So far this week I have been pursuing a line of thought dedicated to the striking similarities between extremist narratives at home and abroad. For the past two days I’ve shared some counter-intuitive lessons about countering those narratives, from the use of humor and ridicule to not selling our own story to DWYSYWD. Today I want to discuss the role of education in longer-term counter-narrative strategies. While the cultural and economic circumstances are vastly different between, say, Afghanistan under the Taliban and Texas under conservative Republicans on their School Board, I suggest that one of the most disturbing common elements between “over there” and “right here” is the extremists’ reliance on the ignorance of the general populace, and the control of thought and language, to maintain their authority and as an ideological vehicle to keep them in power.

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” – Kofi Annan

I begin this post with the Nobel Laureate Kofi Annan quote above because, although I agree with it, the systemic linkage of education with the family, with progress, with liberation, and with power, captures succinctly a third important theme in this series on what is wrong with America. Namely: we want to blame education alone for failing to meet our expectations for our children, and educators alone for failing to provide the instruction in core subjects—math, science, English, and history—that will allow American high school and college students to compete successfully with their global counterparts. This blame game is not only factually wrong and narratively misguided, but ultimately it is dangerous to the well being of our society. What makes it especially dangerous is not only the limited futures forecast for our children, but also because we don’t want to talk about it. It has become impolite to raise the issue of education in the context that I will use to organize the remainder of this post.

Fair warning: My observations and arguments are not politically correct. Nor are they for those among you who find it easier to blame education than to look to your own failures as parents, as workers, and as voters.

I’m not a New York Jets fan but I was hit between the ears by a metaphorical truth during their football game yesterday. As the Jets’ entered the third quarter trailing the Pittsburgh Steelers 24-3, I was thinking about the president’s upcoming State of the Union speech. I heard an announcer put the Jets predicament into a perspective that is remarkably similar to the one Obama faces on Tuesday night. To wit: “You need to pick up the pace and score three touchdowns.”

Admittedly, three touchdowns for the Jets would have only resulted in a tie game. Yet, given the midterm “shellacking” back in November, a tie game on the political playing field now could result in another Obama victory in 2012. After all, the president is rising in the polls, and, while those polls mean next to nothing until next year and really not much of anything until after Labor Day in 2012, it’s still a good sign.

Our president handled the Tucson tragedy well, and if he has proven himself a better orator than progressive statesman, there is still audacious hope in my heart for a real leader to emerge from those impressive speeches. I am still awaiting, as I think we all are, a leader who boldly alters the political game and significantly improves the future of our country. He has less than two years to begin to accomplish that, by which I mean to do something other than move the ball between the forty yard lines in order to insure his reelection in Bill Clinton-like centrist fashion. So the question becomes: what should our president do?

In the practice of fiction the genre known as “magical realism” is all about introducing fantastic or magical elements into a narrative as if these elements are perfectly normal. This genre should be used as a framework for understanding the fictions being perpetrated by the Republicans and by President Obama under the guise of “budget cuts.”  Because as far as I can tell, the idea of a “budget cut” comes fully equipped with magical qualities—from reducing a huge deficit without tackling the big issues to curing unemployment by putting more people out of work to guaranteeing weight loss without exercise or diet control.

OK, so I made up the part about weight loss.  But compared to what both sides are claiming their version of the budget will do for us, it’s a wonder they didn’t package weight loss in with the rest of the hype.

In the midst of an American uprising against those who would break the backs of unions, eliminate broad swathes of public employees, and redefine higher education as the common enemy of all right-thinking, self-righteous citizens, it is particularly disheartening to see a progressive leader of a major university willingly succumb to the “divide and conquer” strategy used to drive an economic wedge between her flagship and the rest of the university system. I am speaking ill of Carolyn A. “Biddy” Martin, the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. But also I am implicating former Secretary of Education and the current Chancellor of the University of Miami, Donna Shalala, who called Martin’s plan “a bold move.”

Neither of these highly accomplished progressive leaders is going it alone, or, my guess is willingly, and therein we find the ugly spread of this right wing ideologically fueled strategy, as well as the true nature of our deeper challenge, which is to begin to speak openly about money. The “M” word. The thing those of us in education are not supposed to talk about, or complain about. The taboo term for those of us who have dedicated our lives to public service.