Stupid is as Stupid Does

Our educational system must be even worse than I thought when people can't recognize, understand, or cope with famous words spoken or written by well-known individuals.

Every year for quite some time (about 30 years), NPR has presented the Declaration of Independence on-air. They recently also started tweeting it out. The last couple of years, a number of people have complained because they thought that NPR was releasing a screed against President Trump! They didn't recognize it as the Declaration of Independence. First, what does it say that people don't recognize one of the two most important documents in their country's history? Secondly, what does it show if they mistake a call for freedom from the tyrannical government of King George III for a plea against what Donald Trump is doing as President?

Today, I saw someone post and attribute the famous "Pale Blue Dot" speech of Carl Sagan. I then saw a bunch of people react negatively to it. They were claiming it is not true; that Sagan must be a political hack, a leftist, one of those environmental activists; even that the earth is flat and therefore the whole speech is inaccurate; etc. Yes, this was said about one of our greatest astronomers and astrophysicists about the subject he knew best! A call for people to be better to one another was met with derision and hatred. Go figure.

I've seen people complain about the words of Lincoln, Jefferson, Hawking, Franklin, Roosevelt (pick one), de Grasse-Tyson, King, Jr., and many others. I've seen GOP people complain about how leftist the words of Ronald Reagan, their Republican Godhead, were before being told that the words were his! It's actually fun to watch them stammer, stutter, and try to walk back their angry retorts. Again, it just goes to show how far we've changed that anything Reagan said in the 80s is now considered leftist and progressive... and that members of the GOP don't even recognize his words!

When did America stop thinking? Or, more precisely, when did a certain segment of America decide to leave the thinking to others? Why is ignorance the default setting now?

Stupidity, Fear, and Illness

There actually is an axis of evil. The axis comprises three things that keep those in power in power. Those three things are health, education, and fear.

Ill health results in poor decisions. If for example, you have no insurance, you will keep working and ignore those weird pains in your chest until you drop over, dead. If you cannot afford to go to the hospital, you cannot get over that cold you have had for two months as it slowly becomes pneumonia. If your insurance is poor, you cannot afford the best tests and the best doctors, so you do not find out about that lump in your breast until it is too far advanced. Poor health keeps you working long, stressful hours that can make you sicker after your loved one dies from something you couldn't afford... but are stuck with the insurmountable bills.

Poor education results in bad decisions. When you are uneducated, you cannot get better jobs. You are stuck, most often living paycheck to paycheck. And then something unforeseen happens, and you have to take a loan out. Maybe that loan is from a payday loan service, at 150% interest, and you can never get out from under it. Maybe that loan is from a criminal element, that breaks your legs when you cannot pay. Low education means you can get a taste of a decent job, but cannot go higher. So you are stuck living on the edge, never falling behind all the way, but never getting a head. The low-level work means you are always taking order and never giving them. The long hours means you are slowly working yourself to death, as the lack of sleep and constant stress build and build until you have a heart attack. No or poor education often means a person can be preyed upon by those with more education. An online college can promise them everything they need, and the person isn't smart enough to read the contract and see what little they get for all that money and time. Even a good education can sometimes have unintended negative consequences. A good education often means you are saddle with thousands, often hundreds of thousands, of dollars of debt when you need that debt the least... when you are just starting out and need every cent you can earn to start your life.

Fear results in horrible decisions. When people are afraid, they are willing to trade their most valuable assets for protection and security. They will trade their Constitutional rights for the illusion of safety. People will say things and do things things they would never normally do or say when they are afraid. They will listen to anybody who proposes a solution to their fear. Mob mentally often rules when people are afraid.

Does any of this sound familiar?

America has been waging a war on its people for the past 30 years. Those in power, either in the government or in commerce, have been doing everything in their power to stay in power. They have attacked teachers unions, driving educators out of the business and weakening the educational system everywhere but in private schools. They have driven up the costs of education every year. They have made it harder for people to get scholastic loans. They have cut corners in business and government so that more toxins are in the air, water, and foods, making people sick -- often with unintended side effects. They have slowly turned the news into a biased barrage of negativity and depressing stories that keep people afraid. They talk loudly about the "good of America" while voting against anything that actually improves the infrastructure, economy, or wages. They keep us so afraid that we allow them to make laws that subjugate our Constitutional rights and gather unprecedented data about us, all in the name of security -- which we don't actually have, as not one piece of data, not one airport body scan/screening, not one collected phone call has yet to stop a terrorist attack. They pass laws that enact absurd educational systems that keep people ignorant and uneducated. They give the power over the people's health to those least able to keep us healthy and who are most driven by profit -- and our health cuts into those profits.

And we allow them, because we are too sick, too stupid, and too afraid to stop them.

In this coming election, we each need to vote OUT any person who has been in office for longer than two terms. ANY PERSON. Find your representatives' voting record online and review what they say versus how they actually voted -- you might be surprised. After every Presidential debate, not matter which side you are on, go to sites like Politifact.com, FactCheck.org, major newspaper fact checking sites, and others, and review what your favorite candidates said and how much of it was actually true. Again, you'd be surprised.

In other words, do everything in your power to educate yourself. Because education will lower your fear levels and help you get healthy. And once you are no longer sick, no longer afraid, and no longer ignorant, your politicians will fear you.

John Basil Barnhill, "Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."

Writing Right

For a variety of reasons, I have been reading more on the Internet than usual, including blogs, forums, and news articles from various sites and of various types. It strikes me that the vast majority of people cannot write well.

I make my living writing, so I am both personally and professionally biased, I realize. However, by writing professionally, I also know that nothing I write is ever "perfect." The first rule of my profession is to never edit your own work. When reviewing and rereading your own work, your brain fills in the gaps, ignores misspellings, and generally lets you down in subtle ways that cause errors to creep into your writing. However, that is not to say that I do not do this step; I reread, edit, and re-edit my own work and posts a few times, using different techniques designed to minimize the number of errors that can creep in. Yet, still, when I go back to a previous post, I usually find at least a couple of errors.

While I do not expect anyone to be absolutely perfect online, the average person's blog, Facebook status, or Twitter feed is littered with issues, which shows the decline in communication skills in general. However, I am especially appalled by the number of news magazine and other professional sites that have frequent issues with grammar, spelling, punctuation, and contextual writing. While I deplore what I see as a general lack of even basic skills in these areas, it is one thing to have a non-professional making mistakes and another to have professional sites, which should have copy editors, making egregious, frequent, and consistent mistakes in these areas.

With my current bent on reading more online articles and posts, I see that majority of sites have the following errors:

1. Bad grammar. People are constantly using the wrong word(s) in the wrong syntax. Homophone usage is particularly poor, where someone will use "their" when they want "they're."
2. Bad Punctuation. People misuse punctuation, especially putting punctuation marks outside of quotation marks and sprinkling either commas or semi-colons throughout sentences that do not need them.
3. Bad typos. Many writers also do not take the time to reread their work and look for simple typos (I see a lot of "doe snot" rather than "does not" cropping up lately). Too many writers appear to be relying on spell-checker to get everything right, even though spell-checker cannot tell the difference between a congested fawn (doe snot) and something that works differently than you think it does (does not). Spell-checker is a useful tool, but not a panacea.
4. Bad topic/idea creation or support. Many people do not know about what they wish to speak. They start with one idea but, by the time your each the end of the post, it has morphed into something else entirely or the person cannot support his original thesis in any relevant, coherent way.

When I was in grade school, we were taught that every idea has a thesis statement. This is the "statement of purpose" about which you were talking or writing. It is the theme of your idea, and everything else you write should be supporting that theme in some way. Generally, you want to break your thought or theme into one sentence.

Each sentence, paragraph, or, in the case of something really lengthy, topic or heading, should then establish your position, support your thesis, or explain your reasoning. There are many ways to do these steps, and I will not go into them here. It is safe to say that many people that saying, "Because I said so," is in some way an erudite and insightful way of stating their opinion. Yet, we do not know why they think as they do, how they came to their conclusion, or what could be done differently to appease their worries.

For example, if you were to speak with a friend about a new movie and the friend said, "It sucked," you would not be satisfied with that answer. You would likely follow up that statement with questions to delve into the reasons why he/she thought it sucked, what about it sucked, if there were any redeeming qualities to the movie, and then make up your own mind on whether to see it. These questions you would ask your friend about the qualities that made the movie suck are the same types of questions a writer should be asking him/herself about the thesis of their statement and then providing useful, relevant, and specific examples to showcase their knowledge of the subject. For example, the friend could say, "The movie used shaky-cam, which I find very distracting." Further, "The actors didn't seem to have any chemistry at all, but the movie was supposed to be a love story." And, "I had a very hard time following the convoluted story. There are so many twists in it, that I stopped caring what happened and simply focused on trying to figure out what was going on." These responses all provide you with much-needed information that could sway you one way or the other on whether to see the film yourself.

While it is true that literacy rates have fallen to new lows over the last decade, some argue that the Internet is actually helping to get young people to read and write more and that literacy rates are slowly trending upward. While I do agree that I young people are texting more often, texting does not equate with reading or writing skills. In fact, I argue the opposite; the use of so many short-cuts and acronyms in place of real grammar is hurting people's writing skills more than helping it. Because they are starting texting at young ages, the bad habits of texting often supersede the information they should be learning in grade school about sentence creation, thought formation, and general writing skills. This keeps compounding until they graduate high school with little ability to read or write anything above a fourth-grade level.

What many people forget is just how much writing we need to do in today's society. Unless you have a fairly basic blue-collar job, chances are that you will need to email your bosses. Most white-collar professions require constant reading and writing as you take in data and then must disseminate it to others through emails, fliers, memos, speeches, specifications, and other forms of, generally, written communication. Those who can write well often get promotions and raises that others may want or even deserve simply on the foundation that they can communicate better than those who cannot write well.

When I see that educators and education budgets are under constant attack by politicians, I shake my head in wonder. By firing teachers and gouging the budgets, the ability to teach the next generation proper grammar, spelling, and writing techniques will get even worse. Soon, we'll have a monosyllabic culture that cannot express itself in the written form. This does not bode well for our country's ability to compete in a global economy, where clear communication is becoming more important, not less.

My online reading has made me aware of a lack of communication and writing skills in the general population. While a small number of errors can be attributed to the usual mistakes that creep into one's work when one is editing his/her own writing, the vast number, consistency of, and quality of the errors and writing lead me to believe that America's communication skills have atrophied. Short status sites like Facebook and Twitter, and quick contact applications like instant messaging, seem to be further eroding our ability to write coherent communications. I wonder what affect this will have on America in the next 10-20 years, as global communication via the Internet continues to climb and the world continues to shrink?

Some Thoughts

1. I don't get the current attitude in education reform where they are firing tenured teachers (and, in one case, an entire district worth of teachers) for student's bad test scores. I wish we could use the same philosophy in government or the business worlds: I didn't succeed, therefore it is my manager/VP/CEO's fault, and he/she should be fired. Let's try going back to a) allowing students to fail and b) making it the children's fault when they don't succeed, unless you have proof that a teacher is not doing his/her job or is actively working against a student's success.

Damn near every teacher I know tries hard to educate, spends much of their own money, spends many extra hours grading and tutoring, and will bend over backward to help their students. They get paid shit wages for doing one of the most important jobs in any nation.

Too many students I know or have seen do not want to be educated, want to have good grades handed to them for little to no work, think adequate quality should be graded like excellent quality, and have parents who will believe their lies and try to force the teacher through browbeating and threats of lawsuits and false accusations to give their children the grades they "deserve" (which is ironic, because nearly every time the student IS getting the grade he/she deserves).

2. Last decade, the Republicans created the term "nuclear option" to refer to their desire to eliminate the filibuster in Congress. The Republicans have been responsible for 14 of the last 19 uses of reconciliation. In this decade, the Republicans are changing the use of the term "nuclear option" to refer instead to reconciliation and are claiming it is this evil thing that Democrats want to use to subvert the American people. And the filibuster is now the Republicans best friend and an often-used tactic now that they no longer have control of Congress.

How is it that the majority of Americans in general, and Republicans in particular, are not calling the representatives on these lies? Why was the filibuster something to be done away with and was a nuisance to politics when they had control of Congress, but now that they do not have control, it is their God-given right and they are using it more than at any other time in the history of the government? How is it they have used reconciliation to get a vast majority of big projects pushed through (including, ironically, at least two large health care related bills (ever hear of COBRA? Passed by Republicans using reconciliation)), but now that the shoe is on the other foot and the Dems want to use it to do the exact same thing, the Repubs think it is EVIL?

3. What is up with so many people being at the car wash at 11 am on a Thursday? Isn't it still a work day for most people??

4. I'm thinking the worst of winter is over this year. After the hellacious one last year, that is kind of nice. We have two ranks plus nearly half a rank of wood left as of today. Last winter, we were worried about running out of wood and only had about half a rank left when we stopped having fires. Will make next season's expenditure less, for sure.

5. Looking forward to my first trip to Boston later this month. Only a few days, but since I've never been, it should be fun.

700

I was reading somewhere something that struck a chord with me. The person, paraphrased because I don't recall the exact way in which he said it, stated that he felt he was lied to by teachers. His teachers, like mine, constantly told him to really study math because you will use it every day of your life. What they should have pressed him on, he lamented, was English.

With apologies to my many friends who have taught or do teach math or work as programmers and engineers and are those few for whom that old adage is true, the vast, vast majority of people do NOT need more than the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to get through their daily lives. However, even those who do use more complicated math daily must speak, read, and write every day, multiple times per day.

How often do we read a sign, or a package, or warning labels, a book, a magazine, a web site/blog/forum every day? How often do we speak to those around us, to ourselves, or to our pets? How often do we need to write a note, a blog post, an article, an email? How often do we communicate with others and rely on our message getting through to the other in a clear and precise manner?

One of my long-time friends is a programmer. His day involves knowing math and communicating in languages that are math-based and precise. However, he thanked me once for forcing him to take more challenging English classes because it allowed him to excel at work; he was one of the few programmers who wrote emails clearly and could communicate in meetings in ways that others could understand and follow. His experiences in those harder English classes improved his ability to communicate with those around him and made him, sometimes he claims "unfortunately," better suited to positions of leadership and even management within his company.

From January 1 through to right now, I have needed math a handful of times. My wife and I had to calculate how much wood was delivered after it was finally stacked, and that involved figuring out the volume of a cord of wood and then breaking down the amount we had and figuring out if we were over or short. Outside of that one issue, we haven't needed math on a daily basis beyond calculating the tip on a food bill, adding or subtracting in a check book, some light multiplication or division on occasion. However, we have to communicate, with each other, our friends and family, and our coworkers, bosses, and clients, on a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute basis. Sometimes those communications have been critical; talking with bosses about raises or needed assistance, correcting errors with software, understanding drug interactions on medicines, calming down situations or people, etc.

A lot of students figure "well, I speak it, so I don't need to study it" when it comes to their native language. What they are not understanding is that their understanding and use of the language may be the difference in getting the job, keeping it, and being fired. The clarity of the communications they use may be the difference between getting or keeping the girl and losing her. Their ability to process and respond to written or verbal communication may be the difference between life and death.

If a person shows an aptitude for mathematics, then by all means encourage him/her in that area and see how far he/she can go. But make sure that person can communicate clearly and effectively, both in writing and orally, as well. He or she may be the next Einstein, but who would know it if he/she can't communicate what they discover?