Tuesday, January 08, 2008
This just pisses me off....
I don't even know where to start here....this has been a long, drawn out monologue of mine for years, and it's just getting worse. I've avoided talking about it because it just gets me riled up, but I just saw yet another example of it on TV. (Which, actually, is totally against my whole beef, but let me explain...)
We're stupid. We, as Americans, are stupid. This state of being has been a decades-long result of technology, poor education, and laziness.
Have you ever perused a McGuffey Reader? This was THE educational book for American children starting in the 1830s. They were used up until the 50s, I believe. If you open one up, what will you find? EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL. It's actually shocking what a first or second grader in the 1850s, say, was studying and learning. Go ahead, look it up online, there are ample sites about the Reader. It's AMAZING what freaking Little House on the Prairie kids were learning compared to kids today! It pisses me off! Our brains aren't made any differently now. We aren't "unable" to learn all that stuff that humans used to learn, used to be interested in, used to VALUE. So, why are we so dumb? Why is every other f'in TV show a reality show?! Because we're LAZY.
Somehow, we...society, have allowed stupidity to be cool. It's "too hard" to analyze things, think outside the box, or to be curious about the world around us. A really good example of how lazy we are can be shown in two points. One, the insane amount of reality TV shows. We're so lazy that we don't even have enough creative people to write original, thought-provoking shows. Seriously! It's insane! Tatoos, wives, kids, screwed up kids, bad wives, models, court tv, singers...it's ENDLESS. The latest one I've seen commercials for is about lie detector tests. They hook up people to the machine and them ask them questions that will be embarassing, ruin their relationships, expose secrets that really need to remain secret, etc. Are you KIDDING me?! When I think they can't add another one, there it is! Scott Baio's life on TV! All are reality TV shows, and there's so many of them that there are reality TV WEBSITES so you can keep up with them all. How do these shows, at all, further develop you as a human being? As a thinker? As anything?! They DON'T.
Second on the lazy front, we have no curiousity. Sure, I do, sure, you do...but talk to the average high schooler, none. And I don't mean the lower ten percent of a class. I mean that about 80 percent of the current high school public is NOT curious, and therefore they are apathetic. Why? I could give you endless reasons, but the biggest reason is poor parenting. Shocker? Let's think about it. What has been the norm for raising kids for the past 30 years? Daycare. What kind of one on one attention do they get in daycare? None. Maybe one percent. What else is the norm? That mom and dad's jobs are more important than their child's curiousity. Therefore, these inquiries about the world become supressed. A new toy takes place of conversation. Sitting in front of a tv takes place of going to the park. No time to make dinner because you're working all day? Fast food. (Which brings up an entirely different, yet related subject, our kids are fat.) And the new toys? ALL are instant gratification gadgets. Things that light up, need only three basic steps to achieve, require no reading or deciphering to play. So what happens? Attention deficit, bad social skills, low vocabulary. Get the idea?
This leads into my second beef with current society dumbing down our kids: technology. What sort of technology did you have as a kid?? I, personally, did not have access to a computer, cell phone, VCR, answering machine, remote control anything, cordless phone, or even more than one TV in the house. I did not have games that lit up until my junior high years when Texas Instruments made the Speak and Spell. How did my mother STAND IT?!! She had to DO STUFF WITH US! She couldn't sit my sister and me in front of a DVD or video game made for toddlers! She had to actually PLAY with us! Create with us, play outside, read to us. How insane is that?! We went to the hobby store and got new art projects, we played outside in the sand box and we rode our bikes, she read SERIES of different books to us. We went to the library a lot and learned how to use the dewey decimal system by the time we were five. Ask a kid today to read a book for a class, they FREAK, usually don't read it, cheat on the tests, or just read the Cliffs Notes or try to find the movie. My college roommate was a TA while getting her Doctorate. She had a student in her office one day and was trying to help him with the book the class was reading. She said while helping him, "The second time that you read it you can start to make a detailed outline, blah blah....". She said the student shrieked, "The SECOND time?!" It had never occured to him that maybe he was having a problem because he didn't RE-READ the book.
Lastly, so as to not make this long enough to BE a book, we are poorly educated. Being smart and going to college is not important to a HUGE percentage of our society (like all the ones who are watching Flavor Flave "pick a mate" on his TV show). About twenty years ago, the public education system decided to "give kids hope" and give them high school diplomas not based on a standard, but based on "they're doing the best that they can." I'm totally serious. The best example of this is the current practice in most school districts to not give any child below a 50 in any class. REGARDLESS of whether they actually earned a 20 or a 0, they will get a 50 on their report card because it "gives them hope" to do better next time and maybe they can pass the class with a 70. This is REEE-DICK-YOU-LUSS! When these morons walk across the stage and into their forever job at Walmart, and they get FIRED, they will not get a chance to do it over. So why in hell do we let kids do this in school? What are we teaching them??! It is also common practice to give an A to a student not based on, oh, I don't, whether they know the material or not, but rather if it's "the best that He/She can do." Therefore, an A. WHAT?! You parents need to pay attention to your kids' work...look at those A's. Is it really A work? Is your kid being prepared for college? A lot of the time, no.
So, what can we do? That's where a book needs to be written...maybe I should write one titled, "What's Really Happening at Your Child's School." The short list...trade schools, no 50 give aways, revamp our elementary education system to ingrain kids with the desire to learn.
We're in trouble in about 20 years. You heard it here first.
We're stupid. We, as Americans, are stupid. This state of being has been a decades-long result of technology, poor education, and laziness.
Have you ever perused a McGuffey Reader? This was THE educational book for American children starting in the 1830s. They were used up until the 50s, I believe. If you open one up, what will you find? EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL. It's actually shocking what a first or second grader in the 1850s, say, was studying and learning. Go ahead, look it up online, there are ample sites about the Reader. It's AMAZING what freaking Little House on the Prairie kids were learning compared to kids today! It pisses me off! Our brains aren't made any differently now. We aren't "unable" to learn all that stuff that humans used to learn, used to be interested in, used to VALUE. So, why are we so dumb? Why is every other f'in TV show a reality show?! Because we're LAZY.
Somehow, we...society, have allowed stupidity to be cool. It's "too hard" to analyze things, think outside the box, or to be curious about the world around us. A really good example of how lazy we are can be shown in two points. One, the insane amount of reality TV shows. We're so lazy that we don't even have enough creative people to write original, thought-provoking shows. Seriously! It's insane! Tatoos, wives, kids, screwed up kids, bad wives, models, court tv, singers...it's ENDLESS. The latest one I've seen commercials for is about lie detector tests. They hook up people to the machine and them ask them questions that will be embarassing, ruin their relationships, expose secrets that really need to remain secret, etc. Are you KIDDING me?! When I think they can't add another one, there it is! Scott Baio's life on TV! All are reality TV shows, and there's so many of them that there are reality TV WEBSITES so you can keep up with them all. How do these shows, at all, further develop you as a human being? As a thinker? As anything?! They DON'T.
Second on the lazy front, we have no curiousity. Sure, I do, sure, you do...but talk to the average high schooler, none. And I don't mean the lower ten percent of a class. I mean that about 80 percent of the current high school public is NOT curious, and therefore they are apathetic. Why? I could give you endless reasons, but the biggest reason is poor parenting. Shocker? Let's think about it. What has been the norm for raising kids for the past 30 years? Daycare. What kind of one on one attention do they get in daycare? None. Maybe one percent. What else is the norm? That mom and dad's jobs are more important than their child's curiousity. Therefore, these inquiries about the world become supressed. A new toy takes place of conversation. Sitting in front of a tv takes place of going to the park. No time to make dinner because you're working all day? Fast food. (Which brings up an entirely different, yet related subject, our kids are fat.) And the new toys? ALL are instant gratification gadgets. Things that light up, need only three basic steps to achieve, require no reading or deciphering to play. So what happens? Attention deficit, bad social skills, low vocabulary. Get the idea?
This leads into my second beef with current society dumbing down our kids: technology. What sort of technology did you have as a kid?? I, personally, did not have access to a computer, cell phone, VCR, answering machine, remote control anything, cordless phone, or even more than one TV in the house. I did not have games that lit up until my junior high years when Texas Instruments made the Speak and Spell. How did my mother STAND IT?!! She had to DO STUFF WITH US! She couldn't sit my sister and me in front of a DVD or video game made for toddlers! She had to actually PLAY with us! Create with us, play outside, read to us. How insane is that?! We went to the hobby store and got new art projects, we played outside in the sand box and we rode our bikes, she read SERIES of different books to us. We went to the library a lot and learned how to use the dewey decimal system by the time we were five. Ask a kid today to read a book for a class, they FREAK, usually don't read it, cheat on the tests, or just read the Cliffs Notes or try to find the movie. My college roommate was a TA while getting her Doctorate. She had a student in her office one day and was trying to help him with the book the class was reading. She said while helping him, "The second time that you read it you can start to make a detailed outline, blah blah....". She said the student shrieked, "The SECOND time?!" It had never occured to him that maybe he was having a problem because he didn't RE-READ the book.
Lastly, so as to not make this long enough to BE a book, we are poorly educated. Being smart and going to college is not important to a HUGE percentage of our society (like all the ones who are watching Flavor Flave "pick a mate" on his TV show). About twenty years ago, the public education system decided to "give kids hope" and give them high school diplomas not based on a standard, but based on "they're doing the best that they can." I'm totally serious. The best example of this is the current practice in most school districts to not give any child below a 50 in any class. REGARDLESS of whether they actually earned a 20 or a 0, they will get a 50 on their report card because it "gives them hope" to do better next time and maybe they can pass the class with a 70. This is REEE-DICK-YOU-LUSS! When these morons walk across the stage and into their forever job at Walmart, and they get FIRED, they will not get a chance to do it over. So why in hell do we let kids do this in school? What are we teaching them??! It is also common practice to give an A to a student not based on, oh, I don't, whether they know the material or not, but rather if it's "the best that He/She can do." Therefore, an A. WHAT?! You parents need to pay attention to your kids' work...look at those A's. Is it really A work? Is your kid being prepared for college? A lot of the time, no.
So, what can we do? That's where a book needs to be written...maybe I should write one titled, "What's Really Happening at Your Child's School." The short list...trade schools, no 50 give aways, revamp our elementary education system to ingrain kids with the desire to learn.
We're in trouble in about 20 years. You heard it here first.
