The Art of Operating an Automobile
Do you remember the first time you drove a motorized vehicle. For me it was a mini-bike at the age of 9. I remember to this day the anxiety that I felt when it was my turn. I straddled the mini-bike, sat down on the cushioned seat, grabbed the throttle, twisted the handle, and off I went down the road. There was a turn only about 40 yards down the road and I had to take a 90-degree left turn. That's easy I thought, just turn. I failed to realize that I was still accelerating and was under what I would learn later in life, Isaac Newton's 2nd Law of thermodynamics First Law of Motion. That is an object in motion will tend to stay in motion, unless affected by an outward source. In this case, I had a moment of anxiety as I wondered how to slow down. Since I was accelerating I was holding on tightly and that action actually caused me to tighten the throttle and proverbially, floor it. While this was going on I negotiated the turn and figured out that I could apply pressure to the brake with my left foot and at the same time, let up on the throttle. Now that I knew how to drive it, it was exhilarating and the anxiety vanished. I had learned to drive that mini-bike without a lesson from anyone.
Why the nostalgia of learning to drive? Let's consider what happens when one first drives an automobile. First the act itself requires a lot of trust on the government’s part. With a typical 25 hours of combined classroom and behind the wheel training, the government allows over 100 million of us to drive. This intrinsic trust, which is granted by the government, is at minimum a radical one. Let's examine. An automobile contains a gas tank that on impact can has the same strength as 3 sticks of dynamite. Additionally, the capacity and potential of using a vehicle as a battering ram is capable of hurtling through side walk crossings at up to two miles a minute. They are actually giving this responsibility to everyone who can pass the minimal requirements to get a drivers license. In this respect, there is an underlying unstated official assumption about human nature. That is that nearly all people are competent and responsible. Universal motoring proves that. Almost all auto mishaps are accidents, and while there are seemingly a lot of those, the actual fraction of mishaps, when help up against the stupendous number of possibilities for mishap, is quite small.
Notice how quickly people learn to drive well. Early failure is efficiently corrected, usually self-corrected, because the terrific motivation of staying alive and in one piece steers driving improvement. If the grand theories of Comenius and Herbart about learning by incremental revelation, or those lifelong nanny rules of Owen, Maclure, Pestalozzi, and Beatrice Webb, or those calls for precision in human ranking of Thorndike and Hall, or those nuanced interventions of Yale, Stanford, and Columbia Teachers College were actually as essential as their proponents claimed, this libertarian miracle of motoring would be unfathomable.
We only need consider the intellectual component of driving. It isn't all just hand-eye-foot coordination. First-time drivers make dozens, if not hundreds, of continuous hypotheses, plans, computations, and fine-tuned judgments every day they drive. They do this skillfully, without being graded, because if they don't, organic provisions exist in the motoring world that will punish them. There isn't any court of appeal from your own stupidity on the road. Think of licensing, maintenance, storage, adapting machine and driver to seasonal and daily conditions. So you see, when carefully analyzed, driving is a impressive a miracle as walking, talking, or reading, but this only shows the inherent weakness of analysis since we know almost everyone learns to drive well in a few hours.
Given this example of capability of man to learn complexity, why is it that our schools are limiting the learning potential of students? Why are we offering curriculum that neither challenges or demands? Why are we selling the human mind short? Why are curriculum standards spiraling down?
Frederic Bastiat said in "The Law":
Thus developed the greatest monopoly of all time, government education. We neither have the right to exclude ourselves or our properties from its insidious reach. Under the threat of confiscation of property and incarceration we comply. If we want our children to experience new means and conventions of driving, how can the government schools raise expectations of it's students? How can parents, who are stuck in the monopolistic structure of government education, change how their confiscated dollars are spent? We need to either demand more from our schools or go elsewhere with our dollars. One of the only means we have for reformation of this monopoly is through the education of facts, accountability of administration, exposure of union and administrative motives, and the ability to stand up and fight for what our founding fathers created for us.
When we consider our assumptions about human nature that keep children in a condition of confinement and limited options, we need to reflect on driving and take lessons from it's experience.
Why the nostalgia of learning to drive? Let's consider what happens when one first drives an automobile. First the act itself requires a lot of trust on the government’s part. With a typical 25 hours of combined classroom and behind the wheel training, the government allows over 100 million of us to drive. This intrinsic trust, which is granted by the government, is at minimum a radical one. Let's examine. An automobile contains a gas tank that on impact can has the same strength as 3 sticks of dynamite. Additionally, the capacity and potential of using a vehicle as a battering ram is capable of hurtling through side walk crossings at up to two miles a minute. They are actually giving this responsibility to everyone who can pass the minimal requirements to get a drivers license. In this respect, there is an underlying unstated official assumption about human nature. That is that nearly all people are competent and responsible. Universal motoring proves that. Almost all auto mishaps are accidents, and while there are seemingly a lot of those, the actual fraction of mishaps, when help up against the stupendous number of possibilities for mishap, is quite small.
Notice how quickly people learn to drive well. Early failure is efficiently corrected, usually self-corrected, because the terrific motivation of staying alive and in one piece steers driving improvement. If the grand theories of Comenius and Herbart about learning by incremental revelation, or those lifelong nanny rules of Owen, Maclure, Pestalozzi, and Beatrice Webb, or those calls for precision in human ranking of Thorndike and Hall, or those nuanced interventions of Yale, Stanford, and Columbia Teachers College were actually as essential as their proponents claimed, this libertarian miracle of motoring would be unfathomable.
We only need consider the intellectual component of driving. It isn't all just hand-eye-foot coordination. First-time drivers make dozens, if not hundreds, of continuous hypotheses, plans, computations, and fine-tuned judgments every day they drive. They do this skillfully, without being graded, because if they don't, organic provisions exist in the motoring world that will punish them. There isn't any court of appeal from your own stupidity on the road. Think of licensing, maintenance, storage, adapting machine and driver to seasonal and daily conditions. So you see, when carefully analyzed, driving is a impressive a miracle as walking, talking, or reading, but this only shows the inherent weakness of analysis since we know almost everyone learns to drive well in a few hours.
Given this example of capability of man to learn complexity, why is it that our schools are limiting the learning potential of students? Why are we offering curriculum that neither challenges or demands? Why are we selling the human mind short? Why are curriculum standards spiraling down?
Frederic Bastiat said in "The Law":
Self-preservation and self-development are aspirations common to all men, so that, if each person enjoyed the free exercise of his faculties and the free disposition of their products, social progress would be continual, uninterrupted, and unfailing.
But there is another disposition that is also common among men. It is to live and to develop, when they can, at the expense of one another. This is no rash charge, nor is it an expression of a morose and pessimistic state of mind. History bears witness to its truth: its annals are filled with accounts of constant wars, mass migrations, acts of clerical despotism, the universality of slavery, commercial frauds, and monopolies.
Thus developed the greatest monopoly of all time, government education. We neither have the right to exclude ourselves or our properties from its insidious reach. Under the threat of confiscation of property and incarceration we comply. If we want our children to experience new means and conventions of driving, how can the government schools raise expectations of it's students? How can parents, who are stuck in the monopolistic structure of government education, change how their confiscated dollars are spent? We need to either demand more from our schools or go elsewhere with our dollars. One of the only means we have for reformation of this monopoly is through the education of facts, accountability of administration, exposure of union and administrative motives, and the ability to stand up and fight for what our founding fathers created for us.
When we consider our assumptions about human nature that keep children in a condition of confinement and limited options, we need to reflect on driving and take lessons from it's experience.
posted by Anonymous @ 1:32 PM
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