The War On Bullshit

Kavan recently did a great piece on why the world thinks we’re all idiots in the good ole’ US of A. One primary reason that he left out is that we are idiots. Our kids are stupid, and stupid kids grow up into stupid adults.

A study done by the U.S. Department of Education in 2002 showed a full 21 percent of teens were functionally illiterate. How is this possible in what a lot of patriots call the greatest nation on Earth? How does one of the superpowers of the world - seen as so integral to modern society - have a full 21 percent of teenagers who cannot perform beyond the most basic literary tasks?

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think American kids are somehow inherently dumber than kids in the rest of the world, but there are some very real problems in the way we educate our children, and it’s certainly not helping them grow up into productive, creative adults.

Here’s a few reasons why our kids are idiots:

5. Teachers are often woefully underprepared by education departments.

Departments of education should just be eradicated, period. They serve little useful purpose and distract future teachers from what really matters in teaching: that you know what the hell you’re talking about. Education departments are famous for teaching a bounty of pedagogical tools and teaching tricks to young educators… which is nothing but a distraction from content knowledge in their chosen field. If someone wants to teach science in high school, they should spend most of their time learning the actual field, rather than compromising their knowledge of science for their knowledge of teaching methods. Rather than having a field of education, and degrees in education, how about people get real degrees in the field they wish to teach and have classes on how to teach in that field? In other words, let the damn science department teach people how to teach science.

4. Schools waste too damn much time. Why do our children spend 7 hours a day in school - not counting whatever hours they spend on extracurricular activities that should be handled by sports clubs and youth groups? What the hell are they learning there - other than how to be unquestioning, loyal citizens, of course? Why the recess, the pep rallies, the lunch? I don’t know if you remember going to grade school, but I know I stopped listening after lunch, and I was a pretty good student. Seven hours a day is just too damn much for a child to keep their attention focused - nor should they have to. Kids learn more about the world from playing outside then from most teachers, anyway.

3. Teachers are terrified.

Imagine you’re the 24-year-old, 120-pound female teacher fresh out of college who has to face the rowdy pack of 250-pound guys in the classroom. Fear is something teachers have always had to face before, but now teachers aren’t just afraid of not doing a good job, or afraid of their students before they gain some authority and confidence. Now they’re afraid of parents. Now they’re afraid of what they can and can’t talk about. They’re afraid of the ACLU, and preachers, and even the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Sometimes, I can get totally behind lawsuits filed against school districts because they are often justified, but sometimes people need to make the choice of which battles they should fight. It’s stupid if a school tells your kid he can’t have blue hair, sure. But seriously, get the fuck over it. Stop sueing school districts unless they actually violate someone’s liberties. Forcing a student to pray or treating minority students unfairly would be a good example. 

2. Religion.

It makes people stupid. Sorry, but early indoctrination into an organized religion often makes people unable to examine anything that goes against their religion with an open mind. Trouble is, the modern world goes against the concept of most religions. Important scientific theories, carbon dating, even postmodern views of how language works, all of these go against religion. The problem is that religions teach people not to question what they are taught by their religious leaders. Telling someone not to question anything they are taught is always a bad thing.

1. Critical thought is dead among American youth.

This ties in directly with reason #2, but there are a few other entities killing critical thought in American kids. The schools themselves are the primary reason our children cannot think critically about what they read and hear. What response do far too many teachers give when questioned? “Because I said so,” the same mentality parents often espouse to the detriment of their children. Unfortunately, this one is a vicious cycle. Critical thought is killed in future teachers when they go through the school system (and I include much of higher education in this) and thus, when they become teachers, they never learn to pass on some semblance of critical thought to their students.

The Answer

So how do we solve these problems? Easy. We stop the school day at noon, take all funding from education departments and make teachers actually learn the material they teach, stop sueing school districts, and become atheists. Don’t question it. Just do as I say, and I’ll give you a gold star.

Tuning into talk radio can sometimes be a mind-numbing task that significantly lowers one’s IQ, but I occasionally throw myself in front of the train and risk my intellect to see what folks out there are talking about. Unfortunately, when I turned my radio on this morning, people were talking about why black Americans should just “get over it.” The caller apparently believed that since slavery ended, everything is now hunky-dory and the black community has no reason to talk about it anymore. I realize it can be hard for gun-totin’, deer-huntin’ rednecks with Confederate flags flying in their pickup trucks to understand, so I put together a little list of why African-Americans don’t just get over it:

1. Holocaust survivors get Israel, while freed slaves get sharecropping.

I’m not going to bother with the stale, old argument about which was worse, the Holocaust or American slavery. I don’t think it’s fair to compare the two – one was genocide, while the other was 400 years of stripping human beings of their rights and using them as farm animals. However, the response to the two would sure as hell piss me off as a black man.

Let’s get this straight. The Jews get a national homeland, stolen from the Arab people who had lived there for centuries, while the freed slaves got sharecropping and debt slavery on the same plantations where they had toiled as slaves. I realize the two happened in two totally different times with two totally different social consciousnesses, but I can damn sure see why this might tick off your average African-American.

2. Decent education is less available to people in majority black communities.

In the South, slaves were rarely allowed to read – this is a common tactic for keeping slaves. Keep them ignorant and afraid, and they will follow commands. Unfortunately, this did not die with slavery. White, privileged Americans tried for the next 100 years to keep black people ignorant.

First, we segregated our schools to keep those terrible, awful black kids from mingling with our ‘wiser’ race. This was a fine method for ensuring that education for both ethnicities was anything but fair and equal. Integration presented challenges for those who wanted to keep holding black people back, but clever redistricting often sent all the kids from majority black neighborhoods to a vastly different school setting then their white counterparts. This still happens today, everywhere from inner-city New York City to the rural south.

Furthermore, there is quite a bit of evidence that kids learn better from teachers of their own race, as they have more upon which to relate to their teachers. That’s a real tough goal when the vast majority of teachers are white. This is part of a vicious cycle, unfortunately. White people on average receive a better education, and thus they are more apt to become teachers, only exacerbating the situation.

3. White people in the workforce still earn more, on average, than their black coworkers.

According to information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, white workers earn more cash for their work than African-Americans. This could be the result of less-qualified minority workers, but I’d say see reason number 2 for information on why this may be the case.

4. Black men still make up the largest number of American prison inmates.

A 2003 Bureau of Justice census reported roughly 46% of prison inmates are black men. I’ve often heard the argument that “maybe they commit more crime.” Sure, that’s probably true. Once again, see item 2. A lack of education often leads to a life of crime.

5. And finally… RACISM STILL EXISTS.

The Jasper, Texas incident happened in only 1998, for a recent high-profile hate crime. For a more personal account, there are towns in my home-state of Louisiana where black men are warned to not be pulled over if they drive through because they will be harassed, searched, and given excessive fines by the local law enforcement. A particularly telling case of present-day racism, also from my home-state, is the Jena 6 incident, where six African-American teens were given excessive charges, as adults, for a fight with a white classmate.

Conclusion

I would not argue that racism still exists in the way it did even twenty years ago, even here in the south. Nor would I argue that African-Americans should be revolting, or overthrowing the bonds of white oppression. But to suggest black people should just “get over it” is ludicrous. Nor should Jews “get over” the Holocaust. Does this mean they should be constantly angry at the so-called “white race” over these injustices? Of course not. But getting over it implies forgetting what has happened and no longer discussing these injustices, and it is never a good thing to forget the evils of the past. We can remember the injustices of the past without carrying a burden of hate and bitterness, and we can prevent future injustice by discussing the errors of human history. The darkest times in human history should be remembered better than the golden days. Otherwise, we’re bound to repeat the same old mistakes, again and again.

I think this explains it all:

Judge Rules That Police Can Bar High I.Q. Scores

It’s not that they are allowed to exclude intelligent people, it’s that they want to exclude intelligent people so badly that they’ll spend a shit-ton of taxpayer money taking it to federal court.

Is this supposed to mean that there’s not room for one genius anywhere in the police force? Because that would sure as hell explain:

1) why white-collar and computer crime (like online extortion, not Metallica fans) is rarely prosecuted

2) why so many crimes go unsolved

3) why organized crime has flourished

4) people getting Tased for crimes like laughing and not speaking English

5) the police force’s serially-demonstrated inability to eliminate internal corruption

6) officers who do not understand people’s rights

7) sexual harassment of prostitutes and prisoners

Related Posts:
Top 5 Reasons Not to Trust the Police
5 MORE Reasons Not To Trust the Police