The Madness of King Us: our growing educational deficit

[dorkulon]

This article's from October, but it's message is still timely--and sobering.

http://www.buffalobeast.com/108/the_madness_of_king_us.htm

--snip--

Everybody likes to complain about how stupid everyone else is. But it’s a real problem when it’s true. The fundamental flaw in self-rule is that the government is only as smart as its constituents. Widespread public ignorance is like kryptonite to democracy; it can’t survive long in its presence. It’s not a hard process to follow—the dumber someone is, the easier it is to fool them, to take advantage of them. And we have become a nation of marks.

To make matters worse, while Americans have grown more intellectually undernourished, a major industry devoted to manipulating them emotionally has rapidly evolved into an exact science. Nowadays, when a politician “approves this message,” you can bet that message has been tested on selected voters while their brains are monitored to determine its precise emotional impact. So while our mentally enfeebled populace is ever less able to defend against manipulative PR messages, those messages are ever more calculated and refined. We don’t stand a chance.

Here’s the real buzzkill, though: if our diminished capacity to think is the root problem, there really is no hope. Our schools have been deteriorating for decades, and they’ve gotten consistently worse, even when it seemed they couldn’t possibly get worse. With Republicans intent on choking the Department of Education to death and Democrats maintaining the status quo to appease teachers unions, there is no visible end to this trajectory. So if today’s average voter is gullible enough to, for instance, still believe that there were WMD in Iraq, or that Dick Cheney really has severed all ties with Halliburton, it’s terrifying to contemplate the collective mental capacity of America by the time Lindsay Lohan receives her Lifetime Achievement Award.

There’s no getting around this problem. Stupid people make stupid decisions. And when a stupid majority votes on a complex issue, your only hope is to fool them into making the right choice. Hence people argue not that torture is simply wrong, but that it doesn’t work. And congressional Republicans are in trouble not because of the twisted mockery they’ve made of the federal system, but because one of them has been exposed as a creepy old pervert. Frankly, it’s pathetic, and it’s only going to get worse.

--snip--

http://www.buffalobeast.com/108/the_madness_of_king_us.htm

It's a good point. How do we expect an ignorant nation to understand global politics or domestic economics? What can be done about it?

[thingfisher]

1. I don't think America has been committed to education

for many decades. We have squandered our resources on military armaments and obsolete on delivery weapons systems as reps and senators voted for appropriations for their constituents. Had we tied even a percentage of defense spending to education (we have not even maintained the physical plants) expenses we could have the intelligent population we deserve to be. That being said, with the outsourcing of jobs for lower salaries and wages (in the interest of greater profits) we might only hae ended up with a better educated mass of unemployed and under employed.

[dorkulon]

2. a "better educated mass of unemployed"

would be infinitely better than a bunch of sitting ducks--because such a populace would be able to make change happen.

[thingfisher]

3. Point taken.

Perhaps as more of the technical jobs get outsourced and the "better educated mass of unemployed" grows there will be more poweful resistance to this madness.

[Abuhans]

4. This is heresy but,

I do not trust Government with education. Ever since public education, the American people have increasingly dumbed down. And really it makes sense. What would happen if there was say...Public bread? Anybody can get "free" bread, paid for by exorbitant taxes. The bread would of course be horrible, and would only get worse. The only private bread providing companies would provide exotic and/or expensive, high quality bread. Sure there wouldn't be any starving people, because they could just get a fill of public bread. But wouldn't it be better just to completely privatize the bread business? Doesn't that competition create higher quality, more diverse, more affordable bread? Replace the word bread with education, I think we would be a lot better off with no public education. Maybe it is not the best analogy, don't get hung up on it.

[thingfisher]

5. Well, in a way we have both.

The wealthy and priviledged have always been able to afford the best schools for their offspring. Of course that does not necessarily insure that the product will be of any quality (see current president as example).
Public education was a good idea originally and worked for many decades when its purpos was toproduce a work force that was adequately educated to perform in society. Often this rewquired no more than an 8th grade education.

In our modern day, public education offered various curriculum; academic (for college bound), general, and commercial(secretarial and office work).
When I was in the system it functioned fairly well but later it seemed to deteriorate with every passing year. Sometime I think poor schooling is part of a bigger plan to produce undereducated people who are easily manipulated and preyed upon.

[kineneb]

6. original purpose of public education in US

was not to create doctors or lawyers, but workers just educated enough to run machinery in the factories. Since we no longer need factory workers- the factories having all been offshored- the educational system is in need of reform. And yes, in the 19th century, an 8th grade education was all that was needed for most people: they could read, write and do basic sums.

My grandparents both graduated from high school in the early part of the 20th century, something that was still not common in rural America at the time.

[porphyrian]

8. "Sometime I think poor schooling is part of a bigger plan to produce undereducated people..."

I think that's EXACTLY the case. Corporate interests now trump the better interests of the majority of the citizenry because they have been able to buy influence in government via lobbyists. Corporations don't want well-educated masses questioning their practices and resisting their advertising, they want Good Consumers. Good Consumers trust authority and don't really want to think too much. Good Consumers can be told what to buy and when, working as many hours for shitty pay as it takes to do so. Good Consumers are cattle, and cattle are predictable. We're being raised to be Good Consumers, and a decent education doesn't really figure into that.

[thingfisher]

9. As my avatar suggests

Frank Zappa is one of the people I respect for his ability to see through the squalor of consumerism as a basis for culture.
I am very weary of our society, which seems to exist solely for the purpose of producing consumer products in a nauseating variety of pointlessness for consumer citizens whose sole purpose is to earn money to consume pointless products until death.
Meanwhile our culture drowns in a miasma of trashy "high culture" of insipid music, flashy but vacuous entertainment, and more entertainmet featuring "fascinating" glimpses into the lavish lifestyles of those who are paid gazillions to entertain us.

The likes of Frank Zappa brought so much more to the realm of "entertainment", and actually forced us to think as we enjoyed the complex and fascinating music he wrote and performed.

[porphyrian]

10. Zappa really earned my respect with his treatment of the PMRC.

Before those hearings/trials, I hadn't really listened to most of his music (beyond Don't Eat the Yellow Snow and a few others).

[dorkulon]

11. I agree that introducing an element of competition is necessary.

It's about the only thing Republicans say that I agree with, except that I wouldn't trust them to implement such a policy. I think the "school choice" idea has some merit. The teacers unions don't like it, but they don't seem committed to doing anything at all to improve the situation.

[hfojvt]

7. maybe I am overly optimistic

but I do not complain about how stupid everyone else is. I complain more about the flood of misinformation with which they are inundated. It isn't that their brains don't work, but that they have neither the time nor the interest to do their own research. Even if they did, there are websites, books, newspapers, magazines and talking heads on TV willing to spread lies, hatred and deceit. It's hard to hear the truth over the right-wing noise machine, and, IMO, many of the pieces of conventional wisdom in our society, IMO, are not very wise. As James Loewen wrote in "Lies my teacher told me" more education in history seemed to make people more stupid because they 'learned' more propaganda.