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IGNORANCE STRENGTHENS ITSELF [1]
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Date: 2022-08-24
“IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”
George Orwell, “1984”
“The corporate world, for its part, uses anti-intellectualism to depict any suggestion that humanity might be better served by some order other than the free-market system as nothing but arrogance, an implied desire to redesign life itself.”
Thomas Frank, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?
The protest sign read: “‘1984’ was not meant to be an instruction manual.” Neither is this essay. Robber barons are making out like bandits (pun intended) in the COVID-19 pandemic, not only with meteoric profits. They stand to make longterm gains from the panic and disarray in America’s public education system. While the ruling tycoons still need some educated employees, the historical flip side is that educated citizens tend to hinder the taking of complete control that any ruling class craves. In the COVID-19 chaos, with schools across the country undergoing rearrangements and shutdowns, with teachers quitting in record numbers, American public education could be headed for collapse. Nationwide, the political leadership is confused and divided on how, even whether, to fix the system. Many public figures favor doing nothing at all, at least at the federal and state level, with the unspoken goal of allowing wealthier neighborhoods to support their own schools, thus perpetuating the power of those who have it. The results would be horrendous for anyone who does not want “government of, by, and for the people to perish from the earth;” godsends for those whose god is power.
During the last decade of my working life, I was a substitute teacher in public schools. My wife was a regular teacher, and some of our relatives and friends have or had careers in education. We all have well-thought ideas about how to preserve, nurture, and improve the system, based on real experiences in the trenches. But political leaders who control the education system can be impervious to teachers’ knowledge. Politicians must serve many conflicting interests, education being only one. Still, since our country’s founding, never mind the crisis, Americans have traditionally supported education for each new generation. Support has often been inadequate, sometimes even dismal, but the will to educate our population has endured. Now a new reality has emerged: an almost critical mass of voters who believe public education should either be radically altered to teach propaganda, or eliminated. Rightwing media have promoted widespread distrust of education over the past half century, and the pandemic has given rise to an emergency which could let that animosity coalesce into destructive action.
Public schools are essential for the maintenance of a healthy democracy, because educated citizens, when made aware of problems and causes, will either demand solutions from those in charge, or change their leaders. Educated citizens have always questioned the usefulness of unbridled capitalism, which since 1914 has been unable to prove itself beneficial to any but a tiny minority. To defend itself, capitalism has transformed itself into America’s dominant religion. Religions have no need to prove their usefulness, and no dominant religion can tolerate dissent. Citizens who are taught critical thinking can and do challenge religious dogma. Among many symptoms of an illness brought on by America’s worship of free enterprise are the election of a sideshow barker to his first government job as President of the United States; the meltdown of the healthcare infrastructure; and worsening climate change. Capitalism (revering only profits) having caused or worsened society’s difficulties, depends on true believers to stay in power. Madison Avenue serves the carrot and rightwing media brandish the stick, forming a real world version of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, which deftly maintains capitalism’s domination over society.
Educated citizens still challenge the blind faith in capitalism that provides the foundation for the corporate state’s power. To protect the corporate state against critical thinking, rightwing propaganda outlets work constantly to convince average citizens to feed corporate government’s insatiable greed. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided enormous opportunities for American fascists to vaporize critical thinking. Schools have floundered—first closing, then reopening, only to close again each time infections and deaths surge. Classes have been taught on line, with mixed results, as is also the case with in-person teaching. The changes hit impoverished students, many of whom do not have computers, especially hard. Educators have developed strategies to identify and redress problems in the pre-COVID world, but in this new situation, unforeseen problems emerge constantly. Parents, as confused as everyone else yet having highly personal stakes in the crisis, have grown understandably impatient. Politicians who advocate for parents to dictate what teachers will or will not teach are winning elections, causing some teachers, who do not go into the profession to propagandize, to quit. Replacements are hard to find in the pandemonium, in education as well as other high-stress workplaces. Opportunists could try to turn schools into daycare centers. If respected, well-trained, unionized professionals can be replaced with low-paid, unskilled babysitters or guards (which is already happening in Florida) and at the same time children will not learn how to think for themselves, plutocrats will be happy. Working parents would still have reliable socialistic childcare for at least part of the workday, and any savings could go to the rich, enabling them to buy more politicians.
Though businesses still need skilled workers, the need shrinks constantly with further automation, an issue that right-wingers fairly gloated about until the shutdown. Widespread unemployment makes the bosses happy, explaining why the ruling class is so upset with the post-COVID tight labor market. The proles must be kept busy, but this can be done cheaply if they are desperate enough. Those who want lucrative work could pay for their own specialized training, if they can, while bread and circuses could be devised (prisons already are) with innovations bounded only by the imagination. Recently, media that can amuse the “masses” have expanded, and continue to multiply, allowing us to envision a point where anyone who wants to can easily avoid thinking. Oligarchs will still need certain scientific skills (to defend the homeland from enemies both foreign and domestic) dependent on actual critical thinking in various specialties. Obedient scientists, engineers, and technicians would be well-rewarded for helping plutocrats stay in power—keeping proles in perpetual servitude, poverty and ignorance—incapable of challenging the ruling class.
The world of capitalism, quite unprepared for COVID-19, has been turned upside down, and is now in a state of general turmoil. The true believers in free enterprise are confused. People can be persuaded to do anything, to follow anybody, when they feel their lives are permanently disordered. We could enter a new Dark Age, or we could grasp this chance to reinvent our world, with education aiding universal freedom, prosperity, and equality. Shall we rethink our way of doing things for the past half-century, or shall we reinforce a religious devotion to a worn-out economic system by hammering down the lid on inquiry? Do we need more critical thinking, or more blind obedience? Is the importance of universal quality education greater or less than before? It might be time to ask ourselves these questions. Those who would answer in favor of reinforcing the status quo of top-down order, who seek the strength that comes from identity in a mob, who would embrace slavery for the freedom not to think, need do nothing. We who would like to see the revival of an enlightened age, who want peace, prosperity, and genuine liberty for all, need to get to work.
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