I found this on the Facebook. I thought I had already sent it out to you, but can't find it anywhere. It's an interesting idea. About the changing attitude toward education that is at the base of the debt problems. We have, apparently, slowly adopted the Republican attitude toward education in this country -- showing how effective their propaganda is on everyone, even if you think you are on the other side.
--Kim
If you go to David Policar's site, there is a whole discussion about this post. It was too long to transfer to this email, but if you want to learn more about what people are thinking about this, and also want to see some intelligent discourse (in opposition to the people who say there is nothing intelligent on FaceBook), then go and read it. I believe this will take you there:
One thing I am coming only slowly to understand is that opposition to student loan forgiveness is really firmly grounded in opposition to public education.
Like, the whole "pay your debts!" narrative is built on the idea that the important category here is "owed debt," and it doesn't matter what the debt is _for_. If I borrow money, whether it's for education or housing or hookers and blow or starting a business, it's all debt and all debt is basically the same.
But we don't treat housing debt the same way as other debt, because of how we value homeownership. And we don't treat business debt the same way as personal debt, because of how we value business.
And there was a time when we didn't treat educational debt the same way as other debt, because of how we valued education. But I guess we let that slip away.
Framing educational debt as a purely private matter, which each individual is responsible for, implicitly frames education itself as a purely private transaction with no positive externalities. Which is consistent with the Republican assault on public education more generally.
I'm glad we're taking some steps to reverse that process, and I hope we continue.
This was probably already clear to others, but I haven't heard it said explicitly and I only just now realized it.
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