Ron On Schools
A little rant from Ron on our education system.
Sheeeesshhhh! So I guess all that’s left to do is rant. Read somethin by Orwell last nite that kinda stuck in my mind . . . the power that school boards and teachers have in determining what and how kids are taught about our history. For example, you ask a Russian student who won WWII in Europe and he won’t say it was the US, and you ask a British kid who won WWII in Europe and he won’t either. But my generation was convinced that without the massive influx of US manpower and materials in that war, all of Europe would today be speaking German.
We know the French would be speaking German. That’s for durn sure!
Knowing who you are and where you came from, what your traditions and your culture and your rights are, has a lot to do with what you become in life. Chances are if you tell a kid that he comes from a long line of losers, shabby unfortunate people who had neither a pot to piss in nor a window to dump it out of, he won’t set his goals as high as a kid who’s told that his ancestors include adventurers, advisors, inventors, investors, and invaders.
How about if you tell a group of people they cannot compete fairly due to the color of their skin and they require the gummint to succeed, what are you really telling them? You’re telling them that they’re stupid.
A kid from a trailer park or a ghetto or a ‘hood isn’t anywhere near as likely to become successful in business, or sports, or self-improvement as one who grew up in a wealthy environment where golf clubs and tennis racquets and money to pay the fees were all available in abundance. Chances are a kid will make more productive contacts at a country club dining hall than a downtown corner pool hall.
And if you read to your children at an early age, they wind up doing better in school. Funny how that works.
George Orwell told us that if you can control a person’s past, you can control his future to a great degree, and if you have control over the present, you can revise the past to fit your agenda. You tell a kid often enough that he’s a loser, he’ll more than likely turn into one. A few will buck the odds and succeed, just to prove you wrong. But generally if you expose someone’s genealogical roots as gnarled and muddy and less than spectacular, his self-image is dulled and his aspirations are dimmed.
Or if you tell someone that doing well in school “be actin’ white”, what does that do for his aspirations?
I’ve said on numerous occasions on numerous sites, as well as in my numerous classrooms, that traditions and rituals and heroes and celebrations are necessary to the health of a culture. It’s the old axiom “you’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.” The way I see it, our educational system today, and certainly our cultural values system, is trying to protect children from any and all unpleasantries.
And it’s also telling them that they should be ashamed of the white heritage that built this country.
Kids can’t be spanked in school, nobody can be valedictorian unless everybody can, you get a trophy for just showing up, and if you bite off parts of a cracker so that what’s left looks like a pistol (or just the letter “L” on its side) you’re a sociopath. Teachers can’t use red ink to mark up students’ papers because the color might intimidate or frighten them. And anybody who disagrees with the President’s policies is a racist.
When I went to school, boys carried pocket knives. In elementary school we dressed up on Halloween and some boys came to school as cowboys with – shudder! – cap pistols. We played dodgeball and kickball in gym. Now we’re raising a bunch of pussies.
Da-yum! A great percentage of kids in school today, perhaps as high as 99.9%, will eventually run into bad luck along the road of life: Bullies. Muggers. Rapists. Pickpockets. Identity thieves. Vandals. Miscreants. Blackguards. Racists. Thugs. Liars. Crooks. And general assholes.
I believe that instead of being antiseptic oases with pixies and unicorns, schools should be training grounds for real life. Children should be exposed to the realities of lying politicians, corrupt officials, greedy bankers, deceitful businessmen, infected hookers, and selfish bastards. Any kid who grows up never having had a bloody nose has been cheated out of one of life’s most valuable experiences.
Yep! Sometimes you’re gonna lose. Get up and learn from it. The lessons you learn the best are the ones you learn the hard way. My father said that to me once when I did sumpin’ stupid, which I did on more than one occasion. Once, I got thrown against the lockers by the assistant principal in junior high. Had I gone home and told my parents, I would have gotten a lot worse from them. Once, in elementary school, Miss Edwards picked up David Fowler, who was acting up, and gave him a few blows on his fanny with a ping pong paddle. Today she would be sued by the parents.
One thing a black eye or a bloody nose or a busted knuckle teaches you is that it’s not the end of life as you’ve known it to that point. And if you’re still in school where somebody can let you take a few swings and then break it up before anything major gets broken, that’s better than when you’re 30 years old and get cold-cocked coming out of an all-night bakery with a bag of hot croissants. Even better is that you make it home and Mom cleans it up and kisses it to make it all better, then Dad says that next time he wants to see the other guy’s blood on your knuckles instead of yours runnin’ down and drippin’ off your chin.
Yeah, it’s not fair to kids to teach ‘em that everybody’s a winner, that two percent of the population has the right to dictate archaic religious practices or aberrant sexual behavior for the entire society, or that government is the answer to all of life’s problems. And I believe that along with exposure to the badasses, the predators, the exploiters, the con-artists, children should be introduced to brave heroes, chivalrous knights, patriotic guardians, cultural champions.
Yeah. Like the white Anglo-Saxon guys who founded this country who are now demonized because some of them owned slaves. Just who was it that led the movement to abolish slavery? It was white Anglo-Saxon dudes. Great Britain was a leader in that movement. Who still owns slaves? Blacks in Africa. And just who captured and sold slaves to the slave traders? It was other blacks in Africa. Whites didn’t go into the interior of Africa. Roots was a fantasy about that. Coastal black tribes did it. Who else owns slaves today? Arabs. Arab Mooslimes. Yannow those Mooslimes that Obungler sez helped make up the “fabric of America”. I guess if you include slave trading, that’s true.
Children need to be taught how to think, how to balance a checkbook, how to fire and maintain a weapon, how to repair an engine, how to butcher an animal, how to deliver a baby, how to change a diaper, and when to throw the bullshit flag.
I remember going to a week of summer camp at the end of elementary school and we were given a checkbook with a balance of money in it. Everything we bought that week we had to buy by check and we had to keep track of how much money was in that account. I wonder, do they still teach Home Economics in school anymore or is that too sexist?
They also need to understand self reliance and that they have to pay for their own food, their own mortgages, their own cellfones, their own insurance, their own OTC drugs, and especially their own birth-control pills or devices.
Good luck with that? Sandra Fluke (which rhymes with slut) bitched about having to pay $9 a month for birth control. Now she’s financing most of her campaign for some office she’s running for with her own money.
Excelsior, y’all.
