The Use of Myth in the Systematic Stratification of a Nation

© by Trace Taylor, 2017

Homo sapiens sapiens (human) is the only extant (living) subspecies of Homo sapiens (the human race) on the planet.  No known extant subspecies of Homo sapiens sapiens (human) exists.  Ergo, all humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) belong to the one extant Human Race (Homo sapiens), which is to say all humans are of the same species, and no person, regardless of skin, eye, and hair color, culture, country, language, ethnicity, religion, or any other reason is more or less human than any other person.  In this way, all humans are equal.  The human animal, like many other animals, dogs for instance, varies greatly in body shape and size, skin pigmentation, eye and hair color, and hair texture and even region.  This does not alter any individual’s genetic membership in the one extant species of human (Homo sapiens sapiens); much as dogs, regardless of region or physical characteristics, all to-date, are still canini (caninae) of canidae of Caniformia that is pandas, dogs, skunks, walruses, sea lions, seals, raccoons, and bear (Boucot, 1990; Sanders, 2003; Derbyshire, 2010; Harmon, 2012; Reilly, 2015; Ghosh, 2015;Prothero, 2016;Qiu, 2016; Smithsonian, 2016; Vince, 2017).

Overwhelming genetic evidence, as recent as 2016, points to Africa as the wellspring of modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens).  Though migrations and later evolutionary strains, such as the Denisovans whose DNA has been found in Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians, complicate the evolutionary path, the path nonetheless still ‘overwhelmingly’ tracks back to Africa, the cradle of the Human Race, which began millions of years ago.  If all humans belong to the one extant Race of Humans (Modern Human, Homo sapiens) and this one Human Race emerged in Africa, and all are from a mix of now extinct previous mixes, then why does the archaic language of race, such as multi, bi, and interracial, pure and mixed bloods, and super and superior races, persist and permeate the base and superstructure of American society in spite of current genetic knowledge about human evolution and the one Human Race? Perhaps this is a question, not of race (skin color), but of stratification and hierarchy, of manipulation for power, control, and wealth, and of beneficiaries (Sanders, 2003; Derbyshire, 2010; Harmon, 2012; Reilly, 2015; Prothero, 2016;Qiu, 2016; Smithsonian, 2016; Vince, 2017).

Accompanying the myth of “races” is the notion that some humans are pure while others are mixed.  Common terms often used for this are “pure-blood” and “mixed-blood”.  The Poli-Corporate Complex, that is the part of the superstructure that directly and indirectly writes and implements profit-agenda’d policy, has propogated such aforementioned myths for well over two centuries, including the myth of multiple extant human races with of course the white one being superior to the rest.  Separate but Equal is a legal doctrine and a myth, first published in 1868 and later cemented by the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896.  The separate but equal myth/doctrine only served to reinforce the multi-race, pure and mixed-blood myths, so much so that the Jim Crow laws flourished from 1877 through the mid 1960s.  These state and local laws reinforced the division of the U.S populous by color.  Anti-miscegenation laws governed the mixing of the mythical “races”, or more correctly put, human colors, at the sexual, procreative and pair-bonding levels from the 1870s to 1967 when the last of these laws was struck down by Loving v.  Virginia. Terms such as “pure blood,” “mixed blood,” and “half-breed” have no scientific support.  A dog of any other hair color, hair texture, or body shape and size is nonetheless a dog.  There is no known exception.

If we are to understand how language plays a role in the stratification of the American human group, it is imperative that we look at several other aspects of American society and most especially that which relates to education. Stratification with respect to human society can be defined as the arrangement, classification, or grouping, or rather division since the end result of these groupings is ultimately a division of larger groups or masses into smaller, more easily measured or managed groups or masses by different and even more or less desirable qualities or traits.  Throughout American history, these groupings, which is to say divisions, have been based on myth that served Poli-Corporate Complex agendas per Poli-Corporate Complex values (Anderson, 1988; Kozol, 2005).

The genetic complexity of Homo sapiens sapiens is rivaled only by the complexity of each individual’s combination of intelligences, learning styles, interests, preferences, strengths, weaknesses, experiences, cultural backgrounds, circumstances, and situations, all of which influence interpretations and understandings. With unquantifiable variations, individual to individual, how can any one mixture of these variations be standardized without conforming individuals to said standardization, a standardization that serves a Poli-Corporate economy built on human product?  According to Kelsey Page at Stanford University, standardization does “not take into account that a student may be intelligent in other academic areas not covered on the test” (The Stanford Daily, 2014).  What it does do is conform the human (raw product) to a narrow service niche.  Standards can be defined as ordained levels of achievement; ideas or things used to measure or model in comparative evaluations, and levels, methods, and means established by authorities to measure skill, potential, capability, weight, extent, quality, quantity, intelligence, and ultimately, status and position within a group or society and market value.  Standards are used to establish baselines extrapolated from interpretations of limited data: mined norms, means, and averages.  Who benefits from such targeted measurements? Standardization can be seen as an instrument of market control by economically tethered Poli-Corporate players, used to manipulate tax rates and wages for the maintenance and growth of their wealth, power, and control.  Algorithmic technology platforms are used to surveil the lives of individuals.  This enables those who establish standards, influence policy, and benefit from profits (ruling classes) to “steer us through entire courses of action, be it for the execution of complex work processes or the generation of free content for Internet platforms from which the Poli-Corporate Complex earn billions.  “The trend goes from programming computers to programming people” (Gardner, 2012; Helbing et al., 2017; Smythe, 2015).

Malleable means pliable, shapeable, or moldable.  Something that is malleable can in various ways be shaped or adapted to fit a specific niche, a place or position, the way a gear is molded to the task of turning the clock hands or the way a human might be conformed or molded to serve a task in a society, such as hair dresser, dental or medical technician, or hospitality worker.  Once an item is molded to fit a niche, a perfect fit, pre-determined, pre-assigned purpose, it has value, a value predetermined by a market manipulated across American history by the ruling classes of politics and business.  Individuals sorted by these values (standards) then molded, relegated to predetermined purpose and even to specific geographical areas, have fewer opportunities, fewer options, and fewer skills to live and evolve beyond such consignment, to pursue health, prosperity, and happiness, relegated to the role for which they have been purposed for maintenance of the Poli-Corporate machine. Repeatedly, history demonstrates this consignment of the non-ruling classes.  Large populations of American society have been and are being molded to serve the global ruling classes (Poli-Corporate Complex) agenda of economic control.  By manipulating support (access), professional, academic, and economic potential are also manipulated.  This manipulation furthers economic control (Anderson, 1988; Kozol, 2005; Mahoney & Garrison; Strunk et al., 2015).

Linda McNeil points out in her book, Education Costs of Standardized Testing (2000), “that educational standardization harms teaching and learning, and over the long term, restratifies education by “race” (skin color) and class (wealth, value).” Daniel Ian Rubin and Christopher John Kazanjian in “‘Just Another Brick in the Wall: Standardization and the Devaluing of Education” (2011) reveals that “standardized testing does not result in increased student learning or development,” that standardized testing serves the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets, a narrowing band of standards determined out of context by algorithms, non-educators, and the ruling classes.  Each key stroke, interaction, demographic shift, each penciled-in bubble is consumed then processed and added to the mapping of the individual while discourse, choice, and creativity are discouraged.  Standardized testing maps track then nudge the individual to choose from a set of limited options.  This subtle manipulation is a narrowing of choice (voice, freedom), and a concerted conceit throughout American history.  The American Poli-Corporate Complex rose on the backs of Oppressed humans: Native Americans, Black slaves, poor Whites, Mexican migrants and refugees, Chinese, Irish, Italians, Jews, females, sorted, beaten into submission, and managed by standards established by the authority and enforced by policies and practices that supported one group over another: Whites above non-Whites, males above females, the wealthy above the non-wealthy.

The American Poli-Industrial Complex which includes the education system, sorts and maps raw materials then through manipulated supports, programs, and access, consigns them while simultaneously empowering radical control groups such as Christian extremists, nationalists, xenophobes, homophobes, and Whites supremacists.  The sorting (segregating), mapping, programming, and consignment (relegating) happens much the same as it has for centuries, with the exception of technological advances (personalized learning/tracking and nudging) which have ramped up production of raw materials into more compliant, purposeful products.  Hampton-Tuskegee employed strategized standardized curricula of repetitious hard manual labor and limited literacy to track (conform, relegate), program, and nudge individuals into limited career paths.  These earlier versions of the modern industrial schools functioned to churn out programmed laborers who understood and accepted their predetermined assignment to the lowest position in the social order, and consequently, the most limiting, lowest paying, and least skilled jobs.  These laborers could be leveraged against poor Whites should poor Whites grow unhappy with their own lower consignment (Anderson, 1988; McNeil, 2000; Kozol, 2005; Helbing et al., 2017).

Industrial school graduates in and of themselves are one product, while the industrial “teacher” is quite another.  This “teacher,” redefined today to include individuals who do not even hold teaching degrees, whose skill and knowledge are limited to the standardized and scripted curriculum, might, much like an assembly line worker at a manufacturing plant, produce hundreds of programmable nudgeable laborers and more “teachers.” Booker T.  Washington exemplifies the beginnings of the American industrial “teacher.” Interestingly enough, Washington believed that he was acting in the best interest of the segregated group to which he belonged.  Because the task of teaching was and is so deskilled and limited to the instruction of “knowledge” that best serves the ruling class agenda of programming and consigning for the purpose of economic control, teachers are not nor were they indispensable. Southern White plantation owners and Northern philanthropists placed great priority on the production of industrial “teachers.” More “teachers” meant that the standardization of targeted populations could exponentially expand, that under most circumstances the “teaching” position might be easily filled, and that wages for these “teachers” were kept at a minimum (Anderson, 1988; McNeil, 2000; Kozol, 2005; Mahoney & Garrison, 2015).

Today, many schools that serve consigned populations, typically urban minority, suffer from a high turnover of inexperienced teachers, trained in standardization, wrung themselves from the system of standardization and scripted curricula, teachers whose wages are tied directly to their production numbers, numbers established and interpreted out of context by people vastly unqualified and inexperienced in the field of education.  Curricula are narrowed with the dominant focus on test prep and testing for the purposes of producing data.  More than one-third of every school year is spent on test curricula, test prep, and testing.  From each testing, a more thorough mapping of the individual creates stronger, more focused marketing, tracking, programming, and nudging into career paths and spending habits.  Tracking, programming, and nudging by the ruling classes are not new to America.  Neither is the concept of programming people (Allington, 2006, 2012; McNeil, 2000; Kozol, 2005; Mahoney & Garrison, 2015; Helbing et al., 2017).

Standardization in education has been a strategic contrivance and implementation by the American ruling classes since the early 1800s to restrict the rise of the American non-ruling classes for the purpose of controlling the American economy.  Wages are driven down through division and competition between groups.  Political (economic) voices of the non-ruling classes are hampered, if not silenced via educational programming via diminished access; manipulative literature, media, and rhetoric (target marketing); superficial state interest and support with accountability measures placed on districts, superintendents (CEOs), and teachers (managers); and the narrowing of curriculum and the replacement of knowledge that supports global literacy with test “knowledge” (programming), to name a few.  On the surface, these implemented measures (controls) might appear student-focused, but a closer inspection shows quite the opposite.  They primarily remove education from public discourse and place it under the direction of the Poli-Corporate Complex for the purpose of generating revenue and strengthening the elite stranglehold on the American economy (Anderson, 1988; McNeil, 2000; Mahoney & Garrison, 2015).

The value of the division of the mass into smaller masses by physical characteristics enables the leveraging of one group against another.  American history demonstrates a strategy by the ruling classes to use education as a means to manipulate access and equity, choice, political voice (economic power, wages), and human and civil rights for the purposes of economic control.  White northern philanthropists and landowners, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pearson Education, etc., all are the main beneficiaries of policies designed to relegate one group for the manipulation of another, though both groups share a powerful common trait besides DNA: their non-ruling class status (Anderson, 1988; Mahoney & Garrison, 2015).

The role of myth in the sorting and classifying of human beings in American society must not be discounted.  Without myth, in the face of increasing exposure, understanding, and familial ties across national and global segregatorial divides, the pitting of one group against another would probably prove a much more difficult task.  The institutionalization of myth aids in the sorting (segregation, relegation) of humans into more manageable, purposeful, and profitable product groups. Myth programs individual, group, and national responses at both the base and superstructure of a society, on the macro and micro scale.  They influence which ideologies about religion, culture, language, family makeup, and physical characteristics dominate, that is to say, those more preferred by the ruling classes and established through policy that reinforces the divisions (groupings, segregations) (Anderson, 1988; Kozol, 2005).

There are many myths about people of color.  For instance, Native Americans have been falsely painted as scalpers and drunkards while Black Americans have been painted as brutes, better suited to manual labor and prone to violent and criminal behavior with little understanding of family or the family unit; as having poor work ethics and being incapable of complex tasks or higher levels of responsibility or status within a society. It’s even been stated that they lack the moral wisdom and foresight necessary for participation in a democratic society, that a quality, well-rounded education is wasted on Black Americans, that they are shiftless lay-abouts who seldom work and suck the welfare system dry.  Latinx populations are currently in the news painted as rapists and cartel drug traffickers, and job stealers.  Females have long been painted as weak in mind and body, prone to hysteria, and driven by their biological clocks, less intelligent and capable than males and historically the downfall of and responsible for their victimization by human males.  These myths encompass a broad range of sorted (segregated) populations, including poor Whites and perpetuate the ideology of one group being better than another based on valued characteristics as determined and sold by the ruling classes.  They program groups on either side of the myth to standard reactions and responses, and they heighten hostilities between groups.  The ability to consign one group over another would be greatly decreased were it not for the rhetoric of myth (Anderson, 1988; Strunk et al., 2015).

Another myth which justifies the “adequate” or rather unequal education for students in segregated zones is that of insufficient funds.  An “adequate” education is an unacceptable goal.  Who determines what adequate is, and in the end, will it be determined out of context by those same authorities who ride roughshod on the economy and who have little or no experience in the field of education? Most probably.  The rich Southern plantation owners and the Northern philanthropists demonstrate how the adequate has been defined to serve an agenda other than that of education.  Betsy DeVos, the head of a corporate conglomerate worth millions, has been appointed by other economic elites to govern the education system and make sure that every child gets an “adequate” education based on values determined by sort standards established by those same economic elites and their fellows and fore-bearers (Kozol, 2005)

Students consigned to segregation (depressed) zones are disadvantaged by older, dilapidated facilities, higher student-to-teacher ratios in classrooms, less experienced and less skilled teachers, a higher turnover rate of these teachers, funding targeting profits rather than need, and a limited selection of courses which help to develop analytical thinking and social awareness and that better prepare students for higher learning.  Schools just over the boundary line that serve predominantly White, more affluent students, provide such “adequate” education advantages as modern technologically advanced facilities, lower student to teacher ratios, a more static teaching force of greater skill level, and a broad selection of classic courses which are much less service oriented.  Why is there funding enough for one school to have “adequate” resources while not enough for the majority of schools serving a majority of students? What standards and values are used to decide which school gets support and which does not? The myth and its proponents would have us believe it’s a matter of insufficient funds, but under examination the myth does not hold weight (Kozol, 2005).

Education policies historically subjugate and stifle the political voice of the relegated minority majority who have yet to realize the full and equal privileges of being a citizen of the United States.  Policy in America has at times aided in the lessening of stratification, but only with great opposition and assault from the ruling classes.  Separate but Equal and Plessy v. Ferguson boasted that in separation both comfort and equality could be found, but if we look at historical and current data such as funding disbursements, curricula and course options, and even something as basic as the comfort and condition levels of facilities, the mythical nature of “Separate but Equal” is quite glaring.

Another myth that must be addressed as a driving force behind privatization is that public education is failing.  What the real data speaks to, however, is that policy and procedure are failing segregated schools and their students.  Long-term studies on several schools both in and out of segregated zones across the country have proven that the advantages of lower student to teacher ratios, more highly-skilled and experienced teachers, “adequate” financial and political support, and a greater selection of courses do in fact make a marked positive difference regardless of the skin color or socioeconomic position in the social order.  Integration of segregated groups has proven time and time again to be a remarkable solution to the persistent problem of American stratification.

The American education system functions as a national sorting machine, grouping students by standardized test scores and position in the social order.  Sorting can be defined as stratifying, arranging, or grouping by any number of qualifiers, including but not limited to physical characteristics, wealth, and value (Tucker, 2015).  Teaching test knowledge and testing test knowledge provides the means by which to map an individual’s responses.  Only by mapping the individual can programming curriculum be configured to aid in the tracking and nudging of students into a limited selection of career paths as determined by a student’s test scores and market need (value).

Tracking associated with ability grouping is the practice of grouping students by measured potential, capability, and skill level.  This highly controversial practice is based on equally controversial standardized, high-stakes testing.  Proponents of the practice argue that tracking affords students the opportunity to learn and grow academically at their own pace and in areas of personal interest with peers of the same “caliber.”  However, opponents contend the practice is simply a modern-day version of segregation, a means of widening the education gap by diminishing access and perpetuating inequity and inequality through decreased academic opportunity and limited career options (Kohli, 2014).

When students are the raw material, when instruction is the process of production, when testing is the process of stratification, and when several highly profitable products result from this process, how can education be anything but a capitalistic enterprise, operated from the perspective of a business in which the primary concern is economic control and market domination? One highly profitable product of the Poli-Corporate Complex is the devalued worker-consumer drone mapped (outside of its context) and programmed by the surveilling AI, including testing (Helbing et al., 2017; Kozol, 2005; Mahoney & Garrison, 2015), and not adequately skilled in analytical thinking, which means a more malleable raw material and so greater economic and political control for the ruling classes.

Another highly profitable product is the data derived from mapping and standardized testing.  This data drives standardization and its derivative revenues such as funding in the form of tax exemptions and subsidies: large scale mandated purchases of and profit from test prep materials and test materials, and data sales.  Standardization produces an annual revenue of more than 30 billion dollars, and this does not even include related benefiting industries, such as the prison, security, and surveillance industry, the trade and vocational training industry, and all the secondary related vendors these industries support and are supported by: the political machine, financial institutions, food, beverage companies, clothing and uniforms and linen and laundry services, tools, equipment, and furniture manufacturers and suppliers, construction companies, and even data collection, sorting, and sales (Mahoney & Garrison, 2015).

It is argued that the application of big data through learning analytics creates a “personalized learning” experience for each individual student.  However, the role of Big Data in the privatization of public education cannot be stressed enough, neither can the reworking and redefining of public/private distinctions which has enabled the removal of education from the public sector and placed it squarely in the hands of the private sector, the ruling classes of the Poli-Corporate Complex.  “Personalized learning” violates student privacy.  It narrows the curriculum and minimizes the role of the “teacher” and moves decision-making processes of education again to the private sector.  It changes the language from that of education to that of production and accountability and lends greatly to the production of a well-trained workforce acclimated to the tedious task of monotonous busy work, test prep, and testing. It accustoms this workforce to less equity, support, and representation, to fewer rights, lower wages, and lower positioning in the social order (Anderson, 1988; McNeil, 2000; Kozol, 2005; Mahoney & Garrison, 2015).

The ruling corporate and political classes of the United States possess such hyperbolic wealth, privilege, and connection that they manipulate the value of global markets by manipulating the value of energy not limited to but including oil, food, and human life.  Concerning labor, the lower the value placed on a job by those who establish the standards, the more replaceable the workers become, and so the more easily one group is pitted against another.  This strategized rivalry insures economic control and lower wages for most groups. Only in the division of the mass into smaller masses can this control be achieved.

By valuing certain characteristics or qualities, typically those that mimic the ruling classes, over other characteristics and qualities, one group is leveraged by the state and is in this way empowered over the other groups as a dominant force. This is seen throughout American history and even as recent as 2019.  These supported or “authorized” dominant groups under a sense of empowerment and ordination are quite powerful for their incited waves of threat and use of violence justified by myth-driven rhetoric and state support.  A standing threat of violence from a state-supported group against the group less supported by the state via rhetoric, policy, and funding serves multiple purposes.  It reinforces the segregations and hostilities by escalating myths, and so, fears, insecurities, and jealousies (Potok, 2017).

Education policy and funding exemplify this state support of one group over another, specifically White students whose physical characteristics mimic the most prominent physical characteristics of the ruling classes over non-White, non-wealthy students typically denied state support.  Using the rhetoric of myth, groups can be leveraged and even aimed like weapons against one another.  These myths also engineer justifications that allow the government to establish and implement unjust and biased policies that infringe upon the rights of American citizens and work to divide or unite groups as needed in service of elite economic control (Anderson, 1988; Kozol, 2005; Strunk et al., 2015).

The redefining of language to support such myths is not uncommon in America.  It has been present throughout most of America’s history, and in fact persists today.  Take for instance the word “adequate,” which is becoming the new meaning for equality. If we look at government and corporate applications, many still contain the question: What race are you? The correct response to this question, given what we know about the one extant Human Race, is Homo sapiens sapiens of Homo sapiens.  The problem with this absolutely correct answer is that it leaves little room for division by established standards (values).  Ridding America of this longstanding myth of there being multiple extant races of humans opens the door to a conversation the American Poli-Corporate Complex seems disinclined to have, a conversation about human rights. Unlike civil rights, which can be manipulated through division of groups and reinforced with the rhetoric of myth, human rights would redefine equality as rights defined by every human’s irrefutable membership in the one Human Race (Kozol, 2005, p.248, 258). Such a conversation would nullify the power of divisive myth and strengthen the rights of not just workers but all humans beings.

The myth of one race being superior to and dominant over another race is ludicrous if we take into account all the scientific data available on human evolution. Scientific data is something that proponents of segregation and classification and of sorting and consigning ought to be able to get behind, though they seem, as of yet, unable to do so. Current scientific data tells us beyond doubt that there is only the one race, so it is a factual impossibility for one human to be more pure than any other human.  The rhetoric of “multiracial” or “biracial” humans, and this cannot be repeated enough since there is only one extant species of human, persists in American society as a means of division and segregation of humans into more profitable and manageable groups.

There are myths about White Americans.  “Whites are a superior race of humans.” Every part of this statement, believed by many Whites across the country, who like many humans want for some semblance of personal authority and wealth in a world where there is little of either for the non-ruling classes, is disproved by the empirical data.  White humans are of the same race, the one race, as Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow humans.  Some White humans, as many humans of other colors, are superior to their fellow humans, , but it has yet to be proven that Whites in general are superior to all other colors.  What the data does support is that those citizens regardless of skin color, religion, or any of the other reasons used for segregation or division who receive equal, not “adequate” but equal, education opportunities and financial and political support show remarkable success rates compared to those citizens who do not receive these same opportunities and supports (Kozol, 2005).

In the face of the data (evidence), several facts become quite clear.  One, a large majority of the American populous has yet to experience the privilege of full citizenship, but instead suffer the station of second-class citizenship, not provided the full supports and protections or considerations from their government, supposedly a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.  While this population appears to be predominantly those of color, if historical data is weighed with current-day then an image of class more than color emerges. Among the disenfranchised numbers, there have been and still are the manipulated control group of poor Whites.  This fact alone makes clear that American stratification is more a case of wealth, status, and market value than of skin color. The education of minorities alone will not pave the path to equality.  It must be an education across all skin colors and all layers of the social order. Some cannot be taught language arts while others are taught how to take tests for more than one third of their school year, and for democracy, there must exist equality based on human rights. Civil rights are not enough.

If humans are seen as citizens rather than as humans, then the Poli-Corporate Complex (ruling classes) will always find a way to divide the mass into more manageable groups through the rhetoric and employment of myth.  The Complex must divide the mass if it is to conquer the mass, and it must conquer the mass if it is to control and limit disbursement of resources, such as food, water, healthcare, shelter, land, and education. This type of control can only be achieved through political control, and political control can only be had by limiting the citizenship status (rights) and so the voices of the non-ruling classes. A healthy, well cared for, well educated, united body of humans could present a formidable challenge against the inequality the Complex imposes, but a poorly fed, poorly cared for population divided by myth and set against one another is weak and easily kept in its place, at the lower rungs of the social order.  Only liberally educated humans can see through the myths and the rhetoric and come together as a unified force against the Complex to achieve equality.

Americans must be humans first and citizens second, if the pitfalls of myth and division are to be avoided.  America needs a Bill of Human Rights such as the United Nations’ Bill of Human Rights. Such a bill would, if not eliminate, at least greatly limit discrimination by traditional means: skin color, biological assignment, religion, wealth, language, etc.  If human is human, and the knowledge of human evolution is taught in schools equally across the board to all students then the American human group might stand united against such injustice as traditionally presents itself in American policy and governance.  However, this cannot be achieved without total integration of skin colors and classes in both neighborhoods and schools.  Policies and practices that limit human choice and relegate entire groups to lower stations of life, to fewer protections by the law and judicial system, perpetuates the division and so the inequalities, and so the myths.  The data stands testament to this.  If students and teachers are fully integrated then a higher level of global literacy will be achieved from equal facility, financial, and policy support and from greater exposure to diversity within the American human group.  New friendships and family ties will develop, ultimately diminishing myth and the rhetoric of myth (Kozol, 2005).

The narrowing reductive evolution of curricula and the deskilling of teachers must be reversed.  For this to happen, education must be rested from the business sector and once again placed in the hands of the public.  The parents and teachers should be responsible for the education of students, not business moguls and billionaires who know nothing about education.  Next, the connection between test scores and teacher pay needs to be severed entirely and more appropriately tied to teacher experience, and teacher pay should be set higher and not included in available funds when budgeting for classroom expenses.  Teachers must be given the freedom to instruct as they see fit within reason and yes, national standards as determined by educators not market trends, and state controls must be monitored by a non-Complex related entity. The principals must no longer be called CEOs since education is not in actuality a business, but rather an endeavor to produce an educated citizenry that can participate in its own governance, not at all the goal of the Poli-Corporate Complex.

The education system has become a robot production factory, raw materials adapted to tedium, poverty, service, and agreeability.  Corporate standardization in the classroom is the instrument of this injustice, removing choice but maintaining the illusion of choice.  Will the student get to be a medical technician or a dental technician, perhaps a veterinarian technician or a cook in a hotel (hospitality) kitchen.  Tracking students into these slots at a young age before they even know what’s available for them or what they might really be interested in, and making sure these options are the only options due to poor test scores designed for data mining and not education, tests that data shows measure nothing but a student’s ability to take a test, a test rigged against the test taker.  Course options need be expanded to include the arts and languages, and all schools must have the same course options so that no matter what school a student goes to, they have the exact opportunity to perform to the best of their ability in fields they are truly interested in, fields that can improve their higher education opportunities and political representation via democratic participation.

Science and language arts are not mutually exclusive of one another and so need to be taught together rather than separate.  We paint. We paint with what?  How do we get this paint material?  What combinations create what colors? What is color?  What are some things in our societies that represent color?  STEM and Language Arts ought to be taught one within the framework of the other.  Since without language and the ability to effectively communicate ourselves, the sciences would, we can surmise, be somewhat less developed.  The sciences must be taught within the larger framework of language and language arts if a deeper holistic scientific understanding of connections, systems of exchange, and the varied nuances of language, rhetoric, and myth are to be achieved.

If a curriculum is constructed for the outliers, and we know all human learners are fingerprints, so outliers, then this type of curriculum might offset the longstanding imbalance that plagues a majority of American students, regardless of skin color, socioeconomic status, religion, sexual orientation, gender, biological assignment, language, or any other difference used to marginalize a student. All of these are solutions to the current educational dilemma that faces the country today, a dilemma which has faced it since the nation’s conception.  However, before these solutions can be fully employed, there must be a Bill of Human Rights. The original myth of multiple races must be dispelled, and the only way to do this is with a Bill of Human Rights.  Such a document would unite most humans in the knowledge that they share certain inalienable rights simply for being human.  The result could be a shared common trait that supersedes the differences used for the purposes of division.  Basic essentials that enable and empower the pursuit of happiness, wealth, love, family, and knowledge can only strengthen a country and the world.  Our strength is in our diversity.

Footnotes:
(p1) Base and Superstructure is a theory by Karl Marx, that links the concepts of Base, which refers to the forces and relations of production—to all the people, relationships between them, the roles that they play, and the materials and resources involved in producing the things needed by society, and Superstructure expansively refers to all other aspects of society (culture, ideology, norms and expectations, identities that people inhabit, social institutions, the political structure, and the state (Cole 2017).

(p1) Denisovans an extinct, likely-dark-skinned hominid discovered in Siberia, living between 170,000 and 700,000 years ago, and closely related to Neanderthal, interbred with both Neanderthal and anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Multiple types of human existed on the planet in overlapping time periods, mingling their genetic material. Homo sapiens spaiens is the result of this mingling and the only extant Homo species (Smithsonian 2017).

 

References:
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