Here’s a little something about the authors

About Kavan Wolfe

Kavan Wolfe is a Canadian author, IT consultant and martial artist. Bullshit is his pet peeve. Wherever possible he encourages people to see past the simplistic reasoning of the mainstream media to the core issues that lie hidden beneath.

About Riley Firth

Riley Firth is a musician, journalist, and talk-show host from Louisiana. He is a liberal stuck in the Bible Belt who fights every day to change the mindset and values of conservatives.

Many adults do not understand human rights – what they are, why they’re important, how their presence or absence affects the well-being of society. As far a I can tell, the reason adults don’t understand human rights is that they didn’t learn about it in school. What’s worse, even if human rights issues are covered in social studies or ethics classes, it’s damn near impossible to convey the importance of human rights when the humans in the class don’t have any. It’s like trying to explain the importance of the internet to people without electricity. Here are 6 ways schools systematically undermine rights education by ignoring human rights in their own practices.

6. No trials

If a students is accused of wrongdoing, he has no right to any sort of trial or tribunal, and sometimes no opportunity to defend himself. Consider, for example, the no-tolerance policies for fighting at some schools. Self defense? Bah. Never through a punch? Bah. You’re suspended anyway.

5. No elected government

Schools are dictatorships. The students get no say in who’s in charge or what the rules are.

4. No mobility rights

Just imagine if, as an adult, you got up to go take a piss and some dude told you to sit your ass back down and hold it. I’d be so shocked, I don’t know if I’d even have the presence of mind to tell him to go fuck himself.

3. No right to privacy

Here’s a favorite in movies: the teacher intercepts a note and reads it in front of class. Who the fuck does she think she is? Interfering with the post is a federal offense in many countries, but nabbing student’s notes is ok? Another: police need a warrant to search your house or car, but your kids locker in school? Nope. Here’s one that’s far more nefarious: a Canadian school board is considering mandatory drug testing for students.

2. No freedom of association

Something that always rotted me was when teachers give detention to whole classes because some of the students were loud or otherwise misbehaved. This is taught in education degree programs as a method of encouraging students to self-police. Bullshit. It teaches students that punishing people for the actions of others is ok and that freedom of association is nonsense.

1. No freedom of speech or expression

And here is the kicker. Uniforms. No Swearing. No criticizing your school on MySpace. No describing scientific research that conflicts with the views of the school. No criticizing human-rights-violating referendums. Et cetera.

So when the Bush Administration turned the US into a dictatorship, when people are held in prisons without evidence or trial just because they were near by where trouble happened, when people are told to watch what they say and not criticize their governments, when the government spies on its own citizens and taps their phones with no prior evidence, don’t expect outrage. Nobody’s surprised, because that’s what they grew up with.

Many of the posts on the War on Bullshit will be complex essay-length analytical pieces. As such, it takes a while to write them. Currently, the posting schedule is as follows:

Monday – Kavan Wolfe
Thursday – Riley Firth

Hopefully, more writers will come on staff soon.

Bullshit is a ubiquitous social phenomenon that’s causing serious problems for humanity. Bullshit is not untruth but a message conveyed regardless of truth. It’s not that the bullshitter is necessarily trying to deceive but that he or she does not care about the truth.

This blog will tackle some of the most societally damaging bogus arguments, anti-rationalism and intellectual diarrhea. Feel free to disagree with the arguments and fire back your own ideas. Insightful debate makes us all that much smarter and better prepared to fight The War On Bullshit.

Here are some posts that exemplify our mission and perspective:

Nine Reasons why Bad Grades Don’t Mean Squat

Why The World is So Screwed Up

Eight Mental Mistakes Preventing us from Building Good Electric Vehicles