A CNN Education

There are currently 5 news networks considered to be legitimate by large numbers of Americans, CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, and all the NBCs, which I shall count as one (since they are all owned by General Electric with some Microsoft involvement). (There is a link between this and education, by the way, as I will get to soon.)

I must now ask, why is it that all of these networks are considered to be legitimate? I don't present the question in an argumentative sense, but in a descriptive sense, so as to ascertain what reasons someone who does follow these outlets would give to explain why they think these 5 news operations are honest or competent?

What is basically observable of these networks is that they are large, they cover a large share of the news market, and they are owned by very rich entities that also own a lot of other interests, and I suspect that the main reason why so many people think that these organizations are credible is that they are so large and so omnipresent. But that alone does not make him credible any more than sheer scope of operations would make Lucky Luciano someone you could trust. They are big because they happen to be the news organizations owned by some of the richest entities and people in the world. That does not necessarily make them useful; I would say it makes them suspicious.

Another rather sad reason why many people invest their trust in the 5 Major news networks seems simply to be that they tell us to. CNN claims to be "the most trusted name in news", FOX, the "most powerful name in news" (apparently, FOX News assumes its viewers will equate power with righteousness--if only I had access to FOX's in-house psychological profiles of their market!) Of course, this is no evidence for credibility besides the fact that so many people seem to believe them, which then brings us to the third and final reasons these news organizations are considered legit, namely reputation. Appraising an organization by its reputations seems totally valid, until we realize that many these other people are in turn basing their judgments on each other as well. When everybody lets everyone else think for them, what happens is that the subject under consideration ends up not being thought out at all. All we really think about are each other's thoughts, while the actual subject of our inquiry is quietly abandoned. What something is and what other people think it is are two different things, regardless of how similar they might appear; and appraising the first by looking at the second is as invalid logically as appraising the value of a house on Elm St. by looking at a car on Main St. When this becomes the dominant manner in which we think, there is no limit to how much things as they are can deviate from things as we believe them to be, since while we obsess over the second it simply slips our minds to check in even occasionally on the first.

This is not an attack on reputation, because reputation can be a very effective and valid basis on which to form an opinion. It is fine to put your trust in something based on the opinions of those whom you consider reliable, who in turn base theirs on the opinions of still others who are considered reliable, as long as somewhere along the chain, there is someone who has come to this conclusion by honestly and capably appraising the object itself, and as long as you are willing to judge your own experience of this object against your reputation. All too often these days, however, the source of reputations is murky, and is difficult ultimately to trace to any real critical examination of a specific object. Many reputations are, in fact, orchestrated through mass guerrilla marketing campaigns, where influential people are targeted and paid to talk up a certain product, but most seem to come from a distant swirl of nothing whereby people believe something because they just do (i.e. for no reason at all), and nobody challenges it because nobody dares trust their own judgment over the prattling of crowds. Such is the case, in my view, with major news media outlets. They are utterly discredited propaganda machines that rarely report actual news. But this reality has been slow to reach the general public, although they are starting to get it and turn that crap off.

But what does this have to do with schooling?

Only this. I cannot remember any history class, or any class in anything where a student ever did the heroic deed of putting his hand up and saying "How do I know you're not just making this stuff up?". Should the teacher have pointed to the textbook, the student should ask the same of the textbook. How do we know that the textbook writer isn't making it up as he goes along, saying what he is told to say, or simply lying? (Most history and social studies textbooks are in fact filled with outright lies and distortions.) Particularly in history, but also in the sciences, schools do not teach the reasoning or content of their subjects. They only teach the conclusions that "experts" have reached. Some education "theorists" point to all sorts of critical-thinking exercises as proof to the contrary, but they miss the point, because these "critical thinking" exercises are divorced from the content of the education curriculum. I had all sorts of "critical thinking material" in my education, but I was never asked to critically examine, say, the sources of the great depression or the case for and against evolution. For that crucial material, I was merely obligated to trust authority. Imagine my astonishment when I found out later in life that there is a human chromosome that is virtually identical to two monkey chromosomes fused together, and that in fact humans have one less chromosome than these monkeys. Conclusion: either somewhere along the evolutionary line, the primate chromosome fused or for some reason (perhaps interbreeding between humans and human-like non-humans) humans just happen to possess a chromosome that looks exactly like one in which two monkey chromosomes fused. I studied evolution in school, just like everyone else. One wonders why they forgot to mention this crucial fact that the average student is perfectly capable of understanding. But the school fails to give it to him, preferring instead to demand that the student accept by the authority of the teacher(!) whatever conclusion is favored by those who write the textbooks. Repeat this process over and over again, and after 12-20 years of schooling, the student is offered no experience or practice in verifying claims for himself. He is simply given several years of ritualistic indoctrination in trusting established authorities for "real" information, and is thus prepared to blindly trust established authorities for his news, his views, and everything else. This is not an accident. It is the desired outcome of the American Government Education Monopoly. Conformity and compliance is virtually the only thing that those who control policy at the highest levels care about. Getting students to come to their own conclusions about something important by critically examining data is dangerous to the school agenda. Teaching them how to do this well is anathema to the project of producing mindless automatons who possess just enough technical skill to make money for their masters--*ahem*--employers, but well short of any mental substance that could rock any boats or ruffle any feathers.