Read Online More Money Than Brains by Laura Penny - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Laura Penny
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have yet to fuck up. You know the drill: mouth some well-meaning mush about how much math and science and reading rilly, rilly matter in the twenty-first century, tousle some moppet’s hair, feign interest in the classroom tchotchkes, finagle some mom-and-pop votes.
They can also use the state of the schools to go dire and forecast doom. This sort of school panic-speak is a watered-down long-range version of the politics of fear that has prevailed since 9/11. If immediate perils such as terrorists, a rising China, or wussification by Eurosocialism do not destroy North America first, someday all our stupid children will. Our failed schools will render them too stunned and broke to run the machines and dole out the meds we expect to ease us through our dotage. And our children’s children will be utterly barbaric and bereft, wandering some blasted Mad Max hellscape, barely able to recall the recipe for fire, even though everything around them is burning, endlessly burning.
School crisis stories are a manifestation of our worries about the future and our widespread concern about the children. But they are also one of the ways we express our anxiety about our collective intelligence. “Is our children learning?” is another way of asking, “Is us getting dumber?” If we are, whatchance do we have of remaining competitive in the global market, keeping up with countries that seem to have better school systems, students, and adult literacy rates than we do? Mediocre to crappy student test scores are one of the signs that we may soon end up the bitches of those diligent high-scoring Asians, Indians, and Scandinavians, unless everyone works harder, faster, better, smarter, more.
Schools are also a staging ground in the culture wars that have waxed and waned since the eighties. But righty and lefty criticisms of the school system are more similar than they initially appear, thanks to their common adherence to some of the anti-nerd notions I discussed in the first chapter. The right claims that schools are socialist indoctrination centres where their lil’ spuds get soaked in government and gaydom. The left claims that the schools are corporate brainwashing facilities that teach kids to be obedient little office drones, stunting their creativity and curiosity, plying them with junk food and ads and pointless busywork. They may blame different causes – well, slightly different, given the tender intimacy betwixt government and business – but they level similar charges, arguing that education is nothing more than propaganda or brainwash.
The propaganda campaign that passes for education is one of the ways those dastardly nerds exert their control over society as a whole, by wrecking kids, setting up camp in their dear little heads when they are young and vulnerable. Schools change tiny minds. The implication on both sides is that they should not. Go far enough to the left or the right or towards some god, and you will find ardent parents’ rights advocateswho think – no,
know
– that they know better than their children’s teachers.
North America’s decentralized school systems are perfect conveyances for passing the smelly blame, ensuring that there will be way more speeches than solutions. Parents can blame lazy teachers. Teachers can blame lazy parents. Teachers can blame administrators. Administrators can blame the school boards. School boards can blame their cheapskate, tax-averse districts or their greedy unionized employees. Or they can pass the blame along to the state and provincial educrats, who then blame the feds for providing insufficient funds. The feds plead poverty and blame everything from
Grand Theft Auto
to teachers’ unions to bureaucratic waste for the situation, tap dancing as they try not to alienate the voluminous voting blocs of concerned parents and unions.
But are our schools really sucking? This turns out to be one of those issues where people hate the species and the system but approve of
They can also use the state of the schools to go dire and forecast doom. This sort of school panic-speak is a watered-down long-range version of the politics of fear that has prevailed since 9/11. If immediate perils such as terrorists, a rising China, or wussification by Eurosocialism do not destroy North America first, someday all our stupid children will. Our failed schools will render them too stunned and broke to run the machines and dole out the meds we expect to ease us through our dotage. And our children’s children will be utterly barbaric and bereft, wandering some blasted Mad Max hellscape, barely able to recall the recipe for fire, even though everything around them is burning, endlessly burning.
School crisis stories are a manifestation of our worries about the future and our widespread concern about the children. But they are also one of the ways we express our anxiety about our collective intelligence. “Is our children learning?” is another way of asking, “Is us getting dumber?” If we are, whatchance do we have of remaining competitive in the global market, keeping up with countries that seem to have better school systems, students, and adult literacy rates than we do? Mediocre to crappy student test scores are one of the signs that we may soon end up the bitches of those diligent high-scoring Asians, Indians, and Scandinavians, unless everyone works harder, faster, better, smarter, more.
Schools are also a staging ground in the culture wars that have waxed and waned since the eighties. But righty and lefty criticisms of the school system are more similar than they initially appear, thanks to their common adherence to some of the anti-nerd notions I discussed in the first chapter. The right claims that schools are socialist indoctrination centres where their lil’ spuds get soaked in government and gaydom. The left claims that the schools are corporate brainwashing facilities that teach kids to be obedient little office drones, stunting their creativity and curiosity, plying them with junk food and ads and pointless busywork. They may blame different causes – well, slightly different, given the tender intimacy betwixt government and business – but they level similar charges, arguing that education is nothing more than propaganda or brainwash.
The propaganda campaign that passes for education is one of the ways those dastardly nerds exert their control over society as a whole, by wrecking kids, setting up camp in their dear little heads when they are young and vulnerable. Schools change tiny minds. The implication on both sides is that they should not. Go far enough to the left or the right or towards some god, and you will find ardent parents’ rights advocateswho think – no,
know
– that they know better than their children’s teachers.
North America’s decentralized school systems are perfect conveyances for passing the smelly blame, ensuring that there will be way more speeches than solutions. Parents can blame lazy teachers. Teachers can blame lazy parents. Teachers can blame administrators. Administrators can blame the school boards. School boards can blame their cheapskate, tax-averse districts or their greedy unionized employees. Or they can pass the blame along to the state and provincial educrats, who then blame the feds for providing insufficient funds. The feds plead poverty and blame everything from
Grand Theft Auto
to teachers’ unions to bureaucratic waste for the situation, tap dancing as they try not to alienate the voluminous voting blocs of concerned parents and unions.
But are our schools really sucking? This turns out to be one of those issues where people hate the species and the system but approve of
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