Learning The Hard Way

It used to be we wanted all our children college educated. I remember when residents of California got free tuition to state funded colleges. And there were many of them. But that all ended around the time Reagan became President. Trickle down economics resulted in trickle down illiteracy and financial barriers to education. Student loans went from government investments in our nation's future to cynical profiteering by banks leading to our young becoming indebted the rest of their lives. Public schools became the holding cells for the poor and lower middle class while the more affluent created a new tier in a caste system for education. Now the private schools, often having connections with the Christian faith, attempt to skim government education dollars and further destroy public education. Visit major state funded universities today and you will discover a majority of the students seem to come from affluent backgrounds. The government now leaves community colleges to the less affluent as a way of obtaining college education. And still the banks seek to profit on the backs of even the poorest students.


Educators have become the evil empire to the right wingers. Many have the audacity to assert themselves by using collective bargaining. Unions have emerged to speak out for teachers and educators. Unions have dared to ask educators be paid living wages. The private educators in the elite church schools aren't usually able to unionize. Their wages are usually far less. So, the government funded educators must be vilified. Look at the test scores! They must be poor educators because they can't teach the hungry and emotionally stressed children to read at age appropriate levels. They must be lacking because they fail to get children in gang infested neigborhoods to stay in school. Public schools are failing and look at all the money wasted on them by tax payers. Let non-union schools take over. Let the private schools profit and discriminate against the poor performing students. Leave those students for the overworked and understaffed public teachers to deal with. Blame those teachers for failure of the public schools.

Education in the US is a reflection of our society. We no longer seek to educate our children to be free thinkers. We no longer seek to have our children think abstractly. We've made education a game where the best team wins because they have wealth and influence. Education is a paper chase where students are indocrinated in capitalism by most schools. Misinformation and fallacy prevails at many schools. Students have come to understand excellence isn't about the ability to think for themselves. It's about the ability to game the system. To get the answers right on the culturally biased tests created by co-opted stooges of the capitalist system.

I've spoken with professors who are threatened if they don't give grades undeserved. Professors who expect critical thinking from their students are hated or dearly loved. Some of our children actually do want to learn. Despite all the barriers.

American education is like American healthcare, unfortunately. European students learn multiple languages. American students learn how to take politically motivated tests. Educators are overwhelmed by the broken system. Like medical professionals they struggle to do the right thing but bureaucracy and politics constantly impede them from doing so. Greed insidiously infects educating our children. The huge amounts of money granted to education is up for grabs and the less spent on the children learning means the more profit.

It used to be we wanted our children educated in colleges and universities. Now that goal has stalled for the first time in many generations. Not only will my kids and grandkids have poorer edcuation opportunities and higher debts they will also be under-employed or unemployed at higher rates. Their generations will be the first generations in nearly a hundred years not to live in better conditions than the previous generation.

We should truly be ashamed.