"Unschooling" the University

Never Let Schooling Interfere With Your Education

Unschooling is a growing trend among children old enough to attend primary or secondary school. It is a type of homeschooling that is child-directed, taking place both at home and other places where children can learn about the world.

The advantage of this method is that it doesn't require you, the parent, to become someone else, i.e. a professional teacher pouring knowledge into child-vessels on a planned basis. Instead you live and learn together, pursuing questions and interests as they arise and using conventional schooling on an on-demand basis, if at all. This is the way we learn before going to school and the way we learn when we leave school and enter the world of work. _Unschooling: Holt

In the US, with university student dept around $1 trillion, more people want to bring "unschooling" to the university level -- and make it very low cost, sometimes free.

[US] student debt now tops $1 trillion and that a third of college students drop out–with debt and without a degree. Nearly a third of the average 18-to-24-year-old’s income goes toward debt repayment, much of it owing to student loans.

...Yet if [Vivek] Wadhwa is right the student debt problem will take care of itself—at least as it relates to the next generation and those that follow. Online courses will proliferate to such a degree that acquiring knowledge will become totally free. There will still be a cost associated with getting a formal degree. But most universities, he says, “will be in the accreditation business.” They will monitor and sanction coursework; teachers will become mentors and guides, not deliver lectures and administer tests. This model has the potential to dramatically cut the cost of an education and virtually eliminate the need to borrow for one, he says.

...Wadhwa allows that there will always be students able and willing to pay for a traditional college experience and for them it will be a worthwhile investment. But for the vast majority, from a financial standpoint that kind of education makes no sense and is fast becoming unnecessary. He believes the higher education revolution is coming soon and will happen fast—perhaps fast enough to keep the next generation from finishing school with debts they may never be able to pay. _Moneyland.Time

University has become a place for young adults and adolescents to receive a political indoctrination, form bad personal habits, and avoid responsibility while spending "other people's money" for as long into adulthood as possible.

In other words, for a large number of young people, university has become the capstone on an edifice of dysfunctional education and child-raising that leaves the young person incompetent and unfit for taking meaningful responsibility in world growing less friendly to the unskilled by the day.

The problem with "unschooling the university" is that most graduates of primary and secondary public education never learned to be self-directed toward their own education. They and their parents trustingly counted on the government educational system to provide the child's education. And now, here they are, unable to pick up the ball and run with it.

We anticipate that in the future, more and more parents will opt for "The Dangerous Child" approach to child rearing, which is a type of "unschooling" -- although much more dangerous, of course.

The dangerous child learns multiple skills and competencies from an age at which most parents and educators would believe it impossible. But it is not only possible -- it is vital, if the child is to develop his full potential of dangerousness. Dangerous children must achieve high enough skill levels to be able to support themselves financially in at least three different ways by the time they are 18 years old.

Needless to say, the future would look quite different in a world full of dangerous children -- quite unlike the present world full of lifelong adolescents and incompetent psychological neotenates.

And remember, it is never too late to have a dangerous childhood.

A Late Comprehending of Obama's Incompetence

It has been a year of fecklessness, amateurism, and posturing. Less that is useful has been accomplished by this president in his first year than by any president since Herbert Hoover, and he was ambushed by the Great Depression after seven months. _Ntl.Post

You would have to go farther back in history than Herbert Hoover to find a US president as incompetent as Obama. But far worse than his incompetence is his unshakable belief in his own destiny to determine the fate of the world according to his inner whimsies.

Withal, this president seems overwhelmingly confident, strangely detached,....'cold and faux eloquent.' He is fluent and sonorous, but rather vapid.

...For all the claims that the Republicans are too influenced by religious zealots and country club knuckle-draggers, the administration may be in the hands of 'redistributive,' pacifistic Kool Aid drinkers. ConradBlack

Unemployment rose in 43 states in December 09. The state of California is on the brink of economic collapse. Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and several other Obama strongholds are not far behind. Even the labour unions -- among Obama's staunchest supporters -- cannot escape the fallout of incompetence emanating from ground zero of Doombama. Consequently, union membership is growing among government employees but falling in the productive sector -- where everyone is suffering.

The middle class has always been a bulwark against collectivists and dictators. And the US middle class is starting to wake up to the reality of Obama. It is growing angry.

The frustration of the middle class is the angry confusion of people who can appreciate the opportunities Big Government denies them. It is the anxiety of those who hear the businesses who employ them relentlessly demonized, while the ruling class is never held responsible for its foolishness, waste, and theft. It is the resentment of people who suffer through disasters that President Obama and his allies regard as opportunities. It’s the hearty distrust of a State, and its media apparatus, that declares every frigid blast of bad economic news to be “unexpected” – but expects us to believe it can predict market fluctuations, technological advances, and even the global climate.

The President says “I have every interest in seeing a unified country solving big problems.” The rest of us have an interest in being allowed to pursue our individual solutions to those problems, according to the liberties our Constitution says belong to us as absolutely as our souls. We can see the wreckage of those “unified” solutions strewn through our past, and littering the rest of the world. Our frustration is born of intelligence and moral strength, not stubborn blindness. _TheGreenroom

There is nothing new about Obama's incompetence. What is new is the growing public comprehension of the invisible nature of the emperor's suit. Obama has always lacked leadership ability. But the news and entertainment media have been willing to provide a smokescreen to hide the man's incompetence -- until now.

It was easy to get caught up in the Obama crusade -- for those who had never had an original thought, for those who had nothing truly important to accomplish, and for those who saw an opportunity to advance their own selfish goals under the cover of a populist crusade. But as the destruction grows and as failure mounts, it is not so easy to ignore the sense of an approaching abyss.

Can politics save a nation from the disaster that politics has created? No. But it can delay and mitigate the disaster long enough for the more thoughtful and competent ones to prepare.

Everyone Understands Intimidation and Incompetence

Image Source
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming has dominated the blogs recently. This is partly due to the Copenhagen climate conference and largely due to the still unfolding ClimateGate exposure of unethical and unscientific practises by top IPCC climate "scientists." The greater the exposure, the less seriously the general public -- and the more intelligent of the blogosphere -- is taking the global warming holocaust.

But is the blogosphere and the general public qualified to understand the intricacies of climate science? Ah.  That is, of course, the wrong question to ask, and an obvous red herring. The important question to ask is: do the blogosphere and the public possess enough information to pass judgment on the impartiality and scientific integrity of the top gatekeepers of the IPCC and the peer review climate science publishing establishment? The answer to that is a growing affirmative.

The ClimateGate files revealed that a small, closely knit group of scientists, bureaucrats, editors, and journalists worked together hand-in-glove to control what was published in 1. scientific journals 2. IPCC reports 3. the mainstream media 4. and even Wikipedia!  This small group of gatekeepers used unethical (perhaps illegal) means to control the climate message to government leaders, scientists, funding agencies, journalists, and the general public. Not only that, but the people in question were unquestionably incompetent, as revealed by their unguarded, private chatter.

One does not need to be a climate scientist or computer modeler to understand intimidation, deception, and incompetence of this magnitude.

Who will accept and deal with the problem -- and who will try to cover it up and cover it up with diverting questions such as "Are you a climate scientist?" The question is a non sequitur, a red herring. The better question is "Would you put the IPCC gatekeepers in a critical position, where the quality of their characters could decide the fate of you and your loved ones?" Would you even buy a used car from them?

Anyone who tries to whitewash, coverup, and sweep under the rug the critically important aspect of this issue -- that  the data and the methods underlying climate catastrophe have been jiggered --  can not be trusted themselves.

Obama's Disastrous Debut......Worse to Come

Obama's presidency is off to a blundering and inauspicious start, with daily missteps and the continuing failure to fill important administrative positions. Obama is the second-least popular president in 40 years, after just 100 days. Even George Bush was more popular after his first 100 days.

...five presidents rated higher than Mr. Obama after 100 days in office. Ronald Reagan topped the charts in April 1981 with 67 percent approval. Following the Gipper, in order of popularity, were: Jimmy Carter with 63 percent in 1977; George W. Bush with 62 percent in 2001; Richard Nixon with 61 percent in 1969; and George H.W. Bush with 58 percent in 1989. _Source

Even more than his unprecedented multi-trillion dollar a year deficit spending, and a clear intention to double the national debt during his tenure in office, Obama's personal incompetence shows through in every way to anyone capable of looking. The end result of Obama's total cluelessness about the economy will be the subject of anti-Obama curses for generations to come.

Obama wants the US to be like Europe. But which Europe? The Europe in his fantasies, or the rapidly crumbling memorial to socialist stupidity?

Barak the Clown wants to put persons on trial who did their best to protect the US from muslim terrorists. But is D'oh-bama's thinking on this issue clear? And is the view of the Obama zombies toward Iraq based upon the facts on the ground? Obama's NYC Air Force One low altitude fly-by reflects a certain pre-9/11 thinking that borders on the totally oblivious. Whatever are those idiots thinking?!?!?

Obama has been artificially buoyed by a worshipful press, a corrupt and quasi-criminal labour union movement, the wealth-stripping crony cabal of trial lawyers, a thoroughly indoctrinated and partisan academia, and an odd assortment of bailed-out Wall Street investment bankers and billionaire political activists. Oprah helped a lot, too.

But how long can Clown Prince of the world Barry maintain this artful semblance of popular support, when his personal arrogance and disdain for Americans and their country is on full display? We shall see. There is nothing liberal about D'Oh-bama. There is only a clueless leftist arrogance that has already created a fiscal disaster for the country that is almost beyond recovery for many decades.

More Americans are waking up from the zombie dream daily. The longer it takes to awaken, the harsher will be the hangover. Heed the alarm, or suffer the consequences.

Obama: Incompetence Beyond Redemption

There are different types of incompetence. There is the incompetence of inexperience, which may go away with time, training, and hard knocks. Then there is the incompetence of set ideological trajectory. That type of incompetence is incapable of learning from mistakes. It is doomed to spectacular failure with huge collateral damage. That is the type of incompetence that Obama and his incoming administration--along with the new Congress--possess.

All around the web, one hears the voices of the loyal opposition loudly proclaim that they are willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt--at least until February. That is quite sporting of them, actually, and also quite stupid. It is like a New Orleans resident saying that he will give Hurricane Katrina the benefit of a doubt, at least for a day or two after the city begins flooding. Not very bright and certainly not prescient.

Obama is a disaster written in neon lights by everything that we know about the man, his associates, his backers, and what he has been done since his election. With a clueless executive and an out of control ideologically rabid congress on the loose, the disasters borne of incompetence could come fast and furious.

Government is turning into the most significant problem for US citizens in their entire lives. In the name of "looking out for the little guy", the new reich promises to destroy every opportunity for private sector advancement, startups, saving, and other traditional methods of working one's own way up in the world. Instead, Obama offers endless taxes, regulations, the shutdown of most large sources of vital energy and power supply, a huge open door for labour unions to takeover whole industries, and a cordial invitation to trial lawyers to tear down what little can be built up in an environment wholly hostile to business and industry.

If you are a person of conscience who is a military member, or a civil service worker, what do you do when your own government and employer declares war on US Constitutional rights and liberties? What do you do when the government goes on the attack against the producer classes, chokes off innovation, starves the nation of vital energy? You retire if you can. If not, what are the choices--not only for government workers of integrity but for anyone with a lot to lose from the oppressive neo-fascist style of government that Obama and cohorts appear to be bringing into existence?

The answer to that question will be the topic of a series of postings at various Al Fin blogs over the next several weeks. The question is one that psychological neotenates and the academically lobotomised will never ask. But the rest of us have no choice.

The answer will not involve violence or open insurrection. When the extreme hardship consequences of the incoming reich's policies hits the population, the violence that naturally results will be something that Al Fin readers should know how to avoid and protect against. There will be plenty of anger and violence without more informed and aware people adding to it.

Some bloggers are discussing various destinations in the world, to sit out the Obamapocalypse and Obamageddon. I am not ready to set my escape in motion as of yet. North America has been one of my favourite parts of the world for a long time. I am not prepared to abandon this amazing continent, yet.

Scattered throughout North America are large numbers of enclaves of semi-autonomous regions, with their own governments, law enforcement, and internal rules of law. Besides the official semi-autonomous enclaves are many unofficial semi-autonomous enclaves of various degrees of functionality. It should not be too difficult to devise a network of quasi-invisible, semi-autonomous enclaves of cooperating groups, functioning with minimal contact with the US or Canadian federal governments.

Do not expect ideological, ethnic, religious, or even linguistic homogeneity among these groups. Only a cooperative dedication to freedom. Time to start building, and no time to spare.

Surprise! Pelosi Promotes Political Peak Oil

Washington has become paralyzed by dysfunctional government. France and China can build nuclear electric plants in just years; in the U.S. it takes a decade. Brazil will bring offshore oil online in 24 months, while for U.S. companies it takes 10 years. New refineries are virtually illegal to build. New electricity-generating plants using coal are now unable to obtain financing because of environment constraints.

This is destroying the value of the dollar and wrecking our balance of trade, making oil prohibitively expensive, and sending hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign lands—many of whom are no friends of America. No wonder 80 percent of Americans think their nation is on the wrong track. Washington needs to declare a national emergency program to produce energy. The reasons we don't are political, not technical.

Political peak oil is the only kind of peak oil hardship the world will experience. Americans can thank Nancy Pelosi and her comrades in congress--plus their friends the trial lawyers--for that. Think of them every time you fill your gas tank.

......the world oil shortage is political, not geological. In the U.S., the government prohibits drilling offshore. In Nigeria, civil strife has shut down major production. In Libya and Iran, Washington effectively blockaded and isolated the nations for years to inhibit new production. In Iraq, of course, the U.S. destroyed much of the infrastructure since the first Gulf war in 1991 and then blockaded reconstruction. In nations such as Russia and Mexico nationalism and corruption curtail increased production.

Outside of developed Western countries, the single largest reason for oil "shortages" is government incompetence and ownership of the subsoil rights so that landowners don't benefit from oil discoveries. In Patagonia, Argentina (a nation with abundant oil), I was told how it was common for landowners to try to hide any evidence of oil seepages from underground, lest the government oil company come in and ruin their lands with no benefit to themselves. Private mineral rights ownership is the reason some 90 percent of all oil wells drilled have been in the U.S. Scientific advances and innovative engineers keep coming up with ways to both discover new fields and keep old ones in production almost indefinitely.

ANWR could become the fastest way to generate hundreds of billions of dollars of new oil. But laws need to be changed to fast track the leasing (there are 11 litigation choke points) and to create special courts to expedite environmental issues, as recently proposed by Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.). Under current laws, it could indeed take 10 years to produce oil, compared to two or three years for the actual drilling and pumping. Additionally, leasing is done slowly, thanks to laws written when oil was plentiful. Such laws were designed to gain maximum upfront money for the government, not for speed. For example, BP recently paid $1.2 billion for a new offshore lease, some 400 miles East of Canada's Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. The cost and distance gives some idea of industry expectations as to the extent of oil reserves. _Reason

Cold Winter in South Africa: IQ and Incompetence

The southern hemisphere of Earth is bracing for a cold winter, similar to what much of the northern hemisphere recently experienced, only worse. Cold weather is more dangerous than hot weather--up to ten times more people die from cold weather than hot. For a society to survive truly cold winters, it must be technically competent to protect its people from the effects of cold.

The average IQ of the population of South Africa is 72. A quick glance at an enlarged view of the image below, will show that very few South Africans possess a high enough IQ to acquire technical competence in the technologies of the modern world. So long as the weather stays warm, populations with low IQs can survive despite the heat, for the most part. It is only when temperatures plummet that the importance of IQ and competence are revealed in stark calamity.

Falling temperatures will push up electricity demand across South Africa - and with it the real prospect of winter blackouts...The national power grid remains stable, but for the first time this week, demand went past the summer's high of 31 000MW and peaked at 34 000MW.

...Even though South Africa does not have a history of sustained cold fronts, Eskom expects that even "a little freezing cold" will put its grid under pressure...According to the Weather Service's winter forecast, the country could experience "below normal temperatures" on average in June and July.

The seasonal forecast also says the country could experience more severe cold snaps than last year. __Source

Bland words in a news report. Nothing to worry about, right? Wrong. Although South Africa's latitude extends only slightly further into the cold zone than Florida, Kuwait, or Mexico, the country's cities are not accustomed to prolonged cold weather.

What if the sun enters a prolonged solar minimum, as predicted(PDF)? Temperatures in many traditionally warm locations would dive into dangerous ranges of cold. Humans can adjust to different circumstances. If they possess the "human capital." What if the majority of the people cannot be trained to operate and maintain the machinery of modern western civilisations--the machinery that allows western nations to survive in temperate and near polar environments in urban environments?

As long as a low-IQ population coexists with a sufficiently large market dominant minority, the minority can operate and maintain modern machines and technologies, and the majority can benefit from their expertise. But when a low-IQ majority overthrows its market dominant minority--persecutes that minority and drives it from the country--the burden for maintaining a technological infrastructure rests upon the country's majority. South Africa is better off without Apartheid. But it is not better off without skilled and talented high-IQ technicians, engineers, scientists, medical professionals, farmers, and business persons.

If the machinery of civilisation begins to break down due to various stresses--expected and unexpected--the population will grow unruly and demand to be taken care of. The political elites in low-IQ countries live a far more luxurious existence than the average person, a fact that will not escape the majority of the population when everyday machinery begins to break down.

We should hope that the weather in warm, traditionally low-IQ population countries will never turn unseasonably cold for a prolonged period. But too many things in the natural universe are beyond the control of humans, the climate being one of them. The natural state of Earth's climate for the past several million years has been one of extensive glaciation. Our current warm period is just a short, lucky intermission between the iceball Earth norms.

The tribes of Earth that migrated to colder climates developed over time to match their environment. The tribes that remained in the warmth nearer the equator were never challenged in the cyclical, systematic ways in which the more polar oriented tribes were tested.

Think about what happens when the Earth turns cold again. The ice will march equator-ward. Human populations will be pressed together. Cold weather humans will need warm weather lands to grow crops and to live out of the ice. Warm weather humans will need the technical expertise of cold weather humans to survive the unwelcome cold. But it will not go that smoothly. Disputes over control of territory are typical in all animal species, including man. Cold is a killing thing.

H/T Tom Nelson

Embracing the Incompetence of Perpetual Adolescence

If a society is to preserve its stability and a degree of continuity, it must know how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, attitudes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.
—Eric Hoffer

It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.
--Eric Hoffer

These quotes begin to reveal the complexity of maturing into adulthood. Youthful energy is always useful, whereas youthful petulance and naive impulsivity can make fools of persons of any age.

27 percent of adult children striking out on their own return home to live at least once; and that 46 percent of adult couples regard their parents’ houses as their “real” homes.7 Over in Italy, nearly one in three thirty-somethings never leave that “real” home in the first place.8 Neither have 25 percent of American men, ages eighteen to thirty.9 Maybe this helps explain why about one-third of the fifty-six million Americans sitting down to watch SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon each month in 2002 were between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine.10 (Nickelodeon’s core demographic group is between the ages of six and eleven.) These are grown-ups who haven’t left childhood. Then again, why should they? As movie producer and former Universal marketing executive Kathy Jones put it, “There isn’t any clear demarcation of what’s for parents and what’s for kids. We like the same music, we dress similarly.”11

...In considering what I like to call “the death of the grown-up,” it’s important to keep a fix on this fact: that for all but this most recent episode of human history, there were children and there were adults. Children in their teen years aspired to adulthood; significantly, they didn’t aspire to adolescence. Certainly, adults didn’t aspire to remain teenagers.

...The National Academy of Sciences has, in 2002, redefined adolescence as the period extending from the onset of puberty, around twelve, to age thirty.5 The MacArthur Foundation has gone farther still, funding a major research project that argues that the “transition to adulthood” doesn’t end until age thirty-four.6

Source

The Death of the Grownup by Diana West takes one look at the perpetual youth culture that has worked its will upon most western societies. Ms. West suggests that a society that attempts to focus upon youthful attitudes and proclivities to the exclusion of mature concerns, may be setting itself up for a hostile takeover. In this case, the hostiles would be Islamic supremacists.

The takeover would be demographic (differential birthrates) and by force of will--the barbarians who are willing to take the issue of control to an extreme that the "civilised but perpetual adolescents" cannot bring themselves to do.

Readers of Al Fin blog may recognise the much-mentioned issue of "psychological neoteny"--the perpetual incompetence of pampered adolescence--in my description of West's book.

Another book with overlapping concerns is The Case Against Adolescence by Robert Epstein. Epstein touches on another Al Fin concern with psychological neoteny--society's unwillingness to expose adolescents to the adult world of work and responsibility.

North American attitudes toward adolescence are certainly dysfunctional, and may even lead to increased vulnerability to outside threats. It is worthwhile to consider these concerns while there is time to address them.

The tenured incompetents who run much of academia and the media do not want ordinary people to concern themselves with these issues, since they consider the education of youth and the public to be their exclusive purview.

It is up to us, how long we allow them to believe that.

Mugabe's "Bleed the Rich" Economic Plan Results in 4500 per cent Inflation Rate

The world had great hopes for Robert Mugabe when he assumed leadership of Rhodesia, and changed the name to Zimbabwe. More than the name of the country changed. A once prosperous breadbasket of southern Africa has become one of the worst third world hellholes. How easy it seems, in hindsight, to totally destroy a country!

The accelerated decline of what's left of Zimbabwe's economy might soon leave the embattled president without the cash to pay off those on whom his political survival will depend. As prices spike and waves of Zimbabweans flee the country in desperation, the inner circle of his ZANU-PF party may finally have little choice but to push him aside.

The 83-year old president, in power since 1980, is unlikely to go gracefully. He vows to seek another five-year term in elections scheduled for March. Yet, across his country, high inflation has become hyperinflation. To this point, Mugabe's government has been able to collect taxes and maintain the president's patronage network, buying the loyalty of the army and police. ZANU-PF officials have been able to feed their most useful constituents.

But official estimates now set inflation rates at around 4,500 percent. The real figure is almost certainly much higher. The director of the International Monetary Fund's Africa department warned on July 31 that the figure could reach 100,000 percent by year's end. Prices for consumer goods change several times a day. Meat, produce, eggs, bread, cooking oil and soap have become precious commodities.

Officially, one American dollar buys 250 Zimbabwean dollars, but the black market rate is often 1,000 times higher. A typical pensioner is provided about 6,000 Zimbabwean dollars per month. In Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, a loaf of bread now costs between $Z30,000 and $Z40,000, a pack of chewing gum around $Z15,000.

Source

"Soak the rich" is a popular rallying cry for Hugo Chavez, as it continues to be for Robert Mugabe. It is likely that Chavez--in spite of all his oil--will chart a similar economic course for Venezuela. Economic incompetence appears to go along with dictators who hide their lust for personal power behind high sounding populist rhetoric.