Discussion of My Ishmael and Food, Inc.

well, my mother and I discussed both My Ishmael and Food, Inc. With food, inc we were in agreement that what has been happening recently (according to the movie) was deplorable and actually shocked my mother a few times. This discussion led us in to talking about how food is locked up (according to My Ishmael) and my mom didn't find it as interesting of a concept as it was to me. I eventually got around to talking about a hypothetical house design I have been constructing slowly but surely. I described it to her as a "house that is more like its own city than just a home." what I mean by that is this design I have been concocting is a dramatic re-design of the everyday home. The roofs are 100% replaced by solar panels and the roof is lined with a gutter system that leads all the rain water into a underground purifier that recycles the water to be used for the household. My design also involves a automated greenhouse slapped onto the back. Thats not even the half of it... I am just personally a little lazy and don't want to go in-depth. We next moved on to another subject from My Ishmael, Education. Now my mom is a firm believer that the current education system overall has been doing a great job so far. I on the other hand have always thought our educational system was crap and lacked severely in more than one way. My Ishmael essentially just gave more enough fuel to argue with her over the subject for months, maybe years to come... heh. She tried to fiercely defend our educational system but I eventually was able to best her when I explained a prototype design that I have been toying with... Essentially this design revolves around the base idea of a collage only on a much longer term. Again my laziness prohibits me from explaining this in any real depth.

Dialectic Journal: My Ishmael

quote: "Mother Culture's deception here is that schools exist to serve the needs of people. In fact, they

exist to serve the needs of your economy. The schools turn out graduates who can't live without jobs but

who have no job skills, and this suits your economic needs perfectly. What you're seeing at work in your

schools isn't a system defect, it's a system requirement, and they meet that requirement with close to one

hundred percent efficiency."

Response: Once again My Ishmael has proven to reveal yet another obvious truth that barely anyone see's until it is pointed out to them. This quote, to me, connects perfectly to our current government and its increasing failure to do anything at all useful for the common man. What I mean by this is that the US government cares more about keeping the corporations happy, fat, and powerful while they make Americans dumb, docile, and blind. At first when I started noticing this trend with the government I never looked to see just how far it reached until I read these chapters and realized that the government isn't just doing this on a scale that encompasses the media. It is also doing it down to the schools themselves, essentially, making brain dead lemmings out of most people before they even have a chance to make something of themselves. This not only infuriates me but it frustrates me to the point that I feel the need to attempt to come up with a better, not perfect, but better education model for a hypothetical government that is both capitalist and socialist (along with also being a true democratic republic). Essentially my current idea is to have a school that teaches you what you need to learn at first and then at a certain stage (varying from person to person) you chose a certain set of studies that fascinate you and eventually help you to get into the field of work you want to go into for the future.