Another Picture from The Institution

Dear Dr. Bones,

Sort of a cartoon, actually:

The Department of Education Cracks Down on For-Profit Colleges Should Washington scale back its huge college subsidies instead?

The neolearned an’ postgallant perfesser seems to have been outside strugglin’ with his two-wheeler when he should have been attendin’ the AEIdeological orientation part of the course offered by Wombschool Normal U. or St. Dilbert’s Antistate College or George Peppermason or wherever. I guess "There is nothing improper about the idea of a for-profit educational institution" was not original-intented as damnation by faint praise; all the same, if the Cramerite flame of zeal for Mammon flickered much lower, it would stop existin’.

And ¿what -- ¡I ask you! -- are the pajamaclad kiddies to make of "I really believe in the merits of a traditional liberal arts education" ? For that matter, ¿what do the Crameroid golfin’ buddies make of it?

To be sure, his Cramerian freelordship’s devotion to Lieberal Education is not unqualified -- "it needs to be done in high school, where we used to do it." Usually I flatly don’t believe the word ‘historian’ when it comes from the hired e-hands of Roger, Freelord of Simon Pajama in the neopeerage [1], but with Parteineukamerad Herr Professor Doktor C. E. von Kramer, an exception must be made: run-of-the-mill whight-wing bunksters would not be caught dead alludin’ to any bunk that far back towards the abyss. For it has been a long, long time indeed since "we used to do" Lie. Ed. at the secondary level rather than the tertiary. St. John Dewey, you’ll remember, used to complain of that situation all the time, starting in perhaps 1880. By the time he died in 195X, however, the situation had long since been rectified.

This qualification is, I fear, makes me a little suspicious. No doubt his freelordship sincerely craves to get all that useless unprofitable lumber -- "medieval French literature" -- removed from our institutions of tertiary educationalism, but, once it is safely out the door, I suspect M. le baron de Cramer would not much mind if it were just laid by the side of the road in a garbage bag for some fine, upstandin’ waste-disposal privateer to deal with quietly over night. Should it never make it sixteen blocks up the pike to Gated Hills Latin School, probably his freelordship’s grief would not be inconsolable.

But my suspicions pale besides those that his freelordship’s Party neocomrades ought to be entertainin’ of him. Especially if they, too, should happen to live in Gated Hills, that garden spot of South Central Foxcuckooland. For if GHLS does take the rubbish in, ’twill be their property-taxes pay for its upkeep. Whereas, had it been left where it was, at the tertiary level, at least part of the cost would be covered by misguided volunteers from the Secret Sector. The kiddie selfservatives are not, in general, sufficiently bestembright to entertain the idea that his freelordship of Cramer may be winkwinknodnoddin’ at ’em a little here. Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh, for example, who likes to bark ’bout how he, at least, proudly lives in ‘Literal[s]ville’, will certainly conclude that M. le baron really wants to see compulsory Old French at GHLS. ¡What Rush, who happens to be _universitätsrein_ himself, will bark ’bout his freelordship in conjunction with *that* nifty scheme, I leave to your imagination, O Bones!

Probably M. le baron is just muddled, but it is just possible he is a stern _Klassenkämpfer_ unafraid to stand up for his own country-clubbers even against nominal Party neocomrades from the "respectable Republican cloth coat" mob.. That is to say, the Gated Hills Latin School is not for the neoproles down in Rio Limbaugh, who retain perfect freedumb to dispose of their local property-taxes for instruction in matters a little less upmarket-ornamental than _Le Roman de la Rose_.

To judge from noises emitted by the Three Weird Sisters of Boston [2], every neoprole takes for granted that education was decreed by Father Zeus to insinuate Dr. Limbaugh’s "young skulls full of mush" into well-remunerated employment in the Secret Sector as quickly as possible. There are serious reasons for doubting that everythin’ inculcated at the Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie Regional High School in fact works towards that end, but, as far as I can make no, no disagreement worth mentionin’ that that is what RL-PSLRHS *ought* to be doin’, apart from a comparatively minor fringe of cultural studies designed to make sure that the neoprole kiddies know exactly which athletic an’ ideological teams they are required to cheer for. [3]

But probably M. le baron is just muddled. Examine his last paragraph, sir: plainly his freelordship does not want to see ‘his’ taxes wasted on the Bad Poor, marchin’ in lockstep with the whole phalanx of Party neocomrades on this, the most crucial, point. However the freelordly an’ kiddiemagisterial Class cannot make it on its own, She [4] requires a continual supply of scabs to keep down the Union thugs an’ Tee Putty to turn out on election days. This continuin’ supply of fresh neoblood has to come out of the arteries an’ veins of the holy Homeland™’s educational system somehow. Wombschoolin’ in the narrowest sense -- homeschoolin’ -- is not a viable option on the scale required. Even at Gated Hills, to be "privately educated" like a (probably) non-phony aristo from two or three centuries ago is so expensive as to be insignificant for the _Klassenkampf_. Dick an’ Jane (and Spot) will certainly have to be sent out somewhere to acquire their booklearnin’. Given the inertia of social constructions, it is not likely that they will soon be sent anywhere radically different from the sort of institutions currently available. [5]

The freelordly bottom line

Stacked up against this grim reality, the abuses on display at America’s for-profit colleges virtually pale in comparison

is a pretty example of a kissin’ cousin to "‘¡Shut up!’, she explained." His freelordship would much prefer to discuss the neofact that far too many Bad Poors waste their time an’ his freelordship’s Class’s money hanging around in schools, a preference that has almost nothin’ to do with the displayed abuses. Here the figurative freedame does not explain that we ought to fall silent altogether, only that we ought to allow her freeladyship to know best what to talk about.

Still spinach, though, ¿is it not?

Happy days (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM



____
[1] An’ ¡¡World’s Greatest Yaleodrama™ist!! ¡Never forget that, sir!

[2] WRKO AM 680; WXKS AM 1200; WTKK-FM 96.9.

[3] I presume it would not be fairembalanced to complain that this sort of icin’ on the cake is ‘useless’ or ‘unproductive’. After all, when -- nowadays, if -- Master Wally Wingnut gets admitted for a job interview, provin’ to the Personnel Department that he is a thoroughly orthodox kiddie selfservative may well be of the highest utility.

If Wally were tryin’ to get in the door at ScroogeBank or enlist with the Goldman-Saxon hordes, that sort of thing would not much help and might even hurt, but we all know, Dr. Bones, that the alumnuses of Gated Hills Latin hold a near-total monopoly on the juiciest secret-sectorian plums. Not (I think) so much thanks to their mastery of Old French, as to their parents’ ability to shell out for the archaic kind of pædagogy that stars Old French and the like.

(( Though off-topic here, ‘archaic’ is interesting and important. ¿Did I ever mention that study of Secret Sectoria back in the heydey of glass-and-steel-box architecture? It was the corporate proles who got all the benefits of Modern Times. For themselves, the Big Managers preferred wood panels and upholstered furniture and Century XVIII all across the boardroom. Plus naturally when one has made it really big up at Gated Hills, one immediately pretends to go into agriculture an’ pastoralism -- horses especially. Polo is even better than Old French, statussymbolwise. ))

[4] As it happens, _classis -is_ really was feminine in very early Old French. I think, though, that this particular She would ought to be a Her in any case.

The same applies to _La civilisation occidentale_, the Western Sieve ideoproduct of the Ziocomrades an’ of a few scattereed dummies an’ _dhimmís, set up as hopefully an object of love an’ devotion an’ rallyin’ ’round generally. When one only means to refer to the intellectual history of Western Europe _wie es eigentlich gewesen_, ‘it’ will do nicely, but when when spoofin’ those wunnerful neofolks who seriously expect one to cross one’s heart an’ hope to die for themselves under the WC label, only ‘She’ will do.

[5] If the kiddies’ Destructive ©®ea™ionism product worked half as well as advertised, I daresay we could start over at once with what the Freiherr von Kramer an’ other neocomrades seem to require ideally, namely a revival of the apprentice system. ScroogeBank and WalMart and the Goldman-Saxons and the Warbucks Widget Trust Intergalactic LLC would train an’ indoctrinate all their hired hands in house from kindergarten through graduate school, ignorin’ the vast wasteland of American Educationalism as if it did not exist. Dick an’ Jane could get a far, far better education from the Serene House of Warbucks, after all, than they could ever hope for at the house of their own Mom an’ Pop. (Spot I dunno about.)

As regards tertiary educationalism specifically, surely this would be a far more sensible way for Daddy Warbucks an’ Uncle Scrooge y Tio Ruperto and all the rest of that branch of the family than to set up subsidiaries to specuvest an’ investulate in "for-profit colleges" that probably won’t be so very profitable in the long run. His freelordship of Cramer -- clearly no œconomist -- speaks blithely of "tens of thousands of dollars in student loans that will eventually be cleared only when they die of old age," which would be lovely for Scrooge & Co. if they could get it. But of course they cannot get it: well before middle age, Dick an’ Jane, the shameless ratfinks, will have defaulted on their freelordly creditors-- and there will go most of those "for-profit college" profits, in all likelihood.

One scarcely needs an M.B.A. from the H*rv*rd Victory School to notice *that* locomotive racing down the track at one. Those from the freelordly Class who do actually dabble in such specuvestments certainly appear to have noticed -- that is why they want Uncle Sam to co-sign the notes with our nieces and nephews.

There exist Party neocomrades at the Tanks of Thought, Catoholics an’ Heritagitarians an’ brand-name AEIdeologues, who (pretend to) think that Sam’s signature on a note is not worth much more than Spot’s would be, but this idle chatter of hired hands is contradicted by the behavior of authentic Freelords of Finance, who take for granted that Sam will pay as promised. At least pay our obligations to themselves -- if they can think of a way to welsh only on what Sam owes to the heathen Chinee and/or the Ponzi Security Administration, I think they might go for it. But it is not easy to imagine what that way would be.