3:17 p.m. - 2003-05-01
2 stories about education
2 stories about education
you know, when i was younger, 16, 17 or 18, sometimes i would read the newspapers and be saddened by the news and everything. i didn't understand what was going on nor what the governments in the world were doing; poverty, famines, rapes, wars, all sorts of things happening and they have been happening for decades, couldn't the adults find a solution already? "Must we, the kids inherit such a fucked-up world?"
After years of public education
the answer was found in a book, "Understanding International Relations" by Robert J Lieber:
Albert Einstein was once asked,"why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?" He replied,"That is simple, my friend, it is because politics is more difficult that physics."
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you know, when i was around and about, and friends and acquaintances asked me what i was studying in university, i would tell them it was communication studies.
quite often and quite unfunnily, they would go," Oh! Mass comm! Next time you going to become a reporter or director huh?!"
i would be smiling along embarassedly and awkwardly.
and they continue, "ha ha ha, maybe in the future, i would be watching the channel 8 news, and suddenly this familiar guy comes on, and i would go 'hey i know this guy, last time he ... with me.'"
the answers were found in studying the course itself;
The Media Book (pg. 33):
The central question was no longer "How do social systems function to maintain equilibrium?, it was the problematic of "How do societies in which resources and rewards are so unevenly distributed continue to survive at all without revolution?" The answers were to be found less in the overt exercise of power than in an analysis of the different forms of authority.
Part of this analysis requires consideration of the role of the production of ideas, information and cultural representations, and how these interests reflect the interests of the ruling class or of the prevailing coalition of dominant interests.
The authority of ruling classes in modern society is defined in terms of how successfully they secure the willing consent of the ruled to the conditions of their own oppression.
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yes... it was here that i gained more useless information, information that does not help me to find a job and earn lotsa money. but im quite happy. i got at least some answers.
