The Dumbing Down Of America Is Intentional, at least to some degree. Carl Sagan warned us how this could threaten our democracy and the ability of the majority to look out for their own best interests and recognize obvious scams or superstitions in the following book excerpt:
Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" 1995 p.25-6
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.
We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements—transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting—profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. Complete article
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.
We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements—transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting—profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. Complete article
Many people seem to consider this prophetic, considering how much more extreme it's gotten since then; however, it was an accurate description of how television was dumbing people down in his own time. One big problem with the media is that the establishment spent far more money promoting dumbed down television than they did promoting good scientific programming that would teach people to sort out superstition and real science; judging by his comments, Sagan would agree, at least to some degree.
Carl Sagan was a skeptic, so he might not be inclined to rush into supporting a conspiracy theory; however, he was more open minded than many other high profile skeptics, who often aren't nearly as scientific as they pretend to be. He was also familiar with producing good scientific research for PBS, as he showed with the original series "Cosmos" based partly on his book. If he was familiar with the scientific programming in the nineties then he must have known that the quality of it was deteriorating rapidly.
While Bill Clinton was reforming the media, enabling them to consolidate into five or six corporations controlling over 95% of the national media, there was some discussion about requiring a certain amount of educational material. Media lobbyists that wanted to minimize the amount of educational material had much better political connections than education groups; and, on top of that, they had some people with an educational background claiming that some of the shows the media wanted to pass as educational qualified, even though more sincere people from the educational sector knew they were very poor quality, often including reality TV and after the spot light was off, they got even worse.
Carl Sagan passed away in 1996, but many other scientific people that watched what happened, before and after that had to know that, at a minimum, this was incredibly bad politics catering to corporate interests. But there may have been a significant amount of evidence to indicate that there was more to it, and this grew in the years since then, as media became less and less competent, just about every year.
A large reason for this doesn't quite fit the strictest definition of a conspiracy, since it's not secret; however, the mainstream media hardly ever reports on many of the details to prevent the media from providing good educational material or suppress education for the poor, so it practically accomplishes the same thing. This is what I consider propaganda, where the few wealthy people provide deceptive messages designed to convince people they're educating the public, without doing so.
Some of the strongest evidence for the consolidation of the media, that I know of, was reported in a few books that got little or no promotion from traditional media, and are presumably only read by a small percentage of the public that learned how to look for more reliable educational material or happened to stumble on some of these good books, which is what I did, before I learned where to look for them. Ben Bagdikian first reported on this back in the early eighties in "The Media Monopoly" 1983/2014 and Robert McChesney went into much more detail about the history of the media and how they suppressed efforts to require a reasonable amount of education back in the thirties, when educational groups wanted to use radio to inform the public, instead setting up a system where the media is controlled by commercial interests, that put profits ahead of education in "Rich Media Poor Democracy" 1999/2016 and "The Problem Of The Media" 2004
McChesney reviews the history of the media far better than any other source I've seen. He explains how financing it through advertising has always created a strong bias, even before the media consolidated into six oligarchs. This gives wealthy people, more concerned with maximizing profits than the best interests of society, much more rights to free speech than those looking out for the best interests of everyone. For a while, other interests, including educational advocates, workers rights advocates, civil rights advocates, had a chance to reduce this inequality thanks to postal subsidies, which was how most news was spread in the nineteenth and early eighteenth centuries.
These sources, along with many other shows that wealthy people have always had far more political power than the majority of the public; in a previous article, Tracking the elite ruling class I pointed out how a small percentage of the public, either of very wealthy people, or chosen by wealthy people, control all the most powerful institutions in our country, and the world. They ensure that the news is heavily biased in their favor and that only the candidates they support get enough media coverage to get name recognition enabling them to be elected to higher office. There are a few exceptions at the local level, where well informed people help elect more sincere politicians; but, most political power is at the state or federal level.
At times, when the working class or other groups supporting popular causes are well enough informed and organized, they have reduced the amount of inequality in control over our government, but never reversed it so that the wealthy have been subject to oppression, with the possible exception of the French and Russian revolutions, both which went to extremes and backfired on everyone. The most extensive reform movement in the United States probably happened during the great depression when the masses were motivated by desperation caused by the crashing of the economy by the wealthy. This motivated them to listen to some of the best researchers, instead of propaganda controlled by the wealthy, which they followed during good times. Of course, it also helped to have a good reformer in office, FDR, but despite the media and historians giving him most of the credit for the reforms, the grassroots did far more to pressure the political establishment than he did.
There was also very effective activism during the Vietnam War, and to begin the environmental movement in the early seventies. Since then, there has always been a small percentage of well informed people active in politics since then; however, they've been less effective at influencing the government, thanks in part to consolidation of control of the media, business interests, and political establishment. What ever improvements were made by the grassroots between the great depression and the mid-seventies were almost all eliminated and control by oligarchs are worse than it's been since at least before the crash of Wall Street in 1929.
However, despite the fact that a small percentage of wealthy people have always had significantly more political power and influence on the government, it hasn't stopped them from portraying themselves as the victim; and there's plenty of evidence to show they've routinely conspired to rig the economic system in their favor, effectively rolling back many of the reforms passed when citizens were better organized. One of the most notorious pieces of evidence, at least among those who keep up with alternative media and haven't let it fall down the memory hole, is the Powell Memo, which shows that they used false ideological claims to justify a conspiracy to dominate control of media, education systems, and other organizations as indicated in the following excerpt, along with other reviews of the Memo:
The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto) The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971, distributed only to those at the Chamber of Commerce, who they felt needed to know. It was intended to be kept secret indefinably; however, Jack Anderson obtained a copy of it and published it about a year later, after Lewis Powell became a Supreme Court Justice.
Confidential Memorandum: Attack of American Free Enterprise System
DATE: August 23, 1971
TO: Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
FROM: Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
This memorandum is submitted at your request as a basis for the discussion on August 24 with Mr. Booth (executive vice president) and others at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The purpose is to identify the problem, and suggest possible avenues of action for further consideration.
Dimensions of the Attack
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.
There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.
But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.
Sources of the Attack
The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.
The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.
Moreover, much of the media-for varying motives and in varying degrees-either voluntarily accords unique publicity to these “attackers,” or at least allows them to exploit the media for their purposes. This is especially true of television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people.
One of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction. ......
Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader, who — thanks largely to the media — has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans. A recent article in Fortune speaks of Nader as follows:
“The passion that rules in him — and he is a passionate man — is aimed at smashing utterly the target of his hatred, which is corporate power. He thinks, and says quite bluntly, that a great many corporate executives belong in prison — for defrauding the consumer with shoddy merchandise, poisoning the food supply with chemical additives, and willfully manufacturing unsafe products that will maim or kill the buyer. He emphasizes that he is not talking just about ‘fly-by-night hucksters’ but the top management of blue chip business.”7 .......
A column recently carried by the Wall Street Journal was entitled: “Memo to GM: Why Not Fight Back?”9 Although addressed to GM by name, the article was a warning to all American business. Columnist St. John said:
“General Motors, like American business in general, is ‘plainly in trouble’ because intellectual bromides have been substituted for a sound intellectual exposition of its point of view.” Mr. St. John then commented on the tendency of business leaders to compromise with and appease critics. He cited the concessions which Nader wins from management, and spoke of “the fallacious view many businessmen take toward their critics.” He drew a parallel to the mistaken tactics of many college administrators: “College administrators learned too late that such appeasement serves to destroy free speech, academic freedom and genuine scholarship. One campus radical demand was conceded by university heads only to be followed by a fresh crop which soon escalated to what amounted to a demand for outright surrender.”
One need not agree entirely with Mr. St. John’s analysis. But most observers of the American scene will agree that the essence of his message is sound. American business “plainly in trouble”; the response to the wide range of critics has been ineffective, and has included appeasement; the time has come — indeed, it is long overdue — for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be marshalled against those who would destroy it. Complete article
Confidential Memorandum: Attack of American Free Enterprise System
DATE: August 23, 1971
TO: Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
FROM: Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
This memorandum is submitted at your request as a basis for the discussion on August 24 with Mr. Booth (executive vice president) and others at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The purpose is to identify the problem, and suggest possible avenues of action for further consideration.
Dimensions of the Attack
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.
There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.
But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.
Sources of the Attack
The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.
The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.
Moreover, much of the media-for varying motives and in varying degrees-either voluntarily accords unique publicity to these “attackers,” or at least allows them to exploit the media for their purposes. This is especially true of television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people.
One of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction. ......
Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader, who — thanks largely to the media — has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans. A recent article in Fortune speaks of Nader as follows:
“The passion that rules in him — and he is a passionate man — is aimed at smashing utterly the target of his hatred, which is corporate power. He thinks, and says quite bluntly, that a great many corporate executives belong in prison — for defrauding the consumer with shoddy merchandise, poisoning the food supply with chemical additives, and willfully manufacturing unsafe products that will maim or kill the buyer. He emphasizes that he is not talking just about ‘fly-by-night hucksters’ but the top management of blue chip business.”7 .......
A column recently carried by the Wall Street Journal was entitled: “Memo to GM: Why Not Fight Back?”9 Although addressed to GM by name, the article was a warning to all American business. Columnist St. John said:
“General Motors, like American business in general, is ‘plainly in trouble’ because intellectual bromides have been substituted for a sound intellectual exposition of its point of view.” Mr. St. John then commented on the tendency of business leaders to compromise with and appease critics. He cited the concessions which Nader wins from management, and spoke of “the fallacious view many businessmen take toward their critics.” He drew a parallel to the mistaken tactics of many college administrators: “College administrators learned too late that such appeasement serves to destroy free speech, academic freedom and genuine scholarship. One campus radical demand was conceded by university heads only to be followed by a fresh crop which soon escalated to what amounted to a demand for outright surrender.”
One need not agree entirely with Mr. St. John’s analysis. But most observers of the American scene will agree that the essence of his message is sound. American business “plainly in trouble”; the response to the wide range of critics has been ineffective, and has included appeasement; the time has come — indeed, it is long overdue — for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be marshalled against those who would destroy it. Complete article
For starters, their stated or implied claim that they're the victim is utterly absurd. Powell represented a class of people that still had far more money than the working class that did all the work to enable their massive profits. It may not have been nearly as extreme as before the crash of the stock market in 1929, or as extreme as it has become in the past couple decades, but they still had more than their share of wealth, which is how they were able to afford many new think tanks advertising and other political activities, which escalated after this Memo was distributed.
A lot of good researchers reported on the large growth in think tanks, lobbying firms, propaganda advertisements, influence on the education system and other efforts to rig the political and economic system in favor of the wealthy massively increasing epidemic levels of income inequality. Many of these researchers often say or imply that Lewis Powell is the mastermind behind this reform movement, but this is only partly true. He specifically says that it was written at the request of Eugene Sydnor, Jr. with plans to discuss it the day after it was dated with him, "Mr. Booth (executive vice president) and others at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce." There's a strong possibility that it reflects previous discussions on the subject.
Powell rants against Ralph Nader, but declines to discuss whether or not he had legitimate concerns about making products safer for consumers or if some of the chemical additives are unsafe, which they often are. Mr. Powell is a lawyer so he knows better than to put in writing that they want to be able to increase profits by selling dangerous products without accountability, but it's clearly implied. His strong bias should have been clear even before this became public or he was nominated to the supreme court based on the work he did for the tobacco industry making false claims as the following quote from his Wikipedia page says:
His experiences as a corporate lawyer and a director on the board of Phillip Morris from 1964 until his appointment to the Supreme Court made him a champion of the tobacco industry who railed against the growing scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer deaths.[14] He argued, unsuccessfully, that tobacco companies' First Amendment rights were being infringed when news organizations were not giving credence to the cancer denials of the industry.[14]
This was public knowledge before he was nominated and approved by the Senate, yet he was still able to get 89 votes with only one Senator voting against him, and 10 not voting. This isn't uncommon at all, pro-business appointees routinely get approved easily whether it's as a Judge, Cabinet member or any other political office; while pro-labor, environmental, health or other activists defending the majority are rarely if ever even appointed in the first place, and have a hard time getting confirmed if they are. This adds to the evidence that the economic system was never under attack at all, as his memo claims.
It doesn't take much reading between the lines to realize that wealthy people got away with profiting by polluting the environment, selling dangerous merchandise, including tobacco that kills the consumer when used as directed, oppressing workers rights, and more, for decades if not centuries and they began accustomed to thinking they were entitled to continue business as usual. When activists managed to reduce, but not eliminate the amount of fraud they felt they should be able to reverse this and restore their rights to get away with epidemic fraud.
The mainstream media has forgotten the Powell Memo long ago, letting it fall down the memory hole, presumably because they're increasingly controlled by oligarchs. however there are numerous other low profile reviews of it including The Powell Memo with Commentary which points out, "The Powell Memo of 1971 precipitated an explosion in the growth of US think tanks, starting with the founding of the conservative Heritage Foundation in 1973. This marked the birth of a new type of politically aggressive and openly ideological “expert” organization." One thing this review claims is that, "Those working for the common good have no equivalent of The Powell Memo. In other words, the opposition has a master plan and we don't," which isn't quite true; numerous authors, including Naomi Wolff, Robert McChesney and coauthor John Nichols, Hendrick Smith, and others, have written books providing advice to activists recommending how to reform the system, and unlike Lewis Powell and the business community they didn't try to keep their activities secret, since they have nothing to hide.
We have good reason to know that all these think tanks have been increasingly popular, and that they're having a major impact on lobbying, foreign policy, education, propaganda, and more but it's difficult to know exactly what they're doing since a large portion of their decision making is done in secret. What they release publicly is often carefully crafted and accompanied by spin which many good researchers often study to determine their goal, even without adequate inside information. There's no doubt that corporations have an increasing impact on the media, as Robert McChesney, Ben Bagdikian and other researchers, including Noam Chomsky have pointed out.
Almost everyone has heard of Brown v. Education, which was supposed to end segregation, even though it never happened; however few people have heard of numerous other Supreme Court decisions that weakened that ruling. One of the most important ones was
Another major issue, which Powell addresses in his memo is efforts by the business community to influence education, and there's plenty of evidence to show they're doing just that including a few rulings by Lewis Powell that deteriorated quality of education, or prevented efforts to improve it, for lower income people. One of the most important of these cases was San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez which Jonathan Kozol writes about in the following excerpt:
Jonathan Kozol "Savage Inequalities" 1991
Late in 1971, a three-judge federal district court in San Antonio held that Texas was in violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. "Any mild equalizing effects" from state aid, said the Court, "do not benefit the poorest districts."
It is this decision which was then appealed to the Supreme Court. The majority opinion of the high court, which reversed the lower court’s decision, noted that, in order to bring to bear “strict scrutiny” upon the case, it must first establish that there had been “absolute deprivation” of a “fundamental interest” of the Edgewood children. Justice Lewis Powell wrote that education is not “a fundamental interest” inasmuch as "is not among the rights afforded explicit protection under our Federal Constitution." Nor, he wrote, did he believe that “absolute deprivation” was at stake. “The argument here,” he said, “is not that children in districts having relatively low assessable property values are receiving no public education; rather, it is that they are receiving a poorer quality education than that available to children in districts having more assessable wealth.” In cases where wealth is involved, he said, “the Equal Protection Clause does not require absolute equality …”
Attorneys for Rodriguez and the other plaintiffs, Powell wrote argue “education is itself personal right because it is essential to the exercise of the First Amendment freedoms and to intelligent use of the right to vote. [They argue also] that the right to speak is meaningless unless the speaker is capable of articulating his thoughts intelligently and persuasively …. [A] similar line of reasoning is pursued with respect to the right to vote.
“Yet we have never presumed to possess either the ability or the authority to guarantee …. The most effective speech or the most informed electoral choice.” Even if it were conceded, he wrote, that “some identifiable quantum of education” is a prerequisite to exercise of speech and voting rights, “we have no indication … that the [Texas funding] system fails to provide each child with an opportunity to acquire the basic minimum skills necessary” to enjoy a “full participation in the political process.” Complete book
Late in 1971, a three-judge federal district court in San Antonio held that Texas was in violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. "Any mild equalizing effects" from state aid, said the Court, "do not benefit the poorest districts."
It is this decision which was then appealed to the Supreme Court. The majority opinion of the high court, which reversed the lower court’s decision, noted that, in order to bring to bear “strict scrutiny” upon the case, it must first establish that there had been “absolute deprivation” of a “fundamental interest” of the Edgewood children. Justice Lewis Powell wrote that education is not “a fundamental interest” inasmuch as "is not among the rights afforded explicit protection under our Federal Constitution." Nor, he wrote, did he believe that “absolute deprivation” was at stake. “The argument here,” he said, “is not that children in districts having relatively low assessable property values are receiving no public education; rather, it is that they are receiving a poorer quality education than that available to children in districts having more assessable wealth.” In cases where wealth is involved, he said, “the Equal Protection Clause does not require absolute equality …”
Attorneys for Rodriguez and the other plaintiffs, Powell wrote argue “education is itself personal right because it is essential to the exercise of the First Amendment freedoms and to intelligent use of the right to vote. [They argue also] that the right to speak is meaningless unless the speaker is capable of articulating his thoughts intelligently and persuasively …. [A] similar line of reasoning is pursued with respect to the right to vote.
“Yet we have never presumed to possess either the ability or the authority to guarantee …. The most effective speech or the most informed electoral choice.” Even if it were conceded, he wrote, that “some identifiable quantum of education” is a prerequisite to exercise of speech and voting rights, “we have no indication … that the [Texas funding] system fails to provide each child with an opportunity to acquire the basic minimum skills necessary” to enjoy a “full participation in the political process.” Complete book
Jonathan Kozol wrote several books about massive inequality, especially in education. This brief excerpt barely begins to tell the story about how wealthy people have much better access to education and the political establishment. The same business interests that have been arguing to suppress educational opportunities for working class people have also been shipping jobs overseas so they can suppress wages, making it even harder for people in low income areas to pay for good education and keep up with all the political issues so they can vote in their own best interests. They also have less educational background to recognize massive fraud by our corrupt economic system as a result of this ruling. This also contributes to increased poverty and income inequality, which is exactly what the business community wants, since they're the beneficiaries of the rigged economic system. Lack of education, poverty, and income inequality are all major contributing causes of violence as well, so this ruling has contributed to higher crime rates in abandoned inner cities. And, as I'll point out below more of his policies or rulings have also contributed to higher rates of violence.
Peter Irons has been researching the legal profession for decades and has reported on many other Supreme Court rulings that have chipped away at the right to a good education for the working class, especially minorities and reported on more court cases like this in "Jim Crow's Children." 2002 He also reported on the long history of appointing judges with a strong bias toward the wealthy going back to the early days of our republic up to the 1990s in "The People’s History of the Supreme Court," 1999 which shows that the Supreme Court has never been nearly as unbiased as massive amounts of propaganda makes it appear.
Once wealthy people deprived local schools of the funds they needed to provide a good education to children corporations began providing some funds, often through advertising in schools or other forms of sponsorship; however, it didn't come without strings attached. Susan Linn wrote about how these ads are doing more harm than good and giving Wall Street corporations the opportunity to corrupt the education system in "Consuming Kids" which points out the following, among many other things:
The only goal for creating classrooms materials should be furthering the education of students using that material. Once a goal becomes imprinting brands into students’ consciousness, or creating a positive association to a product, education is likely to take a back seat. Is, for instance, a corporation likely to be unbiased in its presentation of subjects in which it has a vested interest? According to Consumer Union’s 1995 review of seventy-seven corporate-sponsored classroom kits that claimed to be educational, the answer is “no.”
Nearly 80 percent were found to be biased or incomplete, “promoting a viewpoint that favors consumption of the sponsor’s product or service or a position that favors the company or its economic agenda. A few contained significant inaccuracies.” Materials from energy companies and professional organizations such as Exxon (now Exxon Mobil) or the American Coal Foundation, for instance, were found to be biased in their presentations of the pros and cons of reliance on fossil fuel. Through the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industries produce classroom materials about energy. These can be downloaded at a site called classroom-energy.org. In addition to the Institute’s own materials, the site includes links to science lessons produced by oil and gas companies.
Allowing business interests to control the education system is an obvious recipe for disaster, especially with the massive amount of damage being done to the environment around the world, including Climate Change. Short term financial interests have taken over the education system as well as the media, political establishment, and other powerful institutions and it's guaranteed to lead to epidemic collapse of our society, unless this is reversed.
Diane Ravitch, who previously worked with several presidential administrations, including George H.W. Bush was involved in the early reform movement, initially supporting it; however when she realized that it was putting financial interests of the elites ahead of the best educational interests of children she began writing numerous books to expose this including "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" 2010; "Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement" 2013; and most recently "Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization" 2020; She also writes regular updates on educational fraud and other issues at Diane Ravitch's Blog. Now that she's no longer supporting efforts to corrupt the educational system, the political system and media routinely try to portray her as a radical from the fringes; however, if you read her work it will be clear who the more credible one is.
Another major, and shocking, ruling by Lewis Powell was Ingraham v. Wright, where he ruled that corporal punishment was allowed in schools, disregarding some extremely outrageous examples of it as shown in the following excerpt:
Philip J. Greven: "Spare the Child 1991
The physical punishment that occurs within private households also takes place in schools across the nation. As of March 1990, twenty states have prohibited the infliction of corporal punishment in public schools* This is a significant increase over the two states – Massachusetts and New Jersey – that had prohibited corporal punishment in schools prior to 1977, when the Supreme Court, by a bare majority of five votes to four, decided the case of Ingraham v. Wright This remains a landmark decision, shaping the legal rationales for permitting physical assaults, characterized as discipline, against children and adolescents by teachers and administrators in public schools. As a result of Ingraham v. Wright, American schoolchildren lack any protection against physical punishment on the basis of either the Eighth or the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
In 1974, at an earlier stage of Ingraham’s progress toward the Supreme Court, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit took careful note of the evidence in the original trial of school officials at Drew Junior High School in Dade County, Florida. The majority, in an opinion by Judge Richard T. Rives, noted: “The evidence shows that corporal punishment in Dade County during the relevant period consisted primarily if not entirely, of ‘paddling.’ Paddling involves striking the student with a flat wooden instrument usually on the buttocks.” In the county schools using physical punishment (only 16 of 231, a small but noteworthy minority, did not), “the punishment was normally limited to one or two licks, or sometimes as many as five, with no apparent physical injury to the children who were punished.
In Drew Junior High School, however, students were struck many more times and with far more severe injuries, according to the testimony cited by the court. In one such instance, James Ingraham, then fourteen, was one of a number of students who “were slow in leaving the stage of the school auditorium when asked to do so by a teacher,” and was on of those “taken to the principal’s office and paddled. James protested, claiming he was innocent and refused to be paddled.” Nevertheless, he was held by two school administrators “by his arms and legs” and was “placed … struggling, face down across a table.” The principal “administered at least twenty licks.” Young Ingraham then left school and went home where he found “his backside was ‘black and purple and it was tight and hot.’” Later, “The examining doctor diagnosed the cause of James pain to be ‘hematoma,’” and told him to remain home for one week. During the trial, “James testified that it was painful even to lie on his back for the days following the paddling, and that he could not sit comfortably for about three weeks.” Other students told similar stories: some experienced up to fifty blows from paddles at various times. One student after wiping something off a seat in the school auditorium, had his number placed on a board and was then summoned to the office of the assistant principal. “Because he thought he was innocent,” the student “refused to ‘hook up,’” that is, “To assume a position standing in the back of a chair, with hands on the seat of the chair, in preparation to being paddled.” The school administrator “then hit him five or ten times on his head and back with a paddle, and then hit him with a belt. The side of … [his] head swelled, and an operation proved necessary to remove a lump of some sort which had developed” after being “struck.” On another occasion, the same student had been given “ten licks,” after which his “chest hurt and he threw up ‘blood and everything.’” The opinion explains: “Perhaps because he had asthma and heart trouble of some sort,” the student “also reacted to this paddling by ‘shaking all over’ and trembling,’ and required treatment at a local hospital.” Perhaps there were other reasons as well, such as anxiety or even rage, but that remains unclear. What is evident is that such incidents were commonplace at this particular school. The court was called upon to decide whether the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment,” would protect students from such assaultive and painful school discipline. .......
In 1976, the Supreme Court considered Ingraham v. Wright, reaching a split decision in 1977 (five votes to four) concerning the constitutional issues the case raised. The majority (in an opinion written by Justice Lewis Powell and concurred in by Associate Justice William Rehnquist, now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) skipped quickly over the evidence generated in the original trial, although they acknowledged that this evidence “suggests that the regime at Drew was exceptionally harsh.” In one compact paragraph, they referred briefly to the experiences of two students, but the rest of the testimony concerning the pain and injury caused by the paddlings was passed over in silence, without any visible empathy or compassion for the students victimized by these beatings. Additional excerpts
The physical punishment that occurs within private households also takes place in schools across the nation. As of March 1990, twenty states have prohibited the infliction of corporal punishment in public schools* This is a significant increase over the two states – Massachusetts and New Jersey – that had prohibited corporal punishment in schools prior to 1977, when the Supreme Court, by a bare majority of five votes to four, decided the case of Ingraham v. Wright This remains a landmark decision, shaping the legal rationales for permitting physical assaults, characterized as discipline, against children and adolescents by teachers and administrators in public schools. As a result of Ingraham v. Wright, American schoolchildren lack any protection against physical punishment on the basis of either the Eighth or the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
In 1974, at an earlier stage of Ingraham’s progress toward the Supreme Court, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit took careful note of the evidence in the original trial of school officials at Drew Junior High School in Dade County, Florida. The majority, in an opinion by Judge Richard T. Rives, noted: “The evidence shows that corporal punishment in Dade County during the relevant period consisted primarily if not entirely, of ‘paddling.’ Paddling involves striking the student with a flat wooden instrument usually on the buttocks.” In the county schools using physical punishment (only 16 of 231, a small but noteworthy minority, did not), “the punishment was normally limited to one or two licks, or sometimes as many as five, with no apparent physical injury to the children who were punished.
In Drew Junior High School, however, students were struck many more times and with far more severe injuries, according to the testimony cited by the court. In one such instance, James Ingraham, then fourteen, was one of a number of students who “were slow in leaving the stage of the school auditorium when asked to do so by a teacher,” and was on of those “taken to the principal’s office and paddled. James protested, claiming he was innocent and refused to be paddled.” Nevertheless, he was held by two school administrators “by his arms and legs” and was “placed … struggling, face down across a table.” The principal “administered at least twenty licks.” Young Ingraham then left school and went home where he found “his backside was ‘black and purple and it was tight and hot.’” Later, “The examining doctor diagnosed the cause of James pain to be ‘hematoma,’” and told him to remain home for one week. During the trial, “James testified that it was painful even to lie on his back for the days following the paddling, and that he could not sit comfortably for about three weeks.” Other students told similar stories: some experienced up to fifty blows from paddles at various times. One student after wiping something off a seat in the school auditorium, had his number placed on a board and was then summoned to the office of the assistant principal. “Because he thought he was innocent,” the student “refused to ‘hook up,’” that is, “To assume a position standing in the back of a chair, with hands on the seat of the chair, in preparation to being paddled.” The school administrator “then hit him five or ten times on his head and back with a paddle, and then hit him with a belt. The side of … [his] head swelled, and an operation proved necessary to remove a lump of some sort which had developed” after being “struck.” On another occasion, the same student had been given “ten licks,” after which his “chest hurt and he threw up ‘blood and everything.’” The opinion explains: “Perhaps because he had asthma and heart trouble of some sort,” the student “also reacted to this paddling by ‘shaking all over’ and trembling,’ and required treatment at a local hospital.” Perhaps there were other reasons as well, such as anxiety or even rage, but that remains unclear. What is evident is that such incidents were commonplace at this particular school. The court was called upon to decide whether the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment,” would protect students from such assaultive and painful school discipline. .......
In 1976, the Supreme Court considered Ingraham v. Wright, reaching a split decision in 1977 (five votes to four) concerning the constitutional issues the case raised. The majority (in an opinion written by Justice Lewis Powell and concurred in by Associate Justice William Rehnquist, now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) skipped quickly over the evidence generated in the original trial, although they acknowledged that this evidence “suggests that the regime at Drew was exceptionally harsh.” In one compact paragraph, they referred briefly to the experiences of two students, but the rest of the testimony concerning the pain and injury caused by the paddlings was passed over in silence, without any visible empathy or compassion for the students victimized by these beatings. Additional excerpts
Philip Greven's book goes into more detail about the damage done by corporal punishment including additional examples of the abuses that went on in Florida schools, and the court decisions have even more details, which are linked to in the excerpts from the book. As Greven pointed out following that ruling many people at the local level were so outraged that they pushed to ban it in their states, and most teacher organizations support this. By 2011 there were only nineteen states still allowing it, and several of those have considered banning it in recent years.
There was enough evidence to show that this ruling was outrageous at the time of the ruling, in the testimony and in additional research that probably wasn't presented to the court; however, justifiable or not, when the states began eliminating corporal punishment in schools one at a time they provided research opportunities showing how much damage corporal punishment does in the states allowing it in schools and using it more at home. In Research On Preventing Violence Absent From National Media I reported this and cited numerous sources showing that corporal punishment teaches children to deal with their problems with violence. The statistics from the states still allowing it confirms this beyond all reasonable doubt. I went back to 1991, so far and compared the murder rates in the states still allowing it in schools to those not allowing it and found that hey were always higher in those allowing it. In 1992, less than ten years after most states banned corporal punishment the murder rates were as close as it ever got, with the states still allowing it having 2.26% higher murder rates, and for the most part the difference grew steadily the longer they banned it in schools and presumably cut back at home as well. In the last ten years or so, the murder rates were a minimum of 22% higher in states allowing corporal punishment in schools with the biggest difference in 2018, the most recent year with statistics available, when it was 32% higher in the nineteen states still allowing it than the other thirty one, plus the District of Columbia.
Research also shows that child abuse, including corporal punishment impairs the development of critical thinking skills and teaches children to blindly obey orders, and believe what they're told by their leaders. Philip Greven also explains how corporal punishment is used as part of a control process teaching blind obedience and preventing the development of critical thinking skills.
Children raised in authoritarian ways are more susceptible to cult, military or corporate indoctrination, and less able to recognize obvious scams, including some of the ones that Wall Street are involved in. This means they're more likely to trust anti-communism propaganda which often ignores many inconvenient facts. There's no doubt that the Soviet Union and Communist China were oppressive tyrannical regimes; however, many other countries, including large portions of Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. have done a much better job sorting through the details. These countries have done a better job providing health care, education, child care and teaching not to abuse children leading to much less violence. They have a higher quality of life, less poverty, income inequality and violence.
There's an enormous amount of evidence to show that corporate efforts to rig the economy in favor of the wealthy comes at an enormous cost to the vast majority of the public; however the few that benefit are controlling the mass media and the political establishment and they're suppressing the best research on any given subject when it interferes with their financial best interests, at least in the short term. these elites seem to behaving like fanatics, since they should realize that in order for them to continue living a good life style they need a functioning society, but they're on the verge of pushing it over the edge with fanatical politicians like both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
If not for the dumbing down of America, there's no way either Biden, Trump or Hillary Clinton would ever have gotten the nominations for their parties, nor would many other politicians for other offices. Furthermore, if not for the gradual deterioration of the media many more people would seek out alternative media, especially if they haven't been distracted by shallow reality TV or other obsessions, nor would people ignore many of the enormous problems including destruction of the environment, routine wars based on incredibly bad lies, obvious insurance scams designed to deprive us of health care and many other corporate scams.
Fortunately, there's plenty of good research available in the academic world, libraries, and alternative media; however the best books, including ones I've cited in this article get virtually no promotion from traditional media and the majority of the public doesn't seek it out. Those that are aware of it might be more active and doing their part to inform others. If we're going to reverse this insanity those people might be the ones that bring about real reform.
For what it's worth, many of the ideas expressed in the Powell Memo weren't new at all; he may ahve frevised the same ideas used by oligarchs in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, which led to the stock market crash of 1929, and will inevitably lead to another crash. In fact it already has, including the crash of 2008 and many other smaller ones between the depression and now; but an even greater one may be in the process of developing right now.
Wikipedia: Lewis F. Powell Jr.: Powell Memorandum, 1971
Quotes from "Who Stole the American Dream?" by Hedrick Smith 2012
Google excerpts: "Who Stole the American Dream?" by Hedrick Smith 2012
Hedrick Smith '55 - Who Stole the American Dream? 10/19/2012
The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations 09/4/2012
Carl Sagan: The Skeptic's Sceptic Peter S. Williams 08/2/2020
Kidnapped By UFOs? This feature contains disturbing material
Interview With Carl Sagan Author, Astronomer I want you to comment on John Mack. SAGAN: Many of the principle advocates of UFO abduction seem to want the validation of science without submitting to its rigorous standards of evidence. When John Mack talks about parallel universes or other dimensions, he's using scientific ideas. Those have long been in play in the Physics and Astronomy community. But, there is no evidence for them. He also criticizes the current paradigm that is the skeptical scientific method. But, this isn't validated. We don't believe it just out of prejudice; we believe it because it works.
"The Powell Memorandum" - Corporate America's Master Plan 03/02/2017 A little known but extremely important historic document to be aware of to understand the corporate dominance of our society.
The New Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian 2004
Rich Media, Poor Democracy by Robert W. McChesney 1999
The Problem of the Media by Robert W. McChesney 2004
