America gave up on truly educating all its kids. Then Jan. 6 happened. Coincidence?

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Laurence Tribe
@tribelaw
Mass public ignorance is the predictable result of inadequate elementary and secondary education. An ignorant populace is ripe for manipulation by despots. We reap what we sow.

America gave up on truly educating all its kids. Then Jan. 6 happened. Coincidence? | Will Bunch
A viral moment from Pennsylvania's court battle over school funding about kids on ‘the McDonald’s track’ holds a buried truth on the anniversary of Jan. 6.
inquirer.com
10:24 AM · Jan 2, 2022

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/january-6-anniversary-civics-education-in-america-20220102.html

You would never expect a weeks-long trial in Harrisburg about such an important yet super-complicated issue — whether wide disparities in school funding across rural, urban, and suburban school districts in Pennsylvania violate the state constitution — to create a viral moment that would rock social media.

Yet a brief exchange between a lawyer for budget-crunching GOP lawmakers in the Keystone State and a superintendent in a remote rural district in the deer-hunter country of north-central Pennsylvania did exactly that, by voicing an entire nation’s anxieties about how America educates its young people and — much more important — to what end.

I’ll even go way out on a limb here to argue you can draw a straight line between the country’s collective decision — hardened somewhere in the late 20th century — to stop seeing education as a public good aimed at creating engaged and informed citizens but instead a pipeline for the worker drones of capitalism, and the 21st century’s civic meltdown that reached its low point nearly one year ago, in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

This lightbulb moment occurred in the middle of weeks of arduous testimony over unequal K-12 funding during the Harrisburg trial. On the witness stand was Matthew Splain, superintendent of the underfunded Otto-Eldred School District in sparsely populated McKean County and board president of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools. His inquisitor was John Krill, a lawyer representing the state’s top Republican lawmaker, defending a political regime that’s made Pennsylvania 45th in the nation in state support for its public schools.

*snip*

[MagickMuffin]

1. The willfully ignorant are very easily GASLIGHTED

That's the plan. Make sure the populous is so dumb they will believe anything.


Then create a Charlatan/Carny-Barker to amplify the gaslighting and Presto Bingo you have a mob ready to do your bidding.

[jimfields33]

6. The don't give D or F's in classes don't help kids either.

Our education system needs an overhaul emphasizing math and science to all students. Is it any wonder why we rank so poorly in the world with education.



https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc7news.com/amp/california-schools-drop-d-f-grades-oakland-unified-phases-out-below-c-competency-learning-mastery-based/11308550/

[MagickMuffin]

7. Well it is ALL by design, as the article indicated.

"Leave NO Child behind" was a really cute slogan, but it was never intended to be utilized.

[jimfields33]

9. Very true.

[onecaliberal]

2. We have them the keys and have apparently been good with watching them burn it all to the ground.

[Collimator]

3. I don't have children.

But I never once questioned the validity of my tax dollars going to educate "somebody else's kids" in the way I have heard other people complain. I have always understood that it was about educating my future fellow citizens. Whether it's the plumber that I call to fix a leak or just the person driving a car next to me in traffic, I want these people to know different things, engage with the world around them and feel that they have a personal stake in a peaceful, stable society.

[MyOwnPeace]

10. Congrats to you.....

you DO understand what education in these United States is supposed to be about. Unfortunately, RepubliQans, with concerns about 'rights' for THEIR voters and ways to get their hands on 'education' money (hello, remember Betsy DeVos?) have been actively working to destroy TRUE public education.

[Dan]

4. I've head that the most recent Justice of the SCOTUS believes that

Brown vs Board of Education was wrongly decided.

It would appear to me that there are parallels to that decision and the current trial.

When it comes to money, poor Whites will discover that the plantation just got bigger to accommodate them.

[CrispyQ]

5. We didn't give up on education. It was deliberate.

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing." ~Karl Rove

[cbabe]

8. True. IBM created curriculum in the 1980s

systematically downgraded materials year after year.

Vocabulary lists were shortened until what was 5th grade reading became 12th grade.

[MyOwnPeace]

12. Correct! Just as I posted earlier.......

'follow the money' works here: The Repukes saw a huge pile of it and wanted control of it.

[Irish_Dem]

11. A democracy depends upon an educated citizenry.

Good article.

[DavidDvorkin]

13. However, when I was in high school in the late 1950s

Many of my classmates were appallingly ignorant about American history, government, society, etc. The courses were required and those kids took them, but they paid no attention or immediately forgot what they were taught.

I don't know what the root of the problem is, but I don't think it's the schools. I suspect the problem has always been with us; we're just unusually aware of it right now.

[Collimator]

14. There has been a consistent thread of anti-intellectualism. . .

. . . woven into the fabric of American society for many, many generations. Of course, that doesn't mean that we give up on the principle that a well-rounded, solid education helps to produce more tolerant, engaged citizens.

[kskiska]

15. I'm old enough to remember when a high school education was adequate

for a majority of students, and enabled them to get decent starting jobs at many large companies in the town where I lived. My dad had a trade school education prior to enlisting after Pearl Harbor. and becoming a B-17 pilot and POW after getting shot down over Germany. When the war ended, he briefly went back to his auto-body job until he was lucky enough to be hired at a large company in town that did government contract work. He had the title of "Engineering Aide," and worked on projects for the first moon landing, the Hubble Telescope, and equpment for spy planes.
I believe that today's college education is pretty much equivalent to past generations' high school education.