I had heard the term “Postmodern” for quite some time before I finally got off my duff and looked it up to see what all the fuss was about. From Wikipedia:
“Postmodern philosophy is skeptical or nihilistic toward many of the values and assumptions of philosophy that derive from modernity, such as humanity having an essence which distinguishes humans from animals, or the assumption that one form of government is demonstrably better than another.”
What the heck is ” nihilistic” ? From Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, nihilism is defined as:
1a : a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless. b: a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths.
2a: a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility. b. capitalized : the program of a 19th century Russian party advocating revolutionary reform and using terrorism and assassination.
Some of the results of postmodernist philosophy are the belief that, for example:
1. Human beings are just another animal on earth and there is no intrinsic difference in, say, a hamster, and in say, Martin Luther or John Admas, or well, you fill in the blank. Picture the greatest men and women that have ever lived, who have contributed the most to the soul of mankind, and on the other hand, picture an earthworm. Postmodernism holds that there is, in essence, no difference in the two. Let’s get right to the point: Postmodernism holds that humans do not have a “soul” and that there is no supernatural or other difference in the essence of a worm or in the essence of a human.
2. One form of government is no better than another. That means that it is impossible to say that, for example, a republic that elects it’s leaders is any better than, for example, a totalitarian dictatorship that routinely uses torture and execution to keep their constituents in line (think IRAQ). This is what most postmodernist say anyhow. At least initially. But after you really dig into their beliefs, postmodernist generally DO believe that one form of government is better… they usually believe in Marxism.
3. It is impossible to know any absolute truths, because there is no absolute truth. This means that there really is no “right” and no “wrong”, and so anything that you want to do is OK. You don’t have to let your imagination wander to far to see where that leads.
4. There is no meaning to our lives. The obvious next step in this line of thought is that since nothing matters, we might as well do what feels good right now…there is no meaning, and therefore no real consequence to our actions.
5. Tearing down the culture and society of the United States is in and of itself, desirable, even if there is nothing constructive to replace it with, because things are so bad here. (But wait, I thought that there was no objective truth, and that no way to prove that any one form of government was better than another? So how can we know that a given society is “bad” and should be destroyed? Well, we have just uncovered one of the striking self-contradictions of postmodernism. If you want to start keeping a tally, get yourself a lot of paper, there are a lot of them).
Just in case you think any of these five results of postmodernist philosophy might be a stretch, go back to the top of this article and re-read carefully the definitions of postmodernism and nihilism. It is all in there.
So, what has all this got to do with Education, and the price of rice in China? Well, no discernible link to the price of rice in China, but the link to modern education is significant. Postmodern philosophy has become very, very prevalent in institutions of “higher learning”. There has been a group of postmodern thinkers who have impacted heavily the philosophy of education here in the United States. Here is a link to an article titled “Rorty’s Rebels, published in World Magazine in the September 6/13 2008 issue, that is a good starting point in understanding the mindset of these postmodernist, what their agenda is, and what the results of their influence has been. 
More later on the absurdities that have resulted from postmodernist doctrine.