roachboy

to my mind the fundamental problem is that the american educational system--which includes public, private, mixed and homeschooling--is a direct reproduction of the class order. that is the primary effect of pegging school funding to local property taxes for public education--and if you imagine that opting for either private schools or home-schooling is opting out of the system of class reproduction, you are simply fooling yourself.

claims to democracy or meritocracy have about the same pertinence when it comes to the way the american educational system operates as the sovet constitution had to what stalin actually did in the exercise of power. it is not even a lie--it is too far removed from reality to be a good lie--it is dreaming.

and it is the primary beneficiaries of this class-stratified educational machine that oppose attempts to change it.

i have taught at ivy league unversities and at public universities. i do not think it's true that "people are getting dumber"--i think that is a facile, one-dimensional rationalization--even the phrase is passive--no agency, no-one doing anything, no system effects--it just happens. "people are getting stupider". like the weather. now its raining. now its not. whaddya gonna do?

what i do see is population of students who go to college with very different levels of preparation and find that in the main---in the main---this maps onto class position. there is no particular difference between kids from good public schools and elite private schools. there is no particular difference between kids from working class schools. but there ARE differences--and very considerable differences--between kids from good public/elite private schools and those from working-class schools. expectations for themselves. beliefs in what they can do. willingness to take intellectual risks. ability to think recursively. academic preparation. this is a class issue. there seems to me to be no way around it.

so you are not seeing the effects of any particular Giant Slide into Stupidity that is happening in the way the weather changes--you are seeing the effects of a rather old story of class reproduction that is surfacing now in the way it is because that system of class reproduction is not only out of phase with the changing labor pool.

the huge problem at the center of all this is twofold: (1) the system itself has been designed such that it cannot be adjusted as a system. so the system reproduces an outmoded labor pool because it continues reproducing an outmoded class profile. as it has been doing. and (2) the american system of social reproduction is being defunctionalized by remaining basically the same as the socio-economic contexts change around it.

when these two large-scale frames were better aligned, the american dreaming would be such that one could imagine that this class reproduction was not already an unbelievable wasting of human potential and talent and capabilities--but it was. one could pretend that american education was equitable because the consequences of the many many ways in which it was not disappeared--spatial segregation on class lines explains many such delusions--the refusal to see in the american system the results of political choices instead of the reflection of some social order ordained by some fictional god (city on the hill blah blah blah) meant that this wasting of human potential capabilities and talents was normal.

i think we are all suffering from the consequences of this dreaming.
if at the very least educational funding levels were detached from local property tax rates and distributed on a flat/even basis across class lines you could make some plausible argument that an educational meritocracy was in place---but it aint like that.
and it may well be that as the socio-economic realities under which the american empire operates--or crumbles, depending on your view--require that kids be educated in ways that privileges flexibility of thinking and openness to innovation--but that too aint happening within a system geared entirely around reproducing the existing class structure. it cant. its out of phase with system requirements.
and it may be that if the american empire is to do anything other than crumble, it needs to have an educational system that ignores class and that encourages intellectual growth and autonomy FOR ALL PEOPLE if only so that a bigger cadre of kids can have access to leadership positions (assuming this degenerate socio-economic order we labor under survives)--but that too aint happening and cannot happen so long as education is a straight mechanism for reproducing the existing class arrangement.

so entire populations of kids are sacrificed, enormous potential squandered.
and we are seeing the consequences of it.
you arbitrarily narrow the pool of folk whose abilities are encouraged and allowed to develop and you fuck yourself in the longer run.
maybe someday when the history of the devolution of america gets written, someone will make a strong case for this being a fundamental error that a future, better culture will not do to itself.

i agree with mm about the substitution of skills-required-to-get over for learning for its own sake.
it follows from the conflation of economic class position with inward qualities like intelligence and ability.
so whatever gets you over must be good. and the wealthy are smarter than others because the money they have demonstrates it.
people believe this horseshit.
you hear version of it all the time. think the cult of celebrity and move laterally. think conservative grovelling at the feet of the wealthy and move in a straight line. start almost anywhere and do almost anything and you'll arrive at the same conclusion.
they have submitted--we have submitted--we submit our kids---to an educational system geared around these same assumptions.
and now--as if all of a sudden--there's a problem.

where have you been?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite