I like reading about history and I used to read everything I could about the Second World War. One day I read an article about the Manhattan Project and how the United States, despite all its economic power, was far behind in the atomic race precisely because it lacked “brains” and had to import scientists and machinery from Europe. The author of the article said that the American authorities no longer wanted to take risks and started investing in education and ways to attract students to science. Then they started investing in science fairs and similar events. Seeing all that is happening in the United States, it gives the impression that they are shooting themselves in the foot.
My frustration with the US is that it’s been very well understood that the country is having a shortage of skilled labor but also certain professions that involve a lot of intensive schooling. I can’t speak for other states, but looking at what schools here in TX are really spending money on is gigantic football stadiums. For high schools.
Instead of investing in other things that will improve creative and intellectual drive they invest in the one thing that actively reduces brain cells.
Very true… but we’re here in part because people became convinced that you don’t need the humanities, so it was quite fashionable to attack those fields, and of course, the anti-intellectualism led to a devaluing of the sciences, too, except where it can benefit corporations. Universities have already suffered from cutting of federal funding, with private industry and non-profits often filling in the gaps. Writing grants is a major part of being a professor at a Research university. There is much more money for the sciences than for the humanities, from either public or private sources.
This is something I would expect from my country, except that the authorities don’t even invest in sports, let alone in good schools…
In the last government they invented a so-called civic-military school, a common school, but managed by military personnel and with an emphasis on discipline and hierarchy. Of course the parents loved the idea of having their children tamed, but in the end, the result was mediocre.
The real military schools (which are not like the American military academies) in Brazil have high quality teaching, but their cost is much, much higher than traditional schools.
Instead of increasing investment in education, they preferred to increase discipline.
The Pledge of Allegiance is already required in Alabama public schools; now the legislature wants to require a “Judeo-Christian” prayer as well.
Christofascist fuckheads.
Oh this makes me wish I were a teacher there, there are just so many delicious possibilities for malicious compliance.
Only a ginger can call another ginger “ginger”.
But more seriously, they’re trying to eliminate all action against discrimination, and (because fascists live in backwards land) they’re doing it saying that anti-discrimination efforts are discriminatory. And by “eliminate”, I mean not just to stop doing it, but to scrub all information about it, all research, all documentation, all history. They’re working on not just undoing but unexisting the Disability Rights movement, the LGBTQI+ rights movement, the Civil Rights movement, and the Women’s Liberation movement.
They are re-imposing segregation, on the basis that desegregation is racist. They are removing women from the workplace and public participation on the basis that gender equity is sexist. They’re going to remove all accommodations for disabled people because it’s impractical and just plain common sense.
They’re making exclusion, humiliation, and shame core to public policy.
I’m pretty sure they don’t mean to include prejudice against redheads and the left-handed in that, but they’re not going to weep about it.
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Towards the end they discuss the role of University presidents and how they used to be expected to speak out in favor of the university being a key institution of democracy, and how now, they’re expected to talk about self-preservation… honestly, the post-great recession put them in that position. It probably go deeper than that, too. The far right has been attacking “woke” universities for a while, and as the funding for colleges has dried up and/or been privatized, they’ve already been trained to think of themselves as acting like a university is a business. I think this probably cuts across the “private-public” distinctions, as the major private unis need to think about their endowments and growing it, while public universities, are seeing the need to push up tuition costs at a time when fewer students can afford to pay it (forcing them to go deep into debt just to get a BA). That led to freezes on new lines for tenured profs, in favor of more adjuncts or more grad students teaching. Over worked adjuncts or inexperienced grad students are less able to give students the education they deserve. So, this made colleges and universities easy pickings for this movement to come along and gut them more easily.