O P IN I O N |
Education or manipulation? BY JACOB FULLER Columnist
What do you do to prepare yourself for a test in school? Do you read the text, make flashcards of key terms, read and reread notes from Powerpoint slides or write definitions five times each? Whatever the method, they are all for the same purpose: memorizing facts. That is what the education system, especially at the K-12 levels, has become: teaching children and young adults to memorize information so they can regurgitate it onto a page by filling the term in the blank or selecting it from four or five choices and bubbling in the corresponding letter. Oh, and if memorizing those facts is too much trouble, they’ll be happy to dole out some medication that will turn a student into a studying machine. Is this really education? How much time do we spend outside of school bubbling in Scantrons while quietly sitting in neatly organized desks? When we cram information in our brains, we may be able to conjure it back up the next morning when it is given in multiple choice, but we forget it soon after. For the most part, that is just fine. It’s not every day that most
Correction:
In Monday’s edition of the DM, a story ran about the Lanes and Brass Monkey building burning that said Gary Churchill was the owner of the building. Churchill was once the owner of the Lanes Bowling, but never the Brass Monkey. The owners of the building are Kay and Robert Churchill. Gary
people need to remember the atomic number of phosphorous or who was king of France in 1784. The fact is, outside of school, life is not lived on paper. The world constantly presents situations and problems that are never covered in textbooks and with no one to narrow the possible answers down. When faced with real life problems, the answers are rarely something taught by an algebra teacher. Unfortunately, in the American education system, organic problem solving and creativity have been the least focused on. Instead, students have been given the answers to memorize and told exactly how long before the next quiz. This is the most catastrophic offense our government has ever performed. Beyond dropping the atom bombs in Japan or even murdering our own civilians and burning much of the southern states to the ground for exercising their constitutional right to secession, our government has caused devastating, irreversible damage to tens of millions of American children. Through mandatory government education, they have managed to squash creativity and free thought in exchange for adults who only know how to spit facts they are given and do what they are told. They are too scared to stray far from the herd, so they stay
was no longer the owner of the center, and it was closed at the time of the fire. The Lanes at this time had been leased to a company out of Tupelo and had planned to reopen soon. Also in the article it was stated that Anthony Montgomery was the manager of the Brass Monkey,
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Mobile Phones Across the Pond in a single-file line just like in elementary school. And that is exactly what the government wants. A population that is unable to think, reason and create for itself will turn to the media and government for its answers. This creates a population that will never question how they are ruled or make any attempt to create a system outside of the accepted norm. They will vote for one of two candidates and believe they are making a choice. They will do what they are told by men in uniform because they saw “NYPD Blue” and “Oz” and do not want to fight a losing battle that lands them in prison. They will be miserable at desk jobs crunching numbers because they cannot creatively mix what they love to do with how they make money. And they will take pills to help them sleep so they can further bury the creative spirit that is dying to get out. So I ask, are we really preparing students to live life to the fullest once they graduate, or are we preparing them to fall in line and take medication if they feel the urge to stray from that line? Are we creating a people who are free and brave, or are we creating a people who can be easily manipulated and scared into compliance? If you answered the former, I’m afraid you are more of the latter than you can possible understand on your own.
but he worked for the Lanes. He was never employed by the Brass Monkey. While ATF agents have been working to find the cause of fire, Gary Churchill asked his family, friends, and past employees not to make any comments until investigators were finished with their work.
BY MATTHEW HENRY The Daily Mississippian
My apologies for the hiatus in writing, I’ve been settling into my life here in Edinburgh, Scotland. Life across the Atlantic is similar to life in the States. There are, however, some key differences. At risk of sounding unpatriotic, I have to admit they do several things better here than in the United States – though we have cornered the market on fast food. One aspect of getting settled that struck me was getting a cell phone. I decided after the second time getting lost walking around that it was probably a good idea to purchase a cell phone. I brought my iPhone 4 to use as an iPod and a back-up camera, but didn’t pay for a data and voice plan . I decided to get a cheap phone and just get a voice and SMS plan. I expected to spend a good hour buying a phone and setting it up; I was surprised that it took me all of three minutes to buy a phone, select a plan, and have my number set up. On top of that, my phone (which is a decent phone by American standards) cost me only $1.50. All in all, the experience was extremely easy. The reason for this is because the UK mobile market is structured completely differently from the American market. In the UK, phones are not tied to a certain mobile carrier. Instead of going into a mobile phone store and buying a phone with a twoyear contract, you simply pick out a phone, then select from the five or six major mobile carriers. Since there
is more consumer choice, prices are driven down for the consumer. And since the idea of phones tied to mobile carriers does not exist here, you can use any phone (such as an iPhone) on any compatible network. Why not try that system here? Sure, the mobile carriers make a great deal more money forcing people into a two-year contract and having exclusivity agreements with phone manufacturers. In the United States, we always seem to champion the free market and the benefits of consumer choice. But when it comes to our cell phones we turn a blind eye. We end up giving the mobile carriers more money each year because we do not have greater competition between carriers. When a carrier blocks services like Skype, we should have the option to choose a provider who will allow it. Unfortunately we allow carriers to go as far as to “lock” phones to their network (I’m looking at you, AT&T). Even the Library of Congress has seen the absurdity of this practice, making an exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allowing people to “unlock” their phones from a network. I have been happy with my service so far in Edinburgh. It was very easy to find a phone that worked for me and then which carrier offered the best plan for that phone.. It is time Americans started looking at cell phones and smart phones as mobile computers. We should be able to easily choose the best carrier and use our phones on any compatible carrier we choose.
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