Sunday, February 27, 2005

Ethics for Activists - 2

It may be that there is no other way of educating people. Possibly, but I don't believe it. In the meantime it would be a help at least to describe things properly, to call things by their right names. Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this:

"You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself - educating your own judgement. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being molded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society."

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just FYI - MS Sans Serif is a bitmap font and looks bad compared to the usual anti-aliased / cleartype font renderings that people are used to, on 9 screens out of 10. Since it's so web-unfriendly, you should probably demote it within your style sheet, or eliminate it entirely.

Delete this comment as soon as you read it; then forget that I ever wrote it, if you like. I don't want to distract from your excellent content.

Chris cavanagh said...

thanks for the tip - much appreciated, as i'm ever eager to learn more about how this tech works, what works well, etc. (besides, i haven't figured out how to delete comments yet ;-)