Pink Floyd was Wrong -- We need some Education

We all know Pink Floyd's famous song We don't need no Education, written in informal english as if to highlight the speech of the uneducated, but this is precisely the wrong approach. We need education, we don't need schooling. Why is obvious; schools act as centres of indoctrination and in many ways it is a necessary evil of modern life that the government is involved in schooling at all.

Of course we all know that the song is a protest against authority, handed down through the school system and fed into unquestioning students who are told that the greatest virtue is deference to authority. Schooling teaches conformity, but because of schooling being confused with education, we tend to miss out on everything good about education. Now I know that We don't need no Schooling probably would not sell records, mostly because it does not fit the meter, but the point stands that education and schooling are frequently confused with one another.

This brings me to the image of the week, a protester screaming at the top of her lungs against the democratic process as she hears that Donald Trump has assumed the oath of office. She is a product of inablility to critique, the very thing which good education instills in a person. Socrates once said that "the unexamined life is not worth living" yet schooling does not teach personal examination, it teaches rubrics.

You might also have noticed if you've ever encountered an SJW in your day to day, that they have an air of teacherly scorn, which is manifest in the subtle ways that they seek to control arguments and demand deference. It's off putting to say the least, and it is a direct result of the indoctrination of schooling, that these people seek to imitate power by behaving like they're your 4th grade teacher.

Now in order to be educated one cannot rely on schooling, because it doesn't teach anything but rather it socializes children. The individual must instead be taught that they have agency, that in the past there were great people who are worthy of emulating and that they have the power to aspire to thier own ideals.

This is what the screaming protester is missing. She believes that she is powerless, so all she can do is scream on the floor; because she has lots of labels but no identity, lots of schooling but no education and lots of criticism but no self examination.