“All that’s sacred comes from youth … dedication … naive and true … with no power … nothing to do …”
So sang Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder back in the day. Of course if you listen to a Pearl Jam concert lately (which our founding editor recently did) Vedder’s lyrics have changed a bit.
The youth still have no power, only now they’ve got “f*cking so much to do.”
Indeed …
We mention this by way of commending to your attention a dated – yet still fascinating – post authored by clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine, who a few years back wrote a book entitled “Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite.”
Originally published in 2011, Levine’s post identifies eight ways in which America’s “ruling elite” have successfully “created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.”
Seriously … this guy thinks modern-day America is one step away from the dystopia of The Hunger Games trilogy.
And he’s probably right …
According to Levine the eight methods of youth subjugation are 1) Student Loan Debt, 2) Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance, 3) Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy, 4) “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top,” 5) Shaming Young People Who Take Education—But Not Their Schooling—Seriously, 6) The Normalization of Surveillance, 7) Television and 8) Fundamentalist Religion and Fundamentalist Consumerism.
Very interesting …
We’re not necessarily sold on all of Levine’s conclusions, but we wholeheartedly embrace his assessment of the pernicious impact of expanded federal involvement in education.
“In a more democratic and less authoritarian society, one would evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher not by corporatocracy-sanctioned standardized tests but by asking students, parents, and a community if a teacher is inspiring students to be more curious, to read more, to learn independently, to enjoy thinking critically, to question authorities, and to challenge illegitimate authorities,” he writes.
That’s true …
Which is another reason why the government-run education monopoly must be undone if America has any hope of maintaining competitiveness in the 21st century …
7 comments
Ah yes, the scourge of public schooling will drive us into the Hunger Games.
Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Really, I am speechless on this one.
So seriously for a moment, demagoguing aside, what in the link he posted of the 8 bullet points do you disagree with? I mean, they seem pretty up front for the most part.
Do you think all 8 points are bullshit? (not withstanding whether they will lead to the “Hunger Games” or not, which isn’t the point of the titled link…which simply points out the demoralization of the youth-that was Sic’s hyperbole)
So seriously for a moment
——-
LOL!
lol…fair enough
If we become educmacated, the poor will join unions, and the corporate CEO’s will jump out of their 30 story windows… health care will become single payer insurance.. and we will begin to expect that every division of government perform efficiently and benefit the American people.
That would destroy the entire notion of the 1% scraping together every unguarded penny as entertainment for the rich.
The very definition of the destruction of America!
This rambling piece exemplifies FITS at his weakest. You run all over the place in search of a cogent thought…
You so labor the reader, that we give up before you come to your tortured and over-explained point…
Not to mention you seem to be so heavily influence by liberals…which means it’s nothing new, and it likely based in myths, your greed and lies…
“Very interesting?” About as interesting as watching proverbial paint dry. It’s not even worth killing point-by-point, which would be even MORE uninteresting (and that’s a tall statement, that). Drivel. Not that amazing that it was created by a cat who used the term “Battling the Corporate Elite” in a book title not too long ago.