Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing because I am concerned about the overwhelming emphasis that your education policy is placing on vocating rather than educating our young.

I understand the need to vocate or train individuals in the new kinds of skills that our increasingly technologically driven society demands. And I support all of the efforts in that regard. What concerns me is that this effort is being made at the expense of the educational side of the equation.

By "education" I mean being deeply exposed to the great ethical, and moral Principles which underlie our Civilizations and Cultures. These Principles such as goodwill, honesty, courage, love, and compassion are responsible for the relative success of any of our past civilizations. Their presence in our DNA is responsible for the enduring efforts of Humanity to build evermore just and inclusive systems of government that foster liberty, freedom, happiness for everyone.

Democracy is not possible without an educated people. Fascism, totalitarianism is not possible with an educated people.

Those not interested in the democratic principles have always resisted any effort to educate the general population. Their assault on our educational system has been non-stop. One of the more insidious aspects of this assault is the notion that some of our people are too stupid to learn anything other than some vocational skill, so why waste their time on history, literature, art music, or learning how to write. This notion is only a bit less ignorant than the attitude that very smart people who can operate in the technological world do not need to waste their time on such fluff.

Any educational program needs to be anchored in the Humanities. The reason for this is that these fields carry the Wisdom of what Humanity has managed to learn through our enormous struggle over many centuries. They are the archives of all that makes humanity human. To fail to equip our children with these treasures is a crime.

You spent two years at Oxy, and I know you know how important that experience was to who you are now. My view is that if we could have a nation of individuals who had the education that you had, this would be a very much different and a very much better, more inclusive, loving compassionate, intelligent, heart driven nation and model for our brothers and sisters in the rest of our world.

Can you do something about this?

lots of love

-tom