In America, Most Republicans Think Colleges Are Bad for the Country - education, intellect, and or liberal arts, a threat

[Steve Kinney]

On 07/18/2017 01:22 PM, Marina Brown wrote:

> I don't know. My parents were all educators - including father and
> stepfather. They fought all their lives against the devaluation of
> education even at the college level.
> 
> I guess we have to keep up the fight against the propagandization and
> devaluation of education. It's been a long term project of
> authoritarians to create education that is akin to technical training
> without people learning how to think for themselves. We have to be ready
> for a long fight too.
> 
> --- Marina

I see a lot of problems with education.

"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."  Not always true, of
course.  But it becomes more so when extended to include "...and those
who can't even teach, become educators."  People are people and no
generalization fits all cases, but I have seen the writing on the wall.

I have seen educators whose principal objectives included cost
containment, defense of funding though a politically mandated 'teach to
the test' agenda, and pursuit of funding by presenting de facto
advertising and/or banning a corporate benefactor's competitors from the
classroom.  This all puts educators at odds with teachers - especially
teachers who want to help their students learn to "think for
themselves."  The educators have command authority in the enterprise, so
the teachers rarely win.

Professionals in every field that involves persuasion - sales,
advertising, business administration, military and political propaganda
- all use "education" as a preferred synonym for "indoctrination."

Doctrines, a.k.a. fixed protocols, can have their uses when properly
understood as tools under their users' conscious control.  Science and
engineering programs openly discuss this principle and its role in their
fields of endeavor; but the "fuzzy studies" programs lean strongly
toward applying indoctrination in the classroom, preparing students to
apply the specified doctrines after graduation, as authorities in their
various fields.

A large majority of University students attend for just one reason:  To
buy their way onto the right side of an employment discrimination
barrier, an ironclad agreement among college graduates that they will
support their "own kind" via preference in hiring, promotion and
compensation.  Reading job postings, one sees numerous job descriptions
where requirements include a degree in /any/ firld, with no regard to
its relevance to the work in question.  In those cases the employer
wants proof of social rank, not evidence of competency.

The American Dream of equal opportunity notwithstanding, the U.S.
pay-for-play University system enforces a rigid social class barrier:
Students whose parents can afford to heavily subsidize their tuitions
emerge as winners, while the student loan scam leaves graduates of
"lower social standing" in an upside down financial position they can
not dig their way out of, even on the right side of the employment
discrimination barrier.

I find it more than ironic that people enrolled in "fuzzy studies"
programs geared to the needs of mediocre students so often speak against
"class privilege", while diligently working to safeguard, formalize and
exploit their own class privilege by completing that degree program and
presenting a certificate of conformity when they hit the employment
market.  At least they are "not racists."  Any black, brown, yellow or
etc. person can become as "white" as anyone else by getting a college
diploma.  True Believers in higher education all know about - but rarely
mention - the ignorance, laziness, etc. that account for anyone's
failure to "better themselves" through a college education.

I strongly doubt that these and similar problems can be solved by
educators - even in the unlikely event that a consensus to solve them
emerges among that group:  They do not control the purse strings, and
neither do their student 'customers.'  The systemic disorders in higher
education reflect systemic disorders in society as a whole, which seems
inevitable as long as higher education remains an integral part of the
disordered system.

I do have some hope that the descendants of those who survive the
upcoming collapse of the global material economy will create a /much/
better educational system: Decentralized, consensus driven, inexpensive
and adaptable, facilitating the practical objectives of people and
communities organized on a far less self destructive basis than our
present self destructive clusterfuck.




-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 490 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20170718/2ec19dae/attachment-0002.sig>