Jeffrey Alexander Martin

A couple of weeks ago I had an AI transcribe my thoughts on a new educational model while I was walking. "It's a common question to pose the question of what should be taught or what should be learned. 'What should be learned' is a better question than 'what should be taught,' but there's an even more foundational level than this, which is: who should decide what should be taught and what should be learned? Now, in our modern industrial educational system, it is the government that decides what should be taught and what should be learned. But this is a complete negation of reason and history. There are three major stakeholders, and none of them are the government. Now, it's important to governments—we see it in the work of Rousseau saying that The Republic by Plato is not actually a political work, it's an educational work. We see it in Politics by Aristotle in Book 8, where he talks about the purpose of education being to create a good citizenry. A...

In early 2018 I wrote an article about a student that I had, named Angela. She was about 12 years old, and doing bad in all subjects in her school in China. Her family was moving to Australia soon and they at least wanted her to improve her English. They had tried other private tutors without success. Through word-of-mouth they had heard about me, and wanted me to give it a try. The parents said I could do anything, just improve her English. She wasn't interested in anything. She didn't care about anything. It took me a few sessions to convince her we could learn about anything she wanted. It doesn't matter what we study, because it'll be in English, since I only know English. Eventually she told me she's interested in dresses and fashion. I said we can learn about that together, because I don't know anything about it. Her parents had previously discouraged and banned her from learning about dresses and fashion because they wanted her to focus on school: Chinese...

For thousands of years humans have been learning about themselves and the world through stories. This type of learning is more foundational than any other, and will continue as long as humans are humans. There are two foundational types of stories that give humans ethical, moral, and spiritual truths: fables and parables. Fables normally deal with animals, plants, or objects that can talk like humans, and parables deal with things people are familiar with. Both are used to make a point. The best example of a fable maker is Aesop from ancient Greece, and the best example of a parable maker is Jesus. The simple power of these stories, that can be insightful and useful for thousands of years, and can explain lessons in a few paragraphs that dozens of books can't, is amazing. I think there is a fable situation that can be developed to help explain most of human society, including economics and politics, using three animals: wolves, sheep, and dogs. These archetypes naturally correlate ...

The US education system of mass industrial schooling has failed, and will continue to fail. That's not going to change anytime soon, the US government is far too corrupt to do even the most basic things for improvement. Instead of government schooling, what would be better for education and learning? The obvious answer is private schools. There are a few issues with this. One issue is that many private schools are based on the same things as public schools. Another issue is that private schools can cost quite a bit of money, and it's often more difficult to transport students to and from the schools. The next obvious answer is homeschooling. One issue with that is both parents often have to work and they don't want to leave the kids alone at home. Another issue is that the parents don't know what or how to teach. That's why they are outsourcing education in the first place, it's logistically easy because it's normal, it's cheap because government taxes p...

One day Hare challenged Tortoise to a race. Tortoise agreed. Hare was much faster than Tortoise and easily won. "Ha!" said Hare, "You are so slow you could never beat me." Tortoise thought for a moment and said, "Maybe. Or, maybe I will get faster. Or, maybe you will get slower." Hare rolled his eyes. "I think," Tortoise continued, "we should make it an annual event." Hare agreed. The next year Hare won. The next year Hare won again. The next year Hare was winning, but when Tortoise got to the end Hare wasn’t there. Hare had a heart attack, and died alongside the trail. Tortoise won that year. Tortoise, racing by himself, won again the next year, and for many years thereafter. Moral of the story: Persistence wins. Find more at  JeffThinks.com  or  JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

It's pretty clear at this point that the US is in decline and losing. But who is the US losing to? It's the classic question of why empires fall. In the case of the US, I know quite a few of the reasons. The US is suffering from a death by 1,000 cuts, from enemies both foreign and domestic. Obviously Soviet infiltration during the Cold War was highly damaging to the US. The Cold War officially started in 1947 under Truman as President, but really it had been going on for awhile. Hollywood famously had the blacklist in the 1940s where Marxists and communists weren't supposed to be involved in films. Yet, even during that time some of the most successful films were written by communists. During WW2 US propaganda promoted the Soviet Union communists as good for fighting the fascist and socialist Germans, and even before that the Marxists were able to start getting a strong foothold in the US. Marxism, communism, and socialism are different terms for the same basic philosophy t...