BILL WHITTLE: AMERICAN EDUCATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR STUPIDITY ****
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/bill-whittle-the-struggle-for-stupidity/
Sci-Fi Author Jerry Pournelle recently re-published a sixth grade reader from 1914. In his latest FIREWALL, Bill Whittle explains how full comprehension of a single paragraph from that hundred-year-old elementary school textbook eludes virtually all of today’s college graduates; shows why it is such a sin, and reveals the Progressive Struggle for Stupidity in all of its undeniable venality.
AMERICAN EDUCATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR STUPIDITY
Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.
Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has republished, with his additional commentary, a completely forgotten – but far from forgettable – book called Literature Reader, Sixth Year, by Leroy E. Armstrong.
Literature Reader, Sixth Year, by Leroy E. Armstrong is not a novel or a scientific treatise or a book or Mr. Armstrong’s poetry. It’s a textbook – a California textbook: a collection of written tales and their analyses, the basics of literature, story structure and all the rest: that’s it and that’s all.
On a whim, I looked it up on Amazon, and on another whim, I clicked on a random link, and scanned the first paragraph I laid eyes on, which read:
Then Jason lighted the pile, and burnt the carcass of the bull; and they went to their ship and sailed eastward, like men who have a work to do. Three thousand years and more they sailed away, into the unknown Eastern seas; and great nations have come and gone since then, and many a storm has swept the earth; and many a mighty armament, to which Argo would be but one small boat; English and French, Turkish and Russian, have sailed those waters since; yet the fame of that small Argo lives forever, and her name is a proverb among men.
This is what sixth graders were reading one hundred years ago, in 1914, but if a college kid today graduated with a full and complete understanding of that one single paragraph they would be better educated than they are after a quarter-million dollars or so of student debt.
Reduced to a movie – which would be the only way to get a 6th grader to meet Jason and the Argonauts today – It would be:
EXT. WIDE SHOT – THE BEACH
Jason lights fire to the bull. After a moment, his men turn and walk to the ship. Casting off the lines, they set sail out into the harbor.
CLOSE UP – JASON
He looks out to sea, a look of determination on his face.
CUT TO…
And that would be it. But that’s just the surface of the paragraph, and that’s all 6th graders in 2016 get – the only the surface of everything. A hundred years ago, these same-aged children would have imagined – they would have seen in their minds – the great ship setting sail for the eastern sea, and then be shocked that the Greek author did not talk abut sailing for three hundred miles bur rather for three thousand years. They saw the mighty fleets of the English and French and Turks and Russians – sailing ships, battleships – come and go and only the small Argo remain on these waters of eternity. Only this small band of men, in a little boat, sailing across the ocean of history and legend human history, like men who have a work to do.
For a random paragraph from an obscure textbook, that is a profound insight. No doubt it is why Leroy E. Armstrong decided to include it in his reader.
The Progressives have had to fight against that 1895 or 1914 level of education, and it hasn’t been easy for them. It took them at least half a century to win this struggle for stupidity: elimination of standards, grading on the curve, the self-esteem movement, new math, gender studies, speech codes and all the rest – the det-ritus of the battle against educated citizens, in harness to the socialist paradise that is so obviously doomed to failure – well…obvious to people who know math, history, and economics, anyway.
And now, with Common Core, soon it will be against the law for your child to hit the jackpot, against all odds, and end up with a Leroy E. Armstrong. No, the final battle in the Struggle for Stupidity will be to make it illegal to be taught anything other than Standard State Stupid. They have succeeded in taking a generation that go to the moon with slide rules, doing the math in their head, to a generation that is amazed to discover that the movie Titanic is based on a true story.
And through it all – through the rise and fall of England and France and Turkey and Russia and now us, the United States of America – the Argo sails on alone, unread, undiscovered, waiting for a time when people begin to search for her once again.
Comments are closed.
