02-11-2017, 02:27 PM
(02-11-2017, 09:49 AM)Marypoza Wrote: This weekend CN takes on the sorry state if our educational system........
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/left-behind/
Discuss!
First of all, it is Clusterf*ck Nation, and not an entity that I would have expected as a news source (CNN) which has similar initials (CNN of course has two N's). .
Yes, Betsy DeVos is catastrophically unsuited to be Secretary of Education. I can only imagine what she wants done with the Department of Education -- transforming it into a propaganda tool for the GOP so that children can accept the ideology of the Hard Right without critical thought? Obviously I expect the worst of a President who admires dictators and ignores more legitimate heroes of the Right (like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher).
But this said, our educational system is flawed. To be sure, what kids put into formal education matters more than what governments throw into education. This can reflect cultural differences, typically between fatalistic people who believe that success is nothing more than luck and those who recognize formal education as all that prevents one from having a miserable life in the permanent underclass of a merciless order. This is not an issue of race. Kids from the black middle class have huge advantages over most white kids from the Mountain South.
I expect underfunding of public K-12 education as a norm, with the promotion of overpriced charter schools. I expect the Trump Administration to bring back the awful for-profit vocational schools that the Obama Administration shut down that charge students what private colleges charge for bad vocational education that prepares graduates of such schools for nothing, but leave students deeply in debt.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.