Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Monday, March 21, 2011

This Is NOT The Fault Of Pubic School Teachers

Via Political Wire:

Newsweek recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America's official citizenship test and found 29% couldn't name the vice president, 73% couldn't correctly say why we fought the Cold War, 44% were unable to define the Bill of Rights and 6% couldn't even circle Independence Day on a calendar.

This kind of thing is NOT the fault of teachers.

This kind of thing is the fault of stupid Americans.

Listen, we live in a country where nothing is too stupid, ephemeral or superficial to NOT make the news.

I take the PATH, a train system that is outfitted with NBC TV's. I am subjected to "news" headlines that often are promos for some of the dumbest shit imaginable - reality shows, idiotic sitcoms, melodramas so bad that I cringe watching 15 seconds of them.

And that's just the shit they show on the The Today Show.

That's supposed to be "news" with Al and Matt and whoever the fuck took Couric's place (some woman, I dunno, I don't care who the fuck it is.)

I went to the same high school as Al Roker and the couple of times I have seen him in person I have wanted to say, "Hey, Al, how the fuck do you sleep at night with the horseshit you put on TV? Seriously, do you understand that watching even five minutes of the crap you and Matt and the faceless woman whose name I do not know spew MAKES PEOPLE DUMBER.

Yeah, you make enough to pay for the ex wives and the liposuction, but seriously, there's a place in John Bunyan's hell for you when you're done with this mortal coil.

I can only hope they make you watch reruns of your Weather Channel show for eternity.

Until people turn this bullshit off - the "news" on the cable channels or the networks, the local "news," the conventional wisdom/drivel that passes for "news" on public TV and radio, the garbage in the papers (ALL of the papers - the News, the Post AND the Times) and say "ENOUGH!!!", they will keep feeding us this crap and more and more people will watch or listen or read or view on the Net or see it on Facebook or whatever and fewer and fewer will know what the Bill of Rights is or just how badly they're, in the words of George Carlin, "getting fucked by a system that threw them over 30 fucking years ago!"

But let me repeat - this is NOT the fault of teachers.

This is the fault of emotionally detached humans who would rather veg out with mindless corporate infotainment, corporate sports, corporate wars and other bullshit instead of protecting themselves from the oncoming New Feudal Order.

1 comment:

  1. You are correct. I teach 12th grade civics. I KNOW I have taught EVERYTHING on the Newsweek exam. By July, they will have forgotten most of the information, and they don't care if they EVER learned the information....Right now we have The NCAA Tourney. Why do we need to know the vice president?

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