Undizzying the United States

We hope that U.S. Crisis: Art, Education and Society will encourage others to join us in a righteous cause.

We make the strong case that the university operated as a business causes major problems in our educational system. It is the incompatibility between the two that causes the art of education to succumb to the business of education. It is not so much the Establishment that we attack or big business, nor to we assault liberals or conservatives who seem bent on attacking reason. It is not the puppet politicians who, in order to be reelected, jump to the strings of professional lobbyist-puppeteers that we assail.  Neither is our national crisis the fault of the public media that parades big banners announcing the latest shocking headlines such as U.S. Ranks 25th in the World in Educational Quality. The media struts this stuff in front of onlookers as long as the headlines command an audience.

What is at the root of the problems and with those entities listed above? Ideas! And it is our school system, from preschool through the doctoral level, that teaches ideas to our country.  Perhaps more than parents, churches and peers, it is through our schools that values and standards of living are inculcated.  We have an dizzying, fast-spinning merry-go-round that must be slowed to a halt and, then, its direction changed. We have to 'undizzy' our country.

It is the public acceptance of 'mediocrity is good enough' that has been taught by our schools to our citizenry. This is done rather than insisting on seeking and providing the best education possible for our nation. Since there has been little, if any, substantive opposition to this deterioration other than reports from a few Commissions on U.S. Education, we have a national ethical crisis that has permitted the cultivation of greed as the main engine of the nation's economy, accepted lowered academic standards that assure the graduation of too many students from high school and college with a diploma in hand but without having received a 'real' education, allowed a government to become an increasingly powerful group of lobbyists and politicians that have become entangled into one messy pocket handkerchief that makes decisions for the people, and supported public media that boasts that it is 'keeping them honest' and that its news is 'fair and balanced' while it is obvious that its stories are politically tainted – the news  slanted to the 'right' or to the 'left' to sustain television ratings.

The country is at odds with itself, feeling helpless about being able to do something about the U.S. Crisis. U.S. Crisis: Art, Education and Society is a rebellion. It points out some of the actual reasons behind the destruction of the public intellect and the deterioration of our national self-esteem by criticizing our education system from our 'inside the academy' perspectives. We expose the implications of the 'vulture' capitalist's wish to feed off of the public's insatiable appetite for pop culture.

We encourage a dialogue among readers of our book and blog to begin to forge a path to a new way for education and for a return to valuing art and art education as something critical to sensitive and sensible living.  We have nothing to lose in such a venture but by participating in reformation, in the best sense of the term, U.S. Society will have a chance to become the best it can possibly be.