News and Opinion from Kay

I have very strong views on education, especially music education.  I still keep in touch with some of the colleagues from the places at which I have taught, and it surprises me how concerned they are about education, especially their specific fields.  "Chemistry is being neglected," says a tenured chemistry professor, and "Math is not being taken seriously enough!" exclaims a tenured math professor, and "there's too much emphasis on everything except foreign languages" insists a tenured professor in modern languages.  Am I different because I agree with all of them--to some degree?  Clearly, colleges have now been put in the position of having to give kids a general education, to allow them to function in society.  (Grade school used to do this, but in those years kids are awfully busy being kids.)  This frantic competitiveness when it comes to the various disciplines within a school seems needlessly . . . I don't even know the word for it.  (It's fractious.  I had a brain fart.)  It is as if they have never heard the motto: United we stand, divided we fall!  We must all hang together, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, or we will certainly be hung out to dry separately.  And who should know better that all subjects and disciplines should be given equal emphasis once those fields are introduced into the curriculum than college professors?  They seem to spend far too much time fretting about the stability of their jobs.

I think the central tragedy in our society today is the conviction that nothing is worth more than money.  We have grown up with people who have been preoccupied with material wealth for years, but somehow it never came to the point where it was all that mattered. Reputation, appearance, appearances (not the same thing), power, education, social standing, the public good, all these things mattered to some degree.  But a recent article about a Virginia economist called James Buchanan traces the roots of the economic and political strategy of the economic elite who mastermind the politics in Washington to this man.  He advocated not just the defeat of the welfare state, but the actual destruction of democracy.  Ayn Rand had a relatively sunny disposition, says the author of this piece, compared to Buchanan.  Reading it, one gets the conviction that Trump is merely a tool.

Well, as long as we're alive, we have to push back, and I have neither the inclination nor the training to contribute to the resistance which must take place.  But an important component to the upbringing of the sort of citizen who has a vision of the kind of world in which diversity and art and culture have a place is the proper education.

Whether we like it or not, our environment is educating our kids to believe that only money matters.  Well, our environment is mostly dominated by businesses.  What do we expect?  Money is the very blood of Business, so if we swim in a sea of business, money is inevitably the source of all energy.  Is this, I wonder, the origin of this panic-stricken urgency that so many on the Christian Right feel to proselytize everyone?  Well,  I have news for them: can't you see how your very evangelists have sold their souls to Mammon?  That is the fact that most makes me want to tear my hair out!  More than Trump, Christianity is a tool for this anti-Democratic cohort to dismantle the political philosophy of this, the longest-surviving constitutional democracy.

These Buchananites (as opposed to ordinary Libertarians, some of whom want extreme freedom in order to serve their fellow-man according to their own impulses--but, I'm convinced, not so these Buchananites) must go through life with the opposite of rose-colored spectacles; everywhere they look, they only see someone out to steal their money.

In Helen vs. Messiah, Marissa lies in bed, broken-hearted at the fact that Helen has retired from the concert stage, and apparently gone into a depressed funk.  Here's an excerpt --not the one I was looking for, which would have better illustrated how Marissa regarded Helen, but this will have to do:

Helen’s miraculous arrival a year and some months ago had made her life less of a disaster than it would have been.  In spite of all the heartbreaking obstacles Helen had been presented with, she had given Maryssa the strength to see the world as a place with possibilities, with kindness and friendship hidden behind its rough, harsh face.

That's the essence of it.  Just as Helen opened Marissa's eyes to see the world without being threatened by it, so education does the same for us.  An infant sees the world as its mother.  Then, as it grows older, and experiences its environment, a time comes--or could come--when all it sees is the rough, harsh face of the world.  If we cannot get beyond that intimidating facade, then we're fair game for those who see their environment--and I'm not talking about woods and streams here; I mean the world outside us--those who see the world as something to be mastered and dominated.  The recent history of the USA has this thread of exploitative domination running through it, and not in a happy way.

Those who aren't in sympathy with the aims of college education, see it as an opportunity for the wrong kind of people to indoctrinate innocent kids.  (If there are any college professors reading this: there are great dangers in trying to fight fire with fire, and indoctrination with indoctrination.)  What you can do is to present the basic interconnectedness of all things as something positive, and the world as something to be embraced and appreciated, rather than a hostile entity that needs to be put in a cage, and exploited for oneself (not even for the benefit of others among one's acquaintances).

That was exhausting to write; a thousand curses upon those who dream up these dreary theories which we must labor to address!  The rough harsh face of the world just looks a lot harsher today.
[more after the break:]

Politics

The policy of taking kids at the border away to hold separately sort of died not with a bang, but a whimper, as far as I can see.

Each time they dream up some executive order to rile up the Democrats (which is really what they're doing, and the Democrats know it, but can't help from reacting) it costs the government millions of dollars.  They're eating up their own financial reserves (thinking about the treasury as 'belonging to' the Republicans, which it may as well, seeing as it isn't money, but anti-money, to borrow an idea from the Physics people), which in turn means that they're adding to the deficit.  This means only one thing: the GOP has filled its pockets symbolically with all it can carry, and is preparing to allow the Democrats to deal with this unprecedented deficit.

If only the people-at-large understood the problems with deficit spending!  The national debt is now so large that the liberals and the Democrats cannot afford any social welfare.  Once the Democrats take Congress (and I'm almost willing to bet that the GOP will actually work in the side of the Democrats, because there's nothing for the GOP in taking Congress, and everything to be gained by seeing a Democrat Congress flounder for two years) all the Democrats can do is raise taxes again, pay down the deficit again, and try to prevent the Trumps from running off to Moscow.  Wait . . . maybe we ought to leave the deficit where it is, and maybe add to it a little.  Hopefully no do-gooders will step up to the plate to solve all the problems with brilliant out-of-the-box thinking . . . There may not be any boxes left, once 2019 rolls around.

Kay H. B.