FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7. Reality has a funny way of convincing people that things could not be any other way.
This misperception is, of course, helped along by various ideas planted in the minds of the public.
In one of his many brilliant essays on education in America, John Gatto, former teacher of the year in NY, points out that, prior to 1900, before public schooling assumed the compulsory, government-enforced face it now has, people were actually able to teach their families to read. What a surprise.
I remember my mother taught me to read before I went to school.
Gatto also cites stats to show that reading capacity has steadily declined in America for a very long time--at least 80 years.
We assume that since the public school system "teaches everyone everywhere," under the umbrella of government, it could not really be any other way.
We assume that huge organizations in a highly populated country must exist in their gargantuan form. Otherwise nothing would get done.
This is a failure of the imagination.
A failure, that is, to USE the imagination.
Because, in fact, reading skills were more advanced when schools were much smaller, when parents taught more reading at home.
America was actually built on the idea of local control. There were reasons for this beyond the fact that everyone did not have a television set or a cell phone. THE SYSTEM RAN BETTER THAT WAY.
We delude ourselves into thinking that technology could not have been developed without huge corporations. This is another misperception. The articles I have been writing lately on suppressed cancer cures illustrate that lone researchers, working in small labs or no labs, have done far more to "win the war on cancer" than all the high-IQ ants running around at the federally funded National Cancer Institute.
This is no accident.
I am not against all large organizations. Nor do I believe that such organizations always fail. But what I am for is a test, so to speak. A level playing field. Then we can see more clearly. I know which side I'm betting on
Education in America has become a way of turning out people who accept the kind of society we have become, who look for a way to fit themselves into a niche within a gigantic mechanism.
This is mistakenly called "preserving the culture," and many other foolish things. How do you preserve a culture if more and more people can't read?
People have a fear that, if schools vastly decentralize, we will be left with a patchwork quilt of provincial cultures isolated from one another within America.
Well, if that means defecting from a disposable junk society where no one knows what independence and individual freedom mean, I'm all for it.
In fact, with our present top-heavy school system, we are moving toward a decimation of all cultural memory. We may take comfort in seeing millions of kids going to large cookie-cutter schools, believing this is proof "that we are all Americans," but I assure you, this is a superficial perception.
In the same way, we may imagine that thousands of people wandering through a monster mall on the weekend is evidence that all is well, all is One, but in fact we are seeing One reduced to its lowest common denominator.
Ending the grip of the public school system is not a job for the government, however. The government is an organism which develops its own survival instincts. And those instincts tell it to expand and control more. Those are the motivations of a fungus.
The job is the people's. Drop out, re-form, rebuild.
And another thing. I know folks who characterize "inner cities" as places where no one will ever learn to read unless there are public schools everywhere. I propose that this is some kind of weird "sympathy-prejudice," combined with a sheer wrongness of judgement.
The great resource within inner cities, on this count, is PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE. People who want other people to read and can bring it about. And if government supported THEM, with a tiny fraction of the $$ it now spends on public schools that fail, we would have small and good schools springing up all over the place. And reading would get done. And citizens would become more independent and would need less from the government.
There is a general sense these days that it is too late for solutions to take hold. We have to go with what we have. We have to shore up the losing institutions and hobble along. We have to patch up the threadbare governmental functions.
I hate to use this old saw, but THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK. They want you to think it's too late. They want you to give up. They want you to take the wrong road, which is THEIR road to greater domination over a passive society.
They want you to believe that big is always better, and that big is the only choice because there are so many people. They want you to believe that if government loosens its hold, things will really spin out of control.
They want you to think, "Well, WE'RE giving THEM every opportunity to raise themselves up, and if THEY don't take advantage of that, it's THEIR fault, and WE'RE off the hook."
I have news for you. This isn't some kind of moral game which promises a salve for the conscience. This isn't some kind of test to see who can take the higher moral ground.
It's the fate of a nation and a world in the balance. It's a question of what will actually work.
"It's too late" is a mantra we use to convince ourselves that all we can do is tinker and repair and build on what we already have.
That's a point the Romans got to shortly before the end.
Paint the fungus read. Paint the fungus green. Cut a little off there. Add a little here. Put the fungus in a pretty dress. Draw a face of concern on the fungus.
Who's kidding who?
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