Apparently my hosting provider hijacked the blog and sent all my traffic to some scam/spam site. Please be patient while I recover the site over the next few days.

In other news, stay the hell away from NoAdsFree.com. It’s a scam.

-KW

My apologies for the recent downtime of the War on Bullshit blog. The traffic from my last post (12 Bonehead Misconceptions of Computer Science Professors) blew my bandwidth allocation and I didn’t notice until yesterday (thanks Michelle!). Just my luck that one of my posts would get popular just when I’m ignoring my blog to focus on job hunting.

Many thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll be back in the New Year with brand new stuff.

For the more technically inclined, the problem occurs when using the adsense deluxe plugin to include google ads within posts. The javascript that displays the ads is included in the RSS feed when you select “For each article in a feed, show full text” under Settings –> Reading. You can see the problem by entering the address of your feed at http://feedvalidator.org. The problem can be solved by selecting “show summary” instead of “show full text” under Settings –> Reading. Removing the ads might also solve the problem, but I suspect other WordPress plugins, like the sharing bar you see under each of my posts, may have similar effects on the feed.

If you have any feedback on the new look, please leave a comment. We’d love to hear it.

Businesses exist to make a profit; CEOs of corporations are supposed to keep the interests of their shareholders in mind over just about anything else. Of course they will do what benefits those people who own the majority of a corporation. The problem is that we have set up and accepted, for far too long, a system, a relationship between government and business, that is fundamentally flawed – we have created the corporation as a whipping boy of the executives who run it, allowing them to act for profit regardless of law or morality.

The nobility of Europe often had a privilege for their children that was not at all extended to the common man: the whipping boy. The children of royalty could not be touched, upon penalty of death, and so their parents – terribly concerned with proper child rearing – created the whipping boy as a way to punish their children’s misbehavior without actually punishing their child. Instead, their kid would grow up with a good buddy – some commoner – who would take the beating for the noble child any time they acted improperly.

Now, this seems like a bizarre idea to those of us in America, who live without divine rights and nobility and class divisions (don’t we?). Unfortunately, it’s a concept that is still in practice, except it’s not the children of monarchs who benefit from it; instead, it is the board of executives of national corporations. The corporation actually exists, legally, as an individual, a person – they have the same property rights as you and me, they can sue or be sued, and, more importantly, they can be charged with crimes.

Unfortunately, charging an imaginary scapegoat with a crime doesn’t do too terribly much for the executives who are actually making the poor decisions and breaking the law. It is not the individuals making these decisions who face the consequences of their actions, but the corporate whipping boy – the imaginary ‘person’ the corporation represents. Well, you can’t send an imaginary person to jail. The most you can do is chastise them, and maybe issue a fine.

Thus, we have a corporate system where there are actually business executives sitting around a table with a cup of coffee, discussing whether it is more profitable to break the law and pay a fine, or to follow the rules and regulations passed by our government. Is there any wonder we have places like Cancer Alley in Louisiana, where oil refineries and chemical companies have polluted the water and air to the point that the cancer rate is astronomically high? If I stand to lose $4 million by implementing the proper safety procedures to keep those pollutants out of the water, and only $40,000 if I break the law, dump my chemicals in the river, and get busted by the EPA, of course I’m going to break the law!

Of course, it’s no wonder businesses have adopted an idea from the nobility we decided to throw the hell out of this country during the American Revolution, when you really consider where some of these wealthy corporations originated. For one thing, some of them are the same people who ruled Europe as monarchs. Next week, we’ll take a closer look at some of corporate America’s richest, and we’ll see how much we really have done to divorce ourselves from the same people who have been running the show since they called themselves barons.

4. Not everyone is entitled to a college degree.

Part of the current incarnation of the economic stimulus plan passing through Congress includes tax credits for students attending a four-year university. This sounds like a great idea, right? Put more people through college, and we’ll have better-educated adults entering the work force.

The problem is, we don’t need more college-educated adults. We need more people with functional educations who can do actual, physical work – not more liberal arts majors who function in some service-based field. Take a look around your house. How many things weren’t made in China? How many of those things not produced by the Chinese were made in Mexico, or Korea? We don’t make a damn thing anymore. What’s worse, you can’t even find qualified carpenters or plumbers or mechanics in this country, because we just don’t produce citizens capable of these necessary jobs.

One of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, had some ideas on education that unfortunately Americans never bought into. Jefferson believed “every citizen needs an education proportional to the condition and the pursuits of his life,” and this couldn’t be farther from the typical American practice. Jefferson’s education model was based on the idea that any student was entitled to a free education… so long as that student continued to progress and excel. If you’re only book-smart enough to be a plumber, that’s okay, you’re just done with school in the 10th grade and spend a year or two apprenticing with a plumber. If you’re sharp enough to be some kind of paper-pushing clerical worker, maybe you get to go through the 12th grade, and on, and on, and on.

Unfortunately, we’ve become a nation too wussy to tell a kid he’s not achieving at one thing, maybe there’s another path; so instead we tell the child a lie, and he ends up wasting years of valuable time and daddy’s valuable money going to college and skating by on a D-average.

5. There are too many levels of bureacracy.

Bureacracies are some of the worst purveyors of bullshit. Anyone who has ever had to deal with a state university registrar’s office, has worked for a state office, or has had to get assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency knows this well. Education is a prime example.

First, you have the school administrators; then you have your local school board – eight or nine of (if the district where I live is any indication) the least educated individuals in town. Then you have whatever state board of education has authority. Then there’s the feds. This isn’t counting whatever idiotic committees exist on all those levels to ‘advise’ these authorities.

With that in mind, it’s no wonder there’s so much bullshit floating around in our educational models. Pretty much any time you see some state board sending schools lesson plans that get passed down to the 5th grade teacher, you’re witnessing bullshit in action. Anyone who has ever taught a class knows that every student is an individual, every class is different, and every lesson plan and pedagogy had better reflect that. You adapt your teaching to each class’s needs. Anything passed down from some board that has never even seen these students will not be effective for them.

6. We completely fail at teaching critical thought.

This is probably the biggest problem facing education. We no longer teach students to think critically, not just in their scholastic pursuits, but in everyday life. I asked a few college student friends how much training they had in critical thinking, and their reply really brought it home; almost every one of them said, “You mean like in English class?”

For whatever reason, critical thinking is something that we’ve associated with text. Sure, students learn how to analyze a poem, or read a book critically and write a response to it. But we don’t teach them how to apply that to daily life. English teachers rarely use items from world events, political rhetoric, or daily life to fuel students’ projects. Why not?

I’ve got an English degree. Certainly I value literature and its contributions to society. Yet I also realize that in the grand scheme of things, being able to read and understand Yeats is probably less important than being able to understand the logical flaws in something the president proposes. This is where we fail in critical thinking training, and it happens, as I’ve written before on this blog, because our school systems to not foster dialogue and dissent.

Our classrooms are designed like little dictatorships, with a teacher who is to remain unquestioned and obeyed. Controversy is stifled. School uniforms are a fine example. While there are many good reasons for implementing uniforms in public schools, one of the bad reasons people use to back up this action is the idea that we should stifle any potential conflict between students. Perhaps this is why they grow up to be passive adults, unable to communicate their disagreements or fight for their beliefs. Adults do tend to reflect the way in which they are raised, and our kids spend most of their day in school every week.

7. Problems start at home.

This issue is, along with critical thinking training, the biggest problem facing education. Unfortunately, it’s also the hardest problem to deal with. Most of the problems in education start at home. When teachers are playing catch-up with students whose parents did not read to them, give them any sense of discipline, or foster any love of learning, they are wasting precious time.

One issue here is that parents are simply too busy to raise their kids. With both parents working all day, how can we expect one caregiver to have the time to read to their kids at night? A family should be able to survive off one income. With fat-cat executives and families like the Kennedys debating whether they’ll take the Cesna or the Mazaratti to work, there’s no good reason why we can’t pay people who work full-time jobs enough to feed their families.

The other, of course, is one of productivity’s worst enemies: television, and all the other forms of entertainment we feed our nation’s children. We’ve all heard it before. The television is not a baby-sitter, nor is the Wii, but they are, unfortunately, used that way far too often. It doesn’t matter how many episodes of Reading Rainbow your kid watches, it’s not the same damn thing as reading a book with your parents.

Unfortunately, what do we do to solve this? Cross our fingers and hope the next generation of parents is more responsible, I suppose.

Conclusion

There are good teachers out there, and good schools. There are students achieving everywhere in America. But what about the rest of them? Those who are not blessed with some brilliant administrator with innovative ideas for running a school are often left behind to deal with old ideas, the pains of bureacracy, and students who just don’t seem to give a shit.

These are not all the problems in education by any stretch, though. These were those that came to mind with very little thought or research. What are some problems you see in education, and what are the solutions? And don’t just tell us on the War on Bullshit. If you’ve ever seen Idiocracy, you may have glimpsed the future of the United States of America, so for God’s sake, tell your local school board.

Related posts: Three Reasons Why Your Kids Might Be Stupid; The American Way: Three Absolutely Backasswards Practices

Here’s a few American practices and institutions that just don’t seem to make much damn sense when you really examine them:

1. Innocent Until Proven Guilty… on the Radio?

This is one of my personal favorites. We’ve all been told a thousand times that the greatest part of the American judicial system is that the accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty – and, hey, I like this. It makes sense for a legal system to assume someone is innocent unless there is substantial evidence to the contrary.

What doesn’t make sense is that it’s alright to plaster the faces and names of individuals charged with a crime all over television, the newspaper, and any other media you prefer. What the hell is that? I’m presumed innocent, but CNN can tell the world that some jerk sheriff thinks I might be a child molester? Thanks, guys, that’s gonna endear me to the neighbors!

If a teacher is charged with a sex crime, do you think it will be easy for that educator to find a job teaching kids again, even if found innocent? Or a man charged with a murder that is later determined to be a suicide – will everyone shrug it off, or do you suspect there might be just a tiny shadow of doubt in the back of everyone’s mind?

Innocent until proven guilty is great, but then wait until someone is found guilty to tell everyone about their awful crimes. To do otherwise is, well, kind of a dick move.

2. We beat our kids, but ground our criminals.

Parenting is tough, and there are many schools of thought on how best to discipline a child, but one that has never made much sense to me is spanking. Now, I’m not talking about the one-two swat on a three-year-old’s behind right before they stick a fork in the socket; I’m talking about the middle-of-Wal-Mart-I’ll-give-you-something-to-cry-about-boy spankings that are part and parcel of daily life in the south.

Before I lose “y’all” spankers (that’s how they say it in the trailer park, right?), I’m not one of these hippies who thinks a kid can’t learn anything from a beating. Kids aren’t stupid, and they’re quick to realize that A+B=PAIN. There are just other ways of discipline that are just as effective – but more importantly to the topic at hand, it just doesn’t match up with what kids experience when they grow up.

Wouldn’t you think a more effective way of disciplining criminals would reflect, in some fashion, the discipline us adults remember from childhood? Those readers who were spanked will probably still shiver a little if they see Dad’s belt wrapped around a fist. Yet we don’t punish criminals with a belt. We punish them by grounding the shit out of them – for years. What’s wrong with this picture?

So we ground this guy…

…but beat this girl? WTF?

If I’m an immature kid, and mom catches me smoking marijuana, she uses physical violence to punish me; if I get caught doing the same thing as a damn adult, I just get grounded? What’s worse, if someone suggested beatings as a punishment for crime, there’d be inevitable comparisons to awful totalitarian regimes like China, where caning criminals is still a fun past-time (I guess it’s to occupy the folks whose kids have already grown up).

I don’t know what the solution is here. Should we cane our criminals, or ground our kids? Hm…

3. We use totalitarian education to teach future citizens of a democratic society.

Maybe this is the source of all the bullshit we post on here: the sad state of American education. Hey, it’s no secret that our schools suck and our kids don’t want to learn, right? But to be fair, would you want to learn if the fucking SS were teaching your class? Me either – that’s why I was homeschooled.

We’ve got a president who talks about spreading democracy to the world (and thankfully, we’ll have a different president hopefully talking about different goals by the time I update again), and while I realize that our American ‘democracy’ is a far cry from true democracy, it is at least founded in democratic principles. So why do we adopt such a fascist model for our schools?

Democracy and free society in general cannot function without an educated, critical citizenry who engage in free and open dialogue. Democracy without debate isn’t democracy at all – just look at the Bush White House, where dissent from Dubya’s plans is frequently silenced.

Yet we have an educational system that seems to be violently in opposition to dialogue. Have you ever tried correcting a teacher in an elementary school, or questioning information in your text books? Children are taught early on to accept whatever authority figures tell them is The Truth, and to always be mindful of anyone older, richer, and wiser than them.

Schools pass regulations to stop any conflict between students – because it’s too hard for unqualified educators to handle the conflict and let it be resolved in a civil fashion. Classes are set up with multiple choice exams where students memorize and repeat, instead of contextualizing and discovering information. Even the placement of the teacher in the classroom, standing before the whole class like Stalin before the proletariat, as a form of visual rhetoric, makes them seem like some distant and quasi-divine entity sent to the chalkboard to impart wisdom.

And now there’s the move in school districts across the country to go toward more uniforms and stronger dress codes.

Pictured: American schoolchildren, eagerly modeling their new Hitlerjugend uniforms.

Some people see children headed to school in their perfect uniforms and smile; I shiver. I shiver because those kids aren’t going to school to learn. They’re going to school to be indoctrinated. They’re going to school so our nation’s educators – blissfully unaware of how they are being used to subvert democracy – can teach them everything they need to know to ensure that a viable democracy will never exist in this country to take power away from those who already hold it. Next week, we’ll expand on this fatal flaw in education, and take a look at how an educator can be democratic rather than authoritarian.

Well, step aside, American media. Once again, you’ve been beaten to the punch by the Associated Press, who have figured out exactly what Bush’s legacy will be: Bushism. The AP this week published a list of their favorite Bushisms, and, while stumbling through Bush’s broken sentence structure and the words he seemingly pulls out of the black void of his ass, I couldn’t help but notice the accuracy of what he had to say.

Is it any wonder that Bush has created his own -ism? Some of these are such dead-on interpretations of reality, I forget the guy is president, not philosopher-general.

This week, there’s no bullshit. This is a tribute to a straight-talker, whose semi-retarded speeches reflect the wisdom of a real American hero. Here’s a few gems from the big list:

3. “Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?”

Speaking at a campaign event during the 2000 election, Bush reflected on the current state of education. The irony of Bush’s poor understanding of verb conjugation really brings the point home for me.

With such a hard-hitting question on education during the campaign, you’d expect Bush to really crack down on education, right? Enter the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which, theoretically at least, rewards schools for high scores on standardized tests while holding accountable those schools which receive low scores.

Wow! Holding teachers accountable! You’re ballsy, Dubya, I gotta hand it to you. You’d think, with such a radical idea on education, Bush would probably make something like education his #1 priority during his term.

…but then you realize that he cut $4 billion from the Department of Education’s budget in 2006, while still funding an endless conflict in the Middle East with a bunch of people who didn’t even attack us. That might explain why they ‘is’ not learning after all…

2. There’s no doubt in my mind . . . that we will fail.

A passionate President Bush discussed getting the country back to work after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, offering this dreary look at the future. The stark, defeatist attitude is almost prophetic, looking back at it from the year 2009.

Now, slow down, you’re probably thinking. We’re doing fine in Iraq. Mission fuckin’ accomplished, remember? And I do. But up to 1 000 000 dead Iraqis and over 4000 dead U.S. soldiers beg to disagree. And what many people (Bush included) don’t remember is a place called Afghanistan – a mystical place full of hashish, opium, and strange creatures called the Taliban.

Now, with the man who actually attacked us either running free, or dead because his dialysis machine could not plug into a rock, Bush could not have been more accurate. We will fail, indeed.

1. There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.

Everyone’s favorite Bushism! Michael Moore made this one famous with his documentary Fahrenheit 911, and of all the prophecies listed by the Associated Press, this was the one I least expected to be true when 2009 rolled around. But lo and behold, Bush does it again.

Now, with Barack Obama shacking up in D.C., anxiously waiting for the day when functional literacy can again return to the White House, I realize this statement is probably truer than any words Bush has ever spoken. You can’t get fooled again is right, Mr. President. Just ask John McCain.

A few posts ago, I identified what may be the root cause of our society’s ubiquitous problems. Reader jonathan quite rightly commented: “Flawless description of a problem…but no solution?” Now, with the help of several friends and colleagues, I am putting together a proposal for the solution, which we will be submitting to Project 10 to the 100. Wish me luck, and submit your own proposals. May the most beneficial win.

In the meantime, I’d just like to point out that how far ahead in the polls Senator Obama is, is not the most important story. If Obama thinks that all he has to do to become president is win the election, he’d better think again. The upcoming US election is rigged. Here’s the evidence that’s come up lately:

Diebold has admitted it’s e-voting machines are faulty.

Furthermore, GOP security expert Stephen Spoonamore has explained in blood-curling detail how his own party is going to steal the election using the problems in these machines.

A new Brennan Center report has found that the way states remove names from voter lists has become “vulnerable to manipulation.” (summary)

The Department of Justice is putting on the pressure for voter purging.

In Michigan and who knows where else, the GOP is trying to stop victims of foreclosures from voting – because the poor are obviously not real citizens. Right.

It appears Obama’s team is seeking an injunction to stop this undemocratic voter purging.

And that’s just the things they’ve been caught doing…

1. You’re less likely to be robbed, raped, beaten or shot.

Generally speaking, other developed nations have lower crime rates than we do, according to UN crime rate statistics. The United Kingdom, Denmark, and Finland are exceptions (as well as a host of crappy undeveloped nations) – these countries do have higher crime rates than the United States. Don’t worry, though, there’s still plenty of places that offer a safe alternative – most of the EU, for instance, or Canada, our friendly neighbors to the north. Hell, you could even move to Yemen or Russia if you’re just looking for a lower crime rate.

2. You won’t feel the gas crunch nearly as much.

I’ve already discussed in previous posts how other countries are not affected nearly as much as we are by the rising cost of gasoline. Sure, they pay even higher prices than we do at the pump; that’s why the first thing you do when you move is sell the damn car! Though there are big parts of Canada where this doesn’t hold true, chances are if you head across the big lake to Europe, you’ll find you don’t even need a car. In fact, in many cases, it’s a bigger inconvenience than it is a boon. It’s easier to take the incredibly efficient public transit, or even hop on a bicycle for the scenic route. Most countries in Europe are scooter-friendly, too, so you can look dorky but save a ton of money on gas by putting around on a Vespa. Imagine all the cash you could save right now if you could just stop taking your car to work – personally, I’d pocket an extra $160 a month, and I live within five miles of my job. Unfortunately, it’s only a dream for many living outside the major metropolises in the United States.

3. You won’t face the burden of listening to people talk about their faith.

Alright, so this is more of a personal benefit for rational atheists like myself. Being an atheist in Europe is pretty nice. Very rarely will a European confront you about faith. You won’t have some Bible-beater blaring a megaphone in your ear while you’re having a beer at Oktoberfest in Munich. Ask the Naked Cowboy if you can say the same about Bourbon Street.

However, the benefits of a secular state don’t just affect nonbelievers. Our very own founding fathers knew the wisdom of keeping church and state separate, though in practice they did not do a perfect job of implementing it. It prevents discrimination against both believers and nonbelievers; it does not allow the rights of one group of believers to take precedence over another group. Unfortunately, faith has become a major factor in U.S. elections. It’s doubtful a presidential candidate who did not profess Christianity could win any time in the foreseeable future.

Ironically, many EU nations to which you might expatriate do not have the same clause about separation of church and state which we follow in the United States. They’ve just managed to collectively not give a shit about religion for long enough that the same religious apathy has leaked into their public policy making.

4. Castles kick ass.

Let’s face it: the scenery matters. This is the reason I’m thinking Europe > Canada, assuming this whole Russo-Georgian conflict dies down in the near future. Castles seriously rock, and it would behoove you to live near one so you can see how awesome they are.

Ronneburg Castle, Hessen, Germany. It has a catapult on the other side, just in case you question how much ass it kicks.

5. You’ll live longer.

As if castles and a lower crime rate aren’t awesome enough reasons to leave America, there’s the higher life expectancy the United Nations report in many other countries. Canada, the UK, the EU – all have higher life expectancies. Meanwhile, the United States falls at number 38 on the list – just below Cuba and just above the bustling nation of Portugal. Seriously, people, Cuba does better than us on keeping people alive?

We can argue about the benefits of socialized medicine all we want to, rehashing every argument Michael Moore or Ronald Reagan could drum up for or against it, but the fact remains that folks tend to live longer in all those evil socialist countries to which conservatives so fervently wish to ship all us libs. Even if every perceived evil of socialized medicine is true, they’re still doing their job better than we are, if you consider that job keeping folks’ tickers ticking for longer.

Conclusion

Originally, I’d intended to keep this list down to five good reasons. Unfortunately for any American nationalists reading this, I came up with a lot more than five reasons, so we’ll save the next five for next week. Let’s just hope the Bush croneys don’t ship me off to Gitmo before I get around to posting them.