Louise,
This article is extremely good and makes some very good points. I think it is exceptional in that it opens up a subject that really calls for a lot more discussion amongst the group.
For example, as we will no doubt have to do our turn in the military or in employment by one group or another we need some exposure to the public school-like lock step activity. In working with a group getting employment for American Indians I used to see this alot. Many Indians would get the job but lack the basic knowledge on how to keep a job. He knew how to read, write, multiply and divide but had no concept of showing up on time.
Ron

Yes, Wendy has been involved in unschooling since the seventies and has a great deal of knowledge to contribute on the subject of life learning - or open source learning.

I am not sure I agree that the unschooled would have a difficult time knowing when to show up at work. I doubt, however, that many unschoolers would find themselves enlisting in the military, although of course it's possible.

Please remove my name from the bottom of your posts. It looks as if we both wrote what you have written. Thank you.

Louise,
"I doubt, however, that many unschoolers would find themselves enlisting in the military, although of course it's possible."
Your class pretenses are showing again. Many occupations are noted for appealing to the bottom and the top of the bell curve whether that bell curve is measuring intelligence, education or social standing. The military is one of those occupations.
I had the opportunity to serve with both elite and general units both in military and civilian life. However the most intellectually alive unit I was ever around was the cadets and officers I met in Navy Flight School.
Question, what school is rated as the number one liberal arts college in the US? We are talking undergrad only.
Ron

No pretenses, Ron. Why would someone who'd learned through open source, or life learning, want to volunteer for regimentation in the military?

Also, I have no idea "what school is rated as the number one liberal arts college in the US." This, and your reference to the bell curve, seem strange things to reference when the topic is unschooling, or life learning.

As requested above, please delete my name from the bottom of your posts.

Louise,
First, I did not put your name at the bottom of my email therefore I cannot take it off the bottom of my email. I suggest you take that up with the administrators of the list.
You have a major misconception about the military, given what I know about your background that seems inevitable and perhaps even desirable.
The military has simple goals. They break things and kill people. As Clauswitz observed they are diplomacy by other means.
The military demands what I call "apparent conformity." That is to say they demand that all members conform or appear to conform but only upon limited occasions. The rest of the time a member that goes about his business quietly is left to his own devices so long as he shows up and performs certain designated actions. Those are usually not very demanding.
The reason my associates in Navy Flight School were very intellectually alive is because they were the biggest collection of mavericks I've ever seen. Books are among the most portable of all educational devices. Having a knowledgeable person who is willing to explain his favorite subject is another. Those two facts coupled with the extremely diverse backgrounds of the flyers and the sheer number of hours available made for a very rich intellectual mix. It might surprise you but among people of that intelligence good books and good conversation chase out the petty.
College? Accept among the schools teaching the STEM (science, technology, engineering and Math) subjects they are too hemmed in by PC.
The bell curve is simply a observed phenomenon from the field of mathematical statistics. Like the Pareto Curve it seems to make sense of many diverse phenomena in widely scattered fields. I will venture a guess that almost any student dedicated to life long learning will learn about the bell curve and the Pareto curve unless they let themselves get trapped by a PC mentality.
Ron

It's too bad that such mavericks and highly intelligent flight schoolers could not have dedicated themselves to better things than

Of course, when enlisted troops get a little too mavericky, this can happen:


Rolling Stone

Along with fire bombing Tokyo and Dresden and napalming Vietnamese villages and:

From Breaking Out Of The Trap, the Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto.


Chapter 18

"It’s fairly clear to me by now that we engage in our endless foreign adventures, launching military forces against tiny islands like Grenada, or tiny nations like Panama, bombing the vast deserts of Iraq, a country of 22 million people, or engage in our reckless social adventures, too, patenting human genes, forcing kids to be dumb, because our leadership classes are worn out from the long strain of organizing everything over the centuries. Our leadership has degenerated dramatically, just as British leadership did after Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking. Recently I read of an American newsman who walked unchallenged into a nuclear weapons storage facility near Moscow watched over by a single guard without a weapon. It tends to make me skeptical about any orderly scientific future. Is it possible that those who sit atop the social bell curve represent the worst of evolution’s products, not its best? Have the fools among us who just don’t get it risen up and taken command?

Think of the valent symbols of our time: Coca-Cola, the Marlboro Man, disposable diapers, disposable children, Dolly the cloned sheep, Verdun, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, the national highway system, My Lai, fiat money, the space program, Chernobyl, Waco, the Highway of Death, welfare, Bhopal, hordes of homeless, psychopathic kids filling the corridors of the schools put out of sight and mind until their morale is deteriorated; think of Princess Di and the Ponzi scheme we call Social Security, the missile attack on the Sudan, the naval blockade of Haiti. The naval blockade of Haiti? Is any of this real? People who walk the dogs and kiss the grandchildren are all so tired of grandiose schemes and restless utopians I doubt if too many would really care if the planet exploded tomorrow.

Think of the never-ending stream of manufactured crises like the invasion of Panama or the cremation of Iraq, principal products of a spent leadership trying to buy itself time while the grail search for a destiny worth having goes on in laboratories and conference rooms instead of in homes and villages where it belongs. Did the people who arrange this sorry soap opera ever take note how green the world really is, how worthwhile the minds and hearts of average men and women, how particular the hue of each blade of grass? It’s the terrible idleness of the social engineering classes that drives them mad, I think. They have nothing worthwhile to do, so they do us."

Louise,
"Of course, when enlisted troops get a little too mavericky, this can happen"
No, at every level this is the essential job of a military force.
But I do see what it is that you are mis-understanding.
Basically the place to start is on any elementary school playground. Inevitably some child learns that he/she can bluff other children into knuckling under if they convince the other child into believing they, the bully, are more willing to hurt the victim than vise versa. Now teachers, other children, etc, will often try to reason with the bully and sometimes it works. However for many bullies bullying has become virtually a win win situation and reason does not apply. All he/she has to do is be willing to use their greater willingness to hurt the victim and they win.
Once the bully passes this point of being willing to hurt their victims more than the victim is willing or capable of reciprocating against the bully the bully will continue to bully.
So how do you break the cycle? You have to be willing and able to hurt that bully worse than he/she can hurt you.
That is the purpose of a military if it is not being used to bully. I often question people to see if they can sustain a charge that our military is used for that purpose. Perhaps that happened occasionally with the American Indians. Certainly it is untrue in our other wars.
However the US military has shown itself very good at convincing bullies they are willing and able to win those sorts of contests. We will hang in there far past the other guy's ability to bully.
You do not understand that the only possible response to a bully that continues a policy of inflicting hurt is to out-hurt him or her. Your policy only increases the number of deaths that results from the aggression of the bully. Of course in the end you achieve nothing as the bully will have to be dealt with violently. Losing more than he or she gains is all that will stop him or her.
Ron

Well, Ron, thank you for addressing all the points I made in my last post, and in such an avuncular tone.

Yes, Grenada was a terrible bully that no doubt had to be set straight by the use of military intervention.

This is your view on US military intervention around the world, which is contrary to peacemaking of any sort.

You are dedicated to military intervention, no doubt believing you are "making the world safe for democracy." I don't think so. US military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan serves no purpose except US interests and the military-industrial complex. Sending in more troops, escalating conflicts, is not going to stop the next underwear bomber who boards a plane. Yet you continue to try to put this storyline over on people, fighting the caliphate that inhabits your imagination.

Louise,
"Yes, Grenada was a terrible bully that no doubt had to be set straight by the use of military intervention."

To make that line of attack work you are totally dependent on my and the rest of your readers being completely ignorant of the facts. Sorry.
Grenada distills down to one question. Why did Reagan send in the troops?
A man, I forget the names, had conducted a coup or a revolution and displaced the legal leader of Grenada's government. That was dictator #1. Then he was displaced by a coup led by dictator @2. Dictator #2 assasinated dictator @1.
Grenada was wanted by the Internation Communist movement then led by the Soviets as it sat astride the shipping lanes used by ships supplying us our oil. That would have completed a blockade, along with Nicaraga, of our Gulf Coast and our ability to have any access to South America.
Then the Cubans sent a military construction battalion in to build runways suitable for heavy bombers. They were equipped with anti aircraft weapons among other weapons.
As you proudly claim to be completely ignorant of military affairs you followed the PC crowd and noticed nothing.
That was reason #1.
There was a medical school located on the island popular with American students who had been unable to find a place in American medical schools. Those students were effectively held hostage to our conduct while the airbase for bombers was being built.
As before you took no notice of that and by now have completely forgotten the conduct of the dictator who violently replaced an earlier dictator who had illegally replaced the last legitimate leader of the island.

"Well, Ron, thank you for addressing all the points I made in my last post, and in such an avuncular tone."
You are welcome, please feel free to try another of your ill informed attacks anytime you please.

"US military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan serves no purpose except US interests and the military-industrial complex."
It only serves the purpose of the survival of the US and Western Civilization. However as that is of no interest to you I assume that reason is insufficient.
Ron

Funny you do not even consider alternatives to military intervention. Ever your first resort, not your last one.

I guess the invasion of Grenada took people's minds off the Marine barracks being blown up in Lebanon.

Got to watch those in the grip of PC thinking, Ron. Military intervention is always necessary, right?

You swallow Bush-Cheney propaganda whole, then accuse me of being PC. What a joke.

Louise,
"You swallow Bush-Cheney propaganda whole, then accuse me of being PC. What a joke"
Are you attempting to tell me that I am being non PC? PC is a tactic invented by the Frankfort School and I do not accept them as an authority on anything.
Secondly, what did Bush-Cheney have to do with Grenada-Beriut? Don't you have even a basic grasp of events that happened during your own life?
At least you are fairly good at memorizing the PC line and letting it substitute for thinking.
Ron

It has to do with this:

You're the one who feeds on propaganda, all the while you claim I substitute PC views for thought. You gobble up whatever the US propaganda machine tells you to believe, even going so far as to say that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan serve the purpose of the survival of Western civilization.

I believe you are very much deluded by whatever the newspapers may report.

Louise, mi pobre,
" even going so far as to say that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan serve the purpose of the survival of Western civilization."
I forgot every morning you are born into a brand new world and can remember only one overriding thought, hate America at all cost and in all things.
You really have no idea what led up to Afghanistan do you? You don't know that OBL the architect of the attack on New York City that murdered 3,000 of your fellow citizens. That is perfectly okay with you, isn't it? You don't know that OBL represents a segment of Islam that has been spreading Islam by the sword since 622 AD. Again that is okay with you because obviously we started the whole thing in 621 AD -- don't let that be too subtle for you.
Your ignorance is pathetic.
Ron

Your war-mongering ignorance is pathetic.

Thank you, Louise,
I will take that as a badge of honor and regale my buddies with stories of your PC naivete.
Ron

Couldn't agree more. So many drink the Gov Kool-Aid..

Must taste great.

Darrel,
"Couldn't agree more. So many drink the Gov Kool-Aid.. . . Must taste great."
You made that comment in response to Louise having said, "Your war-mongering ignorance is pathetic"
Why would you call me a "war monger" and use the term "ignorance" to describe me?
Do you have a reason for taking that position or did it just sound like a good idea at the time?
Ron