Beelzebub's Trough
Now I bet you niggers do think y'all white. College don't mean shit.
Y'all niggers, and you gonna be niggers forever
--School Daze (1988)
I'm a little bit country
And I'm a little bit rock 'n roll
I'm a little bit of Memphis and Nashville
With a Little bit of Motown in my soul
I don't know if it's good or bad
But I Know I Love It So
--A Little Bit Country, Marie Osmond
Academy: A modern school where football is taught
--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
A mind is a terrible thing to waste
--United Negro College Fund motto
A mind is a terrible thing
--Eddie Murphy, SNL
__________________
Let's talk about socialism in America today. We will begin with the public school system.
Aviator47 @ Milpub today posed the question:
"Why does public education exist? Does it exist to help/please/entertain the student or the parent, or to meet a societal need? I doubt that the way we implement it in the US is really about the needs of our society. If it were, then a diploma would be a clear credential of an identified level skills, knowledge ability in specific subjects."
The only thing most people agree on is, education is a mess. But why do we even have public schools? The question is anathema. Why don't we allow some students to follow a vocational or IT track (the equivalent of the old "secretarial")? Anathema, again. We hew to the fallacy that education is about leveling the playing field, making it so that you, too, might be president one day.
But that's folderal, for if you are to be president, you better be a good money-maker (if not born into it), a good entrepreneur, and have all the skills that accrue to that undertaking. We don't teach that in school -- that's privileged information, and those that have it are averse to its wide dissemination, or we would have a different sort of educational system.
And how is this socialist mosaic funded? Partially through Ranger's property taxes on an investment property in a county in which his children could not attend school anyway, even if he had them. His assessment (above) shows he pays three school-related taxes amounting to over $1,000, which gets funneling through the tax collector to be distributed by the school board.
Ranger pays taxes for somebody else's kid to have a seat in the classroom, and is this not a definition of socialism? The involuntary redistribution of Ranger's wealth, without his input. Is this just and equable to pay for goods and services that one does not use? Why not tax only families utilizing the school system? Why not a "special purposes" fee?
The U.S. has made a societal choice to socialize at the local level, while the conservatives continue to rail at this de facto situation. Socialism is the devil, so your kids are feeding at beelzebub's trough.
These education taxes are but one example of the contradictions and fictions that guide our clueless and hypocritical political and personal lives. Do you take a commuter train to work? You, too, are benefiting by socialism at work. Many of the loudest voices still understand the need for public transport, for how will their household help make it out to the suburbs to service their every need?
Schools are also funded through the Lotto -- gambling, an activity skewed to taking it out of the poor. Just like socialism, gambling is an evil to the likes of the conservative crowd, but they somehow turn their heads like Linda Blair in The Exorcist in order to allow its funds to trickle into the slumgullion that is socialized education in America. We can't be honest, but we have mastered averting our eyes.
Here is the humdinger: We will oppose socialism with all of our might -- with wars and violence -- all while meekly paying our taxes.
Can you say, "hypocrisy"?
--Jim and Lisa
Labels: education, republican fascism as socialism, socialism, taxes
posted by rangeragainstwar at 11:03 AM
14 Comments:
Great post. For answers to why public education is what is, google John Gatto and his book Underground History of American Education. Hint - American public education is exactly the way it was planned to be ...
GSJ
Hi Jim and Lisa,
Point! Good post.
Dave
Public 'education' is merely a way to keep ambitious younger workers out of the free market. Its there so assholes who run 'apprenticeship' programs (among other forms of coercive guilds & monopolies) can keep their cushy jobs. Imagine the US were to re-extend rights to teenagers of say 13 and above? They could work, vote, own real property and so on and so forth as they did when this country was founded.
No, public 'education' now is a bribe for the middle and lower classes to have their children set aside to keep them obedient and ready for the most brutal among them to become enforcers for the parasite class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWTYP6rcn30
BRL,
P.S. has much of the "holding pen" about it after 6th grade.
Then when life buffets the hapless people disgorged unwittingly from that system, some of them drag their battered selves to seminars like "Rich Dad/Poor Dad" and Suze Orman, or those of the many "personal trainers", forking out thousands to try and learn something that will help them succeed in this thing called life.
I am not dismissing the value of the latter, merely mourning the fact that it is necessary, and the many lost manpower years.
Of course, the top 2% always do pass this valuable information down to their scions, and hence the cycle continues.
This is way off topic but it ought to put that extra sunshine in your attitude. I copied it off the Alternate Brain blog...
TPMMuckraker
Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" for the conservative Christian group the American Family Association, was unhappy yesterday that President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to a soldier for saving lives. This, Fischer wrote on his blog, shows that the Medal of Honor has been "feminized" because "we now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them."
Jay in N.C.
Say Lisa and Jim, we've got good public schools up here in Mass. for the most part.
Generally they are rated best in the nation overall for the state though quality can vary locally.
I'm a product of public schools, namely those in Texas and my kids up here in Mass. I think strong public schools are critical to our nation.
The school systems up here in MA are just much better than where I grew up. Why? Well local townies demand a higher standard from their school systems here and attention to details show results. Also the school districts are smaller with a strong sense of local pride. That attention has to be at the local level.
Also its not cheap. It costs about $15K per student up from $12K a few years ago.
I was in Utah earlier this week and was surprised that it has one of the lowest per student expenditures. I was told by two parents looking to place their kids in school there that the best place to get a good secular education in Utah was in Catholic schools. I thought that was amusing at several levels.
So my point is, I like our public schools up here in MA. They require a significant investment in money and strong community and parental involvement - not necessarily the newest facilities which they are not.
When I recently returned to Texas I was surprised at the decline of public schools K-12 my nephews were experiencing relative to when I was there years ago. Folks just seemed to not want to pay or the system and seemed content to have crappy teachers, standards and textbooks. Also the drop out rate was appalling.
A commitment to public education was a novel concept in the 18th and 19th century and uniquely American in many regards - that an educated public was necessary to maintain a democracy.
People in a community gotta give a damn about their kids public education for it to be a quality experience.
Jay,
Per the MOH, i've written a series of articles on this topic.
Watch for them.
They've been edited and are in the hopper.
But be advised- it ain't girly stuff.
jim
MB, Mass.
I think education is the key to a successful life.
In fact, if it weren't for education ,i probably would've had to work for a living.
My point of this article is that we are a socialist type society, while denying it.
I have a hard time justifying using my money to educate other peoples clilruns. I did not over breed my paycheck.
I have a hard time also understanding how gov't even got involved in the issue, at least at the Federal level. ISTM that this should be a local/state issue.
Back to my complaint-I'm spending my money on something that i don't need.
Is it my duty to pay for someone else's kids education? Either we are capitalists or we aren't, and forcing me to buy insurance OR to pay education taxes is not capitalism. It's highway robbery.
That's the first thing that we should learn in school.
jim
Minstrel Boy:
Fr. the recently released National Report Card (@ www.nationsreportcard.gov) :
Results indicate that seniors in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Iowa, Connecticut and South Dakota beat the national average in reading and math.
Students in Arkansas, Florida and West Virginia scored lower than the average in both subjects. Results were mixed in Idaho, Illinois and New Jersey.
I second GSJ's recommendation. For anyone interested in this topic, John Taylor Gatto is a must read.
A waste is a terrible thing to mind?
avedis
Hi Jim and Lisa,
A Richard Mitchell quote comes to mind:
Schools do not fail. They succeed. Children always learn in school. Always and every day. When their rare and tiny compositions are “rated holistically” without regard for separate “aspects” like spelling, punctuation, capitalization, or even organization, they learn. They learn that mistakes bring no consequences. They learn that their teachers were only pretending in all those lessons on spelling and punctuation. They learn that there are no rewards for good work, and that they who run the race all win. They learn that what they win is a rubber-stamped smiling face, exactly as valuable as what they might lose, which is nothing, nothing at all. They learn that the demands of life are easily satisfied with little labor, if any, and that a show of effort is what really counts. They learn to pay attention to themselves, their wishes and fears, their likes and dislikes, their idle whims and temperamental tendencies, all of which, idolized as “values” and personological variables, are far more important than “mere achievement” in subject matter. The “whole child” comes first, and no one learns that lesson better than the children. Just as you can predict the future by going to school, you can decipher the past by looking-around. All those thoughtless, unskilled, unproductive, self-indulgent, and eminently dupable Americans—where have they been and what did they learn there?
Richard Mitchell, The Graves of Academe
Sorry for the long-winded quote, but it seemed apropos.
Dave
Dave,
Thank you -- that is a wonderfully germane quote.
Ranger says, "A mind is a terrible thing to lose" (based upon Dan (potatoe) Quayle's "A mind is a terrible thing to waste.)
Ranger's quote is based upon lived experience.
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