The Dumbing Down of America: Part I of II
By Manuel Valenzuela, Contributing Editor AxisofLogic.com
Jun 17, 2004, 13:17
See also….Part I: The Dumbing Down of America
Made Ignorant to a World Beyond our Borders
American education makes no attempt to expose the wonders of a world existing beyond its borders to its children. The
outside world and its plethora of diverse people are hardly mentioned, easily summarized in brief mentions of world
history. The ignorance of cultures, religions, ethnicities, nationalities and beliefs that has ensued has made America a
nation neither curious to a grand spectrum of peoples nor understanding to the vast complexities of an ever-changing
world. Failing to understand what exists beyond our oceans, American children, through the damaging effects of the
nation’s dilapidated educational system, become isolated from the world community and the fraternity of peoples.
It is understanding the world and becoming part of it that prevents the Iraq’s and Vietnam’s of history from ever
arising. It is knowledge of a world and its people that creates peace and good-will. Ignorance, on the other hand,
fosters only exploitation, indifference and arrogance. Iraq today is the result of this failure in American education.
Abu Ghraib and its war crimes is the result of a system that isolates, indoctrinates and makes ignorant to the lives and
realities of six billion people whose world is larger than that of our own borders. The debacle in Iraq is a
manifestation of American ignorance to a world and its diverse peoples; Iraq’s daily explosions are testament to its
failure to understand the people it is occupying and the anger emanating from the arrogance and ignorance of its
soldiers.
The failure of American education to teach about a world existing beyond the confines of its own grandeur is exemplified
today by an Iraq that is the catalyst to a most dangerous era in American history. Societies that are ignorant to the
greater world around them suffer a dereliction of humanity and the far reaching implications their actions tend to
unsettle. From the actions of ignorance rise the reactions of those ignored.
America’s failure to educate its children to a world beyond its shores, in a world coming closer together is a travesty,
and an error, especially for an Empire whose grip is all-encompassing, its power circulating around the globe. A leader
of nations and an Empire such as America must learn and understand the world it dominates and the people it controls.
For it to govern wisely its citizens must be brought into the sphere of a world community that is both heterogeneous and
aware of the dangers the Pax Americana is capable of releasing. For it to avoid the wrath seen today its ambassadors and
representatives must be educated to the songs of the world and the tunes of human civilization.
In order to prevent the never-before seen levels of hatred, animosity and anger directed at the United States and the
blowback that is now being manifested the American education system must open itself up to the outside world. If it
remains isolationist and ignorant, preferring to enclose itself in the bubble it continues to lock itself into, the
karma we are witnessing will be but the tip of the iceberg. Ignorance leading to exploitation can only go so far; a
world beyond our borders exists, and must be taught, learned and understood.
For if the Empire’s people fail to grasp the lands and peoples beyond their borders, preferring instead to live in the
comfort of their own existence and the ignorance of their upbringing a world that was never known will be once more
forgotten, and the blowback birthed by our ancestors will be made that much more difficult to comprehend.
Separate and Unequal
The purposeful inequality inherent in American education is created by design, fostered by an elite that manipulates in
society a separation between rich and working class. It is abundantly clear that education systems in America are
nowhere near to being equal. On the contrary, their inequality stems from a government and the elite that control it
that seek to maintain the status quo of preventing millions of children from ever advancing beyond the caste they are
born into. Without opportunity, ability is wasted and those capable of threatening the power structure as it exists at
present are left to rot in the cesspool created by those social engineers sealing the destiny of millions of Americans.
Maintaining separate and unequal education systems assures the elite, government and corporations of millions of
exploitable slaves that through no fault of their own are condemned to a life stuck in the working class, living off low
wages, surviving on a day to day basis, uneducated and ignorant to the exploitation they are subjected to. The millions
that fate has placed in corrosive school districts starving for pennies from the government are subjected to an
education that is shameful at best and a crime against humanity at worst. Unequal distribution of tax schemes makes it
impossible for children born into poor neighborhoods from ever getting the education the few elite children of privilege
are guaranteed.
With rotting school districts that cannot afford good teachers, books, buildings, administrators and a semblance of hope
children receive substandard education levels that forever alter their ability to learn and advance in society. When
this is compounded year after year the ramifications are severe, serving to quash all ability and potential opportunity.
It is this level of education most American children, both urban and rural, are subjected to, forced to endure the worst
inequality of teaching found in the developed world.
When the elite that run the nation are deciding futures, however, this is to be expected. Their corporations need
low-class workers; their armies need soldiers; their government needs slaves. By maintaining separate and unequal
education systems, in essence two completely different systems, one reserved for privilege, the other for future serfs,
the elite are assured of control, exploitation, power and growing wealth, mostly at the hands of the slaves they have
created. The masses, having been trained from birth to become the slaves of the nation’s capitalists, are subjected to
years of subservient education mechanisms that encourage and indeed guide us toward exploitation. The dreams and hopes
of childhood are thus eviscerated as the reality of the environment and education we are born into collides with once
creative talents and utopian goals.
Born into environments offering the worst in American education creates in the masses ignorance to the plight our
government is subjecting us to. We are made unaware and become indifferent to the massive crime being perpetrated by
government officials who help foster separate and unequal education and even encourage it by their unwillingness to make
right what has been made wrong. The continued apathy of our government to the vastly different levels of education is
proof that it is complicit in the manufacturing of an entire class of slaves produced to be exploited by the powerful
few. To continue a system that is so dastardly in its scope and so damaging to millions is to acknowledge the purposeful
disregard our government has in alleviating a reality that in this nation at least does not need to exist. It is
shameful, it is wrong, it is a crime.
An assembly line of slaves has been created, socially engineered through years of manipulations and exploitations,
breeding ignorance, robbing opportunity, erasing talent and harvesting entire generations of worker bees. For America
the beautiful needs slaves to work and enrich the elite, it needs soldiers to wage war in the name of capitalism, it
needs ignorance to continue its sovereignty and castes from which to maintain the balance that has kept those in power
at the top for generations.
Separate and unequal, the secret ingredients to the American juggernaut; separate and unequal, the oil that assures the
mighty engine of capitalism from ever corroding and malfunctioning. Through the backs of the masses the elite survive;
through the exploitation of the many the few thrive.
Leaving all Working and Middle Class Children Behind
The dumbing down of America continues its injurious path through the policies of George Bush, who is quietly decimating
the talents and energies of the nation’s youth. Wishing all children to become the bumbling idiot that characterizes his
existence, his policies have washed away what remained of viable education. The dumbing down of America has only picked
up its pace as children today are being deprived of the tools necessary to think for themselves. Forced by the
government to teach to standardized tests, school districts are erasing the arts and other important classes from
curriculum. Instead, teachers are being forced to prepare their students to passing the test that determines financial
reward or punishment.
This form of education is leveling critical thinking, analytical skills and free-thinking minds. It is destroying
education as we know it, along with the futures of millions of children who are being made automatons lacking a mind to
question the world around them. This sinister mechanism is purposefully being implemented to dumb down American
children. It is yet another tool those in power are using to create a nation devoid of free thought.
Teaching to the test entails sacrificing all subject matter not included in the test itself. As a result, vital tools
such as music, art, languages, social sciences, philosophy, health and other liberal arts are being ignored, thrown away
into dark closets of indifference. Worthy teachers now have their hands tied down, unable to bring out the blossoms of
talent from their students. Instead, they must partake in the manipulation of America’s children, becoming the
instructors to a new generation of students those in power want desperately to transform into unthinking sentinels
easily manipulated and controlled.
America’s teachers, already underpaid and under funded, battling a system eager to destroy youth, must now see the seeds
they sow become homogenous crops succumbing to ignorance, eroding all semblance of individuality and wasting away once
fruitful and talented lives. All children are being left behind, and American society will pay the ultimate and most
severe price.
Fostering Ignorance, Creating Sheep, Cementing Decline
Children are brainwashed at a very early age to follow the dictates of the state, to become the obedient drones the
state needs in order to survive. Curriculum programs prevent the free-thinking mind from ever emerging even as such
paramount subject matter such as art, foreign language, music and philosophy are being eliminated or never implemented.
It is at a very early age when these classes can make a such a vital difference in children, in essence granting an
enormous head start towards a long lasting, happy life. It is at early youth that the human brain absorbs everything
that is taught, it is at this stage in development when positive and all-inclusive education bears fruit. Yet American
children, living in the wealthiest nation on the planet, are being denied the essential tools needed for human progress
to move forward, individuals to prosper and for a nation to thrive.
Becoming an exercise in futility, education has become a weapon to militarize millions of children to the tune of the
government, robbing them of the free-thinking and analytical mind whose questioning of government and individual thought
the elite want eliminated. In today’s America, no child must be allowed to think or understand what is being done to
them and the society they inhabit. Every child being taught must march in lock-step with millions more, becoming benign
drones made ignorant to a process robbing them of their existence, neither challenging those in power or absorbing the
ingredients necessary to develop a mind that may one day become the ultimate weapon for freedom and salvation.
As in all state systems, in order to have subservient citizens, the young must be programmed early on to the dictates of
those in power. In America, these entities are the elite capitalists that have transformed democracy into corporatism.
Entire generations of people have become an enormous herd of sheep, unaware of the slavery that grips them and the
exploitation that befalls every waking hour. The corporatist state has accomplished the ignorance of its citizens, now
ruling unobstructed and unaccountable, free to unleash wave after wave of crimes, both upon those it rules and those it
conquers.
The majority of the American people now fail to question authority, debate policy, seek accountability or demand
answers. Indifferent we have become to the dangerous ways of our government or to our own plight. Every generation has
seen its ability to understand, question and analyze dwindle with each subsequent decade that passes. Soon the day will
arrive when complete drones our descendants become, completely subservient to the will of the rulers, shackled in chains
of ignorance, transformed into exploitable energies deficient of free-thinking minds.
The only vestige of freedom left is that of the mind, a realm never before touched by the claws of the state and the
powerful. Yet this freedom is disappearing, for the state has found a way to annihilate a freedom once thought
untouchable. Free-thought is fading fast from an American psyche that once espoused the belief in the power of the
individual. In its wake lie hundreds of millions of energies whose minds have been captured in a war we failed to
realize we were being subjected to. Free-thinking minds are being made extinct, suffering from years of social
engineering and artificial conditioning.
More and more we are failing to understand what is being done to us and our children. With each passing day the
corporate Leviathan absorbs more of our collective brain, inculcating us with garbage, conditioning us to its version of
what American society should be. The wretched symptoms of capitalism are devouring our very existence, making us the
sheeple the system feeds off of. We are being herded to the slaughterhouse, ready to be gutted and mass produced, sold
to the hungry wolves and vultures concomitantly ready to feast off our once vibrant energies.
Tell the Children the Truth
The time has come to tell the children the truth. The time has come to tell them that most are condemned to castes,
unable to escape, destined to be exploited, destined for modern man’s version of slavery. The time has come to tell the
children of privilege that they are being trained to become the exploiters of the masses, becoming condoners of
subservience, inequality, injustice, corruption and thievery.
We must awaken from this lethargy catapulting us into a future missing freedom and individuality, happiness and a worthy
existence. The dumbing down of America cannot be allowed to continue, for if it does, George Orwell’s prophetic vision
will become George Bush’s sinister reality. It is time to tell the children the truth. It is time to liberate ourselves
from a system that is making us all automatons. Freedom of thought, freedom of mind and freedom to live are our goals.
The elimination of the virus inflicting ignorance and enslavement upon us and our children should be our mission.
The time to retake the American mind is upon us, and this starts with telling our children the truth of what our
indifference, subservience and inability to act is condemning them to. For knowledge is power, the kryptonite that
weakens the energy leading us to nothingness. They know this, which is why the dumbing down of America is taking place.
Knowledge is a threat to their existence and continued control, which is why they want it destroyed. Education is
liberation, something they want desperately to avoid. An enlightened populace is their nightmare; an ignorant citizenry
their wet dream.
It is through the awakening of the masses that mountains are moved and canyons crossed. It is through the slumber of the
masses that evil awakens. It is through our collective energy that those in power have no future and no place left to
hide. The future of America is in our hands: either the dumbing down continues or the awakening commences.
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© Copyright 2004 by AxisofLogic.com
Manuel Valenzuela, 29, is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to
be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing editor. Mr.
Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net
Read Other Articles By Manuel Valenzuela: Manuel Valenzuela Archive