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Re: And we wondered what is wrong with our education system?
ER — (archived)

It's a business, Tom. Companies lobby and court educators. Probably bribe, them, too. You guys even have a name for it, "Crony Capitalism".

It's an ugly system, and it needs to be fixed. But the ideological content of the books must be determined by individuals under political control, who can be voted out. Not by businessmen,or church ladies, or a bunch of Hillbilly Hitlers in some local school board.

Besides, the problem described by Feynman is not about ideology,or politics, its about stupid people who don't care about anything but making money.

We had a similar problem when I was in college, although we had excellent textbooks, as far as content was concerned. The problem was that editions and texts were frequently changed, differing by little except page numbers, forcing students (by rule and restriction) to spend enormous sums just to get the latest edition. Perfectly good books were bonfired each year so new editions could be sold to the next class. It was a racket run by the publishers, and by professors who wanted to sell their own books and didn't want to compete with the used book stores IN A FREE MARKET. It wasn't about ideology or politics, it was all about profit.

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