Stupid Kids

This came from San Francisco columnist Mark Morford: "...the ugly and unavoidable truism about the lack of need among the government and the power elite in this nation to create a truly effective educational system, one that actually generates intelligent, thoughtful, articulate citizens. Hell, why should they? After all, the dumber the populace, the easier it is to rule and control and launch unwinnable wars and pass laws telling them that sex is bad and TV is good and God knows all, so just pipe down and eat your Taco Bell Double-Supremo Burrito and be glad we don't arrest you for posting dirty pictures on your cute little blog."

The whole column can be found at here. The title of which is, by the way, "American kids, dumber than dirt". Pretty pessimistic. In it he argues that public schools are filled with kids raised in intellectual voids, whose brains have been miswired as the result of too much t.v. at too young an age, poor nutrition, and an educational system that is focused on testing rather than developing thinkers. When I hear these things I generally attribute it to what he termed, "generational relativity", the habit of crabby old men to think every teenager is an idiot and that his generation and those that came before were more virtuous, moral, hard working, etc. than the current. And to a certain extent I think that's what this is. But only to a certain extent.
As a teacher I know too much of what he is saying to be true. I do not believe that we are really dedicated to a democratic educational system. We are not dedicated to passing on the values necessary to the preservation of democracy and civil rights in this or any country. We are far more concerned with furthering the nationalistic mythology that passes for social studies than we are about studying civilization, understanding the diverse nature of the world and supporting real democratic values by developing citizens who consider it their responsibility to to knowledgeably criticize their government. These are the kinds of things we are definitely not doing. Well educated citizens are capable of articulately debating with one another the important issues of the present while having a strong understanding of the past events that have brought us here.

That is not what is expected of a public school education in America. An America education promotes the study of skills that can make one productive in the economy. An American education stresses submission to authority. A proper social studies education is expected to build a foundation of patriotism and nationalism with a structure built of trivial knowledge about presidents and captains of industry. It is the type of education that leads to fascism or a dictatorship of the majority.

Until we dedicate ourselves to a real public education, we are screwed. And right now we aren't even close.

pic from: http://outreach.thecollegetrack.com/matriarch/images/classroom.jpg