Antipodean Angst – part 3

The Dumbing Down of Population

‘Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.’ – George Orwell

As mentioned, change has happened gradually over decades, its roots and tendrils stem from universities and schools, and the educators, management, and students within these organisations. It has been a slow and insidious process operating in the shadows as the university graduates moved from the campus to inhabit positions of influence in society.

An obvious arena is the education system which has disrupted the pursuit of knowledge and the building of intellect over time in order to replace that with a doctrine and ideology that fits with a radical world view.

‘There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.’ – George Orwell

The Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute conducted a study that found that three quarters of students in Years Seven to Ten are being taught mathematics for at least one year by a teacher who was not trained in the subject.

This then has fostered an institutional problem in that students are being taught subjects from teachers who are not equipped to teach them.

An ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) report revealed in 2018 that students with low ATAR scores are being recruited into Initial Teacher Education (ITE) with reports that students with ATAR scores as low as zero to nineteen were included in these intakes.

More disturbing was that the University of Sydney apparently ordered that the report be destroyed.

Inclusivity, diversity, and gender are at times taught in English classes rather than what should be taught. When the reaction from parents is negative and brought to attention publicly, they quietly retreat. It is indoctrination of the young by stealth and it is appalling and abhorrent that the administration of schools allows this to happen. There are numerous examples Australia wide of this type of stealth indoctrination of our young and it appears that rather than the education system taking steps to prevent this they are somehow quietly endorsing the propagation of a method in which our young are being manipulated.

If nothing else this illustrates the insidious nature of the infiltration into the education system of people who are little more than drones who toe the line and follow the dogma as it secures them what would normally be denied them due to their low academic ability, being power and wealth and a position of authority.

To clarify this:

The ill-educated and agenda driven are teaching the uneducated. This fostered by the dogma of the generation that came before, and before that again, resting in the comfort of blind ignorance that time has hidden from them the agenda that they themselves cannot see and are not equipped to understand. Only then is the process complete.

Does this include all educators? Naturally the answer is no, as if this were to be true then there would be none of the advances that can and do still happen. There are educators that are dedicated to educating and pushing for students to learn, however, they have to operate in the system within which they exist.

More to the point is that there is a cadre of ill-equipped, agenda driven educators protected by an internal authority that is promoting their ideology. In simpler times, when plain speech was used, the people in cadres such as this were known as authoritarian, bootlicking toads.

There have been various articles written that put forward that the invasive nature of PC culture has resulted in an education system that is poorly equipped to provide the basics. Combine that with a policy that begins in primary school whereby students are not allowed to fail and ‘participation awards’ are given in order that no student is allowed to experience failure, whether it being on the sporting field or the classroom. Despite statistics and spin to the opposite, the reality of the education system has come to public and political attention as needing fundamental changes.

Failure and success are as sure as night and day, yet at some point, educationally, failure became a dirty word. Failure became unacceptable, even when it was inevitable, and therefore had to be removed.

Failure provides the ‘push’ for a person to strive for success if they are motivated and have the right supports behind them. Failure also allows more opportunity to learn than success; that is for a person who has the desire to learn.

By removing failure from the education system, it can be reasoned that an important part of learning was removed. Failing doesn’t feel good and it shouldn’t. That is why it is important. If all a person experiences is success, or a manufactured form of success, then they are missing out on a vital part of what it is to be human and a crucial part of the learning process.

Further exacerbation of the dumbing down of our young is the inclusion of technology into classrooms. By technology I refer to students being allowed to have smartphones in the classroom in the belief that this allows them access to information. The inverse of this is apparent, as students in the main; use it to access social media, text messaging, and also in small part source information. However, that information is perverted in that the easiest path is taken to find that information and critical inspection of that information is not encouraged. The phrase: ‘Google is your friend’ has become suspect, as the disseminators of information has been relegated to a private corporation that has the power to control the information.

It sounds disturbingly Orwellian that information access has largely been ‘pushed’ towards one source when there are multiple sources available. Additionally, people have become ‘educated’ to ‘click’ on the first link rather than inspect multiple sources. Concerning in that Google uses an algorithm to decide what is most relevant and also what they wish to present, and then places it in descending order based upon the algorithm they created. Effort has been replaced by ease.

‘If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.’ – George Orwell

Professor Mark Williams, a neuroscientist, has been conducting studies into smartphones for a decade, and his findings to date show that smartphone use has resulted in a reduction in retention of information of up to thirty percent, as well as that smartphones affects memory, concentration, and cognitive ability, all in negative ways. Smartphones are also linked to reductions in social interaction and anti-social behaviours as it moves human interaction from the physical world to the online world. It impacts on sleep patterns and causes inadequate sleep, poor real-world navigation and increased rates of depression. Thankfully the removal of smartphones from classrooms has slowly begun but is still limited and being met with reluctance and opposition in some areas.

They are also highly addictive as is evidenced by simply looking at the world around you to see that the bulk of the population has a smartphone in their hand and that it has more importance and relevance than the real world environment that people inhabit. Separation anxiety from your smartphone has become a real thing and yet the absurdity of this is clear to see.

Education is more than just absorbing information, it is about building knowledge and developing minds that build on what came before. Being inquisitive and questioning, building on the past are the means by which knowledge and intellect is grown and humanity advances.

A parent who cares about their child strives to build an environment whereby the child advances past the parent, for that is how it should be. Yet today it appears that the responsibilities of the parent have been fostered out to others. This by the parents in large as they succumb to the pressures of an increasingly persuasive ideology that is contradictory in that they are to be both respectful to the child and also provide a framework of discipline all the while with a ‘no consequence’ mentality for all involved. Basically, a no-win scenario for all involved, including the educators.

Education is more than sitting in a classroom; education is all about being inquisitive and questioning. It is about not being afraid of being cancelled because you don’t toe the line or don’t blindly accept what is being fed to you intellectually. Education is a two-way street and it requires the humility to accept opposing ideas and then debate those ideas without fear of reprisal.

Education is also about a person learning their place in the ‘pecking order’ and learning that advancement is based upon merit and ability rather than anything else. Education is also held in life experiences and that has been suppressed as children are sheltered from experiencing the reality of life and collecting the bumps and bruises that are part of those experiences. Call it helicopter or lawnmower parenting, it denies a child valuable experiences and is morally and ethically wrong.

All advancement of any value in humanity has been about just that; being inquisitive, questioning, life experiences, and not living in fear. If these traits had not been pursued, then we would still believe the Earth is flat and is the centre of our solar system.

‘Never let schooling get in the way of an education.’ – Mark Twain

So, what happens when the parent has not been educated to build on existing knowledge and instead is reliant on others to provide that environment? What happens when the parent is the product of the society they inhabit that has been built over decades? What happens when the information sources for the parent are manipulated and corrupted? What happens when the parent doesn’t care enough about education of self, and instead only looks for the easy answer?

The child has only one world view and that is the view of the educators and the education system. In turn those views are the product of the promoter of an ideology based in an agenda. This is known as indoctrination.

When people use social media and mainstream media as the primary source for acquiring information then the information gathered is likely to be tainted with subjective views and opinions. Other times it is simply false and has no bearing on reality.

What happens when the primary source of information comes from a global corporation?

Then the information is what that corporation decides to present, better known as censoring. The corporation has one concern and that is power and profit. When viewed in this light it is disturbing as the conclusion is that information and knowledge are being manipulated for profit and power and little else. I mentioned Google, however they are not the only corporation that does this, mainstream media is another, as each media corporation indeed has an agenda in what and how they report events as they promote their ideology for both power and profit. These two examples are by no means the only examples; however, they are readily apparent within modern society.

Power and profit. Think about that on a personal level.

So, when primary schools remove failure and high schools allow smartphones in classrooms. When universities suppress views that go against their beliefs, or the beliefs of their largest benefactors; and profit is more important than knowledge. When unlearning became a requirement in universities the alarm bells should have deafened this country, yet it went by unnoticed.

A disturbing thought is that education in our modern times is driven not for the pursuit of intellectual advancement; rather it is a means to an end. Education is now about gaining the qualifications that will allow the individual to go into the world and make money. Not that making money is inherently a bad thing. However, when education becomes the means to make money rather than advancing the intellectual achievements of humanity, then it is bad.

This is by no means a new thing, as Glubb points out in his essay; it is historical in the decline of empires.

Historically part of the decline of empire is this very thing; when education no longer is about advancing human intellect and becomes about the gathering of wealth. That is simplistic in explanation, and but a part of his findings, yet it is in context to my writing on the dumbing down of population.

When freedom of speech has conditions attached it became apparent that only some ideals are allowed because of outside influences corrupting the institutions with money then it is no longer an institution for learning. Rather it is an institution for indoctrination of a profit or power motivated agenda. The agenda based in fear of the teat of money upon which they suckle being denied is powerful and sinister.

The products of this education system have gone on to take their places within society and the subversion then perpetuates exponentially.

Make no mistake, it is subversion and on a grand scale.

We have business leaders who are driven by profit bereft of ethics or morality. We have educators that have not been educated. We have politicians that are driven by fear, greed, and agenda. We have people who are too apathetic and scared to have an original thought or opinion for fear of consequences. We have a society that is considered to be largely silent as submission is safer than opposition.

When open debate is not about opposing ideas being discussed, and instead become a screaming match whereby the author of the unpopular idea is destroyed as this is the only recourse a radical can have when confronted with facts.

Think for one minute that cancel culture is decried yet it continues to grow. The very existence of cancel culture is the direct opposite of PC culture and yet those two things are inextricably linked together. Reasoned debate and inspection of fact is the antithesis of the activist and as so must be silenced. Cancelling the author is simply the best way to achieve silence.

Why is this so?

The answer is simple as one cannot exist without the other, for fear of PC culture being exposed for the pathetic joke that it is. However, even a pathetic joke can be dangerous if it is believed to be true by enough people.

The dumbing down of Australia is by no means complete, yet a large proportion of the work has been done. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that what began thirty years ago and was the subject of ridicule has now become the overwhelming mainstream ideology. Our young are the products of the society that we stood by and allowed to be created.  They have no concept of anything other than what society is in its modern form.

We now have a society in which the ill-educated educate our young to some extent. Free thinking, free thought, new ideas of merit that do not agree with the doctrine are destroyed or ignored. We live in a society that has difficulty with common-sense as that has become a too difficult or dangerous concept. We live in a society where facts are no longer facts, and truths are no longer truths if they are unpleasant. We live in a society where everyone can be a victim as this is more preferable than taking responsibility for self.

If we as a society were to determine to change this pattern right this very minute it would take the span of one generation to change this, as the products of this change would have to grow and in turn inhabit the positions of power on all levels of society, Bezmenov pointed this out. One generation being twenty-five years.

To have that determination for change it would require radical measures. Our educators would have to be replaced in part; the education system would have to step back in time and actually teach the basics as well, as teach the new things, free of suppression of thought. Our political system would have to be purged of the radical elements and replaced with more moderate elements. The mindset of the entire population would have to be refocussed. In short, an almost insurmountable mountain to be climbed even if our society had the stomach for it.

Yuri Bezmenov and John Glubb both presented a solution to these problems indirectly, and that is also unpalatable, for it is war on a grand scale. War swiftly refocusses society and joins it together in a common goal against a common enemy. War exploits and encourages intellect in the building of weapons and technology in a compressed timeframe. War is the environment that brings out the best and the worst in humanity in a very short period of time. War is the great leveller for when society has descended into the indolence of its own indulgences.

We live in a society that has lost its way simply because we allowed the lunatics to run the asylum.