TV tells a million lies
The paper’s terrified to report
Anything that isn’t handed on a presidential spoon

“Ignoreland,” R.E.M.

The educational attainment propaganda starts early in formal education with students being shown the simplistic chart of how directly more education seems to insure higher pay:

The message, however, that educational attainment is the “great equalizer” proves to be a deforming myth; for example, consider just one level of teasing out the information above by race:

In fact, data are overwhelming that being born wealthy is far more powerful in determining most people’s lot in life than any degree of educational attainment or other types of effort. White, male privilege trumps almost everything in the U.S., leading to Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty.

Idealized quests for a meritocracy, a society in which effort and such do in fact lead to rewards despite any person’s initial station in life, are just that: a fantasy.

The educational attainment lie has always been a veneer for privilege, and we are well past time to admit this fact.

Greater education should matter, however, and not be reduced to narrow metrics such as earning power.

But the U.S. at the end of 2015 with 2016 just around the corner is not where that is a reality. We are a culture of privilege and Social Darwinism, without compassion for fellow human beings.

And no time each calendar year is more illustrative of those ugly facts than now in the wake of Thanksgiving and the tidal wave of Christmas—when children and young people all over the country are released from the halls of schools to learn how to be good little consumers.

Merry Christmas.