Is There Value in an Educated Populace?
This theme, that education is indoctrination and is actually harmful to our personhood, is extremely popular now, but largely among our nation’s uneducated people. This could be called “sour grapes,” but some (uneducated) people won’t know what this means.
We’re so screwed.
Supporting the idea that education kills our capacity for creativity and critical thinking has great appeal to many Americans as our society dwindles down into Trumpism, but what are the consequences? A few ideas include our American kids who:
Can’t tell you where Minnesota or France is, and can barely read and write.
Will never achieve any real wealth and will certainly never take any place in our knowledge-based world.
Will be fantastic candidates to support Trump, or, perhaps, the even greater bastard who comes next.
Ten years ago, if you had surveyed Americans as to the viability of selling off public lands to for-profit corporations, people would have laughed in your face. “That’s an outrageously stupid idea, as it strikes a blow to the core of who we are as a people,” you would have heard people say.
These people claim:
The MAGA folks are thrilled that people living here with brown skin are terrified about what’s happening under Trump. But how sustainable is this? How long will it take until fatal gunshot wounds between the hunters and the hunted become too common to keep track of?
The story at left is a strange one, though worth telling for a good reason: We all should make sure that money plays its proper role in our lives.
I would describe what Rousseau said about himself here as “gutsy.” Most of us don’t want paradoxes in our mental lives; such “cognitive dissonance” as it is called is an uncomfortable phenomenon.
If Dickens’ hope as expressed here is going to come to fruition, it will be because decent people actively made it happen.
Trump’s following of amoral rich people and uneducated whites seems to be remaining in place, because neither group actually cares too much about the veracity of what comes out of his mouth. The former group is getting tax breaks, and the latter group is getting mass deportation of non-whites.
Donna Smedley writes:
Without doubt, a cleanly and frequently mowed lawn of some variety of grass was the paradigm for our front and back yards when we were young.
