Educated

Greetings good citizen,

More basic than the state of our economy is the state of academic accomplishment in our (rapidly crumbling) society.

Hey, it’s not new and it’s not hidden. You can view ads on TV that show the US 17th in math and 25th in Science…(worldwide standing)

And what’s the ‘major malfunction’ here?

The official reason is not enough ‘qualified teachers’!

Why do you suppose that is, good citizen?

Could it be the same reason nobody in the US studies engineering. They’re all studying to be lawyers or stockbrokers…with a smattering of accountants trying to get a leg up into the financial sector…

How sad is it good citizen that none of those jobs ‘go begging’? Sadder still is the meat-grinder that passes for the path to partnership in law firms NOT OWNED by YOUR family.

This is what capitalism and the, er, ‘contest’ to line your own pockets with as much as you can, as quickly as possible results in.

You end up with more lawyers than the system can use and not enough teachers.

Yet nobody faults this basic flaw of capitalism, especially those seeking the best legal representation ‘money can buy’.

[I digress to point out that everybody knows, in corrupt times like these that ‘legal talent’ is virtually indistinguishable from ‘political connectedness’. The more ‘grease’ you have, the higher the likelihood of a judgement being in YOUR favor…]

So what of our crumbling educational system that the anti-tax conservatives seem bent on choking to death?

They DON’T give a fuck; they’ll send THEIR kids to ‘private school’.

And finally: critical thinking is the birthright of every American. We should not aspire to a feudal society where only the elites are taught to think independently, evaluate evidence, weigh complex factors, and make informed decisions. But it will become one -- in just a generation or two -- if we stop making this the foundational competence delivered by our educational system. A democracy in which a majority of people are no longer capable of basic critical thinking skills cannot remain a democracy very long.

Our educational system is a product of our deepest values. And the battles we're having now are, very directly, battles over what we believe is possible in America, and what kind of country we want to be 20 years from now. The conservatives are not wrong: for 150 years, the schools have been the leading promoter and disseminator of progressive values. They are now doing their best to dismantle that system, and replace it with one that produces followers, subjects and serfs.

What is education for? We won't even be a contender in this fight until we're committed to our own clear, coherent, values-based answer to that question. How we answer it will shape the country's future.

Our schools system already SUCKS (thanks to deeply mis-guided motivations of capitalism…which, ironically isn’t taught ‘in-depth’ in ANY school system!)

Then there is the other ‘cornerstone’ of a ‘free society’. A society incapable of making decisions for itself is doomed to follow the decisions of the self-interested, regardless of the consequences or competence.

Worse, we already know that conservative ideology is base on belief that has no basis in fact, so their decision-making capability is, by default, disastrous!

Look at the two ‘wars of choice’ conservatives have spent trillions on and still can’t define what ‘victory’ looks like!

Not to put too fine a point on it but a conservative decision has become synonymous with being a ‘wrong’ decision.

How do you like your stacked conservative deck in November’s elections now?

The more we re-visit this topic (November Elections) the more irksome it becomes.

IF we’re ‘lucky’ they won’t happen…although I use the term ‘lucky’ in the broadest possible context.

If elections DON’T HAPPEN this November it will likely be because we are locked in battle to decide the future of Western Civilization, a battle we can’t afford to lose.

But I digress, let us return to the often-overlooked (despite constant media attention) education system.

Where, once again, we see conservative ‘tax relief’ efforts gutting the funding from public education.

As one might expect, the bone-headed conservative position is that our kids are ‘too stupid’, which is why they test so poorly…as opposed to the real reason our schools suck, because of the warped values of the capitalist system.

A system where people who ‘manipulate’ money are paid more than the people who actually produce a product or provide a service (like education or healthcare…)

Not that our healthcare system doesn’t cost us dearly…but again, thanks to the perverted values of capitalism, a bulk of the cost goes to paying investors!

The ‘incentive’ to become a teacher doesn’t exist (just as the incentive to become a doctor in today’s litigious society is decidedly negative!)

Understand, teachers these days make a pretty darn good paycheck as opposed to what they’d get in the private sector as a ‘grunt’…but the private sector doesn’t have a ‘continuing Ed’ requirement to keep your education credentials current.

Worse, the private sector has all but disappeared.

And the public sector is seriously under-funded as a result.

BUT, if your scholastic record is, er, ‘strong’, why wouldn’t you take a shot at becoming a lawyer or a banker? (Although those jobs aren’t going begging anymore…)

And with student loans becoming increasingly toxic, more students will be ‘forced’ into the still highly competitive market for educators.

As the tax pool shrinks to nothing, educators jobs will compete with police and fire jobs on the local budget.

How will you kids learn if the library is only open a couple of hours a week, if at all?

The battle lines were drawn long ago, good citizen, why are you still reluctant to fight?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

O.O.C.

Greetings good citizen,

Considering the ‘Land of the Free’ also boasts the world’s largest prison population we probably shouldn’t be too surprised by this disturbing development

The case is among thousands across the country fueling a long-simmering debate over when educators should bring in the police to deal with disruptive students. A 6-year-old Georgia kindergartner became the latest test case last week when she was hauled off in steel handcuffs after throwing books and toys in a school tantrum.

"Kids are being arrested for being kids," said Shannon Kennedy, a civil rights attorney who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Albuquerque's public school district and its police department on behalf of hundreds of kids arrested for minor offenses over the past few years, including having cellphones in class, destroying a history book and inflating a condom.

Civil rights advocates and criminal justice experts say frustrated teachers and principals are calling in the police too often to deal with the most minor disturbances. But other teachers say a police presence that has grown in response to zero tolerance policies of the 1990s and tragedies like the Columbine High massacre is needed to keep teachers and well-behaved students safe.

Ironic as the topic of this morning’s radio broadcast on NPR (increasingly becoming National Republican Radio, gotta get that ‘P’ out of there!) was ‘racial profiling’ and the ‘problem’ this presents law enforcement personnel.

In defense of racial profiling (or more succinctly, in denial) was the statement that we all must think cops are outright racists if we were to believe they were being ‘bigoted’ in the performance of their duties.

No, the truth of the matter is we all KNOW cops are too fucking stupid to deal with juvenile offenders sensitively…

I mean, they busted a six-year old who was obviously having a ‘bad day’. WTF, good citizen!

There’s one ‘badge’ that needs to be flushed down the toilet, pronto! and, in fairness, a teacher who needs to find another line of work!

Just as bad as Out of Control cops are the O.O.C. teachers who call them into their classrooms!

Worse, good citizen, it appears we have an epidemic on our hands…and the fucking Corporate Owned Media doesn’t breathe a whisper about this heavy handed policing that is taking place right under our noses!

And what is the ultimate ‘verdict’ rendered here? Unfit parents. Not unfit teachers with hair triggers or idiot cops who will bust anyone (even a six-year old) on someone else’s say-so…

Do you think we have a ‘problem’ here…because it appears a majority of these kids are getting ‘records’ (although the fucking dickwads causing our children to be arrested instead of imposing detention or a more suitable punishment deny it) that will, because we’ve seen it ourselves, NEVER GET ERASED.

These juvenile offenses will follow these kids to their GRAVES, because that IS the ‘mentality’ behind busting kids for being kids!

Which is to ask, where is the criminal statute against ‘possession of a cell phone?’

What did the cop bust the kid for? Certainly not possession, so it must be a ‘civil disobedience’ charge.

And do YOU honestly think something like THAT is going to be ‘purged’ from your child’s ‘permanent record’?

You know how they ‘purge’ this stuff don’t you? They don’t remove the document and destroy it (unless you pay a crooked cop to ‘fix’ your records) No, they just make a note beside it, leaving it there for whoever pulls your records later in life, to haunt you.

Worse, future fucktard can read (and act on) this information, PRETENDING they didn’t see it because it was marked ‘deleted’.

Worse, if YOU ask to see your files, they WILL make sure to ‘pull’ all of the stuff marked as ‘deleted’ so all you see is the stuff you already know is there!

Which is to say you will NEVER succeed in asking to see your files, and have someone walk over, pull them up on a screen and print them out…

NO, you will have to file a information request and they will MAIL them to you…so someone can take the time to ‘edit’ the parts that they would surely be sued for if anyone else saw them!

But then we have the opposite end of the dilemma to deal with, good luck finding a lawyer willing to take THAT case!

Worse, good luck finding a court willing to hear it (because what passes for our ‘Justice system’ is totally corrupt.)

So today’s Big Red Flag is OOC policing in our classrooms that will/is making an appearance in our workplaces.

Since schools ‘main objective’ is to train you to be an OBEDIENT and (semi) competent worker (in that order,) how long do you think it will be before the boss has you arrested and fined for being late? (Or ‘stealing’ for taking too long to return from break?)

[Which is a rhetorical question, I am well aware that we are already there and beyond already! It has become so commonplace that it doesn’t make the news…which should surprise no one.]

We (sadly) already know that the cops ‘do what they’re told’. Heaven forbid they think for themselves! (Or they’d know better than to arrest a six-year old! But maybe I expect too much from a college educated adult with ‘public relations training’…I mean seriously, WTF!)

Equally as bad is how the corporate owned media thinks this ISN’T ‘newsworthy’!

The very foundations of our civilization are under attack by (ruthless) profiteers and our media is mute about it?

Well, that isn’t true either, is it? Because here’s a story about exactly that from a major national publication…

But it ISN’T a story about OOC teachers and cops, no! It’s a story about A FUCKING LAWSUIT against the STATE OF ARIZONA (in the Republic of Lunatics) about OOC policing!

This is, good citizen, a very damning indictment of our badly broken society.

It is not a question of whether or not we have crossed the line but if our knee-jerk reactions have driven sanity and judgement out of our daily affairs?

Which is to point out what we all know, the ‘search for excellence’ should remain, ever and always a ‘metaphorical’ pursuit.

The thing we need to have ‘zero tolerance’ policies for is zero tolerance policies!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Police State (an offshoot of the Class War)

Greetings good citizen,

If you haven’t already I want you to picture in you head what ‘Class War’ would look like.

Would there be riots and confrontations with the Police State in your mental image?

Or would it be a day like today, where the stock market dropped a hundred points due to ‘fear’ of bad news?

Seriously good citizen, the class war is blazing all around you and it has been for the past ten years but thanks to our closely muzzled media, most of you remain ignorant.

The biggest ‘giveaway’ is the 30,000 strong Tea Party (funded by billionaires! Real ‘grassroots’ organization, isn’t it? And popular too, the fucking media can’t stop fretting over them…which should tell you something all by itself.)

Then, like the last administration’s penchant for torture we have this bullshit, which has been building for quite some time.

Those who suggest that the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Kentucky is ‘no big deal’ or that it’s ‘alarmist’ to think otherwise, must not understand the extent to which the boundaries are pushed when the Court makes exceptions to our rights. Nor do they comprehend that once lost, civil liberties are impossible to reclaim. With SWAT teams already injuring and at times killing the wrong people to serve warrants, just imagine the abuse to come given the increased power the Court has bestowed upon the state.

Considering the level of brutality we have been dishing out around the world, from the “war on drugs” to the “war on terror,” the erosion of our civil liberties is sadly inevitable. Did we really think that we could wage war and occupy other nations with checkpoints, invasive surveillance, and brutal violence without these same policing tactics spreading to our country?

Like many things that have happened over the past thirty years, the ever expanding Police State started out as concern for the ‘safety’ of the officers…and as the (civilian) death toll mounted, the ‘blue wall’ got more funding and less accountable.

Sadly good citizen we have already seen ‘the next step’.

It happens every day in Afghanistan and Iraq and soon it will be happening in El Paso and Tuczon. In the interests of ‘officer safety’ police will soon start lobbing missiles into ‘suspect neighborhoods’, Hell, the Isrealis do it all the time!

Should you object (or worse become the victim of such an attack) you will be shit out of luck! Because their goofball ‘supreme court’ has deemed their actions ‘perfectly legal’.

Which is to ask how rapt you will be watching THEIR trial for treason? (I’ll bet you’ll be glued to the set!)

When the justice system starts to unravel ‘justice’ takes some pretty bizarre bounces.

Understand that the idiots responsible for this latest twist towards ‘do as I say not as I do’ don’t intend to ‘lose control’…so when the backlash comes they will be taken pretty much by surprise.

And they will know full well that ‘sorry’ isn’t going to cut it.

Also under the header class war, we have this article that until only recently was being billed as the salvation of all who made the effort.

Young people between the ages of 16 and 24 face an unemployment rate nearly twice that of the rest of the population, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. 2010's 18.4 percent rate for youth was the worst in the 60 years that economists have collected such data. ColorLines notes that in 2010, 8.4 percent of white college graduates were unemployed, 13.8 percent of Latino graduates, and a dismal 19 percent of black graduates.

Those bright, shiny new degrees simply aren't worth the paper they're printed on all too often. The cost of a college degree is up some 3,400 percent since 1972, but as we all know too well, household incomes haven't increased by anything close to that number -- not for the bottom

Worse, most are at a loss when it comes to deciding what to study. Why spend a fortune for a low paying service industry job? (And you WILL spend a fortune because like most loans, it’s not the principle but the interest that drains you dry!)

Just how ‘fucked up’ is our badly broken economy?

I think most of you know the answer.

And if you don’t this excellent article from Jesse’s crossroads café provides a good primer:

When this natural progression of change can no longer be resisted, things might start moving more quickly, perhaps remarkably so.

But until then bear in mind that these big changes happen slowly and for the most part quietly. With sudden bursts of change and release of energy, often over a period of years, until the pressure breaks into the public arena, and then voila, a full-blown crisis appears as if out of nowhere. And most swear that it could not have been foreseen or predicted.

I am telling you, again, that it is happening now. With this continuing resistance to change and reform it may very well break upon the world financial system in the next few years with what could be a terrific. An astonishing effect that will sweep away whole institutions and many long held beliefs and assumptions, old lessons that have been unlearned, and must be accounted for again.

While I have not asked him I’m reasonably sure Jesse doesn’t like being the bearer of sad tidings any more than I do.

We (the paycheck peasants of the modern world) are under attack, good citizen.

While they’d like us to march willingly into the gas chambers, most of us will resist once we know what’s going on.

Are they gassing people? I dunno but they sure as hell are sterilizing the next generation wholesale and there isn’t anything being done about it! (Because fertility clinics are cleaning house!)

Do you doubt there is a class war raging all around you?

All they need to win is for you to do nothing…

Wake up…and then spark it up!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner