It's the Schools, Stupid!

by Doc Cuddy, Editor

The really big failure behind all the others, of course, is of the American system of education. It’s the schools, stupid.

Lately , we have tut-tutted obediently as the media companies have filled our TV screens with images of armies of Muslim youth being indoctrinated by rote into a screed of vengeance and glorious death which has about as much to do with the past grandeurs of Islamic civilization as, well, David Letterman has to do with the High Renaissance.

Questions:
What kind of education system produces a mass audience for not just one Rush Limbaugh but for dozens? What kind of education system produces a mass audiences for not just one Schwarzenegger movie but for dozens? What kind of education system produces a mass audience for not just one PuffDaddy but for dozens, for not just one Jerry Falwell but for dozens, nay, hundreds, thousands?

Answer:
An education system that numbs- and dumbs-down through the daily enforced rote of attendance in vacuous classes. The product of such a system emerges as an mindless, more or less obedient employee-consumer, anesthetized and ready to do any kind of shit work available in order to partake of tiny media and product droppings from the high table of High Capitalism, with advertisements for which he/she is constantly bombarded.

A person who, in two words, is unthinking and unfeeling in all areas of life except those immediately concerned with daily survival.

Hope, and light, still exists in America solely because of the grossly unfair, unequal two-track system of education that has evolved and solidified out of the on-going exploitation of the underclass.

Side by side and simultaneous with the suppression of all thought in standard public and religious education, America still has a small, hugely subsidized and truly excellent fast-track continuation of the classical model of education where the old pedagogical rules still apply: stimulate, challenge, question; stimulate, challenge, question.

But even as the glacial subduction of individual values grinds on in the mass system, the dangers for those on the elite path loom larger and larger. Yes, we get ‘em—the best and the brightest—to think, to write, to create. But once they’re done, emerging from the cocoon of intellectual privilege into the world, they, as highly select members of the capitalist elite, are faced with two ever more powerful temptations: money, and power.

Power:
Consider the Washington faces we see every day. Not the hail-fellow-well-met boobs who’ve always populated the Congress, but the appointed administration officials who actually sit at the levers of power. Smart? Yep. Thoughtful? Yep? Very very well-educated? Yep.

And look at their behavior. Truism or not, power really does corrupt, above all in a system which protects the wielders of power from personal responsibility. How many of the powerful were punished for Vietnam? How many for Iran-Contra? How many will be punished for domestic and global atrocities being planned even now? A token few, and the rest will be re-cycled in future like-minded administrations.

Money:
Consider the Enron/Worldcom/Andersen/Merrill-Lynch/etc. faces. Money also corrupts. How many of those smart, well-educated, well-protected faces will be punished for the $7 trillion lost since the height of the stock market bubble? A token few, and the rest will live in comfort with their Swiss bank deposits.

In spite of all this, some in every civilization persist in thinking and in feeling. They speak, they write, they act, they create.

Who, in the din of sell and control, sell and control, listens?