Dumbing Down America: The Decline of Education in the US as Seen From Down Under

Dumbing Down America: The Decline of Education in the US as Seen From Down Under:

Dumbing Down America: The Decline of Education in the US as Seen From Down Under

Friday, 22 November 2013 09:25By Niall McLaren, Truthout | Op-Ed

"[The aim of public education is not] to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim . . . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States. . . . " - Henry Mencken, The American Mercury, April 1924.

"If the right-wing billionaires and apostles of corporate power have their way, public schools will become 'dead zones of the imagination,' reduced to anti-public spaces that wage an assault on critical thinking, civic literacy and historical memory." - Henry Giroux, 2013.

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," you may say, except it wouldn't do you much good, as very few Americans would understand you.

The United States consistently spends far more money per school age student than any other country in the world, something like $11,800 per child compared with $4,000-$5,000 in comparable countries. Excluding the huge sums spent on the 10 percent of children who go to private schools, the United States spends something like $8,000 of public money per child per year. Yet, in 2012, the United States was 27th on the list of world rankings for school educational achievement, well below Cuba, below even Mexico and Brazil. Social critics regularly blast American public