This has something to do with unrest and the power of suggestion.  I had this thought that terrified me.  I transposed what is taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan to the United States.  What we know of those two occupied countries is that not only do they oppose the presence of the U.S. but they are fighting among themselves and there are all sides of the political spectrum existing there involved in trying for supremacy.  There are no political negotiations that are worth following.  Tribal and family interests with histories going far back are more important than any new idea involving “democracy”.

I got to thinking about the education or lack of it that drives much of the action in these two unlucky nations.  I believe the different groups school their children in hatred and belief in things that cannot be justified (at least here in America).  Then I got to thinking about the different educations that have come to the fore here in America for the last forty or so years.  The old-fashioned idea that democracy created the American PUBLIC school system still exists in the minds of those of us who went through it.  In turn, the PUBLIC school system continues to build democracy into the kind of pluralism that is open and free.

Thinking beyond this point, I found that there were a great many diverse and opposing kinds of education going on here and they have been embedded in our country in states and areas so that we no longer have the unanimity of belief in the same democracy that has come down to us from the Founders of this country who tried to figure out enduring systems.  Unfortunately, my thinking took me to a listing of the opposing kinds of education that have produced the fragmented American society today.

First, Age:  The oldsters like me who went to the Public Schools during the Great Depression just before I was old enough to fight in the Second World War are opposed by those younger Americans who have not shared the same experience.  Second, there have always been alternatives to Public Education.  There are PRIVATE schools and PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS.  Third, there is HOME SCHOOLING and fourth there are children who have been left behind or who are presently tormented by testing – but so many children HAVE been left behind or not educated very much in the way we understand education. We assume too much.

I am sorry to burden you with this thought that terrifies me.  But, I feel the heavy weight of what is happening in this country and the comparison between the educations that exist in nations we occupy and the educations that exist here in the 50 States of the Union.  We do not produce educated people in either place and democracy has received blows from which it may not recover.