Public schools created to develop human capital to be invested in building a better world are under attack. The school’s goal of empowering citizens to manage their own affairs, conflicts with aims of other power centers. Political machines dedicated  to preserving their own power willingly sacrifice the public interest. Some western religions view humans so flawed as to be unworthy of representative government. They would prefer a society dominated by a moral majority organized by earthly representatives of the divine, a theocracy. With cynical ideas about human capacity and dignity the organizers of our economy view political rights as concessions extorted by people during national emergencies. With today’s professional army under the control of the executive branch, only corporate rights need to be respected. Internationally, the Department of State will defend corporate rights to ensure our economic dominance no matter the situation existing when those rights were obtained. Domestically, the public school’s emphasis on human rights interferes with the exercise of corporate rights so they must be drowned in Norquist’s bathtub along with other governmental agencies.

Public schools are being attacked by promoting private alternatives, by starving the schools of resources, by overtaxing them with responsibility to correct societal problems, by dramatizing the resultant inevitable failures, by converting them to trade schools (STEM) and by bullying them with their testing. These persistent low level attacks gradually undermine the schools making teaching an unattractive profession accelerating the decline.

We must see that local school boards are manned by people committed to the full development of the students. National political parties foster the debatable idea that continual economic growth is desirable and possible. Supporting our schools allows the debate to continue. Humanists believe that a society should celebrate the character of its citizenry as more important than the sophistication of its technological toys, that human capital is more valuable than human resources.

 

John E. Gibson

Owatonna