Over 60 years ago, I worked for a carnival concessions company playing state and county fairs, complete with the bearded lady, two-headed calves, and other exotic, erotic, and mysterious aliens. One would think that with all the legislation on civil rights and the mentally and physically disabled, education, over time, would remove the exploitation of the “different.” There is new evidence that education has failed society again. Not only do the Kardashians compete with the Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty dynasties, but we have two new entries in stunt “gross.”  
At the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, in a planned artsy-fartsy display, “vomit artist” Millie Brown stuck two fingers down her throat and puked all over Lady Gaga on stage in a demonstration of a new colorful medium called “vomit art” starring luminous green and black milk. Lady Gaga, a Madonna “Like a Prayer” and “Like a Virgin” imitator, has already made me gag on every occasion I have seen her perform. I guess we will never get rid of mental and physical freaks at concerts. But I digress from my serious subject: education.

First: A Solution To The College Cost Disaster

Here’s a fascinating point. If Bill Gates would cash in all the assets of his world-leading $76 billion and agree to provide every qualified American student a college education for a year, he would still have $8 billion left for food, clothing, shelter, and personal computer games. If necessary, he could join a monastery and pray daily for more money, as John D. Rockefeller did each morning at breakfast.
A college education is rapidly becoming an inherited privilege. A GM executive can afford to send his children to Harvard or Carleton at $55,000 per year for decades, including MBAs and PHDs. A GM assembly-line worker can’t afford to send his children to junior college or vocational school, or often even afford to pay high school extra-curricular fees so his son can play basketball or his daughter can play the bassoon in the orchestra.
State legislatures have been raising higher ed tuition for more than a decade, so parents and students have been absorbing those costs. The average law school graduate now owes $140,000 in student loans as he slogs across the stage. Minnesota college graduates now average over $30,000 in loans. In the last four years, student loans have increased over $100 billion a year in the U.S. Student debt at $1.225 trillion exceeds all credit card debt.
Bill Gates says he wants to help low-income students bridge the income inequality gap: “America is the land of equal opportunity, and the reality is we’re not delivering on that promise when low-income households end up in public schools that don’t educate their kids well.”

Is A College Education Only An Inherited Right?

Here’s a fascinating point. If Bill Gates would cash in all his assets of his world-leading $76 billion and agree to provide every qualified American student a college education for a year, he would still have $8 billion left for food, clothing, shelter, and personal computer games. If necessary, he could join a monastery and pray daily for more money as John D. Rockefeller did each morning at breakfast.
A college education is rapidly becoming an inherited privilege. A GM executive can afford to send his children to Harvard or Carleton at $55,000 per year for decades, including MBAs and PHDs. A GM assembly-line worker can’t afford to send his children to junior college or vocational school, or often even afford to pay high school extra-curricular fees so his son can play basketball or his daughter can play the bassoon in the orchestra.
State legislatures have been raising higher ed tuition for more than a decade, so parents and students have been absorbing those costs.  The average law school graduate now owes $140,000 in student loans as he slogs across the stage. Minnesota college graduates now average over $30,000 in loans. In the last four years student loans have increased over $100 billion a year in the U.S. Student debt at $1.225 trillion exceeds all credit card debt.
Bill Gates says he wants to help low-income students bridge the income inequality gap: “America is the land of equal opportunity, and the reality is we’re not delivering on that promise when low-income households end up in public schools that don’t educate their kids well.”

What Kind Of Education Should We Pay For?

If we are going to compete in this world—and it may already be too late—we need a careful balance between science/math and humanities/creativity. Politicians and corporate CEOs who generally know nothing about education like the STEM fields and love to talk about how science, technology, engineering, and mathematics will keep us on top of the world economically. But STEM courses have little to do with corporate and government leadership. That’s why humanities/creativity must share the priorities of the educational curriculum and purse.
The critics of the new Common Core curriculum are right. Although we need to strengthen math and science, we cannot neglect the humanities—the study of history, literature, languages, art, music, philosophy, and the social sciences. The idiotic Leave No Child Behind (LNCB) program sells a lot of rote learning and useless tests while dumping the humanities, art, music, and literature in the trashcan of history. We solve problems by communicating effectively with colleagues and the public, not by depending upon technical knowledge. Leaders and inventors must lead lives of purpose and meaning. They must appreciate the diversity and complexity of life. As University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman sums it up, “The humanities and social sciences are essential parts of undergraduate education. Most successful careers, including in technology and engineering, do not result simply from technical knowledge. They require leadership skills, social and emotional intelligence, cultural understanding, a capacity for strategic decision-making, and a global perspective.”
The STEM curriculum won’t cut it. STEM and LNCB create automatons for the assembly-line. The 21st century has passed the assembly-line model. We need to create a passion for lifelong learning and the ability to work and succeed in multiple fields across our working lives. We live in a world that requires constant adaption. Where have all the video stores gone? A study the other day suggested that 47 percent of the regular jobs in the U.S. could soon be done by robots. (I think young and old should read Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” He had an education based in technology and the humanities and accurately forecasted our future in 1932.)

Since When Is Education About Money?

Politicians and CEOs talk about financial investment in education. They are all about money. Well, education is not only about money. Jobs are important, but so is a meaningful and enjoyable life. There’s terrific value in the discovery of music. I learned to appreciate classical music by listening to the Voice of Firestone on the radio while milking cows and shoveling manure. I saw my first opera at age 17, courtesy of a neighbor: Risë Stevens starring in “Carmen” at the Northrop Auditorium. I have played and hummed the “Toreador Song” since. You can have great fun with just a little knowledge.
There is a “life” value in the discovery of art. I will take Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” over Andy Warhol’s soup cans any day. “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck reveals more about the Great Depression than government reports. Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is absolutely breathtaking in its studies of human relationships. In great movies such as “All Is Quiet on the Western Front” and “Citizen Kane,” we get a great overview of the world at large. All this “stuff” makes better citizens.
President Barack Obama recently apologized for using the art history major as a dead-end symbol in today’s job market. He should apologize. We need art historians to catalog, review, and save the art of the past. William Faulkner was right: “The past is never dead, it’s not even past.” If students choose a profession that doesn’t arouse their daily passions, they have made a bad choice. I still haven’t figured out if brighter kids play cello, violin, bassoon and viola in high school orchestras, or if playing the cello, violin, bassoon or viola makes them brighter. Orchestra members always have the highest grades and higher IQs. We should probably figure out why.
To gradually put the humanities and creativity back into the curriculum will take a lot of money. Solid programs in art, literature, music, theater, debate, speech, journalism, and creative writing don’t come cheap. Many school districts cannot afford to have gifted and talented programs. Even STEM courses have been neglected. Over 25 percent of high schools that have a majority of black and Hispanic students do not offer Algebra II, essential for further math education. A third of these schools do not offer chemistry! Many majority whites and poor minorities do not even have access to algebra, geometry, and biology. This is an absolute disgrace. I am not optimistic. Like many countries, we have become tribal.  

We Have Split Into Upper Richistan And Lower Pooristan–And Many Other Tribes

The gap between the rich and the poor worsens by the day. The middle class is disappearing, while half of America is in or near poverty. Science is no longer important in decision-making. While over 97 percent of scientists in the world believe humans contribute to global warming, a significant portion of the populace either believes God will take care of us or totally denies human influences on climate change. Gee, how could that happen to us in only 6,000 years since the creation? We have the Bible Thumpers who believe every Biblical word in the hundreds of different translations scribbled by kings and malcontents. Over 20 percent of Americans who are now non-believers yell back, “The hell you say!”
We have politicians who range from those who think a complex society of 50 states needs economic and environmental regulation to those who believe each state should direct its own future regardless of what the country needs. We have the red state tribes vs. blue state tribes. We have South racial tribes vs. North racial tribes. We have Midwest tribes vs. East and West tribes. We have tribal taxpayers who actually pay their taxes in, and then we have Upper Richistan tribal tax-avoiders who file their exemptions in tax havens such as the Bahamas and remote islands in the Pacific. In this, the rich are saying, “To hell with the U.S.—hello, gated world.” We have the Wall Street tribes whose basic plan is to screw everybody, including their brothers on the Street. We have the bankster tribe that is avoiding jail time by bribing politicians. We have the foreclosure tribe, impatiently waiting for someone in the Justice Department to charge banksters with fraud and theft.
We are no longer a country. We are tribal like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a dozen African “countries” fighting over Sunni and Shia tribal beliefs. We have a national legislature dominated by tribes sold to the highest billionaire bidder. They are, as my long-departed daddy would say, “as useless as teats on a boar.” We have a Democratic Party that exemplifies profiles in cowardice and a petty Republican Party that succeeds in electing puppets. They even fail to govern a small county effectively because of the Tea Party. It will take a political miracle to put this Humpty-Dumpty nation together again after it has fallen off the wall into a maelstrom of uncompromising tribes.

When Will The Computers And Robots Take Over The Routine Jobs?

According to Oxford University research, 47 percent of our present labor market is at risk of being “mechanized” out of existence by robots. Surgeons are now using robots in delicate operations. Soon those robots will not need human direction. The website Momentum Machines reports that a robotic burger flipper is just about ready for market. Soon airplanes and cars will not need human pilots or drivers. Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary inventor, said as early as 2001, “In the day-after-tomorrow society there will be no place for anyone as ignorant as the average college graduate. If it seems an impossible goal to bring the whole population of the planet up to superuniversity levels, remember that a few centuries ago it would have seemed equally unthinkable that everybody would be able to read. We have to set our sights higher.” By the way, the robotic burger flipper also slices, grinds, and fries.