Is George Carlin Correct To Be Soooo Cynical About American Education???

In one of his last concerts, George Carlin presented a bleak vision of American education: “It will never, ever, ever be fixed. It won’t get any better. Don’t look for it....The owners of this country don’t want that... The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all important decisions. They own you. They own everything... They own all the big media companies. So they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.... They want more for themselves, and less for everybody else.... They don’t want well informed, well educated people... They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork...”

Carlin’s cynicism is certainly depressing, but is it correct? When I write about education, I’m always assuming that if only we are clever enough, we can figure out how to make things better. So here are three questions:

1) How true is Carlin’s cynical take on education and the "real owners"?

2) Ever since John Dewey, the top educators try to use the schools to create cooperative little socialists. So I see how bad education helps the Left... But wouldn’t the “real owners” be BETTER OFF if our citizens were smarter so the economy and our place in the world would be that much more secure? Most countries would think like this.

3) Carlin regards the media, the so-called liberal media, as foot soldiers for the "real owners." When I watch the newspaper in Norfolk not cover education, I see Carlin fulfilled right in front of me. But how do these liberal editors see their work? Do they know they have been co-opted?

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Link to Carlin YouTube video where I got the quotes (length: 3:14)-- [link to www.youtube.com]

For equal cynicism but also answers, see "38: Saving Public Schools" -- [link to www.improve-education.org]

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