- Jun 13, 2007
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You present yourself as an extremely educated individual so my question to you is; have you benefited in life from the education that you have and have you become a much more responsible and productive person as a result of that education?
I am quite cynical about the word "education" so further explication is required.
Self-Education Is the Only Kind of Education There Is
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/07/07/self-education/
I had no idea about this when I was in grade school but I accidentally discovered it and eventually came to agree with it over time.
I started reading science fiction in 4th grade. This was my first book:
Star Surgeon, by Alan E. Nourse
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18492/18492-h/18492-h.htm
That book presented information and ideas that I had never heard mention of from any adults, including my so called teachers. Nourse was a doctor and had a human heart transplant in the story. So I read a fictional account of what would become world wide news SIX YEARS before it happened. I was hooked on science fiction from then on. I found the concepts of ATHEISM and AGNOSTICISM in science fiction and decided I was an agnostic at 12. But it is not just a matter of science fiction, finding words and concepts demonstrated in story form told me what to research in the encyclopedia.
Many Black people, especially women, believe in the WORD "Education". But what does it really MEAN. Mostly they mean getting a PIECE OF PAPER from the White Man. My mother believed in education. There was a World Book Encyclopedia in a shelf right outside my bedroom door. But the universe does not come in alphabetical order. Science fiction told me what to look up in those encyclopedia. I recall having three encyclopedia open on my bed while I read one SF book. My mother called my books, "something crazy".
In 7th grade, I think, the nuns made us memorize how to spell ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM. Our spelling books gave us 20 words to memorize every week. Many people in this society will regard someone as ignorant if they don't spell correctly, like that is really important. I do not recall having to spell FISSION or FUSION. Is fission important? Ever heard of FUKUSHIMA? That is really ironic considering Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So far we have only gotten fusion working in hydrogen bombs, but all of the stars run on fusion so our very existence depends on it. We must all know how to spell ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM however.
I decided to go to college for some form of engineering before I even graduated from grade school. So I confess to amazement about people in college who say they can't figure out what to do with their lives. Were they given enough stuff to read in grade school? But then I cannot remember a single book suggested by any of my teachers that I found interesting. But Black Americans seem to mostly have an anti-reading culture and then expect other Blacks to believe what they say just because they say it.
This is the book that probably made me interested in engineering more than any other:
A Fall of Moondust (1961) by Arthur C. Clarke
http://www.tor.com/2010/09/29/a-future-that-never-came-arthur-c-clarkes-a-fall-of-moondust/
But I dropped out of college because it was aggravatingly boring and I was running out of scholarship money. I didn't go back to college until I got a job with IBM and they would pay for it as long as I got a least C's. My manager was impressed by the A's and B's.
So does that sound extremely educated enough?
I don't know what you mean by "extremely". Most people I have met who try to portray themselves that way seem to be pseudo-intellectual jerks. Maybe that is what I am. LOL
The peculiar thing is that I got my first full time job as an audio technician with Panasonic entirely on the basis of what I learned on my own during high school and college and not what I got from school. I taught myself to solder by building kits from Heathkit. I built this:
High accuracy in a Portable Meter...Heathkit 20,000 ohms/volt VOM
http://www.heathkit-museum.com/test/hvmmm-1.shtml
in 11th grade. Jeez, I didn't know I could find a picture. It is like I can remember feeling it in my hands when I finished it.
I built one of these:
Heathkit H8
http://vintagecomputer.com/heathkit-h8.html
when I started with IBM in 1979.
IBM flew me to Atlanta and Dallas, I don't know how many times, for training on various IBM products. But I got greater understanding about computer technology from building and using that little computer than from any IBM course or from most courses I took in school.
This brings us back to the issue of what is meant by education. IBM's objective was to make money. All that mattered to them was what I needed to know to help with their objective. I was a Human Resource. I was there to be used. Not to serve MY PURPOSES, whatever they were. In fact, the less I thought outside the IBM box, the better.
So if by benefitted you mean gotten decent paying jobs to pay the mortgage on my apartment building then yes, but Formal Education was not as great a factor in terms of relevant knowledge as it's propaganda would justify. But it can be necessary because of social nonsense. If you don't have a piece of paper and try to get a job your resume probably goes into the trash. The way college debt is going, education is another form of enslavement. A Black woman told me I was jealous of her degree when I didn't have one. I chose not to argue because it is a waste of time when someone has decided they already know what you think better than you do. But I have met lots of people with degrees that do not impress me with what they know or how they think. College has turned into a scam.
So what kind of Box do most Black Americans think education is supposed to be?
I use the Internet to put what I consider to be relevant information out there. Maybe I am full of crap.
http://www.sudanforum.net/showpost.php?p=2977524&postcount=368
http://www.toxicdrums.com/economic-wargames-by-dal-timgar.html
When I was in high school the Vietnam War was a big deal. Now this Global Warming problem makes Vietnam too trivial to think about. What does physics matter to education?
I just think science fiction makes the importance of science more obvious, interesting and fun than school usually does. Today's high school kids are in Deep ****, though they may not see how really bad it will be for another 10 or 20 years. The last 14 months set reord high temperatures all in a row.
SCARY!
um
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