The President is talking about education today

Undoubtedly, the speech will be lively and compelling.

Frankly though, Humble Elias thinks that he ought to save his breath, the whole education set up in this country is "for the birds" as his silver haired old Irish mother would say.
These days education is purely about teaching kids to be job-seekers and job holder, consumers in a modern market economy. Not citizens of a great democracy or even voters, they are being taught to be consumers in the final analysis.
Well today they are consumers, tomorrow they will be mere commodities.
Hell today's public school pupil is taught nothing of civics and the intricacies of citizenship, there is no time for such frippery not with five or six standardized tests overwhelming the process between Middle School and the 12th grade.
Shit the metrics we are applying to teachers have elevated our state legislatures to mighty colleges of pedagogues and debased teaching to the runaround that attends on being a used car salesperson.
The problem with education in this country is simple we are using it as a sort of "cowards way out" in terms of addressing income disparity. Instead of addressing the declining purchasing power of the middle class and the vanishing ranks of the working class, we are offering their offspring a chance at a better education and thus a better job.
And of course, with nothing else on offer, all and sundry take this gold brick, indeed what else can they do?
Better education isn't the answer to stagnant wages, it is routinely pimped as being just that, by politicians of all parties and ideological persuasions.
I'm standing athwart this mishaugas and crying "HALT".
Whatever else our expectations may be about education in general, lets stop deluding ourselves that it is somehow gonna fix the real bottom line in this country.
Scholarship, educational achievement and yes a sense of citizenship are all fine things, but today's educational priorities are about none of that.
And that for real has to change, unless we all wanna become shrinkwrapped goods up on some metaphoric shelf somewhere.
Granted this is a radical view, so lets start with something simple like a mere one hour a week devoted to teaching civics in the high schools...and no Gawd-Damned state mandated TEST to measure whether the kiddies have reaching the top percentile in civic mindedness either!