Through Education We Will Change The World

           Plato was a Greek philosopher who lived from 428-348 BCE. He was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle. Plato was one of the most important thinkers of his time and arguably ever. His writing is so beneficial that even though it is over 2,300 years old, it is still studied, used, and relevant today. The Republic is comprised of several books written about Socrates. Of these books there are two that I find particular relevant and I reference them quite often in my everyday life. Books II and VII of the Republic are very powerful and, when studied deeply, can depict the world we live in today.

The Ring of Gyges

Book II is about the Legend of the Ring of Gyges. In Book II Socrates asks us to imagine that a noble man is given a ring which makes him invisible. Once in possession of this ring, the man can act unjustly with no fear of reprisal. Glaucon Claims no one can deny that even the most just man would behave unjustly if he had this ring. He would indulge all of his materialistic, power-hungry, and erotically lustful urges. This tale proves that people are only just because they are afraid of punishment for injustice. No one is just because justice is desirable in itself.

Glaucon ends his speech with an attempt to demonstrate that not only do people prefer to be unjust rather than just, but that it is rational for them to do so. The perfectly unjust life, he argues, is more pleasant than the perfectly just life. In making this claim, he draws two detailed portraits of the just and unjust man. The completely unjust man, who indulges all his urges, is honored and rewarded with wealth. The completely just man, on the other hand, is scorned and wretched.

His brother, Adeimantus, breaks in and bolsters Glaucon’s arguments by claiming that no one praises justice for its own sake, but only for the rewards it allows you to reap in both this life and the afterlife. He reiterates Glaucon’s request that Socrates show justice to be desirable in the absence of any external rewards: that justice is desirable for its own sake, like joy, health, and knowledge.

This Allegory is presented for Socrates to explain what he thinks justice should be as well as how fallible man is. I chose this story primarily because it makes me wonder: what is justice?

In the Republic, there were several definitions given by several people. Polemachus said that justice is “doing well to your friends and harm to your enemies.” Thrasymachus explains justice and injustice as "justice is what is advantageous to the stronger, while injustice is to one's own profit and advantage." Glaucon says that justice is “a social contract that emerges between people who are roughly equal in power, such that no one is able to oppress the others, since the pain of suffering injustice outweighs the benefit of committing it.” To Socrates, justice was “carrying out one’s duty to one’s station.” By his definition, if one’s job is to lie, then the just thing to do is to lie.

I think that the word justice is something that cannot be defined by what it is. I can only think of defining it by what it is not. Justice is not harming another human being. If you do acts that result in someone’s harm, you are committing injustices. This definition makes it hard to be a just person. It forces you to be educated on all possible outcomes so you can decide which act is just and which acts are not.

The Ring of Gyges metaphor really makes me think whether or not a definition for justice really exists. In the Ring of Gyges, Gyges discovers a magical ring that can turn him invisible. Using this ring, he deceives, murders, and manipulates his way into becoming king. Regardless of what he does as king, using my definition, nothing he does can make what he did just.

So this begs the question, is the ring of Gyges metaphor a powerful argument for doing injustice if one can get away with it? This question has plagued my moral compass. The metaphor clearly points out that no person could be just if they had the power of invisibility. A person would become consumed with that power and would act out every fantasy. It would start with little things like sneaking into a girl’s locker room and would progress to stealing money out of a cash register. It would eventually turn into doing possibly evil things. If these are the acts that a person plans on committing then the ring is not a good argument for this.

There are other acts that may be more persuasive in convincing me that you can use the Ring of Gyges to commit acts of injustice. For example, if I was alive in 1941 and had the ring, would I be able to use the ring to kill Adolf Hitler? I would be saving millions of lives and I would only have to kill one person if I did it right. Many people could easily justify committing one murder to save millions of lives. In fact, in a class discussion I had a few years ago, one classmate defined justice by calling it “a balance.” Whatever does the most good is justice. By this definition, killing Hitler would be a just act. Or perhaps it would not. Because we have only seen the outcome of Hitler’s holocaust, we have no way of knowing what would have happened in history if he was killed. If a greater tragedy happened because we killed Hitler, it no longer stands as a just act. By my definition, this could not be just because I think you can never justify murdering a human-being, regardless of the evils they commit. I believe in rehabilitation and if I were to use the ring in any way back then, it would be to capture Hitler in an attempt to put him to trial. In this way, I think you can avoid committing the great injustice of murder and still do the right thing by saving the millions of lives.

Another example for committing injustice is the act of Robin Hood: rob from the rich and give to the poor. This is one that rocks my moral compass the most. Because I believe so strongly in the community and helping everyone survive and succeed, not just the richest one percent, I may be able to, in good conscience, use to ring to steal to help those who need it. The reason I could do this is because if I was faced with the choice of a rich person having another car, and 1,000 people eating for a month, I definitely choose the latter. But in order to be able to do it without affecting my conscience negatively, I would have to exhaust all other possible solutions. Because once I decide that stealing is the solution, where do I stop? Do I stop the second everyone has food but no shelter, do I keep going until everyone has food and shelter but no car, or do I push it to the point of Communism, where everyone has an equal share? Once Pandora’s Box is opened, I find it impossible to decide where the just point to stop is. And where am I in this predicament? Do I give myself a percentage, do I leave myself out of it, or do I treat myself like any other poor person? Where do I draw the line?

I think if the Ring of Gyges existed, it would be too much for any one person to handle. Even if they were the noblest person without a selfish thought in their brain, they would not be able to handle the great powers and responsibility of the ring. Would they choose to kill Hitler, or let him be? Would they steal from the rich to give to the poor, or let the “free-market” decide where the money goes? What would they weigh in as pros and cons? And once they have the ring and see the great power the ring holds, would they still be so noble, or would they allow it to consume them like it would a normal person?

As noble as I think I am, I would be afraid to see what kind of person I would become if I had possession of the ring. I would be unable to resist committing atrocious acts. I could only hope that watching unknowing women undress would be the worst of my crimes and I would use the ring towards more noble things. I know that death is not a penalty anyone should receive for any crime. But because it is such an easy solution, I may become consumed with certain goals that I may see it as just a means to an end. When I am the only possible governor, will I ultimately do what is right?

The Allegory of the Cave

In book VII, Socrates and Glaucon discuss education through the metaphor of a cave. Socrates tells the story as a what if scenario. In his story, a group of people lived in a cave their entire lives, never seeing the outside world. These people are chained in such a way that they cannot look anywhere else but directly in front of them. In front of them is nothing but a blank wall and behind them are fire and a partial wall with different people carrying different kinds of statues on it. Some of the people converse as they move the statues and different noises are made. The only thing the people in the cave can interpret is the shadows the statues make on the wall and, because this is all they have seen, this is their reality.

One of the prisoners was then freed from his chains and is forced to see the fire and the statues. It pains him and he refuses to accept it at first but eventually does. He then is forced outside of the cave and into the real world. He is only able to adapt piece by piece. First, he is able to see the shadows, then reflections, then able to see the people and animals. It progresses that way until he is finally able to see the sun and understand the world around him. To me, this story is religion.

I was raised Christian in a Christian society. I chose to go to church on my own every Sunday and listen to the pastor, my best friend’s father, speak his sermon. This is what everyone around me and I perceived as truth. I continued to perceive it as truth until I was about 16 years old. I started to see the statues and the fire. I started to question my faith. It started out with little questions like “When did the dinosaurs live if the world is only a few thousand years old?” This got me to start looking into the possibilities of other beliefs. I continued question little things at a time all the way through high school until I finally saw the sun. With all the ties of politics and religions I knew that Christianity could not possibly be the truth because, how Anne Lamott put it, “you can safely assume that you’ve created God in your image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” I continue my personal evolution as I learn more and more about all the bad things religion shoves down peoples’ throats. I have reached the point of the Allegory of the Cave where I would rather go through suffering then to go back to swallowing the hate speech.

This was just my personal relationship with this book, but it relates to so much more. Our Society as a whole tries to keep us in Plato’s Cave. Our political system, religion, media, our education, social norms, etc. are setup to keep us ignorant and as I always say, education is the cure to everything. People may claim that I am a conspiracy theorist, but we are slaves to the elite and we are too ignorant to see it. With our public education system, The Powers That Be do not want us to really learn. They dumb down everything, have us teach to the tests, and completely forbid any real open discussion. Politics and religion are the easiest ways for them to divide and conquer. They keep us fighting each other and we don’t see who our real enemy is. “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful” (Seneca the Younger). The media is just the icing on the cake. It keeps us entertained and informed enough to make us feel good about ourselves. “Fox News: Rich people paying rich people to tell the middle class people to blame poor people” (Unknown).

The Powers-That-Be, as I like to call them, are the holders of the Ring of Gyges. Whether they felt just at the beginning or not is unknown, but they have become consumed by the powers that the ring possess. The ring in this instance is power and money. They use their ring to manipulate the media and the political system to pass legislation and to propagate the ideas behind them. They destroy our environment, healthcare, and our education system to line their pockets through privatized prisons, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol, and Big Pharmaceutical. They use this ring so well that they have us thanking them and voting against our best interests. They have locked us in a cave behind the boob tube and the American Dream.

The Allegory of the Cave and the Ring of Gyges are metaphors that still fit society today. We are living in the cave. Whether it is the hidden agendas of religion or the Oligarchical-Plutocracy masked behind the false image of Democracy we have in America, we are blind. The only cure for that is to face the pain of exiting the cave and bare the light of the sun.

How we do that is the obvious problem. The people in the cave are many and the Powers-That-Be outside the cave are few. But they possess the ring that puts a boulder in front of the entrance of the cave. To solve this issue we must take our first step. We must turn away from the shadows on the wall and see them for what they are. We must work together to move the boulder out of our way. As Morpheus said in the famous Matrix movie (based on Plato’s Cave), “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters-- the very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system; that they will fight to protect it.” This tells me that the battle cannot be over an adult mind. Sure, we can get some to crossover and free their mind but the battle must be fought and won with our youth.

We must unite for education reform. If we can create real change in our system, we can change everything. If we can teach our children to read, analyze, and question everything, they will have the tools to escape the cave and destroy the Ring of Gyges for good.

Theocratic or Secular America?

Throughout our lives we have heard the story of why the Founding Fathers came to America. The story we were told was that the Founding Fathers came here because of religious persecution in England. They escaped and formed this nation to have ‘Freedom of Religion.’ We are currently in a very big religion push in politics so there is a lot of mention that America was established as ‘Christian Nation.’ Which story is true and which one is false? Or perhaps they are both false? Was the government formed as a secular nation like the stories we were told in school; was America formed as a Theocracy like the ‘Religious Right’ are saying; or is the truth somewhere in the middle? Have we become more religious or less since the colonial times?

We have this image formed in our head of America being established on secularism but there were many religious groups, particularly the Puritans, who were a part of the formation of the 13 original colonies. These Puritans were responsible for a great amount of persecution.

The Puritan Beliefs are: Humans are born sinful since Adam’s fall; God only saves a select few; Jesus died for the chosen ones, not for everyone; God’s grace is freely given, cannot be earned or denied; and those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God (Morison, 1972). The last belief is the most substantial. Due to the religious experience, most Puritans believe that they are one of the chosen and, in turn, believe they have to ability to interpret the Bible. This led to their acts of persecution. They wanted everyone to worship their way and because they were the dominating force in the colonies, they had the power to punish nonconformists with fines, banishment, imprisonment, and torture.

Mary Dyer was an English-born immigrant who came to Massachusetts in 1635. Mary became a Quaker and quickly became the target for persecution. Quakers were banished from Massachusetts, so she moved to Rhode Island after threats of death. Mary did not heed these warnings, however and returned to Massachusetts periodically. On June 1, she was walked out of her prison house towards a tree to be hanged. She had been here before. Seven months earlier, she had been caught and was facing execution. She was walked to that tree in the same fashion but that time she was with two fellow compatriots. Those two young men were strung up to that tree and murdered. When it was her turn, things were different. They only went through the ordeal as a charade—an attempt to get her to repent. They wanted her to repent, be set free, and then be an example for the other Quakers. However, that was not the case – she did not repent.  Luckily, they realized how bad it would look if the news of them killing a mother reached England and she was let go. On that June day, seven months later, she was not so lucky. Despite pleads by Mary’s husband, she was hanged. Mary was murder for simply being a Quaker.

Another example of these despicable acts was the Salem Witch Trials. The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings, as well as prosecutions, of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. In that time, the belief in the supernatural was common. Witchcraft had become synonymous with the devil, demons, and evil spirits. In fact, it was expected for people to believe in evil spirits. 17^th century philosopher and writer Joseph Glanvill said, “If they doubted the reality of spirits, they not only denied demons, but also the almighty God” (Glanvill, 1676, p. 2). In Salem, it was believed that good came from God and any misfortunes were the work of the devil. Infant deaths, illness, and crop failures were blamed on the evil spirits and were attributed to witchcraft. Because you cannot prove a negative, once an accusation of witchcraft was placed upon someone, it stuck. Those who maintained their innocence were executed and those who confessed to be witches were not executed. Over 200 were accused and not one was cleared (Drake, 1968).

Their original intent was not to be so violent. They set out to form what Plato called the Good City or, as John Winthrop called it, the City upon a Hill. In 1630 while aboard the Arbella John Winthrop said:

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together; always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "may the Lord make it like that of New England." For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going. And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. "Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil," in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it. Therefore let us choose life that we and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity.

Their goals were noble; their results were not.

            The Jamestown settlement was filled with a different type of people. Unlike the Puritans, they did not set out to for the purity of their settlement. These particular immigrants came to America for economic reasons. To these early Virginians, they were less interested in the intangibles and much more interested in material wealth. These secularists were not anti-religion; they were just predisposed with things they valued more. This is very similar to the people of today. There is a small amount of extremely religious people that hold God and religion above everything else and have the Bible play a role in their everyday decisions. The majority of people, however, are more concerned with the tangibles – the things that help them meet their everyday human needs (Ahlstrom, 2004).

            Because the church was not their primary concern, they were less forceful when it came to conversion than the Puritans. They were more concerned with survival and prosperity than the church, so they were more willing to accept those that could be deemed as outsiders. They recruited Presbyterians and other German and Swiss Protestants to move to Virginia. These newly moved settlers could be used as a form of protection against the Native Americans and the French. If an attack occurred, they knew they could be trusted to alert the rest of the English settlements. Allowing people from different churches was a small price to pay in order to have a little extra security (Olmstead, 1960).

            Ironically, the Puritans were the ones who sought out to form The City Upon the Hill, but the secularists were the ones who brought this idea to fruition. They were able to look past differences and “delighted in each other; made others’ conditions their own; rejoiced together, mourned together, labored and suffered together, always having before their eyes their commission and community in the work, as members of the same body” (Winthrop, 1630).

            If we jump ahead to 1750, “there were about 1,300 churches (chapels, meeting house, and parish buildings) in the colonies, or about one church per 800 of population” (Nellis, 2007, p. 33). Even if all the churches were completely full every Sunday, this still shows that the majority of people no longer attended church regularly. Numerous Founding Fathers have been quoted declaring the secularist views:

Ben Franklin said, “In the affairs of the world, men are saved not by faith, but by the lack of it.” Thomas Jefferson said, “There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.” John Adams said, “This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it.” Thomas Paine said, “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all;” George Washington said, “Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.” Abraham Lincoln said, “The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession.” James Madison said, “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise” (Sobel, 2011).

These are just a few of many quotes by our founders and they paint a very clear picture of a secularist view of the country they envisioned.

            If we fast forward again to 1789, we can skim through the proposed Bill of Rights to see again that secularism was the dominating view of that time. The First Amendment insures that never again will the United States be a theocracy by printing the words “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (Bill of Rights, Amendment I). In fact, throughout the whole Constitution, the only mention of God or religion is the forbiddances of religious tests for public office and the establishment of religion.

            If we jump ahead yet again to today, we can analyze just how religious we are to get a clearer picture of the 18^th century. Although it is difficult to be precise, Hartford Institute for Religious Research estimates that there are about 350 thousand religious congregations in the United States (Hartford Institute). There are about 314 million citizens in the US which calculates to about 900 people per church. That is very similar to the church/population ratio of the late 18^th century. According to the National Congregations Study, the amount of weekly worshipers is about 56 million people, or 17.8% of the population. This more closely resembles Jamestown settlement secularists, as opposed to the Puritan settlements. The majority of US citizens label themselves as religious while only 17.8% of the entire population lists their religion as their top priority. Like Jamestown, today’s America is more concerned with fulfilling their needs and less concerned with religion.

            Was the government formed as a secular nation like we were told in school, or was America formed as a Theocracy? The evidence shows that both sides are correct. There were the Theocrats and the Secularists. Both played a positive and negative role in American history. The evidence also shows however, that what started more as a Theocracy shifted towards being more secular; it was at that time that the United States was formed. History is said to repeat itself and it is repeating again. We shifted from religious to secular over the course of the 17^th and 18^th centuries and we are going through a similar shift now. We are in a scientific push and science is answering the questions that were once declared as God. The majority of the world is becoming radically less religious and America is slowly following. We will hit a point in the near future where religion will lose the last strand of the rope it has tied around our government -- secularism will rise in its place.

           

Reference List

Ahlstrom, Sydney E.. (2004) A Religious History of the American People. New York:

Vail-Ballou  Press, Inc.

 

Frederick C. Drake (1968). American Quarterly. Vol. 20, No. pp. 694-725. The Johns Hopkins University Press

 

Glanvill, Joseph. Essay IV Against modern Sadducism in the matter of Witches and Apparitions in Essay on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion, 2nd Ed, London

Greer, Allan. (2000). The Jesuit Relations. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Kolchin, Peter. (1993). American Slavery 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang.

Kuppperman, Karen Ordahl. (2007). Major Problems in American Colonial History. Boston, MA: Wadsworth

 

Lepore, Jill. (1998). The Name of War. New York: First Vintage Books

 

Loewen, James W. (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone.

 

Middleton, Richard. (1992). Colonial America: A History, 1607-1760. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers

 

Morison, Samuel Eliot (1972). The Oxford History of the American People. New

York City: Mentor.

 

Nellis, Eric. (2007). The Long Road to Change: America’s Revolution, 1750-1820. Ontario: Canada Cataloguing in Publication.

 

Olmstead, Clifton E. (1960). History of Religion in the United States. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

 

Sobel, Robert. (2011). 20 Quotes from Historical Americans against the US being a Christian Nation. Examiner.com. Retrieved on June 28, 2013 from http://www.examiner.com/article/20-quotes-from-historical-americans-against-the-u-s-being-a-christian-nation

 

Wills, Gary. (2007). Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America. New York: Penquin Group Inc.

 

Hartford Institute for Religious Study. Fast Facts about American Religion. Retrieved June 28, 2013 from http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/fastfacts/fast_facts.html#numcong

How to Put Ethics into Education

It is common knowledge that society sends its entire population through an education system in order to maintain a competent society. The idea is to invest in the people to produce a workforce that can do the jobs our economy demands. Somewhere along the way, this system has been undermined and is no longer producing a populace that is productive. American is number one in the world in incarcerated citizens per capita (Nation Master), number seven in literacy (Huffington Post), number 31 in math (Huffington Post), number 23 in science (Huffington Post), number three in median household income (Huffington Post), and number four in labor force (Huffington Post).

 

 

As teachers, we are expected to take in every student, teach them Math, Reading, Writing, Science, and Social Studies and have them be able to prove their competency on a standardized test every year. The budget has continued to be cut, classrooms have gotten larger, the content the students are expected to learn in order to graduate has decreased, and the economic situation for the students arriving at school has become worse. Teachers are expected to do more with less.

 

           

This poses the question: What is the objective of school in today’s world? I would like to be able to say that the education system is still trying to produce a competent workforce filled with entrepreneurs, inventors, and future world changers but I cannot confidently say that. I thoroughly believe that our education system has been intentionally undermined in order to produce people just smart enough to maintain the status quo, but not smart enough to ask questions.

 

 

First Lens

The first lens I look at this situation through is the Relationship Lens. According to Baird, the relationship lens is asking the questions: “What is a fair system?” and “How do I care for those with no power?” It focuses on the relationship between a person and the community. It also asks whether or not the citizens are receiving “fair treatment”; are the rules being administered fairly; are the people receiving fair compensation; is blame being placed fairly (Baird p.241).

 

 

According to Rawls, people want to be ethical and just but they possess a “Veil of Ignorance” that forces them to think they are being just while they are possibly being unjust. They are ignorant to their place in society and think that because something is fair for them, it is fair for all. Rawls uses a metaphorical Cloud of Oppression to explain this. The cloud is raining down acid rain, which represents oppression, and every person possesses pieces that form their protective umbrella against this rain. Everything in your life that puts you in a category without oppression is a piece for your umbrella. If you are white, heterosexual, male, Christian, and possess a lot of money, you will have a larger umbrella than a black, homosexual, female, atheist who is in poverty. Rawls says people are ignorant to others who possess a smaller umbrella and are unsympathetic to their situations.

 

 

A great example of this is our Judicial System. Is the system fair and does it care for those who do not possess power? When looking at the statistics, I would have to say it is not. When 1 out of 3 black males spends time in the prison system while only 1 out of every 17 white males goes through the prison system, it is clear the system is flawed. When 1 out of every 9 black males between 20 and 34 is currently in prison compared to 1 out of 30 for all males in that age range, it is clear the system is flawed (Prisoners of the Census).

 

 

Looking at the education system through the Relationship Lens poses a problem because of Rawls Veil of Ignorance. How do [mostly] middle class, white teachers teach a populous filled with different races, genders, religions, and financial backgrounds? How do you have a mature approach without having a Utopia viewpoint that is unreachable? To do so we must first recognize the Cloud of Oppression that rains down upon our students. This forces us to do research into the demographics of our students. We must begin with finding out the answer to some questions. We must find out what the free/reduced lunch rate is, what the race breakdown is, what the average household income is, and we must understand the culture of the students we work with. Some cultures think school should be done at school and kept separate from home, for example, while other cultures want to be involved in every aspect of the education process. Instead of trying to force these cultures to adapt to our own ideals of what school is, we must adapt teaching to meet the needs of the students. If we can do this, we can begin to form an education system that is fair for all students who enter. They will have rules and expectations that are fair and not necessarily equal. This approach must be taken in order to adjust for the America we live in that favors the rich, the white, and the powerful and return it to the country where the American Dream can still be achieved.

 

 

Second Lens

The second lens I incorporate in this dilemma is the Results Lens. According to Baird, the Results Lens is asking the questions: “What do I want?”; “What are mutually good results for all in this situation?”; “How can I be a partner in creating a better world?” It also focuses on how to maximize satisfaction, how to maintain efficiency, how to remain loyal, and how to avoid conflicting interests (Baird p. 209).

 

 

J.S. Mill said that there are higher and lower satisfactions. He theorized that it is ethical to delay small, immediate gratification in order to attain a larger one. He said, “It is better to be Socrates Dissatisfied than to be a pig satisfied.” My best explanation of this quote is to compare it to The Allegory of the Cave (Republic Book 7). In the story, a group of people are shackled entirely, causing an inability to move or look anywhere besides this wall. It is dark but there are shadows casted onto the wall. Because these people were born and have always lived this way, this is the only reality they know. One day, a person comes down into the cave and breaks the shackles off one of the men. He tries to explain the truth to this man - the reality of the situation - but the truth is too much to bear. He refuses to believe him. After some time, the Caveman is willing to venture on, so his Rescuer takes him higher in the cave behind where they have been shackled. He shows the Caveman the fire, the people, and statues that had been behind them causing the shadows to appear on the wall and the voices that were heard. Again, the truth is far too much to bear. It hurts the cave man gravely. After some time, as before, the Caveman is willing to venture on. The Rescuer takes him outside but the sun is so bright he cannot see. He fell to the ground in agony. He then started to touch the grass and see the shadows casted by the trees. He could later see reflections off the water and then the water itself. He could see the trees and plants and, eventually, he was finally able to see the sun. He was finally able to comprehend what the Rescuer had tried to explain to him. He could finally see reality in all its glory as well as its horror. This was his deliverance. The Caveman was given the chance to go back into the cave and tell the others what he saw. When he did, the others called him a fool. They resisted and told him to come back and stay with them because that was the true reality. But as much as the Caveman’s discovery hurt, he refused to go back. He knew that it was better to know the truth and the hurt than to live in blissful ignorance. In this context Mill’s quote is saying that it is better to pursue the ‘sun’ and never see its light and feel its warmth than to stay shackled inside the cave, ignorant of the beauties you are missing out on in life.

 

 

Looking at the education system through the Results Lens poses a problem because in order to find what mutually good results are for all in this situation, you must look at the possible outcomes for the students, the teachers, and the future of society. In order for this to be accomplished, we must meet what Aristotle called Arete in his States of Character chart. This means that we must want to do good for all parties involved, set a plan for that to be accomplished, and the results must also be good for everyone involved. This has proved difficult because it is impossible to know the results before we set forth on the plan. This forces we as educators to constantly research teaching practices that work and do not work elsewhere. We must be willing to challenge ourselves, make mistakes, and adapt based on what we learn from our mistakes.

 

 

It also proves difficult because it can lead to being so numbers oriented and so cut and dry that one can neglect to have the compassion needed for students to be successful. Without compassion, we will inevitably cut out the straggling students and immediately cut out a teacher who may struggle in their career.

 

 

Ethical Maturity

Incorporating these two lenses together is extremely important to solve this problem and achieve Ethical Maturity. If you look at this dilemma through just the Relationship Lens, you will soon realize that this is a Utopian viewpoint. It paints a picture where everyone gets along and is compassionate towards one another; and that is simply not how our society works. The most likely result of using only this lens is becoming so focused on keeping the struggling students on the bottom moving up, that we stop challenging the top students. This would result in lowering the ceiling in education as opposed to raising the floor. This would end in economic and societal failure because we would no longer produce the entrepreneurs, inventors, and the people who will make changes in this world in exchange for the citizens landing in the middle.

 

 

If we look at this dilemma through just the Results lens, we will notice that it neglects compassion. It goes straight for the numbers and cuts out the ‘fat.’ It is currently the system that we are using. We have standardized every aspect of learning where we try to produce ‘cookie cut’ students and we discard the ones that do not fit the mold. It also pushes out teachers who use unconventional methods of teaching, even when the teaching method may be successfully teaching the students. Using only this lens has caused educators to teach toward the test and teach students what to think instead of how to think. It is solely quantitative and not qualitative.

 

 

The best approach is to combine the two lenses. We must push students towards results while maintaining compassion for the different views, backgrounds, and learning styles of our students. We must continue to question what results we actually want out of students and research how we get from point A to point B. We must realize that because starting point ‘A’ is different for everyone, it must be possible for ending point ‘B’ to be adaptable, as well. We must also realize that some teachers ‘drive a car’ to get to their destination while other teachers may ‘take a taxi’ or ‘take the train.’ The important thing is arriving to the destination, not micromanaging how they get there.

 

 

Proposal One

My first proposal is to address the teacher accountability. We cannot allow for teachers to keep their jobs if they become complacent or ineffective. Teachers are paid to teach and the foundation of our future is placed in their hands. If they are not successful, then they are in the wrong profession. To solve this problem I think we must get rid of tenure. It is the biggest blockade between getting rid of ineffective teachers and bringing in new, effective ones.

 

           

I know that this does not please the teachers involved so it does not meet both lenses. In order to please the teachers and stay ethical with the Results and Relationship lens, I propose a middle-ground, three-year tenure. This new tenure gives a teacher three years of job security, which will push teachers to try new things and be willing to make some mistakes without being in fear of losing their job, but also keeps a teacher from getting complacent because they have to be evaluated again in three years.

 

           

The evaluation process is where it becomes most difficult. This is where using both lenses is extremely important. You must form several committees in each school that evaluate these teachers. The committee has to be made up of a district member, a member of the school, a parent, and a student. During an evaluation year, a teacher is observed by three different committees on three separate, random occasions. Each committee documents tangibly what they observed and votes whether they think the teacher is effective or not. A teacher must have at least two committees that think they are not effective in order to be put on probation. If the teacher is put on probation, they have the next year to be evaluated a second time and be considered ‘effective.’ If they are effective, they receive three years of tenure and if they are not effective after their probation period, they are let go. This is the best way to keep both the interests of the students and the teachers in mind and not give one individual too much power over what constitutes a teacher being ‘effective.’

 

 

Proposal Two           

My second proposal is to increase the pay of teachers nationwide. Currently, the teaching profession is only sought after by wide-eyed optimists who want to make a real difference in this world and those who like having a lot of days off throughout the year. There is no fiscal incentive for the best and brightest who seek financial reward for all their hard work. Our society values wealth above all and we look down on middle-class teachers, policeman, and firefighters while putting rich athletes and CEOs on a pedestal. If we pay teachers a six-figure income like we pay lawyers and doctors, it will attract people who want a career that is both fulfilling and financially stable.

 

           

By attracting smarter, harder working, and more capable people into the education field, it will undoubtedly improve how information is presented to the students and will lead to brand new ways to measure the amount of knowledge a student has. We need the best and brightest to teach the future’s best and brightest and return this country to the ‘Shining City on the Hill.’

 

 

Proposal Three

My next proposal is probably the most difficult one to accomplish because it involves changing how we educate students throughout their entire lives in school. I propose instituting an ‘Abilities Based’ system that moves students to the next grade based on their abilities, not their age. Through this approach, if a student is ready to graduate high school at age 12 they may. If you are not ready to move on at 22, that is ok. The goal is to have citizens who are prepared for the world when graduating, not just waiting for them to turn 18 and wishing them luck.

           

 

In order to accomplish this complete overhaul, we must do a top-down approach. We must change what colleges expect in order to enter. No more Index scores based on GPA and ACT/SAT scores. Every student who graduates and is college bound will be prepared to handle college scholastically. The Universities will then have to find another way to decipher talent because we will be graduating only prepared students.

 

           

If we are willing to remove Capitalism from this process entirely, we can imitate what Iceland does. Iceland has seven Universities and any student who graduates their [high school] education program and is eligible to attend college, must be admitted to the state-run schools if they apply (Iceland). If we do this correctly, it will force a high expectation for what is acceptable for a student to graduate high school.

 

 

Proposal Four

My next proposal seems like a path that has already begun. It will allow for different pathways for students while they are in high school. It is a fantasy to say that every student belongs at a University and it is ridiculous to force students to wait until after graduating to start preparing for their career. If a student knows what they want to do with their life at a young age, they can begin taking College/Vocational courses that meet their learning requirements for their chosen career path. They will still need to fulfill their high school expectations to graduate, but they will enter college with many of their requirements finished or finish high school ready to start their career.

 

           

This will benefit both society and the students because it will reduce the amount of time they spend in school after graduating high school. As a result, this will reduce the amount of money they will need to take out in loans for their housing and food while attending school and will create more workers sooner which will stimulate the economy and pay taxes.

 

 

Proposal Five

My final proposal is a faux pas in today’s society because with our fear-based corporate media, we have demonized the word Socialism, making anything ‘Nationalized’ sound evil, and anything Capitalistic sound like the best option. I propose that we continue publically funding K-12 education but extend it to vocational schools and Universities until 5 years of education are fulfilled after high school. The reason we started paying for education through high school was because a high school diploma was needed to make America the great country it used to be. Now, we cannot compete with the rest of the world without a college education, so it is now time to extend our education benefits towards a college degree.

           

 

The way I propose paying for this is starting a “Future Investment” tax. One does not begin paying the tax until after graduating college, but once they do, they pay a small tax throughout the remainder of their lives to invest in future students. Iceland uses a similar system and ends up paying an average of about $6,000 per person as opposed to in American where, after interest, a college degree costs an average of $100,000 (Iceland).  This plan will make college cheaper, will allow more people to receive a college education, and inherently creates a more educated populous. A more educated populous will, in turn, create a more prosperous economy and a stronger community.

 

 

Conclusion

The education system is currently broken. We are producing less educated students with every graduation class and are no longer competing with other countries in the World Market. Teachers are expected to do more and more, while given less to work with. The economy for the poverty class and middle class has not bounced back after the recession, which results in students coming to school hungry or from a home where their parent is never home because they have to work constantly to make ends meet. There are so many issues involved with this problem that cannot be controlled by educators or the education system. Despite these outer issues, the education system can be fixed. It is a long road but you can be accomplished.

 

 

If we attack this problem ethically using the Results Lens combined with the Relationship Lens, it will get solved. Combining those lenses will result in a plan that is both qualitative and quantitative; that is numbers based while remaining compassionate towards all those involved. I believe that my five proposals of completely changing tenure rules, evaluating teachers, increasing teacher pay drastically, doing a top-down approach for abilities-based education, creating career pathways in high school, and nationalizing education through college will drastically improve, if not solve, our education problems. It can be done and must be done. Our society must stand up against the Plutocracy and fight for these changes. I hope one day to be in a position where I can help implement these desperately needed changes.

 

 

Work Cited

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/27/education-olympics-how-do_n_1707968.html

http://www.iceland.is/the-big-picture/people-society/education/

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/toobig/race_ethnicity_age.html

Baird, Catharyn. “Everyday Ethics: Making Wise Choices in a Complex World.”

EthicsGamePress. Denver, CO. 2^nd Edition 2012

Rawls, John. “A Theory of Justice.” The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971

Plato. “The Republic.” Trans. Benjamin Jowett. The Internet Classics Archive. Web Atomic and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 13 Sept. 2009. Web. 4 Nov. 2009. <http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html>

 

The Work of the Devil?

I’m assuming that this will be a rather short blog post because it is mostly just drawn out questions. It has now become common knowledge that I am an atheist and I have a huge problem with the lack of secularism in this country. Today I had, what I like to consider, an epiphany. It lead me to a lot of questions so I would like to direct them outward. But the question/statement I propose is more from the perspective of if there was/is a god.

I was thinking of the idea of there being a devil and the devil playing tricks to make sinners out of people so they would go to hell. So let’s pretend that this devil does exist and that god exists as well. What seems like the most obvious thing to me is that with all the hate, murder, rape, etc. that is in the bible, is it not the most logical conclusion for a theist to come to that organized religion is the work of the devil? God gave us this impeccable ability to think, question, and discover and this religious book tells us not to use what god gave us. Isn’t god giving us all these gifts and telling us not to use it antithetical? So with that said, wouldn’t the next logical conclusion to come to is that god’s infamous test for humans is to put us on a religiously covered planet with only our ability to question, think, and each other to rely on and hope that we trust our brain to overcome the clear lies placed in front of us? Would that not be the better test as opposed to testing us by wanting us not to trust the brains that god gave us?

I based these questions on the Judeo-Christian belief system but it applies to all religions. Maybe, if there is a god, the test is to think for ourselves and to break free from the intellectual chains that religion places upon you.

I am still an atheist and most of you are still theist and that is fine. It is impossible to know whether there is a creator or not and that part is not worth arguing. But what I know for sure is false is the idea that a creator would give us this book filled with murder, rape, slavery, and blindfolds and send us to eternal damnation for pointing out just how idiotic it is. Think about and question everything. If god does exist, then that is why he gave you that ability.

I will send you off with my favorite religious quote. “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones… I am not afraid.” Marcus Aurelius

Shackled

I have never written on this blog about my personal life or growth. But I think that it is relevant today. I am going to write about my awakening and use “Plato’s Republic” to do it. First off, I know many people have not read this book so I will give a brief summary of what relevant story I am referring to. In book VII of The Republic, Socrates uses a story to metaphorically explain a person’s inner ability to become educated. That story is called The Allegory of the Cave.

In the story, a group of people are shackled entirely causing an inability to move or look anywhere besides this wall. It is dark but there are shadows casted onto the wall. Because these people were born and have always lived this way, this is the only reality they know. One day, a person comes down into the cave and breaks the shackles off one of the men. He tries to explain the truth to this man but the truth was too much to bear. He refuses to believe him.

After some time, the cave man is willing to venture on his rescuer takes him higher in the cave behind where they have been shackled. He shows the cave man the fire, the people, and statues that had been behind them causing the shadows to appear on the wall and the voices that were heard. Again, the truth was far too much to bear. It hurt the cave man a lot.

After some time, as before, the cave man was willing to venture on. The rescuer takes him outside but the sun was so bright he could not see. He fell to the ground in agony. He then started to touch the grass and see the shadows casted by the trees. He could later see reflections off the water and then the water itself. It could see the trees and plants and, eventually, he was finally read to see the sun.

The cave man was given the chance to go back into the cave and tell the others what he saw. When he did, the others called him a fool. They resisted and told him to come back and stay with them because that was the true reality. But as much as the cave man’s discovery hurt, he refused to go back. He knew that it was better to know the truth and it hurt than to live in blissful ignorance.

When I first read this story, I saw it as my growing up into an atheist. I went to church and believed in god growing up. But at age 14, I started to have little questions. The little questions turned into big questions. The questions drove me forward into finding answers. It was painful because I never knew anyone who questioned Christianity. But I pushed forward until I finally realized that it could not possibly be true. The questions were my shadows and reflections and the atheism was my sun.

I now see that this story fits so much more than just religion. It fits our entire functionalistic society. We are raised in shackles. Whether our chains are religion or the comfort of having a roof over our head, we are enslaved. Most people are so dependent upon the system that they don’t want to see the truth. They are not ready, even if it is right in front of their face. There are many of us who do see the truth, however. We see that we are used as pawns for a few people’s benefits. They are using religion, money, comfort, etc. to keep us enslaved. We must break away from our shackles if we ever want true freedom. The problem is, are we ready? Are any of us really ready to give up the comfort of that warm cave and go through the pain of leaving without a place to go in order to find the truth? I originally started writing this as a message to others but as I write, I realize that it is a message to me. I may see the truth, but am I ready to break out of the cave and face the fear of the unknown in order to try to free everyone else? I don’t know. But I must. This world needs it and if I don’t, who will? Face your fears, Bryan. Stop looking at the sun through a cage, break out and go feel its warmth. Now is the time!