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Perversity oft presents the path to progress. <br>
A road less travelled?<br>
"The straight line seems bent.", as Laozi noted.<br>
<br>
Of course, the blame for their woes lies squarely with the American
People<br>
themselves, not with their "duly elected leaders" (lol!) nor the
perpetrators of<br>
academic pedantry, nor with their wretched offspring. The inability of
<br>
the American People to "do anything" about their problems will be<br>
a historic classic. <br>
<br>
The "education" system seems to be a great aid in the dumbing down<br>
of the people such that they don't dare think about rising up against
their masters.<br>
Americans have grown soft, and lazy. America has become a land of
sissies and bullies.<br>
Some of us have seen the collapse coming for 35-40 years.<br>
No doubt the real "holocaust" is "yet to come".<br>
<br>
It is yet to be seen if Americans will, or even Can, respond to the
"wake-up call" or<br>
just roll over and go back to sleep, if they are able. A friend told me<br>
recently that Nightmares are only possible for those able to sleep.<br>
(At least he's awake.)<br>
<br>
With all due respect, David Green, I perceive the social safety net from<br>
a different perspective. I dont see it as a net under the people, but
rather<br>
as a net cast over the people, keeping them firmly under control, and
therein<br>
lies the gravity of the situation.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 12/13/2010 3:07 AM, David Green wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:590364.89219.qm@web65413.mail.ac4.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
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<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri"><b>Misguided critics of public schools ignore
fundamental economic realities</b><o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">David Green<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">It is conventional wisdom that good schools are
essential to a healthy economy. It is true that schools are responsible
for the basic literacy, skills, and educability of those entering the
workforce. It does not follow, however, that schools are to blame for
the dismal economic outlook for many Americans. <o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">Misguided perspectives on the relationship between
economy and education lead critics to focus on daily activities and
outcomes of teachers, parents, and students. These critics avoid the
fundamental nature of growing economic inequality and its evolution
over the past three decades. Their criticism is not only profoundly
misguided, but part of the problem. They are in denial regarding the
class-stratified nature of an American economy that has victimized
working people and their children in a systematic and structural manner.<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">The facts are clear, and their implications easily
discerned. These facts address the long-term relationship between
worker productivity and wages; the transition from a manufacturing to a
service economy; and the sources of recessions and high rates of
unemployment. Given the basic existence of universal and functional
public schooling, none of these trends has been determined by the
relative merits of schools, teachers, students, or parents, whatever
their specific achievements. These trends have been completely
determined by the corporate, financial, political, and ideological
powers that be.<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">The Pew Charitable Trusts’<span style=""> </span>“Economic
Mobility Project,” available online, clarifies the evolving
relationship between productivity and wages. Since 1945, the American
worker has increased productivity by at least 2% per year, consistently
throughout. This means that efficiency—output per person-hour in the
production and provision of goods and services—has doubled twice during
this 65-year period, both before and after the advent of computers and
a high-tech-based economy.<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">This historical and structural increase in
productivity—and hence both national and per capita wealth—has depended
on innovation, skill, and effort by scientists, technicians, managers,
business owners, and workers. About no sector of the workforce can it
be said that its employees, from “top” to “bottom,” have not
significantly contributed to these increases by the quality of their
minds or the sweat of their brows. Similarly, it is inconceivable that
the quality of our schools has been an impediment rather than an asset
to these increases, ongoing, which are typical for all countries in the
industrialized world.<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">From 1945 to the mid-1970s, the median (adjusted for
inflation) wage for the American worker increased commensurate with
productivity—that is, doubling during that period. Between 1974 and
2004, while productivity increased by 80%, the median wage increased by
20%. From 2000 to 2005, productivity increased by 15%, while the median
wage fell 2%; obviously that trend continues to this day, and worsens. <o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">All of these facts clearly indicate that while the
country gets richer, the median, “middle class” worker becomes stagnant
or gets poorer; all of the increases in wealth that are generated by
the labor of all workers accrue to the benefit of the upper quintile of
the population; the largest share going to the upper 1%. Again, none of
this, in any critic’s wildest imagination, can be attributed to the
failures of schools to educate our children, whatever the debatable
extent of such alleged failures.<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">This well-documented appropriation of wealth has
nothing fundamentally to do with computer technology per se, but with
policies promoted by elites during the transition from a manufacturing
to a service economy. These policies determined that private-sector
unions would be effectively destroyed, and that non-“professional”
workers (that is, those not protected by their credentials from foreign
competition) would be placed into competition with low-wage foreign
(and immigrant) workers. These efforts, most identified with the Reagan
era but supported by all administrations since Carter, were well under
way before the digital transformation, although they have subsequently
been abetted by this phenomenon.<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">While American workers have adapted to technological
change, their organizational and political capacities to materially
benefit from their labor have not adapted to the onslaught of
neoliberal, “free market” (referred to locally as “capitalism and
limited government”) ideology and practice among those who rule our
country for their own benefit—especially those in financial,
speculative sectors. This leaves workers vulnerable not only to the
chronic appropriation of their wealth, but to the acute misery caused
by speculative bubbles generated by financiers that result in the
massive disappearance of housing wealth, increased unemployment, Wall
Street bailouts and profits, huge federal deficits, and cynical attacks
on the social safety net.<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font
face="Calibri">In this light, it is perverse for public school critics
to focus on the “accountability” of teachers and the “personal
responsibility” of students. Many parents and children are rightly
aware of the dire nature of their economic circumstances and future
prospects—whatever their efforts and skills—in an economy with high
unemployment and the most extreme inequality among the developed
nations. In relation to the poorest among us, such criticism borders on
cruelty on the part of the comfortable.<o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font
face="Calibri"> </font></o:p></p>
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