The foundation of America's shining moment in the academic world came as a result of post-WWII GI Bill. It gave students stipends, which relieved pressure on the job market. But it also educated a bunch of farm boys and immigrants.
State governments decimated elementary education in response to Brown v. BoE. Rather than educate Black residents, they elected to educate none of their children. We are reaping the whirlwind in Tea Baggers and low-information voters. We need to stem the tide.
We have been abandoning our children and our veterans to a gray world of despair and ignorance by denying them a decent public education. This has exploded the population of poorly educated Americans to the point where the society is overwhelmed by their ignorance. Thus building a nation of wage slave ready drones already primed by the PATRIOT Act to submit to any and all physical abuse under the guise of 'safety.'
Vast numbers of our young people are peasants, isolated in rural backwaters where the Constitution and PBS no longer reaches. They enlist for war out of desperation and lack of alternatives. We've grown 15 years of these vets, most of whom were designated cannon fodder and abandoned by their country.
It's time to re-look at how we use the GI Bill to bring back an educated electorate and society.
You know what to do.....
Instead of GI Bill for college, why not put the money where it needs to be? Secondary and Primary education for adults. The prime cause of unemployment is lack of education.
If we revamped the GI Bill to support local Community Colleges we could expand their offerings to include the full educational range, including art, music, reading and real science across the primary and secondary levels.
The funding to community colleges provides a means of curbing the excesses of on-line for-profit degree mills. It opens up a means of employment for thousands of academics who cannot survive on the meager wages of adjunct professorship. Neighborhood revitalization usually follows, along with diverting young people into interesting, productive areas previously beyond reach. It ends the ignorance base of the far-right.
By giving our vets another shot at a decent education, no matter what their age, we build a stronger, more intelligent citizenship, able to smell the snake oil they've been fed. We establish a 'campus community', which helps provide mutual support and exposure to diversity.
We also need to rebuild our Civil Service, which acted as Congressional sheepdogs. They were our wall between lobbyists and Congressmen. Regan/Bush destroyed the WWII generation's greatest gift to the boomers. A professional, in-house corporate memory, immune to Congressional threats. The ability of fellow citizens to operate their own government, rather than pay a contractor is what we need to bring back involved citizens. That goes for City and State in-house ownership of Public assets like Public Utilities.
(If you don't own a capability, in a disaster, you are going to sell your children to afford the contractor. New Orleans.)
Reestablishing a robust Civil Service and in-house government agencies also provides competition for Labor. It allows the government to set a bottom on wages and benefits by expanding the work-force to combat wage stagnation.
The jobs programs we need are government jobs, sheltered from the marketplace. Siphoning adults back through an education can correct the abuses of the States, increase the average level of scholarship irregardless of financial conditions.
By educating our veterans and citizens up to a modern standard, we spend our taxes investing in our future.
That's how you kick free-market Capitalism in the nuts. Build your citizens.