Article #11 >>>>> Concise Observations on Existence and Education

Societal Consequences of Abysmal K-12 Education

Given the quality of the populace produced by wretched systems of public education, life in 2021 ensues in a degraded societal context created by an ignorant aggregate citizenry.  

Lacking understanding of the genetic, developmental, and environmental determinants of behavior, society fails to design knowledge-intensive, ethically substantive curriculum for students of all economic descriptors.

Families mired in poverty at the urban core tend to remain in that circumstance, so that their children go forth to mean streets leading to psychic or physical death, or to prisons.  Having created the environmental context for behavior resulting in incarceration, we fill prisons disproportionately with those abused by history and current circumstance.

As poverty and associated behaviors persist at the urban core, those at the urban periphery, in the suburbs, and within gated communities dwell in their own psychic poverty, themselves the victims of limited education.  

Very few citizens comprehend the constituent components of an excellent education.  The great bulk of the populace, lacking adequate knowledge of mathematics, natural science, social science, and the humanities, make poor decisions pertinent to government, public health, community well-being;  and to their own health, vocation, and avocation. 

Feigning interest in their children's education and life prospects, parents  instead seek personal aggrandizement in sending their offspring forth to colleges and universities for pecuniary advancement rather than excellent education likely to sustain individual happiness and societal welfare.

Lacking comprehension of people across the economic and cultural continuums, citizens are typically atomized, often antagonistically.  In the absence of adequate knowledge bases, emotion, superstition, and supposition guide personal and ethical decisions, rather than facts, analysis, and ethics.

Even those deemed well-educated tend to be merely professionally specialized.  Technological proficiency supersedes universally beneficial application of technology.  Personal gain as goal is the paramount value, rather than the universal good.  Failing to comprehend linked destiny, even those individuals considered most fortunate suffer under circumstances in which the general and therefore personal welfare suffers.

In this situation, despite isolated accomplishments in science, technology, industry, commerce, literature, music, and visual art, much of life proceeds in caprice, violence, and immorality.  

A society that lacks understanding of the determinants of human behavior, ethics, and transcendent purpose cannot design systems of excellent public education.  Wretched public education produces an ignorant and immoral citizenry.  

A vicious cycle abides.   

Only when, upon one of those epiphanies observable at rare historical junctures, that cycle is broken, so that the design of excellent public education becomes possible, will we be positioned to realize the potential beauty of Life and leave behind the degradation witnessed in contemporary society.