From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Sun Aug 25 2002 - 04:39:06 MDT
In a message dated 8/25/2002 4:20:17 AM Central Standard Time,
forrestb@ix.netcom.com quotes Griffin: "In our dreams we have unlimited
resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our
molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and
unhampered by tradition, we work our own good upon a grateful and responsive
rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children
into philosophers of mental learning or of science. We have not to raise from
among them authors, editors, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search
for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors,
peachers, politicians, statesmen of whom we have ample supply. The task we
set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one: To train
these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they
are...in the homes, in the shop, and on the farm."
Thank you Forrest. I was raised on what is often known as a raggedy
pants cotton farm. Early on it was noticed by my teachers that I had the
talents to learn and especially I was good with numbers. As they had no
facilities for teaching a kid like me they did the next best thing and left
me free to learn on my own. I became an engineer, earned my raises &
promotions then at the appropriate age retired.
I tell you this to set the scene. The local large scale farmers and
merchants that served on the school board had decreed that kids like me were
to be educated to be contented cotton choppers and cotton pickers. The local
view of a boy that had made good was to elevate yourself to being known as a
good "tractor hand."
One of the things that started me thinking beyond that received
lifestyle was that a about fourteen I fell madly in love with one of the
local big merchant's daughter. I got to thinking one day -- when you are
fourteen and chop cotton ten hours a day you have a lot of time to think and
to try on various adult scenarios in your mind. Anyway, I got to thinking
about the economics of marriage. I was already a good hand at any job on the
farm, I knew the going wages as well as anyone. So, I came to calculate what
I could earn per week if I was lucky enough to win the young lady -- a pretty
thing she was, smart too.
To make a long story short there was no way I could afford her. And,
there was absolutely no way she would be dumb enough to settle for such a
life.
At the time I thought the local powers that be were very self serving
in their attitudes. An aside, yes, things are open enough in a southern
cotton farming community that I knew where the problem lay even at fourteen.
Now I hear that the national powers that be want to educate our
children in the same manner. This sounds an awful lot like England to me. A
few very wealthy people exercising a custodial function over the lower
classes while living very well themselves.
As I write this a line that I probably read in John Taylor Gatto keeps
running through my mind. It no doubt struck a very responsive chord in me as
I had so often observed it during my career in industry.
The idea is that the uneducated worker doesn't give the manager the
difficulties the educated worker does. I was an "efficiency expert" and
spent a lot of my career eliminating large numbers of low skill workers. Of
course this resulted in a higher proportion of highly skilled workers.
Relatively speaking, the lower skilled workers were more docile but
managing the highly skilled was like herding cats.
I think it was the authors of The Bell Curve that made the argument
that a conflict was going on in the upper ranks of American business. As our
economy became more and more sophisticated the old money has to hire more and
more highly educated very intelligent people to run those businesses for
them, the old money. As the HIVI become more indispensible they are
challenging the old money for more of the profits and the authority.
I wonder if Gatto is right and what we are seeing is an increasing
imposition of the Indian education for caste system??
Ron h.
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