Michael Mitchell: Archive

The system itself is oppressive. No one's fighting against power, everyone's fighting for it. Why? Because if education is a public service provided by the government, then we think we all have a right to it. Do we really have it, though, if we can't control it? For parents (consumers), it's "free" education for their children. For the system (producers), it means controlling what kids learn. Who has the real power in education? Parents or the government?

What happens when we disagree on what's being taught? We have to try to change the school's curriculum by changing the leaders who ultimately determine it. 90% of children go to public schools. If parents are unhappy with what their kids are being taught, why can't they just find a better school? Because there's no free market in education, almost no incentive for private businesses to make a profit, because the government has used it's power to monopolize the industry, so most parents have no choice. The result is the lowest possible standard, not the highest. The government doesn't have to do a good job, to provide a high quality service, because it has no real competition. While our kids are getting dumber, we're all bickering about racism.

CRT, for instance, isn't being taught directly to kids -- not officially, at least. It's being taught to teachers who are passing it along as a natural consequence of their educational philosophy. If parents disagree with this philosophy, why can't they just send their kids to a school that operates on a different one? If the government left education to the free market, that's exactly what would happen. No one would be arguing about this shit on Fox or CNN. There'd be no need for protests or school board meeting battles. No vulgar display of helpless parents bitching about shit they barely pay for. No way for any "unchosen ideology" to control our lives.

That itself is an ideology, though. It's called capitalism. It doesn't mean the government gives handouts to businesses. It means the government leaves all of us the fuck alone, economically. Socialism, or statism, is when the government interferes in the economy. That's the kind of system we have. We can call it "mixed", but the truth is if the government can interfere with one business than it can interfere with them all, whenever it wants. The economy may be "mixed" but the ideology we've all accepted is not. All anyone's really arguing about are different forms of socialism, what they think the government should control more and how they want to control it within whatever industry is being controlled. This fight for power is happening in all industries. It's just more obvious in education.

That's not freedom. That's oppression. The only difference between this form of it and total authoritarian rule is we democratically chose it, but the result is the same. We just get to whine about it more, to feel superior to each other, and to evade the reality of our chains.