Reading back over this entry in my blog, I don't much like it. Not a bad idea, but it's too long, rants a bit, and offers no solutions. Bleah. Still, I'll leave it here until I can a) fix it or b) get tired of it and delete it. Pardon my verbosity.
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Does anyone remember the last Newhart Show, from the 80s, where there was the line "Hi. I'mLarry. This is Darryl and this is my other brother, Darryl"? I loved these 3 characters, the not-quite idiot savant and his two silent side kicks.
In my "middle age" I've become less tolerant of rednecks - a broad term I'm using to generally describe guys who spit. Ok, so it's women too, but where did these people grow up? Is there really a subculture where spitting on public streets, (even opening your car/truck door to do so in traffic) is acceptable?
Of course there is, and therein lies my deep discomfort.
Maybe as I've gotten older I'm just less into denial (
AS IF they might snag a chick with a shiny, metallic sticker and a v8 engine?
So what has this to do with dumbing down? I think what bugs me is that these guys are so incredibly proud of being uneducated and uncultured.
Even more disturbing is the trend to take so many large and small interactions down to the lowest common denominator.
For instance, in the local school system parents who chaperone field trips have to have full background checks now. And parents can't sleep in the same room as the children. How many parents have actually submitted to days of chaos with hundreds of overcharged elementary, middle or highschool students on field trips for the purpose of molesting them?
Shouldn't we be getting to know our parents better? And teaching our kids how to recognize a sexual predator? Wouldn't 3 (or 5 or 10) references be enough?
What about filming every person who enters a bank? Can they actually catch criminals with the lousy recording of the holdup? I wouldn't know my own mother in those films. Why not just attach webcams to the tellers foreheads?
How about fingerprinting people who are cashing checks at banks? Even before 9/11 this became common place. How much use can they really make of all those thousands of fingerprints? Did you feel like a criminal when you made the obligatory smudge? So the crooks have taken over your banking experience.
Teachers, sadly, have to devote most of their time to dealing behavior problems in the classroom. And then bureaucratic paperwork after hours. When they are finished with these two challenges there are irate parents to face. And then, worse, there are the apathetic ones.
Standardized tests themselves finalize the push toward mediocrity. Why learn how to communicate clearly and concisely when you can just sail through with multiple choice bubbles? Why should teachers bring creativity or passion into the classroom when what they get paid for is making scores good? Even their bonuses (!) depend on how many kids are at "grade level" according to the test.
Patients can't figure out that antibiotics don't work on viruses, so even doctors get dumb and over-prescribe. As a result viruses and bacterial infections build up resistance to antibiotics. So we all suffer. Too bad prescriptions for "Placebo" aren't covered under our failing medical care system.
Speaking of which, emergency rooms are packed with people who can't get preventative medical care, so every person who seeks care is at risk, waiting for hours and hours and hours. Again, the entire system descends into the pits of the lowest common denominator.
This is starting to sound classist, but that's part of what got us into this mess.
When poor schools can't get basic materials, but rich schools have everything, how can we hope to solve poverty? How are we going to break the vicious cycle of ignorance and abuse?
I'd say the best way to solve most of these problems is education.
Sure, a little reorganization and money invested up front in schools and health care would be the sensible answer. But witness the recent Medicare bill, and you know that "common sense" and real reform are often the last items on political agendas.
So where else are we sinking to the lowest common denominator? Elections (30 second political ads), democracy (sound bites and FL and chads), media (USA Today, aka "McPaper"), NASA (PowerPoint presentations), television ("reality" shows), movies ("The Terminator 8"), global economy (we trade with China in spite of her environmental and human rights records), foreign policy (fictional weapons of mass destruction and we bomb a third world country into the "stone age"), and of course, dubya (Jeb is the smart one, remember?).
Here's one for you - the Middle East. Every bombing begets retaliation, and more bloodshed, and de-rails the peace process. Why give the terrorists in Israel control of the peace process? What happened to letting cooler heads prevail? (And it isn't just Palestinians who harbor and vote for terrorists. Trragically, Israel also has the blood of the innocent on her hands.) How can peace be achieved in the hands of radicals? Since when are terrorists good policy makers?
Tom came up with the term Redneck Diplomacy: "Do what we say, or we'll kick your ass." This could be rephrased as, "You hit (or scare) us, so we're going to hit you harder." Lowest common denominator. Same thing.
Now tell me true - have you ever purchased a book with a title like "Idiot's Guide to _____" or "_____ for Dummies"?
Yeah, me too. Visual Basic for Dummies. I needed it for a class I was teaching, as a reminder of what I'd forgotten in basic programming.
Was I being a good trainer? I was being lazy.
So what to do about rednecks? I've got a book in mind to write: "An Idiot's Guide to Idiots"
Posted by Vicki at December 27, 2003 06:40 PM