Surviving Capitalism (Not) : De-legitimizing public education

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, November 15, 2010

De-legitimizing public education

by Valerie Strauss from The Washington Post.

The writer provides a good service by foreseeing further attacks on public education and the continuing dumbing-down of the American public. But what she offers in addition to this are some valuable hints on how the ruling class controls education through top-down layers of control. She inadvertently provides these hints in steps 3, 4, and 5. This, in outline form, is precisely how the ruling class controls all public service institutions in a capitalist "democracy".

What would be of greater interest would be to fill in that outline with more details, not only in education, but in all other institutions. That would be the most valuable service to all working people so that they could really understand how their society works in contrast with the rubbish that they are taught in schools, by mass media and Hollywood. But, of course, she wouldn't dare do that because she would be fired and her career in journalism in mainstream media would be finished.