I Find This Article By Chris Hedges Amazing

[Rakhmetov]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081208_hedges_best_brightest/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardized_test#Disadvantages_and_criticism

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ralph_nader_was_right_about_barack_obama_20100301/

[RadioRaheem84]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...est_brightest/ (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081208_hedges_best_brightest/)

I've been saying this for years! I attended a top school and Chris Hedges is right on the money! This is exactly how it was when I attended and there was little room for alternative ideas. All I learned was how to master professional contacts, manipulate people to get to the next level and bullshit my way through academia.

All these schools are breeding are arrogant wannabe policy wonks, future bond traders, and technocrats. Everyone reads the Economist and other "social development alternative" rags that are friendly to big capital. All Physics majors talk about is what private equity firm they want to join when they get out. How they would rather be quants than nuclear physicists.

It's not like much has changed. I mean these college campuses were always breeding grounds for the next generation of future leaders but there was at least some area for alternative thought. Now there really isn't. It's sad and also dangerous considering the arrogance in which this new generation exhibits toward alternative ideas. They're instructed to distrust them all.

Sometimes I wish I would've just listened to my friends and attended UT-Austin.

[Rakhmetov]

What univ. did you end up attending?

[Homo Songun]

I don't find it amazing since I've known this myself, but I agree with it. I've organized at both working class JCs and top tier Ivies, and the difference is like night and day. Even though many students at the JC level are hungry to "make it" by matriculating to a "good school", and many more are just too tired from work and kids to engage with "great ideas" or whatnot, the spirit of critical inquiry and plain old empathy with the world at large that is to be found at "good" schools is a minute fraction of that of "lesser" schools. This is despite the plague of ponderous "critical theory" pap that infests the minds of typical "left wing" humanities types at big schools.

I'm reminded of Chomsky's notion (right or wrong) that under bourgeois democracy, the ruling elite has to only control what he calls the "opinion makers", in other words, the 15% or so of the population destined to be the managerial elite that Chris Hedges is talking about.

Its funny how many so-called communist grad students imagine that they can be the next Zizek or Zinn. That world is gone.

[RadioRaheem84]

What univ. did you end up attending?

I really do not like to give away too much info on an unsecured site but I'll just say, "go big green". That's about it.

[RadioRaheem84]

I'm reminded of Chomsky's notion (right or wrong) that under bourgeois democracy, the ruling elite has to only control what he calls the "opinion makers", in other words, the 15% or so of the population destined to be the managerial elite that Chris Hedges is talking about.

Well I have always insisted that we should educate the masses (I am still educating myself) but debate the elites. I grew tired and weary being an internet warrior arguing on youtube with people who clearly didn't know their left from their right. Websites like revleft, especially the OI forum have really helped to steer me away from debating on other websites. It is best to learn and share ideas with each other, help those who are interested in Marxist thought, practice debate in the OI forum, and use the knowledge learned against the establishment.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I haven't finished reading all of it, but I think the observations are totally right on. I also think it's a planned response to student radicalism of the 1960s and 70s. The some in the ruling class believe it was education (and radical teachers) that led to the student revolts and they have put a lot of effort into making sure that radicalism doesn't take root on campuses again. The UC Berkeley student Republicans produce a glossy newsletter just for that campus and it is paid for by a single wealthy doner who never went to UC Berkley and lives in Texas. David Horowitz and other right-wingers (and O'Reiley and Beck too) target left-wing teachers and try and intimidate other teachers who dare to hold views counter to right-wing orthodox views of American history.

On a systematic level, the ruling class has decided that a well educated workforce is no longer the priority it was after WWII. So now and then I run into people who were UC Berkeley or UCLA students in the 1960s who say they paid maybe $100 a year to attend school (I heard $24 a semester from someone and, for a second, I thought I was going to beat the shit out of them in an irrational fit of rage). And that was at a time when you could still get a manufacturing job and own a nice home and so on without a degree. Now working class students go to school, work, and go into huge amounts of debt. This means they have something to loose if they are not competing and maneuvering and just focused on grades and requirements rather than learning for the sake of knowledge and understanding and critical thinking.

However, I'm a little skeptical of the premise that this style of education led to problems in the US. First of all, most of the people running the pentagon and banks and so on were educated in the 1960s-70s before these structural changes took place in education! Elites are always arrogant, so I don't think it has much to do with being told in college that they are the best... the community college I go to in Oakland also tells students this. I think this is just a case of expensive colleges trying to justify and sell their expensiveness. Finally, education, arrogance, and so on might make Pentagon leaders have more hubris, might make banks more aloof, but these are not the determining factors for why imperialism and exploitation exist, it's all part of the system and not kind of education system can change the nature of capitalism (unless the education system does produce a generation of radicals who help organize a revolution to replace this system:D).

[Homo Songun]

Please elaborate on your final paragraph. I'm not sure I understand what you are saying.

[RadioRaheem84]

But Jimmie, I think that Hedges is talking about the generation that experienced these structural changes. That is why he says Obama is a product of this system. The big schools churn out these types more and more by the dozen. I remember being in school while the Obama campaign was going on and to be critical of Obama was like being critical of the entire system I was attending. It was because Obama represented all that was "good" about the system.

The best and brightest minds are constantly being snatched up by Wall St. and consulting groups to break up companies, strip them of their assets, and beat back the working class.

[Salyut]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081110_america_the_illiterate/


There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.

The only real criticism of Hedges that I have is that he calls himself a socialist, but he backs Nader and McKinney. I get the impression that he is one, but I don't know why he hasn't thrown in with an actual socialist party. :confused:

[RadioRaheem84]

Nah, he is more of a social democrat who thinks that he is a socialist.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Nah, he is more of a social democrat who thinks that he is a socialist.

I would have to disagree. He's really educated in Marxism & has spoken very highly of the end of capitalism. That's not someone I would consider a social democrat.

[Salyut]

I would have to disagree. He's really educated in Marxism & has spoken very highly of the end of capitalism. That's not someone I would consider a social democrat.

He doesn't believe that a revolution (or a mass uprising) is possible under the current conditions. Essentially at this point all that anyone can do is survive the coming implosion/tide of violence/happyfuntime, or thats the impression I got from this article. (https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/88/chris-hedges.html)

He argues against reformism, so I don't think he can be classified as a social democrat. If he came out and supported the *insertamericanleftpartyhere* he'd be one hell of a recruiting asset.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Please elaborate on your final paragraph. I'm not sure I understand what you are saying.

Neither am I :D

I just don't think that blame for problems in capitalism can be put on the way education is done or whatnot... if some Yale students suddenly radicalize, there would still be plenty of people ready to take these positions. If people were taught more critical thinking, they still could not reverse the course of what is needed and what is logical from a capitalist perspective (i.e. restoring profitability as quickly as possible even if it means problems in the long-term). Different kinds of higher education models might allow for elites to handle these kinds of problems differently, but the fundamental problems of world-wide economic crisis and falling profitability would remain.


But Jimmie, I think that Hedges is talking about the generation that experienced these structural changes. That is why he says Obama is a product of this system. The big schools churn out these types more and more by the dozen. I remember being in school while the Obama campaign was going on and to be critical of Obama was like being critical of the entire system I was attending. It was because Obama represented all that was "good" about the system.

The best and brightest minds are constantly being snatched up by Wall St. and consulting groups to break up companies, strip them of their assets, and beat back the working class.

I think his observations about education are spot-on, I just think the implication that this style of education (the competition and the push towards conformity) caused problems on Wall Street or in the US in general is misleading. Maybe I am misreading his arguement (I was only able to read the first piece) but the title seems to suggest that if education was different, then the US would not be facing the kinds of problems that we currently are.

IMO, while education could be done so much better if it was run for our interests rather than in the interests of creating the next generation of workers and bosses (essentially run for the sustaining of the system and profits), the form of education is not the decisive factor in people radicalizing or becoming conformist under capitalism.

Even though education in the 1960s was probably much better than now, the student radicals still called it a "Knowledge factory" and it was still set up to feed bright people into the system; into the Pentagon, and into business. Why that temporarily didn't happen in the 1960s for a sizable minority of students (why many law students became defenders for radicals and history students challenged the accepted ideas about the US or capitalism) wasn't only because of more critical thinking was stressed and there were a number of great radical professors, but because that generation grew up during a civil rights movement on the one hand contrasted with the brutality of the war on the other. People saw that movements for civil rights could win, sitting-in could defeat segregation and then they took these lessons to the campuses and the military bases and eventually to the workplaces.

[Rakhmetov]

I like Hedges but I find his criticism of Richard Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris childish. Hedges wrote a book called I Don't Believe in Atheists♠

[RadioRaheem84]

Why? Hitchens, Harris and somtimes Dawkins, can act pretty childish against religion.

[howblackisyourflag]

I dont like Hedges love of religion, but he's one of the few mainstream journalists you could say is not just a guardian of power.

[RED DAVE]

This is the classic book (that's "book," not "article") of Berkeley in the Sixties. The book contains a description of the emerging corporate education system and the revolt against it.

Berkeley: The New Student Revolt (http://www.fsm-a.org/draper/draper_contents.html)

RED DAVE

[Proletarian Ultra]

I went to an Ivy and this article completely squares with what I went through there. (Won't say which one).

Freshman year was basically a boot camp for drilling us in neoclassical economics, 'evolutionary psychology', game theory, pomo lit crit, Straussianism and various other mental gymnastics for justifying existing social privilege.

I remember sophomore year a friend of mine - a black girl from the Bronx, no less - was arguing based on her poli-sci tutorial that Britain should have kept the hereditary Lords. And let me emphasize I was still a Republican at this time, I remember thinking Jesus Christ that's reactionary; they've just got us coming and going don't they?

[RadioRaheem84]

I went to an Ivy and this article completely squares with what I went through there. (Won't say which one).

Freshman year was basically a boot camp for drilling us in neoclassical economics, 'evolutionary psychology', game theory, pomo lit crit, Straussianism and various other mental gymnastics for justifying existing social privilege.

I remember sophomore year a friend of mine - a black girl from the Bronx, no less - was arguing based on her poli-sci tutorial that Britain should have kept the hereditary Lords. And let me emphasize I was still a Republican at this time, I remember thinking Jesus Christ that's reactionary; they've just got us coming and going don't they?

Ditto.