Education
There are many conflicts within the public education system in the United States. The most damaging outcome, however, of the current system is the lack of emphasis on critical thought. Students are spoon fed their education and expected to regurgitate arbitrary information on standardized tests in order to prove that the system is working. This process is grossly unfair to students who do not develop (within the school system) the ability to learn independently and critically analyze information they receive. With a broken sense of history that heroifies our past without connecting it to the present, American students are left with a skewed sense of the world, their country, and their own role in it. Students are not taught to question authority or their role in a "democratic" system. This sets the stage for later in life when they are spoon-fed limited information by the media and are not expected to question the authority that controls such information.
For more information about this topic please read:
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James W. Loewen
Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
by John Taylor Gatto
The Twentieth Century
by Howard Zinn
Media
It is no secret that the American media is controlled by the networks who, in turn, are controlled by just a few large corporations. So why is it that the people are not demanding a more democratic press? The media seems to superficially brush over topics while true investigation and multiple viewpoints are absent. Why is it that American journalists do not ask the "tough" questions? If not the press, then whose responsibility is it to hold the government accountable for its actions? In a country built on the idea of democratic freedom, it seems disgraceful that the media has become just another tool of the governing body and, once again, the people lack true representation. To avoid being decieved by a media moderated by corporate and government interests, it is crucial for the American people to seek outside sources of information, particularly during times of war when information is more tightly controlled. Hearing from the Democrats and the Republicans is not the same as hearing both sides. Non-American sources of information provide a more objective look at U.S. actions through the lens of a different cultural paradigm, and looking critically at a variety of media sources will give Americans a much needed involvement with the ideas of the rest of the world. A great venue for this is www.watchingamerica.com where foreign press reporting on U.S. related actions is translated directly to English.
Other alternative resources include:
www.bbc.co.uk
www.cnnexposed.com
Read this!!!
Kabuki:The Alchemy Series by David Mack
The Nightly News Series by Jonathan Hickman
America Against the World: How we are Different and Why we are Disliked by Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes
Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky