[lit-ideas] Re: Adios, amigo; adios, critical thought

They did rely on the SU but they are now fully functioning on their own and 
have been for a long time.  After the SU let them go (before or after they fell 
apart, not sure), the Cubans reorganized their society such that they became 
virtually independent of the oil the SU gave them and independent from the free 
money they got from the sugar cane they sold to the SU at inflated prices.  
They're still poor but they have a functioning relatively wholesome society.  I 
read this in one of my books on peak oil which used them as an example of what 
the U.S. will be unable to accomplish when the oil runs way down.  Nothing to 
do with ideology, just common sense survival if oil ever runs out.
   
  As far as education, it's funny how quick free market types are to finger the 
public sector when there's some sort of problem.   All that social welfare 
common good stuff, such a burden except that we don't have a workforce that can 
compete with the rest of the world.  I personally think it runs deeper, part of 
the greed is good mentality, that the only thing anybody cares about is money 
and what money can buy.  Bread and circuses, that's all we know.  The liberal 
arts education is if not dead then very sick and you can forget about math and 
science.  Colleges are basically just very expensive vocational schools.   
   
  I was listening to Susie Orman one night on television and a recent graduate 
called in that she was something like 90K in debt after having graduated from a 
fashion design school.  Student loan debt survives even bankruptcy.  It will 
follow her until she dies.  Education in America used to be funded by the GI 
Bill and other low cost government funding.  Now it's not even an afterthought.
   
  

Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
  Mike: trusting that corporate profits speak the truth -- which is -- 
ach, you know what?

You know what? I'm posting part of [NEA Chairman] Dana Gioia's 
Commencement Address at Stanford in 2007, which I just posted on another 
list. Dana G. fingers schools, not corporatism in the emerging 
idiocracy. In other words, blame the cumulative effect of state and 
local budget cuts on education. It's worth the time to peruse. Maybe we 
can agree on it, rather debating the merits of Cuba, which under Castro 
has always relied on one patron or another. -EY



       
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