The miseducation of Florida's young
Florida doesn't want its youth to know the truth. Under Ron DeSantis and his fellow Republicans, the state's schools and universities are no longer temples of knowledge. They are propaganda factories whose sole function is to produce citizens whom they have molded into useful, unthinking tools for the state.
Florida has empowered parents to act as agents for the state's educational jihad. School districts live with metaphorical book burnings and real censorship. Bureaucratic crusaders have stripped curricula of any material that does not enforce white, bi-cis-gender, heterosexual orthodoxy.
George Carlin
American philosopher and social analyst George Carlin saw the academic vandals coming a mile away. He knew what America's owners wanted from the country's educational system. And he was not shy to express his opinion. Here are some highlights from his philippic against the peddlers of ignorance and conformity.
(The reader can CLICK HERE for his complete take on the subject. Or watch the video at the bottom.)
- They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking.
- They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
So what do they want?
- They want obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they're coming for your Social Security money.
- They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.
The academic rot is also post-secondary
The state's interference in education extends to its public universities. Now professors have had enough. A Faculty in the South survey conducted by various conferences of the American Association of University Professors shows that 31% of Florida respondents said they have applied for a job outside of Florida since 2023, compared to 25% among all survey respondents in the South. (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas.)
Why do all these Southern professors want out?
The number one reason used to be money (now #2, 50.7%). It has been replaced by the "broad political climate" of a faculty member's current state (56.6 %). Third is "academic freedom" (45.5%). Followed by "DEI" restrictions (30+%)
Overall findings from the survey indicate that more than half (55.4%) of respondents would not recommend their state as a desirable place to work for colleagues. This lack of enthusiasm suggests that many more disaffected professors would be applying for out-of-state jobs if not for ties to their current location or similar factors.
Where do these dissatisfied academics want to go? The survey shows the top seven states for applications are: California, New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Six of those states are deep blue. And one, North Carolina, has a Democratic Governor running interference against the academic saboteurs in the state house.
All the best dictators censor
Controlling education is high on a despot's to-do list. Soviet students heard nothing the Politburo didn't want them to hear. And Nazi schools were not a hotbed of academic freedom.
Even at the best of times, in the most accommodating of countries, there is a tendency to make the home team look its best. However, spin is one thing. But it doesn't produce the unquestioning jingoism Florida and the other MAGA states wish to jam down innocent throats.
Laws that forbid the truth are better for that.
