Selling Out: Education in the corporate crosshairs

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Thu, 03/11/2010 - 12:00am
Privatized education, politicized planning for too much bridge, not enough river...

Private prisons,  private military, privatized schools...Keeping America safe for wealth.  It's the fast-track to a wage-slave state a social chemistry set designed to distill labor into a nugget of gold at the top and a vast army of low-paid drones at the bottom.  Privatizing education is another form of union-busting...But it's so much more.  When parents choose to send their young to a learning environment that reflects their religion, ethnicity, morals, ethics, politics and shopping patterns, the kids grow up in a synthetic learning environment.  In such a world they never confront people who look markedly different from themselves, never converse with people whose ideas differ from those in which they have been indoctrinated.  They exist in  'MirrorLand'  where every surface reflects a reassuringly consistent belief system and every room echos with 'Family Values' .  Be the 'family' Left or Right leaning,  the result is a homogenous bubble in which no social challenge ever disrupts the perfect  reference surface.  'Mother Country, Father Land', as it were...

Learning happens everywhere and its nature evolves as children grow.  So that's learning for ya...Public schools - whatever you might think of them - have one Great Idea.  and that is students are thrown into unfamiliar situations with people who might be very different from themselves.  In order to survive they must find ways to communicate, acquire the ability to be flexible and venture beyond their comfort zones.  As for the teachers;  there will always be a few bad ones with whom the kids will have to find ways to work.  Just as in real real life.  the private/charter model indeed prepares young people...just not for the real world.

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