Department of Obfuscation
Wisconsin has regulations directing all aspects of our childrens’ education. In particular, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) tells local school districts what to pay their teachers, which types of students must be in their classes, and generally what type of learning resources should be available to these students. But amidst all this chaff, they do not insist that the students actually learn critical thinking skills that would help them evaluate the credibility of what they read, the veracity what they hear from our leaders, and the authenticity of what they see on TV.
After all, if they did that, the students could grow up to question the disingenuous psychobabble emanating from the seats of power, and might hold their representatives accountable for the State’s and our nation’s sorry economic condition. The type of curriculum content that would establish a truely reasoning adult population includes the following:
1. A unit on identifying propaganda and persuasive techniques.
2. A unit on proof requirements and the scientific method.
3. A unit on evaluating syllogisms based upon their merits, ignoring who espouses them (cognitive verses limbic evaluation).
4. A unit on language-based logic, and mathematical logic in advanced classes.
These are not difficult concepts, and it would take no more than two or three English classes to explain them. Maybe the required time can be made available by reducing the chapters espousing the re-writing of history and science to conform to the political proclivities of people who have never labored in the real world. For instance, many of today’s authors attended ivy league colleges that do not aggravate their students by giving them report card grades. Utterances from such sources would be subject to a rigorous logic filter, if our citizens knew how to use such a tool.
Some of today’s schools, both K-12 and college, seem to be places of concept twisting where one unlearns common sense. In today’s incestuous academic world, people who cannot predict the weather for next Friday somehow know what the weather will be like 150 years from now. These people routinely demonize those who disagree with them. It would be nice to test their assertions by putting them through a logical scrutiny, thereby restoring the concept of dialog.
Unfortunately, our kids today can’t tell when they are being hoodwinked by modus tollens (all cats have four legs; I see an animal with four legs; therefore it is a cat). But if Oprah endorses it, it must be true.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Johnny could not only read, but could truly understand what he or she is reading. Absent that, we get the government we deserve, and maybe that is the point.