The End of the World as We Know It
or
We're doomed, I say. Doomed!
Society is regressing.
For a long time, I was blissfully unaware of this, believing the
propaganda that we were becoming more enlightened and advanced.
The light bulb moment, for me, came with the
EU decision to
ban traditional light bulbs
and switch to more energy efficient energy saver bulbs.
This may seem like a good idea, but we are
going from a society where you could have instant light, bright enough for
reading, sewing, whatever you’re having yourself, at the flick on a
switch.
I tried these new-fangled
bulbs.
Once evening came I had to turn
them all to ensure I had sufficient light when I needed it.
This is not progress, this is regression.
Once I realised this I started thinking about ancient
civilisations which once ruled the world and why they collapsed. At first, they advance and became capable of
great technical feats. Then there is
a greater disparity between the haves
and have not, people in power get greedy and complacent, things are taken for
granted and the general state of affairs starts to decline.
Of course, warfare is a major factor and certainly the
reason for the
fall of the Aztecs in 1519 during the Spanish conquest but it
was a different story for the other great civilisation of MesoAmerica – the
Mayans.
Maya civilization declined
gradually over a period of 150 years between 800 and 1000 AD.
There are a number of suggested causes,
peasant revolts, soil exhaustion, epidemic diseases, earthquakes, ideological
fatigue, drought, over-population, loss of confidence in rulers.
The reasons were complex, but the result was
the
disintegration of the Maya. Likewise it has been suggested that classical
Greece and
Rome fell because they over-reached themselves, a greater disparity between the wealthy and the common people emerged and it started to fall apart from within.
Apart from the lightbulb situation, another sign that society is collapsing is the so-called
“obesity epidemic” in Western society.
It has been proposed that for the first time, children’s life expectancy
is less than their parents.
It’s true
that there is still a lot of poverty and malnutrition in the world.
Think of Haiti, just one country where conditions
are to me, a typical Westerner, both intolerable and unimaginable.
But, at the same time, according to Jess
Greenwood , speaking at Wired 2012, “
This is the first year in history that
more people will die of obesity than malnutrition”.
Society is getting fat and lazy, and also, I
would argue, dumber.
Grade inflation has
been a problem in Ireland for at least the last 10, if not 15, years.
Of course, I won’t go any further back than
that because I earned my BSc in 1994 and naturally the decline in educational
standards started after that.
I’ve been suspicious about this for a long time, starting
with the change from the Intermediate Certificate to the Junior Certificate
(for 15 year olds) in Irish education in 1992.
Hailed as the future, a more practical and student-centred examination,
to me it seemed simpler.
There is a
mistaken belief, extremely prevalent in education (and not just in Ireland, it
is also present in British and US education.
I cannot comment on any other countries), that children need to be
praised and encouraged to succeed.
Bullshit, I say and Baumeister et al, writing in Scientific American
Magazine in 2005 support my instincts in their (pdf) article “
Exploding theSelf-Esteem Myth”
a must-read for every
parent and educator.
In a misguided attempt to ensure young people feel good
about themselves, creative ways are sought to ensure no-one fails.
Modern policies, instead of raising the bar
for everyone, lowers acceptable levels to the lowest common denominator.
Again my first brush with this was when the
powers that be ‘improved’ honours Leaving Certificate Mathematics, by
shortening the course and removing the unpredictable questions which challenged
people.
Now we’re about to dumb down second level education
again.
The Junior Certificate is to be
amended yet again with a proportion of it being examined in-house, thus
significantly reducing it objectivity and rendering it worthless.
Then, there’s the people who go on about
multiple intelligence and learning styles.
These theories, while still in vogue, have been comprehensively debunked
(to read arguments against multiple intelligence, have a read of
Lynn
Waterhouse or
Daniel Willingham’s
articles, for learning styles, read
Psychological Science or
Joe Bondra ’s articles).
A quick search on the internet will uncover
more examples.
Despite this, these
theories are still bandied around as facts in learning environments with
teachers adjusting and designing their lesson plans accordingly.
So, despite all the ‘improvements’ in teaching methods over
the years, and the move to a more child centred approach with smaller class
sizes and more teaching assistants (compared to the 1980s when I was in
school), people are leaving school with lower educational attainment. This is quite a strong statement and
admittedly I only have anecdotal evidence to back it up, but I’ll stick with my
story.
Apart from grade inflation which is an acknowledged
phenomenon in the
US , in the
UK , in
Ireland
and
other countries around the world , as a teacher is a college of
further education, I can see the educational standards slipping.
School leavers do not know their maths tables
and find it very hard to cope without a calculator.
Some would argue that it today’s world, with
instant access to information and technology, that there is no need to learn
things off and that more emphasis should be placed on other things; active
learning and critical thinking being very fashionable these days.
However, these students cannot tell when their answers are
wrong. They blindly trust
technology. Students will use a
calculator to add 2 + 3 and will not blink an eyelid if they get the answer 6
due to unwittingly hitting the multiplication button instead of the plus sign. I think that the world would be a better
place if they had to learn things by heart and if they were not allowed to use
calculators until they got to 5th year (like it was in my day, bah humbug!)
I’ve also noticed that students can’t transcribe anymore. Today, you don’t mark students down for bad
spelling or grammar. To do so can be
seen as being overly fussy and mean.
This results in students not understanding the importance of accuracy
which manifests itself in my web authoring classes where leaving out a >
sign can have an alarming effect on their work.
Yet still they’re sloppy.
So this has developed into a bit of a diatribe against the
current state of education, but the point I’m making is that, in my opinion,
standards of education are slipping.
Students do not have the basic building blocks, the traditional reading,
writing and arithmetic skills, to maintain society at current levels and
improve it into the future.
Yet another sign that we are heading for an imminent
collapse of the world as we know it is the alarming level of
fraud which has
recently come to light in both science and psychology .
As reported by Etchells and Gage in the
Guardian , anaesthesiologist Yoshitoka Fujii holds the record for
most fraudulent papers at 172.
As someone who
has been quite ill for a significant proportion of this year, this is
alarming.
172 papers on asaesthesiology
by one person have been found to be fraudulent.
Have medical decisions been made as a result of these fraudulent
papers?
Have people’s health or lives
been put at risk because of this?
It is not a common suspicion, due in part to popular
fiction, film and television, that the major
pharmaceutical companies are only out to make money, sponsor
studies that confirm their findings etc. etc.
But now, we have confirmation that this is happening in the heart of
academia!
Who can we trust now?
No wonder the religious fanatics are on the
increase!
It also means that all the
links I’ve made in this article to website which I’ve carefully selected to
back up my points, while studiously ignoring any that might contradict me, are
highly dubious.
How do I know if they
can be trusted or not?
How can we
separate the wheat from the chaff?
This increase in fraud has come about due to the fact that
success in academia is measured by publication rate and by extension by the way
it is funded.
It call to mind the novel
Changing Places by
David Lodge where two
academics, one English, one American, swap places and University life in the
two countries is compared.
At the time,
one of the differences was that more emphasis was placed on publishing in
America.
One really must question the
purpose of a University.
Is it solely to
further research in academic fields or is it to educate the next generation, in
life as well as their chosen field, and leave them in a position where they can
advance society culturally, technically, scientifically and economically?
“The view taken of a University in these Discourses is the
following. -- That it is a place of teaching universal knowledge. This implies that its object is, on the one
hand, intellectual, not moral; and, on the other, that it is the diffusion and
extension of knowledge rather than the advancement. If its object were scientific and
philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students; if
religious training, I do not see how it can be the seat of literature and
science”
I am proud that Newman was, in 1854, the
first rector of my alma mater, University College Dublin,
and this connection was one of the factors influencing my choice to pursue my
third level education there way back in 1990.
Unfortunately capitalism rules today’s society.
There is an assumption that free trade and
money is the solution to our every want.
Have we forgotten the
famine so
easily?
Economics is the main driving force
today.
The EU may have changed its name
from the EEC (European Economic Community) but we must not forget that its
origins and raison d’être was economic union.
Also while the OECD are a key driving force in advancing
policies in education, it should not be forgotten that
OECD stands for the
Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development .
The danger with this approach is that it
leaves little room for creativity and discovery.
As Bryan Jennings points out in his article
The Role of Pure Research, the commercial value of a discovery is not always
immediately apparent.
These kinds of policies (devised by economists and greedy,
self-serving politicians) are the reason that there has been a world-wide
recession for the past four years.
This
capitalistic attitude to life is the reason for the
rapid spread of infectious diseases in recent years and possibly
why I ended up in hospital for 18 days last February with atypical pneumonia.
This is why
Ash Trees are currently
under threat here and in the UK .
This disease has killed most of Denmark’s Ash
trees and could have been prevented, or at least slowed down, from spreading by
banning imports , but no, this was not done, because it would impact free trade.
This is also why Ireland is now tackling
crippling debt because you can’t burn the bondholders.
Thanks very much,
the 1633 tulip market ofAmsterdam!
Usury has traditionally been
viewed as a bad thing, you know!
Many people are struggling as a direct result of the
recession.
Some blame the banks for
lending money to anyone who asked for it.
Others say people need to take personal responsibility for living above
their means.
This can be countered by
people saying they had an expectation that their jobs were secure and their
income levels would not drop.
And back
and forth it goes.
Whatever the causes,
people are finding it hard to get by.
There is a lot of anger and while in Ireland, it is still bubbling under
the surface, it has been expressed in terms of
riots in England,
Greece,
Spain,
Italy and
France.
So, let’s review the main points again.
- reversion
to a less advanced technology; as demonstrated by the light bulb
situation.
- the
complacency and laziness of the ordinary person; as evidenced by increases in
obesity
- grade
inflation and dumbing down in schools
- overdependence
on technology; people can’t recognise when a simple sum is wrong
- seemingly
high levels of fraud in academia and sponsored research which publishes
expected results only
- the
economic driving force and the elevation of it importance over all else,
including health
- violent
protests
Additionally, we appear undeniably to be in a period of
climate change.
The polar ice-caps are
melting and we can expect more extreme weather conditions.
Think of the
floods in New York last week, in
Dublin last year and in
Gloucestershire five years ago, to cite a few examples.
Put all of these facts together and I believe
we are about to witness the destruction of our current civilisation and enter a
new dark age.
As Captain Boyle so
eloquently puts it in O’Casey’s classic
Juno and the Paycock
“Th’ whole worl’s in a terrible state o’
chassis”
