9/5/09

the responsible parties

Back when I was a brand new blogger (10/07), I saw this op ed where the guy actually wrote:
Indeed, if and when America craps out completely, it will be because of {...ok guess what it's because of....}

...


the suffocating political apathy of our current crop of young people. {!!!!!}
Who Knew?? It's been the Young People All This Time?!?!???

Yeah, um, no. Actually I knew this was wrong even before all this other horrible stuff happened in the meantime, because I wrote:
I just don’t think it’s fair to expect the younger generation to fix all the problems made by greedy boomers. Pony up the money, people, and the power, both of which your generation has ruthlessly amassed, and take some responsibility for the mess your generation made of the world.
Which all came rushing back to me as I read this interview with Obama's Education Secretary, Arne Duncan. You see, according to Education Secretary Duncan, it's students and their parents who need to step up and take some responsibility around here. If you want to click through and read his wisdom, be my guest. I'll just highlight a few of the unfortunate circumstances Mr. Duncan points out as being problematic for students and their families today. It's very sad how nobody seems to take responsibility for these grievous challenges, but you know, it's rude to notice stuff like that (wink wink wink)! And since nobody powerful bears any responsibility for these problems, the responsibility for succeeding against impossible odds falls to students and their parents. Good Luck Kids!

Here's a quick recap of the many challenges facing our students and their parents today.

1. The doors of opportunity only open if you have the secret pa$$word:

For students that don't have a great education, students that don't really apply themselves — those that do have a whole series of doors continue to open for them as they get older. And those who don't see doors start to close on them very, very quickly.

2. There are so many more media distractions and temptations:
There's also a lot more temptation than ever before. I'm not that old, but I didn't have MTV. We didn't have video games. There's a whole bunch of things today that can get in the way of students really applying themselves academically.
Silver Lining Alert #1: The internet is great (as long as they don't have to take it over and shut it down for national security):
The flip side is, there's a whole set of opportunities, the Internet, chances to learn in ways that just didn't exist before.
Also, as an aside, hard work pays off and success has nothing to do with who you know. Just ask Barack Obama:

And here he is, the president of our country, the leader of the free world, because he received a great education and worked so hard.
Back to the problems, which are the bane of students and parents across America...

3. The school day and school year needs to be much longer to accommodate parents who have to work such long hours:
This is not my most popular line when I've talked to young folks. But I think the idea of schools being open five days a week, six hours a day, nine months of the year just doesn't work for families in our country anymore.

Families are working one and two and three jobs now to make ends meet. Schools are safe havens. We want to make sure those are open longer hours, after school, weekends, throughout the summer.

4. In addition, the school day and school year needs to be longer to prepare our children to compete with students from around the world, since there are no good jobs left in America:

I also want to make sure that our students can compete in an international economy. They're competing for jobs against children in India and China. And the fact is that many of those young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here.

I think our students are smarter than anyone. I just want to give them a chance to be successful.

Silver Lining Alert #2: Thank God the stimulus package averted disaster. It could be much, much worse!!!
The biggest thing you'll see is hundreds of thousands of teachers in buildings who wouldn't have been there without the stimulus package. We averted an education catastrophe. We were on the verge of just a total disaster, seeing class size go from 25 to 40.

So a second-grader or a third-grader won't know, necessarily, that their teacher may not have been there, had it not been for this package.

That just is so important. We have to get dramatically better. We couldn't afford to take a step backward.

5. Everyone (well, not *everyone* exactly) has to Give More. That's the answer to our problems.
I just want to say thank you. Teachers are the unsung heroes in our society.

In so many other professions, you're measured by what you get, what you accumulate. Wealth and power and prestige and fancy titles.

Education, teaching, is totally different. It's all about what you give, not what you get. Helping students learn. Giving students a sense of self-esteem. Giving them a vision of what they can accomplish.

And teachers, hundreds of thousands of teachers, every single day, are making a miraculous difference in the lives of our students.

Parents are always going to be our students' first teachers. The most important thing I can do is to read to my children every night, to not have them watching TV and to really be a partner with that teacher.

Parents have to step up. I know it's tough. People are working several jobs now. They've never been under more financial stress.

What a disaster. What can we do Education Secretary Duncan?!?!?

But there is nothing more important any of us can do

than to help our students be successful academically,

to really let our children know how important school is,

how much we value education,

and how much teachers and principals are our partners in helping our students fulfill their potential.

Really? That's the answer?

You know something? I have a great education, and I worked hard. And this is NOT THE DAMN ANSWER.

There's exactly ONE THING that people in this country need to learn about right now: PSYCHOPATHS. How many there are (1 in 25 people), how they operate (without conscience), where they work (throughout the highest echelons of society), and what their damned names are. That is the knowledge that will change the world.

4 comments:

Greg Bacon said...

If the schools taught the little ones how to think instead of regurgitating NWO gossip, they wouldn't need to be nannyfied by Big Government factoids.

We made the mess by being more interested in last night's 'Big Game' and celebrity gossip rather than knowing what in the hell was going on behind closed doors on Capitol Hill.

If we're too apathetic to fix what we screwed up, then we'll get what's coming to us.

I watched an interviewer go around some city and ask folks what they knew about the Federal Reserve.

About half didn't know what the hell the Fed was and most of the rest thought it was part of the government.

That's the kind of stupidity the government wants to teach.

A. Peasant said...

once they got everyone working and chasing a standard of living they saw on teevee, it became a lot easier to hook them into decompressing on sports and celebrity culture. the replaced the feedback loop from citizen to government with consumer to corporation.

Unknown said...

It's been proven time and again that the psychopath ratio for jews is much higher, more on the order of 1:2. Hitler had nothing against the jews, per se. Hitler was anti-psychopath, hence the necessary extermination of the jews. Knowing you're gonna eliminate 3M psychopaths by simply shooting and gassing 6M people, why that's a no-brainer!

Unknown said...

As poorly qualified as I am to promote peace, prosperity, and quality of life, both here and abroad, I hope you will bear with me. And please don't become upset if, in doing so, I must compare, contrast, and identify the connections among different sorts of lackluster, brainless vigilantism.

But before I continue, allow me to explain that if a cogent, logical argument were ever to enter a Zionist's brain, no doubt a concussion would result. This is not Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, where the state would be eager to create an atmosphere that may temporarily energize or exhilarate, but which, at the same time, will pose the gravest of human threats.

Not yet, at least.

But if I said that Zionist activities are on the up-and-up, I'd be a liar. But I'd be being absolutely honest if I said that for its asinine plans to succeed, Zionism needs to dumb down our society

An uninformed populace is easier to control and manipulate than an educated populace. As soon as our backs are turned, schoolchildren will stop being required to learn the meanings of words like "hippopotomonstrosesquipidelian" and "disdenominationalize". They will be incapable of comprehending that the real question here is not, "Is Zionism so biased as to think that this can go on forever?".

The real question, obviously, is rather, "Why can't Zionism relieve its aching sense of inadequacy without having to compromise the things that define us, including integrity, freedom, liberty, justice, love, and sharing and caring?" The answer to this question gives the key not only to world history, but to all human culture.

An ancient Greek once wrote something to the effect of, "Any effort to negotiate with it or appease it is akin to spitting into a hurricane to quiet its fury." Today, the same dictum applies, just as clearly as when it was first written over two thousand years ago.

As someone who is working hard to compile readers' remarks and suggestions and use them to give our young people the values that will inspire them to embrace the cause of self-determination and recognize the leading role and clearer understanding of those people for whom the quintessential struggle is an encompassing liberation movement against the totality of onanism, I must point out that Zionism's trucklers resist seeing that Zionists should be forced to wear a scarlet "W" for "Wants to spam the Internet with unsolicited namby-pamby e-mail". They resist seeing such things because to see them, to examine them, to think about them and draw conclusions from them is to treat the disease, not the symptoms.

It is our responsibility to ensure that Zionism doesn't impugn the patriotism of its opponents, to put it mildly. As reluctant as I am to admit it, I realize that the tone of this letter may be making some people feel uneasy.

However, even if you're somewhat uncomfortable reading about Zionism's neo-soulless mottos please don't blame me for them. I'm not the one challenging all that America stands for.

I'm not the one breaking down our communities.

And I'm not the one causing riots in the streets.

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