I became a member of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (ISPE) in 2008, where I met Dr. Vernon Neppe, MD, PhD, world renowned neuroscientist. with whom I am doing extended research. I've been invited and featured speaker at two international conferences, and numerous conferences in seven US states.

24.) I am not a joiner by nature, but I am a 'Distinguished Member' of two of the highest entry level Hi-IQ Societies in the world by invitation.
25.) I am in excellent health and take no prescription or over-the-counter medicines, - not even Aspirin, and I’ll be 80 years young my next birthday.

25 random things seemed like a lot until I started writing. Here are a few more: My favorite colors are blue, deep purple and gold. I've taken courses and done independent research at eight universities including Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and UC Davis. I earned degrees in math, physics and environmental engineering. I discovered a non-toxic solution to toxic mold in 2006 and published a best-selling book of case studies. I've published hundreds of technical articles in professional journals, six books and have at least three more in the mill, including an autobiography, which is still only about 80% done; but then, my life is not over yet!

It is my life's goal to do everything I can to help bring science out of the dark ages of materialism. My greatest discovery other than my personal relationship with the Creator and Sustainer of the universe through Christ consciousness, in my opinion, is the discovery of the third form of the esseence of reality, called gimmel and daled in these posts.