A Patently Un-democratic Idea

Yesterday I wrote about Malala Yousafzai, the young girl who has stood up to the Taliban in Pakistan for her right, as a girl, to an education. In it, I used the expression "American Taliban." When most people use this descriptive slur, they're usually talking about Christian extremists, but I was using it to refer to those who would limit our children's access to education, not with guns, but with their deep pockets.

I don't often shop at Safeway, but around here they're the cheapest place to get preschool science stuff like corn starch, vinegar, and flour, so I find myself in their aisles once a month or so. When I get to the register with, say, 30 lbs. of baking soda, it's a conversation starter. I tell the cashier I'm a teacher, then they tell me about their kids (if they don't have their own kid, they tell me about a relative who's a teacher). It happens every time. Yesterday, the cashier told me her daughter was a senior.

"Alright," I said, "What are her plans?"

"Well, she's going to finish high school."

"No, I mean after high school."

"Oh . . . You mean college?"

"Or whatever."

"She wants to go to college, but how do people afford it?"

There was a time, in my lifetime, when just about everyone could afford in-state tuition. For instance, $850 per term covered my tuition, books, dorm, and food at the University of Oregon. Community college tuition alone is now more than that, even if you account for inflation. The only option for most people is to take out a loan, which will carry a 6.8 percent interest rate and many kids work for 10 years to finally pay it off. Over the past three decades or so, college tuitions have gone up more than three times faster than the cost of living and twice as much as even medical costs. I will repeat that, college tuitions have gone up twice as much as medical costs. This is not an accident. Somewhere around 1980, we adopted the stupid idea that universities needed to act more like businesses and pay for themselves, as if the only value of education in our society is a selfish economic one.

The cashier and I exchanged a few more words about how expensive college was going to be, then she said, "It's easier to get into the University of Washington if you're from out of state, because they want the higher tuition." This is a Safeway located just a few blocks from the UW campus. The guy behind me in line said, "It's true. I work there."

This is the problem with "for profit" schools: they exist first and foremost to earn a profit, not to educate people. Why do you think athletic departments are so big and powerful on college campuses? That's right, because they generate income. We are rapidly reaching a day, if we're not already there, that higher education is only an option for the upper economic classes.

Now I think that this sort of education ought to be a birthright for all Americans, much the way it is in most of the rest of the civilized world. But you see, the American Taliban, guys like billionaire activists like Charles and David Koch, don't really see the need for an educated population, because, you see, they don't seem to really care for the whole idea of democracy. They are instead libertarian meritocrats, who believe that an individual's worth in our society can and should be measured in dollars and cents. Period. If you can't afford to buy your education, then you don't deserve it. Democracy, as our founder knew, in order to work the best for us all, requires an educated population. In an Ayn Randian "paradise" in which our highest motivation is a greasy buck, education is just another commodity to be monetized. Limiting access to education hobbles your competition, and as far as I can tell, that's why they do it.

I don't doubt their sincerity, but make no mistake, these guys are ideologues whose faith cannot be shaken by any amount of real world evidence to the contrary, any more than the ideologues who make up the real Taliban.

So having now placed higher education out of reach for an ever-growing population, they've in recent years turned their attention on public schools, which in part has manifested itself in what I deride here as "corporate education reform." This includes, first demonizing our current public school system, using their deep pockets to create the myth that our schools are failing. The facts do not support this. Yes, the public schools that serve largely poor populations are not thriving, but when you take poverty out of the equation (a problem, not coincidentally, that has been on the rise in America during these past 30+ years of neoliberal economic policies) our schools perform at least on par with the best in the world. Then they propose unproven solutions designed to undermine traditional public eduction by privatizing it via such means as vouchers and charters. I know there are many of you who see nothing wrong with charters, who send you kids to an "excellent one," but believe me, you are an exception. Most charters are being run by for-profit corporations and in the spirit of "free market competition," they will ultimately use their deep pockets to wipe out the competition, leaving us with no choice but drill-and-kill sweat shops.

Lest you believe I've exaggerated, the Koch brothers make no secret of their desire to dismantle public education and turn it over to the so-called (and deeply misunderstood) "magic hand" of the market place.

I see a lot of brave teachers, parents, and children in this video. No, they weren't worried about getting a bullet put into their head and neck as Malala did in her fight to make sure a quality education was available to all. The American Taliban has stopped that one moral atrocity short of their Pakistani counterparts, although in the later's defense, they are at least in favor of a quality education for half the population, boys, while our ideologues are striving to make it available only to those who can afford it. That is a patently un-democratic idea.

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