How Low Will American Education Go?

Helloooo…(peering through the school door)Anyone home? (knock, knock, knock)…Yeah! Hey! (pounding on the door)…You, over there with the books, talking on the cell phone! And you, behind the desk micro-managing feel-good education! And you, the dude behind the big desk, managing his school like an ice cream parlor with curriculums available in a zillion flavors except for the one with real ingredients! And you, in the parking lot, who says your kid can’t get up before 9 a.m.? Yeah, all you people. Listen up! Twenty-five other nations scored higher than the U.S. on a science test given to 13-year-olds. That’s right. We’re not first anymore. We’re not even second or third. We’re 26th—do you hear me--26th!!!! Today my daily newspaper told me that while immigrant kids struggle in school because they don’t know English, they most likely have better math skills. One kid said that what he was learning in sixth-grade math here, he had learned in third grade back in his home country. Hey America, are you following me here? Do you get yet? Are your petty fights over educational content starting to look sordid yet? Having lived abroad, I know for a fact, that foreign schools demand much more of their kids, and that those schools have no fear of using merit, and merit alone, as the measure for success, i.e., lots of standardized tests. My kid was even in a school where they still used corporal punishment, i.e. spanking. Here are some other examples from that school: Kids had homework in kindergarten. Kids learned to write in cursive at age 6. They also visited art museums in first grade. Every kid took a foreign language at age 12. No academic subjects were ever taught in any language other than the language of the country—so guess what, my kids learned the language. There were tons, and I mean tons, of memorization. School was held 6 days/week, and families that took days off, say, to go skiing, were looked down on. Am I making myself clear here? Are you beginning to see that American education might just have another Sputnik crisis on its hands—getting so complacent about its math and science education, that one day America will wake up and see another country--or as is currently the case, many countries—zooming ahead of us? Other countries’ kids are actually working tirelessly to get an education, knowing full well that education is their ticket to success, yet America continues to dumb down every course and test, demanding the barest of performances from its children. If the high school exit exam is really at a 10th-grade level, then expect 10th graders to pass it, not 12th graders! Other nations, using much less money, exceed us. Yep, while American adults are content to narcissistically rehash the social debates of the 1960’s through the educational system, Rome is burning. How unsurprising that a generation that lacked personal discipline and commitment cannot bring itself to demand performance from its kids, but instead prides itself on teaching protest skills, socialism, and the false notion that self-esteem is given and not earned. When the world is quite literally passing America by, fake self-esteem will be no salve, and the future will belong to others who were better prepared.

Mammas, let your babies grow up to be…

…anything…a cowboy, a soldier…something! Like the 1975 the country western hit, “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” being a cowboy wouldn’t be right for the modern woman’s boy either, but the rationalizations would be different:

1) Cowboys carry firearms (mostly in the movies), thus cowboys are bad (although liberal politicians and movie stars can have bodyguards who carry guns).

2) Cowboys mercilessly herd/brand animals, thus cowboys promote animal cruelty (just let them be free, free, free, like me, me, me—oh, all those old tattoos from when I was a flower child? They’re art, not branding).

3) Cowboys eat meat. The food chain/environmental/vegetarian complaint (‘cause cows are eating all the plants that people could be eating, plus they poop all over the place, sort of like liberals, who take from everyone else to pay for socialist fantasies and then leave their crap for others to clean up).

4) Cowboys drive pickup trucks. Again the environmental complaints (never mind that former 60’s hippies drove environmentally insensitive vans or old, polluting clunkers for years, and some still do!).

5) And worst of all, cowboys are usually conservatives! (Mom faints dead away when son says he’s a conservative rather than gender-confused.)

So this brings us to today’s point: Mothers, please let your children grow up! Let them be soldiers if that’s what they want. It’s not your life. It’s theirs. During past military call-ups, young men actually lied about their ages to get into service, so badly did they want to serve, but these days, all hell breaks loose if a woman’s offspring merely receives information about the military. “But certainly at 18, his brain is not fully formed,” she wails. What! Could a mother be any more condescending than to argue on that point? What was all that women’s lib stuff about anyway, if not choosing one’s own life path? But really, what is she afraid of? That the kid will decide something contrary to her narrow, indoctrinated thought patterns? That the military might actually make the kid grow up and not be dependent on her for his every waking thought? Let them grow up! Let them claim their adulthood, and let them do it long before you’re gone. When you do, you’ll finally grow up, too.

Circus of the Stars

I sit slumped in my oversized chair, tongue out to one side, eyes rolling, mindlessly repeating, “bla, bla, bla, bla,” while listening to the actor, Donald Sutherland, as he slanders our country. How many times must we listen to pampered actors reviling the United States while on foreign soil? Do they only feel safe saying nasty things when they are far away from those who might decide to throw rotten eggs upon hearing them? Are they cowards as well as flaming socialists and closet communists? As Donald wept on camera over the supposed evils of the current administration, one couldn’t help but wonder if he was acting, for he does that very well? If so, for whom? Undoubtedly for a little self-serving publicity just in case they’d forgotten whom he was. Europeans are on a heavy hate-America jag these day, and surely Donald suspected that his name and face would be on every newscast on the Continent if he only lambasted the U.S., or better yet, cried. So were they real tears, Donnie? (By the way, how’s the health care in Canada where everything is apparently soooo much better than here?)
Beyond poor Donald, there is yet another new film by yet another concerned Hollywood actor with the following topic: maniacal right-winger pitted against the journalist as savior. Never mind that no one under 50 knows who Edward R. Murrow was, that journalists of today are not of the caliber of his generation, that conservative journalists seem to be hired only to show token political diversity, that conservatives in Hollywood have been in the political closet for decades longer than anyone suffered under Joseph McCarthy, or that conservative themes are all but non-existent in films except as grotesque caricatures—however, this film will win Oscars, ‘cause Hollywood loves its causes more than anything else. Frankly, I won’t be watching the Oscars, because really, how much self-aggrandizing fluff can one take from Hollywood? Not much.
As I have always thought, and as was confirmed by the economist, Dr. Thomas Sowell, professors are people who know one thing very well. Such is the case for innumerable actors as well. Curiously enough, it was not so long ago that acting was considered a disreputable profession. Heaven forbid that your son should become an actor, or worse, that your daughter ran off with one. But thanks to mass media, actors have become larger than life. How much would an actor’s political opinion be worth if he still traveled in an itinerant troupe, and earned his money every night from gathered crowds who threw coins on the stage? He might then see and finally feel the effects of his blathering on the ordinary citizen. So actors, go and weep for the leftist intelligentsia of Europe, all the while trampling on the masses in America who pay your bills, build your palaces, and guard your freedoms, and then consider a certain Marie Antoinette, who said to her public, “Let them eat cake.” The starving French masses did not appreciate her comments either.

Columbus Day...or is it?

I’d like to say Happy Columbus Day, but the chronically disgruntled really don’t want me to try. I believe that Columbus Day unofficially became Indigenous People’s Day in Berkeley, California, heartland of neo-segregation (definition: the act of segregating people, school and civic groups, as well as academic tests or anything else they can think of into ethnic or cultural groups, except white groups, by power-seeking people who can’t bear to be with anyone different from themselves for fear of losing their ‘diversity’ or their illusion of self-power). Just a little way down the road at Stanford University, one of many modern-day bastions of socialist thinking and conservative censorship, there is a sign that reads, “Celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, not genocide.” Thinking about university speech codes, I am wondering if that is hate speech? Doesn’t that statement say several hateful things, such as, ‘anyone not indigenous need not apply—we’re celebrating without you,’ or ‘anyone who dares celebrate Columbus Day supports genocide’ (rather a broad, maybe racist stance)? Perhaps it even means, ‘All Europeans stay home or should be in jail or aren’t people,’ or maybe…it targets only people from Spain, who gave the New World the lovely conquistadors. Yeah, maybe it’s anti-Spaniard! But wait, that would mean a Hispanic community divided against itself, which is not allowed in the diversity game, so scratch that thought. I can already hear the other side screaming, “it’s the Indians, you dummy, not the Hispanics!” Well, of course, anyone with a scintilla of education knows what happened to the Indians, and anyone with a scintilla of a soul doesn’t want it to happen again. They continue screaming, “You don’t get it, you idiot. We suffered….” Mind you, these are the supposedly disadvantaged students of Stanford, for whom the world will be their oyster, who are getting their dander up (which makes me wonder again about the racist content of the banner, since they are now of the privileged ones whom they so despise). Yet the yelling continues, “We must never forget, never forget….” This makes me think that they were brought up on the following slogan, ‘Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” but apparently the wise elders who taught them that slogan forgot to mention an equally if not more important phrase: those who live only in the past miss the present and never get to the future. They condemn themselves and their progeny to museum status by never developing the skills to choose the best from the present and the world’s past to integrate into a new, more prosperous future. Small amounts of the past will go into the future, but the future cannot be the past. Neither will the future go forward by posting hate-filled, exclusionary banners on the walls of universities. So I say, if we need to re-name Columbus Day, then let’s call it Ethnic Heritage Day or some such inclusive name. Say no to neo-segregation and instead give everyone something to celebrate and share with others. That way, out of any sorrow from the past is built positive contributions to the future of humanity. Happy Columbus Day!