The one about Will Lynch's mind being dominated

260 pages of Thomas Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem, 113 pages of Neil Postman’s The End of Education, 5 plus “short” stories a week from American Lit, 2 months of Southern Exposure’s six songs and choreography, Kappa Sigma meetings on Wednesdays and Sundays, Work on Thursdays and Saturdays, Student Senate meetings on Wednesdays, Intramural officiating for flag football on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Give or take homework and an exam or two somewhere in there. Reminds me of a Chris Farley quote... “Forget it, I quit, I can't do this anymore, man. My head's about to explode…” the quote goes on to how I REALLY feel, but that’s beside the point.

Anyhow, now that I have that off my chest, I can move into my burdenous (which my spell-check thinks is not a word) reading of The End of Education. We’ll start from page 59, “… public schools are state-run agencies and have no license to reconstruct society on their own authority... [They] are mirrors of social belief, giving back what citizens put in front of them.” Isn’t this kind of eerie? That schools can make you believe anything that they want you to believe? I don’t like that. How much propaganda has been spoon fed to us? Dr. Smith and I were speaking about this the other day before discussing the Friedman novel. We were talking about propaganda and I said that most of it was garbage, but some of it is necessary. He mentioned the Flag song that we all learned in grade school, along with some other hidden propaganda. It’s of absolutely no educational value, but there it is. So what else has been hidden in there?

Another quote I liked from the reading was from page 69. “Though there may be knowledge of which we can be sure, such knowledge is always confined and within a certain tolerance-meaning, within some limited sphere. Yes, we know things, but much of it is wrong, and what replaces that may be wrong a well. And even that which is right, and seems to need no amendment, is limited in its scope and its applicability.” Interesting. I like Werner Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty, how much of what we know is true? How much is farce? The truth of the matter is no one may ever know if what we know is what the truth is.

So there you have it, is what we know the truth? Do we really need to know what we know at all? Does the school know what we need to know? Who are they to tell us what we need to know? Truth is... I don’t know.