Education Scam

Education as we know it is a scam. Or at least it's not there for the reasons most of us believe it's there; education is not meant to prepare children for adult life, but for obedience.

Let me start by quoting a bit of George Carlin, as he explains it so well:

There's a reason why education sucks and it's the same reason that will never, ever, ever be fixed. It's never gonna get any better, don't look for it, be happy with what you got, because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control all things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians; the politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't! You have no choice. You have owners, they own you! They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, they've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses and city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls! They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well we know what they want: they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want; they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking, they're not interested in that, that doesn't help them, that's against their interests.

And there you have it; I could stop here, say "thank you George," and go about my business. You can watch the full clip here, as he has some more striking points about how badly we're being screwed by the real owners. But I'll expand a bit more on the failed American system of public education. Not that I prefer private education though. To the contrary, I want public education fixed. The education system as we know it is approximately two centuries old. Before that only the elite received an education, but with the industrial revolution and the replacement of royalty with robber barons and oligarchs, there came a need for factory workers. The modern education system was designed to teach future factory workers to be "punctual, docile, and sober"; that's not only the title of an article, it's the truth.

But it's not just the factories, it's other work places as well. And democracy itself, for that matter, as George Carlin explains in the rest of his performance. There is no true freedom of political choice when the powers that be control all the information you get through the corporate controlled media. Often referred to as “the father of public relations,” Bernays in 1928 published his seminal work, Propaganda, in which he argued that public relations is not a gimmick but a necessity:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
_{source: Wikipedia}

Your owners do not believe in a truly free and democratic society. The above quote by Edward Bernays is rooted in the conviction of the elite that the general population simply can not be trusted with important decisions. Furthermore, the social hierarchy in which they occupy such an elevated position needs to be protected, so we teach our young ones to be obedient and to repeat the knowledge poured into them by their superiors. Of course, when you're a member of the higher social class, your children can be taught to think for themselves, so you don't send them to public schools but give them an expensive private education. Why do you think public schools are funded by local property taxes in America? It's to protect this hierarchy of course; if you live in a poor neighborhood, you go to a poorly funded school, and schools become better and better funded according to the price of property in your neighborhood. It's the perfect system to maintain the social stratification with the rich white men at the top.

There's a lot to say about the American education system and the way far right conservatives are trying their hardest to make it even worse. This is all explained in the below linked video in a way far better than I ever could, so please watch it. It answers the question why there are increasing numbers of videos and reports of extremely angry conservative parents angrily shouting at school-boards. Why books with honest information about America's past, sex and gender are increasingly banned, and why the outrage around Critical Race Theory is purposefully created by right wing propagandists.

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