A few years ago on a cold winter’s night I left the house to drive to the gym.  In a hurry, I backed out of the driveway, hearing and feeling a thump wump twice.  Stopping I saw nothing in my headlights, so I now backed out more slowly.  The process revealed a severely injured raccoon laying on its side harshly illuminated by my headlights.  His last struggle for life was thankfully short but horrifying just the same.

Now, the dead raccoon was my problem.  His carcass was as large as that of a medium size dog.   I was not even sure how he fit in the front wheel well where he obviously camped out to be sheltered from the night time cold.   After a few calls to friends it was decided that Freddie, (We had to name him.)  would be double bagged in those 55 gallon double thick black trash bags and disposed of in the trash.

Clearly Freddie was uninformed as to the dangers of hanging out in vehicle wheel wells.  He had found a place where he was warm and sheltered from the elements.  All was right with his world until reality so rudely disturbed his resting place.  His lack of knowledge was not an issue until the very last moment.  At that point it was fatal.

Many of our schools now fail to teach capitalism and instead literally promote socialism as a fairer more enlightened approach to running an economy.   Like Freddie,  a core survival skill for being prosperous is not taught.  The utopian ideal, the warm and snug wheel well of Freddie’s dreams is presented and it is only after life and livelihood unravel that those taught this pipe dream realize it is not a safe spot.

How educator’s can ignore the complete weight of history and continue to promote a philosophy that endangers our prosperity, health and lives completely baffles me.  Thirty years ago I had teachers that promoted communism as a workable economic system even though the Soviet Union at the time existed with rampant corruption and poverty.  It’s complete collapse followed soon there after.    In today’s world that philosophy has produced Venezuela where the most recent price of a loaf of bread is $150.  Inflation is at 740%.  Cuba is yet another example where the most fortunate have 30 year old cars that still run.

Freddie did not have PHD raccoons telling him where the best place for him to live would be.  He did not have the brightest minds in the raccoon world telling him how best to keep warm and safe.  Today’s students have the PHDs teaching them.  They have the brightest minds in the world telling them how the world works and even so those same brilliant minds are teaching economic fantasy.  That is why we are printing money (like Germany in the 1930s and Venezuela),  racking up unbelievable debt, and funding a non working class (Like the old Soviet Union) and yet our wise raccoon instructors are still telling generation after generation that the results will be different.

The history of the United States and of Western Europe (until recently as they have swung more toward big government) has proven that socialism and communism produce an overall standard of living far less attractive for the masses than does capitalism.  Yet our educational system reviles capitalism even though more prosper under capitalism than under any other economic system.  Instead our educational system is teaching and promoting ideas where our populace winds up living in the wheel well, just one backward step from destruction.  Cushy ideas are taught instead of facts and history.

It is an approach that leaves our students, and workforce woefully unprepared to compete in the global market.  That same approach causes businesses to look out side this country for a motivated workforce.  It amazes me that the most brilliant minds in education consistently teach the appeal of a utopia that fails instead of choosing a pragmatic prosperous future with a system that works.    PhDs that fail to understand history or incorporate facts and woefully ill qualified.  It is those same ones that are failing us generation after generation.

Freddie lacked the knowledge to prevent his doom.  There is no excuse for those who have the knowledge on how to prevent that doom to willfully continue to promote ignorance.  It is an ignorance that will give us the same results as Freddie had.