Off topic: Learning to Be Stupid

Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash

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've embarked 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 focused 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 Pedagogy 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 waging - 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 is a murder - and a war crime. And it signals 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-echelon 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.

Meanwhile, in my state, the governor has ordered a 10% cut across the
board for all departments in the state - including education.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at Edinboro University in
Pennsylvania. Please send your comments/feedback/discussion on this
article to . ? Copyright Luciana
Bohne 2003 For fair use only/ pour usage ?uitable seulement .

(Michael Petukhov) wrote in message . com...
Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash


1. So what. In an open society, it is easy to find examples of all
the wrong things. Proves absolutely nothing. Anyone who has had the
fortune to live in several different societies knows that one on one,
people are pretty much all alike (good and bad). Societies, however
(cultural, religious, governmental) can be vastly different.

2. And Michael, WHAT THE **** DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MILITARY
AVIATION? Go post this stuff on alt.bull****.whogas, where it will be
gleefully accepted as the gospel truth.

All this from a Russian, who should know better about believing what
he reads. Sigh.

Kirk

1. So what. In an open society, it is easy to find examples of all
the wrong things.

It's also easy, in America, to find out _about_ those wrong things, a little
nuance our Canadian tut-tutter seems to miss (although Canadians don't seem
to have a strong grasp of many things American in the first place). As
compared to the Soviet Union, or China, or Japan, or even many topics in
Europe where it's difficult if not impossible to find out about these things
on your own regardless.

In article , "t_mark"
wrote:

1. So what. In an open society, it is easy to find examples of all
the wrong things.

It's also easy, in America, to find out _about_ those wrong things, a
little
nuance our Canadian tut-tutter seems to miss (although Canadians don't
seem
to have a strong grasp of many things American in the first place). As
compared to the Soviet Union, or China, or Japan, or even many topics in
Europe where it's difficult if not impossible to find out about these
things
on your own regardless.



I'm not a Canadian-American (or American-Canadian) like AHS, but I've
worked extensively for Canadian companies and had time to learn some of
the cultural differences. Indeed, I make many of my Canadian friends
nervous when I tell Canadian political/ethnic/cultural jokes. There's a
vague flavor of the Japanese concept of the "strange gaijin" who knows
too much about the culture, eh?

The problem is that Canada and the USA have so many superficial (and
also deep) similarities that it can be hard to pick up the differences.

Howard Berkowitz wrote in message ...
In article , "t_mark"
wrote:

1. So what. In an open society, it is easy to find examples of all
the wrong things.

It's also easy, in America, to find out _about_ those wrong things, a
little
nuance our Canadian tut-tutter seems to miss (although Canadians don't
seem
to have a strong grasp of many things American in the first place). As
compared to the Soviet Union, or China, or Japan, or even many topics in
Europe where it's difficult if not impossible to find out about these
things
on your own regardless.



I'm not a Canadian-American (or American-Canadian) like AHS, but I've
worked extensively for Canadian companies and had time to learn some of
the cultural differences. Indeed, I make many of my Canadian friends
nervous when I tell Canadian political/ethnic/cultural jokes. There's a
vague flavor of the Japanese concept of the "strange gaijin" who knows
too much about the culture, eh?

Concept of gaijin is not those who knows too much about the culture.
I live and work there for three years and as far as I understand
this word is considered to be a bad word, is not used publicly,
at least not before foreigners. The meaning of gaijin is a foreigner
who do not undertsand rules of proper japanese style life and behaivior.
Since both are quite complex particularly for beginners, almost all
foreigners in Japan are a sort of gaijins. I am not sure what is the fraction
of ordinary japanese share this views on foreigners but must
be not so small fraction.

Michael


The problem is that Canada and the USA have so many superficial (and
also deep) similarities that it can be hard to pick up the differences.

(Michael Petukhov) wrote in message . com...

The demise of the American public school system is well known and
documented, and can be directly traced to to unionization of teachers
in the 70s. It was at that point that public schools ceased to
primarily be places to educate children, and instead became primarily
places to employ union members. It's interesting, even telling of
pre-existing biases, that the writer latched upon students' ignorance
of the 1973 coup in Chile, and of the CIA's complicity therein, as
proof of the demise of the American public schools, when far better
proof is much closer at hand.

Spread Eagle

(Michael Petukhov) wrote in message . com...
Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash

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've embarked 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.

First, Edinboro really is a podunk university, the U.S. has about
2200 four year degree granting universities and colleges and Edinboro
is not in the first or second rank. Secondly, although I am sure that
the Chilean coup was important in 1973, that was 30 years ago. There
are very few Fascists or Communists on the streets today. I get a
slight hint that perhaps Ms Bohne's class may have been pulling the
pretentuous leg of their European teacher. She is, after all, an
internationally published voice of what's going on out there.
In case Ms Bohne is worried about the actual reading habits of those
in real academic positions I met several in California who do not read
the newspapers because they are just 'liberal trash.' Remember the
line in Being There where Chauncy says he doesn't read, and all the
President's advisors agree it's a waste of time.

Those who carry on about our schools and school teachers are often the
same people who invent statewide and nationwide tests of 'standard'
knowledge and then whine at the teachers because their kids didn't get
perfect scores. The University of California at Berkeley used to be
one of the top three schools in the country, rated academically with
Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Stanford was way down the list. Then
someone decided that the movements of the 60s were somehow signs of
academic elitism and now Cal ain't even in the top 10, probably now
below UCLA. Stanford is in that top 5 or 10 because they don't have
100 legislators making up their hiring lists and admissions.

Most Europeans don't understand the American style of education, early
on the Eurps are told whether they are smart or not and the unsmart
ones end up in trades training, the smart ones at the few
universities. Almost all of these are national universities, run by
the government, usually what would pass for socialist governments. If
you think teachers' unions are pushy try a union with the ruling
government party behind it.

American youth are told they need a college education to succeed. This
breeds the Edinboros of the US, in California they worked out the idea
that a cheap source of the first two-years of college could be
obtained at a two-year junior or community college. The next level
after the JC/CC was either a California state university (one system)
or the University of California (a different, somewhat higher rated
system).

(Jack Linthicum) wrote in message . com...
(Michael Petukhov) wrote in message . com...
Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash

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've embarked 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.

First, Edinboro really is a podunk university, the U.S. has about
2200 four year degree granting universities and colleges and Edinboro
is not in the first or second rank.

Although this may or may not be true I do not see how relative ranking
of a few US top universities discussed below is related to the main message
of the article. Namely that generally US education system is, according to
the author, the way to "Learn to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash".
If you disagree you have to prove that 1) it is not "learning to be stupid"
or/and 2) US Culture is not "the Culture of Cash". Stanford problems
of being 5-th rank only in US has nothing to do with all that.

Michael

Secondly, although I am sure that
the Chilean coup was important in 1973, that was 30 years ago. There
are very few Fascists or Communists on the streets today. I get a
slight hint that perhaps Ms Bohne's class may have been pulling the
pretentuous leg of their European teacher. She is, after all, an
internationally published voice of what's going on out there.
In case Ms Bohne is worried about the actual reading habits of those
in real academic positions I met several in California who do not read
the newspapers because they are just 'liberal trash.' Remember the
line in Being There where Chauncy says he doesn't read, and all the
President's advisors agree it's a waste of time.

Those who carry on about our schools and school teachers are often the
same people who invent statewide and nationwide tests of 'standard'
knowledge and then whine at the teachers because their kids didn't get
perfect scores. The University of California at Berkeley used to be
one of the top three schools in the country, rated academically with
Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Stanford was way down the list. Then
someone decided that the movements of the 60s were somehow signs of
academic elitism and now Cal ain't even in the top 10, probably now
below UCLA. Stanford is in that top 5 or 10 because they don't have
100 legislators making up their hiring lists and admissions.

Most Europeans don't understand the American style of education, early
on the Eurps are told whether they are smart or not and the unsmart
ones end up in trades training, the smart ones at the few
universities. Almost all of these are national universities, run by
the government, usually what would pass for socialist governments. If
you think teachers' unions are pushy try a union with the ruling
government party behind it.

American youth are told they need a college education to succeed. This
breeds the Edinboros of the US, in California they worked out the idea
that a cheap source of the first two-years of college could be
obtained at a two-year junior or community college. The next level
after the JC/CC was either a California state university (one system)
or the University of California (a different, somewhat higher rated
system).

In article , Michael
Petukhov wrote:

Although this may or may not be true

Indeed, it may or may not be true. It might even be half true and half
untrue, or find itself in some intermediate position betwixt these
poles.

But it is *outrageously off-topic* for both the groups to which you
have chosen to post it.

Not only that, it is flamebait; by pure chance, the only people who
have responded thus far are in calm, decent and gentlemanly mode.

What's the Russian for troll?

--
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water" Ibn Khaldun

My .mac.com address is a spam sink.
If you wish to email me, try alan dot lothian at blueyonder dot co dot uk

Alan Lothian wrote in message ...
In article , Michael
Petukhov wrote:

Although this may or may not be true

Indeed, it may or may not be true. It might even be half true and half
untrue, or find itself in some intermediate position betwixt these
poles.

But it is *outrageously off-topic* for both the groups to which you
have chosen to post it.

Not only that, it is flamebait; by pure chance, the only people who
have responded thus far are in calm, decent and gentlemanly mode.

What's the Russian for troll?

Smirnitsky says "troll" with a soft sign.