My students today are much less obnoxious [then I was at their age]. Much more likable than I and my friends used to be, but they are so ignorant that it’s hard to accept how ignorant they are. You tell yourself stories; it’s very hard to grasp that the person you’re talking to, who is bright, articulate, advisable, interested, and doesn’t know who Beethoven is. Had no view looking back at the history of the 20th century — just sees a fog. A blank. Has the vaguest idea of who Winston Churchill was or why he mattered. And maybe has no image of Teddy Roosevelt, let’s say, at all. I mean, these are people who — We have failed.And this is at Yale. So you wonder, if they never learned about Beethoven, Churchill, or Teddy, what did they learn?
I would venture to say that this is the best reason to de-fund the Department of Education.
5 comments:
They learned all the stuff you actually hear them talking about - climate change, racism everywhere, patriarchal oppression of the lgbtxyzpdq community.
That and OMG! have you seen the latest app?
What did they learn? Recycling.
That and the ongoing federal political indoctrination...
gfa
"what did they learn?"
They learned to love the government.
This by the way proves that the schools have not failed. They are doing exactly what they were designed to do.
They have learned that history is malleable, so it's useless to learn; it'll be changed/rewritten/memory-holed tomorrow anyway. They have learned that emotions are real, facts not so much. They have learned that the value of an artist's work is determined by the artist; that being subject to the opinions and tastes of future generations is unfair and just plain mean. They have learned to use technology, but not how to learn about the world; rather, they use technology to tell the world about themselves -- to gaze inward and transmit outward, instead of gazing outward and transmitting inward (i.e. learning).
And yes, as Paul Bonneau said, they have learned to love the government, which is a feature -- not a bug -- of public school systems.
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