The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy (47 page)
Read The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy Online
Authors: Jim Marrs
And as with any profession, laziness largely contributes to the recent flux of poor media content. As the British novelist and critic Kingsley Amis once put it, “Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.”
This laziness is partially due to the prevalence of public relations press releases in the last half century. It has always been easier to rewrite a government or corporate news release than conduct the legwork necessary for documenting a good story. Good stories require a reporter to go out into his community, not sit around at a desk. Yet when a reporter is not at his desk all day, his editor usually becomes upset, as businesses (after all, media companies are businesses) like employees on the premises, at their desks. But sitting behind a desk all day does not promote good daily news or investigations.
University of Illinois communications professor and media reformer Robert McChesney and many others believe journalism may be one of the greatest issues facing the American public, because if the public is not informed about current events, then it is almost impossible for the public to make electoral decisions. Thus, democracy becomes impossible in a journalism-free society.
In the future, journalists may be private citizens who, making use of cell-phone cameras and the Internet, take it upon themselves to find and report the news. It’s happened before (albeit without cell phones and the Internet). According to McChesney, perhaps the greatest of such journalists was I. F. Stone, the iconoclastic and once-blacklisted editor of
I. F. Stone’s Weekly,
a self-published newsletter in the 1950s and 1960s with far-reaching influence. In 1999, ten years after his death, Stone’s newsletter was named among “The Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century.” “Stone is currently celebrated by professional American journalism schools as a great hero. But for most of his life, Stone was an anathema to those that relied on official sources,” explained McChesney. “Stone refused to have any relationship with people in power because he knew that relationship would corrupt his ability to be a real journalist. He knew that this would limit his capacity to get at the truth of what the government does and whose interests it serves.”
“I want a thousand I. F. Stones, combing Washington and Wall Street, investigating power,” said McChesney. “To do this well, [the journalists] would need a decent salary, professional training, and a newsroom to protect them from the powerful. They would need much more time. If I work at an office or a factory all day, go home, feed my kids and make their lunch for the next day, clean the house and do the laundry, and then sit down to blog at 11 p.m., it is going to suck.
“What people can do, though, let’s say if they’ve studied some economics and become really interested in economic issues, is this. They can actively search for, collect and read numerous pieces by journalists on the economy. They can compare different points of view, fact-check, and scrutinize sources. Then they can blog on all of this. They can actively participate in the media debate. But this does not mean trained journalists are no longer important. I view the blogosphere (the part-time or volunteer citizen-journalist) as a number of musicians improvising on a melody written by journalists. Bloggers may contribute to the melody in interesting ways. But without journalism, there is just a lot of noise. Journalism should be there to make sure that blogging is not just a lot of noise, but a beautiful song.”
I
T MAY PERHAPS BE
the case that the media’s blandness is only a mere reflection of the blandness and conformity that public school systems instill in the nation’s citizens. Mark Taylor, currently a teacher at Olathe South High School, in Olathe, Kansas, believes that “In order to win the struggle in the classrooms of America, teachers must first realize that today’s public education system was designed by powerful economic elites, whose true intention was for students to think of themselves as employees in a system designed to dumb them down to be good little consumers of the goals that the purveyors of that system have arbitrarily chosen. This system has been sold to educators all across America as the values of a Democratic Republic. These teachers, whether they are university professors, or secondary and elementary school teachers, should begin by addressing that lie and begin to use the elite cover story of a Democratic Republic as a weapon to defeat the imbedded design of subservience.”
Taylor has spent his teaching career trying to instill critical thinking skills in his students. “The essence of education is not what we learn, but questioning what we learn. The first step to questioning what we learn is to realize that in order to think outside the box, we must first know we are in it. In order to know we are in it, we must learn how to think, and in order to learn how to think, we must learn primarily from the four horsemen of intellectual enlightenment: philosophy, economics, political science, and history. From philosophy we must learn about what is real, what is true and what is good. From economics we must learn that wealth creation is an illusion created by powerful economic elites. From political science, we must learn that the pursuit of politics is the pursuit of power and it is tied to the secrets of economic wealth creation. Finally, we must learn that today’s news is tomorrow’s history and since most of today’s news is based on lies and deceit, most of history is a lie,” he added.
There are teachers across America who teach their students to question the system through the pursuit of philosophy, economics, political science, and history. “Every teacher who uses this formula will contribute to a moment in time when the critical mass of history will implode the designs of those who seek to enslave us all,” Taylor said.
Unfortunately, such teachers illuminate their charges in spite of the system, not because of it. To produce literate and functioning members of society, education must first offer all students a basic grounding in the three R’s—reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic. Past this, they also should be grounded in the history and philosophy of American freedom. Not in simply memorizing names and dates but, more important, understanding why revolutions and wars were fought and what results came of them. And, over all, students must be shown how to think and reason critically, how to research and examine issues on their own, and, last, how to speak out for what is right and just. Only with a truly educated and responsible citizenry can American regain its place as a leader among nations. With an increasing number of parents beginning to understand the worth of real education, not simply passing tests or fulfilling state-required curricula, they are turning to an alternative.
T
O ENSURE A BETTER
education, some parents remove their children entirely from the public education system. Once considered highly controversial, homeschooling seems to gradually be gaining favor across America. In the past, homeschooling was thought to be only for xenophobes and religious fanatics. Now, by some estimates, two million American kids are getting their education at home. And there is a growing belief, backed by studies and statistics, that the education of homeschooled children often outstrips those in the public system.
Even well-respected collegiate institutions are recognizing homeschooling as a legitimate educational practice. According to a study by the Virginia-based advocacy group National Center for Home Education (NCHE), 68 percent of colleges were accepting parent-prepared transcripts or portfolios in place of an accredited diploma. Those universities accepting homeschoolers included Stanford, Yale, and Harvard. The NCHE said such colleges “generally require SAT I (one) and/or ACT scores, a high school transcript, letters of recommendation, and writing samples.”
“Homeschoolers bring certain skills—motivation, curiosity, the capacity to be responsible for their education—that high schools don’t induce very well,” said Jon Reider, the director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School who at one time was Stanford’s senior associate director of admissions.
Isabel Shaw, a writer and homeschooling researcher, wrote: “On average, homeschooled kids score one year ahead of their schooled peers on standardized tests. The longer the student homeschools, the wider this gap becomes. By the time homeschooled children are in the eighth grade, they test four years ahead of their schooled peers.” Isabel and her husband, Ray, homeschooled their two daughters for fifteen years. “Of course, these results translate into better American College Test (ACT) scores. Research shows that high achievement on the ACT strongly indicates a greater likelihood of success in college. According to official ACT reports, homeschooled students repeatedly outperform publicly and privately educated students in the ACT assessment test.” Kelley Hayden, a spokesman for ACT, said, “What you can say about the homeschoolers is that homeschooled kids are well-prepared for college.”
Those leery of homeschooling say that the very absence of “real world” experiences may put homeschoolers at a disadvantage in later life. “Public school students learn how to deal with a system, no matter how capricious it may be,” said one Texas public school teacher. “They learn how to put up with the incompetents (including administrators) they will have to deal with in the real world.”
According to Hal Young, a past education vice president for North Carolinians for Home Education, “One of the most common objections levied against home education is that homeschool students lack exposure to different social settings.” But Young said that “graduates integrate well into the campus environment. Homeschooling is individual, but it’s not isolated. Most homeschoolers that we hear from are pretty well networked in support groups, church activities, Scouting programs, and sports programs…so when they get to the college campuses where there are other groups around, that’s just another day in life.” Young noted that, as a result, “A lot of colleges are saying that [homeschoolers] are a good population to pursue. They’ve had positive results dealing with home-educated students, and so they actively go out and look for them….”
The late Chris Klicka, as senior counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association, also addressed the idea that homeschooled kids are poorly socialized:
[P]ublic school children are confined to a classroom for at least 180 days each year with little opportunity to be exposed to the workplace or to go on field trips. The children are trapped with a group of children their own age with little chance to relate to children of other ages or adults. They learn in a vacuum where there are no absolute standards. They are given little to no responsibility, and everything is provided for them. The opportunity to pursue their interests and to apply their unique talents is stifled. Actions by public students rarely have consequences, as discipline is lax and passing from grade to grade is automatic. The students are not really prepared to operate in the home (family) or the workplace, which comprise a major part of the “real world” after graduation.
Homeschoolers, on the other hand, do not have the above problems. They are completely prepared for the “real world” of the workplace and the home. They relate regularly with adults and follow their examples rather than the examples of foolish peers. They learn based on “hands on” experiences and early apprenticeship training. In fact, the only “socialization” or aspect of the “real world” which they miss out on by not attending the public school is unhealthy peer pressure, crime, and immorality. Of course, the average homeschooler wisely learns about these things from afar instead of being personally involved in crime or immorality or perhaps from being a victim.
With the advances in information technology, online education has also grown popular. According to the
Wall Street Journal,
“Roughly 100,000 of the 12 million high-school-age students in the U.S. attend 438 online schools full-time [in 2009], up from 30,000 five years ago, according to the International Association for K–12 Learning Online, a Washington nonprofit representing online schools. Many more students take some classes online, while attending traditional schools. The National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Education, says 1.5 million K–12 students were home-schooled in 2007, a figure that includes some who attended online schools. That is a 36% increase from the 1.1 million in 2003.”
As with regular homeschooling, one major concern about online schooling has been that strictly sitting at a computer will stunt a student’s social skills. Raymond Ravaglia, deputy director of Stanford’s Educational Program for Gifted Youth, pointed out, “For online high schools, the biggest obstacle is addressing the social interaction for the students. At that age, people really crave social interaction.”
Others believe that online students, with their access to multimedia Internet content, will gain an advantage in our increasingly digital world. “What they learn while in the online high school will make them more adaptable thinkers,” said Rand Spiro, a professor in education psychology at Michigan State University.
On the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs website, Matthew Ladner, vice president of research at the Goldwater Institute, offered a possible alternative to traditional public education that could be applied nationwide: “John Stuart Mill once observed that if government would simply require an education, they might save themselves the trouble of providing it (or in this case, unsuccessfully trying to provide it)…. State lawmakers could make the passing of a civic knowledge exam a precondition for receiving a driver’s license, and simply make the necessary study materials available online and at public libraries.”
