EDUCATION
When parents are asked to list the important things in their child’s life, a good education is almost always near the top. The importance of a top notch education is talked about at every level of society. In order to get ahead, we have told children for decades, you must have a good education.
Recently much has been made of the US’s relatively poor showing in test scores and educational results comparing major industrial nations. Over the last few decades the US has not only slipped behind many other nations, but US scores are regressing from their own previous levels. The question is often asked: in a nation full of computers and the latest and best educational aids, services and technology, how can we be lagging behind?
The usual answers to this question focus on the apparent downfall of our society due to a number of factors. Blame for the US’s educational failure is spread all over. Some feel the US has become lazy and lost its drive for excellence. Others blame parents for making their children poor students, and teachers for losing control of their classrooms. Teaching styles and practices are likewise attacked resulting in endless changes in philosophy.
Students are viewed as being lazy, uninformed, and more concerned with peers and partying than with learning. Schools are accused of being useless and dangerous social clubs where gangs, and warring factions carry guns and knives instead of books. Television, movies and music are viewed as aimless distractions which dominate time spent out of school.
Yet, for every one of these disadvantages one could name countless advantages our children have over other nations. Though our media spews forth a lot of crud it also presents our children with very valuable information. Our children, are more world wise and better informed than any other people or generation on the planet. Our children are confronted and deal with more adult issues than in the majority of the nations educationally out-showing ours.
Students in this country have more educational resources than others. A greater percentage of students live near libraries and have access to computers at home and at school. Our high schools and colleges have more up-to-date textbooks and science equipment. People from all over the world enroll at our universities because they offer the finest education available.
If education is indeed a priority of parents and business alike, then why are our children performing so poorly. The only logical reason why the wealthiest, most powerful and best equipped nation is failing in its educational goals is that we lack a true commitment. Let’s take a look at some of the factors which demonstrate a lack of our commitment to education.
The Talent Pool
A nation espousing to make education its number one priority would behave very differently than ours. First, we spend a far greater amount of money on defense and military force than we do education. In earlier sections we noted that this priority is based in economic concerns and not necessarily ideological ones. Our military actions demonstrate how we are more interested in protecting our corporate interests than in spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world.
Since money is supreme, than one of the first premises we should analyze is the one stating that US dominance in business and science depends on our educational superiority. On the surface this logic seems almost too obvious to question, but once again a deeper look reveals some interesting facts.
The US exited WWII as the undisbuted world power. US dominance was forged through its excellent resources and technological superiority. Without the help of the greatest scientists in the world the outcome of WWII could have been quite different.
Many of the scientists and intellectuals responsible for the US’s success were not US citizens. Some were trained and educated here, but many others were not. During and following WWII the US has been quite successful in acquiring the services of the world’s best scientists through monetary seduction.
When you can buy the best minds in the world, it reduces a country’s need to produce them. The major centers of scientific research and development are owned or controlled by US citizens. American interests and corporations dominate the technological field and directly employ a great percentage of its finest minds. Whoever is not employed by US interests or its allies can often be enticed into joining our ranks through offering them the facilities and monetary research they need to accomplish their professional objectives.
The fact that our tentacles reach all over the world provides us with the largest pool of talent from which to choose. Since allegiance to one’s teachers and mentors is natural, it is important that our universities be wealthy and at the cutting-edge of scientific research. Likewise, it is beneficial for many of the major foreign universities to feature US professors or those trained in the US while having their laboratories and research facilities funded by US interests.
Focusing all our attention and money on providing every US citizen with the finest education would drastically cut down our control and influence abroad. Our pool of potential scientists to employ would dwindle and our competition abroad would increase dramatically. When your primary interest is maintaining monetary superiority through control of the scientific community than one needs to keep one’s influence international.
This logic seems to indicate that our policy makers may be interested in only the best students, both here and abroad. Domestically, our system of education does produce a small percentage of very gifted students. Though the majority of US students may not be excelling, our schools continue to produce some of the finest minds in the world. Our major universities train and instruct the best students, and many of these students attended US schools their entire lives.
In the section on foreign policy we noted an economic pattern which has been emerging since WWII. Where ever the US intervened the lifestyle and wealth of the few soared, while the economic condition of the masses either stagnated or declined. This tendency has also shown itself domestically where the shift of wealth of this nation has gone to a shrinking percentage of Americans while the relative wealth of the majority has sharply declined.
The above reasoning helps explain why our government planners, politicians and corporate leaders may not view improvement in our educational system as urgent. In fact, the more we look at education from an economic perspective, the more we find reasons why improving our educational system may be viewed as dangerous or counterproductive.
Over the last few decades our nation has kept down its unemployment figures by creating a lot of lower paying jobs. The millions of minimum and subsistence wage jobs created have replaced higher paying career oriented employment. Factory work, which was greatly protested in the social revolutions of the sixties, is now the employment goal of many communities. The politically correct policy makers now glorify this menial labor by referring to it as the industrial sector or manufacturing.
Even with a “failing” educational system, many individuals with a college education find themselves “overqualified” for the job market. Though many complain that our work force is unskilled, the truth of the matter is that despite our mediocre educational system our workers are generally over-skilled.
Our economy currently cannot support a highly educated work force. The business world is not structured for a preponderance of educated workers, but instead is built around maintaining a huge menial labor force. The tendency of modern business to “downsize”, “restructure” or reinvent itself runs counter to a society preparing to meet the needs of a highly educated professional work force.
If even half of the populace received a complete college education, than it would be near impossible for the wealth of our nation to be hoarded by the top few percent. Therefore, it is only logical for the economic and political elite to feel less than enthusiastic, threatened by or even opposed to a well functioning and successful US educational system.
It is easy to find many factors which seem to validate the theory that our society is being led away from its avowed educational goals and priorities. These factors are not limited to the direct actions of the economic elite, but are found everywhere in our society.
Politicians and the economic elite are not the only ones who might be less than honest when they proclaim their commitment to education. The attitudes of parents, likewise, appear to undermine our childrens’ educational priorities. Parents seem more interested in their children acquiring academic credentials, than in actually receiving a quality education. Society often expects students to do well in school, while also preferring that they not become intelligent or “too smart”.
In every society there exists in people feelings of resentment and envy towards those more intelligent than themselves. Yet, despite these feelings, many nations revere their intellectuals and philosophers and take pride in their expertise. All around the world from France to India and China, nations and cultures drink in the wisdom of their most intellectually gifted contemporaries. Some, like France, have official positions such as a national chair of philosophy, which brings with it political and social influence and respect. Books by these respected thinkers are read by and discussed by a significant percentage of the populace.
Intellectuals in the US are seldom offered a vehicle for positive recognition. Instead, for decades they have been derided for being nerds, eggheads, snobs, pansies and bleeding hearts. Scientists, even when recognized for their achievements are made fun of as social buffoons.
Though most of these heroes are known for their determination and business rather than book smarts a few inventors and scientists were revered for having both. Yet, the personal facts we know of these “great minds” is often uncomplimentary or anti-intellectual. One of the most popular facts of Einstein for instance, is that he flunked college English and was only a fair student.
Our idols are not intellectuals, but hard working entrepreneurs. One reason for this is probably that most of our business empires have been created by relatively uneducated individuals. The richest people in the US have never been the most educated. Our highest academic achievers have been pawns and valued lieutenants for the economic eilte, but seldom have been the originators of great wealth.
Third or fourth generation members of the economic elite may indeed possess the finest education money can buy. Yet, once again the way to gain induction into the economic elite is not intelligence, but determination and business savvy. Intelligent people are an important but dangerous commodity for the economic elite. An intelligent scientist or technician though vital to the continued success of any major corporation, is also a possible threat. Therefore, it is important to the economic elite that these great minds do not become too popular or influential. Einstein, though a highly valued mind, was belittled and made fun of for his political and humanitarian views.
The emphasis in our country is for the bulk of our educated to belong to professional communities, such as lawyers, professors and doctors. Dependent on their membership in these communities our educated must remain loyal and follow a strict code of behavior. These professional groups, therefore, pose little threat to the security of the economic elite. In order to maintain their standing in their professional community many rules must be followed. Rules which involve not only how they speak, but the opinions and politics they espouse. In this way, intentional or not, the economic elite can keep those most dangerous to their domination on a very short leash.
Our universities are just as dependent as the media is on corporate funds for their survival. Corporations stock our universities with some of the finest and best equipped laboratories in the world. These labs are involved in valuable research in all fields (agriculture, bio-technology, computers, medicine and physics just to name a few).
The economic elite finds numerous benefits in investing in our universities. First, students make for very cheap workers and researchers. Corporations can get more bang for their buck by having a great deal of their research being conducted by students. Second, corporations, by carefully selecting lab equipment, can insure that the research being conducted services their needs and agendas. Thirdly, corporations generally retain the commercial rights to the discoveries made by professors and students working in these corporate sponsored laboratories.
Advances in technology make it almost essential that new inventions and discoveries take place in these labs. The days in which an inventor like Edison can make commercially viable breakthroughs in his own workshop are long gone. Except in the most rare of cases, most significant discoveries are dependent on the materials and high tech machineries available in only the finest of laboratories.
The economic elite insure their security by making universities dependent on their funds and by controlling what they are researching. With such a fortuitous relationship major corporations can squelch the very possibility of someone making a discovery rendering their products obsolete, while insuring the allegiance of the world’s finest minds at a very early age.
The functioning of our public schools are completely dependent on taxpayer money. Without this assistance, our entire elementary and high school systems would fold in a matter of weeks. Even though public education has been in monetary trouble for decades, each state has a number of schools in affluent communities which are sufficiently equipped and staffed to offer a quality education. Most other schools, though failing to teach the majority, due find a way to service the most promising and affluent students. Many of our finest students take advantage of their family’s affluence and receive a quality education at a private school.
This tragic scenario allows a small percentage of students to succeed while most fail. Yet, as we stated earlier, our economy and work force are not prepared to incorporate any significant increase in the number of students receiving a college diploma. The power and privilege of the economic elite would be greatly endangered if our nation were to produce a high percentage of workers who were highly educated, skilled and ambitious.
Our economic elite has much to gain by the success rate of our educational system remaining low. This fact may explain why the US is able to successfully overthrow governments and politically intervene in nations around the world while remaining unable to solve many of the problems which plague our schools. Our politicians and national leaders have always found the resources and means necessary to find a solution when our economic interests have been threatened in foreign lands such as Iran, Iraq and Panama. Yet, our ingenuity and resourcefulness vanish the moment our attention is placed on the relatively simple task of improving the quality of public education.
Social experts and politicians cite the downfall of the American family as a major factor contributing to the proliferation of gangs, drugs, violence, pregnancy and negative peer pressure which cause our high drop-out rate and impede the education of millions of US teens. Yet, at every turn our national policies seem to perpetuate rather than solve this problem.
The percentage of dual working families is increasing as our dwindling middle class struggles to maintain a lifestyle conducive to providing their children with the resources necessary to maximize their educational opportunities. Yet, without their parents supervision the number of relatively affluent youth succumbing to destructive influences increases. Those children of working parents unable to afford child care are even more susceptible to falling prey to gangs, teen pregnancy, etc.
Though these facts are known, little is done to solve the problem. Though we are accustomed to spending billions of dollars protecting our oil and trade interests abroad, we fail to see a need to spend even a fraction of that money on education. Instead, our policy makers blame the failure of American education on the parents, teachers and a lack of dedication by the general public.
Their concerns are economic and their fiscal solutions only promise to worsen the problem. Their solution to the welfare problem which is dominated by impoverished single mothers is to force them to work. Many of these so called “lazy” welfare mothers living in poverty are the only thing standing between their children and a life of drugs, gangs and crime.
The economic elite will be the only ones to benefit by altering the welfare program in such a way. Paying these welfare recipients minimum wage or below, corporate America will find another source of cheap labor to capitalize on, joining the already growing numbers of illegal immigrants and prisoners whose slave labor they use to pad their escalating profit margin.
The poverty stricken involved in these welfare work programs will not make enough money to survive on, but only feel punished and blamed for their poverty. The escalation of crime caused by the lack of adult supervision for these most vulnerable of children will cost the average taxpayer more money than it saves. All in all, the economic elite will make money on this program while the average taxpayer picks up the tab for this expensive and very inefficient governmental program.
We are indeed a bickering nation. Yet, much of the blame and prejudice we engage in is fostered by the programs and policies of our nation, and the rhetoric they use to sell these programs. Instead of pumping the necessary money into our public educational system to help build-up its efficiency and resources, our system induces us to bicker amongst ourselves. Sure their are incompetent teachers and irresponsible parents, but that should not be the focus of improving education.
In an effort to respond to dilute public pressure our educational experts regularly implement new educational theories and programs. When test scores fail to improve, a school district will likely replace its superintendent, or implement some new cutting-edge method of education. Each time a community engages in such a solution they increase their feelings of responsibility for their childrens education, while decreasing the governments responsibility.
A prime example of this is in the current trend of magnet schools. A school is designated as a magnet school because it is supposed to offer special services which “attract” students to their school. The schools success is therefore, dependent on the focus of the school’s cirriculum (arts, science, math, etc.) and on its ability to attract good students. The schools than become competing businesses in which the teachers and parents sell potential students on the school.
The rivalries can become quite nasty, and PTA’s usually end up spending a great deal of energy collecting and spending money on advertising. Spending money on beautiful and eye catching signs and gardens becomes just as important as buying new books and computers. The competition between schools is another device in which the attention is diverted from the real problems of public education. Public schools should not be in competition with each other, or depend on the fund raising skills of its most active parents to insure a quality education for the children. The funds needed to insure a quality education should come from our tax money and be equally divided.
Ocassionally a school system finds a formula for success that they stick with for awhile. Yet, by and large our public school systems replace new methods promising success with even newer ones every few years. These much heralded teaching strategies are seldom given enough time to prove themselves, for the prevailing mood of frustration and impatience demands change.
Many communities find it hard to believe that we are not spending enough money on education. This perception is based on the fact that they vote to pass educational bonds worth millions of dollars almost every election. Even before the previous bond money is used they are asked to bear the burden of another bond. Yet, why isn’t this money sufficient? Why isn’t it having the children in the communities test scores improve?
The answer to these questions is often in the definition of an educational bond. Yes, the bond money is being used for education, but the bulk of it is being used for the infrastructures of education and not on upgrading educational materials. Most taxpayer monies whether from community referendums or federal tax dollars are used for the construction and maintanence of school buildings and in the purchasing of school supplies including everything from pencils and erasers to paper towels and floor wax. A relatively small portion of the money is actually used to purchase textbooks and crucial educational material, the bulk of the money is used to pay for the services and products of a slew of businesses and corporations. This does not even include the expenses many schools face through vandalism and general destructiveness of its students.
Books cannot be bought until all the vendors, businesses and utility companies are paid. The end result is that it is not unusual for children to be sitting in a comfortable amply supplied classroom with an insufficient number of textbooks, having to share them with other classrooms and unable to take them home for study or homework. In a free enterprise school house educational materials are often the lowest priority. How could test scores be expected to rise, when educational materials are not the first priority of our schools?
While grade and high schools function as non-profit public services, our universities are sponsored by and patterned after big business. Corporate dollars not only insure control over what a university does and how, but it makes them dependent on supporting and promoting the free enterprise system. The economic elite learned some very important lessons by the college revolutions of the sixties and have done much to prevent it from ever happening again.
Universities are not just centers of learning, but major corporations of their own right. Our colleges and universities are becoming major investors with huge holdings and stock portfolios. Corporation’s invest in these institutions to insure commercial control of the fruits of their labors. Yet, universities compound this dependency by making themselves dependent on the success of the economic elite.
The net worth of even a moderately sized university is quite astounding. In the 1980′s student protests caused a few universities to remove their investments in S. African interests. California’s Davis University responded by divesting themselves of over 3.1 billion dollars of investments in S. African stocks. Since they are modeling themselves after major corporations their gigantic holdings do not prevent lucrative universities from raising their tuitions or crying that they are broke.
The social revolutions of the sixties which questioned Vietnam, racism, bigotry and misogony were born in our universities. Students not only read about other ideologies but discussed their possible impact on our society. What form of censorship is built in to a system whereby universities are increasingly dependent on corporate sponsorship, and corporate profits? What limits of free speech are placed on professors as they teach in the classroom?
Our CIA is famous for its ability to spread propaganda and change popular opinion. Intelligence talents such as counter-insurgency, “white” and “black” communication, taught as valuable courses in our military, have been instrumental in the over throw of “unfriendly” and dangerous governments all over the world. The CIA, for reasons of national security, will and have lied to not only enemies but friends, allies, congress and white house staff.
The CIA who has always viewed communism as our major foe, equates capitalism with democracy, and any social reform with communism. Over the last few decades the CIA has increased the number of their staff which reside at our universities. Many agents and former agents take up teaching positions, or function on an advisory level.
Why does the CIA feel a need to infiltrate our universities? How does their presence effect ideas discussed casually amongst professors or at faculty meetings? How does this effect the comfort level of students and teachers to explore ideas in the classroom?
Obviously, the constant presence of US intelligence would inhibit most from talking freely. With an entire globe to cover it is suspicious that our CIA would devote such energy and manpower to universities without a greater purpose than finding new recruits. The presence of intelligence agents on college campuses all over America does not mean anything in particular, yet it would seem to inhibit many from engaging in converstaions which could be even remotely construed as unpatriotic.
The economic elite of our nation realize our continued global dominance depends on providing the best minds with the finest education. To achieve this end, corporate America works hard to keep US universities the wealthiest and best equipped in the world. In this way, the US is able to educate, employ and utilize the best minds from around the world.
Yet, the dominance of the few is dependent on the subservience of the many. The increased skills and abilities of the majority of college students and graduates could threaten more than help the economic elite. Therefore, it is beneficial to the economic elite for the education of the bulk of college students to be diluted and insignificant.
This again could explain why our universities do not solve problems, practices and conditions which injure the quality of higher education. First, though wealthy institutions continue to raise the cost of a college education, keeping many our of their classrooms. Those able to afford an education, often fail to take full advantage of the opportunity for a host of preventable reasons.
The expectation in our culture is that a student attends college immediately after they graduate high school. For most students college is their first experience living on their own and away from their family. Many new students fail because they have difficulty surviving in a foreign environment without familial support. This is especially true at major universities when a new student can get lost in the vast numbers of students.
Those able to adapt may fall prey to other aspects of campus life. Without parental supervision, one’s college years are often a time to party and socialize. Education can become a low priority when one is feeling one’s oats, falling in love, or just spreading one’s wings. Couple this new freedom with the fact that most college age students are entering their most rebellious years where establishment values such as education, are often questioned if not openly challenged and ignored.
Many of the same problems plaguing our high schools such as drugs and alcohol, pregnancy became magnified in college. Univeristies do little to curtail, and often promote such problems by indirectly glorifying these images of collegiate life. Fraternity and Sorority houses notorious for their “kegger” parties, wild antics and promiscuity are seldom punished by the university.
Events such as rape, sexual and physical abuse are often covered up, or handled in house to avoid tarnishing the universities public image. Social epidemics such as alcoholism and drug addiction are likewise minimized and rationalized as a need for the students to blow off a little steam.
Maximizing the educational opportunities our universities offer is difficult when you consider the age of the majority of the students and the learning environment with which they are subjected. Sure the chaos can be avoided by attending a junior or small college, yet the education offered at these institutions is either poor or under-valued by potential employers.
Universities have done little to improve learning conditions. In fact any move to improve the situation is usually defeated for economic reasons. Universities resist enforcing tighter laws out of fear that party hungry adolescents will avoid their institution. They avoid reducing their numbers, for a loss of size would endanger their corporate endowments and donations, as well as make it impossible for them to maintain their huge investment portfolios.
Allowing more students to receive an education via the computer from their home is likewise discouraged. The stated logic is that the student would lose out on the social benefits of college life and the beneficial interaction between teacher and classmates. The classroom learning environment is greatly exaggerated.
First, most basic classes are held in vast auditoriums where an entire semester would be spent on the first lesson if each student felt the urge to ask a single question. Second, in the modern classroom, many students spend their time taking copious notes, either by hand or lap top computer, while others tape record the class for later listening.
At a fraction of the cost to live on campus, a student could buy a computer and modem allowing them to attend college via an electronic classroom. Students using this format could interact with each other, store all information the teacher imparts, and engage in research quickly and efficiently. The only social interaction missed with one’s classmates, would be the wild antics and endless parties which cause many students to underachieve or drop-out.
Many universities have responded to this problem by lowering their academic standards and requirements. Some of our finer institutions give out only A’s, B’s and failing grades. This does little more than foster mediocrity, and reduces the significance of getting good grades.
The Computer Rage
Just a short while ago, schools complained about the lack of computers in their classrooms. Except in the wealthiest of communities, parents and PTA’s found it near impossible to find the resources necessary to get an effective amount of computers into the classroom. Those succeeding usually found a local business willing to donate their old discarded computers, or a computer related company who felt the publicity would more than offset any loss they incurred by selling the computers at a reduced price.
Now, even the poorer schools, which couldn’t even afford one for the library, are finding it possible to get computers into the classroom. What is the reason for this? Where are we getting the money to afford these computers?
The reason for the computers new found access to our schools has little to do with the price of computers, or to an escalated commitment to education on the part of the general public. Parents. PTA’s and communities have futilly struggled for years to have computers become a vital aspect of our children’s education.
Money for computers is suddenly appearing as schools are tooling up to become part of the “information highway” and passengers on the internet. Funds are pouring in from federal and corporate sources as we hurry to “improve” the quality of education and “prepare for the global economy of the 21st century’.
Where is this new commitment coming from? Has the government and corporate America begun to believe their own propaganda regarding the importance of a quality education for all American’s?
Though it would be nice if it were true, many contradictions surface which seem to lead us towards another conclusion.
The key to our newfound commitment to the computer as a necessary component of a quality education can be found in the commercial potential of the internet and information highway. The expense of wiring everyone into the internet far exceeds that of the old goal of just getting computers into the classroom loaded with quality software. Quality educational software has existed for years. For the price of one textbook a school could purchase a CD ROM containing an entire wing of their school library, or more information than all the textbooks and visual aids even the brightest student could possible weed through and process during their entire stay at the school.
When such a relatively cheap and effective educational tool exists, why would we choose the more expensive alternative of becoming part of the internet. The reason as always has to do with the value of money once again outweighing and controlling any other value (principle).
The only current educational advantage the internet has over the CD ROM is in its ability to get the very latest information. As an example if one were studying cancer, one could spend an afternoon weeding through the very latest findings by top researchers and foundations all across the globe. Yet, how often do you think it would be necessary for a student to have to read the very latest findings. Shouldn’t the information contained on a CD ROM produced within the last year or so, suffice?
When the goal is up to the minute research, the immediacy of the internet has a decisive advantage over any textbook or software available. The advantage of software such as CD ROM’s is in how quickly the information can be accessed. Another advantage is that the information on the CD ROM has been selected because of its importance and validity to what the student is studying. A student on the internet could be spending a great deal of time just searching for pertinent material to their assignment. Even once the appropriate material is found, a student would spend a great deal of time and mental energy weeding through the material in its undiluted state probably reading the same facts, opinions and statements numerous times from various sources.
Many may argue that the inefficiencies of the internet are present because it is still in its infancy. Some would go so far as to say that the information highway is the way of the future, and that money spent on computer software is wasted on something which time has come and gone.
You here a lot of talk today about the “unlimited educational potential” of the internet and information highway. Those with a memory will recall much the same being said about the other forms of mass communication when they were in their infancy. Radio as well as TV were hailed as unlimited sources of information and education. Yet, the fate of the internet is likely to go the same route as that of TV and radio.
The drive to get schools onto the information highway is coming mainly from the corporate sector. The reason for their preferring the internet over any other alternative can be seen from our original discussion regarding the CD ROM. These discs are economic and educationally efficient. Yet, how many publishers would be excited by the prospect of their entire line of textbooks being replaced by a handful of CD ROM’s?
The CD ROM market itself has little interest in making our educational system more efficient. How much money would they make if they produced a small list of durable disks which were to replace the thousands upon thousands of textbooks which quickly go from desk to landfill each year?
Do those businesses and vendors who make their living supplying schools with educational materials really want education to become less expensive and more efficient? If it be true that monetary considerations dominate many of the decisions which effect the course of our educational system, than why the internet?
While CD ROM’s might save the taxpayers money by reducing the cost of textbooks, they also could cut into the profits of many important corporations. The internet on the other hand is a money making bonanza.
Corporations were less willing to buy computers for schools when they saw little chance of making a profit. Personal computers where introduced into schools just enough to whet the appetite of the average consumer. Many home computers were purchased by parents who were concerned that their child would be at a disadvantage to those who had a home computer. Their were always enough computers in schools to demonstrate their usefulness, while not enough to restrict the sales of home computers.
Now that personal computers are an accepted necessary commodity, their presence in schools is not so dangerous to home sales. While computers with quality software no longer pose a threat to the personal computer market, they also do not do much to generate additional profits. The internet on the other hand, at least commercially, truly has “unlimited potential”.
First, the cost of being on line will always generate a steady flow of profit for a number of corporations and businesses. Just like TV and radio, the information highway is prime real estate for commercials, relatively free advertising and market research. The unlimited potential of the information highway is, therefore, more economic than educational.
A society truly committed to providing all with the finest education would not construct or support our current system. We would not choose to subject impressionable adolescents to an environment full of distracts and traumatic experiences, and expect them to maximize their education.
Our nation’s dedication to insuring that we protect our economic supremacy appears much stronger than its commitment to providing a quality education for all. Yet, who can blame the economic elite for protecting their interests. The longer we make money our highest priority, the further we go from forming a just and fair society, for the very success of our entire economic system depends on our maintaining a large, unskilled work force. Providing a quality education for the majority of citizens is not only dangerous but counter-productive.
Community Colleges
Lately we’ve been reading complaints about how unprepared many of our children are for college. Not only junior colleges, but universities are offering “remedial” courses in English and Math for students whose basic skills in these areas are far below their age level. Some are even warning us that for many students the bulk of their first two years of college are spent learning things they should have learned in high school. In other words a two person receiving a two year degree is little more than a high school graduate. Since many of our labor force is coming out of junior colleges, where is this highly skilled work force of the 21st century coming from?
Sure most junior college students are learning technical skills for specific jobs, but couldn’t they learn those same skills on the job as an apprentice? Are our junior colleges becoming nothing more than training programs making the kids and their families pick up the tab to be trained? Once again students are being used as free labor to advance the interests of the businesses who “donate” equipment to the campus.
The use of donations to junior colleges as a shrewd investment opportunity by local businesses is on the up-swing. The role of donor has many economic benefits for a local manufacturing or business firm. Businesses get to try out new equipment or techniques on students without having the bulk of this expense written off as a donation. Local businesses get beneficial positive press through announcing their donations and by having building, projects and courses named after them.
As in universities, junior college students provide businesses with plenty of free and relatively competent workers. Businesses can train and recruit the best students, thereby cutting down on expenses, and maximize their profits by being able to hire workers who have already demonstrated an ability to learn and work on their machines and computers.
While corporations use their labs at top universities to train, exploit and recruit the best minds in the world, businesses use the community colleges to find the worker bees who are needed to help run the massive labor forces which make up the manufacturing and service industries.
In the first paragraph of this section we mentioned that many teachers and professors are complaining at how low functioning many first year college students are. Though the watering down of our high school education was probably not planned, and a result of a number of social conditions, the fact remains that the business community has used this sad fact to their advantage. Raising the basic expectation for employment from a high school education to at least the completion of at least two years of college has many political and economic benefits for our most fervent capitalists.
The pathetic education many kids are receiving in high school makes it necessary for colleges, especially junior colleges to lower their expectations. Most adults would not consider a child who can barely read, write or do basic math problems as employable or their formal education complete. This simple reality, makes it easy for the general public to view their community college as both important and necessary to the progress of their community.
Communities sold on the importance of a junior college will financially and emotionally support their community college. This means that tax payers can be expected to help in the construction, maintainence and expansion of their college, thereby insuring its survival.
I believe our educational system will stay much the same because many wealthy and influential people would stand to lose too much by any substantial improvement. The educational system, for all its faults accomplishes the goals our government planners and economic elite have had for decades.
Our system does in fact educate the finest students in the world, while simultaneously gaining their employ and allegiance. Even those who drop-out or receive the most basic education are successfully indoctrinated.
At an early age we are taught that we are the land of opportunity, and the world’s only hope for freedom. It is our duty to defend this country and a privilege to be apart of this great nation. Our government embodies the highest and noblest ideals of man. Since our government and our way of life are good, anyone opposed to us is evil. This country has become great by the sweat and determination of the common man, and therefore, an American can be proud whether or not he acquires wealthy.
We are allowed, even encouraged to debate how it is best to enforce our values world wide. This is the land of diversity, teeming with hawks and doves, liberals, conservatives and libertarians. All is fine as long as we do not question our national goals, or challenge the economic elite.
The above “facts” are the central points of our education. An education which we receive not only in school, but every time we turn on a television, watch a movie, read a book or magazine, or attend the church of our choice.