College Isn't as Left-Wing as It Seems....
I'm in a class called Operational Decision Making (It should actually be called "Towing the Corporate Line"), and I damn near threw my textbook against the wall today. Why? Because if the professor isn't making some wisecrack about Venezuela or Communism, some fresh-faced kid is doing it for him. Today, after the professor whined about how California has made it impossible to do business because...you know, taxes, said little shit (He probably isn't older than his early 20s, which likely means the post-9/11, post-Soviet world is all he knows) chimes in with the usual "Yeah, Socialist Policy."
At that point, I yelled "Give me a break. Really?" to which this kid replies "I have evidence." So after telling him he no doubt gets it from whatever the pundits tell him, I asked him a question: Do the workers in California control the means of production? The obvious answer is no, but in a class where towing the corporate line is literally everything, that doesn't matter.
After all, it's common practice for dominant industry in an area to set up regulations and tax code as barriers to entry for new businesses, poach jobs from other areas, and even parley tax incentives to pillage other areas they wish to rape. They wouldn't get anywhere otherwise.
Honestly, the only class I'm in that doesn't talk about Towing the Corporate line (Intro to Info Tech Management does the same) is Intro to C++. Hell, any class where I was either programming, coding, working with graphic design or the like because there's no towing the line involved (usually).
It seems this kind of thing is inescapable. Hell, when I was going through a public speaking class in '08, two kids literally gave evangelical sermons, one on creationism and the other..well, let's just say he was a military kid who went to Iraq and decided to deliver a fire-and-brimstone sermon to the class. I literally wanted to bolt in both cases. How I got through them I'll never guess, but being in my mid thirties I find myself a lot less tolerant of this kind of reactionary bullshit. How little things change...or perhaps they got worse.
At least I got to introduce the class to Spock's Beard and their best song, The Great Nothing. The opening riff is pretty unique. It was actually a segue I used in my speech on the evolution of the guitar. Sure, I was god awful at giving said speech but I'd like to think I researched pretty well.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8Zc7TJa1zU]
Come to think of it, The Great Nothing is what this whole thing feels like. Any attempt to find any measure of what the capitalist pigs refer to as success is a moot point.
Helen Keller was right. Education isn't the place to go for new ideas.
Comments
but ... but ...
everyone knows those college professors are all a bunch of commies!
i have no idea how i would have reacted in a similar situation, but i'm sure that, like you, i would not have been able to hold my tongue. "I have evidence." Oh, brother. Yeah? Well I have a moral compass, bub. Let's see where your evidence lines up on that.
PS:
Just so you can say you got something out of the experience, I will edify you with the knowledge that the expression is "TOE the line" -- it refers, not as one might imagine, to hauling a line with a load at the end, perhaps in concert with a bunch of other schmucks yoked into servitude, but to standing in a nice neat row with a bunch of other schmucks, with your toes at the line where you've been told to stand. (Oh, and parLAY, not parLEY.)
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
If you aren't
getting many responses, Aspie, I think it's because of Trump's directive to declassify Russiagate documents and the sending of new missiles to Ukraine in response, happening at the time you posted this, but I think you're raising a very important problem. I've seen false information conveyed to high school students by their teachers concerning American history. I saw it during the 1980s, and I think it was part of a concerted disinformation campaign, which ultimately led to the mess we're in now.
Not just American history, but world history as well.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Capitalist education
is a place where ideas go to die, where everything is in service to an economic fairy tale. I think there is a war between capitalism and science. Mainly because science is about to declare capitalism a terminal disease.
No doubt about it.
And the plebs will defend capitalism to the death, as they always have.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
I really miss school some days
and have thought about going back just to go. But I had already read about how college is not much more than a job skills training program anymore and you show that here to be true. I would not be able to keep my mouth shut when some prof starts spewing Capitalist fairy tales so its best just not to make that attempt. Hang in there.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
You might like
to read an OOP book from the late 60s named Up the Organization. It is short, funny and easy to read and is the best primer on corporate leadership I have ever seen.
Mary Bennett
Don't even get me started on education ...
Dewey, a huge proponent of democracy and cooperative learning, said 100 years ago that we were merely training drones to only work in factories in order to serve their corporate masters ...
I showed a video in an education class, What if students controlled their own learning? | Peter Hutton, about a school in Australia where students sit on the school board, design the curriculum, and all kinds of other great stuff. The Professor asked if that could be done here. I shook my head, and bit my tongue. Obviously our corporate masters don't want students learning independence and democracy and critical thinking ... our corporate masters want well-trained drones.
I sent this to my mother-in-law who works in the school system.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMxqEkg3wQ0]
This made my day. Thanks.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
It brings tears to my eyes every time I watch it ...
... tears of joy for TC students, and tears of sadness for my wasted youth and for the violent and oppressive ordeal that US students must unnecessarily endure every day in America.