Education in the land of nothing free

From Random Hipatia

I had recently read Derek Neal's paper, Left behind by Design.

This is an important study about the consequences and failure of education systems built around testing metrics such as those in Bush's defective "No child left behind.". What is clear is this policy for public education disadvantages not only those least able to perform but also those who's talents and abilities might otherwise be stimulated and promoted.

Indeed the consequence, if not the very intent, of this defective by design education policy seems to be a throwback to the 19th century, when public education was first conceived as a means to supply a minimally educated but properly disciplined and conditioned labor force for early factories.

Of course, we do not have many factories now, thanks to decades of defective trade policies, but we do have consumers. That is, people who we used to call citizens that at one time actually had real rights, but are now called "consumers" who must beg for those things now being called privileges that used to be citizen rights, such as fair use, private ownership, and due process. It is this purpose that public education now seems to serve, to create compliant and minimally educated consumers for corporations out of what used to be free and educated citizens. Indeed, 21st century citizenship is rapidly deminishing to pre-20th century serfdom, especially here in the land of nothing free.

For my part, I have concluded the only way to educate my children is do so myself. When they are older, they will not go to some so-called "public" or "technical" University in the U.S. that only teach students to be educated minimally as needed at the lowest possible cost so they can perform specific wage-slavery tasks. The key to understanding American Universities today is when they refer to their own student body as "consumers". Like a former citizen, a "consumer" serves no purpose other than being made to trade his or her most basic human rights and dignity for the privilege of consuming more corporate goods thereby solving the problem of markets of abundance by creating artificial excess demand for unneeded things.

Nor would I choose to send them to one of those expensive private universities in this country that are normally accessible only to the wealthy. Many private universities exploit their students as well today in the land of nothing free. Students may find their undergraduate work, particularly in fields of science, is now "forcibly licensed" to their university, and then sold to the exclusive benefit of private corporations. The last good director of the National Science Foundation, Rita Colwell, whom I once had the pleasure to meet while speaking a number of years back at the NSF, described the process as science under siege and the destruction of science. I happen to agree with her.

No, I do not see the future for my children's education in this country. At least not until people are motivated and willing to do those things needed to change it, whether by direct action or by other means. Unless and until this happens I see no future for this country at all.