Posted on 07/19/2010 4:22:51 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
In one of his last concerts, George Carlin presented a bleak vision of American education: “It will never, ever, ever be fixed. It won’t get any better. Don’t look for it....The owners of this country don’t want that... The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all important decisions. They own you. They own everything... They own all the big media companies. So they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.... They want more for themselves, and less for everybody else.... They don’t want well informed, well educated people... They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork...”
Carlin’s cynicism is certainly annoying, but is it correct? When I write about education, I’m always assuming that if only we are clever enough, we can figure out how to make things better. So here are three questions:
1) How true is Carlin’s cynical take on education and the "real owners"?
2) Ever since John Dewey, the top educators try to use the schools to create cooperative little socialists. So I see how bad education helps the Left... But wouldn’t the “real owners” be better off if our citizens were smarter so the economy and our place in the world would be that much more secure?
3) Carlin regards the media, the so-called liberal media, as foot soldiers for the "real owners." When I watch the newspaper in Norfolk not cover education, I see Carlin fulfilled right in front of me. But how do these liberal editors see their work? Do they know they have been co-opted?
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Link is to YouTube video where I got Carlin's quotes. (Length: 3:14).
For equal cynicism but also answers, see "38: Saving Public Schools" -- http://www.improve-education.org/id62.html
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For old hippies like Carlin, it’s impossible to place the blame on anyone except evil capitalists. He ccould not conceive that big government could be the problem.
George Carlin is cynical about ________.
If only everybody would listen to him./s
Who do you think controls government? The voters, I suppose. LOL
He was funny, but seemed to labor under a cloud of unhappiness.
If you don’t think voting matters, do you actually bother? If so, why?
I wouldn’t look to him for any answers. http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/investing/20010316a.asp
He had funny moments, but I found him not really to have much shelf life, past my teens.
I believe that George Carlin is one of the greatest social satirists of all time. The fact that he gets under a lot of skins means his comments hit very close to home for many people.
I miss him dearly, but there’s always You tube...
He was a lot less cranky prior to 1997. His stuff up until then was very funny, but he had a relatively narrow stretch from around 1980 to 1990 where he wasn't pushing drugs in his act and hadn't gotten bitter. BTW, Robin Williams was a lot funnier before he dried out.
He was OK in small doses. But I have to laugh when someone who obviously had an affair with drugs and loved the
counterculture life style worries that civilization is dying.
Must admit that I can’t accept that the stupidity and ignorance encountered daily is actually natural and not a conspiracy. Am I really that naive?
i agree that it will not get better, but it’s not for the reason he thought...
A must see for every liberal loony. Shock therapy.
Along that train of thought: my ol’ Ma taught school for many years, and in those days, average intelligence meant something.The class dunces were the exception, and truly half the class was “above average” because of the competitive nature of education in those days.
Roll over, Ma...
Here’s what I see about education:
1. Too much worthless research. There are legions of educational theorists working their way to doctoral status doing all manner of studies to prove some snake oil theory about what gets students to learn better. Most of them bear little or no resemblance to what you actually see in your classroom. But they get taken seriously because every administrator and superintendent wants his people on top of things, and if it is “new” then it must be good, so it gets done.
2. A real lack of student accountability. A lot of school administrators are afraid of having large numbers of students fail, and therefore, they practice garbage such as social promotion. This means large numbers of students getting kicked from grade to grade without learning or doing anything. Then they get out of school and fail at life because they don’t know they are supposed to work in order to succeed at anything.
3. Student discipline- this needs to be reset to where it was c. 1959. Expulsions, suspensions, and corporal punishment at grades K-8. No more ISS, time out, etc. Dealing gently and stupidly with student misbehavior wastes the time of teachers and the taxpayer’s dime, and as a nation, we can no longer act as if either was infinite.
4. IDEA and other laws that cause a focus on the bottom-tier students. This is going to sound harsh, but we toss all manner of resources and money at our most marginal students, to the detriment of everyone else, and doing next to nothing for our upper-tier students. We are not infinitely wealthy and this is wasteful.
4. Defederalize it and localize it. The Federal Department of Education is a complete waste of time and education should be a matter for the people of the individual states to decide. Local citizens will have more concern with something they control.
5. Too high of expectations. The fact is that schools, teachers, principals, and counselors are no substitute for the most necessary thing- a caring mother and father. Everyone needs to realize that education only works for a limited number of objectives- it can’t cure all societal ills, right all wrongs, fix all broken things, and can’t guarantee success, happiness, or material wealth.
As a teacher, I don’t think Carlin was right at all. Big corporations don’t have a lot to do with education- more problems come from neglect, a distinct disconnect from the real world, and an unwillingness to acknowledge that education as an endeavor has limits in a free society.
Great post; thanks. (You can punctuate? Thank a teacher.)
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
Home school.
For those for whom it is impossible, you have my sympathies. But if it is possible: home school.
Proud son of a certified schoolteacher here also.
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