Category: Education

Posted on

“…but most of it is dreck”

Eric Schmidt: Every 2 Days We Create As Much Information As We Did Up To 2003

Of course, to Schmidt, “information” is just bits ‘n’ bytes of data crunched by Google. But still, our society is awash in information. Most of it, IMO, is misinformation, disinformation and just plain uninteresting or completely trivial.

Take Twitter. Please. The “information” channel for twits*.

Far too many people “know” things that are simply untrue, fallacious, destructive and harmful. They’ve heard these things from “friends” (though few seem to know what a friend is) and acquaintances, seen these things on TV, heard them on the radio or, in rare cases, read them in newspapers or more likely on Farcebook, Twitter or blogs… written by other subliterate, ill-informed, misinformed, DISinformed, or simply self-lobotomized sheeple, dumbasses and liars.

How to sift the wheat from the chaff, separate the meat from the sizzle, refine the gold from the crap?

First, by attempting to become really literate. Seriously. No, not able to laboriously puzzle out those funny squiggles and put words to them or even to (mostly) understand some of those words’ primary meanings, as known to today’s subliterate culture. No, a literate person–or even one who’s made serious efforts to become literate–just automatically performs historical-critical analysis of what he reads and has multiple primary or other relatively reliable sources and resources to draw on in understanding a text.

Start with any of the “100 must-read books” lists that abound. Sure, they’ll all contain multiple instances of propaganda masquerading as history or historical novels like “The Grapes of Wrath” or many of the ancient historians like Thucydides or darned near all modern historians (though the classical histories are less arrogant and sneering than the modern propaganda papers), but they are at least well-written, for the most part, and as close to primary documents for their respective ages as can be found.

BTW, look askance at any “must read” list that doesn’t include The Bible and ALL of Shakespeare’s works. Lists that don’t include those two things are likely to be wanting throughout. In fact, I’d suggest reading the King James Version until you understand the language there at least as well as you understand contemporary English. It will serve you well both in reading many of the classics and in grasping the many, many cultural memes still expressed with biblical expressions.

Add to those lists some books and other resources that are often missing, such as The American State Papers (including The Organic Law of the United States), Ortega’s “Revolt of the Masses” and the modern “classic”, The Founders’ Constitution, and you’d have a good strong base of reasoning ability and knowledge from which to become more literate and able to at least evaluate the masses of infrmation flowing from various media nowadays.

Just sayin’.

*1twit noun \?twit\

Definition of TWIT…

2: a silly annoying person: fool

Continue reading ““…but most of it is dreck””

Posted on

I Just Hate This Kind of Stuff

Got an email from a politician. OK, I don’t mind that so much, since I solicit comments from politicians. What I disliked so intensely was the subject line:

Can I send you my book?

*feh* This is a politician who will not get my support. Of course someone on this pol’s staff actually wrote the email and that stupid subject line, but the pol’s responsible for the stupidity of “its” (my fav “gender neutral” pronoun *heh*) staff.

My answer, should the pol or its stupid staff care to read my reply email is, “Of course you CAN send me your book. You already have my contact information. You don’t NEED to ask if you CAN send it, dumbass. But since you ask such a stupid question, I’ll answer the question you ought to have asked instead. You MAY NOT send me your book, and if you do I’ll burn the thing rather than read something written by (or for) such a dumbass.”

Posted on

Sure, Despair Is a Sin

…but things like this make one wonder if it’s sometimes just being aware of reality. *sigh*

“In one century we went from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to offering remedial English in college.”
— Joseph Sobran

Remedial English, dumb-dumb “math” (counting past fingers and toes?) and “wymyn’s studies”. This is supposedly among the best and brightest we have to offer? Is it any wonder the primary influences in our society today are illiterate, innumerate, self-lobotomized Mass MEdia Podpeople, Hollyweird celebrities and tone-deaf “musicians”?

Posted on

NOT Part of the Solution

First, a couple of graphics, then a brief (not quite *heh*) disquisition.

And a fuzzy blow-up of part of that screencap:

Now, the problems:

1. The graphics are the result of a screencap from a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson to a group of “more than one hundred school superintendents from around the world” at the 2008 Apple Education Leadership Summit.

2. School administrators, in the US at least, are arguably the stupidest people in education (Check their scores on the GRE, for example: bottom of the barrel.)

3. The talk in the video linked is about creativity and education, and in particular the links to divergent thinking. Sloppy thinking and presentation creates a false dichotomy between divergent and linear thought (something Robinson also does in his book, “Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative,” IIRC).

4. No matter that Robinson does briefly allude to the fact that divergent thinking is but a part of creativity and “genius” (he’s remarkably chary in his description of either) notice the graphic accompanying his talk on the decline of divergent thinking from ages 3-5 to ages 13-15. That’s right. Although his words say he’s talking about divergent thinking, his graphics say he’s talking about “genius”–whatever that is. And remember: he’s talking to what is likely a group of the dumbest people in education…

5. Robinson also makes absolutely stupid and false comments like, “…all children are born artists…” *faugh!* Not even all children are born with enough creative spark to be artists, and NONE of them are born with the talent AND the disciplined training, practice and experience to BE artists. It’s comments like this that encourage idiots to admire their own inartful scribblings, ugly dabblings and awful screechings as though they were art, and also encourage the appreciation of such crap by dullards made even duller by people who buy into Robinson’s stupid meme.

Mozart wasn’t BORN a creative genius. He was born with the POTENTIAL to BECOME a creative genius, and by means of his father’s (often harsh, excessively so, perhaps, if my reading of Mozart’s upbringing and the record itself is accurate*) tutelage, developed that potential to amazing heights.

I could go on and on (and on), but the point is simple: school administrators–as a general class–don’t need to hear this kind of poorly thought out tripe. They’ve already heard too much of this stuff over the years and from the evidence do not have the mental capacity to filter it for nuggets of wisdom or even understand them if they could do so.

Continue reading “NOT Part of the Solution”

Posted on

Dogs and Bones

I recommend this post highly. Its subject matter is extremely important in almost every area that impacts our lives today, but since it seems to lie outside the issues that are most loudly trumpeted as urgent, critical issues, the fact that the “half-educated” it refers to (or less, actually) are mostly creating the problems that face us mostly disappears in the noise.

The author of the linked post applies the problem of people who think they know more than they do to the influence such people have exerted to bring about the current economic woes we face, but that only touches the very tip-top 1/4 inch of the iceberg, leaving the rest (including that which is submerged*) to bedevil us.

Always remember the importance of a well-informed (as opposed to ignorant or misinformed or DISinformed) electorate in a representative republic, especially one with far too many democratic elements.

“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”

Continue reading “Dogs and Bones”

Posted on

Sometimes, I Just Have to Say, “No”

A while back, I decided to give a Windows “news and tips” site a whirl and submitted a secondary email address in order to receive notices of site updates. Since then, it’s yielded a few interesting tidbits, but sometimes, “a few interesting tidbits” just doesn’t cut it.

Recently, a portion of a topic line stood out, as at least 2/3 of the topic lines received in updates from the site have. Again, not in a positive light. The portion–this time–that made me wince: “The reason behind its name revealed !”

WTF is with the (usual and customary, from this source) space between the last word and the punctuation? It’s stupid. And, as I said, usual from this source. But that’s just the normal quality of punctuation usage from this source. What about word usage and grammar?

In the same email update: “Not why it a browser.”

?!? Yes, that’s the entire sentence fragment posing as a sentence. Where’s the verb?

And then, “…to make it running as fast and stable as new.” No, dumbasses, “to make it RUN as fast and stable as new” would at least be marginally acceptable, although “fast and stable” in this context is problematic.

“Since the last couple of days I’m seeing… ” Obviously English is a second language for the writer. Either that or the writer is a recent American college graduate.

I’ve only scratched the surface of the ear-grinding English constructions in just this one email. I can’t take it anymore. Unsubscribing, with prejudice. *heh*

Posted on

Every! Single! Time!

A question posed in an online forum has resulted in all the usual suspects churning the aether… The question: “Are Homosexuals Discriminated Against?”

Lots of discussion, much of it from advocates of “normalizing” and mainstreaming homosexual behavior, including many, many who assert that not allowing homosexuals to “marry” is adverse discrimination and others who assert that special protections and privileges for homosexuals is a worse problem.

One thing I’ve noticed in the discussion is that advocates of what are, in fact, special, society-altering privileges for homosexuals both claim absolute moral authority and superior reason to be on their side. Unfortunately, to this point, none of this group has been able to marshall anything but argument by assertion (with no supporting facts) and continual dropping of the “homophobe bomb”.

And then there are the relatively calm advocates of homosexuals being granted special privileges and protections who assert their best arguments so:

“Homosexuality doesn’t change society, it’s apart of it.”

*sigh*

Really? He either meant “apart FROM it” or “A PART of it”. Frankly, since practicing, AND admitting but not practicing, homosexuals make up only about 3% of society, and are a dead end, “apart from it” is probably closer to the truth, but probably not what he meant to say. Continue reading “Every! Single! Time!”

Posted on

Borrowed Wisdom

I ran across the following quote at Jerry Pournelle’s place. It pretty well sums up a fairly serious problem with the “multi-culti” society so sought after by subliterate morons on the Left.

“Not a few of the students who apply to me for admission to the present form of Erskine’s [Great Books] reading course give me as a reason that they want “the background” and will have no other chance to “get it”, because they are about to study medicine or engineering. Their idea is we “give it” and they “get it.” But what is it that changes hands in this way? Background is the wrong word altogether. What is acquired is a common set of symbols, almost a separate language. I open today’s paper and I see over a story of naval action: ‘David-Goliath Fight by Foe at Sea Fails.” Immediately, I infer that some small enemy flotilla fought a larger force of ours. The image was instantaneous, and would have suggested more—namely the foe’s victory—had not the writer added that it failed.
“A common body of stories, phrases, and beliefs accompanies every high civilization that we know of. The Christian stories of apostles and saints nurtured medieval Europe, and after the breakup of Christendom the Protestant Bible served the same ends for English-speaking peoples. Bunyan and Lincoln show what power was stored in that collection of literary and historical works known as the Scripture, when it was really a common possession. We have lost something in neglecting it, just as we lost something in rejecting the ancient classics. We lost immediacy of understanding, a common sympathy with truth and fact. Perhaps nothing could better illustrate the subtlety and strength of the bond we lost than the story Hazlitt tells of his addressing a fashionable audience about Dr. Johnson. He was speaking of Johnson’s great heart and charity to the unfortunate; and he recounted how, finding a drunken prostitute lying in Fleet Street late at night, Johnson carried her on his broad back to the address she managed to give him. The audience, unable to face the image of a famous lexicographer doing such a thing, broke out into titters and expostulations. Whereupon Hazlitt simply said: ‘I remind you, ladies and gentlemen, of the parable of the Good Samaritan.’

“It is clear that no account of explaining, arguing, or demonstrating would have produced the abashed silence which that allusion commanded. It was direct communication; the note that Hazlitt struck sounded in every mind in the same way and it instantly crystallized and put into order every irrelevant emotion. That, if I may so put it, is what ‘background’ does for you. Even today, without Bible or classics, everyone possesses some kind of tradition which he uses without knowing it. The man who should look blank at mention of George Washington and the cherry tree, or who had never heard of Babe Ruth, or who thought that Shakespeare was an admiral, would get along badly even in very lowbrow circles. He might be excused as a foreigner but he would be expected to catch on as soon as he could. This does not mean that culture is for keeping up with the Joneses; it is talking to your fellow man—talking more quickly and fully than is possible through plodding description.
“In college and after, it so happens that the fund of ideas which it is needful to possess originated in great minds—those who devised our laws, invented our science, taught us how to think, showed us how to behave. They spoke in highly individual voices, yet rely on the force of a common group of symbols and myths—the culture of the West.”

Continue reading “Borrowed Wisdom”

Posted on

Waivermania

Obumascare Waivers are now “old news” (which the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind has largely ignored, and so guaranteed that thinking people everywhere arekeeping them in mind… and marking their score cards accordingly). The new thing? Waivers for NCLB (“No Child Left Behind” known disaffectionately by anyone with more than two active brain cells as “No Child Gets Ahead”). A commenter at Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor blog offered this comment, in part:

One can hope that this will allow some worse-off schools to adopt plans more suited to the students they have. One suspects it’ll far more often let the local bureaucrats return to not caring whether they’re compounding the problem with bad teaching, as long as they perform the proper rituals for Washington.

Which of course spurred me to wonder just what rituals would satisfy some “feddle gummint bureaucrap” as to qualifications for a waiver. This sort of thing, perhaps?

Posted on

Was Pollyanna Stupid or Evil?

It’s a tough question. If you’re unfamiliar with the reference, take some time out. I’ll wait. Meanwhile, I’ll leave this here for interim consderation:

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.–Napoleon Bonaparte (ascribed)

There is such a thing as human evil. I’ll allow no argument on that point, because any argument otherwise is simply either stupid* or evil. Period. So, accept as axiomatic that human evil exists. Is it then stupid or evil to look human evil in the face and see good? (I’ll allow a third option: insanity.)

Examples abound:

Idiots who defend Islam as a “religion of peace”. Stupidity or witting enabling of the evil hate cult of Islam?

People who assert that America is an unjust society, because we have people they class as poor? Evil or stupid? Consider this:

Ahhh, I’m tired of this already, and my BP is starting to climb… *sigh*

So, are those who are enablers of the hate cult of the Butcher of Medina evil or stupid (or both–likely, IMO)?

Are those who seem to be actively attempting to destroy our society via such activities as encouraging the kleptocratic “gimme” culture evil or stupid (or both–likely, IMO)?

And when do we stop ascribing destructive behaviors to stupidity alone and start calling it malice?

Yes, I aborted a bunch of stupid/evil material ranging from “pro-choice” (which is really, “Deny ANY choice to the unborn”), “Edumacation”, the Thugs Standing Around program of full employment for goons and petty tyrants, and “feddle gummint” tyrannical meddling in citizens’ lives while actively enabling outlaws to The Cult of Anthropogenic Climate Scare-ism and numerous points in between. One can select any issue dominated by the lies of the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, politicians *gag-spew* and Academia Nut Fruitcakes and plug it right into the “Stupid or Evil” matrix for consideration.

*I include in my use of “stupid” acts of witting, deliberate avoidance of facts. Witting, deliberate distortion of facts is evil–slander against truth.