SRP CATALOGUE - Physics & Audio-Visual

Our Bankrupt Elite Sociological Pamphet - Education Summary Table of Contents Sociological study of the tragic consequences for a test society of a desastrous reform of its educational system in the 1960's, a tendency that has been generalizing in Occident based on popular pseudo-progressist schooling models that have progressively degraded the general level of knowledge in the elite for the past 30 years. Despite the illusion of continuously increasing knowledge of our elites created by the few hundreds or even thousands who reach higher levels of knowledge through personal initiative, the direct consequence is that each new promotion of primary and secondary school teachers

====> ISBN 0-981748-2-5 <==== 300 Pages. Price $22.95 By André Michaud

The most striking proof of this degradation is the following. While in 1994, 38% of the population of this society was considered illiterate to various degrees by the OCDE, which was already totally unacceptable, that rate reached 50% in 2003 for people of age 16 and more, according to an International inquiry on literacy and adult competences (EIACA), and can only continue to degrade given the sorry state of the knowledge of their own mother tongue of the current canditate teachers.

Presently, the fact that the general heirloom of accumulated knowledge is constantly increasing in no way implies that the current elite essentially masters it.

Case study of a society whose elite has been auto-specializing for the past 30 years from the beginning of Senior High School on, disregarding any type of advanced general education.

Paradoxically, it is the level of general knowledge of the population, and mostly that of the elite proper, that suffered most of the trend, with its associated drift towards irrationality.

Quote from John Maddox in 1996, Director of NATURE for 20 years:

Science has become so specialized that it is becoming incomprehensible for ordinary people... This is why they turn more and more to para-sciences. We are witnessing a return to irrationality that puts in jeopardy the foundation of scientific thought in society. Moreover, this anti-scientific tendency threatens research budgets, because they become more and more difficult to justify in the eyes of ordinary people. They are already diminishing. This a danger for science and for the world.

Why was 50% of a population considered illiterate in 2003 when ALL CHILDREN of that population have been schooled as far as High School since the end of the 1960's ! Isn't there a link with the fact that for many years, barely 30% of current candidate teachers showing minimal general knowledge, with most being unable to express themselves with a level exceeding popular language ?

Why is reading no more taught to ALL children in first grade of primary school, as was the case before?

What is the elite of a society?

It is the unstructured group of individuals mainly made up of a core of university graduates possessing doctor's or master's degrees in the various domains of intellectual and scientific knowledge, and whose actions or inactions, coordinated or not, determine the structures of that society.

What is social awareness?

Awareness of the problems that ill adapted social structures inflict upon individuals who suffer from them.

Why do so few members of our intellectual and scientific elites develop social awareness?

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