The Sequestration of Education

Onyx Contributor:  Tim Druck (@southendtimd)

No, no no no no NO. Private schools are part of the PROBLEM, not the answer.

Follow me while I have you young folks’ attention.

You guys are starting to figure it out, but as you’re learning, you don’t even know what’s been left out of your education. You don’t even have the tools to understand how you’ve been screwed, and that’s ON PURPOSE.

So listen close while I say this, maybe even repeat after me:

THE RICH’S WEAPON IS POORER SCHOOLING.

Go back and read that again.

THE RICH’S WEAPON IS POORER SCHOOLING.

Look around you. Look at your schools, the places you go for education. Look at the ways those places have changed in the last fifty years. Look at the way the curriculum has changed and how those changes have been made.

Schools used to teach civics and government, so you knew your rights. They taught geography and arithmetic and real skills, and if you didn’t learn those things, you stayed until you did. You could teach and learn in peace, and if you disrupted those things, you were disciplined, and your parents followed up, often with more discipline.

Did you even know those things?

Look at what you learned – watered down, PC American history with no real lessons, no mention of the mistakes our forefathers made and glossed-over accounts of the wrong we’ve done. How are you supposed to learn not to make those same mistakes and commit those same acts if you don’t know? You might spend a week out of four years of high school discussing how our government actually works, why you should be involved, and how to effect change within the system. Used to be a full semester.

You don’t even learn how to spell anymore, let alone how to write like an intelligent, thinking adult. There is no grammar anymore, no technical writing, no letters, no reading of the modern masters or the current innovators, and certainly no material that requires thought. You read ancient history – Beowulf and Hamlet and The Scarlet Letter. CRAP. I don’t mean to demean the classics, but what can you learn about your life by reading about the rich people in The Great Gatsby? Why aren’t you reading Salinger and Sayles and Twain and George Will and Sedaris and Kozol and Updike? Because those people had something relevant to your life.

You don’t learn math anymore. Either they shuttle you into something called Consumer Math where you spend your high school years re-learning how to count money and figure tax for four years, or they give you something called New Math that means nothing at all. Nobody teaches you Geometry so you can build useful things. Nobody teaches you Physics so that you understand how things work. Trigonometry is a lost art that unlocks the entire universe. God forbid you even hear of Calculus, and they’ve been doing that since Archimedes.

Science. Don’t get me started on that. It’s not even science anymore now that zealots have demanded equal time for garbage like intelligent design, a young-earth theory… you can’t even say the word “evolution” in school anymore.

There are no arts in school anymore. They used to teach music and art and humanities and physical education in the interest of making a well-rounded, responsible adult with an appreciation for culture, and educators understood that music and art and humanities were linked to math and science and language, and understanding the fine arts was worthwhile in support of the hard subjects.

Public School has gone from a system of educating the populace in the interest of a stronger nation to a factory churning out job-ready automatons with the skills that Big Industry says are needed for the “Jobs Of The Future.” Nobody cares if you know anything, as long as you can do what UPS or Ford or Amazon needs you to do to protect their business and their profits.

Why? Because as long as your education is garbage, you can be controlled. All those things they USED to do were taken away by PEOPLE. People who have the power to take those things away from you. But who and why?

DO YOU THINK RICH KIDS GET THIS BULLSHIT EDUCATION?

Absolutely not. Look around at schools you’ve never even heard of – schools that cost a third of your parents’ salary for one year of tuition. The people who run big businesses don’t send their kids to fucking Valley or Western or Shawnee. Their kids go to Collegiate or Country Day or Walden. Look at the bios in every issue of Business First. Those people didn’t graduate from Southern or Iroquois or Moore. They might go to Ballard or Male or Manual if their parents are liberal enough to insist on public schools. Those schools are so alien to us that we think Butler is a great school when it’s merely sufficient, and should be average.

If you can afford it, you can lift your kid out of educational mediocrity into a school where the principal has a Doctorate in Education, and every single teacher has a Masters’ Degree in the subject they actually teach. Where teachers can be fired for poor performance, let alone misconduct. And where rising class sizes mean hiring more teachers, not parking some trailers out back of the building and calling them “Portable Classrooms” and jamming 35-40 kids into classes meant for 25.

IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT.

If you can afford it, your kid will read the modern masters – they will read about scientific innovation that is banned from public school. They will read about social issues and current events, and they will be motivated to learn math and science. They will be taught the things they need to be the masters of the government that rules your world.

IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT.

Let me tell you – as long as their education is better than yours, YOU WILL WORK FOR THEM. As long as their kids get a better education than yours, YOUR KIDS WILL WORK FOR THEIR KIDS.

This is no accident.

Let me say that again.

THIS IS NO ACCIDENT.

This is how the wealthy reinforce the ‘Social Contract’ to be binding enough to twist blood from the turnip. This is how the rich make sure their kids stay rich and yours stay poor, from now to forevermore. As long as you don’t even know what you need to know to effect change, you can’t do it.

THE RICH’S WEAPON IS POORER SCHOOLING.

And as long as they control access to education, as long as they can dumb down education until teachers who say things like “Never rebel against anything because all pain in the world is caused by rebellion” are in classrooms brainwashing you…

it is IMPERATIVE that you QUESTION FUCKING AUTHORITY at every turn.

Let me repeat that.

QUESTION MOTHERFUCKING AUTHORITY.

DEMAND THE EDUCATION YOU ARE OWED. If they won’t give it to you, get your ass in a library or on the internet and TAKE WHAT IS YOURS. Education is your birthright. Do not be screwed.

NOBODY OWNS KNOWLEDGE. IT BELONGS TO THE HUMAN RACE. ALL OF US.

I’m going to leave you with one thought. A quote. From one of the smartest people who ever lived. A true maverick who invented something bigger than any of us. He taught us how to learn the impossible. Google his name, and learn who he is.

“ALWAYS ask WHY. And ALWAYS understand the answer before moving forward.”
– Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, United States Navy.

photo credit:  Thomas Hawk