We hear people talk about quality teachers, higher standards, and more functional schools that are streamlined for each student to excel. But in that process of making these things happen we are leaving millions of children behind, and we are not holding the people at fault accountable. Say what you will about the USDE, pell grants have helped millions go to school, and have provided kids with no possible way of reaching a higher education to obtain that goal that our society places so highly on the totem pole of success. Now i am not advocating for the end of the USDE, i find that it provides an essential service, but it is not the answer to our problems.
We have seen the rise of a pandemic in this country of a fictional disease. That disease is known to all of us as Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD and it's partner in crime ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). And the answer to this problem is this:
if you live on a college campus you know exactly what this is. This is adderall. and this is the most dangerous legal drug on the market. You see when a child is young and his/her parents can't stand the yammering, and active lifestyle that the child craves they take them to a doctor, and the doctor says "ive got just the thing to fix this problem." and so he prescribes this drug to shut the kid up, make them focus, and more attune to what is going on in the class room. this drug was billed as the saving grace of our children. the thing is this drug has the same ingredients as that meth that is made in that sketchy trailer about 2 miles down that dirt road in bum-fuck wherever. which brings me to this:
(would like to thank sir. ken robinson for this topic today as some of the ideals expressed here are credited to him)
This is a test. it was given to 1,500 people to test their abilities in DIVERGENT THINKING. Divergent thinking is the process of receiving a question (How many uses for a paper clip can you think of? was one of them), and then taking that question and interpreting it in 100's of different ways and coming up with 100's of different answers. In short it is the ability to interpret one question as many questions and the ability to answer those questions with many answers. But what everybody is told from the time they are born is there is one answer and one answer only (A, B, C, or D). You learn from an extraordinarily early age the process of elimination on tests to help you single out that one right answer. Now to that I do admit that a question like "Who was the first president of the United States?" only has one answer. But a question like "how many uses for a paper clip can you think of" could have hundreds if not thousands of answers. Why do we single out answers. If there was only one correct answer to everything then would that not entail the idea that everything is cut-and-dry? It would mean that everything has an answer, it would negate the idea of religion and political ideology because clearly there is only one answer, not multiple. so in that case one religion is right, one ideology is right, and so on. does that sound sensible to you? Not to me. To me the drugs we force our children to take force them to find one answer, and forces them to think in a very narrow one way thought pattern. That is not healthy for society or the mind. In the test that people took for "Breakpoint and Beyond," 98% of kindergarten children scored at the genius level for divergent thinking, and as they tested those same children during their longitudinal study, they found that percentage to DECREASE as their years in the public school system INCREASED. a few things come from these statistics. One that everybody is born with this ability. Two by the time we have reached what many call "educated," we have lost this ability and now only see one answer for one question that is rigidly structured. And the help comes from these drugs that are now seeing INCREASED popularity. Parents, teachers, and all other educational facets hate when a child is independent and free thinking and views the world as their playground for ideas, thoughts, and actions. so the answer is to shove more pills in their system. you see these kids. they tweak in class, their medicine wears off and they freak out, they look like zombies. its ridiculous and most of all it's cruel and it totally devoid's children of their imagination and open mindedness. but as much as i would love to pin all of our educational problems on adderall, i can't. i feel that adderall is a part of the problem and it is certainly not the solution, but the bigger problem lies with these people:
Parents, not teachers, not drugs, not doctors, not anybody can be blamed for our failing education standards, except for the parents. Christmas and birthdays are now centered around the idea of new gadgets and toys for our kids. these kids get these devices and spend all their time with them. they become their outlet for divergent thinking. and unfortunately it rots the brain away much more rapidly than anything else. children lose essential social skills that have always helped witht he advancement of society, they become home bodies, who never want to leave the house unless they absolutely have to. Parents work all the time, they have no time for kids, they are to worried about getting that adderall RX filled, and sitting that kid in front of a TV or whatever for hours on end so they can go fuck the pool guy, scramble to pay the mortgage, and make the car payment. we as society have streamlined everything including parenthood, the most basic, and simplest of all human interactions. its in our genes folks, we naturally know how to raise children, every animal does. it's just nature at it's best. but now with all these outside interferences in media, and other outlets that basic instinct is rotting away and causing our children to fall dangerously behind in their education. parents can't raise kids any more, they can't discipline, they can't do anything because of government interference and social pressure to drug em up and sit em down because then they will learn. our teachers have not changed, they have adapted to the new world of teaching. they are teaching kids in the most stimulating time in earths history. they are teaching kids with from thousands of different lifestyles and backgrounds. you have carie-ann who drives a volvo and wear the nicest clothes and texts on her iphone all class long and lives a great life, but also in the same class you have james who lives in a house with a single mom or dad who works constantly to provide shelter and food to james while he rides the bus to school and wears hammy down clothes and eats on the school meal voucher program. so how is it fair that a teacher has to teach so many different backgrounds and kids with totally different outlooks on the world and expect them to still understand education is the great equalizer when james probably wont even go to college? you can't. our teachers have been forced to try and teach in an environment that is so out of whack because of parents that they have no choice but to stick with mundane, ignorant, and illogical methods of teaching. you see carie-ann is poised to go to a prestigious university and major in business or physiology or something like that. while james, if he is lucky, will go to the tech school up the road and major in brick laying. now that no shot at brick layers they provide an essential service, but what if james really likes to write? or say he really likes to make music? or what about he likes to paint and draw? well the best arts schools are to expensive to get in, so he settles for the only thing affordable. while carie-ann will join a sorority and go on to med school or law school. it's not fair and it starts at home folks. when the parents of the children of this country make the effort to add fuel to their childrens learning fire then we will have a successful education system. if james mom saw that he loves to paint or whatever and made his home life revolve around the aesthetics of his desires then james very well could go to a fine arts school and pursue his dreams. but he can't because not only is that not available at home it's not available at school either. the four classes you are required to take from K-12 are the same as always English, Math, Science, History. why do we do that? who made those subjects the holiest of all subjects? why is it that art, gym, and other classes that harbor our childrens ability to think divergently are cast as "electives?" why is that you "elect" to take those classes but you are forced to take the big 4? thats not learning folks, that is forcing ideals and knowledge upon people. no less people that can not muster a credible defense to such a sophisticated idea.kids never know what they want to do when they grow up. ask any first grader and they will say a million different things, football player, fireman, police officer, teacher, and everything else. but children are aware of what they are good at, and we are aware of their abilities at very young ages. why can we not see this? why do we force kids who don't like those subjects to take them for so long? you take the big 4 from k-12 and then you get into college and even if your a say culinary major, dance major, or anything else you are still forced to take english, math, science, and history. do you rally think that a dancer or artist needs to know what the square root of 796 times 12 is? or do you think a political science major really needs to be versed in trigonometry? or what about a calculus major being versed in the crusades and the colonization of the new world? it jsut doesn't make sense that those subjects are the only ones that really matter. and until we tackle the issues of home life, and what we are forcing children to study in schools we will never reach a fully educated society. we can not keep forcing the idea that a college degree is the only thing that merits you as smart on to people. it just does not work. it discourages free thinking and hard work. and most of all it is bringing our species to it's brink.
happy reveling
I really laugh my ass off everytime i see the picture of "the mommy, the daddy, and the babygirl" hahahahahaha!
ReplyDelete