This may be cheating, but not everyone who reads the comic reads my blog, so I feel justified in a double post. Besides, it’s free advertisement. I originally wrote this post here, following an awesome comic strip introducing the word “edu-natrix” into the American lexicon. Which just goes to show that if you aren’t reading La Casa Comics, you should be.
Education is one of those wacky things. It is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable resources available to anybody, no matter their interests or their professions. Education is a tool for personal and professional growth, a weapon against ignorance and oppression, and it makes its own sauce. And in the United States, at least, it’s becoming more and more of a joke.
While the “No Child Left Behind” act makes such claims as, “Every child can learn. Every child must learn. And thanks to NCLB, every child will learn.”, Kansas has gone off the deep end and made “intelligent design” a mandatory part of the science curriculum.
The good old NCLB goes on to say:
Fortunately, there are schools and reform leaders across our Nation who have shown how quickly effective leadership can transform student achievement and how swiftly success can sweep through a school. With a dedicated focus on accountability and achievement, any school that needs improvement can create a new culture of learning and excellence. The good news is that we know much more about what works: scientifically proven methods; aligned standards, assessments, and instruction; school and district leadership focused on student learning; accountability for results; and highly qualified teachers will improve achievement and bring success. Admittedly, our Nation’s commitment — to teach every child — is ambitious. But we have the tools and we have the know-how. Working together, we can ensure that all students succeed and that the achievement gap is closed, once and for all.
And in the meantime we cut educational funding, screw over schools and libraries, and pump money into weapons, oil, and wars. And as China teaches us, cutting educational funding gets students run over by big trucks. Come on America, we don’t want our students to be killed in traffic, do we!?
I could probably spend about 10 hours writing out this post, but I don’t want to, and I don’t think anyone would read it if I did. So I’ll try to wrap things up. The tricky thing about education is that if you don’t have one, you don’t realize what a valuable thing it is that you’re missing. It’s like if you’ve never read Kant, you don’t realize how dull and brain-melting the process is. And you won’t get it when people make offhand references, as I just did. You are missing out, truly.
Parents need to read to their kids. Education starts at home. Teachers need to get excited about getting kids to learn. I had an alternative style of education, in which I was taught the value of learning, and after that pretty much given the option of how often and where I wanted to go to school. As a result, I home-schooled for two years, went to middle school as a part-time student, and dropped out of high school halfway through my junior year. I got my GED, worked for a year, and then went to college, and I’ve never regretted a single one of those choices. I pursued the education that worked for me, because the way the system had things layed out didn’t always make sense. NCLP is making restrictions tighter, and trying to improve education via standardization and testing.
To be blunt, fuck standardization, and fuck testing. Teach these kids the value of an education, and they’ll do the work themselves.
“It is only the ignorant who despise education.”
-Publius Syrus (42 B.C.)
