Power and Politics

Corporate America has developed a well-honed expertise in motivating the population to behave in a desired manner. Citizens as consumers are ample manifestation of that expertise. CA (Corporate America) has accomplished this ability by careful study and implementation of the knowledge of the ways of human behavior. I suspect this same structure applies to most Western democracies.

A democratic form of government is one wherein the citizens have some voice in some policy decisions; the greater the voice of the citizens in policy decisions the better the democracy.

In America we have policy makers, decision makers, and citizens. The decision makers are our elected representatives and are, thus, under some control by the voting citizen. The policy makers are the leaders of CA; less than ten thousand individuals, according to those who study such matters. Policy makers exercise significant control of decision makers by controlling the financing of elections.

Policy makers customize and maintain the dominant ideology in order to control the political behavior of the citizens. This dominant ideology exercises the political control of the citizens in the same fashion as the consuming citizen is controlled by the same dominant ideology.

An enlightened citizen is the only means to gain more voice in more policy decisions. An enlightened citizen is much more than an informed citizen. CT (Critical Thinking) is the only practical means to develop a more enlightened citizen. If, however, we wait until our CT trained grade-schoolers become adults I suspect all will be lost. This is why I think a massive effort must be made to convince today’s adults that they must train themselves in CT.

Thomas R. Dye, Professor of Political Science at Florida State University, has published a series of books examining who and what institutions actually control and run America. To understand who is making the decisions that affect our lives, we also have to understand how societies structure themselves in general.

http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/12-dye.html

What makes you think our school children are being taught critical thinking skills, Coberst?

I have been intimately involved in the education system for years and it has been my observatiion that while individual teachers try to teach critical thinking skills and while the government, federal, state and local pays lip service to teaching critical thinking skills, most of what goes on in the public schools is indoctrination. Each year less time is spent on academics and more on 'other skills', ie. touchy feely matters.

While reading and math are still being taught history, grammar, creative writing and even science are being replace by sex education, peer groupings, tolerance of non-mainstream lifestyles, and other areas mandated by governments. Most states regulate how many hours must be spent per week on each subject area but then add so many mandated programs that it is impossible to find the time to teach the subject matter.

Our schools are not being used to raise up a generation of critically thinking adults but instead a generation of compliant, namby pamby adults who will accept the nanny state that awaits them.

frogger

I agree. Our schools and colleges are just begining to teach youngsters how to think and it is moving very slowly if it is moving at all.

I think that one of the big reasons why our educational system fails to teach our youngsters how to think is because our adults were never taught this very important matter and therefore the adults are not conscious of its importance.