Several years ago, I had a realization: conservatives don't care about education.
It's a generalization, I admit. And sounds outlandish. Yet for the past 60 years, conservatives have made crystal clear their utter disdain for education. Hoping to convince others.
It began in 1952. When Dwight Eisenhower ran for president against Adlai Stevenson, the contemptuous attack Republicans made was that Stevenson was "an egghead." Someone who was really -- smart. And you just can't trust those smart people.
In 1960, when Richard Nixon ran against John Kennedy, the Republican blast was that JFK was advised by his "Harvard Mafia." Smart people. So smart that they were dangerous. And you can't trust those smart people who go to good colleges.
When Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, he hated those smart people who go to colleges so much that students made his Enemies List. And later his "get tough" policies on student dissent (including wanting the Secret Service to beat up protestors) resulted in Republican governor Jim Rhodes sending armed troops sent the campus of Kent State University -- and four "enemy" undergraduates were killed.
In 1988, George Bush claimed to be "the Education President" -- yet on an campaign stop in Los Angeles told a rally of service employees that not everyone had to go to college. A valid sentiment, certainly, but for a candidate supposedly promoting education, it leaked his true feelings.
And in 2000, George W. Bush failed to fund his "No Child Left Behind" education program.
It's continued for 60 years, as conservatives have demeaned public education, pounding away at the national consciousness that learning for the masses is a bad thing to be scorned and mistrusted.
There's an understandable -- and historic -- reason for this, of course, because the less educated the public is, the more it relies on authority figures, rather than question anything. And the more that education is disdained, the less that inconvenient facts will be believed.
And so, instead, we get an attitude that challenges any assertion of education with a contemptuous, "So, you think you're better than the rest of us??" - conditioning people to wear with pride that they know less. In all other areas of life, we want the best. We want more riches, more success, to be faster, stronger, cooler -- better at everything. Except, after 60 years of conservative pounding against education, not to be as smart as we and our children can be.
And while this conservative effort has been surreptitious over the past 60 years, it's finally released itself: open, unrelenting Republican attacks in Wisconsin against teachers -- teachers, for goodness sake! -- and a widespread Republican war against education.
In Florida, $3.3 billion has been cut from education over the next two years, almost 15% from the education budget to our children. While $1.6 billion has been given in corporate tax breaks.
Texas has proposed $9.8 billion in cuts in education assistance to school districts. (Bringing a loss of 100,000 jobs.)
Wisconsin cut $834 million from state aid to K-12 education over the next two years. That's 20% of the proposed cuts in the budget. And cuts to teacher pay and pensions.
We have always heard the praise that teaching is the most important job. That teachers are preparing our most precious resource, our children, for the future. How teachers are underpaid heroes. But from the other side of their hypocritical mouths, conservatives will slam teachers as lazy slackers with three months of vacation, overpaid plunderers of public pensions -- and for 60 years desensitize the public for stripping away public education.
And now, they couldn't be any more clear:
Last Wednesday in Iowa, three prospective Republican presidential candidates bluntly stated their condemnation of public education at a home schooling rally.
"The public school system now is a propaganda machine," said Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX). "And they condition them to believe in so much which is totally un-American." Like, apparently, the Pledge of Allegiance.
"It is not up to a bureaucrat to decide what is best for your children," insisted Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who home-schooled five children. "We know best." Except about U.S. history. Home teacher Bachman recently placed the cornerstone of the American Revolution - Lexington and Concord - in the wrong state.
"That's all we want," said Herman Cain, a prominent businessman testing a GOP presidential run. "For government to get out of the way so we can educate ourselves and our children the old-fashioned way." Note: "the old-fashioned way" included one teacher for six grades in one room, few women and minorities, and teaching math with an abacus.
But it was left to the event's host, Justin LaVan, to explain plainly how so many conservatives truly see education. "Talking about our Creator. Our rights that came from our Creator, acknowledging that and giving Him the glory." Of course, that's why God invented church. For educating children to succeed in a global community where others are learning science, history and geography, it's a disaster. If prayer worked in school, every kid would get straight-A's.
And in the end, that disaster is what conservatives have long wanted from education. No need to learn anything. No public education. Just private schools and home schooling. Which is the end of an educated nation.
Private schools limit education to those who can afford it. Home schooling limits education to families where one parent can afford to stay home. While hoping that the parent completed high school.
This is known as every child left behind.
But for conservatives, that's okay. The wealthy and privileged will get their children a great education. And the rest of America? You're on your own.
Public education is what helped make America the envy of the world. A nation of well-informed citizens. Leading the way in the space race, technology, finance, and medical advances.
But conservatives? They want to go back to "the old fashioned way." Like the Dark Ages. Where kings and the aristocracy ruled. And you peasants, obey thy overlord.
Make no mistake, this is nothing new. The attack against education is the drug that conservatives have been pushing through history.
UPDATED: Information on Kent State
What is missing is any mention of the fact that our "liberal" leaders are AWOL on the issue. I'm fully supportive of perpetual beatings to the republican crusade to turn this nation into a feudal state. They are fully earned.
But as the republicans are fanatically advancing their agenda, the Obama administration and Obama's Democratic National Committee apparatus do ABSOLUTELY nothing to confront the republicans - NOTHING.
The gopers have earned the scorn of the thinking people of this nation for the work they do to destroy our civilization.
But the national Dems and its "leaders" have more than earned at least as much scorn for doing nothing more than an occasional, car-tune-ish finger wagging in the face of the assault on our children.
It's fine to admonish those doing wrong. But let's not forget those vaunted paper tigers who are in a position to confront wrong and choose instead to shrink from it. They share fully and fairly in the national disgrace.
This statement is the crux of our education problems in this country. It is to the benefit of the ruling class to keep the populace uneducated so as to ensure that they will be always responsive to those who wish to rule. It also leaves only one very obvious choice for those who are uneducated, the military. We do not require our military members to possess more than a high school education, or GED. If we leave that education up to the ruling class then the military will be willing to fight in whatever ill-conceived war they want to send them to fight and the uneducated populace will follow along willingly. This in the defacto "back-door" draft that has been going on in this nation since after Viet Nam. We have made it so that only the less educated and the very poor are required to join the military for lack of any other viable alternative. That will, one day, lead to a military take-over of the ruling legislators when the military finally tires of the games.That day will surely come, probably much sooner than any of us are anticipating.
In 2025, Republicans have achieved all of their "goals" for education. The public school system is officially banned with the Eliminate Marxist Education Act of 2020. Parents now have a choice between private education, homeschool, or religious (tax free) education for K-12 up through college. The results:
The Golden Gate bridge collapses in 2021, owing to a shortage of trained engineers. Hospitals are closing down, leaving people to die in the streets, owing to a shortage of trained doctors. The newly abundant class of faith healers fails to stem this tide. Airlines are closing their doors, because no new aircraft are being produced and the existing ones cannot be maintained, owing to a shortage of trained skilled mechanics. The only major employment surge is the military, which loses no less than three wars to inferior enemies, owing to a shortage of trained officers.
As the Chinese Army descends upon America, capturing 30 states, the last Republicans in office rob the treasury and flee to other countries. America becomes a mercenary vassal of China, dependant on them for survival and employment. Historians mark this era as the official rise of the Third Chinese Empire.
The need for an educational system that will develop in people: joy in learning, the ability to think critically and to be far more discerning in consuming information—as well as in choosing their public servants—could not be clearer. Obviously we must take the education reformers to task for there to be a quality system of education that will prepare people to sustain the viability of a free and democratic society.
http://forprogressnotgrowth.com/2010/10/12/incurious-mind/
http://forprogressnotgrowth.com/2011/01/08/envision-then-enact-a-better-way/
http://forprogressnotgrowth.com/2011/02/19/take-the-education-reformers-to-task/
http://forprogressnotgrowth.com/2011/03/07/want-to-improve-quality-listen-up/
It's hard to believe that not a single one of these anti-education liars had a teacher who patiently explained something they didn't understand, who made a dull subject lively, who inspired them to pursue a novel and rewarding career, who opened their eyes to a new way of seeing the world. Have they all degenerated into such narrow, selfish cre.tins that they deny such opportunities to all children?
As for Cain's "old-fashioned way" -- is he referring to the Jim Crow days?
Cutting budgets, constructing wildly outrageous lies about course content, and spreading propaganda about how all teachers are lazy, greedy, incompetent slobs -- I don't see how this encourages good teachers to stay. Most beginner teachers leave after 3 years because the job is far more difficult than they imagined. Most of the rest stay because they love the job, even though they could make more money in the private sector, given their education level. An experienced teacher is a blessing, and it SHOULD be hard for a politically-minded, possibly temporary administrator to fire them at will.
The conservative war on public education is finally out in the open after years of running under the radar. They apparently want a return to just what Robert describes: A society in which one is either born to rule or born to serve those who rule. Their snide comments about intellectual elites, their anti-science agenda, their focus on ridiculous issues like prayer and the ten commandments and creationism in schools. Their drive to defund public education, to use taxes to pay for private religious education, to generally undercut everything we have accomplished in the last 100 years.
Even public college education has become prohibitively expensive, yet aid programs to enable more to attend are under constant attack. Primary and secondary class sizes grow, resource needs are ignored, teachers become an easy target. Curriculum that has meaning to students - like multicultural education - is criticized, and in states like Arizona, prohibited. They complain that the schools are failing, then do everything they can to destroy them further.
It's time to stand up and fight back. If they want to call us a bunch of elitists, so be it. But we cannot let them destroy one of the things that has made us what we are.
Whether Mr. Nixon knew of the order to send in troops beforehand is not known, and it would be wrong to presume it -- but it would not be surprising to learn that a governor would have contacted the White House before giving such an order.