The torch of academia continues to dim...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134288,00.html
I just found this article link in another blog. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to do that neat 'click the word for the link' thing that everyone else seems to be doing here. I'll probably figure it out as soon as I post this. Anyway, back to the matter at hand.
The thought of using school time and credit to learn things like 'healthy eating' and 'gardening' is interesting, if slightly useless, and it points out a trend in society that is not likely to pass on anytime soon. First off, those topics are great. Kids should learn those things. Where should they learn them? At school? No. How about at home? There was a time when kids grew up learning about plants in their own front yard, and learning about cooking and eating in their own kitchens. Who taught them? Their parents and/or siblings. All right, I know times change. I didn't grow up in a house. We had a subsidized townhouse. But there was a 2'x6' piece of dirt under the front window, and my mother put plants there (and yes, she worked and put herself through college as well). She also cooked. Why? She had a child to feed, and it's a natural instinct of the human animal to provide food for its young. All this is to say, it's too bad that when kids are not in school, they are being socialized by their peers, zombified by the television, and neglected by their parents. So, the schools attempt to weigh the burdon of doing all the work of raising healthy, happy, productive members of society (similar to the burdon the U.S. faces over policing the world), with the more preferable option of simply focusing on giving children a healthy dose of the 3 R's.
What is the outcome? I don't know.
But here's a suggestion--There are still children who receive some education at home. For them, I would say a little nutrition, a little 'plant and harvest', no sweat. If they have the right attention at home, they are probably motivated enough to fill in the gaps themselves. But, the children who have no direction at home, the ones who create the greatest strain on the educational system (and yes, it is the parents' fault, even though one day they were just kids whose parents sucked as well), they are the ones who will suffer. Why? Because by the time they graduate high school, they will only be qualified to work at McDonald's and only able to afford tenement housing. At best, they will have to dream of nutrition and gardens, faint images that vanish from their minds with the ongoing cries of the unwanted children who live in the unit next to them, children whose exasperated parents will seek solace elsewhere, leaving them with the dubious tutelage of Will and Grace.
Or it may just work itself all out.
I just found this article link in another blog. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to do that neat 'click the word for the link' thing that everyone else seems to be doing here. I'll probably figure it out as soon as I post this. Anyway, back to the matter at hand.
The thought of using school time and credit to learn things like 'healthy eating' and 'gardening' is interesting, if slightly useless, and it points out a trend in society that is not likely to pass on anytime soon. First off, those topics are great. Kids should learn those things. Where should they learn them? At school? No. How about at home? There was a time when kids grew up learning about plants in their own front yard, and learning about cooking and eating in their own kitchens. Who taught them? Their parents and/or siblings. All right, I know times change. I didn't grow up in a house. We had a subsidized townhouse. But there was a 2'x6' piece of dirt under the front window, and my mother put plants there (and yes, she worked and put herself through college as well). She also cooked. Why? She had a child to feed, and it's a natural instinct of the human animal to provide food for its young. All this is to say, it's too bad that when kids are not in school, they are being socialized by their peers, zombified by the television, and neglected by their parents. So, the schools attempt to weigh the burdon of doing all the work of raising healthy, happy, productive members of society (similar to the burdon the U.S. faces over policing the world), with the more preferable option of simply focusing on giving children a healthy dose of the 3 R's.
What is the outcome? I don't know.
But here's a suggestion--There are still children who receive some education at home. For them, I would say a little nutrition, a little 'plant and harvest', no sweat. If they have the right attention at home, they are probably motivated enough to fill in the gaps themselves. But, the children who have no direction at home, the ones who create the greatest strain on the educational system (and yes, it is the parents' fault, even though one day they were just kids whose parents sucked as well), they are the ones who will suffer. Why? Because by the time they graduate high school, they will only be qualified to work at McDonald's and only able to afford tenement housing. At best, they will have to dream of nutrition and gardens, faint images that vanish from their minds with the ongoing cries of the unwanted children who live in the unit next to them, children whose exasperated parents will seek solace elsewhere, leaving them with the dubious tutelage of Will and Grace.
Or it may just work itself all out.
posted by Master of None at 11:36 AM
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