blog. strange word. bright logical official gabber?

I've been thinking about this quite a bit today, and when I read the other posts, I found that I wasn't alone in my opinion. I agree, being taught to reason and weild it to its full range of possibilities would clear up so much in our fuddled world. I was talking to a guy from South Africa recently (did I already post on this?) and he was talking about how a lack of education, plus hunger, can be the most detrimental thing for the society. We were talking about Rwanda and Darfur, and he kept pointing out that if the people had been better educated, the genocides wouldn't have happened. The radio rhetoric in Rwanda spurred the people to start a mass slaughter...it's uncanny. I also think that if people were educated about rhetoric things would get a lot better. You could look at commercials, and think, "oh, I know what they're doing. no way I'm buying that crap." Small example. My plan would be to up the anty for our education system, teach kids to use reason and show them the techniques of rhetoric. This way, they would be able to take a logical look at speeches and evaluate the implications of what is really going on and make reasonable decisions. Of course, by my plan everyone would be required to care about the implications of their votes, their purchases, they're judgements. It may not be entirely possible, but it's okay to dream.