The key reason for that, imho, is that in a society where I grew up learning was commonly understood as the responsibility of the student, not that of the teacher. Teachers were mere facilitators of that process. You learned because it was a "good thing" - for your future, social status, career, society7 as a whole and whatever other reason - but you learned independently and often despite the teachers. The attitudes of learning the stuff oneself and use it to challenge the teacher were quite common - I did it myself on a few occasions.
By contrast, this dysfunctional society has a really warped concept of education - students do not learn, but rather the teacher teaches them whether they like it or not - just as a mechanic would fix a car. Part of it is the legacy of the anti-intellectualism that degraded the value of formal education, but another part is what for the lack of better term I can describe as taylorization of every aspect of life in this fucked up country, including education.
The essence of taylorization is taking away the control from direct producers or service providers, and placing it in the hands of professional managers. Since the key role of the manager is management every job, every task, every endeavor is redefiend as something that is "managed" i.e. manipulated by the manager. Those being manipulated are reduced to the role of manipulated object deprived of human agency - all agency is rested in the hand of the managerial class.
As an old 'American joke' goes - Q: How many Americans does it take to replace a light bulb? A: Five. One to do the job, and four managers.
Wojtek
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 10:36 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> I had some terrible teachers too. Did they make a difference?
>
> --Yes, because they were mostly science teachers, and played a part in my
> hating science.
>
> --No, because I was a reading demon, was fluent in three languages by age
> 9, and had parents who were very well educated.
>
> But there are lots and lots of kids for whom school is the only second
> chance they will ever get.
>
> Oakland is full of such kids.
>
> Joanna
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