Republicans; "keep the masses dumb"

[Bill Cravener]

President Obama said "At a time when most of the new jobs being created will require some kind of higher education, when countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, giving our kids the best education is an economic imperative."

And yet Republicans are hell bent on cutting educational funding by some 20% nation wide. How can they show such little importance in educating our citizens? I guess I should not be surprised because they hold the same contempt for American citizens when it comes to our health care needs.

The road to this country's return to greatness is the education of its people but Republicans want to keep them dumb. Here in my state of Pennsylvania our new Republican Governor Corbett wants to cut education funding by 50%. How can we as a country ever compete with the rest of the world? My opinion, the Republican Party is Anti-American!!

They only care about their rich fat cat supporters and their simple minded followers such as the tea baggers who do not see that they are helping those scumbag Republicans destroy the United States of America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3I4_8_MAPk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cONmlnjMbGI

[dedndave]

i half agree with you, Bill   :bg

what the republicans want is to maintain class seperation
they know that the rich kids can get a good education because their rich parents can afford it
this mechanism keeps the rich families rich and the kids from poor families get to do all the labor
slap several thousand christian churches in there to control the masses, and you have the definition of a republican utopia

[anunitu]

I had read something a few years back,and can't remember where I ran across it. It was something from back in the late 1800's,and from its content(as I remember) about making sure the schools didn't allow the unwashed masses from getting better educated so that the "Betters" could maintain order and control over their "Lessers"

This might be it.

Quote

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:

    In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote:

    Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.


From here.

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=27316

[carlos]

Back in the late 80's, I read an article in Scientific American, about the state of American education,  I forgot all of the article except a single statement, "If the education system we have now had been imposed upon us from a foreign power, it would have been considered an act of war"

A good education system had an "unpleasant" result, a population that thinks for themselves, and can't be deceived easily, someting that authoritarians, fear above all


Carlos

[hutch--]

 :bg

> A good education system had an "unpleasant" result, a population that thinks for themselves, and can't be deceived easily, someting that authoritarians, fear above all

There is great wisdom in this, the term "dumbing down" comes to mind where you don't want the great unwashed actually being able to think for themselves. Think what would happen if this happened, the country would get richer, more powerful and more equitable.

These dimwits still don't understand that making a bigger pie makes everyone richer where fighting about an ever shrinking pie eventually makes everyone poorer.

[dedndave]

these people only feel rich and powerful if there is someone poorer and less powerful to compare themselves with - lol

[FORTRANS]

these people only feel rich and powerful if there is someone poorer and less powerful to compare themselves with - lol

Hi,

   In a related vein.  Well, sort of.

Cheers,

Steve N.


Avoiding Last Place: Some Things We Don't Outgrow

[dedndave]

reminds me of an old Arlo Guthrie song   :bg
"The Pause of Mr Claus"

[rags]

And yet Republicans are hell bent on cutting educational funding by some 20% nation wide. How can they show such little importance in educating our citizens? I guess I should not be surprised because they hold the same contempt for American citizens when it comes to our health care needs.

Hey Bill Long time no see.
i Hope you find yourself well.
How do you suppose this country is going to bring its spending and debt under
control if we don't start cutting spending somewhere now?

Taxing and spending at ever increasing amounts have never worked.
Obama and Company have spent more money in the least amount of time, than any other President
and hes looking to spend even more.
The rooster has come home to roost and now its time we face the music Bill.

People have to start accepting personal responsibility for themselves, whether it means being
responsible for finding their own funding for college tuition, or paying for their own health insurance.
And if they cant afford college, so be it.The US Constitution does not guarantee equal outcomes in life.

[GregL]

How do you suppose this country is going to bring its spending and debt under
control if we don't start cutting spending somewhere now?

How about ending the tax breaks for the super rich and for corporations instead of cutting education.  Also, I don't think the debt is all that much of a crisis, more like a manufactured crisis by the republicans. Yes we need to deal with it, but not right now. Cutting spending is the worse thing we could be doing right now the way our economy is. The number one goal of the republicans is to make President Obama look as bad as possible so they can win the election, whether it hurts our country and the American people or not.

[Bill Cravener]

How do you suppose this country is going to bring its spending and debt under
control if we don't start cutting spending somewhere now?

Taxing and spending at ever increasing amounts have never worked.

People have to start accepting personal responsibility for themselves,

Fine, how about we start with the paper carriers instead of education? I'm sure you as a paper carrier won't mind if the government bails out the postal service again at taxpayers expense so you can keep that pension, do you rags?? The New York Times reports that the United States Postal Service is on the verge of becoming totally bankrupt and may have to shut down without a bailout. They also report that 80 percent of the problem is caused by a no-layoffs clause in the unions' contracts.

"To cover its losses, the Post Office took a soon to be depleted, $15 billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury in the early 1990's, and has been drawing on it ever since. . .Some kind of bailout is coming, or the end of an institution."

http://www.businessinsider.com/post-office-bailout-2011-5#ixzz1XAMxt3f0 

If we as a country are to compete with the world it is vital that we out-educate those countries. We rank only 37th in education and spend a measly 5.7 of GDP on educating our young people. How stupid is that?? Now come on rags, face it, the Republicans are out to destroy this country!! It couldn't be more clear. South Korea, Finland, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium and on an on, they make us look like dummies when it comes to showing the importance of higher education. Why do Republicans insist on the dumbing down of Americans? Why??

[baltoro]

BILL,
I think all of the people here on the MASM Forum are well-educated. None of us would disagree that a good education is essential.
I also think that our education system, like most government bureaucracies, is incapable of evolving fast enough to meet the need. After all, the professors and administrators see the system as effective, because from their perspective, they are employed doing just exactly what they expected to be doing. I'm guessing that the future may not be so friendly to the students of America (and, by extension, the rest of the world). What will be the appropriate education for the future ??? And, should we guarantee it to young people like it was guaranteed to us ???
There are so many studies that identify a strong research and development university system as a major driver of economic prosperity and technoligical innovation, that cutting spending for education is clearly equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot.