I am a retired school teacher, and there were many points made that I’ve resonated with. However, I am in California, where some of these trends are not as well enabled by our state legislature as we are a blue state. But, I am seeing an enormous increase in homeschooling. What this looks like are parents enrolling their children in online charter schools, so they can teach them at home. I am also seeing a proliferation of learning centers that cater to homeschool families. These are usually small businesses operated by people, or a consortium of people, who offer services to homeschool families in the form of enrichment or remedial classes. Of course they come at a cost. Finally, having taught for 36 years, I can assure you that there are more than a few MAGA oriented public school teachers. Generally, those people keep their mouths closed at school, and several years ago when my school district nearly went on strike because we had had no raise at all for 10 years, most of those people were out marching, picking, and writing letters with the rest of us. I find it curious that these MAGA school teachers can support their union when it serves their pocketbook, but oppose the efforts of other unions that serve other professions and other families outside of their own. But in the end, that is a very MAGA trait, selfishness. Thank you for the thoughtful essay.
I agree with your analysis of our California school system. Speaking with a student of one of San Diego’s High Tech schools your explanation regarding so many enrolled students absences answered my question of her report that student’s miss so many days.
I am astounded at the number of many new huge campuses built by high profile philanthropist in SD. They are well equipped and I see how many public schools suffered in that respect due to the money diverted to charter schools.
I have absolutely no disagreement that "Smart" (as in intelligence) has been made "uncool," given my definition of intelligence to be strictly defined as an ability to learn from past experiences. The opposite of which, is retarded. Stated caveat notwithstanding, I think that not only the GOP is complicit in the proverbial "dumbing down" of the society at large. I believe (and see) the society at large, specifically its institutions, are equally responsible: and that would include Democrats, Technocrats, the so-called Main Stream Media and, yes, even the "educational" system. The GOP is not responsible for the fact that pedestrian deaths are skyrocketing across the country because people are crossing the streets with earplugs staring at their "smart" phone. A device, quite literally, "smarter" than they are.
The GOP is not responsible for the fact that most of us cannot remember the phone numbers by memory or rote as we were capable of 50 years ago of our children and close associates (and that part of the brain is atrophying as a direct result). The GOP is not responsible for the fact that the average "American" under 40 cannot read a map. Let alone make one. The devastating malady of which you so eloquently articulate goes far beyond the GOP. As for "equality," who is trying to be equal to what? All the while be mindful that eugenics was touted as "science."
To test my brutal truth, let us query the people next to us "what is the last book you read?"
Rohn, I will agree that the GOP is not entirely responsible for the "dumbing down" of society as a whole, but as someone who went through K-12 in the 1950s and 1960s I have seen a continuous push to de-funding education that has been pushed more from the Republican side than the Democratic side as stated in the column.
In my k-12 years I do not remember hearing about teachers having to buy school supplies so their students could have crayons, paper and pencils to write with. I do remember my parents having meetings with my teachers at the Parent/Teacher association meetings. And I remember my parents making sure I did my homework every night.
I remember a time when people who had various problems would go to one of several people for advice: The mayor of a town, the banker, their religious leader, a teacher or their bartender. Now society does not respect any of these people, with the possible exception of the bartender. It is hard enough for a teacher to accept a difficult job at a low rate of pay when they do not receive the respect the office should receive, much less the person. To have our leaders disrespect them openly is really hard for me to watch.
You seem to blame society for producing a smart phone and the pedestrian crossing the street with earphones on, watching the screen. I have the same problem just walking through the airport dodging people with suitcases looking at their phone and not watching where they are walking. I have an issue with people playing music with their cell phones or having loud conversations without the use of earphones.
Is that the fault of the tech people that make the phone or the society that does not teach people how to use them properly. I still cringe at the Verizon advertisement of the person screaming "Can you hear me yet?"
You talk about not being able to remember phone numbers or being able to read a map and say "Do not blame the GOP", but many of those devices are produced by profit-making corporations whose main goal is to make profits, not to serve the other needs of society, and the types of things they produce may help to weaken those parts of the brain.
On the other hand there are electronic games and puzzles that do stimulate memory.
Have you tried to find a paper map in a filling station lately? Do not worry, the same people that can not remember a telephone number can tell you every sports score or store that has a sale.
I have found adults who have never written a paper check, never received and endorsed a paper check, do not know how to deposit a paper check in the bank. Everything is direct deposit, credit card and PayPal.
Yes, there are many people that can not tell you the last book they read, but they can tell you the last movie or video they watched. And you can go to your local library and meet all sorts of people that read books (until they are banned or the librarians all quit).
I will go back to emphasis on learning and study. Other countries and cultures (India, China, South Korea, Vietnam) also have cell phones and computer games, but they have an emphasis and respect for study that the USA seems to have lost for the great part.
I did not state "do not blame the GOP," not once. What I DID state is that the GOP does not bear the responsibility alone of a WILLFULLY IGNORANT society in which brainless mindrot is rewarded and the Trivium and Quadrivium are ridiculed, if not extinct. Here is Los Angeles, in 1978, public schools were gutted by something colloquially known as "The Jarvis Amendment" or more specifically Proposition 13 (13 being the lucky number it is, like the 13 colonies). To this day the schools have not recovered, in fact they have steadily declined. Since Jarvis was a Republican, it would be convenient to state that his political affiliation is the cause, and it may have been in part. However, the people, the masses, allowed it to happen; just as they have Donald Trump.
No one man, no one political party, no one entity is responsible for that: the whole of the society is culpably negligent, if not criminally so. To blame a single entity is not only intellectually dishonest and cowardly, it is inference that there is no democracy for democracy cannot be imperiled by a singular entity; that would be the antithesis of democracy, mate.
I was moved by your statement about "teachers having to buy school supplies so their students could have crayons, paper and pencils to write with." As a single parent that raised my daughter from birth alone, I have purchased many a school supplies for her classmates, the entire class, for the very reason you have stated. She is now a 25 year old graduate student and many of her elementary school classmates remain grateful to me as do her former teachers. Those were some of the most rewarding, though melancholy, days of my life.
I am sorry if I misstated your thoughts about the GOP, and I agree wholeheartedly with the "willfully ignorant society". However I think we both have to be careful of painting the specific onto the general. There are many people in society who are also appalled at the state we are in. We are talking about our collective children and if we care about them we need to fix this and not point fingers.
I, in turn, was moved by your story of purchasing supplies for your daughter's classmates, which brings about another issue I have that you might agree with.
First of all I am OLD....74 years old, but when I was in high school there were many state land-grant universities where the tuition was FREE for QUALIFIED IN-STATE STUDENTS. Pardon the capital letters, but when people talk about "free college" they frequently leave off those words. They also forget to mention that these state and federal universities can only take a certain number of students. When all the places are full, that is it. After that you could apply to universities in other states, private universities or try for a line of study that had openings (and transfer to a different course of study in your second year).
The University of Maryland, The University of New Hampshire and the University of California State University System schools were all examples of this.
If you were a high school student who studied hard, got good grades, did good on your entrance exams and wanted to one of these universities in your state, you could go tuition free if you were accepted.
For foreign students and out-of-state students tuition was charged. This was only fair since those student's parents did not pay state taxes.
Then, over the years, the state and federal funding was diminished. This was mentioned in Tom's letter. For a non-profit institution there is not much you can do. You can try to cut courses or have more students in each class to cut down on professorial salaries. If you are a research university you can try to attract research grants, but that is tricky.
Eventually you start charging tuition. Then to attract students whose families can pay the tuition you start building stadiums, student unions, etc. Often these facilities are donated, but upkeep costs money too. The tuition goes higher.
The University of California Berkeley, of which I am most familiar, held back from charging tuition until about ten years ago. Now they charge 15,000 dollars a year tuition. Many times scholarships are available, but many times they are not.
Put this together with a single parent making minimum wage....approximately 15,000 dollars a year. Hard to think about sending your children to college. Hard for them to believe they will go, or that they should study to go. You have to scrimp and save to get the tuition money that goes up every year. You can not buy other things like an occasional vacation or even go out to dinner once a month. Then after all this saving your child may decide they do not want to go to university....it happens.
I write this not knowing your situation. You and your daughter obviously worked hard and you both succeeded. Your story made me feel very good.
I am involved with a lot of countries in Latin America. Most of them have free of tuition state and federal universities for qualified students, but forty percent of the qualified students can not take advantage of this free university because their parents are too poor to pay for the room and board, Internet, computers, books, transportation, etc.
So I am working on a project to allow them to start their own part-time business (about 21 hours a week) to help them earn that money. The program will be free to the students and the universities. I hope to start in in full (after a couple of pilots) in 2025.
I am typing this from Valenca, Brazil. My husband and I normally live in the USA but we are visiting his family and friends during the holidays. My husband was one of those "qualified students" where there were no positions open for him in a state or federal university. Because of this he was able to qualify for a fully paid scholarship from the federal government to a very good private university, but without that scholarship his family would not have been able to send him to university.
The question I have for the USA, both parties, all of our businesses and our society, if Latin American and European countries (even Cuba) can have free of tuition universities for qualified students, why can't the richest country on the face of the earth? Why do Elon Musk and other titans of industry need to, year after year, get H-1B visas to bring foreign-trained immigrants to our country?
Believe me, after traveling to over 100 countries over the past 50+ years, and being married to a Brazilian, I do not have any issues with any legal foreign born workers. But as a former university professor I have REAL HARD TIME with not funding our schools and universities properly and not encouraging EVERY student to do their best.
"The question I have for the USA, both parties, all of our businesses and our society, if Latin American and European countries (even Cuba) can have free of tuition universities for qualified students, why can't the richest country on the face of the earth?"
Please let me know when you have uncovered the answer as when you do it will probably point to the same reason(s) the United States is the only so-called "developed" country on planet Earth that does not provide healthcare for all of its citizens, throws away more food than most countries combined while many of its citizens go hungry (including children) and espouses a "right" to guns so that those same children can become maniacal murderous maniacs that shoot up schools, churches, grocery stores and movie theaters on a daily basis. But what do I know, I just work here.
My daughter attended a well-known private university (that is also where she is finishing up her postgraduate/intern work). Her tuition was about $55,000 per year from 2018-2022. I told her that, no matter what, we would make that happen but grad school was quite the different story and she would have to finance that. Due to her academic performance and course of study, the school offered her an internship in which they pay for her grad school as she works for the university. As for the undergraduate tuition, I'll be in debt until the day I die on that.
Your comment was worth reading and I am honored by it.
I have no answers for your questions. There are many more similar questions that could be asked, but the OP was about education, so I tended to stick to that.
For full disclosure I am a fan of Bernie Sanders and only wished that more people actually read and thought about his plans.
Imagine a life where you did not have to worry about Health insurance, college tuition for your kids, daycare for your young children so you could work and a dozen other things that make sense.
I may be out in Pasadena in March for a conference. We could meet and talk about other questions.
I understand the gist of the OpEd, the point of my liberally applied rhetorical queries is that the pathologies pursuant to the issues are likely the same.
Rohn what did you mean “The GOP is not responsible for the fact that most of us cannot remember the phone numbers b…” You are a GOP but not a MAGA zombie?
I believe it was historian James Burke who reminded students that the invention of the printing press robbed mankind of his memory. Once written down, people no longer had to memorize entire chapters of their bibles, etc. What Rohn is describing is less about educational failure and more about technical advances. I have has much computing power in my laptop today as the mainframe I used in 1976 to run the statistical analyses for my master's thesis.
I no longer remember phone numbers, because my cellphone does that for me - the same with addresses
People no longer need to be able to read maps because of GPS and Android Auto. Paper maps are obsolete. Similarly, most young Navy officers are no longer skilled in the use of Sextants to navigate the high seas. I no longer have to remember to turn the lights on in the house because they are programmed to turn on either by time or sunset.
Are all these conveniences rotting our brains? I speculated that the answer is no. The only rotting brains are the same people who graduated junior high at the bottom of their class.
Negative. What I was describing is what I described and I tend to communicate both literally and verbally with brutal precision. Rarely am I indicted for vagueness.
I still remember phone numbers because I force myself to do so. I write things down, because I force myself to do so. I read maps, because I force myself to do so. I don't need to have my lights automatically turned on, I am not that lazy and can flip a switch. It is not my projection that the society is collectively dumber than it has been in the past, there are countless studies that substantiate it. Further, all one need do is observe the populace at large to see it is so.
Technology and a paradigm shift are two entirely separate matters. I am very well versed with technology and can even explain what volatile and non-volatile memory are or what a token-ring network was. Nonetheless, I can still do long division with a pencil and paper. I can still write a comprehensive and cohesive paragraph. I speak not of the convenience technology offers, I speak of the reliance upon it that renders the user an idiot without it. That is called a paradigm shift.
What happens when the grid is attacked (and it's coming)? What happens when an EMP fries the circuits in phones, GPS, cars on the road and planes in the sky? Surely you were around during 9/11 and thousands of people were unable to contact family members because cellphone service was out and they did not know phone numbers. There are people, in significant positions in government and private industry that can not write a memo, email or any other document without "spellcheck." That, along with a myriad of other factors such as parenting (education begins at home), the things articulated in Mr. Hartmann's piece, etc. combine to make the United States among the dumbest, most illiterate societies on Earth. In fact, the United States ranks 125th in literacy rate among all countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The proof is in the pudding. Just look at the asylum that is your country and the idiots you have running it. Don't shoot the messenger.
Rohn, if you want to spend your time dotting I's and crossing T's that is your right. The technology changes I mentioned free my time for more productive activities than turning on light switches or hovering over a chart to stay on course. If my cellphone goes dead because of a terror attack or just bad weather, it is not like I have a viable communication alternative. What - smoke signals? Yes, most of us Boomers can do arithmetic with pencils, however, I can get my answer faster and more accurately with a calculator. That frees up time to do more problem-solving or something else entirely. As for literacy, OECD uses some strange criteria to define literacy which most people would limit to reading ability which is ubiquitous among US citizens over age 8.
I would grant that America is deficient in critical reasoning abilities. It is not formally taught in K-12 - not much even in Universities. Americans are also not taught basic household finance management which helps to explain why so many people with decent incomes live P2P on the cusp of bankruptcy. Banks thrive on late fees and high interest rates. But, as economist Dean Baker points out, the system is rigged to maximize the wealth of oligarchs - not the proletariat. Keeping people ignorant of how capitalism works benefits those who are not ignorant.
Lastly, in Psyche 101 in college, I learned that IQ was created mainly as a tool to determine if a child was mentally deficient and in need of special education. When you get to numbers like Thom mentioned, the numbers are of no practical use. "Really-smart" is accurate enough for laymen or psychologists. LOL
I support IEPs for everyone. An Individualized Education Program (IEP) is a written statement for a student that is developed, reviewed, and revised in accordance with state and federal laws.
A kid should have a customized plan...lots of evidence that if a kid has full attention of the teachers, they do better.
I survived the education wars of the late '60's and 70's when the Nixon administration used hatred of professional education as a wedge to implement the southern strategy. We were called Commuinsts for taking "religion" out of the public schools. They objected to the Education Act, especially Title I (a/k/a Chapter 1) that provided federal funding for disdvantaged kids. They hated the 1973 legislation that evolved into IDEA, which forced districts to accommodate diabled kids. Hated programs like "Head Start" and free breakfast and lunch programs.
We had a "desegregation" order initiated by a Republican controlled HumanRelations Commission in a district where we had few minorities, but had Black administratiors and Black scoool board members who were targeted because they were Democrats. We also represented a township where we had to sell part of our schools to Amish, that used unacredited teachers and had substandard facilities. We had to acquiesce to religious groups under the SCOTUS case Lemon v. Kurtzman. We had the first teacher strike in Pa -- at a time when public employees did not have the right to strike. My brother and I represented virtually all of the districts state wide.
Later we represented the same union, the American Federation of Teachers, that Randi Weingarten represents.
My brother practiced school law until he retired in 2018.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, we have the government of the former Soviet Union. Books are banned, speech is limited, lesson plans are political, history is rewrtitten, etc. JEB Bush tried to privatize and undermine funding for public education, and DeSantis is at the verge of making all of it private, a/k/a "charter."
Reagan tried to kill the Department of Education but failed. He did his best to denigrate it...failed to fund it.
Seeing as how education is necessary to a successful democracy, it's hardly surprising that the control freaks and wannabe dictators that populate the Republican Party feel threatened by the freedom that education gives to the general public.
Yes, indeed, I forgot one other point I wanted to respond to, though there were more than a few I would love to respond to. I started school the year after TOM did in a state that had mandated Bible reading and prayer. I can absolutely, 100% attest to the fact that the practice had no positive influence or transfer on me, my behavior, my friends or the climate at the school.I was delighted when the Supreme Court ended the practice and I am very concerned that a number of states are trying to restore this.
I was raised Southern Presbyterian and was actually in elementary school when "under God" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. I can appreciate your attestation.
However along the way I lost my faith in any god and my eyes were opened to the affect that mandated reading of the Bible might have on the minds of Jewish, Islamic or atheist children.
I have grown to feel that religious people are welcome to teach and praise their religions in their homes, in their religious venues and in their hearts. Keep them out of our schools and government institutions.
True, and the pledge should be restored to its original form. While I had read about the insertion of the phrase “under God” into our Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy era, it became real to me when I attended an event with my mother some years ago. The national anthem was performed, and the Pledge of Allegiance was recited at the start of the event. I noticed that my mother did not include the phrase “under God” in her recitation of the pledge. She recited the pledge as it had been taught to her as a schoolgirl in the 1930s.
Believe me, I had a really hard time with the Pledge when one day it said one thing and literally the next day it was different.
I also had a problem with "The Lord's Prayer" that we had to say every day in school. The one in my church (Southern Presbyterian) was different than the one in elementary school. I was yelled at in both places.
About the same time frame (1957) the words "In God We Trust" were inserted onto paper currency. It was on some coins from about the time of the Civil War.
Speaking of paper currency, I have been waiting for a long time for Harriet Tubman to replace Jackson on the 20 dollar bill. It has been eight years.
I am listening to an interview with David Kay Johnston. He said that 50% of Americans read at a 5th grade level, and 30% at a third grade level. There is little common understanding of important historical events or prominent forefathers. There are an increasing number of towns that have no local newspaper. Children today are seldom required to read novels and draw from their reading insights about life. Civics is seldom taught, much less become a high school club (like I was a member of) and thereby an acknowledgement of how important our constitution and governmental institutions and our elections are in insuring the rights and freedoms of our citizens. The dumbing down of American youth appears to have been accomplished. It will take generations to elevate the level of basic understanding that was once common and widespread. Tuition at the University of Wisconsin has risen from $275/semester to nearly $5,000 a semester. It seems that fewer young people will be able to afford a higher education. There will likely be far ranging consequences if this trend continues. Who will teach our children, what will they be taught? Who will staff our institutions, run our industries, and grow and market our food? I fear for our nations future I fear most for the 99% who don’t seem to proper any more, and who increasingly are duped and conned into making choices that imperil their own self-interest.
While I hear a number of complaints about our failure to teach civics in our schools, I never took civics. I did learn American history, and in that course we were taught about the framing of the our constitution which included discussion of the thinking behind having three co-equal branches of government imbued with checks and balances. I believe I have a pretty good understanding of how our government was intended to operate and much of the thinking behind the creation of our constitution, though even among the framers there were disagreements, though they democratically worked out their differences to arrive at a consensus document that we refer to as our constitution.I respect and value our constitution and fear that we have at least one political party in this country that no longer does, at least in more than a few instances.
IMHO it varies geographically. Some taxpayers refuse to pay for public education.
Generally students in wealthy school districts do as well as kids in expensive private schools.
On average, roughly 20% of the general population can not take care of themselves. When I was in the Army, we had a program to bring in low IQ "duty soldiers" who otherwise would not qualify. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000
Thank you for writing this information. I have been aware of what was happening for many years but instead of Americans becoming more aware of what Republicans have been doing, they bought into their lies and misinformation and have become more sympathetic to the Republicans! I got so sick of hearing about the positive effects of Reaginomics when anyone should have realized that he was ruining our Democratic Republic! Your article should be put on all social media, newspapers, and any news outlet!
I was taught and believed in working hard and getting an education! Getting an education was very time consuming and financially difficult but worth every minute of my family and my personal time and financial sacrifice! I can’t believe that we are being called elite so that the uneducated and cult followers cannot or did not get an education or wasn’t interested enough to enable enable them to learn to critically think. They prefer instead to listen to this fake white religious nationalists, radical white supremists, racist, misogynistic, lies, misinformation, traitors to our Democracy and conspiracy theories from MAGA GOP politicians to help them take control of our Democratic Republic !
•George W. Bush Yale undergrad, Harvard Business School
•Tom Cotton, Harvard undergrad, Harvard Law
Hypocrites. All of the above, and many more Republicans claiming educational indoctrination, are alumni of the same "elite institutions" they demonize. Now that they have the advantage of Ivy League status, they're keen to deny it to others and rail against the same institutions that got them into their plum spots. Then, they encourage their voters to be against science and educational achievement, the very things that will improve their economic fortunes, and blame liberals and foreigners for those undereducated not getting jobs. The hypocrisy of their leadership has no end.
I see the results of failing public schools daily. People do not know how to investigate anything. They just hear something from their favorite news channel and accept it as fact. CRT is a legal theory taught in law school. Republican's call anything related to racism CRT. They also call anything related to help for tax paying and voting citizens Communism. If most of our citizens were aware at all they would no more vote for a Republican than Godzilla.
It’s so heartbreaking that Trump and Republicans have been able to convince people dumbing up your children is better than critical thinking. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and thankful for my education. Never thought it to be right or left leaning. What have we come to? The best thing for your child is homeschooling, educate yourself to pass it on to your child. But, if you work how? And if you are bad at math you need a tutor for example and poor, then what? Anyone like me in the south as a parent is awful as it is. Less resources in the south. Not for blue states. I feel for all young people right now. Unfortunately COVID made the symptoms worse in education with school closures and parents seeing education for their children should be taught or not taught. How many days left? Less than 3 weeks. I hope democrats get their act together and activate. I’m ready to support and defend against privatizing agencies.
In "A Christmas Carol" at the end of the visit by Christmas Present Scrooge notices something poking out from beneath the spirit's robe. When he opens his robe huddled there are two, dirty, starving children with hollowed out eyes & ashen skin. Scrooge asks, "Spirit, are those yours?" His response: "They are man's, this boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both but most of all beware this boy for upon their brows is written the word "Doom"!
It is infinitely easier to control the masses when they are un-or-undereducated. If you don't know enough to question you are easily led. This has been the objective of the wealthy elite since the Roosevelt administration. Dumb down the populace, provide games & entertainment, control the courts, control to he legislature & control the executive & there you have it, the rich get richer & the poor get poorer. And so it goes from the beginning of written history until now.
Bread & Circuses, how Imperial Rome ruled their citizens.
It is time to bring back the model of education in which you and I thrived. The unbelievable racist agenda is the Jim Crow of our time, and like Reagan’s poke in Carter’s eye, the GOP’s tacit thrust to delegitimize people of color.
Thank you Thom, I read but rarely comment because you say and it’s always above reproach. Congratulations for THE best summary of Ronald Reagan’s devastating Presidency! I had just purchased and ran my own business the year of a recession 1974, I was successful but educated. Then came tax time for me the poor in this equation lost the deduction for healthcare or insurance a new thing then but at least a deduction but not after Reagan! He stomped the poor badly! It would have been worse but there was at least negotiation then, Tip O’Neal had a lan that got us this far but we will have to wait for a negotiated solution that I don’t think is coming. It was a life saver and didn’t hurt the poor, we paid n and as advertised it was the safety net. MAGA does not understand the economic trap that poverty is. The shing city on a hill goes to NYL the white rich and professed Christian, it is a bad, bad joke on the forever poverty trap. For years I listened to accolades of Reagan and he was the beginning of the end for the American Dream, it’s gone.
It's important not to give Reagan (a legitimate monster) too much credit / blame for this trend. Anti-intellectualism has been part and parcel of Republican messaging since my earliest memories in the early 1950s. Let no one forget how they labeled Adlai Stevenson: Egghead. Believe me it was not entirely a reference to the shape of his bald head. I remember heated discussions, prompted in large part by the John Birch Society*, opposing fluoridation of our drinking water, in defiance of the know-it-all dentists. And I remember who/what crawled out of the woodwork when it was proposed (1960±) that my home town, Winthrop, Mass, build a new high school. Reagan's great(?) accomplishment was to nationalize those attitudes and, with his typical slick script reading, make them more widely "respectable."
And we wonder why there is a,shortage of doctors. It costs too much to get there. A basic Batchlor of Science degree needed in pre med costs over $50,000 or so, not counting room and board.
Young people have to go into debt with banks under hostile terms. Connect the dots people.
I am a retired school teacher, and there were many points made that I’ve resonated with. However, I am in California, where some of these trends are not as well enabled by our state legislature as we are a blue state. But, I am seeing an enormous increase in homeschooling. What this looks like are parents enrolling their children in online charter schools, so they can teach them at home. I am also seeing a proliferation of learning centers that cater to homeschool families. These are usually small businesses operated by people, or a consortium of people, who offer services to homeschool families in the form of enrichment or remedial classes. Of course they come at a cost. Finally, having taught for 36 years, I can assure you that there are more than a few MAGA oriented public school teachers. Generally, those people keep their mouths closed at school, and several years ago when my school district nearly went on strike because we had had no raise at all for 10 years, most of those people were out marching, picking, and writing letters with the rest of us. I find it curious that these MAGA school teachers can support their union when it serves their pocketbook, but oppose the efforts of other unions that serve other professions and other families outside of their own. But in the end, that is a very MAGA trait, selfishness. Thank you for the thoughtful essay.
I agree with your analysis of our California school system. Speaking with a student of one of San Diego’s High Tech schools your explanation regarding so many enrolled students absences answered my question of her report that student’s miss so many days.
I am astounded at the number of many new huge campuses built by high profile philanthropist in SD. They are well equipped and I see how many public schools suffered in that respect due to the money diverted to charter schools.
I have absolutely no disagreement that "Smart" (as in intelligence) has been made "uncool," given my definition of intelligence to be strictly defined as an ability to learn from past experiences. The opposite of which, is retarded. Stated caveat notwithstanding, I think that not only the GOP is complicit in the proverbial "dumbing down" of the society at large. I believe (and see) the society at large, specifically its institutions, are equally responsible: and that would include Democrats, Technocrats, the so-called Main Stream Media and, yes, even the "educational" system. The GOP is not responsible for the fact that pedestrian deaths are skyrocketing across the country because people are crossing the streets with earplugs staring at their "smart" phone. A device, quite literally, "smarter" than they are.
The GOP is not responsible for the fact that most of us cannot remember the phone numbers by memory or rote as we were capable of 50 years ago of our children and close associates (and that part of the brain is atrophying as a direct result). The GOP is not responsible for the fact that the average "American" under 40 cannot read a map. Let alone make one. The devastating malady of which you so eloquently articulate goes far beyond the GOP. As for "equality," who is trying to be equal to what? All the while be mindful that eugenics was touted as "science."
To test my brutal truth, let us query the people next to us "what is the last book you read?"
Rohn, I will agree that the GOP is not entirely responsible for the "dumbing down" of society as a whole, but as someone who went through K-12 in the 1950s and 1960s I have seen a continuous push to de-funding education that has been pushed more from the Republican side than the Democratic side as stated in the column.
In my k-12 years I do not remember hearing about teachers having to buy school supplies so their students could have crayons, paper and pencils to write with. I do remember my parents having meetings with my teachers at the Parent/Teacher association meetings. And I remember my parents making sure I did my homework every night.
I remember a time when people who had various problems would go to one of several people for advice: The mayor of a town, the banker, their religious leader, a teacher or their bartender. Now society does not respect any of these people, with the possible exception of the bartender. It is hard enough for a teacher to accept a difficult job at a low rate of pay when they do not receive the respect the office should receive, much less the person. To have our leaders disrespect them openly is really hard for me to watch.
You seem to blame society for producing a smart phone and the pedestrian crossing the street with earphones on, watching the screen. I have the same problem just walking through the airport dodging people with suitcases looking at their phone and not watching where they are walking. I have an issue with people playing music with their cell phones or having loud conversations without the use of earphones.
Is that the fault of the tech people that make the phone or the society that does not teach people how to use them properly. I still cringe at the Verizon advertisement of the person screaming "Can you hear me yet?"
You talk about not being able to remember phone numbers or being able to read a map and say "Do not blame the GOP", but many of those devices are produced by profit-making corporations whose main goal is to make profits, not to serve the other needs of society, and the types of things they produce may help to weaken those parts of the brain.
On the other hand there are electronic games and puzzles that do stimulate memory.
Have you tried to find a paper map in a filling station lately? Do not worry, the same people that can not remember a telephone number can tell you every sports score or store that has a sale.
I have found adults who have never written a paper check, never received and endorsed a paper check, do not know how to deposit a paper check in the bank. Everything is direct deposit, credit card and PayPal.
Yes, there are many people that can not tell you the last book they read, but they can tell you the last movie or video they watched. And you can go to your local library and meet all sorts of people that read books (until they are banned or the librarians all quit).
I will go back to emphasis on learning and study. Other countries and cultures (India, China, South Korea, Vietnam) also have cell phones and computer games, but they have an emphasis and respect for study that the USA seems to have lost for the great part.
I did not state "do not blame the GOP," not once. What I DID state is that the GOP does not bear the responsibility alone of a WILLFULLY IGNORANT society in which brainless mindrot is rewarded and the Trivium and Quadrivium are ridiculed, if not extinct. Here is Los Angeles, in 1978, public schools were gutted by something colloquially known as "The Jarvis Amendment" or more specifically Proposition 13 (13 being the lucky number it is, like the 13 colonies). To this day the schools have not recovered, in fact they have steadily declined. Since Jarvis was a Republican, it would be convenient to state that his political affiliation is the cause, and it may have been in part. However, the people, the masses, allowed it to happen; just as they have Donald Trump.
No one man, no one political party, no one entity is responsible for that: the whole of the society is culpably negligent, if not criminally so. To blame a single entity is not only intellectually dishonest and cowardly, it is inference that there is no democracy for democracy cannot be imperiled by a singular entity; that would be the antithesis of democracy, mate.
I was moved by your statement about "teachers having to buy school supplies so their students could have crayons, paper and pencils to write with." As a single parent that raised my daughter from birth alone, I have purchased many a school supplies for her classmates, the entire class, for the very reason you have stated. She is now a 25 year old graduate student and many of her elementary school classmates remain grateful to me as do her former teachers. Those were some of the most rewarding, though melancholy, days of my life.
I am sorry if I misstated your thoughts about the GOP, and I agree wholeheartedly with the "willfully ignorant society". However I think we both have to be careful of painting the specific onto the general. There are many people in society who are also appalled at the state we are in. We are talking about our collective children and if we care about them we need to fix this and not point fingers.
I, in turn, was moved by your story of purchasing supplies for your daughter's classmates, which brings about another issue I have that you might agree with.
First of all I am OLD....74 years old, but when I was in high school there were many state land-grant universities where the tuition was FREE for QUALIFIED IN-STATE STUDENTS. Pardon the capital letters, but when people talk about "free college" they frequently leave off those words. They also forget to mention that these state and federal universities can only take a certain number of students. When all the places are full, that is it. After that you could apply to universities in other states, private universities or try for a line of study that had openings (and transfer to a different course of study in your second year).
The University of Maryland, The University of New Hampshire and the University of California State University System schools were all examples of this.
If you were a high school student who studied hard, got good grades, did good on your entrance exams and wanted to one of these universities in your state, you could go tuition free if you were accepted.
For foreign students and out-of-state students tuition was charged. This was only fair since those student's parents did not pay state taxes.
Then, over the years, the state and federal funding was diminished. This was mentioned in Tom's letter. For a non-profit institution there is not much you can do. You can try to cut courses or have more students in each class to cut down on professorial salaries. If you are a research university you can try to attract research grants, but that is tricky.
Eventually you start charging tuition. Then to attract students whose families can pay the tuition you start building stadiums, student unions, etc. Often these facilities are donated, but upkeep costs money too. The tuition goes higher.
The University of California Berkeley, of which I am most familiar, held back from charging tuition until about ten years ago. Now they charge 15,000 dollars a year tuition. Many times scholarships are available, but many times they are not.
Put this together with a single parent making minimum wage....approximately 15,000 dollars a year. Hard to think about sending your children to college. Hard for them to believe they will go, or that they should study to go. You have to scrimp and save to get the tuition money that goes up every year. You can not buy other things like an occasional vacation or even go out to dinner once a month. Then after all this saving your child may decide they do not want to go to university....it happens.
I write this not knowing your situation. You and your daughter obviously worked hard and you both succeeded. Your story made me feel very good.
I am involved with a lot of countries in Latin America. Most of them have free of tuition state and federal universities for qualified students, but forty percent of the qualified students can not take advantage of this free university because their parents are too poor to pay for the room and board, Internet, computers, books, transportation, etc.
So I am working on a project to allow them to start their own part-time business (about 21 hours a week) to help them earn that money. The program will be free to the students and the universities. I hope to start in in full (after a couple of pilots) in 2025.
I am typing this from Valenca, Brazil. My husband and I normally live in the USA but we are visiting his family and friends during the holidays. My husband was one of those "qualified students" where there were no positions open for him in a state or federal university. Because of this he was able to qualify for a fully paid scholarship from the federal government to a very good private university, but without that scholarship his family would not have been able to send him to university.
The question I have for the USA, both parties, all of our businesses and our society, if Latin American and European countries (even Cuba) can have free of tuition universities for qualified students, why can't the richest country on the face of the earth? Why do Elon Musk and other titans of industry need to, year after year, get H-1B visas to bring foreign-trained immigrants to our country?
Believe me, after traveling to over 100 countries over the past 50+ years, and being married to a Brazilian, I do not have any issues with any legal foreign born workers. But as a former university professor I have REAL HARD TIME with not funding our schools and universities properly and not encouraging EVERY student to do their best.
A long post, but I appreciate you reading it.
Pax Vobiscum
"The question I have for the USA, both parties, all of our businesses and our society, if Latin American and European countries (even Cuba) can have free of tuition universities for qualified students, why can't the richest country on the face of the earth?"
Please let me know when you have uncovered the answer as when you do it will probably point to the same reason(s) the United States is the only so-called "developed" country on planet Earth that does not provide healthcare for all of its citizens, throws away more food than most countries combined while many of its citizens go hungry (including children) and espouses a "right" to guns so that those same children can become maniacal murderous maniacs that shoot up schools, churches, grocery stores and movie theaters on a daily basis. But what do I know, I just work here.
My daughter attended a well-known private university (that is also where she is finishing up her postgraduate/intern work). Her tuition was about $55,000 per year from 2018-2022. I told her that, no matter what, we would make that happen but grad school was quite the different story and she would have to finance that. Due to her academic performance and course of study, the school offered her an internship in which they pay for her grad school as she works for the university. As for the undergraduate tuition, I'll be in debt until the day I die on that.
Your comment was worth reading and I am honored by it.
Carpe diem.
I have no answers for your questions. There are many more similar questions that could be asked, but the OP was about education, so I tended to stick to that.
For full disclosure I am a fan of Bernie Sanders and only wished that more people actually read and thought about his plans.
Imagine a life where you did not have to worry about Health insurance, college tuition for your kids, daycare for your young children so you could work and a dozen other things that make sense.
I may be out in Pasadena in March for a conference. We could meet and talk about other questions.
I understand the gist of the OpEd, the point of my liberally applied rhetorical queries is that the pathologies pursuant to the issues are likely the same.
As for Mr. Sanders...
https://rohnkenyatta.substack.com/p/bernie-sanders-what-if?utm_source=publication-search
Rohn what did you mean “The GOP is not responsible for the fact that most of us cannot remember the phone numbers b…” You are a GOP but not a MAGA zombie?
I believe it was historian James Burke who reminded students that the invention of the printing press robbed mankind of his memory. Once written down, people no longer had to memorize entire chapters of their bibles, etc. What Rohn is describing is less about educational failure and more about technical advances. I have has much computing power in my laptop today as the mainframe I used in 1976 to run the statistical analyses for my master's thesis.
I no longer remember phone numbers, because my cellphone does that for me - the same with addresses
People no longer need to be able to read maps because of GPS and Android Auto. Paper maps are obsolete. Similarly, most young Navy officers are no longer skilled in the use of Sextants to navigate the high seas. I no longer have to remember to turn the lights on in the house because they are programmed to turn on either by time or sunset.
Are all these conveniences rotting our brains? I speculated that the answer is no. The only rotting brains are the same people who graduated junior high at the bottom of their class.
Negative. What I was describing is what I described and I tend to communicate both literally and verbally with brutal precision. Rarely am I indicted for vagueness.
I still remember phone numbers because I force myself to do so. I write things down, because I force myself to do so. I read maps, because I force myself to do so. I don't need to have my lights automatically turned on, I am not that lazy and can flip a switch. It is not my projection that the society is collectively dumber than it has been in the past, there are countless studies that substantiate it. Further, all one need do is observe the populace at large to see it is so.
Technology and a paradigm shift are two entirely separate matters. I am very well versed with technology and can even explain what volatile and non-volatile memory are or what a token-ring network was. Nonetheless, I can still do long division with a pencil and paper. I can still write a comprehensive and cohesive paragraph. I speak not of the convenience technology offers, I speak of the reliance upon it that renders the user an idiot without it. That is called a paradigm shift.
What happens when the grid is attacked (and it's coming)? What happens when an EMP fries the circuits in phones, GPS, cars on the road and planes in the sky? Surely you were around during 9/11 and thousands of people were unable to contact family members because cellphone service was out and they did not know phone numbers. There are people, in significant positions in government and private industry that can not write a memo, email or any other document without "spellcheck." That, along with a myriad of other factors such as parenting (education begins at home), the things articulated in Mr. Hartmann's piece, etc. combine to make the United States among the dumbest, most illiterate societies on Earth. In fact, the United States ranks 125th in literacy rate among all countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The proof is in the pudding. Just look at the asylum that is your country and the idiots you have running it. Don't shoot the messenger.
Besides, I shoot back.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3283/#:~:text=IQ%20scores%20are%20falling%20and%20have%20been%20for%20decades%2C%20new,why%2C%20a%20new%20study%20suggests.
Rohn, if you want to spend your time dotting I's and crossing T's that is your right. The technology changes I mentioned free my time for more productive activities than turning on light switches or hovering over a chart to stay on course. If my cellphone goes dead because of a terror attack or just bad weather, it is not like I have a viable communication alternative. What - smoke signals? Yes, most of us Boomers can do arithmetic with pencils, however, I can get my answer faster and more accurately with a calculator. That frees up time to do more problem-solving or something else entirely. As for literacy, OECD uses some strange criteria to define literacy which most people would limit to reading ability which is ubiquitous among US citizens over age 8.
I would grant that America is deficient in critical reasoning abilities. It is not formally taught in K-12 - not much even in Universities. Americans are also not taught basic household finance management which helps to explain why so many people with decent incomes live P2P on the cusp of bankruptcy. Banks thrive on late fees and high interest rates. But, as economist Dean Baker points out, the system is rigged to maximize the wealth of oligarchs - not the proletariat. Keeping people ignorant of how capitalism works benefits those who are not ignorant.
Lastly, in Psyche 101 in college, I learned that IQ was created mainly as a tool to determine if a child was mentally deficient and in need of special education. When you get to numbers like Thom mentioned, the numbers are of no practical use. "Really-smart" is accurate enough for laymen or psychologists. LOL
Whatever, and I am not a "boomer."
As for "capitalism" I not only understand it, I know what it is.
https://rohnkenyatta.substack.com/p/blacksulting-so-you-love-capitalism?utm_source=publication-search
I support IEPs for everyone. An Individualized Education Program (IEP) is a written statement for a student that is developed, reviewed, and revised in accordance with state and federal laws.
A kid should have a customized plan...lots of evidence that if a kid has full attention of the teachers, they do better.
I survived the education wars of the late '60's and 70's when the Nixon administration used hatred of professional education as a wedge to implement the southern strategy. We were called Commuinsts for taking "religion" out of the public schools. They objected to the Education Act, especially Title I (a/k/a Chapter 1) that provided federal funding for disdvantaged kids. They hated the 1973 legislation that evolved into IDEA, which forced districts to accommodate diabled kids. Hated programs like "Head Start" and free breakfast and lunch programs.
We had a "desegregation" order initiated by a Republican controlled HumanRelations Commission in a district where we had few minorities, but had Black administratiors and Black scoool board members who were targeted because they were Democrats. We also represented a township where we had to sell part of our schools to Amish, that used unacredited teachers and had substandard facilities. We had to acquiesce to religious groups under the SCOTUS case Lemon v. Kurtzman. We had the first teacher strike in Pa -- at a time when public employees did not have the right to strike. My brother and I represented virtually all of the districts state wide.
Later we represented the same union, the American Federation of Teachers, that Randi Weingarten represents.
My brother practiced school law until he retired in 2018.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, we have the government of the former Soviet Union. Books are banned, speech is limited, lesson plans are political, history is rewrtitten, etc. JEB Bush tried to privatize and undermine funding for public education, and DeSantis is at the verge of making all of it private, a/k/a "charter."
Reagan tried to kill the Department of Education but failed. He did his best to denigrate it...failed to fund it.
So you are in Florida! Somehow until this entry today I thought you were in Baja California. Why Baghdad by the Sea? Is that an actual township?
https://www.amazon.com/Miami-90-2Paths2-Murder-Novel-ebook/dp/B087HLWC4V
Seeing as how education is necessary to a successful democracy, it's hardly surprising that the control freaks and wannabe dictators that populate the Republican Party feel threatened by the freedom that education gives to the general public.
Yes, indeed, I forgot one other point I wanted to respond to, though there were more than a few I would love to respond to. I started school the year after TOM did in a state that had mandated Bible reading and prayer. I can absolutely, 100% attest to the fact that the practice had no positive influence or transfer on me, my behavior, my friends or the climate at the school.I was delighted when the Supreme Court ended the practice and I am very concerned that a number of states are trying to restore this.
I was raised Southern Presbyterian and was actually in elementary school when "under God" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. I can appreciate your attestation.
However along the way I lost my faith in any god and my eyes were opened to the affect that mandated reading of the Bible might have on the minds of Jewish, Islamic or atheist children.
I have grown to feel that religious people are welcome to teach and praise their religions in their homes, in their religious venues and in their hearts. Keep them out of our schools and government institutions.
True, and the pledge should be restored to its original form. While I had read about the insertion of the phrase “under God” into our Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy era, it became real to me when I attended an event with my mother some years ago. The national anthem was performed, and the Pledge of Allegiance was recited at the start of the event. I noticed that my mother did not include the phrase “under God” in her recitation of the pledge. She recited the pledge as it had been taught to her as a schoolgirl in the 1930s.
Believe me, I had a really hard time with the Pledge when one day it said one thing and literally the next day it was different.
I also had a problem with "The Lord's Prayer" that we had to say every day in school. The one in my church (Southern Presbyterian) was different than the one in elementary school. I was yelled at in both places.
About the same time frame (1957) the words "In God We Trust" were inserted onto paper currency. It was on some coins from about the time of the Civil War.
Speaking of paper currency, I have been waiting for a long time for Harriet Tubman to replace Jackson on the 20 dollar bill. It has been eight years.
I am listening to an interview with David Kay Johnston. He said that 50% of Americans read at a 5th grade level, and 30% at a third grade level. There is little common understanding of important historical events or prominent forefathers. There are an increasing number of towns that have no local newspaper. Children today are seldom required to read novels and draw from their reading insights about life. Civics is seldom taught, much less become a high school club (like I was a member of) and thereby an acknowledgement of how important our constitution and governmental institutions and our elections are in insuring the rights and freedoms of our citizens. The dumbing down of American youth appears to have been accomplished. It will take generations to elevate the level of basic understanding that was once common and widespread. Tuition at the University of Wisconsin has risen from $275/semester to nearly $5,000 a semester. It seems that fewer young people will be able to afford a higher education. There will likely be far ranging consequences if this trend continues. Who will teach our children, what will they be taught? Who will staff our institutions, run our industries, and grow and market our food? I fear for our nations future I fear most for the 99% who don’t seem to proper any more, and who increasingly are duped and conned into making choices that imperil their own self-interest.
While I hear a number of complaints about our failure to teach civics in our schools, I never took civics. I did learn American history, and in that course we were taught about the framing of the our constitution which included discussion of the thinking behind having three co-equal branches of government imbued with checks and balances. I believe I have a pretty good understanding of how our government was intended to operate and much of the thinking behind the creation of our constitution, though even among the framers there were disagreements, though they democratically worked out their differences to arrive at a consensus document that we refer to as our constitution.I respect and value our constitution and fear that we have at least one political party in this country that no longer does, at least in more than a few instances.
IMHO it varies geographically. Some taxpayers refuse to pay for public education.
Generally students in wealthy school districts do as well as kids in expensive private schools.
On average, roughly 20% of the general population can not take care of themselves. When I was in the Army, we had a program to bring in low IQ "duty soldiers" who otherwise would not qualify. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000
Thank you for writing this information. I have been aware of what was happening for many years but instead of Americans becoming more aware of what Republicans have been doing, they bought into their lies and misinformation and have become more sympathetic to the Republicans! I got so sick of hearing about the positive effects of Reaginomics when anyone should have realized that he was ruining our Democratic Republic! Your article should be put on all social media, newspapers, and any news outlet!
I was taught and believed in working hard and getting an education! Getting an education was very time consuming and financially difficult but worth every minute of my family and my personal time and financial sacrifice! I can’t believe that we are being called elite so that the uneducated and cult followers cannot or did not get an education or wasn’t interested enough to enable enable them to learn to critically think. They prefer instead to listen to this fake white religious nationalists, radical white supremists, racist, misogynistic, lies, misinformation, traitors to our Democracy and conspiracy theories from MAGA GOP politicians to help them take control of our Democratic Republic !
Note the following:
•Josh Hawley, Stanford undergrad, Yale Law
•Ted Cruz, Princeton undergrad, Harvard Law
•Elise Stefanik, Harvard University
•Ron Desantis, Yale undergrad, Harvard Law
•JD Vance, THE Ohio State undergrad, Yale Law
•George W. Bush Yale undergrad, Harvard Business School
•Tom Cotton, Harvard undergrad, Harvard Law
Hypocrites. All of the above, and many more Republicans claiming educational indoctrination, are alumni of the same "elite institutions" they demonize. Now that they have the advantage of Ivy League status, they're keen to deny it to others and rail against the same institutions that got them into their plum spots. Then, they encourage their voters to be against science and educational achievement, the very things that will improve their economic fortunes, and blame liberals and foreigners for those undereducated not getting jobs. The hypocrisy of their leadership has no end.
I see the results of failing public schools daily. People do not know how to investigate anything. They just hear something from their favorite news channel and accept it as fact. CRT is a legal theory taught in law school. Republican's call anything related to racism CRT. They also call anything related to help for tax paying and voting citizens Communism. If most of our citizens were aware at all they would no more vote for a Republican than Godzilla.
It’s so heartbreaking that Trump and Republicans have been able to convince people dumbing up your children is better than critical thinking. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and thankful for my education. Never thought it to be right or left leaning. What have we come to? The best thing for your child is homeschooling, educate yourself to pass it on to your child. But, if you work how? And if you are bad at math you need a tutor for example and poor, then what? Anyone like me in the south as a parent is awful as it is. Less resources in the south. Not for blue states. I feel for all young people right now. Unfortunately COVID made the symptoms worse in education with school closures and parents seeing education for their children should be taught or not taught. How many days left? Less than 3 weeks. I hope democrats get their act together and activate. I’m ready to support and defend against privatizing agencies.
In "A Christmas Carol" at the end of the visit by Christmas Present Scrooge notices something poking out from beneath the spirit's robe. When he opens his robe huddled there are two, dirty, starving children with hollowed out eyes & ashen skin. Scrooge asks, "Spirit, are those yours?" His response: "They are man's, this boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both but most of all beware this boy for upon their brows is written the word "Doom"!
It is infinitely easier to control the masses when they are un-or-undereducated. If you don't know enough to question you are easily led. This has been the objective of the wealthy elite since the Roosevelt administration. Dumb down the populace, provide games & entertainment, control the courts, control to he legislature & control the executive & there you have it, the rich get richer & the poor get poorer. And so it goes from the beginning of written history until now.
Bread & Circuses, how Imperial Rome ruled their citizens.
It is time to bring back the model of education in which you and I thrived. The unbelievable racist agenda is the Jim Crow of our time, and like Reagan’s poke in Carter’s eye, the GOP’s tacit thrust to delegitimize people of color.
It is not just people of color, but the disdain for the poor, the sick. Make no mistake about it, this needs a generational (or two) fix.
Thank you Thom, I read but rarely comment because you say and it’s always above reproach. Congratulations for THE best summary of Ronald Reagan’s devastating Presidency! I had just purchased and ran my own business the year of a recession 1974, I was successful but educated. Then came tax time for me the poor in this equation lost the deduction for healthcare or insurance a new thing then but at least a deduction but not after Reagan! He stomped the poor badly! It would have been worse but there was at least negotiation then, Tip O’Neal had a lan that got us this far but we will have to wait for a negotiated solution that I don’t think is coming. It was a life saver and didn’t hurt the poor, we paid n and as advertised it was the safety net. MAGA does not understand the economic trap that poverty is. The shing city on a hill goes to NYL the white rich and professed Christian, it is a bad, bad joke on the forever poverty trap. For years I listened to accolades of Reagan and he was the beginning of the end for the American Dream, it’s gone.
Isn't that precious, elitists calling others elitists. Go figure.
It's important not to give Reagan (a legitimate monster) too much credit / blame for this trend. Anti-intellectualism has been part and parcel of Republican messaging since my earliest memories in the early 1950s. Let no one forget how they labeled Adlai Stevenson: Egghead. Believe me it was not entirely a reference to the shape of his bald head. I remember heated discussions, prompted in large part by the John Birch Society*, opposing fluoridation of our drinking water, in defiance of the know-it-all dentists. And I remember who/what crawled out of the woodwork when it was proposed (1960±) that my home town, Winthrop, Mass, build a new high school. Reagan's great(?) accomplishment was to nationalize those attitudes and, with his typical slick script reading, make them more widely "respectable."
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q2hHElTVbc
And we wonder why there is a,shortage of doctors. It costs too much to get there. A basic Batchlor of Science degree needed in pre med costs over $50,000 or so, not counting room and board.
Young people have to go into debt with banks under hostile terms. Connect the dots people.