The reality of school reform is that we, as a country, are not committed to it any more than we are committed to ending poverty. The reality of school reform is that we are in the process of dismantling the social welfare system in the United States.

If you are familiar with the concept of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ then you might be aware that we have too many people at the middle and the top trying to reap unearned benefits from the system to provide for themselves and their cohorts.

Think about the reality of wealth in the U.S. The top 1% of the population controls nearly 50% of the wealth in the country. With this recent economic shift, those numbers are growing.

How do you erase, or eliminate, economic disparities? Education is a good place to start, but in order to truly educate you have to make people aware of the disparities. Our system does not do that. Our system pushes the idea that economic disparity is somehow good because the system is open and anyone can achieve success, which is a vision that severely distorts reality.

The reality is, without a true education the majority of people are reduced to parroting what they see or hear in popular media, which is itself the voice of a privatized corporate agenda.

The biggest tragedy of the mess is that the people themselves, unwittingly, are the largest shareholders in the systems corruption. Corporations chase short-term gains at the expense of long-term value. They do this to increase day-to-day earnings for their investors. Who are the largest investors? Surprise, it’s you and me. We invest in pension systems and 401k’s through our work, and these vehicles are “managed” in our interest [non-voting stock] by supposedly benevolent officials whose only concern is profits. They care not for us in particular nor the demise of our jobs.

I find myself wondering more and more these days about how long it takes, how much of the system is dismantled, before history comes full circle and we find ourselves in another French revolution.