436- Paradise and Education Lost (Free)

In the last six decades the quality and curriculum of public school has plummeted to all-time lows. Mathematics, reading and general comprehension skills have, of course, fallen to new lows. Coupled with the onset of the digital age, the quality of information has left the realm of research and scholars and been taken over by corporations who return information, not for value but, for monopolization of as many minutes of your life as they can claim. It was not always this way. There was a time when truly educated minds created, manufactured and innovated in this country. They did so with competency, a higher level of education, respect, and pride. This is self-evident when one sees or handles any product made in America before the 1960s. You know… back when a kid working the counter could make change in his or her head. Things used to be built to last. What is the point? Here is the point – before the 1930s high schools existed in this country that were built like cathedrals, with a level of education to match. There were 15-20, or more, classics instructors, all of which spoke Latin and or Greek. It has been claimed that a Jr High curriculum at that time was on a par or better than current 4-year college curriculum today. In those days Grammar school meant just that – you had mastered grammar and were ready to move up. These may seem like bold claims but look around. How many people do you know that have read any classic literature? Dante’s Inferno, the Odyssey, the Iliad, Moby Dick – or any of 1,000 other titles common to our recent past? How about The Last of the Mohicans? Now there is a title perfectly fitted to our era, and yet nearly no one has bothered to dust it off. To be perfectly clear the high-minded approach to education in America fell at the same time as homeopathy, the medical system and banking – all becoming play-things of the obscenely rich – to include universities. Now we are seeing schools that do not teach the young how to write in cursive, to ensure the Constitution is unreadable and, wait for it…, online universities. Insult to injury. Welcome to the age of self-education. Home schooling is the wave of the future (for competent minds) and the foundation of this idea is books, first hand observation and community. This statement is true because few of us can afford the sub-par education on offer at universities, never mind the crushing debt that follows. And by the way universities will teach that the world is a ball, we went to the moon and gravity and the big bang are just what we accept as true. Advice: Collect old books now and protect them as if civilization depended on it, because after the population reduction, it just might be true and by then the internet may well only return searches related to entertainment. Get ready player 001.