Manufactured illiteracy: a scourge waging war on language, meaning, thinking and critical thought.

[johnnyrocket]

....What forces have allowed education, if not reason itself, to be undermined as crucial public and political resources, capable of producing the formative culture and critical citizens that could have prevented such a catastrophe from happening in an alleged democracy? We get a glimpse of this failure of education, public values and civic literacy in the willingness and success of the Trump administration to empty language of any meaning, a practice that constitutes a flight from historical memory, ethics, justice and social responsibility....
...Defunded and corporatized, many institutions of public and higher education have been all too willing to make the culture of business the business of education, and this transformation has corrupted their mission.


http://www.salon.com/2017/06/24/manufactured-illiteracy-and-miseducation-a-long-process-of-decline-led-to-president-donald-trump/

[elleng]

1. Manufactured by repugs.

They can't succeed with an informed electorate.

[defacto7]

2. I can imagine Trump saying...

"Education is the opiate of the masses" and I'm sure his base would take it seriously.

[Doc_Technical]

3. 1984 Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak

We are at war with west Asia
We have always been at war with west Asia

Our Leader is a doubleplusgood duckspeaker.

[ProudLib72]

4. Well duh, when there are more administrators than professors

it's kind of obvious (and many of those administrators have a business background, not an education background). But this has been the trend for the last decade or more. Higher ed is run on a business model, and that means making money. Part of making money means having good retention rates, and good retention rates means lowering standards or passing students who should not have passed.

I will also make a daring assertion that I will no doubt be flamed for. Part of this trend has to do with a higher ed's sudden lusting after STEM classes at the expense of liberal arts classes.

[MedusaX]

5. IMO it is a failure to foster critical thinking skills & problem solving in the elementary

Grades.

Once you have a wave or 2 of HS grads who lack the ability to analyze, evaluate, and generally grasp abstract & complex concepts.... you then have teachers entering the system that do not possess those skills...
One certainly cannot foster in others that which they do not model /engage in routinely themselves.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.