Conspiracy Theories – Education – Did We Do This On Purpose?

I often wonder whether the changes to education over the last decades were just innocent mistakes made by wrong-headed education experts.

 

2 thoughts on “Conspiracy Theories – Education – Did We Do This On Purpose?

  1. (sadly seems down at the moment) <a href="http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/">The Underground History of American Education</a> – An Award Winning Teacher Pulls Back the Curtain to reveal the actual "Fourth Purpose" for which Mass Forced Schooling was conceived – by John Taylor Gatto is long but worth the read. You don't need a vast 100-year conspiracy micromanaging everything when you have a small conspiracy to start everything up, the inflexibility of the system itself, and the self-interest of groups and people invested in it. For example, whole-word-reading only replaced phonics for as long as it did because publishers of educational materials had spent so much money making whole-word products.

    Also, <a href="http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt">The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher</a> by the same author is much shorter and also worth reading. That's the first link from Google and seems to have everything, but it's a .txt file and uglier than an html page with formatting.

     

  2. Carlin was absolutely right.  In Canada, we've been dumbed down enough that Harper could get away with lying to the electorate that coalition government is an unconstitutional coup.   The corporate media that should have exposed Harper as a blatant, outrageous liar, didn;'t and thereby colluded with Harper in his manipulation.  I am regularly astounded at the level of ignorance about our government and institutions among our young people.  No one is teaching this stuff to them and so they emerge into the work world politically powerless.  Is it any wonder they don't vote?

    When the ultra rich are criticized they scream "socialism" and conjure up images of Lubyanka.  Yet Reagan put in motion the very vehicle by which they effected the enormous transfer of wealth from America's once vibrant, robust middle class into their own overstuffed pockets.  At the same time they yanked up the ladder of social mobility.  And now, as Carlin predicted, they are indeed going after the working classes last remaining assets – Social Security and Medicare.
     
    The only good thing in this is that this form of predatory capitalism will not last.   The rich and powerful are defying gravity by believing they can remain ultra-wealthy without a strong, middle class support base to drive America's consumer economy.   There is a genuine malignancy in their thinking.   Time is not on their side.

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