To The Victors Go The Spoiled

John Houseman as Professor Kingsford had this to say in “The Paper Chase”:

"You come in with a brain full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer."

If Professor Kingsford were to be a member of the faculty at any major university today he would nod his head in approval. Universities have succeeded well beyond his expectations and not just for those seeking to make a career at practicing the law. After all isn’t life today just one big legal minefield?

Pre-nuptial agreements substitute for romantic commitment. Triangulation and blame placing substitute for risk taking and the consequences attached to possible failure. Self-censorship and mendacity substitute for reasoned discourse about controversial topics. Universities, for those not learning from what passes as role models, are more than up to the task to impart this “knowledge” to their victims.

Admittedly universities do not have much to work with in today’s typical incoming freshman class. After years of self-absorptive coddling from what passes as a high school education why should a freshman think that anything would change in college? By continuing to be self-absorbed and by continuing to wrap themselves in the protective musical cocoon of their I-Pod they should be able to make the “college experience” like the “high school experience” just go away. As with anything done without reason or commitment the only thing left is attending to fulfill the expectations of others.

Some residue of rebellion remains however. It is easier, although just barely, to cut classes in college than it is to cut classes in high school. College funding does not depend on students actually being in class. Instead it depends solely on misinformed consumers (also known as parents and taxpayers) paying extortionate tuition and levies in the misguided belief that a liberal arts education from a “name brand” institution of higher learning means the same thing today that it did more than 50 years ago.

Rather than a liberal education, students instead find themselves falling down a rabbit hole that defies description by a Lewis Carroll and into a land that can only barely be hinted at by J.R.R. Tolkien. Grizzled trolls in the form of professors pat each other on the backs as they reminisce about victories past when they planted their flag in the corpse of academic discourse. All the while these same professors lament that they receive at best polite attention if not blank stares from their young charges clearly showing no enthusiasm about these stories of yore. Administrators sit like village elders who have never left the comfort of their town square terrified of what might lurk outside the hedgerows.

So they have won. And victory tastes like ashes in their mouth. There are no more battles to fight in Wonderland, Mordor, Oz, or whatever you wish to call the university campus. No one cares. Especially uncaring are the students. And why should anyone be surprised? The student has learned his lessons well. Even so, the trolls and elders are bitter in their winter years and the student is left wanting.

Are We More Free Today?

Memorial Day is traditionally a day of national reflection as well as celebration. We look back on how our country has been shaped and protected by our fellow citizens who served as members of the armed forces of the United States of America. We think about the freedoms we have today because of their sacrifice and courage. What we might not think about is the systematic and methodical erosion of those same hard won freedoms by judicial fiat, legislative myopia, and bureaucratic dictate. This is being done in such a casual and off-hand manner as to be characterized by media and other enablers as business as usual.

Americans have thought of themselves as being independent, fair-minded, having great initiative and possessing innovative skills to address any challenge that might come their way. And for the most part, at least when related to external foreign threats, America has used these skills to make the world a better place. But can the same be said about the home front?

Erosion of freedoms, as it is with riverbeds, happens gradually. The erosion comes in many forms. It is the local bureaucrat zealously policing water use and punishing those who transgress municipal policy regardless that water is metered and paid for as it used. It is the faceless apparatchik who pulls the strings on local schools from a distant state or national capitol because the school is dependent on outside public finances. It is a legislature which nit picks in a way that only caters to short-term special interests while showing no inclination for restraining the heavy hand of government. It is the cynical judge who places personal bias above what is said by the jury, the voter, and the constitution.

Do these architects and purveyors of diminished freedoms care about the public trust put into their hands by so many who died for America? Hardly. They know nothing of history. They do not think of themselves as just another attempt at establishing the failed ideology of centralized authority. They do not see they have fell into the same trap of allowing themselves to become tin gods trying to force their subjects to bow down to the perverted philosophy of man as individual being above the will and consent of those they govern. For them the chance to enhance a lackluster guilt-ridden life through the abuse of power is too seductive to let pass by.

As we spend our treasured American holiday with friends and family we might just dwell upon the monuments in our national cemeteries. Now they have religious markings. A day may come when these markings are removed as they offend a single person. The monuments themselves may be removed as they are considered an ostentatious display of national pride as well as getting in the way of the bureaucrats who maintain the cemeteries. Then Memorial Day and all of those who make it holy will pass away, victim to the legion of domestic mediocrity that lives only to destroy democracy.

The Great Substance Abuse Rush of ‘08

It has recently been reported that the face value of the American penny is less than the value of the copper used to make the penny. Talk is now being heard of returning to the days of the World War II era steel penny in order to conserve copper. For years drug-involved people have been ripping copper wire out of public schools and other basically abandoned buildings to sell for scrap. Who knew they were on to something?

Speaking of drugs, this sudden spike in metal prices has an eerie similarity to the behavior of the oil and gas market. Let’s sum up. Persons addicted to a drug (oil and gas) have little of it available to them at a price they can afford to pay (arm and a leg). In a desperate measure to feed their substance need they scrape together whatever resources they have in order to satisfy their addiction, even if it means seriously undermining their way of living (you call this living?).

They then give their resources to front men (Citgo and others) almost totally controlled by an international drug cartel (OPEC and non-OPEC countries) which charges anything they wish out of individual greed and knowing that the addict is hopelessly dependent on them. Methadone (biofuel, solar, wind, geothermal, and cow flatulence) is available but it costs more, is severely regulated, in short supply, or has bad side effects (has a bigger carbon footprint or smells worse than oil) and does not produce that long-term industrial strength high that heroin (light, sweet crude) does.

Entering a 12-step program (drilling domestically, using nuclear power, and developing other competitive energy technologies such as coal and shale oil) which have been shown to work (proven technology) is not even a consideration since the addict has not yet hit bottom (sustained rolling blackouts, incurred massive unemployment, or experienced food riots) which in the addicts foggy thoughts would be less destructive than the alternative (harming a snail darter, polar bear, or some guy named Bruce who wants to marry a sea otter).

Such is the insanity of addiction and so it will remain until, like all addictions a bad ending occurs or the addicted kick their habit for good.

School of Hard Knocks

A couple of lines from the song “Kodachrome” released in 1973 and written and sung by Paul Simon go like this:

“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all. And that my life of education hasn’t hurt me none, I can read the writing on the wall.”

Today these lines are still relevant. My belief is they are relevant for reasons much different than what Mr. Simon thought of when he first wrote them. I suspect Mr. Simon thought of his high school education as being indoctrination.

Today rather than being an indoctrination, which implies some kind of organized educational agenda, a high school education is more like a series of episodes from a bad TV reality series. The student can continue to watch unattended or can, since he is unattended, choose to leave the room. As dropout rates show, many students choose to leave.

High schools, at least in theory, are charged with an important and difficult task. That task is to prepare young people for future life in our society as functional adults and good citizens. On top of this some are of the belief that high schools should also teach people to be a better person as well if not instead. The rub is it is easier to define and apply standards to “functional adult” or “good citizen” than to “better person”.

Those qualities that define a “better person” are relative and therefore are anybody’s guess. Because of this, high schools over the years habitually have been the laboratory for anybody to guess about what it takes to be a better person. All of this guessing comes at the expense of teaching functional literacy, responsibility and citizenship. It also, not surprisingly, comes at the expense of the high school student.

My own days in high school (late 60’s) occurred about a decade after Mr. Simons experience and on the opposite coast. Despite these differences in time and space, I believe the commonality that all high school students share both back then and now is dependency. When we were in high school, as would be the case if I were in high school today, we depended entirely upon what was taught to us and who influenced these teachings. Questioning authority was something that was just not done by high school students. And this was and still is fair as we were not adults and we needed to respect our teachers as well as our parents who, ideally in a collaborative effort, helped with preparing us for life as an adult. This respect was a given in order to maintain order in the classroom which in turn would allow teaching and learning to flourish.

Today things are different. The years of experimentation have turned high schools into something akin to the federal tax code. No one understands or is happy with high schools but all recognize their inevitability. It is enough to know only that high schools, like the tax code, have been and will always be with us. In order to avoid severe social sanctions no one dares ask why high schools exist. It is prudent to only know that they exist and tinker with them as best as possible to further ones own special interests.

Each component of the high school fiefdom whether it be teachers, administrators, politicians, or assorted social engineers fights for their territory and power under the guise of helping to educate “the kids”. It is the ages old battle of tribal chieftains attempting to acquire more land, goats, and wives. And the student is caught in the middle. So, all the while, the student learns. He learns to be a “better person”.

Minority Report

Miley Cyrus is but the latest victim of a long tradition in the “entertainment” business where parents, when looking at their children, see only dollar signs. Using the past as a predictor Miley has a very good chance of engaging in alcohol dependency, drug addiction or some other self-destructive behavior in the near future. One only has to step around the shattered careers of Lindsey Lohan and Brittany Spears to see two very current examples.

This tradition of selective child exploitation is not confined to just entertainment but also includes selective individual sports such as golf (Michelle Wie) and tennis (Tracy Austin/Jennifer Capriati) that have also managed to burn the youth out of children before they even leave their teens. Entertainment and sports have been given a pass from child labor laws that were designed to allow kids to be kids and to shield them from the physical and mental pressures of the adult world of work.

Because of child labor laws, children do not work in mines, on assembly lines or in other dangerous endeavors. And this is rightly so. But somehow children can work constantly with adults if they have a tennis racket or microphone in their hands. Oddities and prodigies are cultivated as trumped up minstrel acts. They dance hat in hand not just for family memories but for all, once they have paid, to see. This is seen as being fine as long as they have a tutor following them around to ensure they do their schooling. This is done notwithstanding the benefits of “socializing” and other skills allegedly given a child who participates in an organized public or private education.

The striking thing about this practice is that the parents of the prodigy are usually quite well off. It is not as if the child were in a Third World country and had to work the streets to help ensure the survival of their family. Somehow the parents justify their actions as being in the best interest of their child. The reality is this is seldom if ever the case. The child who works in the adult world is seen as an adult. And this is because regardless of who signs the contract for the child the child is being paid as an adult, competes with adults and especially in the case of sports often takes the place of an adult who would otherwise be able to compete as a professional.

So we either suspend the rules of work for everyone regardless of age or we get serious about enforcing child labor laws. I believe in enforcement. No one should be allowed to make money off the backs of children. Period.