Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Blame the leaders, not the students. Blame the system, not its products. Blame the parents, not the children. And that would be the actual-parents, not the step-parents.
Some attack their parents first, but all of them have a main and final target, and it is the same target for each and all of them: a school, usually the one in which they have dwelt, primary, secondary or post-secondary.
If they had not access to a firearm for executing the attack, they would find another instrument for the purpose. It’s the school, the school, that’s the target of the hatred. And those in it. But the context is the school. The school is the shooter’s focus. It should be everyone’s focus.
Why?
That a school is the ultimate target tells us something is wrong with the school. And since the schools are all alike in educational philosophy, especially the public schools and the post-secondary schools, public and private, it is reasonable to infer that something is wrong with the system of education per se. Something is wrong with the schools themselves, as a system of education. They are not performing as advertised or as intended.
Who is happy with the USA system of education? No one is. How many reformers have come and gone, and the system waddles on like a winged duck trying to avoid another shot from the hunter. The reformers obviously wasted their time and taxpayers’ monies.
What’s wrong?
The USA system of education and the schools in it lack freedom, that is what’s wrong with them. That is why students keep shooting the system up and its leaders do not protect it or those in it. No one likes the system. It stinks.
What to do?
Tear it down, bury it and start over. Dismiss the Mann-Dewey-Prussian industrial factory model in use for over a century. Adapt and apply the Benedictine-Franciscan area studies model of the Early and High Middle Ages. Let the areas be Philosophy, History, Government, Industry and Art. (See below for details.). The Early and High Middle Ages of Europe were the most recent epoch of generalized freedom and happiness among humans. See how they did it, then copy and adapt.
For academic pedagogical method, use the Thayer Method traditionally employed at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. No lectures. Class time is for answering students’ doubts/questions regarding material assigned them and studied by them the previous day.
A Quintivium.
Let the genders, male and female, school together until age twelve. At age twelve, or thereabout, separate their schooling and let each gender, male and female, labor in quiet among the five area studies as per their needs and wishes.
Until age twelve, or thereabout, since maturity rarely tracks with years, let the boys and girls learn together to read, write and sum, appreciate the opportunities and obligations of citizenship, practice obedience to legitimate authority, starting towards their parents at home and moving on towards their teacher at school, experience the thrill of good character, of honor and gain reverence for seminal personalities and struggles of American history.
Do this during those years according to each student’s grasp of the material across the area studies of the Quintivium rather than by passage from one grade level to another, which is artificial and industrial. In other words, have no grade levels. Test for comprehension, not for age-to-comprehension conformity.
At age twelve — roughly the onset of puberty — separate the genders, male and female, for continuing education. Guide and let the students find their way through subtleties and professionalisms of the Quintivium’s sub-area studies. Again, no grade levels. Test for comprehension, not for age-to-comprehension conformity. A school is not a factory. Testing and teacher performance review, themselves, require de-industrialization. Let them reflect the freedom, expertise and long-term depth learning implied in the Quintivium.
And more.
The most current push-out of the Quintivium’s details is here. A discussion of its origin, need and details is here. Further links to my writings about Quintivium are under the word as showing above.
The school is a child of the church.
Churchmen came to fear the tirades of schoolmen and tyrants.
Churchmen lost their grounding in Logos Theology.
Churchmen lost their leonine tone, let in fear of tyrants’ tirades: Horace Mann, John Dewey, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin.
The Declaration of Arbroath, where Quintivium starts, is written by a cleric!
The Roman Catholic Church will be saved again by Poles and Spaniards.
What does not increase quiet, freedom and love is not education.
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God
Update 1: School shoot-ups argue for citizens of arms-bearing age and ability to own a rifle and ammunition for it, master platoon-and company-level tactical training and belong to a civil defense battalion attached to local law enforcement. Arm everyone who reasonably can be armed, train them in the use of firearms and organize them as local response groups. Civilian shooting events argue for that response.
Update 2: Firearm education in schools
Update 3: First space, then auto—now Elon Musk quietly tinkers with education
Update 4: The Sad State of Higher Education
Update 5: Despite guns and schools debate, participation on high school rifle teams is increasing
Update 6: We Will Never Fix Campus Indoctrination Until We Cut College Subsidies
Update 7: Roger Kimball: Don’t Celebrate Bastille Day
Update 8: John Dale Dunn: Another scientist challenges Darwin’s theory
Update 9: VDH: Universities Breed Anger, Ignorance, and Ingratitude
Update 10: Elon Musk: Graduating from a college ‘not needed,’ ‘they’re not for learning’
Update 11: Lawrence W. Reed: The Myth that Americans Were Poorly Educated before Mass Government Schooling
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
