Revolution Watch---Education and Wsconsin

This Illustration in a 1933 newspaper rather says it all. It says it then for the same reason it is pertinent today. It seems there is always an effort out there to lower the quality of public education. I probably shouldn't say always because there was a time, I suppose many times, when education was heralded as the single most important aspect of a good and just society.

Right from the get-go in this country, the founding fathers realized there had to be an informed electorate if we were to have a viable democracy. I believe it was Tocqueville who thought the masses too stupid to govern themselves and worried about the tyranny of the masses. But we showed them it could be done and have successfully managed to educate the masses to an exceptionable level---most of the time.

Generally, it has worked, that is public education, and every citizen, and some non citizens, have managed to get a decent educational opportunity. One must realize that it was not until only a few decades ago this has been improved as folks of color were clearly getting the short end of that stick and if we go back not real long so were women. Still, we as a nation pulled it off. We had an informed electorate because of our education system.

As the 1933 illustration implies there has always been some efforts out there to get rid of this educational system either by making it privatized and too expensive for some of the less fortunate, or  to decrease the quality in general there-by dumbing down the population and making them easier to manipulate. The hopes, I suspect, was to simply get citizens so uninformed they would know enough to prevent themselves form being bamboozled by shucksters (the same jackasses doing the destruction of education).

Well, here we are again. This time with a completely uneducated governor trying to trash our public education by pulling the funds and demeaning our educators. The efforts of this moron are relentless right along his equally idiotic buffoons in the state house. Call the professors lazy, cut the funds form the Universities, take monies form research institutions like the school to study alternative energy, label class room teachers as spoiled and over-paid. I not even talking bout the attach on labor, which is nonsensical.

What is odd is that Hitler pulled the same nonsense. Went after labor, after professors, educators, writers (oh shit), artist (oh shit again), religious leaders and any ethnic group he could find (check out Kansas). This is a really big OH SHIT!. Time to wake up. ( I did not check out this quote but he sure as hell did it)

How do these people get elected? Well one thing for sure it is easier to do if the electorate is ill informed and uneducated--they now are voting against their own better interest. Go figure? What would Horace Greeley say? What does any well-educated person say. I suspect we are not saying enough and letting ourselves being over run by the uneducated and those that want to control our every behavior. I'm getting pissed.