Despite being an "Old White Guy", albeit in Australia, not the USA, I empathise with this piece.

The dumbing down of the population is blatant now. It commences with our environment for even pre-school children are exposed to thousands of mercenary advertisements on virtually a daily basis.

Schooling has always been about socialisation rather than education. Today it is almost completely so. It's major problem is that schooling teaches one to look for answers - usually *the* answer, and that answer the one determined by the curriculum or the teacher. Hence, even in affective subjects, the conditioning continues.

Our governments and capitalist and neo liberalist policies promote success as defined by wealth, status and power.

Understanding, caring, compassion, helping, collaboration, community, justice, and etc. are rarely included or given emphasis in our society. The focus, instead, is always about jobs and or materialism.

The reality is that jobs, unless one is very fortunate and able to work at what one loves, rarely provide either satisfaction, peace-of-mind, intellectual development, clear thinking or real contribution to one's fellow citizens.

I am disinclined to accept that "Old White Guys" are solely to blame for this situation. Generalisations, of course, always have exceptions but in this case there is a bias that is common in feminist initiated discourse,

Unfortunately, passion & personal experience often interferes with true and objective analysis. This topic needs much greature exposure & detailed examination to determine the why's and how to correct what has resulted from them.