Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the education system in the US is broken top to bottom, turning out good little debt slaves, rather than fully educated human beings ready to take on the world. Smashing the US education system was a long process. It took progressives a century to fully break the beast into submission, yet it was the government’s guaranteeing student loans that has been the death knell of education, once and for all. Students graduating today have sometimes over one hundred thousand dollars in loan debt, debt that cannot be expunged by bankruptcy, going into a job market that is at best a dancing landscape. Instead of preparing our children to engage the world, our kids are leaving those expensive universities with crushing debt and dubious educations. In what universe does it make any sense that today, in the Twenty First century, with the absurd amounts of money we throw at education, that our children don’t emerge from college ready to take on the world, little philosophers able to adapt and dance with whatever landscape appears before them?
The primary education system has been so exploited by progressives, as a jobs program for teachers, an indoctrination system for students, and a cash cow for democrats by teachers unions. They know and openly admit, that if given a choice, most people would choose a better school for their children. Every time they say, a voucher system will be the end of public education, that is exactly what they are saying, the public education system gives a poor product for and exorbitant price. If given freedom of choice in education systems, via a voucher system because as a society we have made the decision to publicly fund primary education, being rational maximizers we will make the self interested choice and send our children to the school that best fits our desires. The diversity in education such a system would provide, along with the inevitable increase in aggregate quality, would allow our children to be more adaptable, and more able to profit from disruptions. Of course if you agree with the progressives that the real aim of our education system is a jobs program, that indoctrinates children into a certain political mindset, and funnels money from the government tax system to a favored political faction via teachers unions, then you want to keep the system as it is.
It is in the arena of higher education that our system has got way out of whack. Every professor will tell you, not all professors are progressives, Marxists and/or socialists, but they will admit most are. At the higher echelons of higher education, they are almost universally Marxists and anarchists. That is not my assessment but that of Alvin Gouldner. As we all know, people follow their leaders, and so as the top believes that philosophy will be transmitted down to the students. One quality that glues progressives, Marxists and socialists together is the love of censorship. They idealize the world where anything they like can be said freely and without hesitation, but that which they dislike is not tolerated, and that mindset is transmitted down to the students, manifesting itself in the attacks on conservative speakers and indeed anyone the progressives disagree with. Why debate someone with a better argument when you can shut them down altogether? Reverse racism has become the norm with the curriculum openly teaching “White Privilege.” That which can be said on those extremely expensive facilities of higher learning becomes ever more narrow, based on politics, every day.
The government taking over the student loan system was pure genius, right out of Cloward and Pivon playbook, from a progressive point of view. What a magnificent transfer of wealth from the productive segment of the economy to the unproductive segment. In one fell swoop, the progressives enabled every student going into college or university to strangle themselves with debt, to pay for an education that has little help other than as an entry card at the door of the club. Let’s say your server at TGI Fridays has a PHD in physics and student loan debt of thirty thousand dollars. That debt cannot be eliminated by bankruptcy, if not paid off, it simply grows as does all compounded interest financial instruments. Meanwhile all that extra money allowed colleges and universities to raise the price and therefore their profit, of “non profit” institutions… which translates to higher wages for staff and especially professors and the executives of those universities. Which is basically transferring wealth from the students in the future, to college personnel today. Financially rewarding progressives for their diligent effort to destroy the education system.
The future only holds change on a munificent scale for our children. Everything is poised to change… one way or another. It is an old adage that it isn’t the strong, brave, intelligent or witty that survive… but the adaptable. We spend as a society over ten thousand dollars a year per student, and in some places far more, to give our children a pathetic education, where they cannot even make change for a dollar, find the US on a globe or understand what they are reading. It is not that our children are more stupid than us, but our education system, and culture stunts their intellectual, moral and spiritual growth. Dumbing down the test to scale for the poor performance of the education system is no longer the answer, it is time to change it, fundamentally, with the goal of, educating people to be self interested rightly understood, rational maximizers who are able to profit from economic disruptions. Our children are able, it is we that hold them back by bowing to progressives. It is past time to force a voucher system in primary education, while eliminating the government’s hand in student loans, college accreditation and handouts to local universities, foster real competition in education. Only real competition will return us a dividend of graduates who are adaptable enough to be able to profit from the disruptions ahead.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
