The role of education in the opioid epidemic
The focus of the American Educational system, public and private, is a significant factor in both the opioid epidemic and the COVID pandemics.
I was recently diagnosed with cancer spreading from my lungs to my skin and the Oncologist wrote me a prescription for oxycodone as one of the best of the drugs for dealing with the associated pain. And oxycodone (brand name Oxycontin) is certainly effective at blocking pain signals. However, it is also effective at lowering my ability to think. I find it nearly impossible to read novels, or even many Medium stories, due to the fog that seems to permeate my mind once the oxy kicks in. That’s at 5 mg. At 10 mg it is impossible to do much of anything except float there in a brain fog.
What does this have to do with education? My education, both in the last couple years of high school and in college, was more about learning how to use my mind and to enjoy exploring the many fascinating aspects of pure reason and intellectual joy. There were some practical classes — typing and accounting come to mind — but my engagement with my education was mostly in learning about the Great Conversation. And training to perhaps, possibly, someday, participate in that conversation. So the idea of deliberately introducing cobwebs into my mind is abhorrent to me. I am taking the oxy — at bedtime. While I’m awake, I’ll settle for the much less effective Ibuprofen that at least does not cause partial brain shut down.
When I graduated from college in 1972 with a degree in Philosophy, most employers regarded a college degree as indicative of ability to handle middle management responsibilities because the degree meant I knew how to read and write and figure things out. But this has changed significantly. Starting somewhere around the same time as Reagan declared greed is good (truth is he never actually said that, but I did hear one of his aides say that on TV back then), both high school and college had come to be seen as job training rather than as education.
I won’t attempt to put a date as to when it became possible to obtain a college degree without ever having taken any art or literature classes except perhaps a single overview course. Also without having taken any physical education classes. That has resulted in a generation or two of people whose appreciation of abstract reasoning is close to non-existent and whose physical fitness consists of watching sports on television. I’m afraid that somewhere in the past several decades, the number of “graduates” who do not appreciate intellectual joy has grown from a minority to a majority, mainly because education is no longer the purview of teachers, but now is controlled by administrators and legislators whose underlying religion is “profits first.”
The focus of education, particularly in states who love to cut public education except for football teams, has become to stuff the student’s head with facts and practical techniques for dealing with the workplace (i.e. do what the boss says and don’t think about what you are doing) that will make them good workers. Having a college degree these days does not mean you know how to think, let alone enjoy thinking. So when the MD says use oxycodone to deal with the pain, the resultant brain fog is not alarming. You can still watch and enjoy TV, for example, because most TV shows (and by extension today, most media) do not make any demands on your intellectual abilities. You can enjoy them even within the brain fog of the milder opioids.
The stronger opioids however, can easily override even the desire to think. I woke up in the ICU a few years ago after one of my lung cancer surgeries and was floating on a pleasure sensation that was all encompassing. I asked the nurse what on earth was going on and it turned out that part of the anesthesia was fentanyl. I think that perhaps I would be willing to get hooked on that sensation where I had absolutely no desire to read or do anything except enjoy my current mental state. But I certainly don’t want to get into that place again, at least not as long as there is literature and art to appreciate and the possibility of experiencing or even generating art or intellectual joy.
STEM very much needs to be STEAM, for without art and intellectual joy, the cobwebs laid over the mind by opioids is acceptable to most individuals whose thinking patterns are already skewed by an acceptance of brain fog as ok.
The politicization of COVID is a direct result of a great many citizens (I believe 74 million is the number) whose education has trained them to accept their own brain fog as normal and that therefore persons who do not seem to have brain fog can be trusted.
Fortunately, old dogs can learn new tricks. It is entirely possible for persons who were taught that brain fog or cobwebs in the mind are normal to unlearn that concept and to learn to enjoy art. States that emphasize learning how to think in their public educational system will discover that older students will become more and more common. Especially those who took or are taking advantage of the COVID lockdowns to teach themselves Thinking in the process of evaluating their own future.
Most, but not all Medium readers and writers have nothing to fear from opioids because they do know what intellectual joy is. I encourage all of you to push, gently or not, those friends and relatives who need pushing.
