Corporate Socialism and the Education Agenda

This morning editorials across the country are skewering Brownie, Brownie's boss, and the looters who have paid the political price of admission into the biggest no-bid feeding frenzy since another storm some time back, that one near another gulf region far away where people continue to get blown away every day. If the privatizers prevail now, they will shovel out a quarter-trillion dollars to their privateer cronies on this Gulf Coast. Part of their plan, of course, is to hand out a half-billion (almost a quarter of the entire education relief package) in Federal vouchers to make sure that private school education is not interrupted in the Gulf region.

All of this is part of the corporate socialist movement led (until the indictments come down, anyway) by Grover Norquist, who advocates the focused role of the U. S. government to use its muscle and cash to clear a path here and abroad for the corporate socialist version of free markets to establish a hegemony throughout the world, thus saturating the planet with the unrestrained greed that enobles the Norquist/Cheney/Bush vision of freedom and democracy. The looting of the federal treasury is like the looting of Baghdad, a necessary step in the rebuilding effort of a government whose civic purpose has been replaced entirely by an alienated individualism grounded by fear, righteous hate, and reprisal.

The education plan is a core piece in this new vision of "freedom on the march." Not only do the Norquistians hope to subdue the black and brown urban poor with their reform schools, but they now have their aim set on the university.

This past Sunday the good-and-angry David Brooks began to pump the bellows to get the fires lit under the agenda set last week by Mom Spellings' announcement for a commission to study higher ed. The conservative cause to "end the achievement gap" has been such a popular lie that it will be called into action here, also, to begin the effort to control what is thought and taught in the university. It is clear, Brooks concludes, that the university must take an active role in making sure that students are "psychologically prepared and culturally prepared."

This talking point is echoed in a statement by lead hack and chairman of Spellings' new commission on higher ed (see story here). Even though the "exploration" of higher ed has not even begun, it seems that Chairman Charles Miller has already been handed the demands that the findings will eventually entail:

"It's a different breed of cat," Miller said of colleges and universities. "We should be asking: What are they learning? Are they learning the right thing? Academe is going to have to come up with answers there."