If he were around today he'd be on book tours and holding motivational seminars.

Just goes to show that there are no new issues and problems under the sun, Horatio, they've all been faced by other people at other times. My father was a big Marcus Aurelius fan.

Speaking of Marcus Aurelius, and how the concept of public education today revolves around STEM and vocational training to the detriment of the liberal arts and history, philosophy and the social sciences, (weren't we talking about that?) I always marvel that my father was from a small upstate New York City whose public high school taught Greek and Latin and sent their choir on a tour of Wales and somehow inculcated my father with every piece of classical music ever composed in music appreciation classes.

And I think that education was commonplace at the time for the people of that generation who went on to fight World War II and be part of the transformation of America from it's agrarian past to the industrialized future. One of the reasons they may have performed collectively so well (relatively) is that they were so well grounded in history and literature of the generations and societies that had gone before them. When a piece of music came on the radio in the morning, my father always demanded that my brother and I identity it, and of course, nine times out of ten we couldn't, and he would look at us sadly and say, "Philistines! Don't they teach you anything anymore?" before turning back to his newspaper.

and it's deliberate.

Was discussing this a bit with CStS in her OT yesterday http://www.caucus99percent.com/comment/224312#comment-224312

I think there are 3 different components to why true socialist progressivism (or whatever we're calling it, but you get the point) never seems to get any real traction.

You have to begin with our education system, which is where the two most detrimental components of propaganda are instilled in our young people (and us when we were there). American Exceptionalism and the American Dream are inculcated into us from the moment we're all told to "put your right hand over your heart and repeat after me: I Pledge Allegiance..." When you really think about it, that's some kind of cultish propaganda that should make the Russians salivate. Young minds surrounded by all this American worship stuff, so powerful, that a kid has trouble separating it from being perceived as a deity (which is the intention).

Which is why after years and years of this subtle brainwashing and overt propaganda it is so difficult to get otherwise thinking and caring people to publicly question their government and the lifestyle they are leading and feel comfortable about the healthiness of dissent. The Excpetionalism of the country and the relentless striving to achieve material comfort have been so conditioned into their psyche that it's been accepted as having always been there. Hard to get folks, who have developed such loyalty to that system, to then question it.

From there we're set up up, clearly, not to be truly educated, or learn critical thinking or engage in an open flow of exchanging ideas, but as George Carlin says so brilliantly, to be put into "indoctrination centers" where a "child has been sent to be stripped of his individuality and turned into an obedient, soul-dead conformist member of the American consumer culture.” He, by the way, was kicked out of his school and placed into a higher education type school, where like Noam Chomsky, there was no grading system. Two of the finest minds we've ever had - no grades. Add to that, two of the other finest minds the country has produced, Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, neither of whom went past junior high school, and there is a case to be made for self-education through reading and associating/interacting with minds that challenge and inspire rather than the suffocating mindlessness of modern public school education that puts a premium on obedience and conformity rather than ideas and dissent.

The rote standardized testing, the watered-down and revisionist history making the white European genocidal conquerers into heroes of super powers and the heavy-handed insistence on a schedule that doesn't allow much for kids to be kids, basically chained to their desks, seems so obviously antithetical to what it means to be a child with boundless curiosity and interest. Been reading Herbert Spencer and have become aware of the Scandinavian public school systems (in fact most of Europe, friends in Switzerland have told us similarly, as well as a moving scene in Micheal Moor's latest film "Where To Invade Next," in which he shows a French school's lunch program) both of which value the child having tactile interaction with the lessons they are receiving, with the latter allowing for 15 minutes between class so that the kids can go outside and play and expend all of that natural energy or do things kids normally do (Morgan Spurlock did a segment for his CNN series).

This subject has always interested me greatly. I've noticed the gradual displacement of the arts from public schools as the music and art programs get cut, while there's an unnatural push to groom students for marketing and business-related jobs. In colleges it's even worse. Chris Hedges's Death of the Liberal Class is a must-read in this regard.

As a middle-aged first time parent I have grave misgivings about putting my boy in a few years into such a degraded school system.

One could make the argument that the American public school system has all the hallmarks of a breeding zone for fascism.

But never seem to have enough time, with Mr. Mom duties being juggled along with playing gigs at night.

Thanks for the kind word, brother. Big fan of your wide-ranging intellect and command of subjects. So many intelligent and good-hearted folks here; it's like the best of TOP distilled down to its finest essence. Edifying, inspiring and hopeful, this place.