Sunday, August 07, 2005

Governed Ceilings

Low bridge, everybody down.

Schools (modern, coerced, state-run) are politically empowered to educate. That word is associated with intelligence, knowledgeability, skill ... But a ceiling is (silently) set: one pleasing to the propertied (those in their majority), and acceptable (that is, something short of inciting revolution) to the (minimally propertied to unpropertied) numerical majority.

One ceiling that nearly everyone approves is that the school epistemology remain primitive: so that the majorities (of nearly all kinds) can be fooled that their institutions are in fact performing as idealized: the church is getting us into heaven, the doctors are making us immortal, the economists are making us richer, the military is making life safe, the schools are turning sows-ears into silk purses.

And those who don’t approve? We don’t count.

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