Sunday, March 12, 2006

Washington's neo-Molochs

Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves; when that right is pre-empted it is called brain-washing.
- Germaine Greer

The freedom to share one’s insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes.
- Carl Friedrich Bahrdt

Education in America has become an exercise in political indoctrination. The Orwellian, pretzel-logic of slogans such as "No Child Left Behind" mask much darker political agendas. America has turned schools into torture chambers - cabinets for the Dr. Caligari's of the political right to experiment on our children as though they were nothing more than lab rats.

Would any adult submit themselves to an employer who regularly raised the bar on their production or efforts? Or maybe the employer is unsatisfied with your last review - you'll need to be watched and cajoled and given special attention. Yes, we have ways of dealing with you - all in the name of goodness.

Why do our military come back time and time again for hundreds of billions of funding to 'win' wars that don't exist? The bar for them is never raised. Congress never says, "We expect more with less!" No, that's not what happens.

Has corruption, mismanagement, and ubiquitous political sleaze drained last year's budget? Poor things. Here's another half trillion to tide you over until you get it right.

Meanwhile, to our schools...

I attend school board budget meetings that would make any caring citizen cry. The schools fall further and further behind technologically, educationally, and psychologically. Nowhere are state or fedreral tax dollars to be found for the sake of our children - Alaska needs another sleazy tax windfall. And Rob Simmons is all for GOOD THINGS - "You go, eastern Connecticut! I'm [RIGHT] behind you! [except when the vote counts]"

How can schools improve education when there is no desire to improve education. The LAW MANDATES UBIQUITOUS, WORTHLESS, TESTING and failure to comply, to pass, to coerce, to deface each student into a uniform widget may cost administrators, teachers, others their jobs.

And it is all a FOOL's errand. Wealthy communities always are nearly perfect, less wealthy communities are always on the cusp, poor communities are always on a treadmill to catch-up. This is worse than a wasteland. This is factory of broken souls. A treadmill for school officials and teachers commanded to give Sysiphus a coffee break.

The wealthy communities believe their children are perfect, that their schools are the best, that their Stepford Lives are predictably predictable and eternally right.

The less wealthy are in constant stress and distress. Here a circular firing squad of elderly voters, parents, administrators, budget committees, political hacks, malicious lunatics, petty tyrants, and interested parties, good-willed citizens, anti-tax lobbyists, retro-luddites, and a cacophony of citizens holding their bags of broken political promises apply lipstick to a starving pig and pass it off as a healthy speciment. And in their spare time they wound each other with friendly fire.

Worse, in the urban centers, where children are shot at in their daily lives, minorities plead with their children to conform - don't make noise, sit up, don't make the oligarchy mad, pretend you don't exist and maybe, just maybe, we'll get through this day. The dementia of relentless violence and hard drugs precludes education. This is social triage that is ineffective and politcally unconscionable.

Children have inalienable selves [rights to become] to whom inalienable political rights are systematically being ripped away without the benefit of an anesthesia. "Kindness" and "mercy" are words long absent from the religious vernaculars that have delivered us TO this evil state of affairs.

When do we rid ourselves of this criminal legislation and begin to reclaim our children as unique individuals, schools as places to learn as best students can learn?

When?

No comments: