Brent,
they are really that good from the viewpoint of the state. In fact this is the one area where I can say without hesitation that the state has achieved and surpassed its own expectations. What better place is there to inculcate the new American Values of consumption, debt and docility than America’s classrooms? Throw in some mindless entertainment in the evening hours which often reinforces subservience to the state and it is amazing that there is any dissent in this country at all. America, freedom hardly knew you.

For some further information, both John Taylor Gatto (The Underground History of American Education, et al.) and Alfie Kohn (The Homework Myth, et al.) have some interesting things to say on public education as an overall topic. Finally, Bryan Caplan (The Myth of the Rational Voter) presents an interesting perspective on the interaction between uninformed economic superstition and increasingly democratic (versus representative) public choice.

NO! It’s GREAT! I frankly think there’s hope. I find it on the contrary pretty good. Excuse me but I’m less severe perhaps because in old Europe I’m afraid you would have had only one answer: “it’s America’s fault.” And that doesn’t leave much hope at all.

I mean… There’s not much intelligence missing before seniors start to calculate that mortgage backed securities can only fail so much and that the LEVERAGE is the problem that makes that fault so vicious… less the fault itself.

Because alos there’s not much research needed to know where the leverage comes from: FRB, FED!

I’m a teacher and this year I’m subbing in public schools. (I think I was blacklisted after I pointed out to my school’s administration last year that a rule requiring students to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional.) I’ve read Alfie Kohn (who believes in Democratic–I think he means “egalitarian”–schools) , but Kohn’s major problem is that he supports the National Education Association (which even Jon Stewart calls a “voracious, insatiable money pit”) and doesn’t realize the NEA–the nation’s largest union–will block piecemeal attempts to reform the system. Kohn also doesn’t want public schools to compete with private schools.

And that’s the crux of the problem: no competition. Public schools are “enclaves of totalitarianism” and state machines of propaganda.

I’m not surprised to the bias in this article. The majority of teachers in my area are marxists, socialists, even communists. (The teacher pay grid is decidedly socialist as it pays everyone the same, even those with science degrees and PE degrees.) Most are registered Democrats. I see the bias everyday as a sub. One of my colleagues stated that after the Palin pick (she’s an Obama supporter) that she just needed to “teacher harder”. And those who are not liberal still believe in the union (and its socialistic tendencies) and do not want competition in education.

When I was in school, there was no real discussion or coverage about the Federal Reserve or fiat money or of our empire. The same remains true today. The liberal elite blame everything on “greed” and private enterprise without even stopping to examine their assumptions or the role played by corporatism, the Federal Reserve, our monetary system, and government dysfunction.

Today’s public school students have difficulty doing basic math, reading, thinking critically. They’ve been trained to submit, not to question authority, and they will someday make the perfect “citizens”. And this will continue as long as government has a monopoly on education.

Think how arbitrary state, federal and other government standards are concerning well, testing and just about everything else public school. The economic questions of who, what, where, when and how are so distorted that opportunity costs cannot be known- even to the government’s top academics and money crunchers. This is where a priori reasoning in the Austrian tradition has to come into play. Public schools aid the destruction of econ calculation and cause social disconnect. The latter has to do with, for example, the fallacy of educational dictates. It is impossible to know which kid, at what time, and in what way, will benefit himself and society the most by reading the arbitrarily chosen text. The benefits the government states they want to derive from this learning control are arbitrary and unknowable as a posteriori values.

Austrian theory makes sense out of the chaos.

John Taylor Gatto, “The Underground History of American Education” is available for download here:

mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf

Fascinating reading!