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AGAINST_STUPIDITY

                                         September 15, 2004

Intellectual fads come and
go, and along the way they
often produce changes in         When you come down to it,
the educational system, but      it just doesn't seem to
they never seem to do any        matter very much what the
real good.                       subject of discussion is
                                 when the students are just
                                 yawning through it to get
                                 their union cards...



Once up on a time (mid-1970s?) it was:

  We must bridge the "Two Cultures", it's time
  for...  Interdisciplinary Distribution Requirements!

                              TWO_CULTS

Then once upon another time (late 80s, early 90s):

  When I was at Stanford a multicultural
  assault was on the way, against Stanford's
  well-regarded requirement for undergrads to
  do a year's worth of study of "Western
  Culture".  This got revised into some sort of
  "World Culture" program, named "Cultures          Acroynym:
  Ideas and Values".                                "CIV", get
                                                    it?

      I was down on this change myself:
      I figured that while you can
      construct arguments for it that
      sound good, the way it would play        "After all, what *is*
      out is that the the revised               Western Culture? Can
      program would be less substantive         you understand the
      without a heavy background in the         West without, say,
      classics, dreaded Dead White Males        knowing about rock n'
      or no.                                    roll?"

                 But I suspect that the way
                 it *really* played out is
                 you got the kids buying a
                 different set of books         A class in "Western
                 they're not going to read,     Culture" sounds like
                 and that's about it.           fun to me, but I'd
                                                hear undergrads say
                                                stuff like "I'm off
                                                to Western Torture".


Then once upon a still later time (the
90s, perhaps on through the Naughts):

   You sometimes hear people claiming that
   we can save American education with
   national standardized tests...

       Myself, I graduated from a
       high school in New York State,
       which has a bunch of                        TEACHING_THE_TEST
       additional tests kids take in
       order to earn a diploma from
       the state Board of Regents.
       While ace-ing them is no joke,
       merely passing them really is:
       they're dumbed down to make
       sure that nearly any warm body
       can squeak by.

          You can't possibly
          Maintain Standards
          with a standardized test.

             Standardization is the
             opposite of intelligence.




It's all so sad, but
what can you really do?

There's no question that
education is important,
and no question
that it needs improvement,
what changes can you possibly        And worse, a funny dated-looking
try to make that won't turn          band-aid reflecting concerns of
into another band-aid?               eras gone by.  Paisley psychedelic
                                     band-aids, pin-striped organization
                                     man band-aids, sputnik atom-age
                                     band-aids, multi-cultural band-aids
                                     with a rainbow of fleshtones...


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