Moonlapse's Private Blog

Wow he had that to say back in 1940? So since that time as the educational system gotten better or worse?

How F***ing true...

 

One interesting note, our own Government (USA) does not pay tuition assistance to it's employees for history. It's lumped together with other humanities as a sort of recreational education not worthy of their money or their employees time...

Wow he had that to say back in 1940? So since that time as the educational system gotten better or worse?

Better or worse according to whom?

 

If you read that man's Wikipedia entry, you'll see that he had concluded that democracy is now defective and that the herd of citizens needs to be governed by a group of elites. I'm curious to know if he concluded this after seeing the product of universal, forced, homogenizing schools or if, ironically, he feels that people should be governed by elites but also educated in our original 'cultural tradition' - two opposite ideologies.

 

The metaphor 'melting pot' became widespread at the beginning of the 20th century, indicating assimilation and homogeneity, giving up Old World identity to become 'American' - but American by what definition? Henry Ford's?

 

Anyways, the 'better or worse' question I feel can be answered, either way or the other, based on this aspect.

Heh, considering the educational level of what most Americans were at when the nation was founded, excluding of course a number of the leaders, I fail to see how he can make such a claim. Perhaps he is speaking of the 'upper crust' of people in the nation? I wonder if he could answer if a nation can be founded democratically by the ignorant then their later education corrupting the simple principle?

What was the educational level of most Americans at the founding? The question relies on an abstract 'standardized' measurement. It is in itself based on the modern schooling paradigm.

 

Remove the television and radios, the Scholastics Aptitude Tests and Intelligence Quotients created in the early 20th century. People involved themselves in reading the exceptional literature of the time, discussing current politics and philosphy at the local tavern, writing and distributing rhetorical pamphlets or analyzing and responding with their own pamphlets, participating as entrepreurs in local economies, etc. Who has more REAL human education, these types or your literal 'run of the mill' college graduate who has been purposefully guided by instructors, learning by rote?

 

People like Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin and George Washington had very little schooling. While they are considered as some sort of elite in modern conception, there was actually little that differentiated them from other colonists. Think about this: between the time independence was declared and the time an actual constitution was drafted, the colonists essentially self-governed. Try that today with all of our dependencies.

 

Not to say that there are not any truly educated people... just that other factors than forced state schooling have more to do with someone aquiring an intellectual education. Usually, its the influence of people your life that appreciate intellect and your natural desires to find the truth in whatever you experience.

In re Moonlapses last post: How does one account for the lack of a solid liberal arts foundation in the schools of higher education? 'Government' intrudes least there, if at all. Don't modern parents have the responsibility to introduce their children to the classics?

 

Unfortunately, all modern governments have a felonious elite in power. Their only object in life is their purses which are filled by an equally felonious corporate elite. "Money is speech." The exploits of A-Rod and Zedane are well known. Tom Paine is a window salesman; Shakespeare, an Indian chief.

In re Moonlapses last post: How does one account for the lack of a solid liberal arts foundation in the schools of higher education? 'Government' intrudes least there, if at all. Don't modern parents have the responsibility to introduce their children to the classics?

Philanthropic foundations - namely those of Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie. They were (are?) the key players in formation of education policy and even foriegn policy. Now... grasp this... the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation currently has an endowment of almost 32 billion dollars. Whether the true intentions are right or wrong, that is an incredible amount of potential influence. The CEO is Patty Stonesifer. Her husband is Michael Kinsley, known for his involvement in Crossfire, The New Republic (coincidentally co-founded by Walter Lippmann) and Slate among others.

 

And yes, it is the parent's/family's responsibility. Unfortunately, the current system effectively replaces the parent in several crucial ways.

If I understand the article, and if it is a correct rendering, then is it not the 'elites' who are running the educational system now?

 

Not to go too far afield, but the only democracy in the Constitution is the House of Representatives. Yet this House is faulty as a democratic institution. There are districts in some states that are composed of more people than in some entire states. The now democratically elected Senate allows for the election of more senators from some dozen states whose populations total much less than that of Califorrnia. These states have more say in the election of presidents (via the Electoral College) than the more populous states. The Supreme Court needs no commentary. I am not sure if this system is genius or fault, but it is not democracy.

 

At the Founding, it was one set of aristocrats (elites) taking over from another set. It was left to the states to decide who had the right to vote in elections. Not all men (to say nothing of women) were given the franchise. To this day, the most are not equal before the law. In my opinion elites, of any stripe, govern for their benefits and not the good of the many.

 

Until very recently, the USA managed to be the envy of most of the world.

 

All the above notwithstanding, the USA has a 'nous' - a soul - that propels it forward in all spheres.

If I understand the article, and if it is a correct rendering, then is it not the 'elites' who are running the educational system now?

 

This quote from that article might shed some light on his words:

 

Early on, Lippmann was optimistic about American democracy. He embraced the Jeffersonian ideal and believed that the American people would become intellectually engaged in political and world issues and fulfill their democratic role as an educated electorate. In light of industrialization, the events leading to World War II and the concomitant scourge of totalitarianism however, he rejected this view. Democratic ideals had deteriorated, voters were uninstructed as to issues and policies, they lacked the competence to participate in public life and were disinterested in participating in the political process. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann noted that the stability the government achieved during the patronage era of the 1800s was threatened by modern realities. He wrote that a “governing class” must rise to face the new challenges. He saw the public as Plato did, a great beast or a bewildered herd – floundering in the “chaos of local opinions."

 

I think that he knew that the population was being dumbed down by new educational policy, and obviously stated so, but chose to ultimately support the cause for which the dumbing down was necessary - the centralization of authority. He knew that we were losing something as a democratic nation, he specifically stated that there were people behind it, yet he gave up on the founding ideals that he obviously had once cherished, paradoxically stating that citizens were incompetent to rule democratically. Masses were being made dumb in order to facilitate centralized authority, but then the masses were too dumb to rule themselves so therefore they should be ruled. It's a very strange, consciously made reversal of opinion and I really wonder how it happened to him.

 

But to answer your question, yes, I think the 'elite' ruling class is running the schooling institution. Walter Lippmann may have said and done things that indicate his opposition to this idea, but he ultimately acquiesced. Lippman knew what mass media and mass schooling were all about.

 

GW Bush, champion of standardized testing, scored 566 verbal and 640 math on his SAT's. Bill Bradley scored 485 verbal. Bush graduated from Yale, Bradley from Princeton.

Some more relevant quotation, this time from the 1954 congressional investigation, The Reece Commission:

The power of the individual large foundation is enormous. Its various forms of patronage carry with them elements of thought control. It exerts immense influence on educator, educational processes, and educational institutions. It is capable of invisible coercion. It can materially predetermine the development of social and political concepts, academic opinion, thought leadership, public opinion.

 

The power to influence national policy is amplified tremendously when foundations act in concert. There is such a concentration of foundation power in the United States, operating in education and the social sciences, with a gigantic aggregate of capital and income. This Interlock has some of the characteristics of an intellectual cartel. It operates in part through certain intermediary organizations supported by the foundations. It has ramifications in almost every phase of education.

 

It has come to exercise very extensive practical control over social science and education. A system has arisen which gives enormous power to a relatively small group of individuals, having at their virtual command huge sums in public trust funds.

 

The power of the large foundations and the Interlock has so influenced press, radio, television, and even government that it has become extremely difficult for objective criticism of anything the Interlock approves to get into news channels—without having first been ridiculed, slanted and discredited.

 

Research in the social sciences plays a key part in the evolution of our society. Such research is now almost wholly in the control of professional employees of the large foundations. Even the great sums allotted by federal government to social science research have come into the virtual control of this professional group.

 

Foundations have promoted a great excess of empirical research as contrasted with theoretical research, promoting an irresponsible "fact-finding mania" leading all too frequently to "scientism" or fake science.

 

Associated with the excessive support of empirical method, the concentration of foundation power has tended to promote "moral relativity" to the detriment of our basic moral, religious, and governmental principles. It has tended to promote the concept of "social engineering," that foundation-approved "social scientists" alone are capable of guiding us into better ways of living, substituting synthetic principles for fundamental principles of action.

 

These foundations and their intermediaries engage extensively in political activity, not in the form of direct support of candidates or parties, but in the conscious promotion of carefully calculated political concepts.

 

The impact of foundation money upon education has been very heavy, tending to promote uniformity in approach and method, tending to induce the educator to become an agent for social change and a propagandist for the development of our society in the direction of some form of collectivism. In the international field, foundations and the Interlock, together with certain intermediary organizations, have exercised a strong effect upon foreign policy and upon public education in things international. This has been accomplished by vast propaganda, by supplying executives and advisors to government, and by controlling research through the power of the purse. The net result has been to promote "internationalism" in a particular sense—a form directed toward "world government" and a derogation of American nationalism.

Read it twice.

And another quote from an investigative commission of the 62nd Congress in 1913:

The domination of men in whose hands the final control of a large part of American industry rests is not limited to their employees, but is being rapidly extended to control the education and social services of the nation.

...

The giant foundation exercises enormous power through direct use of its funds, free of any statutory entanglements so they can be directed precisely to the levers of a situation; this power, however, is substantially increased by building collateral alliances which insulate it from criticism and scrutiny.

 

I'd never heard of these commissions before reading Gatto's 'Underground History...' and I'd be surprised if anyone else has. I certainly haven't heard them mentioned in any discussion on educational reform. Conspicuously inconspicuous?

I think that you might like to add this to your arsenal.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15383124/

Well, I hope that the trend will become widespread but as the article said, "the revolution might never reach many classrooms. The newest English teachers are products of a grammarless era, unprepared to distinguish an appositive from an infinitive."

 

Here's something to compare: The 1882 Appleton School Reader for fifth graders contained writing from William Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, etc. Most of that is currently Advanced Placement high school reading.

Wish that Tom Paine were on that list.