March 10, 2008
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Which is more powerful: actions or words?
Actions of course. Words to come from the heart, but actions make intentions real. The use of words can be considered an action at times–like encouragement. But the goal of rhetoric (use of words) is always to move the audience to action whether to make a judgement based on past facts (forensic), or to make a decision for future action (deliberative), or to affirm common values by praising or blaming (epideictic). So words to action.
Anyway, to another topic. I heard about this story on my favorite radio station. I find the entire thing ridiculous a student has control over his or her learning. But in America we have to blame someone instead of take responsibility for our own failures. And that blame and the witchhunting that comes afterward creates fear (a fear that wouldn’t exist if our justice system weren’t so broken with beauracracy and shamless pandering to the lawless mob). Fear to fail the student because of parents suing for discrimination. Now, fear of passing because the student will sue the school for not doing its job to teaching.
Well, how is the school supposed to do its job if:
1. Parents don’t to theirs. It’s their kid. It is THEIR responsibility to teach and train their children. They brought it into the world after all. It is NOT THE SCHOOLS’ REPSONSIBILITY TO MAKE THEIR CHILDREN LEARN. Schools teach. Parents make sure their kids learn. That’s the social contract.
2. Schools are not allowed to discriminate based on test score and ability. Let’s face the truth: education is by NATURE discriminatory. Not about ethnicity per se, but about merit and ability. It is supposed to separtate those that know from those that do not hence degrees. If everyone can get (not earn) one then degrees are worthless. We might as well be communist and have doctors work on the farm and farmers perform surgery! Which brings me to my next point.
3. Schools are afraid of accusations of racism from racist minority people. We all know who they are. People who would readily blame their ethnicity for all their woes. People who would cry havoc and immediately think that whatever failure they have achieved in life is because “The Man” is sticking it to them, oppressing them. Well, I’ve got news for those people: YOU’RE THE MAN NOW. Everybody’s afraid of you. You’ve already killed “The Man” in the ’70s. Yet you keep on beating his dead body and then threaten to do the same to others (kinda reminds me of one time at Hollywood Park. A man lost a race and kept on screaming that the man rigged the race while beating his own hand with his racing form. ‘sblood.). You keep reminding us of your skin color, of your past oppression, of perceived oppression, special disabilities, etc. Geesh! Stop oppressing the rest of us. You are not the victim anymore, you are the victimizer now.
Schools can’t do their jobs when racist people keep terrorizing the weak-bellied administrators. I guess it beats actually having to earn something. If you can’t beg, you beat it out of someone else.
Anyway, it all reminds me much too much of the satirical movie Teachers with Nick Nolte. The movie put everything bad about education in the 1980s and spun it as a worst case scenario. Well, I guess that satire isn’t far from the truth. Our education system is a genral failure. You have to be a lunatic, like Custer, to stand with your limited resources, shoulder to shoulder with incompetents, and try to stave off the lawless horde of America’s future.
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