Fixing The Failure of Education

If you have kids, or if you care about the future of our civilization, and if you have not yet watched this video, watch it now.

Tragic as the content is, tragic and inhuman as the blatantly stated intended purpose of the original design of our 'modern' (sic) educational systems are, more tragic still is knowing how this demo reel is now nearly 5 years old and we still see this farce of classrooms, SAT test, lockdowns, hall-monitors, forced detainment and personal searches, calculated consumerism indoctrination, horrific food served up in dangerous toxic environments is nonetheless paraded about as if it did work, with all of us knowing full well that it doesn't.

Producer John Taylor Gatto is not, by himself, an engaging orator, but he is prepared, he is serious and he is earnest, and if you'd like hear his research, he's put it all out online in a multipart series of YouTube lectures:

if the video won't load, visit The Fourth Purpose at nicolefilms.com

It doesn't work. Sorry, Mr Wainwright, locking the door on the kids until the end of Grade 12 does not imply 'graduation'. The education system is a failure and everywhere in every direction we have the skyrocketing disenfranchisement of youth and the plummeting economy to prove it. Confining prisoners to their cells under threat of Bill 51 does not imply happy compliance.

The question, the real and pressing question, is how we get from this mess and muddle that we are currently entrenched in and move from this place to that other place, that place where human beings once again love learning, love improving the lot of their entire species, love the place that gives them life and security, love the prospects for the future.

As one of the kids in this promo says, the Old School "Fourth Purpose" way had 150 years to prove its worth, and it didn't materialize; I'm saying we either fix it, now, using methods we know already work in the small scale, we either work earnestly to fix it, or we prepare to pay the consequences.

Economics is not a Science

It's not nature. It's a game, with very particular rules, set in motion by real people with real purposes. That's why it's so amazing to me that scientists, and people calling themselves scientists, would propose to study the market as if it were some natural system ??? like the weather, or a coral reef.

It's not. It's a product not of nature but of engineering. And to treat the market as nature, as some product of purely evolutionary forces, is to deny ourselves access to its ongoing redesign. It's as if we woke up in a world where just one operating system was running on all our computers and, worse, we didn't realize that any other operating system ever did or could ever exist.

via ECONOMICS IS NOT NATURAL SCIENCE

Historically, 'Economics' was coined by Malthus simply because numbers and equations had done so well for Newton in convincing authorities of physics and gravitation, they thought maybe it could lend some Divine Credence to the grand plan to convert all Common Land into Crown Land and all Free Serfs into Employees. It was a delightfully clever swindle. And it would have worked too, if those pesky kids hadn't got in the way ...

Dymaxion Sleep

Sleep is just a bad habit. So said Socrates and Samuel Johnson, and so for years has thought grey-haired Richard Buckminster Fuller, futurific inventor of the Dymaxion* house (TIME, Aug. 22, 1932), the Dymaxion car and the Dymaxion globe. Fuller made a deliberate attempt to break the sleep habit, with excellent results. Last week he announced his Dymaxion system of sleeping. Two hours of sleep a day, he said firmly, is plenty.

Fuller reasoned that man has a primary store of energy, quickly replenished, and a secondary reserve (second wind) that takes longer to restore. Therefore, he thought, a man should be able to cut his rest periods shorter by relaxing as soon as he has used up his primary energy. Fuller trained himself to take a nap at the first sign of fatigue (Le., when his attention to his work began to wander). These intervals came about every six hours; after a half-hour's nap he was completely refreshed.

diagrams via WikiPedia: Polyphasic sleep,

For two years Fuller thus averaged two hours of sleep in 24. Result: "The most vigorous and alert condition I have ever enjoyed." Life-insurance doctors who examined him found him sound as a nut. Eventually he had to quit because his schedule conflicted with that of his business associates, who insisted on sleeping like other men. Now working for the Foreign Economic Administration, Buckminster Fuller finds Dymaxion working and sleeping out of the question. But he wishes the nation's "key thinkers" could adopt his schedule; he is convinced it would shorten the war.

via Science: Dymaxion SleepTIME, Monday, Oct. 11, 1943

Today's pre-schoolyear study tip. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

Lester Young Centennial

Lester Young was born 100 years ago today (aug 27). He died just over 50 years ago, in March 1959.

Young is the most important link in the chain between early jazz and modern jazz.  He sounded good playing with both New Orleans-style musicians and beboppers. If he were around now he could probably go to Smalls tonight and sit in with whoever was on the bandstand without any problem.

While few other jazz musicians from the pre-1950 era continuously invented new phrases, serious Young lovers get every record he???s ever made because they know that there???s always the possibility that he will play something they haven???t heard before. In addition, Young had one of the most swinging beats in the history of the music.  And though he could deliver a honking, stomping tenor, even his most frantic outbursts sound curiously relaxed.  He never tried too hard or worked for the impossible.  He just was:  Cool.  

In fact, he may have literally invented the word ???cool??? and given it to the English language, for his verbal jousting and pre-beatnik beatnik behavior gave him a iconic mystique almost inseparable from the sounds coming out of his horn. The improvisation, the beat, the cool, and the mystique has made him one of the most well-loved musicians of the 20th century. These posts document my attempt to learn from Lester Young in the 21st.  

I ask the forbearance of dedicated Young fans and scholars. They are sure to find errors and incorrect assumptions in my work.  If I ever to decide to officially publish I promise to clean up all errata and double-check all suppositions. For now, this is just a private journey made public.  

1. 18 with Lee K.
2. Oh, Lady!
3. Calling the Masters
4. The Power of Vulnerability
5. Miles Davis and Lester Young
6. A Beginner???s Guide to the Master Takes
7. The End and the Future
8. Top and Bottom
9. Footnotes
10. Further Reading
    
    

via Ethan Iverson: The Bad Plus

posted Aug 27th, Ethan Iverson's tour of Prez is brilliant, thoughtful and thorough, a veritable complete education in the full spectrum of jazz encapsulated in the life of this one most amazing player. Sorry for including the whole clip, but I just didn't have the heart to snip it down.