#stem

I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor. ↗

— John Taylor Gatto

#public-education #education

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#criminal-justice-system #cycle-of-violence #desperation #greed #homelessness

We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things that are not seen are eternal. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#epistemology #philosophical #philosophical

I went to them without fear, child, prepared for a pitched battle, expecting the fierce Watchers, famed for their love of Earth, to defend their families. Yet they stood mute and allowed their loved ones to die. I judged them harshly in my heart for that. ↗

— Kirby Crow

#family

I'm not such a big star. I am just a little planet. In Spain, people don't put so much attention on the star system. But here in America, I can feel it. Mostly, people are very, very nice. But there are also a bunch of fanatics behind the stars. ↗

— Antonio Banderas

#am #america #attention #behind #big

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#injustice #justice #law #legal-system #power

The genius of the American system is that through freedom we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people. ↗

— Phil Gramm

#created #extraordinary #freedom #genius #old

We need to stop spending money on those weapons systems that do not advance national security. ↗

— Lawrence Korb

#money #national #national security #need #security

The Truth about America’s Silicon Valley- Angels in the Silicon Riveting and insightful regarding progressivism and the social upheavals living in the Silicon Valley.- John Yoo, UC Berkeley Constitutional Lawyer, novelist, and public servant ↗

— Richard Theodor Kusiolek

#globalization #legal-system #technological-evolution #change

I counted on sixty days only, but I held out for 133. I didn't go into power, but to get power I borrowed some power from the President and made him sign a number of decrees and give me enough power to create a system capable of handling crisis situations. ↗

— Aleksandr Lebed

#capable #counted #create #crisis #days