Our Public Schools Are Churning Out Drones for the Corporate State (Chris Hedges)

[Octafish]

A crib sheet for those seeking answers to today's big question about schools 'n' stuff:



Detroit Public Schools Book Depository (abandoned)

Our Public Schools Are Churning Out Drones for the Corporate State

Unconscious civilizations become totalitarian wastelands.

By Chris Hedges
Truthdig / April 11, 2011

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers--those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential--and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the "Texas Miracle," is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.

Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don't want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts--those who march to the beat of their own drum--are weeded out.

"Imagine," said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, "going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don't continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job. Up until very recently, the principal of a school was something like the conductor of an orchestra: a person who had deep experience and knowledge of the part and place of every member and every instrument. In the past 10 years we've had the emergence of both Mike Bloomberg's Leadership Academy and Eli Broad's Superintendents Academy, both created exclusively to produce instant principals and superintendents who model themselves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such 'academies' accredited? What quality of leader needs a 'leadership academy'? What kind of society would allow such people to run their children's schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a brilliant mechanism for undermining the school systems, instilling fear and creating a rationale for corporate takeover. There is something grotesque about the fact the education reform is being led not by educators but by financers and speculators and billionaires."

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/news/150578/our_public_schools_are_churning_out_drones_for_the_corporate_state/

America should strive to be more than a nation of warmongers, indentured servants, shoplifters and jailers.

[90-percent]

1. I'm flattering myself undeservedly

But, I kind of think my career has not been well served because I think I may fall into this category:

"Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts--those who march to the beat of their own drum--are weeded out."

They've been trying to weed me out for thirty years, and I have five "layoffs" over thirty years to prove it! Perhaps it has something to do with my lifelong hero Frank Zappa, the idol of my youth? As much as his music resonates, it is also his VALUES that really float my boat and I've tried to incorporate them into the fabric of my being. It would have helped also if I had his talent and work ethic!

To thine own self be true. And fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!

-90% non-drone

[slackmaster]

2. So are our law schools and medical schools

:argh:

[femrap]

3. TPTB are creating

a bunch of robots. And what is worse is the amount of debt the college students must carry around their necks like a dead albatross.

Obey! Or else! And Student Loans can never be included when filing for Bankruptcy (Thank you, Biden in 2005).

I heard on the radio yesterday that STUDENT LOAN AMOUNTS are now higher than the amount of REVOLVING DEBT (credit card, mainly). I stopped in my tracks when I heard that.

I have yahoo mail and there is a constant advertising of STUDENT GRANTS AND LOANS being advertised.

I don't think a College Education will provide the decent living that it once did. The jobs are gone and they're not coming back.

There is NO WAY kids should be coming out of college w/ such high debt. It's all a TRAP!

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. along the lines of what you said:

David Simon, creator of The Wire, The Corner, and Homicide: Life on the Streets, said:

“America now jails more of its people than any country, including all totalitarian states. We pretend to a war against narcotics, but in truth, we are simply brutalizing and dehumanizing an urban underclass that we no longer need as a labor supply.”
and
"These really are the excess people in America. Our economy doesn’t need them—we don’t need 10 or 15 percent of our population. And certainly the ones who are undereducated, who have been ill-served by the inner-city school system, who have been unprepared for the technocracy of the modern economy, we pretend to need them. We pretend to educate the kids. We pretend that we’re actually including them in the American ideal, but we’re not. And they’re not foolish. They get it. They understand that the only viable economic base in their neighborhoods is this multibillion-dollar drug trade."




He said more about that in an interview with Bill Moyers, which was posted on another thread:
(thread links to the excellent interview)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=598395&mesg_id=598395

[femrap]

8. I remember seeing this

interview on Bill Moyers.

I wish the people of poor neighborhoods would demand good schools. Kids should be out there demonstrating for them everyday. It's so damn depressing.

And I know damn well that TPTB are making tons of TAX FREE money off the Drug Trade. Isn't Afghanistan the provider of 90% of the heroin in the world?

BTW...I read that Bill's new show on PBS is NOT going to happen. They wouldn't give him a standard time slot.

[dixiegrrrrl]

28. Tells you a lot about what PBS has become,doesn't it?

Maybe he can go the Olbermann route.

[Odin2005]

14. The War on Drugs has one purpose only, to create a class of Convict-Slaves.

[Odin2005]

13. I refuse to take out student loans, I don't care if it takes me till I'm 30 before I graduate.

[Pooka Fey]

4. The photo adds so much to the article. Thanks for posting.

[anneboleyn]

25. I thought so too. Seeing those books just made me depressed.

I have always been a book nerd, and seeing all of those abandoned, ruined books just broke my heart.

[Overseas]

5. Sad K&R.

Attempts to privatize our public education system have been among the series of disheartening things I thought I'd never see Democrats engage in.

I thought my Democrats would be doing all they could to strengthen the public education system and yet we read every day about more and more charter schools being funded, in spite of their mixed record.

[Le Taz Hot]

7. It's because the activist Boomers

scared the shit out of them. All that talk about socialism, civil rights, communal living, environmentalism, stopping the wars . . . something HAD to be done. Quick! Dumb down the curriculum! Starve the school districts! Teach to tests! Attack the teachers and their unions!

It goes a long way towards explaining G.W. and the Tea Party movement.

[Odin2005]

11. Wrong generation, it was the one before the Boomers that did most of the activism.

The folks born from 1925 to 1942, between the Boomers and the WW2 Generation. MLK jr., Abbie Hoffman, and Tom Hayden were not Boomers.

(Sorry, it bugs me when Boomers take credit for things their elders did.)

[Le Taz Hot]

16. You mean the same generation that was

just fine with racial segregation, women as second-class citizens and internment camps? That one? It wasn't the WWII generation that did all the organizing and the protests and kept up pressure on elected officials. It was us. I know. I was there. The WWII generation referred to us as commie, pinko, hippie, fags who were unpatriotic because we didn't support a war for the MIC. "America, Love It Or Leave It." Any of this sound familiar? I'm guessing not.

The Boomers were the best educated generation before or since. Doesn't it just piss you off? LOL!

[Odin2005]

30. I'm not talking about the WW2 generation, I talking about the Silent Generation that came after them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Generation

Funny how the Boomers seem to act like that generation doesn't exist.

[MedleyMisty]

40. Boomers don't recognize any other generation

I'm on the oldest end of "Generation Y" or the "Millennials" or whatever. You know, so we're apathetic and ignorant and uneducated and don't care enough, despite the fact that we're out protesting and creating our own culture and separating from the whole corporate/television/fascist thing. It's just that we're doing a lot of it online, so it's not visible/doesn't make sense to people who didn't grow up with computers and the internet.

Generalizations and stereotypes are always wrong of course, but generally around people my age, when the Baby Boomers come up, it's in terms of how selfish and egotistical they are and how they think they're God's gift to the world.

[Odin2005]

42. I was born in 1986, so I'm an early Millennial.

I agree with you completely. They think they did everything good in the world, it's like their Silent Generation elders don't exist to them.

[WinkyDink]

20. My father fought in WWII. I am a Boomer. HIS generation did not march vs. VietNam; mine did.

That equaled two generations, BTW.

[Odin2005]

31. See post #30. I'm not talking about the WW2 Generation.

[Kurovski]

9. KRNT

[LWolf]

10. Then citizens, especially Democrats,

should stop electing and supporting the politicians whose education policies create this outcome.

Try putting an educator at the head of the Dept. of Ed instead of a corporate-friendly basketball player.

Try putting educators instead of business people and politicians in charge of all reform and all education policies.

You'd see some authentic positive change.

[anneboleyn]

19. I totally agree Wolf. Educators should be in charge of these things

instead of corporate types who think schools should be run like little companies, with "bonuses" going to the teachers who get their kids to score the highest on the all-important test. Nevermind that these teachers are forced to spend a huge chunk of class time devoted to test-taking techniques instead of learning.

[LWolf]

34. Yes.

:(

[Odin2005]

12. And yet some posters here still treat Homeschoolers as the spawn of Satan.

[madfloridian]

15. "creating a rationale for corporate takeover"

Yep.

[WinkyDink]

17. A couple decades ago, school supers started calling themselves "CEOs." The rest was inevitable.

[Keith Bee]

18. There's a reason why Aldous Huxley still rocks

Now shut up and take your soma! :evilfrown:

[WinkyDink]

22. And why I taught that one to seniors for decades. ;-)

[anneboleyn]

27. yes indeed.

[truedelphi]

29. Hear! Hear! Our local PBS station (Channel Eight in Lake County)

Recently had a full 90 minutes of interviews with Aldous Huxley. This was circa 1959 to 1962, with a full audio presentation of Huxley's remarks to the students at UC Berkeley in 1962.

In one segment, Mike Wallace interviews Huxley for a half hour TV program. It shows you not only what a brilliant mind Huxley had, but also how unblemished our TV system still was. No one in Corporate Controlled Media in their right mind would let a major Talking Head interview Huxley for 30 minutes in this day and age. Their lord and master, GE, would have them fired within a day or two of it happening.

Huxley presented too much clarity of thought, which is NEVER allowed on current TV
programming.

[Odin2005]

32. American Idol = Soma.

[anneboleyn]

21. This is starting to happen in our universities too, as the corporate mentality takes over: adjuncts

are hired isntead of tenure-track or tenured professors. Universities on an epidemic scale (according to a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article) are not replacing retiring tenured professors, instead hiring, in huge numbers, one-year adjuncts and other faculty members who are not on the tenure track or tenured.

An underclass is being created, and this underclass is nervous about keeping a job and/or has little commitment to the future of the institution and therefore does not vote on issues (or is not even allowed to vote on issues or serve on hiring committees) pertaining to faculty development, class size, etc. Faculty members in this position, in which they have a one-year contract, are nervous about having their contracts renewed since the academic job market is so poor right now. These adjuncts are not going to speak out against the university regarding anything -- so "reforms" are passed against the wishes of the faculty and against, faculty argues, the best interest of the students.

[WinkyDink]

24. "[S]tarting"?!

[anneboleyn]

26. Yeah, I know. It's getting worse and worse. My graduate school has told its students

(the current crop of grad students) that most of them will not find a tenure-track job. This is a big shift for them. In the nineties, most of us did find tenure-track positions (and historically they have had a very good placement program). It's just so depressing.

[datasuspect]

23. well, how else do you expect our labor force to become more competitive with China and India?

The death of dreams means guaranteed lowered expectations. and profit.

if you can create a subjected class that lacks the human spirit enough to become self-aware in any profound sense, you have a population of empty vessels which you can manipulate any way you want.

[QED]

33. This is another great article by Hedges.

Has anyone read the book "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" mentioned at the end of the article?

[AsahinaKimi]

35. I hate to say it but there may come a time

When the entire Education system collapses, teachers become outlaws, and the only ones allowed to teach, will have a bible in their hands. Then, welcome the Theocracy because that will be next...

[dixiegrrrrl]

36. Or real teaching will go underground.

edited to add:
I like what Hedges said here:

The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a dialogue with one's inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. There is a huge difference, as Socrates understood, between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think. Those who are endowed with a moral conscience refuse to commit crimes, even those sanctioned by the corporate state, because they do not in the end want to live with criminals--themselves.

"It is better to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself," Socrates said.

[AsahinaKimi]

Could not agree more

Thanks for that!^^

[AsahinaKimi]

37. dupe

[Donnachaidh]

38. and serfs to serve them on vacations etc.

All those for-profit colleges offering culinary careers, etc., is just training new serfs to serve the elites.

[snot]

39. K&R'd! Source for the photo?

[tex-wyo-dem]

41. Although I can understand...

Why TPTB would want to churn out a bunch of unconscious drones to serve the corporate state (and I'm not questioning that that is the goal), it does give pause that the same PTB would be risking making tons of $$$$ off of innovation...let me explain:

I've had many conversations over the years with my engineering and science counterparts that the main reason the US has been so successful over the decades at innovation and technology is because we've had a rich tradition of encouraging free thought and questioning conventional wisdom and authority. This "out-of-the-box" thinking has resulted in much of the most amazing technical advances ever known to man (also resulting in incredible profits for TPTB).

Compare this with other cultures and countries where more rigid thinking and bowing to authority is encouraged/demanded and, well, there is no comparison. An example of this is Japan that has for centuries had a culture of rigid rules where free thought was not necessarily encouraged in the business world. The Japanese are well known for taking existing ideas, designs, etc and making them better, more reliable, higher quality, etc, which takes a tremendous amount of dicipline, but at the same time Japan isn't really known for innovation.

True inventiveness often requires radical thinking, something the US has been traditionally good at.

So, to get back to my original point, why would TPTB want to risk losing this inventiveness, this competitive edge, so to speak? Unless they will just wait for Europeans to do the inventing and just steal the profits.

[The2ndWheel]

43. How else could our organziations and institutions function?

Governments and corporations need standardization. They need predictability. They need order. They need people(for now) going to work every day. They need people(for now) to do the dirty work every day. You need to conform to the requirements of the social system.

So we're drones of the corporate state. As opposed to what? What else would we, or could we, be at this point? If we were actually anything other than drones, how would society function? What business would employ anyone? What business would there be? How would government allocate the resources people need?

It's all fine and good to be a radical free thinking artist while in school. Then you're going to be expected to get a job, and become a productive member of what? That's right, society. The corporate state. You're going to be a drone anyway. If that happens at 15, or 35, what difference does it really make?

If you free thinkingly want to stop going to school for example, what happens? Your parents might get in trouble. You'll be dragged back to school. If you free thinkingly decide you're going to rebel and not pay taxes, what would normally happen to you? If you free thinkingly choose not to vote for whatever reason you come up with, are you a good or bad citizen when it comes to being responsible for your social duties? Not going to obey the laws of society since you had no direct say in their creation? Not going to get a job?

Honestly, other than drones, who do what is required and expected of them by the larger society in which they exist when they reach adulthood, what are we supposed to be?