The Direction of Intention

“Public education does not serve a public. It creates a public. And in creating the right kind of public, the schools contribute toward strengthening the spiritual basis of the American Creed. That is how Jefferson understood it, how Horace Mann understood it, how John Dewey understood it, and in fact, there is no other way to understand it. The question is not ‘Does or doesn’t public schooling create a public?’ The question is ‘What kind of public does it create?'” ~ Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School.

It’s important to know the difference.

In the forests and fields through which our walking path winds, there is Cow Parsnip, Queen Anne’s Lace, and Hemlock. All sport umbrella-clusters of tiny white flowers. They are all members of the carrot family. To the untrained eye – like mine – they look similar. They are dangerously different.

Socrates was sentenced to death and was made to drink Hemlock. It’s very toxic. Queen Anne’s Lace is edible and used medicinally. Cow Parsnip can be eaten “if handled properly,” however a combination of sap and sunlight can cause a painful rash.

It is important to know the difference. It is why education is so important. It is why asking questions, stoking curiosity and looking deeper – beyond the superficial – is invaluable. The point of education, as Neil Postman reminds us, is not to get a better job, it is to be a well-rounded human being capable of making informed decisions.

“At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.”

Republicans since Reagan have been actively undermining our public schools. Cutting budgets, hyper-emphasizing testing (answer-driven rather than question-inspiring), and waging a foxy campaign against “the woke,” a term referring to people who are curious enough to question what they are being told – a skill useful in learning. The demonizing of education and the educated has without doubt led us to this moment: a gullible, angry and easily distracted citizenry. I almost wept the day the young man, an expectant father, told me that he was going to home school his child because he didn’t want his son’s head to be filled with “any of those crazy ideas” that they teach in the public schools. He didn’t want his boy to be woke.

I wanted to tell that young man that democracy is an idea. So is fascism and communism and authoritarianism. It’s important to know the difference.

The fox and Republicans have been for years weaponizing the term “socialism”, an accusation they level when their wealth is threatened by those who question why taxation is unfair, who ask why Republicans cheer when government creates programs uplifting corporate America but snarl when government creates programs that uplift private citizens. Socialism is an idea, too. Asking questions, protecting civil rights, and believing in the promise of democracy is not socialism. It takes some study and questioning to know the difference.

There’s a reason that the cartoon symbol for insight is a light bulb illuminating brightly over a character’s noggin. Letting in the light.

Discernment. Distinction. Knowing the difference between indoctrination and education. Knowing the difference between character and corruption, value and vice, wisdom and hogwash. Knowing how to discern news from propaganda would seem to be essential – democracy-saving. Life saving.

And so, here we are, awash in a cult movement called MAGA, enabled by a feckless Republican Congress, that worships incompetence and promotes ignorance. It shields itself against even the most basic of questions and eschews responsibility for, well, anything (blame is their game). It howls in indignation at the very thought of learning. It is a celebration of the dim-bulb. Drinkers of toxic hemlock, totally incapable of discerning the difference between the deadly and the medicinal, the truth and a lie.

“Because we are imperfect souls, our knowledge is imperfect. The history of learning is an adventure in overcoming our errors. There is no sin in being wrong. The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs, and in believing that our authorities cannot be wrong.” ~ Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School.

read Kerri’s blogpost about DISCERNMENT

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