Education Conspiracy Theory - Dumber by Design??

Watching this year's Presidential campaign it seems like is much more of a focus on the personalities, characteristics, and slip-ups of the candidates then there has been in years past.  After the last debate I read messages on the social media challenges and wasn't surprised to see that the messages reflected my initial observation.  While there were messages regarding issues, the majority of these comments were based on the appearance or personality of the candidates. People commented about Romney's bad spray tan while other's questioned President Obama's love for Chicago sports since he was debating during the Bears Monday Night Football game.  Although some of these were just meant to be funny, it was still a bit disappointing to see the lack of conversation about actual issues.  But can we blame them?   Very rarely do you see one of the news channels stop to provide in depth coverage of the issues facing this nation and what each candidate's plans are to fix them instead, as we saw last March, you see a 60 minute program of President Obama filling out NCAA Basketball bracket with his predictions.

I thought back to some of the readings/discussions in class about the media and the issues facing the American Education system and I put on my conspiracy theory hat and began to wonder if Americans are becoming less informed about politics and less educated in general according to the design of those with power. Many of our readings in class may not have come out and said it directly, but they certainly provided some supporting evidence.  Kumar, for example talked about how our Political leaders explain history in a way that helps support their political agendas instead of providing facts that may go against their actions or agendas.  They create this image of the enemy (ie. terrorists, bad teachers) and the average uninformed citizen becomes afraid and buys into the decisions being made and rarely challenge them. They feel that the decisions and policies being made are in their best interest and they should cooperate.  Kumashiro would describe this as the winners (those with power) making the rules in a way that convinces the losers to keep playing.

And let's face it, its much easier to convince the losers to keep playing when you control not only the messages they receive but also what they learn and their access to education.  Our education system is in the midst of a huge crisis and the solutions from the those with power and influence are reforms focus on standardizing what is taught and ignoring the substance of learning.  This focus on standardization and test scores create a huge disadvantage for those quality teachers who engage students in alternative teaching methods that require students to think critically, but will benefit a teacher who can simply teach the basics.  So what we have is and education crisis with significant issues and the responses from our leaders have been reforms to structure schools in a way that limits teachers' abilities to teach as well as limit what and how a students learn. Oh, and by the way the structure of these schools are not structured the same as the most successful schools where most of those making reforms have children attending.  And because of the extremely high increases of College tuition (which nobody seems to be paying attention to except those paying) those who are lucky enough to graduate can finish or even attend college.  And those who have attended college know that it is a place where a great deal of critical thinking and alternative teaching methods take place.  Could this be the reason why the Government hasn't stepped in to control tuition prices?  Because it creates a barrier for students to learn how to think critically and they fear that this could create educated citizens that would challenge the status quo? 

Now I'm not one to always believe in conspiracy theories (although I enjoy reading them) nor do I necessarily think there is an education conspiracy where they are trying to turn us all into robots, but some of these decisions being made really make you wonder who is really in charge and what their true motivations are. While researching information about education conspiracy theories, I came across this interesting clip by comedian George Carlin which is an extreme viewpoint but not very far off from some of the topics and ideas we've talked about in class.  Carlin also challenges this belief of "The American Dream" which many public intellectuals seem to be doing nowadays. 

(warning: the video does contain some vulgar language).