"Richard C. August" <raugust at ptd.net> wrote:
>My mother related this story to me last night. A gentleman she knows
>inquired of three teenage children on the streets of my hometown concerning
>who bombed Pearl Harbor at the beginning of US involvement in World War 2.
>One teen answered that US Forces bombed our own base under friendly fire.
Everyone has certain facts that they forget because they aren't particularly
useful. Other than as a cultural reference, to a teen of today Pearl Harbor
is no more important than Lexington, Sumter, the Maine, or the Zimmermann
letter, and perhaps less important to world history than the Rubicon, the
Silk Road, the Visigoths, the Tatars, the Black Death, and the French
Revolution. It is just another name and date among so many others, and they
get them confused.
>Another answered that Usama bin Laden bombed Pearl Harbor,
At least they knew who bin Ladin was
>Yet another answered most intelligently, that he didn't know.
Always an intelligent answer.
>A former PA state Gubernatorial candidate, Peg Luksik, remarked in a
>campaign speech made to senior citizens in a senior center, that a girl who
>learned phonetic spelling could never figure out that "apple" was spelled
>a-p-p-l-e when she was told that phonetically, she could spell it any way
>she pleased, so she chose a-p-l.
I'm sure that a few kids will come to think this no matter how they are
educated. And a few others won't care. I know of people who INTENTIONALLY
spell certain words phonetically because they want to subtly move towards
language reform.
Meanwhile, I just ran across a Civil War diary excerpt that was published
unedited. An Illinois preacher (presumably educated at a seminary), serving
in the war, whose spelling and grammar were every bit as bad as that girl who
chose a-p-l. Indeed for a couple of words, he spelled them multiple ways in
the same excerpt.
>Never mind that our kids never learn real American History or Spelling, or
>that they learn revisionist standards
You mean they learned new "truths" that have replaced the old "truths",
because knowledge advances constantly?
>from highly paid but untrained professors who earned their degrees from diploma mills
Relatively few professors got degrees from diploma mills.
>and were promoted by
>the Peter Principle. Our kids are rapidly becoming even more INCOMPETENT
>than are these professors, to the point that they can't even figure out the
>numbers on a calculator, much less work a slide rule.
Why would anyone need to work a slide rule today?
>Lastly, I was taking an evening walk last night, when I observed several
>teen girls rather provocatively dressed. Granted, it is summertime and they
>need to dress to be cool. But to wear clothes only a prostitute would wear
>would make one wonder where their brains really are.
Assuming that they were not prostitutes, then it clearly is a false statement
that only a prostitute would wear them. At which point the question becomes
why women's standards of dress should be determined by men's perverted
thinking that associates recreational dress with occupation.
Do you still walk the streets in top hat and wearing a vestcoat and cravat?
Should people judge you a slob because you do not dress and act like a
gentleman?
>Can they read clothing labels, or bottles of hair colourant?
Probably better than you do. But they probably don't read the Encyclopedia
Britannica.
>Is it any wonder our American Schools
>are now wasting more money and talent with day care centers in our high
>schools whilst pregnant teenagers usurp our tax dollars ostensibly obtaining
>an education when they've been told flat out they can earn more money on
>their backs than they can on their feet?
Have they been told this? By who? And who is paying them - gentlemen like
you?
>Face it, Mrs. Smith, American Schools are a dungheap, and American Children
>are its fodder. Billions of American dollars are wasted educating the
>uneducable MTV generation, who care nothing about the real world other than
>watching "The Real World" on MTV. Talk to these kids, and find out how
>dumb, or how smart, they really are. "Beavis and Butthead" have met their
>progeny here.
This from a guy who thinks that "John Knight" has anything to do with the
"real world". He makes Beavis and Butthead seem both intelligent and
well-connected with reality.
lojbab
