"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
“Old argument for college: Go to college so you don’t have to be a waitress! New argument for college: Go to college so you have a shot at that waitressing job!”
Yeh, but even with a college degree giving a shot at low-wage service jobs, that just means longer to pay back the exorbitant costs associated with that (almost worthless?) degree. . .
Ah, but go hire another few hundred administrators for whatever level of education. It’s for the children, right?
In the attempt to create a society where every idiot–natural born but especially self-made–can not only survive but thrive (for values of “thrive” that include whatever low level of mental activities such folks may attain), I fear “progressives” have worked to create the ultimate regressive society, reversing evolution to create a society where the lowest common denominator, the least fit to survive is the new norm.
Evidence? I give you one example: Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro. The guy’s obviously bright enough to be able to tie his own shoelaces without adult supervision, but, being the self-made idiot that he is, doesn’t act like it. He’s crafty enough to be able to effect his “change for America” (subversion of everything the Organic Law of the US embodies to serve a commie end), but because he was raised in a cocoon that he’s never ventured outside of, he’s too stupid to even be able to know what he’s really doing.
Morally corrupt, from beginning to end; mentally deficient, no matter how crafty some of his actions appear (especially when aided by his cocooning elements, primarily the Hivemind1 he serves and which serves him in return); stumbling about the world stage when reality kicks his ass: these are all the actions of a self-made enstupiate who has been sheltered from the consequences of his auto-enstupiation from birth.
This madness must stop. Reality demands consequences, and shielding self-made idiots from the consequences of their behavior is resulting in the destruction of our society. . . and with an overwhelming number of self-made enstupiates who would be able to rebuild on its ashes?
1I use “Hivemind” here as shorthand for that Conspiracy of Dunces comprised of folks who all echo the same lying memes and talking points–often word for word–in pursuit of identical goals within the so-called “progressive-liberal” world of “reality-based fantasies”: The Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind, Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries, and all the NGOs and even looser affiliations of fellow travelers, cronies, co-conspirators and other evil-doers who spout Hivemind lies.
[UPDATE: See, “Last Thursday, I Lied”. be sure to Read the Whole Thing®.]
[Note: I have family members who are REAL teachers and know at least a few more REAL teachers. Heck, I have even known three–THREE–pubschool administrators who were actually worthwhile uses of the oxygen they consumed. Really! Still. . . ]
Pubschool isn’t entirely “prison for kids”. . . but it’s usually the next worst thing. Pubschool certainly was no picnic for me. People kept interrupting my learning to “teach” me things that were on THEIR schedule. . . *heh*
From a Salon article, School is a prison — and damaging our kids:
“. . .the more scientists have learned about how children naturally learn, the more we have come to realize that children learn most deeply and fully, and with greatest enthusiasm, in conditions that are almost opposite to those of school.”
Well, especially for boys, for whom pubschool is often a kind of prison camp designed to make them into girls 1, or ANY kid who’s in the second standard deviation above the norm or better on any standard IQ test. “Odds” of all kinds find pubschool to me mind-numbing torture as they are REQUIRED to fit into the box. . . and find the box to be far, far too small.
But. . . the problem is this, though: how can a society educate 2 its population in such a way as to maximize the number of useful, productive citizens? Assembly line “prisons for kids” has been the answer for many years, though good teachers–REAL teachers–do everything they can to minimize the “prison” and “assembly line” aspects and encourage real learning. Oh, but that’s another problem: where does one find REAL teachers in numbers great enough to overcome the disadvantages of the system itself, the “millstones” of pubschool administrators *gag* and the plethora of remote-educrat-meddling they implement?
Education 2 ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. . .
1Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys. From a review:
“Sommers, a philosopher by education and a mother of two boys, shows that the trend she identified in the late 1990s to see boys as defective girls and therefore somehow in need of retooling has continued, and its effects have spread.”
2“Educate” has come to mean, more and more, simply “propagandize, brainwash.” Real education leads from darkness to light. What is created by the system of remote educrats promulgating rules for pubschool administrators to use cutting oxygen from the brains of teachers and students alike being implemented in a system of regimentation, indistinguishable from a prison regime, INTENDED (see Dewey, et al) to turn children into useful little cogs in an industrial machine is a kind of software lobotomization that seems to be designed by a conspiracy of dunces to make the lowest common denominator universal. *sigh* I am in awe of teachers–REAL teachers–who can do battle against this monstrosity day in and day out–actually bringing light to some students!–without going out of their everlovin’ gourds. Such people are amazing.
Is “USPS” beginning to mean, “United States Postal Screw-you”? I mean, hours cut (including, at our local PO, an hour SHUT DOWN in the middle of the day and NOTHING past 10:00 on Saturday), packages “lost” and 1/10 of employees NOT surly, petty tyrants.
In recent weeks/months my Wonder Woman has had a rash of things ordered online, sent but NOT delivered by USPS. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems more and more USPS packages are “going missing” (*cough* stolen by postal workers *cough*) in recent times. . .
Whenever I can I specify either UPS or Fedex delivery. At least that way whatever it is has a chance of getting here in a timely fashion. . . or even just getting here at all.
Hey, USPS! Screw you.
Victor Davis Hanson beats a drum often heard here at twc:
“Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition, and basic math skills.”
Remember third world county‘s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom:
“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.”
And remember also that “literacy” is not just being able to decode the written word, either facilely or laboriously. It’s being able to do that AND having a goodly store of useful knowledge gained thereby. Anything less and one is simply either a useful idiot fit for deploying in the service of evil or a completely useless idiot, good for nothing in particular.
Sadly, somewhere near 75-80% of Americans seem to be one or the other of those two idiot alternatives.
. . . and not with the kind of score I’ve been used to being able to score on academic tests over the years, just about whenever I really wanted to. . . and also only because of grandparents and parents who were well-read and encouraged reading well-written, high-information books. Oh, and a really rigorous (for the times) 8th grade biology teacher and a few others who didn’t rigorously stifle independent study (yeh, that was a problem even back in those days of yore. . . ). But I was one of the lucky ones for my generation:
Century-old 8th-grade exam: Can you pass a 1912 test?
By contrast, the “sample questions” for the 12th Grade history section for the 2010 NAEP are relatively simplistic, and cover very little of a nature of questions that my generation of 8th-graders would not have been able to ace. *shrugs* Of course, my acing, now, of the five sample questions is no test. But considering that some serious scholarship has demonstrated that college grads generally are barely better informed on American history/civics than high school grads, the chart below is at least somewhat interesting.
But you’ll still have to STFU and not act “suspiciously” (be properly subservient lil serfs) around “feddle gummint” thugs.
Syrian factions vie for control of chemical weapons.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels pledge loyalty to al-Qaeda, and Obama Steps Up Military Aid To Syrian Rebels
Personally, I think Syria stored Iraq’s WMD in the unused jockstraps of ball-less, go-along-to-get-along, bend over and say, “Please may I have another” cowardly country club Repugnican’ts who have sucked up to traitorous Dhimmicraps for decades, and The Zero just wants to be in on the jock strap raid, but what do I know?
Rep Stockman requests subpoena of NSA’s White House, IRS phone logs
“Obama assures the public he only collected this information to uncover wrongdoing and protect civil liberties. Clearly he would want us to use it to investigate this case, because otherwise he’d be lying,” said Stockman.
“If Obama has nothing to hide he has nothing to fear,” said Stockman.
About time at least one Republican located a workable testosterone therapy.