Posted on 11/25/2013 2:51:11 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
A new book, “The Art of Rube Goldberg,” has just been published. Even though Goldberg died four decades ago, his name and fame are as great as ever.
His comic genius was to show simple things made immensely complicated. This image of a nuclear bomb to kill a fly, as it were, perfectly captures a lot of the evils in our modern world. Things are over-designed, over-legislated, over-regulated, over-dictated, over-everything. Except successful.
Which brings us by perfect segue to our public schools. People are always saying we don’t spend enough money. Probably we’re spending twice as much as we need to. There, I said it.
Public schools use overpriced, overdesigned, incoherent textbooks, which are then replaced every few years. Constant new gimmicks, theories and curricula fly through the schools, each requiring the expenditure of billions more dollars. Everything is done as inefficiently as possible. Remedial education is a vast industry all by itself-- an industry made possible by educational malpractice in the first place.
It seems as though the most greedy textbooks publishers are in cahoots with the most ideologically extreme professors (i.e., they're socialists). Together they make all the decisions. Naturally they will come up with only bad, expensive, unproductive ideas. In short, they will labor mightily and come up with Rube Goldberg contraptions.
For more on why Rube Goldberg seems to be the architect of this country's public schools, see: http://www.examiner.com/article/rube-goldberg-contraption-our-public-schools
This particular machine has the job of placing a finger on a knot. .
Sorry, blog link is this: http://educationimproved.blogspot.com
Not sure how I copied wrong one.
You need it only if you want to see the drawing about the finger on the knot.
Thanks. We will replace http://educationimproved.blogspot.com/2013/06/public-schools—occupied-territory.html with your newer link http://educationimproved.blogspot.com/ Please hit the abuse button the next time. We can see your request faster this way. Thanks.
Looks interesting but ol’ ‘umble is gonna be dropping in
Of course the crucial difference is that Rube Golberg contraptions WORKED.
Good point!
lol
bump
You're right. The Progressives set about to reform American education in the 1890's and they succeeded. Under the, perhaps honest but naive, guise of democratizing the thing, they succeeded in short order in reducing educational opportunities for the brightest and condemning the ineducable to constant failure.
The last century has been nothing but a struggle to bring those two endpoints closer together. And they have!
The American people believe in “education” too so long as there is not too much studying involved.
That, sir is a vile slander! You can expect to hear from attorneys representing the late Mr. Goldberg's estate in the morning post!
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