Article 2 Cracked.com, brilliant joke site
A rare non-consumer-media article from me today. I hate writing about politics, but a good deal of what ails me comes from watching this failtrain of news. Like my protest article (see March 2010), I completely acknowledge my ability to be wrong. These are my thoughts and feelings converted to text as best I can, and oftentimes while I have mixed views, what I write here is what I think most. This is going to be long, so strap in. I'm writing this because I've read two articles recently on similar subjects, and while I think the two articles raise some good points and, for the most part aren't BS, when I read articles like this I feel like an angry finger is being unfairly pointed at me, and my natural response is to go "Get that finger out of my face". In addition, I feel like too many people complain about the state of the US, citing its position on the global totem, lazy youth and disunity. So if you decided not to read those articles, let me break them down for you just a little bit. It goes like this: these days it seems like the USA and especially our younger generations don't work hard enough. Test scores are low, teachers cite absenteeism and apathy as major problems, and economically, well you know. Work ethics have been lost to get rich quick-ism and spoiled....ness, then everyone cries "How come I'm not rich yet?". With the economy suffering badly and other nations rising up in fits of inexpensive and tough labor, these men pointed fingers at everyone who is young. They say that in the 40s no government officials when were afraid to ask the people to contribute and to sacrifice and also were not afraid to tell people that hard work would be needed. And the young people of the time were reputedly not afraid to give that hard work, roll up their sleeves and make it happen. So now that I've laid it out, let me respond.
(1) Tests
The articles above cite test scores as evidence for low work ethic, as well as lament the fact that we're #11-ish on global charts. I loved K-12 school. In normal classes, I really felt mentally stimulated and wanted to come back the next day. You know what part really made me apathetic? Standardized test time. I couldn't learn anything while they went on, they were boring, and honestly did not feel indicative of my actual abilities. I remember feeling like it was a waste for everyone to try and quantify language ability. You can quantify math, sure, but again the material didn't always match up with what I was taught 100%. If I'd scored low, it would only indicate that I was taught the wrong thing. 9 times out of 10, if I missed a math question, it was because I was like "What is that?", not because my existing abilities sucked. If we compare these scores with those of other nations, it only indicates that they can do this or that better because they were taught this or that, not that they are better period. What I'm trying to say is that more and more emphasis and stress is being placed on standardized test scores, and that's probably not good. Those test scores have done nothing for me. I went to junior college, so when I transfered to a university, I didn't need my SAT. The high school exit exam? If you can spell your name, you can pass it. So what are we gauging with these scores, and if the scores are low, how is it indicative of low work ethic? The problem is boredom. All of the kids I see are actually very driven. I was a relatively well-prepared student, and today's students are leagues ahead of my younger self on average. Apathy is probably a problem in the classroom because we're dumping more and more money, time and effort into trying to get our kids to score high on these exams.
"Stop learning for a minute -- we need to test for learning"
Another thing that bothers me is the people who flail their arms in panic whenever they hear the US is not #1 in this or that. I hear pundits go on and ooooooon about how sad they are to see America now and back when they were kids, America was king. They have this idea in their head that the correct order of the world is to have America as the most powerful nation, as if letting anyone else take over for a while would be like letting the bad guys win. News flash, people: Since 1776 (or whatever), up to and including 194X, America was not the most powerful or rich nation ever. That comfy chair has only been ours for the last 60 years at most. America was fraught with failure and a lack of unity for almost its entire existence. The generations raised after 1940 have exclusively known America as the top contender, and can't handle the shock of it only measuring up as just "pretty darn good" now. With 6 billion people on Earth and almost 200 nations, how can we expect to hold #1 if every. last. person and nation is trying for it?
(3) Lazy youth
I'm a scatterbrain. Let me go back a little bit and talk about the young people. It's easy to look at children and teens now and think that they aren't very capable. With TV, really bad pop music, computers, the internet, twitter, facebook, videogames, and teen pregnancy, it's easy to get the impression that the youth of the na-ation are worthless, and when it's time for them to become the adults, America is doomed. DOOOOMED! While culture changes quickly enough that I'm only 23 and already don't get teens, I could probably say that I never did. Even as a teen myself, I was not able to comprehend many of the activities, dispositions and psyches of the people I went to school with. This can probably be said about people "like me" who went to high school 5 years before me, 10 years before me, and so on. We live in a media culture these days that unfortunately broadcasts the lowest common denominator. Like in any generation, we have workers, intellectuals, idiots, lazy-asses, etc. I'm an okay student, and while I was growing up, I was constantly reminded (first-hand) that the generations before mine did not hold education in as high esteem as they do now. Manual skills, not raw educational rankings, were what they used to focus on. You can't tell me that scholastic ineptitude wasn't a problem before but it is now. You can't. It's not like every student in the 50s did their schoolwork and did it perfectly. Every generation had their idiots and rebels and such. In the 50s it was the greasers. In the 60s it was the hippies. In every generation, the problem is that we only really see the flamboyant idiots. That is, it doesn't really help that we don't put our best in the media instead of idiots. But honestly, you couldn't say that the adult world doesn't have this problem too.
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