By Tom Hunter

I’m an old hippy, who would have been a member of UCSD’s class of 69 if I’d stayed around for another year.  I had two great teachers in four years – Herbert Marcuse and David Fate Norton. I had three brilliant roommates and I was at the first march on La Jolla when that bastion of liberality first realized they had been traduced.

La Jolla has never recovered.  Even the birds do little but shit on the place.

I was a C student, although I was in four different departments in four different years.  Physics, Biology,  Philosophy and finally Art.  I was very young for my age and I worked 20 plus hours a week at the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (my office building is currently trying to do a header off the cliff above Scripps).

I may be somewhat tainted in my memories, but I’m fairly sure I got a well rounded education – for nearly fucking free.  Cut to UCSD of today.

My class had 200 freshman and almost no seniors after four years.  Today UCSD has 22,947 starters.  Yikes. At 23,760 dollars each per year for residents (and double that for out of staters) how much wood could a woodchuck chuck?

So, suddenly education gets serious.  Now it’s a race to study those subjects that might get your debt paid before you die.  Or not.  Or you might fall into the clutches of the for profit military industrial complex.

San Diego is the home to Bridgepoint Education.  Or as a Congressman has called it – “a complete scam”.  This hurt their share price a bit, but being a complete scam is not enough to put you out of business.  Just wave a little bible babble and away you go. The majority owner is hoping to cash out for 700,000,000 plus.  Kinda makes Bernie Madoff a bit of a piker.

Taxpayers might wonder where all that money comes from?  The federal government via student loans.  Jeez, some dude in Modesto will make you a Phd. of divinity for 10 bucks.  And there is no shame, compared to a degree from the minions of Bridgepoint.

How does public school money find its way into religious schools?  In eight states it is called “scholarships”. Sneaky bastards in Congress have a way of punching holes in every facet of the Bill of Rights as well as any other laws that seem to limit favoritism toward their pet projects.

Charter schools have become another money sucking way to weaken public education.  Some brilliant scammers have set up private companies to run charter schools and suck them dry and leave them for a new project.  There are no definitive studies that show that charter schools are any better than the schools they take away from.  So basically it is a bunch of theorists who care nothing for their guinea pigs.

And now for something entirely different …

The word stuff above is the result of thought and research.  The following are eye witness accounts:

Ocean Beach Elementary School is freaking awesome!  My granddaughter has got the best teachers in the world and she LOVES to go to school.

My sister taught fourth grade in Santee for twenty years and was so popular with the parents they would fight to get their kids in her class.

Now my children had a different experience in school.  They were bored out of their tree.  One claims the only thing he learned in high school was typing.  So they took the graduation tests and split.  Both of them are successful  way beyond anything I ever accomplished.  So, apparently, the most important years of schooling are preschool to 4th grade.

And what is Congress pissing on these days?  Nutrition for poor folks, universal preschool and masterbating foetuses.  Education should  be a requirement for Gomertville, but it’s just too late for this generation.