This is a rant that's been building for awhile. I am in an aggravated state today as the result of grading lab reports from college students who can't put together a simple declarative sentence. But I can't blame them. In a way, they are victims of an educational system that is in trouble, part of our infrastructure is rotting away as surely as our roads and bridges.
But the ultimate origin of this particular diary is the appearance of Sarah Palin at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville. I caught just a portion of her speech before I ran screaming from the room (follow on):
Wow, oh Wow. Thank you. Thank you very much ($100 grand for this gig, can you believe it? thank you VERY much). Gosh, oh Golly.
PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN. Veterans. Freedom. My son in the service. Thank you very much.
Ronald Reagan. Sweet Tea. REVOLUTION.
Real people in the REAL AMERICA. SMALL TOWNS all across the great land (flyover territory now that I'm a rich celebrity). Tea Parties springing up (Todd sprang up too when I did that teabagging trick). Bottoms Up, not top down (round and round).
Scott Brown. Guy with a truck.
WAR. TERROR. Mean Muslims who hate our freedoms. OBAMA. Attacked on Christmas Day. Babble, babble. MIRANDA RIGHTS, HA! Need a BADASS WARRIOR, not a law professor. Joe
Joe Biden Commission. NOBODY MESSES WITH JOE, ha, ha.
(Time to check my palm pilot)
How is that HOPEY, CHANGEY THING doing for you?
What is it about Palin's diction that melts your brain into goo? To me the problem is that there is no content at all--just a series of applause lines connected by meaningless pap. You keep hoping for some argument that you can accept or refute, but there is nothing there. Just slogans, DRILL BABY, DRILL. You might as well argue with a bumper sticker.Palin's message is attractive to a fairly large fraction of Americans, not a majority certainly, but maybe 25%. But what is her message, exactly? Incoherence, it seems to me. There is no message. There is just a melange of vaguely patriotic images sold with a certain obvious sexuality. The only consistent theme is that Democrats are bad, bad, bad and possibly socialists (COMMUNISTS), and that Obama is not like us (WHITE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE).
I almost admire Palin in a way--she is pure ambition operating on a limited knowledge base but yet she is winning on her terms, more money, more stuff for Sarah and her family. I hope and pray that she really does not aspire to the Presidency.
So how does a nothing like Palin rise to prominence? Well obviously she has backers who recognize that she plays well to ignorant people, of whom there are many. No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
The above quote in italics is from the inestimable H.L. Mencken, who died in 1956. But it seems truer today than ever. Ignorance is rising folks. It represents a clear and present danger to the American republic.
Why is ignorance increasing while information flow has never been greater? Part of it surely is the abysmal state of our schools. We are graduating high schoolers who can barely read, can only do mathematics on calculators, who can't write at all, and have no critical thinking skills. How can this be?
Everybody knows why:
1) Teachers (elementary and secondary) are paid like janitors and are expected to supplement classroom materials from their insufficient salaries. The best and the brightest, not surprisingly, don't aspire to be teachers.
2) The "No child left behind" program, while admirable in its purpose, has meant that teachers are required to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to bring laggards up to speed, while the gifted languish. They have to teach to the test as well as to the lowest common denominator.
I know whereof I speak, in part because I am a college instructor, and in part because I am married to a remarkable woman. She worked 37 years in a factory and then went back to school and received a bachelors degree in education at the age of 58. She has a pension (thank you Union) but now she is a teacher of eighth graders because she loves kids. But she has found it a tough row to hoe.
One of my wife's students is autistic: he has a teacher's aide assigned to him all day long; still he does almost nothing that is required of him; he is violent and threatens other students almost daily; and yet the school doesn't feel that they can expel him because he has been diagnosed as disabled. He is a sponge that uses up resources and yet the probability that he will become even marginally productive is almost nil.
Though many of the truly uneducated never make it to the college level, inevitably we are faced with trying to do remedial work on those who have the courage to look higher.
I work at Tennessee's largest university, but I moonlight at a community college. One day I found a test from an American history exam left in the copy machine. It was one of those matching tests:
- Theodore Roosevelt A) Indigenous American species
- Samuel Gompers B) Plains Indians
- American Bison C) The Philipines
- San Juan Harbor D) Rough rider
- American bison E) labor leader
Besides the fact that it resembles an 8th grade exam more than a college exam, I realized that this test suffers from the same problem as Sarah Palin's speech. There is no content here, only association.
There was a Know Nothing party back in the mid 19th century, but ignorance has never been the political force that it is now, partly because of the willingness of the corpocracy as represented by Faux News to use the ignorance of the populace to fulfill its aims. They do it by amping the principle of associative learning to the max and the rest of the journalistic world assists them.
Faux News Anchor: Obama is a socialist.
MSNBC anchor: Obama is not a socialist.
Faux News Anchor: It is well known that Obama has a socialist agenda.
MSNBC: Obama has no socialist agenda.
MEET THE PRESS: Today we will have a balanced debate on whether or not Obama is a socialist.
Out there in America, most cannot follow the debate because, for one thing, they don't understand the word "socialist." And they have no critical thinking skills. What they do know is that the man "Obama" is connected with the word "socialist" and that must be bad for some reason.
This is associative learning. This is the best that many Americans can do these days.
I feel bad sometimes, because I myself am guilty. I teach Anatomy and Physiology, but because Biology and Chemistry are no longer prerequisites, we are forced to throw in a remedial chapter or two. I teach them that "Proteins are made from amino acids." But they have no real concept of proteins, and none of amino acids. I throw up a few chemical diagrams but it's like Greek to them. So the multiple choice question is:
Proteins are made from
A) nucleic acids
B) fatty acids
C) amino acids
D) hydrochloric acids
E) none of the above
And the multiple choice question for the American people is
Obama is
A) a communist
B) a fascist
C) a socialist
D) a Muslim terrorist
E) all of the above
Well, they haven't really followed all the arguments, but they know he's bad, whatever.
One of my students was complaining about another professor.
"He teaches too much stuff. I only want to know what I need to know."
"So you want to remain as ignorant as possible and still be functional," I responded.
The Ignorant are on the verge of becoming a real movement. They recognize each other by their bad grammar and shared belief systems as inculcated by Faux News.
If you really want a Progressive Movement in America, support education. Republicanism is thriving on contrived stupidity.