Children are important

Laborism will actually treat them that way

Every child born in every home in America deserves to have the resources needed to realize their full potential and lead a safe, happy, and prosperous life. Sadly, many children are not born into Leave It to Beaver or Cosby Show or even The Simpsons households. That’s not an adequate excuse. If we allow the circumstance of a child’s birth to govern their prospects in life, then that is a disgrace to us as a nation. So-called “liberals” have been far too willing to declare that being born with a certain skin color or a certain family income just naturally leads to lots of bad things. So-called “conservatives” have been far too willing to abandon children and mothers, and not at all willing to do anything useful to support the American family. The Pilgrims believed that the welfare and success of children was the responsibility of the entire community. Laborism supports that belief. American children, all American children, are the responsibility of all Americans. If any child suffers abuse or neglect, if any child’s education does not allow her to reach her potential, if any child becomes a teen drug user or a teen mother, if any non-psychopathic¹ child grows up to be a criminal, if any child grows up without healthy food and heat, clean air, clean water, clean housing, and green spaces to play in, if any child misses the chance to become interested in the world and to acquire culture, then we as a society have failed.

Financiers don’t care about our children, other than as future workers earning money for financiers. They may talk about helping children, but just look around you. When Midwestern America was populated by working people, before the financiers took tighter control, every little town had a nice school that was the town’s pride and joy. Drive through historic towns and look for those buildings. They created nice parks and playgrounds for the children. Financiers fought against the child labor reforms that were pushed through by women from working families. Financiers fought against efforts to make urban environments safe and healthy. Financiers pushed to build new private prisons instead of investing in keeping children from becoming criminals. Financiers put through policies that kept a big swath of working Americans poor so that children were not born into a comfortable and secure lifestyle. They push for turning public schools into for-profit enterprises instead of fixing them. They pushed to sell Oxy and other opioids without worrying if they were going to teenagers. They look at differences in achievement between rural, urban and suburban kids, between kids of different races and different family incomes, and kids from different states, and say “well, that’s just racism and such, nothing to be done except to repeat daily that we virtuous and oppose it” instead of saying “that’s not acceptable.”

Laborism rejects those views. We reject the idea that we can’t provide all of our children with decent schools and parks because at one time, in the places controlled by working people, we did. The government tells us that we are several times richer now than we were then, but we can’t provide the same things we did in the past? Laborism rejects the assertion that a black American baby should be expected to perform less well coming out of high school than a white or Asian American baby, either because of their race or because of racism (aside from the racism that asserts that they should be expected to perform less well). We should be tracking each child year by year and making sure they have what they need to succeed, no matter what their neighborhood is like or what their home life is like when they are born. We know that this can work because organizations like Parents As Teachers are achieving it now, even within our fundamentally lousy school and social structures. Laborism rejects the idea that our country’s high rate of serious crime is just how society is. We know that there are specific problems that can be addressed if we have the will to do it.

Laborism stands for the proposition that girls and women should not find themselves with unplanned pregnancies, either through crime or ignorance or other circumstances, and that we should take a number of sensible steps to achieve that goal. It stands for the proposition that all girls should be helped to have the self-respect and confidence and competence that enables them to reject boys and men who seek to take advantage of them, to have true and meaningful control over their own bodies. It stands for the proposition that we should do whatever we can to ensure that potential mothers and fathers see parenthood as a serious obligation, not an Instagram opportunity, and don’t get pregnant unless they are ready to fulfill that obligation. It stands for the proposition that no child who is born to an unready or unwilling mother despite these measures should suffer or be without a safe, nurturing, happy home.

Laborism stands for the proposition that America’s high maternal mortality rate is unacceptable and must be fixed. Our poor pediatric health is also unacceptable and must be addressed at every level.

Lots of people say those things. A laborist government will do it.

Education is important

[E]xperience has shown, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large - Thomas Jefferson

History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views. - Thomas Jefferson

The liberal appropriations made by the legislature of Kentucky for a general system of education cannot be too much applauded . . . . Learned institutions ought to be the favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty. ... What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable than that of liberty and learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support? - James Madison

Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. - George Washington

The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves. - John Adams

A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins. - Benjamin Franklin

America’s founders believed that the education of every citizen was essential to the success of the nation. They knew the extent to which governments and the press are inclined to lie, to excite, and to oppress the people. Those efforts cannot be prevented, and if successful they will undermine any democracy. An educated citizenry, capable of sorting fact from fiction and logic from lies, is the only reliable protection against the victory of propagandists. Without a good education for every American, we will fail. Where enlightenment fails, darkness prevails.

The financiers, of course, don’t want the mass of Americans to be educated enough to see through their propaganda and lies. For decades they have hated our public education system and have tried to undermine it, first by starving it of funds and then more recently by politicizing it. They have agitated among religious groups to get them to hate public schools, financing any organization that seeks to destroy secure funding for public education. They have gotten the opposing wings of the Uniparty to try to turn our schools into indoctrination centers to get children to accept either the neoliberal or the neoconservative world view as their own. The financiers don’t care which of those views children are taught, so long as they are taught not to question authority and so long as working people can be distracted into fighting about which of the two unacceptable outcomes they prefer.

Due to these financier-backed efforts to turn schools into indoctrination centers, this most essential of American institutions, the schools that were our pride and joy, have become battlegrounds for opposing forces trying to do exactly what the founders warned against. Jefferson warned us about what would happen if America ever sought to teach children to have a particular opinion instead of teaching them to question authority. “Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons.” Instead, the founders believed we should give Americans access to facts and help them to learn to reason, question, and criticize, and then they can be relied upon to find their way to the Truth. Yet thanks to financier-funded propaganda, people at both ends of the so-called “liberal”-“conservative”² spectrum now seek to force particular opinions into the minds of our children in an effort to send them into the world as unthinking robots programmed by propaganda, unquestioning tools used to accepting whatever the puppetmasters in society want them to believe. That is the surest way to destroy our American liberties and create a society in which our children truly love Big Brother.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? - Henry David Thoreau

At the same time, American education has been perverted by another trend, one encouraged both by the desires of the rich to maintain their privileged status and by the increased competition that has arisen from the increase in our population from 203 million in 1970 to 340 million today.

What is our image of the core American personality? We are not a nation of sheep and conformists. Our ancestors did not come to this country if sucking up to the Powers That Be and the bureaucracy in their home country was working out for them. They came here because they questioned authority and the old way of doing things. They wanted to follow their own ideas and live their lives the way they thought life ought to be lived.

We remember the pilgrims who came seeking freedom of religion, but we forget that our Midwest was largely settled by persons who fled Europe after the failed revolutions of 1848 and came to our prairies seeking the self-governance they were unable to gain in Europe. They were independent and, while polite and respectful, they did not put up with being told what to do. They did not play the game. That made America great. Those of us who worked in multinational companies in the generation that came out of the 1970s could see the real truth of this American type as compared with colleagues from other countries. Americans did not do things just because that was the way they had always been done. They asked “why?” and “why not?”. They assumed that anything was possible if you thought hard enough about it, and they solved problems and found a way forward. At the same time they prided themselves on succeeding honestly and being the people who really clamped down on bribes and corruption. They were noticeably different than their colleagues from other countries. What was their education like?

Back in the 1970s, if a high school student from an average family could ace her SATs, was reasonably diligent in school (not obsessive) and got mostly As, did enough interesting things with her time so that you could tell that she didn’t spend all her free time getting stoned, and was generally curious about the world and could show in an essay that she was a good observer and really thought about things, then the world was her oyster. She could get into any college she wanted, and she could spend her time in ways that interested her and she could resist authority. She didn’t have to care if she annoyed a particular teacher or if the principal got mad at her. For colleges less competitive than the Ivies, it was even easier. At some state universities, the application process consisted of “sign your name”. Others required more, but still a reasonable test score and having an OK grade point average was enough. Annoying the occasional teacher or administrator along the way didn’t hurt you.

That freedom formed the personality of the American worker. Sure, life in the big corporation was less free than high school or college, but by the time they started working people had already formed their attitudes and approach to life. If some boss got mad at you occasionally or tried to get you fired, OK, so what? If the bureaucracy got in the way of trying to do the right thing, you got together with others and figured out a way to deal with it. As long as you felt confident that you were trying to do the right thing and were sure that you understood why the rules existed, you had the courage of your convictions and, most of the time, you actually prospered³ because of that.

In more recent decades, that spirit has been broken. These days if a middle class kid aces his SATs that’s not enough. To get into a top program, you have to be very careful about your high school GPA, making sure that you don’t annoy any of your teachers and that you diligently do the mountain of busywork they assign you. Don’t disagree with the teacher in class discussions or in your essays, because that is too dangerous. Make sure that your helicopter parents have downloaded the teacher’s assignment list and rubric and that the teacher has stated exactly what you need to do to get an A, and then do exactly that. Be involved not just in one after-school activity that interests you, but in 3 or 4 things that sound good but are probably a complete waste of time. Found an organization, not in a sincere effort to do anything but because founding an organization sounds good, and if you are rich then make it look better by using your parents’ money to get some impressive statistic. Spend time moving boxes back and forth in your local food pantry, not because you think it is helping someone but because it checks the box for being a good citizen.

Of course, when you spend your time doing all of that then you have no time or energy left over to actually learn about or think about things. You learn not to ask any questions that might annoy authority. You learn to conform. You learn to be artificial. When you write your application essays, you say what you think the reviewer will want to hear, writing in the style that the counselors or consultants tell you to write in. You pad your resume. When you get into college, you do the same thing again. Conform, please authority, do what is expected. It will be boring, so spend time on-line shopping in class or getting pre-game drunk instead of reading about, thinking about and discussing things that interest you. Then you can graduate, get a job, and have your employers say “What’s with this generation? They have no initiative. They want to be told what to do. They can’t solve problems.”⁴

All of that works out OK for the children of the wealthy. The Wall Street elites are comfortable that their children will go to the right preschools and the right private schools. (Those fancy schools will be funded partly by “charitable” donations subsidized by us taxpayers, but they will be sure to keep the tuition at a level where mere commoners won’t attend.) Their children don’t have to be bright if they can go to the schools that give them opportunities to do things that sound impressive, if they can be given special opportunities for internships and “interesting life experiences”, if they can hire application consultants and essay reviewers. And hey, that old thing about acing the SAT? Many schools have gotten rid of the SAT now, so that’s not a problem any more. But they still have “legacy” admission preferences, the thing that Detective Green in Law and Order called “affirmative action for white folks”. If you are a poor minority kid and you get lucky and come to the attention of the right people, you might do OK. However, if you are a middle class kid who is really bright and interested in things and are a great problem solver, but who can’t bring yourself to knuckle under to authority and play the game, you’re fried.

We need to fix all that. We need to ensure that every American child, no matter what the circumstances of her birth, can reach her full educational potential and have access to the best jobs, and that she can do that while still being a classic American, independent, creative personality. We can’t be the country we used to be if we wreck our schools with political nonsense and break the spirit of our children by forcing them to conform, obey and play the game.

Laborism will reject all sides of the culture-wars efforts to turn our children into mindless robots who conform to a particular group’s ideology. Instead, we will do what the American educational system was always supposed to do and what it used to do fairly well, which is to help our children learn to think, question, and evaluate. America will be at its best and safest if our children learn to question authority, to separate facts from propaganda, to find useful information, and to draw logical conclusions from information. Rather than focusing just on dates and battles in history, they should learn how to figure out what was going on in history. Why did different groups think the way they did? What did they say? Was what they said facts, or was it propaganda? How would people at the time have been able to tell which was which? Where they had a difference of opinion, who was right, or were they all partly right? We will go back to having them study the writings of our founders, but not as dogma. We will have them apply the thoughts of Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Thomas Paine, and John Quincy Adams to what they observe in later history, and ask the questions “Do you think our founders were right? How would history have been different if we had followed their advice? Why didn’t we follow their advice?”

In science, they should understand that in every decade people strongly believed that many things were established facts when, in reality, they were wrong. They should understand that the scientific method is a method of disproving theories so that you can get closer to the truth and make better predictions, not a method of determining pure and complete Truth in itself. They should learn that many people, on learning that science supports a particular idea, will then argue that that simple idea is the whole story, and that anybody who thinks it might be more complicated is foolish; they should learn that those people are almost always shown to be wrong. In math they should not just learn how to solve problems for a test, but should learn how to use math to do real things and to solve real problems. They should learn how to judge statistics⁵ and how to evaluate risk. They should learn the tricks of propaganda – how people like Edward Bernays (the man that President Wilson hired to sell WWI to the American public and that the tobacco industry hired to get women to smoke) manipulate us, how social media works in the hands of PR firms and BigTech, how to spot the terrific lies about war every time the government is trying to persuade us to send our youth to die somewhere.

If we give our children these tools, any of us who have faith in our beliefs should then feel more confident that our children will come to the right conclusions than we ever could if their only support for a belief is “that’s what I learned in school.” You have good reasons for your beliefs, don’t you? Wouldn’t you welcome explaining them to your children, so that you can help them to understand what you understand? No matter how much power you might think you have to control the curriculum and textbooks in school, you are not sitting in the classroom. Don’t you want your children to have the habit of questioning what they are taught, so they don’t buy the nonsense some authority figure is trying to sell them? Washington, Jefferson and Madison based their faith in our Constitution on the proposition that children would all learn to question, to check facts, and to think for themselves. They knew we would all be exposed to mountains of lies, and so wanted children to learn how to sort fact from fiction. They believed that then we could have good discussions in which truth would almost always triumph over error in the Free Marketplace of Ideas. If we don’t give our children that education, if we instead try to teach them to believe things because the teacher says they are so or, just as bad, to avoid having them exposed to particular points of view entirely, then America will surely fail. But if we give them that talent and habit, then you don’t need to worry about what’s happening behind your back.

In my next post I will expand further on things that we should, and should not, focus on regarding schools.

1. Psychopaths have a condition, lack of a normal fear response, that makes them very difficult to socialize. Some super parents succeed and raise children who become test pilots and war heroes. Most don’t. While we should definitely try to catch children with this condition early and figure out how to keep them from turning to the dark side, once they have turned it is extremely unlikely that they will be reformed. Sociopaths, their poorly-socialized but biologically normal friends, can be reformed if they are kept away from psychopathic role models.

2. In the 20^th century liberals believed in liberty, that the government should stay out of your home and mind and personal life and should not oppress any one, but should be used to keep employers and corporations from oppressing anyone, too. Now people with that label seek to control speech and thought, to subject the world to America’s will by military force and brutal sanctions on their people, and to shift money from taxpayers to Wall Street. In the 20^th century conservatives believed in conservation, in America staying home and minding its own business, in limiting government and helping families have autonomy. Now people bearing that label cheer for destroying the environment, pursuing wars everywhere to show US dominance, running up huge government and consumer debts, having the government decide what is best for mothers and families, and shifting money from taxpayers to Wall Street. Labels matter because they control how we see things. Laborism rejects the liberal and conservative labels in favor of American philosophies – conservation, equal opportunity for all, maintaining efficient markets that serve people, peace and friendship to all, pay-as-you-go, the importance of parents, helping each other, freedom of speech and thought, limiting government power, limiting private economic and political power, freedom to live your life in safety and to pursue happiness. America’s philosophy is not a spectrum. It is a set of core values that we share. The Red-Blue spectrum is a creation of the financiers to serve the financiers and keep working people weak and ineffective.

3. I had multiple people try to get me fired for being uppity during my career. Twice that resulted in my getting a promotion. The only time someone succeeded in getting me fired was after my American company was taken over by an English one.

4. As with all problems flowing from the financiers, this one is not new. John Henry Newman wrote about it in 1852, when the capitalists were already trying to turn universities into machines for serving Industry, loading students up with “practical knowledge” and downplaying questioning authority or following natural curiosity. Newman said that if he had to choose between a university that just brought curious young people together to study and discuss with each other for 4 years versus ones with professors and exams teaching a rigid curriculum, he was sure the former would turn out better and more productive graduates.

5. As Benjamin Disraeli reportedly said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” People have used bad statistical analysis to try to give a scientific aura to propaganda for a very long time. Regular citizens need to know how to spot that game.