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PostPosted: 06/01/17 7:10 am • # 1 
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The cult of ignorance in the United States: Anti-intellectualism and the "dumbing down" of America

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It's the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism."

There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America's political and social fabric. Famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said:

Quote:
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Mark Bauerlein, in his book, The Dumbest Generation, reveals how a whole generation of youth is being dumbed down by their aversion to reading anything of substance and their addiction to digital "crap" via social media.

Journalist Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America, adds another perspective:

Quote:
"The rise of idiot America today represents - for profit mainly, but also and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power - the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is an expert."


"There's a pervasive suspicion of rights, privileges, knowledge and specialization," says Catherine Liu, the author of American Idyll: Academic Antielitism as Cultural Critique and a film and media studies professor at University of California. The very mission of universities has changed, argues Liu. "We don't educate people anymore. We train them to get jobs."

Part of the reason for the rising anti-intellectualism can be found in the declining state of education in the U.S. compared to other advanced countries:

    -After leading the world for decades in 25-34 year olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place. The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly 50% of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are foreigners, most of whom are returning to their home countries;

    -The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs commissioned a civic education poll among public school students. A surprising 77% didn't know that George Washington was the first President; couldn't name Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence; and only 2.8% of the students actually passed the citizenship test. Along similar lines, the Goldwater Institute of Phoenix did the same survey and only 3.5% of students passed the civics test;

    -According to the National Research Council report, only 28% of high school science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution, and 13% of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism or "intelligent design;"

    -18% of Americans still believe that the sun revolves around the earth, according to a Gallup poll;

    -The American Association of State Colleges and Universities report on education shows that the U.S. ranks second among all nations in the proportion of the population aged 35-64 with a college degree, but 19th in the percentage of those aged 25-34 with an associate or high school diploma, which means that for the first time, the educational attainment of young people will be lower than their parents;

    -74% of Republicans in the U.S. Senate and 53% in the House of Representatives deny the validity of climate change despite the findings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and every other significant scientific organization in the world;

    -According to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 68% of public school children in the U.S. do not read proficiently by the time they finish third grade. And the U.S. News & World reported that barely 50% of students are ready for college level reading when they graduate;

    -According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important;"

    -According to the National Endowment for the Arts report in 1982, 82% of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later only 67% did. And more than 40% of Americans under 44 did not read a single book--fiction or nonfiction--over the course of a year. The proportion of 17 year olds who read nothing (unless required by school ) has doubled between 1984-2004;

    -Gallup released a poll indicating 42 percent of Americans still believe God created human beings in their present form less than 10,000 years ago;

    -A 2008 University of Texas study found that 25 percent of public school biology teachers believe that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth simultaneously.

In American schools, the culture exalts the athlete and good-looking cheerleader. Well-educated and intellectual students are commonly referred to in public schools and the media as "nerds," "dweebs," "dorks," and "geeks," and are relentlessly harassed and even assaulted by the more popular "jocks" for openly displaying any intellect. These anti-intellectual attitudes are not reflected in students in most European or Asian countries, whose educational levels have now equaled and and will surpass that of the U.S. And most TV shows or movies such as The Big Bang Theory depict intellectuals as being geeks if not effeminate.

John W. Traphagan, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas, argues the problem is that Asian countries have core cultural values that are more akin to a cult of intelligence and education than a cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism. In Japan, for example, teachers are held in high esteem and normally viewed as among the most important members of a community. There is suspicion and even disdain for the work of teachers that occurs in the U.S. Teachers in Japan typically are paid significantly more than their peers in the U.S. The profession of teaching is one that is seen as being of central value in Japanese society and those who choose that profession are well compensated in terms of salary, pension, and respect for their knowledge and their efforts on behalf of children.

In addition, we do not see in Japan significant numbers of the types of religious schools that are designed to shield children from knowledge about basic tenets of science and accepted understandings of history - such as evolutionary theory or the religious views of the Founding Fathers, who were largely deists - which are essential to having a fundamental understanding of the world, Traphagan contends. The reason for this is because in general Japanese value education, value the work of intellectuals, and see a well-educated public with a basic common knowledge in areas of scientific fact, math, history, literature, etc. as being an essential foundation to a successful democracy.

We're creating a world of dummies. Angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation.

Bill Keller, writing in the New York Times argues that the anti-intellectual elitism is not an elitism of wisdom, education, experience or knowledge. The new elite are the angry social media posters, those who can shout loudest and more often, a clique of bullies and malcontents baying together like dogs cornering a fox. Too often it's a combined elite of the anti-intellectuals and the conspiracy followers - not those who can voice the most cogent, most coherent response. Together they foment a rabid culture of anti-rationalism where every fact is suspect; every shadow holds a secret conspiracy. Rational thought is the enemy. Critical thinking is the devil's tool.

Keller also notes that the herd mentality takes over online; the anti-intellectuals become the metaphorical equivalent of an angry lynch mob when anyone either challenges one of the mob beliefs or posts anything outside the mob's self-limiting set of values.

Keller blames this in part to the online universe that "skews young, educated and attentive to fashions." Fashion, entertainment, spectacle, voyeurism - we're directed towards trivia, towards the inconsequential, towards unquestioning and blatant consumerism. This results in intellectual complacency. People accept without questioning, believe without weighing the choices, join the pack because in a culture where convenience rules, real individualism is too hard work. Thinking takes too much time: it gets in the way of the immediacy of the online experience.

Reality TV and pop culture presented in magazines and online sites claim to provide useful information about the importance of The Housewives of [you name the city] that can somehow enrich our lives. After all, how else can one explain the insipid and pointless stories that tout divorces, cheating and weight gain? How else can we explain how the Kardashians, or Paris Hilton are known for being famous without actually contributing anything worth discussion? The artificial events of their lives become the mainstay of populist media to distract people from the real issues and concerns facing us.

The current trend of increasing anti-intellectualism now establishing itself in politics and business leadership, and supported by a declining education system should be a cause for concern for leaders and the general population, one that needs to be addressed now.

Comment: Professor Patrick Deneen explains how kids have become a generation of know-nothings
We have fallen into the bad and unquestioned habit of thinking that our educational system is broken, but it is working on all cylinders. What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents, and educational goals composed of content-free processes and unexamined buzz-words like "critical thinking," "diversity," "ways of knowing," "social justice," and "cultural competence."

Our education system produces solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment to a public, a common culture, a shared history. They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive and obedient, without any real obligations or devotions.


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https://www.sott.net/article/313177-The ... of-America


Last edited by shiftless2 on 08/26/19 12:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: 06/01/17 7:41 am • # 2 
I hate to think what the world is going to look like 50 years from now. :(


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PostPosted: 06/01/17 7:46 am • # 3 
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I need to think more on this commentary ~ but my knee-jerk reaction is that what has changed most dramatically is the vast popularity of the internet and social media ~ both give everyone/anyone an enormous platform to spew <whatever> ~ :ey

Sooz


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PostPosted: 06/01/17 7:54 am • # 4 
sooz06 wrote:
I need to think more on this commentary ~ but my knee-jerk reaction is that what has changed most dramatically is the vast popularity of the internet and social media ~ both give everyone/anyone an enormous platform to spew <whatever> ~ :ey

Sooz


It's also become a vast pool of "alternative facts". :g


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PostPosted: 06/01/17 7:57 am • # 5 
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Sidartha wrote:
I hate to think what the world is going to look like 50 years from now. :(


I don't even want to imagine it - too scary. I can not get my head around this anti-intellectualism and how or why it developed - it seems absurd to me. The only thing I can think of - is it may be the people who developed this aversion are or were led to believe that common-sense is to be more valued than intellectual prowess. They may think they have common sense where they may be lacking in many intellectual pursuits, or even understand them. No one likes to feel stupid, so common sense may be their way of getting around that. I think both are to be valued, and one with out the other does not a complete person make ;)


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PostPosted: 06/01/17 8:11 am • # 6 
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sooz06 wrote:
I need to think more on this commentary ~ but my knee-jerk reaction is that what has changed most dramatically is the vast popularity of the internet and social media ~ both give everyone/anyone an enormous platform to spew <whatever> ~ :ey

Sooz


It could be that. People post and find others who agree with them no matter how far out or stupid their posts or comments may be - therefore stupidity becomes validated in their minds. Any opposing views are met with disdain and become negated, put down regardless of merit. I think the more legitimate the retort the more it is met with disdain and mockery - so maybe they can feel superior for once in their lives. (Hanging out my shingle momentarily lol)


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PostPosted: 06/01/17 9:09 am • # 7 
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Remaining ignorant is sometimes just laziness. Why bother to check facts when one can find people with whom you agree, and therefore validate your opinions?

A lot of people on the internet have willful ignorance in order to create controversy. I can think of one...


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PostPosted: 06/01/17 9:31 am • # 8 
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Hell, ignorance was elected to office last November.


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PostPosted: 06/04/17 5:57 am • # 9 
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From my FB page ...

Most Sundays my daughter and I go to the gym and at least one of the TVs over the treadmills has that turd Osteen on. My daughter usually says something like, "Ooh, there's your favorite conman."

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PostPosted: 06/04/17 11:16 am • # 10 
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roseanne wrote:
Remaining ignorant is sometimes just laziness. Why bother to check facts when one can find people with whom you agree, and therefore validate your opinions?

A lot of people on the internet have willful ignorance in order to create controversy. I can think of one...



From what I've seen, these types think they actually are informed with the facts. Just try to convince someone that what they have read is wrong or what information you show them is right. People believe what they want to believe.


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PostPosted: 06/04/17 1:36 pm • # 11 
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What I meant is that there are the few who deliberately play dumb in order to create controversy on the boards. It's the epitome of troll behavior. They delight in the ensuing arguments and some even resist joining back in unless they need to keep the pot stirred.


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PostPosted: 06/04/17 1:57 pm • # 12 
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roseanne wrote:
What I meant is that there are the few who deliberately play dumb in order to create controversy on the boards. It's the epitome of troll behavior. They delight in the ensuing arguments and some even resist joining back in unless they need to keep the pot stirred.


Now who would do a thing like that? Of course, if they were completely ignored the problem would likely end.


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PostPosted: 06/24/17 4:51 pm • # 13 
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Manufactured illiteracy and miseducation: A long process of decline led to President Donald Trump
A deep-rooted crisis in education, and a long cultural and political decline, is what got us here. There's hope!


Donald Trump’s ascendancy in American politics has made visible a plague of deep-seated civic illiteracy, a corrupt political system and a contempt for reason that has been decades in the making. It also points to the withering of civic attachments, the undoing of civic culture, the decline of public life and the erosion of any sense of shared citizenship. As Trump has galvanized his base of true believers in post-election demonstrations, the world is witnessing how a politics of bigotry and hate is transformed into a spectacle of demonization, division and disinformation. Under President Trump, the scourge of mid-20th century authoritarianism has returned not only in the menacing plague of populist rallies, fear-mongering, threats and humiliation, but also in an emboldened culture of war, militarization and violence that looms over society like a rising storm.

The reality of Trump’s election may be the most momentous development of the age because of its enormity and the shock it has produced. The whole world is watching, pondering how such a dreadful event could have happened. How have we arrived here? What forces have allowed education, if not reason itself, to be undermined as crucial public and political resources, capable of producing the formative culture and critical citizens that could have prevented such a catastrophe from happening in an alleged democracy? We get a glimpse of this failure of education, public values and civic literacy in the willingness and success of the Trump administration to empty language of any meaning, a practice that constitutes a flight from historical memory, ethics, justice and social responsibility.

Under such circumstances and with too little opposition, the Trump administration has taken on the workings of a dis-imagination machine, characterized by an utter disregard for the truth and often accompanied by the president’s tweet-storm of “primitive schoolyard taunts and threats.” In this instance, George Orwell’s famous maxim from “Nineteen Eighty-four,” “Ignorance is Strength,” materializes in the administration’s weaponized attempt not only to rewrite history but also to obliterate it. What we are witnessing is not simply a political project but also a reworking of the very meaning of education as both a crucial institution and a democratizing and empowering cultural force.

Truth is now viewed as a liability and ignorance a virtue. Under the reign of this normalized architecture of alleged common sense, literacy is regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data and science is confused with pseudo-science. All traces of critical thought appear only at the margins of the culture as ignorance becomes the primary organizing principle of American society. For instance, two-thirds of the American public believe that creationism should be taught in schools and a majority of Republicans in Congress do not believe that climate change is caused by human activity, making the U.S. the laughing stock of the world. Politicians endlessly lie, knowing that the public can be easily seduced by exhortations, emotional outbursts and sensationalism, all of which mimic the fatuous spectacle of celebrity culture and reality TV. Image-selling now entails lying on principle, making it easier for politics to dissolve into entertainment, pathology and a unique brand of criminality.

The corruption of both the truth and politics is abetted by the fact that much of the American public has become habituated to overstimulation and lives in an ever-accelerating overflow of information and images. Experience no longer has the time to crystallize into mature and informed thought. Opinion now trumps reason and evidence-based arguments. News has become entertainment and echoes reality rather than interrogating it. Popular culture revels in the spectacles of shock and violence. Defunded and corporatized, many institutions of public and higher education have been all too willing to make the culture of business the business of education, and this transformation has corrupted their mission.

As a result, many colleges and universities have been McDonald-ized as knowledge is increasingly viewed as a commodity, resulting in curricula that resemble a fast-food menu. In addition, faculty are subjected increasingly to a Walmart model of labor relations designed “to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility.” Students are relegated to the status of customers and clients.

In addition, public education is under siege to an almost unprecedented degree. Both political parties have implemented reforms that “teach for the test,” weaken unions, deskill teachers, and wage a frontal assault on the imagination of students through disciplinary measures that amount to pedagogies of repression. Moreover, students marginalized by class and color find themselves in schools increasingly modeled after prisons. As more and more security guards and police personnel occupy schools, a wider range of student behaviors are criminalized, and students increasingly find themselves on a conveyor belt that has appropriately been described as the school-to-prison pipeline.

On a policy level, the Trump administration has turned its back on schools as public goods. How else to explain the president’s appointment of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education? DeVos, who has spent most of her career attempting to privatize public schools while acting as a champion for charter schools. It gets worse: As a religious Christian extremist, DeVos not only supports religious indoctrination in public schools but has gone so far as to argue that the purpose of public education is “to help advance God’s Kingdom.” Not exactly a policy that supports critical thinking, dialogue or analytical reasoning, or that understands schooling as a public good. DeVos is Trump’s gift to the billionaires, evangelicals, hedge fund managers and bankers, who view schools strictly as training and containment centers — and as sources of profit.

On a larger scale, the educational force of the wider culture has been transformed into a spectacle for violence and trivialized entertainment, and a tool for legitimating ignorance. Cultural apparatuses that extend from the mainstream media and the diverse platforms of screen culture now function as neoliberal modes of public pedagogy parading as entertainment or truthful news reporting. As “teaching machines,” these apparatuses — as C. Wright Mills once predicted — have become the engines of manufactured illiteracy while producing identities, desires and values compatible with the crudest market ideologies.

Under these circumstances, illiteracy becomes the norm and education becomes central to a version of zombie politics that functions largely to remove democratic values, social relations,and compassion from the ideology, policies and commanding institutions that now control American society. Welcome to the land of the walking dead.

I am not referring here to only the kind of anti-intellectualism that theorists such as Richard Hofstadter, Ed Herman, Noam Chomsky and Susan Jacoby have documented, however insightful their analyses might be. I am pointing to a more lethal form of manufactured illiteracy that has become a scourge and a political tool designed primarily to make war on language, meaning, thinking and the capacity for critical thought. Chris Hedges captures this demagogic attack on thoughtfulness in stating that “the emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idioms of mass culture.” Freedom now means removing one’s self from any sense of social responsibility so one can retreat into privatized orbits of self-indulgence, unbridled self-interest and the never-ending whirlwind of consumption.

This updated form of illiteracy does not simply constitute an absence of learning, ideas or knowledge. Nor can it be solely attributed to what has been called the “smartphone society.” On the contrary, it is a willful practice and goal used to actively depoliticize people and make them complicit with the political and economic forces that impose misery and suffering upon their lives. At the same time, illiteracy bonds people: It offers the pretense of a community bound by a willful denial of facts and its celebration of ignorance.

How else to explain the popular support for someone like Donald Trump who boldly proclaims his love for the “poorly educated”? Or, for that matter, the willingness of his followers to put up with his contemptuous and boisterous claim that science and evidence-based truths are “fake news,” his dismissal of journalists who hold power accountable as the opposition party, and his willingness to bombard the American public with an endless proliferation of peddled falsehoods that reveal his contempt for intellect, reason and truth.

What are we to make of the fact that a person who holds the office of the presidency has praised popular “rage addict” Alex Jones publicly, and thanked him for the role he played in his presidential election victory? Jones is a conspiracy trafficker who runs the website InfoWars. He has suggested that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” and that the massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was faked.

Illiteracy is no longer restricted to populations immersed in poverty with little access to quality education; nor does it only suggest the lack of proficient skills enabling people to read and write with a degree of understanding and fluency. More profoundly, illiteracy is also about refusing to act from a position of thoughtfulness, informed judgment, and critical agency.

Illiteracy has become a political weapon and form of political repression that works to render critical agency inoperable, and restages power as a mode of domination. Illiteracy in the service of violence now functions to depoliticize people by making it difficult for individuals to develop informed judgments, analyze complex relationships and draw upon a range of sources to understand how power works and how they might be able to shape the forces that bear down on their lives. As a depoliticizing force, illiteracy works to make people powerless, and reinforces their willingness to accept being governed rather than learn how to govern.

This mode of illiteracy now constitutes the modus operandi of a society that both privatizes and kills the imagination by poisoning it with falsehoods, consumer fantasies, data loops and the need for instant gratification. This is a mode of illiteracy and education that has no language for relating the self to public life, social responsibility or the demands of citizenship. It is important to recognize that the prevalence of such manufactured illiteracy is not simply about the failure of colleges and universities to create critical and active citizens. It is about an authoritarian society that eliminates public spheres that make thinking possible while imposing a culture of fear in which there is the looming threat that anyone who holds power accountable will be punished. At stake here is not only a crisis of education, memory, ethics and agency but a crisis that reaches into the very foundation of a strong democracy.

In the present moment, it becomes particularly important for progressives, educators and concerned citizens to protect and enlarge the formative cultures and public spheres that make democracy possible. The relentless attack on truth, honesty and the ethical imagination makes it all the more imperative for the public to think dangerously, especially in societies that appear increasingly amnesiac — that is, countries where forms of historical, political and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but celebrated. All of which becomes all the more threatening at a time when a country such as the United States has tipped over into a mode of authoritarianism that views critical thought as both a liability and a threat.

Not only is manufactured illiteracy obvious in the presence of a social order and government that collapses the distinction between the serious and frivolous, it is also visible in media platforms marked by the proliferation of anti-intellectual discourses among a range of politicians and anti-public intellectuals who are waging a war on science, reason and the legacy of the Enlightenment. How else to explain the present historical moment, with its collapse of civic culture and the future it cancels out? What is to be made of the assault on civic literacy and the institutions and conditions that produce an active citizenry at a time when massive self-enrichment and a gangster morality are operative at the highest reaches of the U.S. government, all of which serves to undermine the public realm as a space of freedom, liberty, dialogue and deliberative consensus?

One of the challenges facing the current generation of leftists, progressives and cultural workers is the need to address the question of what counts as education, and what it should accomplish in a society that is slipping into the dark night of authoritarianism. In a world in which there is an increasing abandonment of egalitarian and democratic impulses, what will it take to educate young people and the broader polity to challenge authority and hold power accountable? Such a vision suggests resurrecting a democratic project that provides the basis for imagining a life beyond a social order immersed in massive inequality and endless assaults on the environment, a social order that elevates war and militarization to the highest and most sanctified national ideals.

At issue here is the need for educators, progressives, artists and other cultural workers to recognize the power of education both in schools and the wider culture in creating the formative spaces being mobilized against the ideas of justice and democracy. At the same time, there is a need for the left and others to fight for those public spheres that offer alternative modes of identity, thinking and social relations that support democratic socialism and radical democracy.

At the very least, this requires that education be regarded as central to politics, and that cultural apparatuses such as the mainstream media, digital culture and Hollywood films be perceived as powerful teaching machines and not only as sources of information or entertainment. Such sites should be viewed as spheres of struggle that need to be removed from the control of the financial elite and corporations who use them as work stations for propagandizing a culture of vulgarity, self-absorption and commodification while eroding any sense of shared citizenship and civic culture.

There is an urgent political need for the left and progressives to understand and combat an authoritarian society that uses education to weaponize and trivialize the discourse, vocabularies, images and aural means of communication in a variety of cultural sites. Or, for that matter, to grasp that a market-driven discourse does not and cannot provide the intellectual, ethical and political tools for civic education and the expansion of the social imagination.

On the contrary, the pedagogical machinery of capitalism uses language and other modes of representation to relegate citizenship to the singular pursuit of unbridled self-interests, to legitimate shopping as the ultimate expression of one’s identity, to portray essential public services as reinforcing and weakening any viable sense of individual responsibility, and to organize society for the production of violence as the primary method of addressing a vast array of social problems.

One of the most serious challenges facing progressives, educators and diverse cultural workers is the task of grasping education as a crucial political tool that can be used to enhance the capacities of people to translate their hidden despair and private grievances into public transcripts. At best, such transcripts can be transformed into forms of public dissent or what might be called a moment of rupture, one that has important implications for public action in a time of impending tyranny and authoritarianism.

In taking up this project, individuals and cultural workers can attempt to create the conditions that give the wider public an opportunity to acquire the knowledge and courage necessary to make desolation and cynicism unconvincing and hope practical. In a world in which there is an increasing abandonment of egalitarian and democratic impulses, what will it take to educate young people and the broader polity to challenge authority and hold power accountable?

In the age of financial and political zombies, the ability of finance capitalism to cloak itself in a warped discourse of freedom and choice has been weakened. Its willingness to separate toxic economic, cultural and political policies from their social costs has ruptured neoliberalism’s ability to normalize its worldview. The contradictions between its promises and its harsh effects have become too visible as its poisonous policies have put millions out of work, turned many black and brown communities into war zones, destroyed public education, undermined the democratic mission of higher education, flagrantly pursued war as the greatest of national ideals, turned the prison system into a default institution for punishing minorities of race and class, pillaged the environment and blatantly imposed a new mode of racism under the fanciful notion of a post-racial society.

The crisis of capitalism and the production of widespread misery has opened up new political opportunities to reclaim education as a central element of politics and resistance. Education as it functions on multiple levels and through diverse registers matters. It is one of the most powerful sources for changing consciousness, desires and agency itself.

Pierre Bourdieu was right to argue that leftists “must recognize that the most important forms of domination are not only economic but also intellectual and pedagogical and lie on the side of belief and persuasion.” Bourdieu’s concerns about leftists underestimating “the pedagogical and symbolic dimensions of struggle” are more relevant today than ever, given the accelerated political merger of power, culture and everyday life.

Too often leftists and other progressives have focused on domination as mostly an economic or structural issue and in doing so have forgotten about the political role of education and consciousness-raising in providing a language and narrative in which people can recognize themselves, make identifications that speak to the conditions that bear down on them in new ways, and rethink the future so as not to mimic the present. Yet matters of subjectivity, identity and desire are not only central to politics, they are the crucial underpinning through which new theoretical and political horizons can be imagined and acted upon.

In an age in which authoritarianism is dismantling the foundations of democracy across the globe, the ideological and subjective conditions that make individual and collective modes of agency possible — and capable of engaging in powerful and broad-based movements of resistance — are no longer an option. They are a necessity.

http://www.salon.com/2017/06/24/manufac ... ald-trump/


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PostPosted: 06/25/17 9:23 am • # 14 
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Post #14 is a very chilling commentary ~ :eek ~ but Henry Giroux understands and explains well ~ and "public education is under siege to an almost unprecedented degree" [emphasis mine] ~

The one point in the commentary I need to think more about is that Giroux seems to diminish the role of public funding ~ I'm a current believer that leveling public funding will go a very long way in equalizing the education provided to every child ~

Sooz


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PostPosted: 06/26/17 2:15 pm • # 15 
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We were just lamenting the huge change in public attitude toward education yesterday. What happened to the days when we were all alarmed that German, Japanese, Chines, and Indian students scored higher in math and reading than US students? What happened to the days when we were in a race to make scientific discoveries that could send us to the moon and beyond, cure disease, make smaller and faster computers and machines? What happened to the days when we were sure that American students needed more, not less, education?

I propose that it may have all gone downhill when Ronald Reagan formed the US Department of Education. Federal regulation and federal control of education dollars has put us in this bind. We were tricked into thinking that a federal department would give us uniform (higher) standards and more federal dollars neither of which has come to pass. What we got were impossible regulation and less money in return to make improvements and fuel innovation. We got schools with more administrative costs than teacher salaries, more teacher time devoted to fulfilling regulations than teaching students, more students deprived of education for behavioral problems with zero tolerance policies and kick em out before they drop out philosophies. We got the idea that everyone everywhere should learn exactly the same things in the same way rather than that we need all kinds of thinking and a variety of skill sets to fuel the economy and that students who could not do things one way may have great talents and abilities in a different setting. Or that teachers could teach using different methods and individualization instead of just making sure that students could pass "the test".


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PostPosted: 06/26/17 2:29 pm • # 16 
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The one point in the commentary I need to think more about is that Giroux seems to diminish the role of public funding ~ I'm a current believer that leveling public funding will go a very long way in equalizing the education provided to every child ~

Our little school district stands to lose about $14 million a year if they "level the playing field" and give the same amount of state $ for every student, regardless of what school they attend.

So I'm not a fan of that idea.


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PostPosted: 06/26/17 2:57 pm • # 17 
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Up here, poor neighbourhoods get more funding, based on a complicated bit of mathematics that include calculations based on how much the local parent councils fundraise, numbers of violent incidents, reading scores, the number of children who don't speak English, average income for local families, and a pile of other stuff.

I guess it depends on what leveling public funding means. If it means not giving more to wealthy communities because funding is based on property taxes, i'm all for it. If it means stripping supports away from poor and needy neighbourhoods, screw that.


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PostPosted: 06/26/17 3:01 pm • # 18 
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#15 is an EXCELLENT post, queenie! ~ :st

Chaos, I have no clue on how NJ funds public schools ~ here, the lion's share of school funding comes from taxes [primarily real estate and business taxes in individual areas] ~ so poorer areas [with less home ownership and less business] get less funding than wealthier areas [with more home ownership and business] ~ I posted a few years ago the differential [sorry, don't remember the hard numbers off-hand] at the high school level being @$9,000 per student [in the ward where our elementary charter is located] and @14,000 per student [in an affluent suburb north of the city] ~ that's a HUGE difference on what can be/is offered to students ~ and it's a prime reason non-profit charters spend so much time and effort fund-raising ~

Sooz


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PostPosted: 06/26/17 3:04 pm • # 19 
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green apple tree wrote:
***

I guess it depends on what leveling public funding means. If it means not giving more to wealthy communities because funding is based on property taxes, i'm all for it. If it means stripping supports away from poor and needy neighbourhoods, screw that.

As you'll see from my above post, that's exactly how I'm using "leveling", greeny ~

Sooz


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PostPosted: 06/26/17 6:49 pm • # 20 
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green apple tree wrote:
Up here, poor neighbourhoods get more funding, based on a complicated bit of mathematics that include calculations based on how much the local parent councils fundraise...


The question of school fundraising has been an issue for some time.
Quote:
Schools in Toronto’s most affluent neighbourhoods are fundraising 300 times more money per student than needier schools, using the cash for field trips and playground renovations and raising questions about equity in the public-education system.

Fundraising figures for elementary schools provided by the Toronto District School Board and analyzed by The Globe and Mail found that children in those affluent neighbourhoods are getting almost as much as $900 each in educational extras, from new playgrounds to Scientists in Schools. The money is raised through events such as fun fairs and pizza lunches. Some schools in lower-income neighbourhoods raise as little as $3 a student.

Canada’s largest school board provides special grants to schools in high-needs communities to help compensate for the vast differences.

But it still cannot catch up to the hundreds of thousands of dollars schools in the city’s richest neighbourhoods raise. Blythwood Junior Public School, situated around Mount Pleasant Road and Lawrence Avenue East, a wealthy neighbourhood, raised almost $700 a student in the 2012-13 academic year. Thorncliffe Park Public School, located in an area that serves as a landing pad for recent immigrants, raised about $45.The board can’t afford to fully make up the differences, according to Carla Kisko, associate director of the TDSB. “It’s a serious concern because there are significant differences between communities,” she said.

etc ...

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/na ... e21421933/


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PostPosted: 06/26/17 10:52 pm • # 21 
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yeah. i don't work for the tdsb, and my board doesn't really have any neighbourhoods as affluent as the ones you listed, but there still are differences.

But it's not exactly true that parent council money provides as much a bonus as you might think. Parent councils have a lot of control over how their money is spent, and some times they vote for some abysmally stupid things. At best, they tend to want to pay for "perks", stuff that is luxury, not really relevant to good teaching. Things like...repainting, expensive playground equipment (often produced by some relative of the president of the council) "fun" end of the year trips (as opposed to actual educational trips or programs with learning expectations), stupid plaques for the front foyer, a lot of sports stuff...

I mean, it's nice to have a lot of parent council money. especially for the arts programs--musical instruments, art supplies, and gym, and they do tend to spring for equipment for recess which is nice...but for the basics, you'd be surprised how useful it really isn't. Every once in a while a school will get a really great parent council that wants to be truly useful, but for every one of them there's twenty that just want to throw their weight around and push specific agendas. and some are truly dysfunctional--bully each other and their kids, push the teachers around...one parent council i worked with managed to pass some kind of movement that turned into a no homework policy. which ended up meaning that we couldn't send home home reading to families that didn't have books (or books in English). It started with this weird survey that was really badly worded and biased in their questions, and which turned a bunch of parents off the idea that they could ever help their kids at home. It was truly bizarre.


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PostPosted: 06/27/17 7:51 am • # 22 
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This is slightly "off-topic" but related ~

Do Canadians use Amazon as a "go-to" source? ~ if so, check to see if Amazon's "charitable giving" program is active in Canada ~ you register the school or program you want to support and 1% of all purchases that designate that school or program are sent as contributions ~ once registered, you enter Amazon thru a different portal that is linked to your account and Amazon does the rest ~

We use the program for school ~ it's easy to use and automatically tallies how much to send to your school/program ~ I think checks are issued on an annual basis but I'll confirm that ~ we advertise the program broadly to school families and many others ~ if I'm remembering correctly, there's even a link to the program on our school website ~

Sooz


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PostPosted: 06/27/17 12:21 pm • # 23 
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I haven't heard of that one specifically, but there are a lot of those kinds of things around. Unfortunately, they depend on the likelihood that the community can or will buy stuff--which means, again, affluent neighbourhoods get more money, and neighbourhoods that have a lot of people on welfare still get the shaft.

And that's another thing that seems to be trending for parent council fundraising--they're voting to have the funds aimed at the kids of the families that do the fundraising, not putting the funds into a general pot. Which again means that little Billy whose parents are out of work, and little Anna who is in foster care aren't going on those end of the year big trips--the funds go to George and Carrie whose rich uncles were able to spring for 50 pounds of cookie dough and whatever else the school was hawking that week.

I just think, in general, we all need to start thinking a little more collectively. But I'm a hippie, I always think that. But I do wish that the parent councils would so some compassion for the kids that have nothing, instead of just being out for their own kids. Maybe it's a lot to ask.


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PostPosted: 06/27/17 1:37 pm • # 24 
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The times that my kids' schools have been involved in major fund raising exercises that were outside the ordinary (e.g., contributions to bursary and scholarship funds) related to major construction projects.

In every case we were always asked exactly how we thought the money should be spent and how that spend could be used most beneficially. For example, one of the schools was building a major extension and we had raised a significant chunk of change to help with that - my suggestion is that, while cash is fungible and it could just as easily be used to buy a boatload of concrete as anything else, can we just show that the funds are going to be used to equip one of the new computer labs - that fact that the PTA equipped the computer lab will encourage future donations whereas the idea that we'd purchased however many tons of concrete won't.


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PostPosted: 06/27/17 4:29 pm • # 25 
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I actually refused to join the PTA at my daughter's school because of the foolish way they had spent the money the previous year. Same board in place, so I balked. They tried to shame my daughter until I sent a stern note with her about my reasons. Didn't hear any more after that. :b

The next year, the entire board was new and had some really great ideas about their funds. I gladly joined an paid my dues.


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