Article
Shyrley
Can't remember if I posted this...
Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash
March 8, 2003
By Luciana Bohne
You might think that reading about a podunk university's English
teacher's attempt to connect the dots between the poverty of American
education and the gullibility of the American public may be a little
trivial, considering we're about to embark on the first, openly-
confessed imperial adventure of senescent capitalism in the US, but
bear with me. The question my experiences in the classroom raise is
why have these young people been educated to such abysmal depths of
ignorance.
"I don't read," says a junior without the slightest self-
consciousness. She has not the smallest hint that professing a
habitual preference for not reading at a university is like bragging
in ordinary life that one chooses not to breathe. She is in my "World
Literature" class. She has to read novels by African, Latin American,
and Asian authors. She is not there by choice: it's just
a "distribution" requirement for graduation, and it's easier than
philosophy--she thinks.
The novel she has trouble reading is Isabel Allende's "Of Love and
Shadows," set in the post-coup terror of Pinochet's junta's Nazi-
style regime in Chile, 1973-1989. No one in the class, including the
English majors, can write a focussed essay of analysis, so I have to
teach that. No one in the class knows where Chile is, so I make
photocopies of general information from world guide surveys. No one
knows what socialism or fascism is, so I spend time writing up
digestible definitions. No one knows what Plato's "Allegory of the
Cave" is, and I supply it because it's impossible to understand the
theme of the novel without a basic knowledge of that work--which used
to be required reading a few generations ago. And no one in the class
has ever heard of 11 September 1973, the CIA-sponsored coup which
terminated Chile's mature democracy. There is complete shock when I
supply US de-classified documents proving US collusion with the
generals' coup and the assassination of elected president, Salvador
Allende.
Geography, history, philosophy, and political science--all missing
from their preparation. I realize that my students are, in fact, the
oppressed, as Paulo Freire's "The Education of the Oppressed" pointed
out, and that they are paying for their own oppression. So, I
patiently explain: no, our government has not been the friend of
democracy in Chile; yes, our government did fund both the coup and
the junta torture-machine; yes, the same goes for most of Latin
America. Then, one student asks, "Why?" Well, I say, the CIA and the
corporations run roughshod over the world in part because of the
ignorance of the people of the United States, which apparently is
induced by formal education, reinforced by the media, and cheered by
Hollywood. As the more people read, the less they know and the more
indoctrinated they become, you get this national enabling stupidity
to attain which they go into bottomless pools of debt. If it weren't
tragic, it would be funny.
Meanwhile, this expensive stupidity facilitates US funding of the
bloody work of death squads, juntas, and terror regimes abroad. It
permits the war we are about to wage--an unfair, illegal, unjust,
illogical, and expensive war, which announces to the world the
failure of our intelligence and, by the way, the creeping weakness of
our economic system. Every man, woman, and child killed by a bomb,
bullet, famine, or polluted water will be murder--and a war crime.
And it will signal the impotence of American education to produce
brains equipped with the bare necessities for democratic survival:
analyzing and asking questions.
Let me put it succinctly: I don't think serious education is possible
in America. Anything you touch in the annals of knowledge is a foe of
this system of commerce and profit, run amok. The only education that
can be permitted is if it acculturates to the status quo, as happens
in the expensive schools, or if it produces people to police and
enforce the status quo, as in the state school where I teach.
Significantly, at my school, which is a third-tier university,
servicing working-class, first-generation college graduates who enter
lower-etchelon jobs in the civil service, education, or middle
management, the favored academic concentrations are communications,
criminal justice, and social work--basically how to mystify, cage,
and control the masses.
This education is a vast waste of the resources and potential of the
young. It is boring beyond belief and useless--except to the powers
and interests that depend on it. When A Ukranian student, a three-
week arrival on these shores, writes the best-organized and most
profound essay in English of the class, American education has
something to answer for--especially to our youth.
But the detritus and debris that American education has become is
both planned and instrumental. It's why our media succeeds in telling
lies. It's why our secretary of state can quote from a graduate-
student paper, claiming confidently that the stolen data came from
the highest intelligence sources. It's why Picasso's "Guernica" can
be covered up during his preposterous "report" to the UN without
anyone guessing the political significance of this gesture and the
fascist sensibility that it protects.
Cultural fascism manifests itself in an aversion to thought and
cultural refinement. "When I hear the word 'culture,'" Goebbels
said, "I reach for my revolver." One of the infamous and telling
reforms the Pinochet regime implemented was educational reform. The
basic goal was to end the university's role as a source of social
criticism and political opposition. The order came to dismantle the
departments of philosophy, social and political science, humanities
and the arts--areas in which political discussions were likely to
occur. The universities were ordered to issue degrees only in
business management, computer programming, engineering, medicine and
dentistry-- vocational training schools, which in reality is what
American education has come to resemble, at least at the level of
mass education. Our students can graduate without ever touching a
foreign language, philosophy, elements of any science, music or art,
history, and political science, or economics. In fact, our students
learn to live in an electoral democracy devoid of politics-- a
feature the dwindling crowds at the voting booths well illustrate.
The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that, in the rapacity that the
industrial revolution created, people first surrendered their minds
or the capacity to reason, then their hearts or the capacity to
empathize, until all that was left of the original human equipment
was the senses or their selfish demands for gratification. At that
point, humans entered the stage of market commodities and market
consumers--one more thing in the commercial landscape. Without minds
or hearts, they are instrumentalized to buy whatever deadens their
clamoring and frightened senses--official lies, immoral wars,
Barbies, and bankrupt educations.
Meanhile, in my state, the governor has ordered a 10% cut across the
board for all departments in the state--including education.
Luciana Bohne can be contacted at lbohne@....
Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash
March 8, 2003
By Luciana Bohne
You might think that reading about a podunk university's English
teacher's attempt to connect the dots between the poverty of American
education and the gullibility of the American public may be a little
trivial, considering we're about to embark on the first, openly-
confessed imperial adventure of senescent capitalism in the US, but
bear with me. The question my experiences in the classroom raise is
why have these young people been educated to such abysmal depths of
ignorance.
"I don't read," says a junior without the slightest self-
consciousness. She has not the smallest hint that professing a
habitual preference for not reading at a university is like bragging
in ordinary life that one chooses not to breathe. She is in my "World
Literature" class. She has to read novels by African, Latin American,
and Asian authors. She is not there by choice: it's just
a "distribution" requirement for graduation, and it's easier than
philosophy--she thinks.
The novel she has trouble reading is Isabel Allende's "Of Love and
Shadows," set in the post-coup terror of Pinochet's junta's Nazi-
style regime in Chile, 1973-1989. No one in the class, including the
English majors, can write a focussed essay of analysis, so I have to
teach that. No one in the class knows where Chile is, so I make
photocopies of general information from world guide surveys. No one
knows what socialism or fascism is, so I spend time writing up
digestible definitions. No one knows what Plato's "Allegory of the
Cave" is, and I supply it because it's impossible to understand the
theme of the novel without a basic knowledge of that work--which used
to be required reading a few generations ago. And no one in the class
has ever heard of 11 September 1973, the CIA-sponsored coup which
terminated Chile's mature democracy. There is complete shock when I
supply US de-classified documents proving US collusion with the
generals' coup and the assassination of elected president, Salvador
Allende.
Geography, history, philosophy, and political science--all missing
from their preparation. I realize that my students are, in fact, the
oppressed, as Paulo Freire's "The Education of the Oppressed" pointed
out, and that they are paying for their own oppression. So, I
patiently explain: no, our government has not been the friend of
democracy in Chile; yes, our government did fund both the coup and
the junta torture-machine; yes, the same goes for most of Latin
America. Then, one student asks, "Why?" Well, I say, the CIA and the
corporations run roughshod over the world in part because of the
ignorance of the people of the United States, which apparently is
induced by formal education, reinforced by the media, and cheered by
Hollywood. As the more people read, the less they know and the more
indoctrinated they become, you get this national enabling stupidity
to attain which they go into bottomless pools of debt. If it weren't
tragic, it would be funny.
Meanwhile, this expensive stupidity facilitates US funding of the
bloody work of death squads, juntas, and terror regimes abroad. It
permits the war we are about to wage--an unfair, illegal, unjust,
illogical, and expensive war, which announces to the world the
failure of our intelligence and, by the way, the creeping weakness of
our economic system. Every man, woman, and child killed by a bomb,
bullet, famine, or polluted water will be murder--and a war crime.
And it will signal the impotence of American education to produce
brains equipped with the bare necessities for democratic survival:
analyzing and asking questions.
Let me put it succinctly: I don't think serious education is possible
in America. Anything you touch in the annals of knowledge is a foe of
this system of commerce and profit, run amok. The only education that
can be permitted is if it acculturates to the status quo, as happens
in the expensive schools, or if it produces people to police and
enforce the status quo, as in the state school where I teach.
Significantly, at my school, which is a third-tier university,
servicing working-class, first-generation college graduates who enter
lower-etchelon jobs in the civil service, education, or middle
management, the favored academic concentrations are communications,
criminal justice, and social work--basically how to mystify, cage,
and control the masses.
This education is a vast waste of the resources and potential of the
young. It is boring beyond belief and useless--except to the powers
and interests that depend on it. When A Ukranian student, a three-
week arrival on these shores, writes the best-organized and most
profound essay in English of the class, American education has
something to answer for--especially to our youth.
But the detritus and debris that American education has become is
both planned and instrumental. It's why our media succeeds in telling
lies. It's why our secretary of state can quote from a graduate-
student paper, claiming confidently that the stolen data came from
the highest intelligence sources. It's why Picasso's "Guernica" can
be covered up during his preposterous "report" to the UN without
anyone guessing the political significance of this gesture and the
fascist sensibility that it protects.
Cultural fascism manifests itself in an aversion to thought and
cultural refinement. "When I hear the word 'culture,'" Goebbels
said, "I reach for my revolver." One of the infamous and telling
reforms the Pinochet regime implemented was educational reform. The
basic goal was to end the university's role as a source of social
criticism and political opposition. The order came to dismantle the
departments of philosophy, social and political science, humanities
and the arts--areas in which political discussions were likely to
occur. The universities were ordered to issue degrees only in
business management, computer programming, engineering, medicine and
dentistry-- vocational training schools, which in reality is what
American education has come to resemble, at least at the level of
mass education. Our students can graduate without ever touching a
foreign language, philosophy, elements of any science, music or art,
history, and political science, or economics. In fact, our students
learn to live in an electoral democracy devoid of politics-- a
feature the dwindling crowds at the voting booths well illustrate.
The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that, in the rapacity that the
industrial revolution created, people first surrendered their minds
or the capacity to reason, then their hearts or the capacity to
empathize, until all that was left of the original human equipment
was the senses or their selfish demands for gratification. At that
point, humans entered the stage of market commodities and market
consumers--one more thing in the commercial landscape. Without minds
or hearts, they are instrumentalized to buy whatever deadens their
clamoring and frightened senses--official lies, immoral wars,
Barbies, and bankrupt educations.
Meanhile, in my state, the governor has ordered a 10% cut across the
board for all departments in the state--including education.
Luciana Bohne can be contacted at lbohne@....
Christina Morrissey
Thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing this to my attention....
At 09:35 AM 3/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
At 09:35 AM 3/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Can't remember if I posted this...
>
>Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash
>March 8, 2003
>By Luciana Bohne
>
>You might think that reading about a podunk university's English
>teacher's attempt to connect the dots between the poverty of American
>education and the gullibility of the American public may be a little
>trivial, considering we're about to embark on the first, openly-
>confessed imperial adventure of senescent capitalism in the US, but
>bear with me. The question my experiences in the classroom raise is
>why have these young people been educated to such abysmal depths of
>ignorance.
>
>"I don't read," says a junior without the slightest self-
>consciousness. She has not the smallest hint that professing a
>habitual preference for not reading at a university is like bragging
>in ordinary life that one chooses not to breathe. She is in my "World
>Literature" class. She has to read novels by African, Latin American,
>and Asian authors. She is not there by choice: it's just
>a "distribution" requirement for graduation, and it's easier than
>philosophy--she thinks.
>
>The novel she has trouble reading is Isabel Allende's "Of Love and
>Shadows," set in the post-coup terror of Pinochet's junta's Nazi-
>style regime in Chile, 1973-1989. No one in the class, including the
>English majors, can write a focussed essay of analysis, so I have to
>teach that. No one in the class knows where Chile is, so I make
>photocopies of general information from world guide surveys. No one
>knows what socialism or fascism is, so I spend time writing up
>digestible definitions. No one knows what Plato's "Allegory of the
>Cave" is, and I supply it because it's impossible to understand the
>theme of the novel without a basic knowledge of that work--which used
>to be required reading a few generations ago. And no one in the class
>has ever heard of 11 September 1973, the CIA-sponsored coup which
>terminated Chile's mature democracy. There is complete shock when I
>supply US de-classified documents proving US collusion with the
>generals' coup and the assassination of elected president, Salvador
>Allende.
>
>Geography, history, philosophy, and political science--all missing
>from their preparation. I realize that my students are, in fact, the
>oppressed, as Paulo Freire's "The Education of the Oppressed" pointed
>out, and that they are paying for their own oppression. So, I
>patiently explain: no, our government has not been the friend of
>democracy in Chile; yes, our government did fund both the coup and
>the junta torture-machine; yes, the same goes for most of Latin
>America. Then, one student asks, "Why?" Well, I say, the CIA and the
>corporations run roughshod over the world in part because of the
>ignorance of the people of the United States, which apparently is
>induced by formal education, reinforced by the media, and cheered by
>Hollywood. As the more people read, the less they know and the more
>indoctrinated they become, you get this national enabling stupidity
>to attain which they go into bottomless pools of debt. If it weren't
>tragic, it would be funny.
>
>Meanwhile, this expensive stupidity facilitates US funding of the
>bloody work of death squads, juntas, and terror regimes abroad. It
>permits the war we are about to wage--an unfair, illegal, unjust,
>illogical, and expensive war, which announces to the world the
>failure of our intelligence and, by the way, the creeping weakness of
>our economic system. Every man, woman, and child killed by a bomb,
>bullet, famine, or polluted water will be murder--and a war crime.
>And it will signal the impotence of American education to produce
>brains equipped with the bare necessities for democratic survival:
>analyzing and asking questions.
>
>Let me put it succinctly: I don't think serious education is possible
>in America. Anything you touch in the annals of knowledge is a foe of
>this system of commerce and profit, run amok. The only education that
>can be permitted is if it acculturates to the status quo, as happens
>in the expensive schools, or if it produces people to police and
>enforce the status quo, as in the state school where I teach.
>Significantly, at my school, which is a third-tier university,
>servicing working-class, first-generation college graduates who enter
>lower-etchelon jobs in the civil service, education, or middle
>management, the favored academic concentrations are communications,
>criminal justice, and social work--basically how to mystify, cage,
>and control the masses.
>
>This education is a vast waste of the resources and potential of the
>young. It is boring beyond belief and useless--except to the powers
>and interests that depend on it. When A Ukranian student, a three-
>week arrival on these shores, writes the best-organized and most
>profound essay in English of the class, American education has
>something to answer for--especially to our youth.
>
>But the detritus and debris that American education has become is
>both planned and instrumental. It's why our media succeeds in telling
>lies. It's why our secretary of state can quote from a graduate-
>student paper, claiming confidently that the stolen data came from
>the highest intelligence sources. It's why Picasso's "Guernica" can
>be covered up during his preposterous "report" to the UN without
>anyone guessing the political significance of this gesture and the
>fascist sensibility that it protects.
>
>Cultural fascism manifests itself in an aversion to thought and
>cultural refinement. "When I hear the word 'culture,'" Goebbels
>said, "I reach for my revolver." One of the infamous and telling
>reforms the Pinochet regime implemented was educational reform. The
>basic goal was to end the university's role as a source of social
>criticism and political opposition. The order came to dismantle the
>departments of philosophy, social and political science, humanities
>and the arts--areas in which political discussions were likely to
>occur. The universities were ordered to issue degrees only in
>business management, computer programming, engineering, medicine and
>dentistry-- vocational training schools, which in reality is what
>American education has come to resemble, at least at the level of
>mass education. Our students can graduate without ever touching a
>foreign language, philosophy, elements of any science, music or art,
>history, and political science, or economics. In fact, our students
>learn to live in an electoral democracy devoid of politics-- a
>feature the dwindling crowds at the voting booths well illustrate.
>
>The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that, in the rapacity that the
>industrial revolution created, people first surrendered their minds
>or the capacity to reason, then their hearts or the capacity to
>empathize, until all that was left of the original human equipment
>was the senses or their selfish demands for gratification. At that
>point, humans entered the stage of market commodities and market
>consumers--one more thing in the commercial landscape. Without minds
>or hearts, they are instrumentalized to buy whatever deadens their
>clamoring and frightened senses--official lies, immoral wars,
>Barbies, and bankrupt educations.
>
>Meanhile, in my state, the governor has ordered a 10% cut across the
>board for all departments in the state--including education.
>
>
>Luciana Bohne can be contacted at lbohne@....
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>~~~~ Don't forget! If you change topics, change the subject line! ~~~~
>
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zenmomma *
I forward this article on to my husband and he had some interesting
observations. Thought I'd share them with the group.
~Mary
_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
observations. Thought I'd share them with the group.
>>I enjoyed the article, but she presents a dichotomy: She decries the stateLife is good.
>>of the educational system, yet she bemoans the cut in spending on
>>education.
>Also: She is upset that her students have never heard of Plato's Allegory
>of the Cave, without acknowledging that this work is a complex and
>long-winded metaphor which can be summed up in a single sentence
>(perception is not reality -- and guess what? It turns out that Plato was
>wrong, perception IS reality; see The Matrix). I imagine that a teacher
>would spend a couple of weeks on this single subject (read it aloud,
>discuss it, do worksheets?, write a paper...). And of course, all of this
>is necessary to understand an obscure novel whose import is subjectively
>decided by a college professor.
>There have to be better ways to teach such things but she seems to care
>only about the 'what' and not the 'how.' I think she makes some excellent
>points, it's too bad she approaches it from the perspective of an
>educator.>>
~Mary
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[email protected]
In a message dated 2/10/05 5:00:40 AM, livinginabundance@... writes:
<< I am trying to get a PDF of it as well, but probabaly won't
have that until March, if anyone wants it. You can hear clips of her
music on her website at www.leliasmusic.com (hope that is okay to
post). >>
COOL!
Would she be willing to let you post or link to the text of her article, even
before you can get to a PDF? It wouldn't have photos and layout, but people
could read about her music and all.
Sandra
<< I am trying to get a PDF of it as well, but probabaly won't
have that until March, if anyone wants it. You can hear clips of her
music on her website at www.leliasmusic.com (hope that is okay to
post). >>
COOL!
Would she be willing to let you post or link to the text of her article, even
before you can get to a PDF? It wouldn't have photos and layout, but people
could read about her music and all.
Sandra
Faith Pickell
> www.leliasmusic.comFaith
> Is she going to perform for us at the Live and Learn conference? : )
> Hint, hint!
On Thursday, February 10, 2005, at 06:21 AM, SandraDodd@... wrote:
>
>
> In a message dated 2/10/05 5:00:40 AM, livinginabundance@...
> writes:
>
> << I am trying to get a PDF of it as well, but probabaly won't
>
> have that until March, if anyone wants it. You can hear clips of her
>
> music on her website at www.leliasmusic.com (hope that is okay to
>
> post). >>
>
> COOL!
>
> Would she be willing to let you post or link to the text of her
> article, even
> before you can get to a PDF? It wouldn't have photos and layout, but
> people
> could read about her music and all.
>
> Sandra
>
>
>
> "List Posting Policies" are provided in the files area of this group.
>
> Visit the Unschooling website and message boards:
> http://www.unschooling.com
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
LivingInAbundance
<<Would she be willing to let you post or link to the text of her article,
even
before you can get to a PDF? It wouldn't have photos and layout, but people
could read about her music and all. >>
The magazine doesn't put articles online for some reason, and they won't let
me have a PDF until a new issue of the magazine is out. If worse comes to
worse, I will scan it and put it on Lelia's website. But I do have links to
other articles about her. . but more local. This one is a pretty big deal
:) Anyway, just wanted to let people know about it. Columbia Records is
courting her so you may be reading about her in more familiar magazines
soon!
As to the Live and Learn conference, I have no knowledge of it as yet. . .
mostly we are busy with her live performances on weekends at regional and
local venues.
Mary
even
before you can get to a PDF? It wouldn't have photos and layout, but people
could read about her music and all. >>
The magazine doesn't put articles online for some reason, and they won't let
me have a PDF until a new issue of the magazine is out. If worse comes to
worse, I will scan it and put it on Lelia's website. But I do have links to
other articles about her. . but more local. This one is a pretty big deal
:) Anyway, just wanted to let people know about it. Columbia Records is
courting her so you may be reading about her in more familiar magazines
soon!
As to the Live and Learn conference, I have no knowledge of it as yet. . .
mostly we are busy with her live performances on weekends at regional and
local venues.
Mary
cslkll
This is really neat, thanks for posting her website!
I signed up for emails and a free song :0) krista
I signed up for emails and a free song :0) krista
>won't let
> The magazine doesn't put articles online for some reason, and they
> me have a PDF until a new issue of the magazine is out. If worsecomes to
> worse, I will scan it and put it on Lelia's website. But I do havelinks to
> other articles about her. . but more local. This one is a prettybig deal
> :) Anyway, just wanted to let people know about it. ColumbiaRecords is
> courting her so you may be reading about her in more familiarmagazines
> soon!yet. . .
>
> As to the Live and Learn conference, I have no knowledge of it as
> mostly we are busy with her live performances on weekends atregional and
> local venues.
>
> Mary