Education is not real.  It is an illusion.

Adam Renner

 

Genocide doesn=t mean only bombs (Vietnam Addenda, Lorde)

 

One day

the apolitical

 intellectuals

of my country

will be interrogated

by the simplest

of our people

They will be asked

what they did

when their nation died out

slowly,

like a sweet fire,

small and alone.

 (Apolitical Intellectuals, Castillo)

 

Education, the social institution known more precisely as >schooling=, is not real. It is an illusion.  Of course, I know that bricks and mortar exist (in the schools that aren=t falling down); I know teachers talk in the front of classrooms; and, I know there is a corpus of material to teach we call, charitably, curriculum.  These things seem real.  But I want to argue they are not.  They are not real to the degree that they do not accomplish the rhetoric we popularly ascribe to them: (critical) knowledge, (democratic) citizenship, equality of opportunity, etc.  In the way that rhetoric does not match reality, then, I call education Aan illusion.@

 

[A former student sent this link of George Carlin (who recently passed) regarding his take on education.  He captures the essence of what I am about to say pretty well (but with much more colorful language, of course). See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4SSvVbhLw&feature=related]

 

Not only do I mean to argue that education is an illusion in what follows.  But, I also posit this argument as a way of saying that our acceptance of this illusion is literally killing our kids: intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and, sometimes, physically. AGenocide doesn=t mean only bombs.@  What we heap on our kids is nothing short of an atrocityCan atrocity with a silent citizenship (loading the gun) and bipartisan legislative support (pulling the trigger). Bang.