cinco de mayo: This blogger’s observations on education.

Is this what the American classroom will look like in a few years of Republican rule?

Or will it look like this?

I went to public schools in America, both my daughters did as well; for this reason I can give an opinion that perhaps some might not accept as valid but that I find is my experience with the educational system in general.

Here is what I think: Public education in America has been for the most part a training program to incorporate people into the whole of society and not a concerted effort to educate, enlighten and stimulate intellectual endeavor.

Intellectual excellence was rewarded and meritocracy thrived up to a point. It is clear to me that the main purpose of public education was to create “a normal” conformist who could fit well into a mediocre society.

The efforts have always been “one size fits all” or a generality in methodology and goal as is possibly worst exemplified in NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.

The problem is that instead of cultivating the individual, instead of encouraging the assets and talents kids have, educational outfits are more concerned with making them conform, to suppress any creativity or individuality. There is no pretense that diversity is not to be celebrated or encouraged in American public schools.

If you were a gifted student or one with special education needs you were out of luck…for the most part. I was fortunate to have both daughters into gifted programs because some observant teacher recognized their ability and talent. I don’t think that my children were that much different than their peers, neither that much brighter, nor that much more talented. But it was a combination of good luck and the efforts of some educators that took them out of their mediocre classrooms and placed them where they could blossom.

I also would like to think that I made a small contribution to their upbringing by encouraging them to be individualistic, free thinkers and thinking “outside of the box”.

I suppose that a product of too much democratization brings about complacency and a need for conformity. I also think that anyone who departs from the established educational norms is not rewarded but punished, be it the teachers or the students themselves.

After World War II there was an increased need to feed a lot of bodies into the industrial complex. It was necessary to build a labor force…a blue collar labor force. The meritocracy waned and the emphasis was on creating individuals who followed directions and obeyed the laws.

Sadly, we find ourselves at a point in the history of our country where one political party and to a great degree a whole political movement is characterized by the vilification of intellectual pursuit, the celebration of mediocrity and there is such pride among these people to demonstrate how education is not that necessary, it is elitist and it is not something we want to pursue as a society. Of course, I couldn’t disagree more and the reasons are obvious: America has fallen behind in so many aspects as compared to some of the other industrialized nations and it is due, and a direct result of our slashing funds for education, our insistence in teaching mediocrity and our acceptance as a nation that too much education is somehow evil or unnecessary.

And why should the rich and the corporations want a more educated population? The more educated a person is the higher a salary they can command…those at the helm of corporations, at least most of them want cheap labor, uneducated and trained to follow without bitching too much or demanding too much…the hell with education and labor unions…it is all about exacting profits from cheap labor.

We pay our teachers lousy salaries overcrowd their classrooms and squander our resources when it comes to public education. Teaching is not a career that most college graduates want to pursue because it is low pay with horrible working conditions. We have also seen how any attempts by teachers to better their lot have been torpedoed by Republicans. Their total repulsion for teachers’ unions is legendary.

It is a given that these ultra-conservatives shun any type of intellectual endeavor; they gloat at their lack of knowledge and boast of their ignorance. Oftentimes these people will try to vilify anyone in academia as the elitist left; implying that their learning and accumulation of knowledge is useless in dealing with the nation’s problems. Being a college graduate almost disqualifies anyone in the extreme right to be considered to run for any office…there exists a purity test and it appears that the more ignorant they are, the more outlandish their gaffs the more the base loves them.

Let us hope for the sake of America and the well being of our offspring that we as a nation change course in education. Let us hope that education becomes a number one priority and not giving tax cuts to the rich at the expense of education and other social programs…that is not who we are as a people, that is not the America we all love.