We are Sucked in by Our Own Ignorance--The Failure of Education and the Fix

We are constantly deluged with the morsels out of the mouths of wise politicians and talking heads who have the solution to all problems, or so they believe. Public polling is used by pundits to explain how people respond to specific questions and then the responses are used to generalize and attribute much more than the answer to the specific question for purposes of propaganda. We exist in a bouillabase of words that are suppose to mean something, while more often than not are simply intended by their purveyors to shape public opinion regardless of the facts and actual knowledge about the specific subject. Too often unqualified people are asked to investigate or expound on subjects about which they lack basic knowledge, and despite this they present expert opinions or even are asked to legislate laws based upon erroneous or inadequate understanding of the problem.

We are inclined to want simple solutions to complex problems but refuse or are unwilling to use our brains to either get more information or admit that our comprehension of a particular issue is such that we are unable to understand its full complexity.Often full comprehension requires advance training and studies in physical science, mathematics, life sciences, environmental and engineering training and education, or other subject that the majority of us lack. Hence, we often accept simple minded solutions offered by untrained politicians and talking heads or our own emotionall-based opinions to construct solutions for complex problems, and the outcomes are what you would expect: failure to solve the problems and simply handing them off to others or giving up altogether and allowing the problems to fester and deepen.

Problems are not all of the same type. Purely technical problems can and should be approached by applying necessary scientific and technical knowledge bases appropriate to the specific problem. Implementation of the possible solutions will often be influenced by economic and social needs or problems.Complex problems will always require multiple disciplines that can be applied simultaneously, but the technical solution or solutions must always be accepted by non-technical policy makers and the general public when public action is requires. Often organizations do not employ sufficiently educated and knowledgeable people to deal with complex problems and proposed solutions are frequently inadequate. Institutionalized incompetency is the result and such organizations will inevitably decline because bad actions will follow bad ideas. This is equally true for governments and commercial organizations regardless of the endeavors. Incompetency at policy making levels always breeds failure and sometimes disaster.

The long term survival of any organization or society requires competent people who are educated in a broad array of interdisciplinary sciences, technology, and humanities that encompasses a knowledge base that breaks the boundaries of today's over specialized technical professionals. Our educational system has essentially become collections of trade school where capable people are funneled into specialty niches for future employment purposes, rather than expanding their knowledge base and broadening their abilities to grapple with very complex problems. Hence, the human outputs of higher learning institutions are individuals who are usually narrowly educated in one specialty field and nothing more. Scientific and technical training is overly focused on anarrow specialties, and fails to require studies of humanities, philosophy, history, etc. Likewise those studying humanities, history, literature, etc. are generally not required any more than very elementary math and science subjects. The consequence of our present higher education system is that we generate a society in which individuals who take their studies beyond high school cannot grasp fundamental scientific and technical issues, and the scientific and technical specialist cannot grasp anything beyond numbers and very narrow scientific or job-specific specialties. Effective communication between these inadequately educated groups generates immediate distrust or over-dependence one for the other. A truly educated society must be able to carry on intelligent dialogues that are based upon reasoned thinking and not emotionally based opinions. This does not mean that passion about an issue is wrong, but passion must be based upon some reason and facts, not feelings alone if effective remedial action, without violence , is desired.

Our world, consisting of over six and a half billion people, is now so complex that simple-minded solutions to enormously complex problems cannot be approached with the equivallent of a high-school education, present over-specialized higher education, or even less. Unless individuals who assume or are selected to control large organizations or governments recognize the value of interdiscilinry education and demand that the educational institutions at all levels produce broadly educated people instead of pin-head specialists we will continue to lack the ability to intelligently understand or deal effectively with complex problems that ultimately will detemine every individulas' well-being or lack, and the destiny of our planet in the long, long term.

Many generations of educational restucturing will be required to attain some semblance of the type of education that we need to deal with tomorrows growing problems and required solutions. The failure to change educational systems to produce individuals with the interdisciplinary education do so will bring more chaos and diminishing ability to do anything other than become the victims of our own ignorance.