America’s education is in crisis.

Human beings who don’t recognize they have been brainwashed into a self absorbed arrogance, have become corporate ZOMBIEs, and as a result, are complicit in the crimes against this planet.  Reducing education into a corporate/political marketing campaign is nonsense, in the context of universal realities.  Ever wonder why corporations don’t want educated consumers?  Ever wonder why education is being strangled into a micro-managed, politically and religiously polluted, agenda?  America’s Public education infrastructure has experienced a terrible metamorphosis from the honest pursuit of knowledge, into the the denial of knowledge.  We all know that history has been whitewashed since time began, but the scientific process is what brought humans out of caves into condos.  America’s Public Educators are tasked to teach students with so many politically and religiously imposed restrictions that it is no surprise that America’s students rank so low on the world stage. 

Politics:

Education funding is declining in every state.  Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has made it clear he is going to slash funding to education. As Governor, Romney was responsible for the second largest per pupil cut in education funding in America, and left Massachusetts with a culture of poor accountability throughout state government. Romney under-resourced public schools and left students no way to pay for college; with neglected infrastructure; with a job market that needs skills they didn’t have. Does this behavior show any concern for the future? The reason the GOP wants to pull the plug on education is to hand control for Public Education over to Corporations. Education Funding Partners (EFP) is the only national-scope, social enterprise that provides Fortune 500 corporate marketing sponsorships exclusively for major public school districts. EFP serves as an agent on behalf of districts and sponsors to secure high-value, education-friendly, multi-year company sponsorships in U.S. public school settings. EFP’s nation-wide program is streamlined for districts and scalable for sponsors, providing a real and sustainable solution to the public education funding crisis.

California Teacher’s Association president: Current education funding method is a guarantee to ‘keep us at awful’ – “Even though everybody is talking about protecting public education, the reality is protecting public education at current levels basically is a guarantee to keep us at awful,” said CTA President Dean Vogel speaking passionately about the issue Friday. A Formula for Decline: Lessons from Colorado for States Considering TABOR – Colorado’s so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, has contributed to a significant decline in that state’s public services. This decline has serious implications not only for the more than 5 million residents of Colorado, but also for the many millions of residents of other states in which TABOR-like measures are being promoted..

Our misplaced priorities and our privileges, as human beings, will  perish in ignorance, because education is being strangled by politicians. Corporate donors have told America’s leaders to pull government support.  All corporate giants want science to do, is make more attractive products, that consumers cannot live without.

The survival of each and every one of us, and our progeny, is totally dependent on how well we prepare our skills and our children’s skills to meet the future.  Education helps us to understand what is already known, and teach us to discover what we want to know and need to know.

What human beings want to know is how to survive with the least amount of inconvenience.  The future has many undisclosed surprises, but there are enough DISCLOSED surprises to give humanity a head start toward survival.  Modern technology and it’s economic convolutions have distracted modern humans from the first rule of survival, paying attention and learning.

As members of modern society, we have succumbed to the narrow influence of consumerism.  Economic convolutions have distracted the modern population and changed it’s priorities to lust after the products, most of which are unnecessary for actual survival, to dominate and influence our daily lives.  Humans pay attention to too much manufactured nonsense, because companies require you to believe you cannot live without their product. 

Denial of common sense understanding has created a scenario that dooms our children to suffer the consequences of our collective actions.  As a modern, technologically oriented culture, our perception of the world around us has been sanitized to the point of destruction.  We no longer teach our children how to live with the planet we occupy.  We have fouled the air we breathe.  We have fouled the water we drink.  We have fouled the earth that grows the food we eat.  Yet, we promote products that will break the back of the earth’s ability to sustain life. 

Western Culture is the cheerleader for recreational sex, then go off to church and pray for forgiveness.  Even though pious hypocrites send money to organizations, that help poor starving children in other countries, they seldom take responsibility for the children, resulting from their own indiscretions.  Pray hallelujah to Viagra, Cialis and that “longer, stronger, more frequent erections” commercials, because the audience they are intended for is not the audience that is misusing these wonderful products.  These sexual enhancement commercials are directed at an older population past their child bearing years.  But these products have become the new toys for high school and college boys who are not ready to take responsibility for nurturing children.

Public Education is being shooed away from critical subjects, that illustrates how modern technology has shirked it’s responsibility to planet earth.  Public education is under attack for teaching science, built upon long and hard research. Human sustainability already suffers from inattention by America’s education system. The World’s diminishing drinkable water supply, for instance.  Like over-development making cropland unusable for growing food.  Like irresponsible planning and commercial construction in places at high risk for natural disasters.  Like encouraging awareness about wasteful personal behavior.  Like teaching simple skills to live responsibly.  Public education fails to effectively teach the laws of Cause and Effect and Consequence.

EXAMPLE for one of the most serious topics neglected in Public Education:

  Life giving water on this planet is depleting at a rate that cannot sustain human consumption.  Yet, we continue to over populate this planet. You worry about oil?  Who cares about the oil products you are addicted to, when you will be so dehydrated or sick from polluted water, that you cannot drive, or use petroleum based products, anyway. 

EXAMPLE for not enough education:

For those who enjoy the denial of climate effects and environmental changes to this planet, check out the reality of insurance claims. Insurance is the thermometer that gauges the risk humans face in the near and distant future.  Insurance Companies are the real futurists of this planet.  Their whole financial bottom line depends on it.  Insurance is the professional gambler against mother nature, they must know the odds.

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New groundwater and soil moisture drought indicator maps produced by NASA are available on the National Drought Mitigation Center’s website. They currently show unusually low groundwater storage levels in Texas. The maps use an 11-division scale, with blues showing wetter-than-normal conditions and a yellow-to-red spectrum showing drier-than-normal conditions. (Credit: NASA/National Drought Mitigation Center)

Groundwater Depletion in Semiarid Regions of Texas and California Threatens US Food Security – ScienceDaily (May 28, 2012) — The nation’s food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere.

Texas Drought Visible in New National Groundwater Maps – ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2011) — The record-breaking drought in Texas that has fueled wildfires, decimated crops and forced cattle sales has also reduced levels of groundwater in much of the state to the lowest levels seen in more than 60 years, according to new national maps produced by NASA and distributed by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Effect of Groundwater Use: Using Water from Wells Leads to Sea Level Rise, Cancels out Effect of Dams – ScienceDaily (May 8, 2012) — As people pump groundwater for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial uses, the water doesn’t just seep back into the ground — it also evaporates into the atmosphere, or runs off into rivers and canals, eventually emptying into the world’s oceans. This water adds up, and a new study calculates that by 2050, groundwater pumping will cause a global sea level rise of about 0.8 millimeters per year.

Pumping groundwater raises sea level -Two new studies flag an underreported factor in global ocean change. Pumping groundwater, some 70 percent of it to irrigate crops, has recently become a potent force in global sea-level rise, two new studies conclude.

Exposure to Environmental Contaminants Today Can Influence Behavior Generations Later – May 22, 2012, AUSTIN, Texas — Exposure to chemicals has the ability to influence behavior of offspring several generations after the initial exposure, according to a new study published by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Washington State University.

Climate skepticism not rooted in science illiteracy – People who strongly resist data indicating that human-induced climate change could spell catastrophe aren’t ignorant about science or numerical reasoning. Quite the opposite, a new study finds: High science literacy actually boosts the likelihood that certain people will challenge what constitutes credible climate science.  Who will be receptive to climate science, the study found, depends more on cultural factors such as attitudes toward commerce, government regulation and individualism than on scientific literacy.

Humanmade Pollutants May Be Driving Earth’s Tropical Belt Expansion: May Impact Large-Scale Atmospheric Circulation – ScienceDaily (May 16, 2012) — Black carbon aerosols and tropospheric ozone, both humanmade pollutants emitted predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere’s low- to mid-latitudes, are most likely pushing the boundary of the tropics further poleward in that hemisphere, new research by a team of scientists shows.

The SCIENCE that has brought humanity out of the trees into the world of pop culture, and celebrity icon scandals is under attack.  Urbanization has divided civilizations into those that know how the earth behaves, and those who puzzle about earth’s  behavior.  And only knows what is reported in the media. Urbanization would not have been so influential if natural education was included.  How many McDonalds customers really know or care where their Big Mac came from?  McDonalds does not want you to think about how they get their meat and vegetables.  The influence of industry on the urban population has sanitized education.  Generally, students are NOT taken to a slaughter house or shown films about how that hamburger is created. All most people want to know, is, should they ‘Super Size’ their meal.  The disconnect from earth realities has weakened modern civilization.  The people that do understand earth are the ones starving in 3rd World Countries.  They know what is happening, but are helpless to feed themselves because of war and climate shifts.  They do not have individual income, because their crops cannot grow and they have no resources because, their government is bought and paid for by wealthy industries.

More Summer Heatwaves Likely in Europe: Predictability of European Summer Heat from Spring and Winter Rainfall

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2012) — The prediction, one season ahead, of summer heat waves in Europe remains a challenge. A new study led by a French-Swiss team shows that summer heat in Europe rarely develops after rainy winter and spring seasons over Southern Europe. Conversely dry seasons are either followed by hot or cold summers. The predictability of summer heat is therefore asymmetric. Climate projections indicate a drying of Southern Europe. The study suggests that this asymmetry should create a favorable situation for the development of more summer heat waves with however a modified seasonal predictability from winter and spring rainfall.

Dry Lands Getting Drier, Wet Getting Wetter: Earth’s Water Cycle Intensifying With Atmospheric Warming

ScienceDaily (May 21, 2012) — A clear change in salinity has been detected in the world’s oceans, signalling shifts and an acceleration in the global rainfall and evaporation cycle.  In a paper just published in the journal Science, Australian scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, reported changing patterns of salinity in the global ocean during the past 50 years, marking a clear fingerprint of climate change.

Blame it anything you want, but Global Warming and Climate Change are realities cares nothing about anyone’s religion or political affiliation.  There is evidence that some places are seeing the light.

Stay or go? Some towns are eyeing retreat from sea

The earth is trying more and more often to show glimpses of natures plans, to change the configuration of this planet.  But, modern humans turn their heads and attentions to self gratification and social drama, and act totally disinterested in the flashing red lights earth is giving us.  The population that is awakening to the reality (that humans are temporary renters on this planet), are those who have experienced personal disasters; tsunamis, avalanches, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, floods, wildfires, mudslides, tornadoes, hurricanes and those that have experienced man made structure failures as a result.  The numbers of mother nature’s victims are increasing daily.  These victims have been rudely reminded that humans really do not CONTROL their future.  But, preparedness may allow them to survive.  Modern society has the opportunity to prepare better than any other time in history, but has decided to ignore reality.  Modern civilizations have fractured into religious tribal behavior.  Modern society has decided to allow huge numbers of their own species to perish, in the hope that there will be enough earth resource left to allow ONLY THEM to survive.  That is a very selfish attitude, and would appear practical, if those same humans actually made logical preparations to meet potential disaster scenarios.  Without conscience, humans can give themselves a chance to survive.

This is 2012 and the chances humans have to survive earth’s changes have been reduced drastically, by humans themselves.  Human politics and consumerism have taken the focus away from practical reality and placed it squarely into the pockets of economic opportunists. the implications of different financing regimes in the education sector for human capital formation and economic welfare.

Private Investment in Higher Education: Comparing Alternative Funding Schemes:  Agents privately invest in education after they have received a noisy information signal about their abilities. The incentives of individuals to invest in education are determined by the financing regime under which the economy operates. We analyse and compare three financing regimes. Under each regime, the payback obligation of an educational loan is contingent, to some extent, on an individual’s future income.

… the expansion of higher education has often collided with fiscal pressures, thereby creating a tendency to shift the financial burden of an expanding education sector away from public funding towards private corporate entities that have other motives for controlling the education of their future consumers.

If you cannot afford the education you need, the government has handed your future over to Corporations. Pay Attention! There is no end to a rich man’s narcissism.  Teach the children how to pad the pockets of the manufacturers that make nonsense products and the retailers that sell them.