Tom Birmingham was one of the fathers of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993. He writes here that the teaching of history has always been considered a foundational part of education in Massachusetts, the birthplace of public schooling. History is fundamental to citizenship, and citizenship is the main purpose of public schooling.
He writes:
“ABOUT 25 YEARS AGO, as a member of the Massachusetts Senate, I co-authored the Massachusetts Education Reform Act. Drafting a complex bill with such far-reaching consequences requires significant compromise, but one thing my counterparts in the House of Representatives and then-Gov. Bill Weld all agreed upon was the importance of educating students about our nation’s history.
“As a result, the law explicitly requires instruction about the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the US Constitution. We also made passage of a US history test a high school graduation requirement.
“Sadly, subsequent generations of political leaders have not shared our view of the importance of US history. It is now becoming an afterthought in too many of our public schools.
“The Founding Fathers believed that to exercise the rights and privileges of citizenship, Americans had to understand our history and its seminal documents. They also saw it as the role of public schools to pass on what James Madison called “the political religion of the nation” to its children. As the great educational standards expert E.D. Hirsch said, “The aim of schooling was not just to Americanize the immigrants, but also to Americanize the Americans.”
“Without this, they believed the new nation itself might dissolve. They had good reason: Until then internal dissension had brought down every previous republic.
“According to Professor Hirsch, the public school curriculum should be based on acquiring wide background knowledge, not just learning how to learn. This belief is diametrically opposed to the view held by many that the main purpose of public education should merely be to prepare students for the workforce. As it turns out, the evidence is fairly strong that students who receive a broad liberal arts education also tend to do better financially than those taught a narrower curriculum focused on just training students for a job.
“The role of public schools in creating citizens capable of informed participation in American democracy was particularly important in a pluralistic society like ours. Unlike so many others, our country was not based upon a state religion, ancient boundaries or bloodlines, but instead on a shared system of ideas, principles, and beliefs.”
Some people think that the way to reinvigorate history in the curriculum is to require standardized history tests. I disagree. History must be taught with questions, discussions, debates, theories, and curiosity. Standardized tests would reduce history to nothing more than facts. Facts matter, but what makes history exciting is the quest and the questions, the controversies and the uncertainty.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
See: US Education Segregation Is Highly Profitable Business For Some | PopularResistance.Org
https://popularresistance.org/keeping-us-education-segregated-is-highly-profitable-business-for-some/
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“According to Professor Hirsch, the public school curriculum should be based on acquiring wide background knowledge, not just learning how to learn. This belief is diametrically opposed to the view held by many that the main purpose of public education should merely be to prepare students for the workforce.”
Actually, both beliefs are diametrically opposed to the view that the main purpose of education should be workforce preparation. I don’t know of any progressive education proponents who believe that school is all about getting a job. Dewey, in fact, makes it quite explicit that the purpose of schooling is democracy first and foremost.
Education for the workplace needs neither content nor the ability to learn how to learn. It simply needs obedience and the ability to tolerate tedium. That’s what education “reform” (sic) is all about – neither content nor thinking.
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I have posted this before and will do so again. it is the crux of what Diane is saying.
“The destruction of the distinction between truth and falsehood is the foundation of dictatorship.” Oddly enough that wonderful truth, appeared in an article about Myanmar, where Emma Larkin speaks to a historian, Tin Tin Lay, who says:”There is no history in Burma any more. You can look in the school books and the libraries. You will not find it. We are a country without a history — without a truthful history.”
RICHARD DREYFUS is eloquent as he explains what is afoot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=B6n0tr4TfEA
IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS, by Richard Dreyfus, do see it now; it explains the end of civics lessons, and the end of our shared history, and thus democracy.
.AND SEND IT OUT TO Y OUR CONTACTS
Because if we do not teach OUR real history and civics … these guys will
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there is a lively conversation on Commonwealth Magazine for this article. Thanks to Christine Langoff for her comments there…. Also, we have a “Spin-off” discussion that is taking place in a group that sponsors Civic education…. The Massachusetts Center for Civic Education headed by Roger Desrosiers; our presentation at the Malden Public Library was successful and the librarian is planning to have a second presentation for Malden citizens. There have to be many more activist citizens in our towns/cities and we can’t expect everything to come down through the legislature ….
Massachusetts has to support the. Foundation Budget and we are also trying to encourage voters to support the Fair Share Act. Lots of things happening.
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As a former history teacher I wholeheartedly agree with Birmingham. If more voters knew their history we would not have this awful oaf in what is now the Offal Office.
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Without understanding the past, how else can we prepare for the future? As you point out, if we truly understood the implications of fascism, Trump would still be a reality TV host, and we would all be in a better place.
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I don’t think Christine will mind if I copy over her comment from the Commonwealth Magazine rather than have people wade through all the comments there to find her important information. “What Birmingham has left out is that the what most closely correlates with what the tests tell us is the socioeconomic status of the students’ parents.
In arguing that the teaching of history and civics has been sidelined, Birmingham makes the case that teachers have pinpointed since the advent of high stakes testing: what gets tested gets taught. In school systems under the gun for their low scores, test prep for the testing has become the daily norm. T
So we have two kinds of costs: an opportunity cost – what else kids and teachers don’t get to do in schools due to testing – and a fiscal cost; in 2014, WBUR gave a cost of $46 per student for administration of ELA and math tests. DESE has now taken the stance that all school systems must move to testing via computer (despite the fact that scores are consistently lower than on a paper administration).
Birmingham is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in Education at the Pioneer Institute, an organization dedicated to privatization and to the expansion of the unregulated publicly-funded private schools known as charters. Overburdening public schools with testing that demonstrates them to be “failing” and concurrently defunding them means more charters and fewer unionized teachers. The Koch brothers and Betsy DeVos share those same goals.”
this is not everything; she has some other good points there but it will give you the “gist” of what is going on…
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Thanks, Jean, I don’t mind at all your quoting me! 😊
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I agree. In fact, a well constructed history/civics exam, including geography and basic econ, could substitute for almost all standardized testing. Alas, most studies show that testing civics alone doesn’t much improve citizens understanding of democratic institutions. How about a pairing a test with a mandatory civics project that would be evaluated by teachers and local experts, such as lawyers, councilmen etc.? NYC’s successful Performance Standards Consortium high schools already evaluate students based on such projects.
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we have a consortium with Schneider from holy Cross looking at different means of evaluating. My direct objection was a PEARSON test for corporate profit; I never objected to the original New York Regents; in fact my cousins who grew up in the Adirondack Mountains took them and my niece in Albany New York took them and I used to bring them back to MA to provide examples of something I thought was a workable exam. I am specifically against the Pearson profit motive and the fact that all the precious R&D money was spent to develop the tests and we still don’t have something that is reliable and valid (therefore it is fraud if they market it)
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and the professor from U. MA Amherst who says “throw out the damn bell curve” — I inserted the expletive in his statement
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For the sake of all us history teachers, keep testing out of history! One of the saving graces of being considered unimportant is that we do not have to waste mountains of time getting ready for stupid tests. Why should the same facts be required of all students?
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I am a history major and I failed the AP US History multiple choice section.
I never learned the college board way of demonstrating mastery in US history. I sucked at interpreting things like immigration graph data and vague multiple choices asking to pick the best answer that relays the meaning of the college board’s interpretation of a painting or picture. I guess that is “applied” learning?
I felt really stupid when I took that test and admitted to my son I am inept at what they are learning in school.
However, when we had a discussion about the federalist papers, I still felt I had a leg up on him explaining them broadly and how and why they still matter today.
But he can definitely eliminate two incorrect answers and look for “money words” to pick out College Board’s “most correct” choice much better than I can.
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One of the tragedies of standardized testing these days is that if there is no test, then the subject is often marginalized or just plain ignored.
History IS essential. Absolutely!
But the history of standardized testing shows that most the exams should just get tossed in the trash.
I graduated from a public high school in Massachusetts many years ago. And, we learned a lot about history and civics back then -without having to deal with some standardized, state test.
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I appreciate his attack on “learning to learn” that tired cliche. First of all, we don’t need to teach kids how to learn. Learning is what brains do naturally. But there’s another problem: actual learning is time-consuming. If we spend the first 18 years of a kid’s life teaching him how to learn, then presumably he would start the actual learning itself in his early 20’s –just at the time he has to go into the workforce. How many working adults have extensive time to learn outside the workday? They will have found that they’ve squandered the only long stretch of leisure time they’ll ever get: childhood. Childhood is the time they should be learning things, not “learning how to learn”.
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I sent 2 years as the NYC cohort for the Pew research on the thesis by Harvard’s Lauren Resnick,called THE PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING.
It proposed the there are elements/stragegies in the classroom the ENABLE 7 facility Learning, and that the administration must put in place the organization, that supports the health ,safety and learning of the students and makes learning possible.
This was third level research where 20,000 classroom practitioners (i.e teachers) were observed but he staff developers of the LEARNING & RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT CENTER of the University of Pittsburgh.
The 4 principles that they found in the classroom practice was
1- Clear expectations
2-Rewards for achievement
3- An educated experienced professional
4- Materials that supported Learning.
Millions was spent to make the time of ‘childhood’ one that allowed the future adult to gain the skills and the attitudes to approach adulthood.
Luckily, no one worried about their leisure time, or imagined that school was a place to squander childhood. One thing I have learned ,t here days, is that there is a GREAT DIFFERENCE between facts and OPINIONS, like yours, which is a privilege, not an entitlement ..to be able to spout nonsense.
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some nostalgia from the era you mention; our favorite professor at BU Naomi Zigmond who went to the Pittsburgh center when she left BU.
Also, I appreciate what you say about “cliches”. — whenever we make trivia triumphant — every research project I knew of had to have a dissemination component. When the work from the “lab” is disseminated and becomes routinized, we are always in danger of everything being distilled or “capsulized”….. it is the old research to practice gap and it still exists despite our many wonders of technology.
Anything that is tested in the “lab”. (we only have one State University that still has a “lab” in classrooms ) — if and when it becomes “formulaic” … we lose the spark or the inspiration; however , there should be iterative stages for the innovation — I don’t see that happening in the “Market” approach.
I remember distinctly when Goodlad and Anderson would come out from Harvard and tell us “this is not what we told you to do.” It is the old research and practice gap — but we have some new issues like competing priorities (who wants to teach civics education when you could be focusing on sexy STEM? ) and there is a proliferation of marketing products without actual research behind them. But thanks Susan Lee Schwartz for stimulating the nostalgia .
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So kids just naturally know how to evaluate claims or competing claims to find the truth among all the “facts” you want to force feed them. That’s why so many people believe that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and Obama is really a Communist Muslim. Okay then.
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Perhaps you are describing our current moment’s most dangerous enemy very succinctly: “…actual learning is time-consuming.” We have become a microwave/Internet nation, and fewer and fewer people know how to slow down and actually take in long-term-useful information. Additionally, governmentalal ed. policies are now pushing more and more teachers/kids to get things done at light speed, and this will surely become the expected norm.
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Kudos to Tom Birmingham for a thoughtful piece. Followers of this blog may want to look at California’s new History/Social Science/Civics framework which aims at revitalizing the teaching of history in the state. https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/hs/cf/hssframework.asp Diane was one of the original authors of the one of thestate’s first HSS frameworks. Also, see the California History/Social Science project at UC Davis for a list of helpful resources (http://chssp.ucdavis.edu/programs/framework
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That Commonwealth article was a good read, and on the mark.
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There’s a lot to be said for teaching history and civics in public schools because we do live (still) in a democratic republic and we — all of us — ought to know how our government works and what our nation’s story is. But I’m not sure that Tom Birmingham is the person to be making the case, especially given the fact that he’s now ensconced at the Pioneer Institute, which is a right-wing “think” tank funded the likes of the Koch brothers and the Waltons and tied to the State Policy Network and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
It isn’t surprising, either, that Birmingham cites E.D. Hirsch to try and make his case, and that doesn’t help. For both Birmingham and Hirsch, CONTENT is the vehicle by which democratic citizenship is attained. Hirsch refers to this as “cultural transmission” while others have called it “citizenship transmission.” Either way, the idea is that lots and lots of knowledge reverberate in the brain and – voila – magically jells into a commitment to the core values of American democracy. Not likely.
Hirsch maintains that “We are a nation of immigrants, social stratification, and disparate beliefs held together chiefly by a shared devotion to freedom and democracy.“ Frankly, it seems pretty clear that the Republican party has not heard this news, much less believe it.
To Hirsch, “a content-rich core curriculum in the early grades” is the answer to all that ails American public education, including student achievement compared to that in other nations, the lack of educational opportunity in poor communities, and the declining commitment to American democratic values. Yes, he actually believes this.
Meanwhile, in other places, like, say, Finland, there’s a different approach. In Finland, there’s a great premium placed on informal learning in early childhood, not a grade-by-grade sequence of prescribed knowledge.
According to child development specialist Anneli Niikko, “Finnish early childhood education emphasizes respect for each child’s individuality and the chance for each child to develop as a unique person. Finnish early educators also guide children in the development of social and interactive skills, encouraging them to pay attention to other people’s needs and interests, to care about others, and to have a positive attitude toward other people, other cultures, and different environments. The purpose of gradually providing opportunities for increased independence is to enable all children to take care of themselves as ‘becoming adults,’ to be capable of making responsible decisions, to participate productively in society as an active citizen, and to take care of other people who will need his [or her] help.” Non-academic knowledge continues to be stressed in Finnish kindergarten (the equivalent of our first grade) where the informal curriculum emphasizes nature and the seasons rather than formal lessons in reading and writing.
Hirsch, blames the problems and issues in American public schooling on “progressive” education. He’s wrong about that. He is right, though, that public schooling schooling should result in a commitment to the common good. Not to the “market” (which seems to be the sole allegiance of the Pioneer Institute). Not to big bankers, Not to plutocracy.
The American Revolution was a liberal — a progressive — movement. The Revolution was a movement catalyzed by freedom of political participation, equality of opportunity and equal justice under the law, and – importantly – promoting the public good. The Founders envisioned a democratic society “in which the common good was the chief end of government.” They agreed with John Locke’s view that the main purpose of government –– the main reason people create government –– is to protect their persons through –– as historian R. Freeman Butts put it –– a social contract that placed “the public good above private desires.” The goal was “a commonwealth, a democratic corporate society in which the common good was the chief end of government.”
Should we be emphasizing history and civics in public schools? Yes. Is knowledge important? Undeniably. But it doesn’t stop with that.
In Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the legislative branch was given broad, specific powers (among them taxing, borrowing money, regulating commerce, coining money and regulating its value, etc.). Indeed, Article I, Clause 1 gives Congress the power to tax for “the common defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Clause 18 of Section 8 stipulates that Congress had the power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.” Two Supreme Court decisions early in the republic’s history –– both unanimous –– supported and cemented a broad – liberal – interpretation of the implied powers of Congress.
For example in 1819 (McCullough v. Maryland) the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the U.S. government was “a Government of the people. In form and in substance, it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.” Thus one of the purposes of government is to promote the general welfare. Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the necessary and proper clause: “the clause is placed among the powers of Congress, not among the limitations on those powers.” And he added this: “Its terms purport to enlarge, not to diminish, the powers vested in the Government. It purports to be an additional power, not a restriction.”
In Gibbons v Ogden (1824) Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the Congressional commerce power: “This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.”
These were liberal — progressive — interpretations, very early on in the Republic. Are the funders of the Pioneer Institute in agreement with this iteration of American history? No. They’ll pretend this history doesn’t exist.
Aristotle perceived the importance of public schooling to democratic citizenship, noting that “each government has a peculiar character…the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy, and always the better the character, the better the government.” Democracy is government — in Lincoln’s words — “of the people, by the people, for the people,” while oligarchy is government by a relatively small (and usually wealthy) group that “exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.”
Early education reformer Horace Mann — only partially cited by Tom Birmingham — viewed public education as a way to “equalize the conditions” of society. Public schools were “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society. Mann thought schools should go beyond the inculcation of knowledge and the practice of academic skills; they had to delve into the development of character. Aha.
University of Chicago social scientist Earl Johnson believed the premier purpose of public education was the careful crafting of “democratic character.” Gordon Hullfish and Philip Smith — who were “progressive” advocates of democratic education — considered the development of critical intelligence –– “reflective reconstruction of knowledge, insights and values” –– absolutely essential to the maintenance of a democratic society. This means that citizens can not only think in terms of the scientific method (what some have called “collecting, analyzing and interpreting data” and “constructing explanations and designing solutions and engag[ing] in argument from evidence”), but also — and this is the critical thing — they can apply that critical reasoning – that intelligence – to a framework based on core democratic values. In other words, they understand – through “informed and critical intelligence” — and commit to the social contract.
Tom Birmingham is right that “preparing students to fully engage in civic life was a core purpose behind the creation of America’s public schools.” Let’s just say it was the sole purpose. But just giving kids content, and then testing it, isn’t going to cut the democratic citizenship mustard. Want some evidence? From a letter in the Massachusetts Sentinel and Enterprise in September:
“Tom Birmingham is on the mark about his opinion of the need for teaching of U.S. history in Massachusetts schools.
He was trying to be polite by not naming the communist and socialist lobbying groups that brought this about. The communist manifesto told you they would infiltrate U.S. schools and use our own laws against us. They are now trying to revise our history and force feed it to us as fact. They are turning Americans against each other. Three hundred thousand northern white people died to free slaves.
We’ve literally dumbed down the standards in Massachusetts to receive more federal dollars.
Tom Birmingham is a true patriot for what he wrote about the state of education here. Keep up the good fight.”
Read more: http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/letters/ci_31313017/birmingham-makes-strong-case-teaching-u-s-history#ixzz50ZZlpS8n
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Democracy,
I am no admirer of rightwing think tanks. I know who they are. I know Pioneer. I also know Hirsch, and I don’t think that facts alone are the answer to improving education. But nonetheless I thought it was a good article. And I loudly disagreed with the view that Testing will secure the place of history in the curriculum.
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Diane, my comment was not a criticism directed at you, but rather it was directed to the idea that merely providing lots of history and/or civics information to students – and testing it – somehow mysteriously turns them into citizens who are committed to American democratic values. We KNOW that’s not true. The proof surrounds us.
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Want another example?
“law enforcement officials are concerned that the drumbeat of conservative criticism seems designed to erode Mueller’s credibility, making it more politically palatable to remove, restrict or simply ignore his recommendations as his investigation progresses…Sean Hannity, one of the president’s informal advisers as well as one of his most vociferous defenders, on Tuesday night called Mueller ‘a disgrace to the American justice system’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/republicans-hammer-mueller-fbi-as-russia-investigation-intensifies/2017/12/06/4a6097ca-dabb-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html?utm_term=.36504d0e9ece
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“The Founders envisioned a democratic society “in which the common good was the chief end of government.” They agreed with John Locke’s view that the main purpose of government –– the main reason people create government –– is to protect their persons through –– as historian R. Freeman Butts put it –– a social contract that placed “the public good above private desires.” The goal was “a commonwealth, a democratic corporate society in which the common good was the chief end of government.” I was pleased to see you refer to Freeman Butts. We use his work to identify the values… also, John Patrick has a neat “encyclopedia” of the concepts (available at no charge through Annenberg) and when we meet with citizen groups we distribute Patrick’s descriptions of Liberalism, Republicanism and Constitutionalism as well as his page on Civi Virtue….
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democracy , you already know this entire listing but it is the summary we have from the work of R. Freeman Butts:
Here’s the list of American Values……
Hope this helpful!
Best,
Roger (from Roger Desrosiers, Center for Civic Education — in Massachusetts.
I worry that so many of these have been eroded in our current conversations about politics and the actions of people in government ………..
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this is not my statement; it captures the important conclusion however; it was posted by a parent/voter/taxpayer who constantly reminds us we need the “FOUNDATION BUDGET” supported in Massachusetts (similar to the conclusions from Ohio E&A)…
“Tom Birmingham’s commentary urged following the 1993 Massachusetts’ Education Reform Act that called for making passage of a U.S. history test a high school graduation requirement but didn’t mention the state fails to meet its financial obligation to local public schools under that very same 1993 Education Reform Act. ” Several bills are still in committee…. will be following those closely with our state reps.
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democracy: I have no quibble with teaching history/civic education/social studies (with appropriate materials) … most of my comments have been to this issue that Bill Phillis describes at Ohio E&A. and this is what Governor Baker, Peyser and Sagan are doing when they push that Pearson test on every student . Peyser is an ideologue; Mitchell Chester and other bureaucrats have to tell the governors when their policies are harmful to schools and Chester just went along with it and “uberized it ” by telling people to buy Pearson products (he did marketing for all of the Pearson corporate products) and he told them “Sign on with Jeb Bush”….. When Pioneer pushes charter schools or vouchers or ESAs or any other euphemism for privatization, it is detrimental to our public schools.
from Bill Phillis (Ohio E&A). “The bottom line issue on school choice: who controls the money?
There are a variety of issues that swirl around vouchers and the charter experiment, such as academic performance, accountability, transparency, fiscal fraud, nepotism, etc. An issue that looms large is who controls the tax money?
The public controls school district funds. In voucher plans and charterland the funds are controlled privately. The public has no input on anything voucher or charter except that the public provides the money. Is this arrangement cutting edge public policy or insanity?
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And Pioneer is solidly for charters.
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there are powerful influences in the state. The only one who seems to talk about it is Jamie Eldridge and he clearly stated “the corporations have way too much influence on public education” and public policy in this state. I use that quote from Jamie Eldridge so much I called his aide Peter Missouri to make sure I was being accurate. Pioneer may have had an incentive at one time – – vouchers are useful if they help to fill the empty seats in parochial schools — but with the DEVOS and others who are pushing those mechanisms of privatization it has gone way over the top. When I get into personal comments with Pioneer affiliated they say I am anti-catholic but I don’t believe that is the purpose for my stand against charters (and vouchers and ESAs that Walton Foundation is pushing).
See the quote from Bill Phillis from Ohio E&A. Your quotes from Horace Mann also bring out the best of democracy for education I believe as investigated how to deliver public education early on. …. and of course there are others .
MA Business Alliance funded the study that said “MCAS will be a beautiful test” if you keep giving us your taxpayer dollars… that is why they get so angry when parents and students opt out — they don’t have the populations to prove they have a reliable and valid measure ( yet, taxpayers should not be funding the R&D for a corporation in my estimation). All of this is beyond the discussion of teaching civics yet I hope that all of the persons working on the Strategic Action Plan for civics education are aware of what is happening in the political universe surround the plans. I think the MA Council for Social Studies understands how their plans were shelved repeatedly by commissioners because the money was going to Pearson Corporation.
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What– no Anti-Federalist papers? Without them we would not have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. The US Constitution would never have been ratified without the Bill of Rights.
I do realize that the Bill of Rights is being trampled on continuously but at least we are supposed to have them.
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I hear the arguments here that the schools cannot change what people think.
To this I say… it takes a village, and parents, and the culture with its values. With no information about the intentions of our founding fathers, or of history, there is no guardian against flimsy arguments or outright lies, and this POST_TRUTH society of ‘fake news” is the result.
. As E.D Hirsch says , there is no democracy without shared knowledge. http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/hirsch.pdf
May i recommend the introduction to Jerry Mander’s “In The Absence of the Sacred,” http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/mander.html THE BEST EVER to explain when and how our values changed from the beneficial ones that parents and society once passed on , to the ones sold to us by corporate entities–like those that control our societies ‘prime educator’, tv –which values competition, aggression and violence. Successful cultures passed on the benefits of cooperation, compromise and real dialogue. This book was written before th transormational technology–cyberspace–where anarchy offer REAL freedom to spit out any opinion and repeat it until our IGNORANT CITIZENS REGARD it as truth.
The consumer web industry sells there values, and they are in the manipulation business, they sell candidates like Moore, and legislation like this tax bill which negates the value proposed in the Preamble to the CONSTITUTION, TO PROMOTE THE COMMON GOOD.
They build products meant to persuade people to do what they want them to do TO PROMOTE THE WALTH OF THE 1/1TH OF 1%
They call OUR CITIZENS, OUR PEOPLE, “users” and even if they don’t say it aloud, they secretly wish every one of them would become fiendishly addicted.
Users take our technologies with them to bed. When they wake up, they check for notifications, tweets, and updates before saying “good morning” to their loved ones. Ian Bogost, the famed game creator and professor, calls the wave of habit-forming technologies the “cigarette of this century” and warns of equally addictive and potentially destructive side-effects.”
In the sixties, I read The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard,
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1004/article_903.shtml how the advertising ‘mad-men’ led the way to the subtle influences that sell everything from soap to politicians by using subliminal messages!Packard was prescient, but even he couldn’t have predicted the technological revolution of ubiquitous screens, pumping out 24/7 news mixed with lies..
The schools cannot compete with this. It takes a village, BUT WE NEED THE SCHOOLS TO TEACH REAL HISTORY.
“The destruction of the distinction between truth and falsehood is the foundation of dictatorship.”
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I would postulate, that there is a huge amount of support for proper and increased instruction in civics/history,etc. This support is broadly based, from all sides, right and left. Myself, I came to cherish history, I even remember the textbook, that my teacher used in 1963 “They made America great”. The text was a compilation of short biographies of various historical figures, and it put a “face” on history.
I wish that the education establishment, and the politicians would move to increase the study of history. I would be a big supporter.
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