Below is an addendum/extension to the above article based on an email I sent in May 2024 to an associate professor of education at a US university with 14 years of experience and an EdD to her name.
This addition was prompted by a gnawing feeling that in spite of my utmost efforts to make the writings on this blog as clear and accessible as possible, there still seemed to be some readers who have not quite grasped the current and long-term implications of the topic addressed in those writings. The addendum has been somewhat polished-up and further expanded from the original email to enhance clarification.
Subject (of the email): Arguably the World’s Worst Education-Related Problem
Dear
Professor ……..…,
I am from the Maldives and stumbled upon your book ………………. and thought that I’ll acquaint you with my writings that deal with some deeper aspects of the way the human mind works that keep much of humanity in a – mildly put – dismal condition.
Much of that outcome is due to faulty basic education. Rectifying this deplorable situation would therefore call for raising awareness of educators about our complex problem and of their responsibility in inducing a better quality to the world’s basic education. (See article #13 (2015) labelled “World Basic Education System” for my reasoning on why current basic education systems do not meet the most basic criteria for what a good “basic education” should be, and on how that defect can be rectified on a global scale – and I urge you to go through the article before jumping to any unjustified conclusions, which is often our natural inclination.)
……………………….
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PS: Attached is a one-page piece (article #5 (2012) labelled “From a Local Focus to a Global One”) that lays the groundwork for the writings on the blog. It outlines the evolution of my thinking that led to above-mentioned conclusion and, in the process, identifies the root cause of problem we have at hand. As was mentioned in seveal article on this blog, article #5 is a bit old and deals with the more simple “probabilistic” aspect (see below) of the problem we have at hand and it was much later that I came to realize its more complex psychological aspect (also see below).
Some Unpleasant Thoughts to Clarify the Argument of That Attached Piece
It could be concluded from the account given in it that we understand the world based on what we have in our knowledge bases. And the higher the level and quality of knowledge bases in specialized areas, the higher the outputs become. This is the essence of what we call progress.
Unfortunately, the higher the level of people’s knowledge bases the hazier gets their understanding of what is beyond their narrow specializations – see quote from Professor Will Durant’s book The Story of Philosophy at the end of this article. Their mindsets become, to evoke an adage from the local Maldives context, like that of “the frog in the well.” Frogs (that spawn and die in a given well) would understand a lot about the state in their wells, as would specialized people about their specialized areas.
This is the malaise that afflicts the modern world and is in large part responsible for our problem since it compounds the barriers to communication that are the outcomes of our natural disposition (see fourth & fifth paragraphs of the last/top-most article on the blog, labelled “A Helpful Suggestion/Explanation,” beginning with “The Problem in a Nutshell”).
This is by no means a criticism of specialization; for not only are the advanced conveniences of the modern world based on increasingly higher levels of specialization, they are also the basis of evolution of life on Earth; it is by the unerring functioning 24/7 of the thus evolved vital organs of the human body, for example, that an individual can continue to be alive. In the same vein, a modern society functions best when its personnel and institutions function the way they ought to function. The emphasis here is on “ought-to.”
The problem is that societies don’t function the way they ought to. For they function in an increasingly complex world and no individual can master all salient aspects of a complex set of problems, however knowledgeable he/she can be. Also, individuals don’t work alone; they work in interaction with others in the same organization and/or multiple other organizations. Moreover, most societal decision-making settings comprise of people with highly diverse backgrounds. The resulting complexity in interactions in such settings virtually guarantees that the outcomes will be anything but viable, let alone optimal.
Statements in the above paragraph could be better understood if we look into their “probabilistic” aspect. That is if, for example, one has 20% of knowledge about what constitutes a problem, chances are that he/she would likely understand only 20% of that problem. The same applies to others involved in the process. As a result, if there are, say, five parties involved in solving a given problem and each has 20% of the knowledge about that problem that the others don’t have, and given that none of them has the telepathic powers to impart what each knows to the others, the resulting interactions among them could generate only “half-baked” knowledge and would therefore lead to only ineffective and thus unfeasible outcomes.
Then there is the psychological aspect. As a specialized person, whether in an institution or academia, climbs the “social ladder” and attains the limelight, a barrage of psychological “blinders” materialize, the outcome of which being that such persons get removed from the reality of the world in indescribable ways, the outcome of which in its turn is that an aura of infallibility sets in, giving rise to an “I know it best” mindset – although in reality, one cannot actually “know” all aspects of a given problem as per the account mentioned above. Thus any other option/opinion however good or feasible gets side-tracked and ignored. Such people unconsciously put themselves on so high a pedestal that they are unaware of the reality beneath on the ground – “success has gone to their heads,” as the common saying goes. Of course, there are many other psychological aspects to such interactional settings, including those arising from psychological defence mechanisms in particular, not to mention ingrained biases and prejudices as well as downsides arising from the lack of a shared language.
The above are all various aspects/facets of human interaction and downsides thereof that make societal functioning so very ineffective. All is not lost, however. While we cannot alter human nature resulting from our biological evolution over billions of years, and the way we make sense of the world that sprang from the processes involved, we do have realistic measures that can effectively counter and minimize much of their crippling downsides. Outlines of the specifics (the whys and the hows) of what we can realistically do to put things on the right track are explored in some detail in the writings on this blog.
I hope that the above accounts provide “food for thought” and help you to enact a mindset that enables you to face your moral responsibility as an educator – making a concerted effort to become aware of the situation being the first meaningful step in the right direction. As outlined at the outset, world educators are, even if unwittingly, the single biggest stumbling block to rectifying the deplorable condition of the humankind – I said “unwittingly” because they are in the same boat as those in other specialized fields. The difference is that it is only educators who can change the situation by changing current curricula to better reflect today's human needs instead of blindly following centuries-old formulae.
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Two More Cases Additional to the Above Downsides to Further Clarify the Dynamics Involved
One is about how our ingrained attitudes and habits are formed and lead to a single-track mindset. This could perhaps be best illustrated by visualizing how spring snowmelt meanders down mountainsides taking the path of the least-resistance to form minor streams converging into bigger streams and minor rivers and ultimately into raging rivers that carve deep and wide into earth. The neural signals in our brains underlying destructive habits/attitudes function in a similar way – the longer and more a certain way of thinking is engaged in, the lesser becomes the resistance to signals in that pathway and the easier that way of thinking becomes. And in the same way that snowmelt follows the path of the least-resistance down mountain slopes to carve the earth, so does an initially innocent line of thinking becomes an ingrained/fossilized habit, so to speak, and changing the course of either a deep-dug river or an ingrained habit/attitude becomes virtually impossible – that is to say, without enormous effort and expense. In fact, it seems to me through long observation and experience that while changing the course of a raging river is practically possible, altering one’s ingrained habits/attitudes does not lend easily to that possibility. And this has far-reaching outcomes in the realm of societal interactions.
A second related example is about the way decisions get made by elected bodies of representatives. My own observation/experience is, once again, that the realpolitik of today’s world is, more often than not, heavily biased towards the self-interest of the ruling elite to the detriment of the electorate who voted for those representatives and thus that of the greater good of the society. In addition to behaviour driven by insatiable greed, such outcomes are also due to the reasons described above – due to the lack of a proper understanding of the complexity of how the world really works. Apart from the limited understanding, the decisions that get made are often reactionary, and have rather short-term horizons. And contrary to popular belief, this is true in the US in particular and in the West in general and other democracies – as well as the vast majority of other nations. While the freedom to elect public officials gives one a feeling of empowerment, electorates are more often than not indoctrinated by the media that are usually controlled by powerful interests of one shade or another that are not aligned with the greater good of the society, and thus the perceived “freedom” is in reality no more than an illusion, a mirage. I would not be the first person to punch holes in the concept of “democracy” idolized by the masses. The famous philosopher of ancient city-state Athens (where democracy was “born” but where women had no voting rights and, in accordance with Professor Durant’s book The Story of Philosophy, of the 400 thousand inhabitants in its heyday, 250 thousand were slaves) Plato, for example, described democracy as “the rule of the mob.” He may have had his reasons for that harsh judgement, but while in his day two-and-a-half millennia ago, it was only the fluent orators who led the masses astray with their hollow eloquence that did not amount to much, today’s powerful elites have a firm grip on the mass media that can distort public opinion, often in surreptitious ways, to whatever ends they desired – for example, by omitting truths that are contrary to their interests or even right-out lies, thereby misleading the public. In this regard, I believe that of the Western nations, the US especially, is at an extreme, due largely to the dynamics arising from the deep belief in the “free-market” where “money is king” and “anything goes.” (Those interested in my foray into the downsides of the way decisions get made in the US government, and how the current negative momentum can be transformed and diverted into a more positive direction for the betterment of both the US and the world at large, may want to refer to my sister blog www.rifatafeefuspolicy.blogspot.com.)
