Education Matters…
By Ron Signore
There have been no mixed feelings for how I feel about our education system. It sticks and will continue it’s progression to get worse. While I think the current administration has good intentions, this is not an issue that will be solved by our current administration, nor the next one assuming it stays blue. Administrations have been battling a 40-year war on the education system set forth by the conservative leadership since the days of Reagan. The teeter-totter effect from administration and ideology over the years has proven to be a losing effort suffered by those of school age and in living society here in the states.
Education for some reason, probably a well defined but not an acceptable one, has been stifled by other matters. Things that revolve around national security policy-wise takes precedence. Things that revolve agenda wise has taken precedence socially since the battling agenda at the current moment includes a desire to ban books or favor a more Christian Nationalist approach to education. Primarily in that scenario, the loss of credibility in science, technology, whitewashing and ignoring history, are all things that suffer in the current picture of the country. It all goes to a common theme of ignoring reality by ignoring the facts in some Machiavellian snake pit of plummeting IQ’s that have caused social dissention amongst us.
Fixing the system is no easy task. It will take a governing party to recognize more than just one view of our youth. I will not sugar coat it. If it can be fixed at all, it is going to be a longer process based on the length of this deplorable trend. Some of what I see from my own children brings light to what is being taught, but most importantly, how it is being taught. There is a gross overstock of teachers who really are not teachers, not leaders. The bar, by the lack of intelligent aspirations from many who teach our children truly displays what trickle down really means.
Do not get me wrong. In my own life, and in the present day, I see many teachers who are the exact opposite of what I am describing. My empathy and faith is with them wholeheartedly. These teachers have the passion to help students learn and succeed. They have empathy by being multi-versatile in helping adhere to the learning capabilities of many as opposed to here is what you need to learn, learn it or fail.
That latter part was present in my schooling, as I am sure is and was present in all of yours. Some by the diagnosis of a poor system attracting poor candidates to teach. Some were just a result of progress, or lack thereof, as we learn more about neurodiversity and traditional schooling through time. There were always those educators that were shining stars in how they reached you to educate you on whatever discipline of study was under their purview. In my day, they were ahead of the curve of progression from the science of reaching people to aid their ability to learn. And even today, some of that negative result is due to the progression of technology, which has equipped our recent school-age generations with a sense of dependence on learning. Essentially ways to maybe get the right answer, but the gap in critical thinking on how to get that answer has suffered.
Critical thinking is lacking. Technology has allowed us to see many more smaller chunks of information, which has led to a reliance of being told versus being taught and understood. Our youth I believe is struggling with that. However, it is overlapping with reality in society at levels beyond school.
Many people are swayed by the media, whatever that media is they have formed a reliance on. They have relied on these outlets because it appeals to their emotions on whatever their perceived reality is. It is human nature. Newsmax and Fox news are great examples of this. I tune in at times to study for an understanding of people I have to deal with on a daily basis. The lack of reality and facts to drive opinions to emotionally weak minded individuals has taken that emotion to a dystopian level causing civil unrest. Make no mistake, CNN, MSNBC, etc.. are not much different. If and when I tune into those sources, I do tend to see more debating of facts and the impacts and implications of data in real topics. And MSNBC most specifically seems to be fighting the fight of bringing factual based topics to fight misinformation more than most. Honestly, it can be like comparing Barstool Sports (FOX/NEWSMAX) to ESPN caliber reporting. Barstool Sports honestly portrays people like me to an extent. Were just people in tuned with an arena of society and we address it in our own way. ESPN is more of the experienced pundits that brings an expertise point of view to light in their analysis. To be clear, Fox and Newsmax bring in pundits like that as well, but the majority is so far fetched and untied or unhinged from reality that it becomes appealing to those with lower iq.
In that same breath, I have found we need to open our ears, open our eyes, listen, and learn. It is no secret that when there are two sides of a story, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. We are dealing with a different beast right now in the current MAGA movement that is one where it really illustrates the philosophy of being able to win an argument with a smart person, but never winning one with a dumb person. This is mainly because were battling factual information in the real world with conspiracy theories and alternate ‘facts’ (opinions) in an alt reality that is damning our country.
This is why education and critical thinking are so important: we have seen this before. I once had a professor that told us that anyone who says “history repeats itself,” is a fool. It wasn’t until recently that I realized what he was really saying. It isn’t that no events are of similar nature, or the literal meaning that the exact same thing happened before and again. It was that if we didn’t learn our lessons from the past, we were doomed to commit the same mistakes.
None of this was pointed out to me more than by Rachel Maddow. I absolutely love her, but I am not a loyal fan in the sense of watching her program. I know what her agenda is, and though I typically agree with it, it is just that I know it would just be catering to me. And I admit that even knowing her bias and agenda, she has NEVER displayed anything but logic and intelligence in her delivery to the people as a member of the media. However, it wasn’t watching her on MSNBC battle the evils of the MAGA movement that bring her to mind right now. That would be no better than just being a sheep to her as my shepherd.
What drove this is listening to her book Prequel. Listening to her podcast series Ultra, then Bag Man, and finally DeJa News. While they all bring the light of a liberal bias against fascism, they are historically driven accounts that bring thought provoking realizations to the concept of we can prevent history from repeating itself. These podcasts and book all bring to light the struggles of very similar events in our nation’s past that we have overcome in similar battles where democracy is the target. People know pieces of history in our country with Nazi sympathizers and the red scare, but how the dots all connect and continue to connect in modern day show a pattern of like playbooks that we are seeing driven by conservative factions that continue to impose a threat to democracy.
She takes you through the tangents and avenues of these historical eras in these episodes that follow money and power to who is pulling the strings. We compare Chump to Hitler in so many ways, but how real the connection is and how they were both able to get to where they are with their following is scary identical. From messaging, deflection, projection, and fear mongering, all the way to the operatives inside governmental branches that hold power to ensure these lunatics agenda’s have traction to succeed.
But we cannot stop at one source. Expanding your catalog of information outlets is critical. After getting through all of Maddow’s exemplary work, I decided to pick up Jamie Raskin’s book. It seemed like a good time knowing that the focus of his book was around the Cheeto Era and the culmination of January 6th, the events leading up, during, and after the insurrection with the fallout we are still experiencing. He details everything from a legal scholar point of view with what I can only describe as a Tim Walz-esk approach and delivery. Someone on the inside that can outline the who, what, where, when, and why to combat the flood of misinformation and speculation caused by MAGA megamouths like MTG, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert, and Tim Cruz. Supplements the track of history Maddow provides with the near real time realization of the clear and present danger Chump stands for, and in many ways, is winning at.
These real life atrocities we have experienced as a country and continue to experience is a direct result of a failing education system. Some of it as obvious as a lack of understanding to government operations and structure, or the constitution, some as deep as fundamental understanding of what true educated experts in their fields bring to the reality of living in this country. The MAGA movement has continued to discredit intelligence. They discredit experts in the fields of medicine or law all at the risk of the people and for the benefit of others, the benefits of recognized false prophets. It has to stop. We have to get back to a nation where education matters. Being learned is a leadership quality to help the better of our neighbors. A good portion of that starts at home, no doubt, but we have to be able to trust that we have educators driven to help inform and educate our students with factual realities. Enabling critical thinking should result in progress, not regressing us to times of a more primitive culture saturated with racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and other signs of a society geared to drive the success of one portion of the people. The challenge of collaboration to help unite the country in moving forward to providing the best country for everyone has been lost.
We have turned into constituencies that seem to have lost the path of morality in exchange for loyalty. The price of the souls that have been sold to a loyalty to Agent Orange has been polarizing and paralyzing. They have sacrificed loyalty to the one thing they are pretending to fight for. America. We need to vote blue for any hope that we get smarter as a country.
Democrats need to be stronger, hence my admiration to the antics of Dark Brandon or Tim Walz as of this past week. We need to be aggressive in destroying the nonsense, not just showing up to the fight and hoping. Hope is not a strategy. Execution of reality and dominating your opponent with tactics and tact will drive us to get back on track. One of my favorite lyrics from Dave Matthews is from the song “Die Trying,” in that “to change the world, starts with one step, however small, the first step is hardest of all.” Day by day, step by step, we can get to a better country. One of those paths has to be in the education long term with our education system, and the other path in educating those who have already been failed by the system. We can all do our part, and part of that is getting out and Voting Blue.
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