I have long believed that the Right Wing of politics in this country despises and fears Public Education. It is my contention that they will stop at nothing to prevent the younger generation from developing any skills in thinking critically, and to do this they are prepared to sacrifice the education of the many, preserving it only for the few.
This Diary, which is no more than a series of my "impressions" has been a while coming. Last week, Kossack Steven D published this Diary which was an excellent description of research and study into the outcomes of the "War on Education" (my term). This Diary is an excellent primeur for the one that you are about to read, and I commend it to you.
My qualifications for writing this Diary are, at best, thin from the point of view of direct experience in the Public School system.
My wife is a High School Special Ed. teacher. I have Substituted some, and I have three children in the 2nd, 4th and 6th Grades respectively. I myself was educated in England. Primary School, Grammar and Comprehensive High Schools, University, where I didn't graduate (long story). I have two children close to graduating High School in England. I also have a Graduate Certificate in the Care and Development of Children and Young People from the University of Exeter. As I said ..... Thin!
It isn't, of course, a war. War is two sides or more, engaged in violent physical conflict where people on both sides die. To call the formenting of Education Policy a "War", is symptomatic of the violent rhetoric that we have been made much more aware of recently.
"War on Drugs", "War on Crime", even "War on Terror" are all misnomers, but they have all become the common parlance. Whether or not this is a good thing will continue to be debated, but, with the Right so desperately committed to underfunding and undermining Public Education, then this war is as well named as any of the other examples I gave.
I call it a "war" simply to highlight the fact that the stakes are very high, and the determination of the Right to "win this war" is as apparent as their determination to do anything else. I genuinely believe that they would have given up the extra tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans, if the choice had been accept the loss of those cuts, or accept the teaching of "Critical Thinking" classes in every Public School.
The teaching of, in a coordinated manner, critical thinking skills to our children, starting in Grade School and continuing through High School and College, is the Holy Grail of Progress and Democracy; and that is why it isn't happening.
We sometimes consider the spread of political thought to be a spectrum, with the Fascists, GOP, Tea Party etc. at or towards one end of the scale, and the Socialists, Communists, Democrats, Progressives at the other. There you are, a nice straight line. Put yourself as Voter, Congressman, President, somewhere along that line and we can meet in the middle. "Meet in the Middle" is a very good song by a Band called Diamond Rio. As a political theory, it sucks.
We like straight lines, it's human. We can see from whence we came. We can judge where we are right now, and plot a course forwards to our futures.
But politics isn't like that. We do not start at the same place. We have different end goals and there is rarely a visible path from one to the other.
For example. The Right do not see the world as we do. Their view is of a benign dictatorship, where the mass of the population places it's trust in a small, ruling elite (them). They see corporations as the arbiters of market, and money and power as a goal, not as a means to a goal.
Liberals see the opposite. They see Corporations, and the creation of wealth as a means to serve the people. To better the people and fund their development into any areas they wish to go. While we can accept that some will benefit more than others, there are boundaries and limits beyond which we are not prepared to go.
Where we are coming from is different, where we are trying to go is different, and each is completely incompatible with the other. We can't even rely on a common history to inform us, because my view of history ... my conclusions of what history teaches us are not the same as the message drawn by Boehner, or Bush, or Pawlenty or Palin (who IS that woman?).
There are those who see our past, including slavery and apartheid, as a "good model". Those people are in the mainstream of American politics.
The only way to break the endless cycle of lies, cynicism and corruption, is for people to see it. If they see it, and can evaluate in a meaningful manner what they are seeing, then they can, and will, reject it. Conversely, if they see from progressives a lack of guile, artifice and solutions that can be checked and analysed, then they will embrace them.
The desperate need of the Right is to prevent the people, especially the children, from ever realising that the Emporer is stark-bollock-naked, and living in a street near you!
Imagine the situation where a school student is in a classroom, and a teacher or another student makes a very simple statement:
"To be Gay is a sinful choice, and should not be condoned".
Two pages on that please, by Monday
Where does that student start? Her parents would confirm the assertion, she couldn't even tell her Granny that she had the assignment, and just last Sunday her Pastor was banging on about the sin of "a man lying with a man".
Her only problem is how to spin out her simple agreement into two pages. Maybe the teacher will accept two paragraphs, or even sentences, if they are grammatically correct! Because we teach grammar ... My God do we teach grammar. ("My God" is my "ironic inner atheist" having fun).
I think I am a decent writer. Others think so too. I sometimes wonder how I ever survived not knowing to this day, the difference between a pronoun and an adverb. I went through fifteen years of schooling without ever being taught those things. Judge for yourselves how that turned out. In Oklahoma Schools our students are taught grammar for about two hours a week, for years; but to what effect? Steven D's Diary linked above shows outcomes.
That those American kids are as bright, and many brighter than me is beyond doubt. The difference between us is that I was taught how to use English, and not simply how English is constructed.
Let us go back to "teh gay".
In my High School, this student would have started with a blank piece of paper, on which she would write the following headings:
- Who made that statement and what do I know about them?
- Can the Bible be trusted as the "literal word of God"
- Does it make sense to rely only on the thoughts of people 1000 years ago?
- Do I know any Gay folk, and how are they?
- Is "gay" a choice?
- In this context, what does "condone" mean?
- Shit, only two pages, I better get started.
We can quibble until the cows come home about how a student might approach this assignment, but that's not the point. The simple point is that ANY structured approach to this and other, less controversial questions, defines Critical Thinking, and I can do it, and current College students can't. My wife can do it, many Kossacks can do it, but they either went to an exceptional school, or they taught themselves.
If we teach our children to think for themselves we need to accept several guaranteed outcomes:
- They will disagree with their parents
- They will change their Churches, or they will quit going
- They will not vote for proven liars
- They will question everydamnedthingyousaytothem!
- They will kick us out of the way, and build a better world.
We cannot expect our children to grow into mature, responsible adults capable of playing a full role in society, unless we equip them so to do.
If we do this, they will reject much of the orthodoxy, the conventional wisdom, and that is why the Right cannot allow it to happen. If their conventional wisdom is rejected, they have nothing to replace it with.
The Right has some powerful tools on it's side. They have the parlous state of many schools and school districts, they have the wealth, they have the Church. Defeating this is not going to be easy, but it is a fight we need to have, and a fight we need to win.
For our children.