The Obstructed View ~ Education for Education's Sake

 Random thoughts from an idle mind for the beginning of 2009

by Sam Osborne

Is education nothing more than a tool of economics, but without the bailout?

American workers have not lost their jobs to the well educated that work in sweat shops in low-standard-of-living lands.  And, the idea that we are going to educate our way out of our current economic mess is pure myth.
 
We should run our schools as places that enrich the lives of our children and not as factories that turn out standardized parts to fit into business and industry.  What will kids do with the gift of a good education?  We better not have any idea – if we do, we have entered reductive times in which each generation is going to be no smarter then the dumb assed adults that are running the one that they inherited. 

Our economic system is sick.  Not because it is not running well, it is sick because it IS a terminal form of cancer that eats up our resources and our people in the production of things that are acquired and soon hauled off to the landfill to make room for more of the same.  It is time to move to a rich culture based upon quality of life over the insane production of life consuming and environment polluting things.

It would be nice to see our government put money into education for our children’s sake.  Pouring more into the greedy hands of those at the top of the economic pile will only increases the quagmire debt that has already been run up.  Trickle-down economics has once again failed to produce what a mass-consumption market runs on, middle and working class consumers. 

None of the businesses, which have been operated by the current crop of profiteers, folded because they were over taxed or because the huge pile of private capital dried up.  The resources were skimmed off in huge bonuses and paper-profit Ponzi schemes.  Yes it went somewhere, maybe into Swiss bank accounts. 

The 700 billion dollar bailout (with more to come) is damning testament to the myth that economic elitists should not be heavily taxed because they will invest their great gains in creating good jobs for working Americans.
 
Class warfare?  You bet and where is the nearest enlistment office to sign up – it would be great to serve in an outfit commanded by Michael Moore.

Sam
Osborne, former editorial writer and Opinion Page Editor,
Iowa City Press-Citizen; former college professor and Business Department chair,
Ellsworth Community College; and currently out to pasture drinking too much
coffee.  His commentary, The Obstructed View,  will appear on these blog pages weekly, more or less.