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If you want to loose control over something, automate it.

Todays education is following the path of automation. Abundance of computers, ebooks, digital classrooms, tests etc. is good for automation. However I would argue its value for education.

It is the question of quality vs. quantity. We prefer quantity. Because it can be calculated, compared, digitized, stored, retrieved, analyzed and so on. Numbers are our frame of reference. And it is efficient in many areas. But let us not reduce everything to numbers.

With successful test results as the ultimate goal of education the role of teacher gradually devaluates to the level of pipeline operator. Pipeline operators are good, ceteris paribus, but noone of them is directly responsible for the outcome.

How would you like a school where nobody is responsible for the education?

And the majority of schools we have today are like that. It maybe hard to recognize this fact through the veil of worries and “challenges”, ecology, future, financial crisis and other cliches designed exactly for the purpose of blinding everybody. At the same time if we would ask ourselves “who was the person responsible for my education?”, what will we answer?

Einstein once said: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler”. I suspect mankind is now trying to make education exactly that simpler, with tests.

Tests that are same for everybody, for each “unique child”. Tests thats value for the life a student will live decades after are more than vague. There is fraud here.

Nature evidently will take the command — few will win and other will loose, history repeating. We are being told a chronic fairytale about perfect world, where human rights will not be owned be organizations of human rights protection, where freedom and equality won’t be political tools. Perfect world that is only a several bucks away, a several votes away, a several lives away.

People who make decisions, who have power, speak to us about the future we are together dreaming of, about education that will lead us to that future, education that will teach our children to be humans.

And this is paid education. And they are forcing test infected implementation of the dream. And they justify it by the means of revenues and employments.

Are we moving too fast to see that all these mottos are expressed in dollars?

I have written some critical thoughts on the situation a couple of days ago.

As the story unwinds I would like to talk about its two components – two paradoxes, one of democracy and one of generations.

First, democracy is on stage. Well, where else can it be? Peaceful revolution for the better life. There is a paradox here: revolutions are unable to procreate ready-to-use leaders with clean hands. Whoever will win the power, it will be people whose history began decades ago, and nothing can anybody do about this.

Nobody new will be let to rule. Old will rule, same people who were there all these years. And still lives a hope that a sudden change could happen and leaders will start actually do something for people in need.

To be honest such hope is very natural. Take a usual man, who works all his time and remembers about politics only near the ballot box. Majority of people are like him. Majority that decides the future. What shall we expect of the usual man? That he will go into deep analysis, he will weigh all pros and cons? Of course no, otherwise would be absolutely unfair. And with this in mind politics today heavily relies on casting the mist before the eyes of electorate.

The real problem is not vote fraud in the name of power. A horizons of much terrible things are being made in its name. The real problem is the power itself. The present features such as military balance, constant threats of all kinds, terrorism, financial crises, ecological destruction, food and energy security, fear for future that has no future, restrictions and shadow of total control – all these things are indeed necessary conditions of what is called democracy. They form a mass mindset justifying existence of governments, churches, armies and other forms power.

Paradoxic vicious circle: power needs destruction to justify itself for the purpose of preventing further destruction.

Have you thought about why billions of people work for food while supermarket shelves are always overladen with goods of all kinds? Why people have to earn?

Society that has to work to live that strives to prevent a catastrophe, will seldom think of any dangerous lofty ideas, about what the hell is going on in this world, about the causes. For this we have specially entitled persons: usually their unquestionable authorities reach out to masses from the screens. One screen specially designed for U.S., other for EU, another for China, one more for Russia, also for Iran. To each according to his needs.

This story repeats from one generation to another. Looks like young people today do not have any idea of mistakes made by predecessors. And young are likely to repeat old mistakes. Paradox is that delusions will fade away together with youth. Then a new generation will rise and who knows how long it will be possible to repeat this story.

What we see today in Iran? Generally speaking, I do not know whether what I see has any relations to reality. And that fact makes me think. As I see mainly young people on the photos, I am questioning myself about their system of values that made possible the protests. What do they really want? What is that freedom? Freedom to have enough money? To buy fashionable clothing and cars? That is understandable. But if it is freedom of speech, freedom of thought, than I don’t understand anything.

From the alien standpoint it looks like people just have too much energy, and after energy will dissipate and activity will decay, everything will return to the stable state, to the beginning, possibly with different faces but system won’t change. It is too late to wish changes on the scale of a single state. The speed, interdependence and complexity of the world are too high for this.

Talking about difference between tyranny and democracy (or between religions) was good for ancient Greece, today there are no differences, it is all the same.

Twitter stream for #iranElection is updated with hundreds of messages per second.

Hysteria is activated: investors, movie makers, engineers, writers, firefighters, dog-trainers, CEOs, taxi-drivers, new-born babies, astronauts, doctors and so on are shouting out loud. They want revolution.

Just signed up american “iranians from Tehran” post their first 100 tweets via specially setup anonymous proxies and ssl channels.

Everybody now has iranian friends.

Rumors flood the air:

Politicians make serious looks on their faces: “questions about legitimate grievances must be answered”.

Bored winners are entertaining. There’s something happening somewhere in the third world. “Give me a map I will try to find it. Iraq? Iran? Whatever.”

Black hat marketers and spammers use trending topics to push their products.

Isn’t this all a bullshit?

What we see is an information war, mind manipulation, a democracy in action. Lords of the world have great success in telling people lies they will want to believe, lies they will never doubt. Brainwashing is very scalable.

Battles for power and money were always carried our under the pretext of human rights, freedom, justice, equality and other idealistic tools. But as soon as revolution is done idealists and revolutionaries are never needed anymore.

Previous century saw 5 U.S. military interventions in Iran (from “A century of U.S. military interventions”):

• 1946 (nuclear threat)
• 1953 (command operation, CIA overthrows democracy, installs Shah)
• 1980 (troops, nuclear threat, aborted bombing, 8 troops die in plane crash)
• 1984 (jets, two iranian jets shot down over Persian Gulf)
• 1987-1988 (naval, bombing, US intervenes on side of Iraq in war)

Who’s to remember the history?

We consume information. We consume food.
Analogies are suggesting themselves.

• Too much information leads to obesity
• Too little information leads to emaciation
• Low-quality information leads to indigestion
• High-quality information requires effort
• Too much same information leads to surfeit
• Unreasonable consumption leads to disease
• “Fast information” is a huge business
• “Brain obesity” is a common disease
• Information diet and brain training are cure
• Information diet and brain training are procrastinated

Are you keeping a diet?

Look at education.alltop.com There are so many people who write about education day after day. Diversity of visions, diversity of purposes, diversity of lives behind this information flow, diversity of stories told.

And now I am sitting at my desk blocked up with write-only pieces of paper, phone numbers without names, pens, wires, books on machine intelligence, and trying to put my own drop into this ocean.

Writers bend over backwards to capture stranger’s attention for a few moments. And me too.

Some of us work in schools and share everyday experience, some hated school years ago and now want to make change for their children, some are fluent in digital media and push the hot topics, some develop technologies that make them speak, some just love kids, some make money out of everything and education too, some are official representatives who’s work is to write posts, some are mad, some try remember every forgotten thing, some want power for the ego, some are true experts in their fields who have time, some believe that we can save our future. All we do write something categorized under “education”.

But some of us do not write. Do not speak on public. Do not share anything with anybody. Do not save the planet. Do not go 2.0, 3.0, or X.0. Do not rethink anything aloud. Do not shift paradigms over the coffee. Do not lead.

Nobody knows about them. Nobody cares about them. But they got this game.