I have always had to squint my eyes when looking at American education to keep from being blinded by the reflection of my own experiences and beliefs. My mind is made up where education is concerned.

Security, food, health and education are the principal means by which any society or social institution creates the strongest possible supporters of its ideologies and goals.

As a child, my family was poor. Even so, I was raised in the Catholic church and attended private school. I was led to understand from an early age that my education was a serious responsibility. My aunts paid my way through junior high and I finished high school in the public school system. I went on to a public college. Others of my Catholic school friends went to the diocese prep school and then to college at Loyola (Louisiana) or Notre Dame. A few went to schools like Harvard and Stanford.

That is one way the system works.

As a technologist I have also spent time in Boston and San Francisco. The model for higher education in those cities has two components. One is the result of social privilege. The other is economic and much more interesting. The relationship between Silicon Valley and Stanford university, for example, has resulted in the creation of a technology based economy designed to integrate the university with the venture capital and technology community in such a way that a student can move seamlessly through an education to research to a startup to a public company under the guidance and auspices of the university. This model is designed to literally create global economies out of education. It is much closer to a meritocracy than the political/financial/legal educational systems in the Ivy League schools.

We are witnessing an incredible aggregation of wealth in hands of very few people. I do not think it is reversible at this point. I hope I am wrong.

To my mind, the only way to change it is to provide stable employment to families and good food, public healthcare and quality public education to all of the children in this society. Of course, that will result in a different type of citizenry and a likely rapid redistribution of wealth within a generation.

That is why it is no surprise to me that the Republican party does everything in its power to deny these things to as many of America's children as possible.

It's good to have artists involved in the discussion. Beauty and truth are where you find them. You, my friend, are a poet.

Thanks.

Jim,

I don't disagree with you. America is far from being a meritocracy. It is moving rapidly towards a fixed class structure with less and less mobility. But for the time being the class divides are still semipermeable.

When I was talking about the Silicon Valley/Stanford model, what I was also pointing out was the close relation between education and industry. If you want to build a sustainable economy, begin by creating a world-class educational system. If you are going to have a world-class educational system you start with the children, by making sure they have stable lives, good food to eat and proper healthcare.

If you have a great educational system, the economy will follow.

I have been involved in a number of startups from beer napkin to operating company since 1995. Those companies were started out of Dallas. When the time came to scale the companies, we went to Silicon Valley. What we found out was that Silicon Valley almost never (meaning NEVER!) invests in companies that are not located on Hwy. 101 between San Jose and San Francisco. That part of California is a closely held and tightly integrated Rolodex. Between 1996-1999 I was a close observer of the creation of tens of billions of dollars in capitalization by companies that had started with 2-3 Stanford professors and students and were groomed by VC and industry to become public companies. It was nothing for a VC to be on dozens of boards and for professors to be on dozens of boards. If you were physically there (Hwy 101), the meritocracy worked. If you were from somewhere else, the meritocracy was not available to you.

What I learned was that it's 50% have you got the goods, 50% who you know, 50% luck and 100% working your ass off night and day and never, never, never giving up. Then, just maybe, you might make it.

As much of a social democrat (and strongly anti-neolib) Jeffersonian that I am, with my desire for public healthcare and public education and no child goes hungry beliefs, I just love the part where one person can do something that might actually change the quality of life for everyone for the better. But I equally hate the war-mongering, corporatist, fascist opposite edge of that same sword.

That's why I'm so angry with this current government. They're just evil, plain and simple.

America is a war machine. We put paranoia in one end, it goes around and around and comes out the other end as endless war. Meanwhile the people who run the machine gain wealth, power and and the right to rewrite history.

It has been going on for as long as we have been a country. If it's not the British, it's the Indians. If it's not the Indians, it's the Mexicans. If it's not the Mexicans its us.

If the war machine engineers manage this properly, we can get another ten years of war out of hating Muslims. Then we can turn our sights on a cold war with China and hate another ethnic group numbering over a billion people.

I try to be positive, but I'm a little bummed out right now. I read a few hours ago that the Dems went belly up on the latest Iraq "compromise" bill. That means we'll be wreaking havoc in Iraq for at least another couple of years.