Thread by @wmnjoya

Weh...we were fed on demons which we had not understood....

So this was the internal contradiction of English education in the 1800s.

The elite education we have come to admire (the Oxfords, Cambridges, Etons and Alliances) was originally education for the aristocracy.

THREAD

However, the aristocracy had to coopt some middle and lower class kids into the system, so that these kids would defend the system when they were adults. The logic was that if these schools had only aristocrat kids, the people would burn down the schools.

But if the schools had a few token poor kids, then the kids would sound genuine in defending the aristocratic schools. Graduates from poor backgrounds were salesmen of the system. The aristocrats were the priests. Salesmen are more convincing than priests.

So there was a contradiction in the system. It was offering aristocratic education to non-aristocrats. And remember: aristocrats don't need work or training. They make money for merely being born to the right family.

So aristos learned frivolty: Greek, Latin, Plato, etc just to admire their intellect rather than prepare themselves for anything. After all, the butler would open the door and the maid would dress them.

Now, brute businessmen of the industrial age faced this as a contradiction.

Some businessmen had come from working class backgrounds and become rich through effort. Their kids couldn't go back to the poor houses. The only posh education was where? Elite schools, where kids wore tail coats and top hats, and learned which fork to begin eating with.

This bothered the industrialists. They complained that the Greek, Latin and Aristotle wasn't helping the kids. Their sons left elite schools spitting big words but couldnt PRACTICALLY run the companies.

Sound familiar?

I was just about to cry that maybe all my years of saying the humanities matters was about to be destroyed, until I discovered this.

It was true that the elite education instiutions were designed to protect the aristocracy. So what did the Oxbridges do to defend themselves?

They argued that the aristocratic mindset they trained kids in was actually good for business. Wah!

People were sold an aristocratic education in practical wrapping. Before "public relations," or "advertising," elite schools had sold themselves as teaching "practical" skills.

I laughed, then got annoyed because this is what Kenyan universities do when they advertise themselves as giving practical skills, yet I can tell you that the logic of elitism hasn't changed one bit. As I said in my "Mind and Soul" video, the school system is about branding.

The role of our school system is to maintain the state. Graduates don't have to work for GoK, but they are trained to defend it. That's why #upperdeckpeopleke people lose their minds when we tell them that this system doesn't work, and that billionaires are a hoax.

#upperdeckpeopleKE demand "solutions" to fix the gaping holes in the state, and can't get when we say that the model of the state has to be replaced.

Long story short, the problem of our education system is a POLITICAL and WORLDVIEW one.

You can't fix the system by tinkering around with the curriculum or the schools, or trying to get more girls or more poor kids in. You have to replace the aristocratic logic with a human one.

You can watch the full length video here. END