An Educational Analysis
I wrote this for my English 200 composition class. And I really liked how it turned out. (My prof did too, only A I got on a paper) I also really wanted to get other feedback (not that anyone reads this). And mostly so I have a copy in case my computer panic attacks.
What the Government Wants, the Government Gets
In his 1961 inauguration speech President John F. Kenney requested that the American people “…ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.” Selflessness, sweet, sweet, selflessness. However, there is a danger in allowing a government, especially a democratic government, to take what it wants from its citizens. The real issue we see here is that the United States government has selfish wants and needs, and when it uses its citizens to achieve those needs there are serious consequences for the population.
W.D. Hamilton explains selfishness in animal herds in a way that I believe we can apply to governments. Hamilton shows that the survival instincts of most creatures are centered on their individual survival rather than that of the group (296). Similarly, a government’s goal is to survive. We see this in dictatorships where an individual in charge of the government wants to stay in power, even if it is not in the people’s best interests, and we also see this in democratic governments. For a government to survive for more than two hundred years, such as the United States government, it is necessary for the government to have a will to survive, which can result in the government using people to achieve its goals.
Now, it might sound strange for me to be talking about a government this way. And that is definitely fair. It is hard to accept that a government could be selfish when it doesn’t have a heartbeat or a brain that can allow it to exist outside of the individuals that run the basic functions. However, governments also outlast even the most important individuals that make them up. The traditions, laws, legislation and the bureaucracies that are the legacy of our past politicians have built a creature that is made to survive. A government is meant to last, and the laws that run that government, and the politicians that are building their own legacies are selfish in achieving that goal.
This is not okay.
Governments have a similar responsibility to their citizens as parents have to their children. It is the government’s job to protect the individual. It would not be okay for a parent to use their child to achieve their survival, to force them to be a doctor so that the parent will be able to have an easy life later on. It should not be okay for a government to use its citizens in a similar manner.
Let’s narrow the scope a bit and focus on a smaller portion of the population - students. Students are one of the most dynamic portions of the population in the United States. All students have to go through an education system, and the education system shapes a large part of who they become and what they will be capable of. There is a division of quality and style of education between the public sector and the private sector, because the private sector is self-funded and self-regulated while the public sector is funded and regulated by the government. The government uses its resources to shape the education of students in the public sector.
What could the government want with students though? Mark Slouka in his article Dehumanized notes that “What is taught, at any given time, in any culture is an expression of what that culture considers important” (33). Slouka goes on, “One might assume…Our primary function…is to teach people, not tasks; to participate in the complex and infinitely worthwhile labor on forming citizens, men and women capable of furthering what’s best about us and forestalling what’s worst. It is only secondarily - one might say incidentally-about producing workers” (33,34). However he goes on to amend his previous spiel. “I’m joking, of course. Education in America today is almost exclusively about the GDP. It’s about investing in our human capital… It’s about ensuring that the United States does not fall from its privileged perch in the global economy” (34). In other words, it’s about America selfishly using its citizens to protect itself.
Why does this matter? In the long run we’re still winning out, right? Although allowing the government to regulate the education process may limit what most students get out of schools, it can’t really be harming them, can it? After all, the government is just making sure that its citizens will be able to get a job once they are out of high school, maybe go to a state college or get some technical training. The government just wants to make sure that its citizens are able to find a job, marry, live comfortably in the middle class and have more children that they will send to public schools and who they will want to see get a job, marry and give them grandchildren. And so the cycle goes. That isn’t bad, is it?
Inherently I agree that there is nothing wrong with that picture. It is what most lives in America look like. And it isn’t a bad life. However, it isn’t what a Democratic government is meant to look like. When the government focuses education on math and science the result is a population with one-sided intelligence. With math and science at the forefront schools are looking past literacy and shooting for efficiency. If the population of the United States is going to have something intelligent to say about their political system, something informed to say, they need to learn more than calculus and physics.
And this is something that the government is failing at. Realistically speaking, the government doesn’t need the majority of the population to think, to question, and to make decisions. It needs the majority of the population to work. So, selfishly the government is focusing our education into a very narrow picture. It’s creating a population of workers, because it doesn’t need that many thinkers.
The government, after all, can just get its thinkers from private schools. In an interview with Brophy graduate Tyler Tacderan he explained that he believed that his private school was more focused on creating a well-educated student while public schools were “a lot more concerned about turning their students into essay writing and calculating machines.” Tacderan continued that the teachers at Brophy wanted their students to be well informed about current events and political issues. Students even attended a “Summit on human dignity” where they discussed social justice issues. Public schools, on the other hand, probably will not be allowed to read classic literature in class, not to mention have political debates. And when they do read the classics it’s a watered down version fit for the majority consumption. “Since it’s not just the material itself but what’s done with it that can lead to trouble” Slouka argues. “How we teach must be adjusted as well…thus we debate the legacy of the founders but tactfully sidestep their issues with Christianity; thus we teach Walden, if we teach it at all, as an ode to Nature and ignore its full-frontal assault on the tenets of capitalism” (39). When our population is half-educated, half-literate, and half-informed they are more or less incapable of being an active part of the political process. Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death argues that “To them [the founding fathers] mature citizenship was not conceivable without sophisticated literacy…” (62). I doubt that Jefferson would want our ill-informed populace to vote today.
What may be the worst of it is that the government isn’t even trying to hide the fact that they are trying to prepare the average citizen for the work force. A New York Times article analyzing President Obama’s attempt to rework education legislation explains the Obama administration would like to raise academic standards, reevaluate the identification system that identifies “reasonably managed schools as failing” and help a few thousand schools that are in the worst shape. Overall, “The administration's blueprint calls on states to adopt new academic standards that build toward having all students ready for college and career by the time they leave high school.” It would be good for everyone graduating from high school to be capable of getting a job, however in addition to that, the government needs to put forth effort to educate students with the outlook that someday they can be productive, informed, citizens.
The government is using students in the public school system as human capital; it is training them solely for the purpose of finding jobs, making money, and keeping the U.S.A. at the top of the world’s economy. However, people are more than objects, and looking at the citizens of our country just as human capital is a nauseating act. It is time that we get selfish, because John F. Kennedy is wrong, in this day and age it is about what you can get from the government, don’t let it be what the government can get out of you.
What the Government Wants, the Government Gets
In his 1961 inauguration speech President John F. Kenney requested that the American people “…ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.” Selflessness, sweet, sweet, selflessness. However, there is a danger in allowing a government, especially a democratic government, to take what it wants from its citizens. The real issue we see here is that the United States government has selfish wants and needs, and when it uses its citizens to achieve those needs there are serious consequences for the population.
W.D. Hamilton explains selfishness in animal herds in a way that I believe we can apply to governments. Hamilton shows that the survival instincts of most creatures are centered on their individual survival rather than that of the group (296). Similarly, a government’s goal is to survive. We see this in dictatorships where an individual in charge of the government wants to stay in power, even if it is not in the people’s best interests, and we also see this in democratic governments. For a government to survive for more than two hundred years, such as the United States government, it is necessary for the government to have a will to survive, which can result in the government using people to achieve its goals.
Now, it might sound strange for me to be talking about a government this way. And that is definitely fair. It is hard to accept that a government could be selfish when it doesn’t have a heartbeat or a brain that can allow it to exist outside of the individuals that run the basic functions. However, governments also outlast even the most important individuals that make them up. The traditions, laws, legislation and the bureaucracies that are the legacy of our past politicians have built a creature that is made to survive. A government is meant to last, and the laws that run that government, and the politicians that are building their own legacies are selfish in achieving that goal.
This is not okay.
Governments have a similar responsibility to their citizens as parents have to their children. It is the government’s job to protect the individual. It would not be okay for a parent to use their child to achieve their survival, to force them to be a doctor so that the parent will be able to have an easy life later on. It should not be okay for a government to use its citizens in a similar manner.
Let’s narrow the scope a bit and focus on a smaller portion of the population - students. Students are one of the most dynamic portions of the population in the United States. All students have to go through an education system, and the education system shapes a large part of who they become and what they will be capable of. There is a division of quality and style of education between the public sector and the private sector, because the private sector is self-funded and self-regulated while the public sector is funded and regulated by the government. The government uses its resources to shape the education of students in the public sector.
What could the government want with students though? Mark Slouka in his article Dehumanized notes that “What is taught, at any given time, in any culture is an expression of what that culture considers important” (33). Slouka goes on, “One might assume…Our primary function…is to teach people, not tasks; to participate in the complex and infinitely worthwhile labor on forming citizens, men and women capable of furthering what’s best about us and forestalling what’s worst. It is only secondarily - one might say incidentally-about producing workers” (33,34). However he goes on to amend his previous spiel. “I’m joking, of course. Education in America today is almost exclusively about the GDP. It’s about investing in our human capital… It’s about ensuring that the United States does not fall from its privileged perch in the global economy” (34). In other words, it’s about America selfishly using its citizens to protect itself.
Why does this matter? In the long run we’re still winning out, right? Although allowing the government to regulate the education process may limit what most students get out of schools, it can’t really be harming them, can it? After all, the government is just making sure that its citizens will be able to get a job once they are out of high school, maybe go to a state college or get some technical training. The government just wants to make sure that its citizens are able to find a job, marry, live comfortably in the middle class and have more children that they will send to public schools and who they will want to see get a job, marry and give them grandchildren. And so the cycle goes. That isn’t bad, is it?
Inherently I agree that there is nothing wrong with that picture. It is what most lives in America look like. And it isn’t a bad life. However, it isn’t what a Democratic government is meant to look like. When the government focuses education on math and science the result is a population with one-sided intelligence. With math and science at the forefront schools are looking past literacy and shooting for efficiency. If the population of the United States is going to have something intelligent to say about their political system, something informed to say, they need to learn more than calculus and physics.
And this is something that the government is failing at. Realistically speaking, the government doesn’t need the majority of the population to think, to question, and to make decisions. It needs the majority of the population to work. So, selfishly the government is focusing our education into a very narrow picture. It’s creating a population of workers, because it doesn’t need that many thinkers.
The government, after all, can just get its thinkers from private schools. In an interview with Brophy graduate Tyler Tacderan he explained that he believed that his private school was more focused on creating a well-educated student while public schools were “a lot more concerned about turning their students into essay writing and calculating machines.” Tacderan continued that the teachers at Brophy wanted their students to be well informed about current events and political issues. Students even attended a “Summit on human dignity” where they discussed social justice issues. Public schools, on the other hand, probably will not be allowed to read classic literature in class, not to mention have political debates. And when they do read the classics it’s a watered down version fit for the majority consumption. “Since it’s not just the material itself but what’s done with it that can lead to trouble” Slouka argues. “How we teach must be adjusted as well…thus we debate the legacy of the founders but tactfully sidestep their issues with Christianity; thus we teach Walden, if we teach it at all, as an ode to Nature and ignore its full-frontal assault on the tenets of capitalism” (39). When our population is half-educated, half-literate, and half-informed they are more or less incapable of being an active part of the political process. Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death argues that “To them [the founding fathers] mature citizenship was not conceivable without sophisticated literacy…” (62). I doubt that Jefferson would want our ill-informed populace to vote today.
What may be the worst of it is that the government isn’t even trying to hide the fact that they are trying to prepare the average citizen for the work force. A New York Times article analyzing President Obama’s attempt to rework education legislation explains the Obama administration would like to raise academic standards, reevaluate the identification system that identifies “reasonably managed schools as failing” and help a few thousand schools that are in the worst shape. Overall, “The administration's blueprint calls on states to adopt new academic standards that build toward having all students ready for college and career by the time they leave high school.” It would be good for everyone graduating from high school to be capable of getting a job, however in addition to that, the government needs to put forth effort to educate students with the outlook that someday they can be productive, informed, citizens.
The government is using students in the public school system as human capital; it is training them solely for the purpose of finding jobs, making money, and keeping the U.S.A. at the top of the world’s economy. However, people are more than objects, and looking at the citizens of our country just as human capital is a nauseating act. It is time that we get selfish, because John F. Kennedy is wrong, in this day and age it is about what you can get from the government, don’t let it be what the government can get out of you.