A Simple Desultory Phillippic

Across the country, this week and next, at all grade levels, children, youngsters, high schoolers, Friends, Romans, Countrymen are trudging home with report cards. I've always admired the savage sense of timing that our education factories display, just in advance of that celebration of all we think of as The American Family, Thanksgiving. Well played, ladies and gentlemen. Do you think for a moment Norman Rockwell's grades in art ever came up as his dad was carving the turkey? Draw your own conclusion.

And every day we read about the Dumbing Down of America (you'll thank me for the download), though I wonder how oxymoronic that idea is. If we're too dumb to read about it, are we (still dumb)? If a number two pencil breaks while filling in the oval on a PSAT, does it help our kids get into college? Proving perhaps, the Lord has a sense of humor and we are His punchline, Atlantic Monthly worries, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Everyone, without exception, over the age of forty with whom I've shared the article agrees with its premise. And everyone, again without exception, under the age of forty with whom I've shared it, has yet to read more than the first five paragraphs of it. Get Wally Kelly's Pogo in here. We've found the culprit and he/she sure looks familiar......

Is it okay if, instead of the students, we look at the educational assembly line we've created? I guess I should point out I am the son of a schoolteacher--never to be confused with Dad of the Decade, but well-regarded for what he did despite who he was. Disclaimer ended.

We've created a school and value system that rewards effort as much (if not more than) as achievement. The problem with this Brave New World (Order) is that evolution doesn't work that way. The species on the planet now have figured out how to stay alive, and thus, have 'won'. No one awarded prizes to the dodo bird for looking forlorn. It failed to adapt and thus didn't survive the final exam that it never even knew it was taking.

We've raised one or more generations of kids who have been told it's not important to 'get the answer right' or to even understand the process behind how to get the answer. Just show up and be pleasant--you must be present to win. Unfortunately (for us), the rest of the world didn't get the memo and aren't dumbing down their kids which may be why more and more Nobel prizes are going offshore and not to homegrown talent and why more technological innovations are 'from elsewhere'.

Interestingly, many of the award recipients live on our shores because of the personal freedoms our society and culture offers to all and to everyone regardless of merit and effort. They, however, understand these values and intangibles come with a cost-sometimes I'm not sure our children and their classmates do. Meanwhile we are world-beaters at rap videos and reality TV. It's what else we beat that makes me nervous.

I watched Lou Holtz, the venerable (and occasionally less than completely lucid) former college football coach on ESPN TV the other night with 'a viewer's question.' It was great TV and the setup was perfect. All I could do was flop on the dock with the hook still in my mouth.
The question, Coach told us, was:"did your generation have a drug problem?"
YES, Coach Lou said-we sure did. We were drug to church on Sundays. We were drug out of bed every weekday morning to go to school. We were drug by our dads when we didn't do homework to a place out behind the barn, etc......it was funny, but it was true! And true enough that there was or should have been an edge to the laughter, at just that moment before it turns to tears.

Our parents held us to higher standards than those we held our children to (exceptions of course, but I'm in a rant on a roll and heck with specifics!), which is why the wheels fall off so much so often.
When Johnny/Jenny can't read what happens? Instead of doing EVERYTHING all of us can to help the child learn to read, we hire a paraprofessional for the classroom because Lord knows a student-teacher ratio of 12.8 to 1 certainly isn't conducive to learning (I can remember 52 kids in Mrs. Hilge's 3rd grade class at ST Peter School in New Brunswick, NJ; I was one of them).

When Johnny/Jenny STILL can't read, we give their teachers and schools MORE money and when STILL nothing happens, we hire a psychologist to speak to Johnny/Jenny: 'You can't read, kids. How does that make you feel?'
Insanity is doing things the way we always have and hoping THIS TIME the answer will be different.

We went from no-fault auto-insurance to no-fault divorce to, now, no-fault lives. And nine days ago, we elected a man who spoke of change as both a product and a process of national renewal. We want him to save us from ourselves, again, but we don't want to have change anything we're doing. We'll learn more during the 7 O'clock News--Silent Night.
"I been rolling stoned and beatled till I'm blind. I been ayn randed, nearly branded Communist, cause I'm left-handed. That's the hand I use, well, never mind!"
-bill kenny