Why is Education a Major Aspect of our 'Modern' Society?

Education is a common, every day type occurrence in our contemporary social fabric, while it receives little criticism or analysis as to where it is taking us – our selves, our students, our children, our future owners of America – so perhaps some criticism might be valid – and healthy – albeit such action may be painful. But why?

We start out in this American culture with a prejudice against learning and understanding at an early age. We are told that is 'good' and what is 'bad'. We are taught to appear smart, independent, strong and emotionally repressed. For most of us, we are fed propaganda intended to convince us to be compliant and to exert huge mental and emotional resources into being 'popular' and 'like everyone else.”

What is more, in our culture, education is made into a lofty bridge from the moment into unending prosperity and happiness. But everything has a cost, and education is not without a cost. Let us explore this further. We often assume that we need education to 'amount to anything'. How, then, do folks like Thomas Edison, who was home-schooled and presumed too stupid to learn by traditional education, accomplish such great things?

Newsweek magazine published an article in the late 1990s, where they featured a sketch of Albert Einstein and wrote to the effect, “What is Genius?” There, they point out that bright minds don't necessarily product BETTER works, but instead simply MORE works. Put another way, by being unafraid of failure, and constantly breaking rules of science, culture, mathematics, physics, software capabilities, etc., one might produce a greater number of works. It may be presumed that Newsweek's author was insinuating that every work has a statistic chance of being interpreted as anything. This includes a painting that might to one person be an apparent waste of canvas and paint, while another might pay a million or more dollars for. Or perhaps the musician whose music is greeted with heavy rejection by record labels, yet make millions in compact disc sales to the inscrutable public.

Often, there are financial restrictions that can be overcome. An instance of such obstacles are with a musical band that with very little cash, created a song and accompanying music video. They had problems getting bank loans, but in the end persevered with a big hit, due to creative faculties and a little luck. That band, you might know, was D4L (“Down 4 Life”) and “Laffy Taffy”. So, having money may improve success, but success in life can be attained without it.

As we have seen, Thomas Edison and the D4L musical band had creativity that overcame the lack of funds and lack of educational endorsement. In fact, education picks and chooses who it wishes to promote. Those not embraced by academia have just as much right to be alive, to breath the air, to drink the water, to have a home, to be happy. The academic world has a special structure, not too difficult to understand.

What is the structure of education? It is precisely an organizational body of members whose goal is to provide instruction and programming for the benefit of present and future corporations, to power governments by taxation of earnings and spending (Gross National Product,) to teach repetitive, senseless, compulsive consumption of resources, including foods, electronics, candy, cars, big unnecessary houses, and more. Further, education has the function of absorbing fallout laborers from the military and government sectors, while inversely providing a buffer to supply the military with commanders and drill Sargent from the supply. What is more, education tries to teach its participants to be compliant and obedient, to help keep the great capitalistic system in order.

Education has caused our economic woes. Because too many people have been learning how to suppress their creativity, leadership, conscience, genuine concern for fellow humans and the animals of the world, we have been exhausting resources too fast, causing too many wars, and destroying our environment, all in the holy name of corporate greed and military dominance.

Should anyone care about other peoples' problems, especially if the other person or group is halfway around the globe? It might be asserted that we should 'pick out battles' and conserve fighting injustice only when it directly affects us. After all, it is often said, that we can take care of everyone and many things are not our problem; they belong to someone else, quite literally.

But wait! What did the Nazis do in Germany just several decades ago? They practiced 'conqueror and divide'. The injustices the Romans committed against humanity in the first century A.D. may not be unique to the Romans. The Nazis went after various groups, until towards the end, when they decided to come against the clergy of the churches, who had previously been mislead to think the clergy would not be taken to the concentration camps. At least until the end of many mass deaths, but by then, there was no one to object to the priests and nuns being put to death; nearly all the Jews had been killed or left the country. So, may it be unlearned: A battle for one person's justice should become important to others, for it is by division we are easiest to conquer.

What does any of this have to do with education? Everything!

Education is designed to boost the output of corporations, by teaching the public to manufacture goods and perform services, so that others – and them – can be purchasers of these goods and services. The corporations are owned by wealthy investors, of which in the year 1980 about 6% of the total wealth of the nation was owned by 1% of the wealthiest individuals. However, according to a reporter during the Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2009, that number changed to 21% to 22% of the total nation's wealth is owned by 1% of the American population.

Whether this is good or bad is determinate on if we consider it healthy. Healthfulness for the nation is dependent on who exactly is included in that segment of the population. The United States is unique in one aspect in that we are the first culture in history where the elderly are often wealthier than the young (from a book about 'Generation X'). In any case, our system is set up as it is.

So, it could be asserted, “What can do to make things better?” The answer, of course, is very complex. First, better for who? Education makes things better for the wealthiest segments of the population in a highly disproportional level as it improves the lives of nonbelievers of educational doctrine.

So, educational doctrine is what? It most likely can be reasonably shown that educational doctrine serves the rich and makes the military strong. It keeps the populace in line. It makes roles highly clear. Therapists and psychologists say that a clear relationship is healthier than a 'dual relationship.” But what if these roles the citizenry fits into benefit few intensively, and hurt most slightly to moderate. What would we say to that?

Education deserves to be brought into the light, as the word's etymology would suggest. This means that education needs to be debated by communities and young people to decide what they learn. Otherwise, we may be training a workforce that does what it is told, except that it cannot do something like make wealth for itself without instructions, or comprehend true happiness, real success, nor substantial cooperative potential.

Our world is changing at an exponential rate. We have developed more technology in the past century than all the inventions in the prior six millennium. We have had the power to destroy all humanity on this earth sometime in the early 19th century, arguable years before the nuclear bomb was developed from stolen ancient technology.

Things go over and over like a loop. History books allege that a world war occurred some 6,000 years ago. During that, a site in India was nuked, and to this day, the archaeologists unearthing the remains have found sand heated into glass, and bodies holding hands. Today, these remains are radioactive on par with the remains in Japan following the detonation of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. The so called inventor of the nuclear bomb was said to be a Sanskrit scholar, according to historian David Hatcher Childress. It was in two Sanskrit poems that the nuclear bomb of their day was described as brighter than “a thousand suns” and as an “incandescent messenger of death.”

Education is downright failing our nation. It is failing our families. It is failing tax-payers. It is doing a whole lot of harm. It needs to be reinvented as something to provide a creative outlet, a place to learn to be more expressive, to hear new ideas and share feelings and communicate culture. Sad, indeed, it is nearly opposite in function as these 'needs'.

Traditional education stifles creativity. With punishments and rewards, Alfie Kohn points out, the student learns extrinsic motivation. Happiness and self direction are intrinsically motivated; behavior modification leads, with good reason, to a suppression of creativity depth and range. Points and grades are ways to solicit an immediate, extrinsic action, one that is like a passive aggressive behavior, in that both are one way while an authority is around, but when the authority is gone, then 'business as usual'.

Traditional education teaches the suppression of feelings and emotions. The graduates of such traditional education tend to do what they are told, not what they feel, except when they get overwhelmed, then they might act aggressive, much like a bully. The students are told to do something, and to disconnect with how they feel, to favor fitting in and not making waves, so to speak.

Traditional education is all about repeating not only old ideas, but lies. The corporate sponsors of schools are numerous, and range from donating books with propaganda to charts and posters that are false and contain advertisements, and to include liquid candy makers of carbonated beverages who give schools tens of millions of dollars per week.

It should be noted that dentists win too, from deals. The liquid candy does harm to teeth, but also can cause obesity, which is a trigger for heart problems and increases the demand for medical services in the community. This all, for very good reason, boosts Gross National Product. This is arguably how the word 'Gross' best describes the GNP; it is sad that education is so good at boosting the GNP. It would almost seem that the lower the GNP, the better. This might be even more true if the fact that a babysitter who works for $8 per hour without taxes is better off more so than working minimum wage with taxes and transportation costs for an equal number of hours.

Traditional education is a poor place to communicate culture. It is a place to receive the culture approved and mandated by the corporations and the politicians. As a California Supreme Court Justice pointed out quoting a late 1960s ruling, and again referenced in their January 2008 deliberations, the purpose of education is “To promote good citizenship, loyalty to the state and patriotism.” How honest indeed was that justice. Education is structured to get its students to receive culture, not to communicate culture. Is the books that students study, not the analyses or research of fellow students, and it is rare for a teacher to present cutting-edge, new ideas and fresh information into their classrooms.

Indeed, education is about providing soldiers to fight wars those winning does little or nothing to benefit the troops nor their families. Furthermore, education is all about making the richest richer. Education was not, is not and no time soon going to be about empowering students to be responsible adults, who, as Nel Noddings, former business school professor at a major university, suggest education should be about, helping lead students into being “Loving and lovable parents and friends.”

So next time you hear the word 'education,' may now know a different side, a more sharp view, one that is critical, but arguably correct in one or more of the points and references made here. Education needs to shift in control from the wealthiest 1%, to being defined by the people most effected: Students, parents, taxpayers and community businesses. If we only fight our own battles, then who will be there when we need help with out battle? And, with our economy as it is, logic would follow that if our education was really of much value, we might have avoided our economic hardship that our nation presently is griddled with. It is no more and no less our fault than the rich investors who “own” America, for the way things are. We need to listen, to speak up, to think, and to question old premises and believes, for if we don't, we most certainly are just starting to feel the deep financial and emotional suffering every American will see, and most will feel.