This Sunday’s NEW YORK TIMES carried a lot of stories about the recent election as was expected; they were a pleasure to read. One caught my eye “OBAMA AND THE WAR ON BRAINS” BY Nicholas D. Kristof.
It was a continuation of what I brought up recently from an article in the Wall Street Journal about how Obama will hopefully end the anti-intellectual basis of Republican rule in Washington. I don’t think anyone would disagree with me that President W. Bush is the antithesis of an intellectual and based his rule on a perceived sense of moral superiority that he thought gave him a mandate from god and to hell with smart people and their stinkin’ expertise.
Kristof writes that many intellectuals in Politics tended to hide their brains so as to appear less elite and more like an average Joe. He also points out that intellectuals don’t always make good rulers either but he feels we should start changing the anti-intellectual tone in this country away from ‘I don’t need to know where every country is’ to one of “it’s good to be smart’ and ‘it’s good for this country if its citizens were smarter than they are now’.
And I agree wholeheartedly. My parents urged us all to get as much education as possible even though they themselves had little because they had little to no opportunity to get one. They prided themselves on knowing their geography and history unlike Sarah Palin that confused the continent of Africa with a country named Africa?
A recent poll in Michigan found that a majority of parents did not see a college education as necessary for success in life; they believed their kids deserved to be happy and have fun in life and not labor at getting a higher education other than their required by law, K-12 education.
In Michigan you could go to an auto factory job right out of high school and live a “guaranteed” good life and retirement life. It worked for a long time UNTIL NOW!
Obviously I do not think everyone should have a college education or even need one; Bill Gates never finished college. But I do think that our K-12 educational system is woefully lacking and lagging schools in Europe and Asia; a high school diploma does not even guarantee that the graduate can read or write.
I think there has been a dumbing down process in place in our society for quite a few years now and that definitely needs to be reversed. Barack Obama will be a great role model to blacks in this country instead of just basketball players and pimps but also to all Americans who hopefully will feel a need to inspire their young people to get smart and smarter still.
Mr. Kristof, even though inspired and optimistic about changes to come, still laments that we live in a country where people still believe the world in only 6,000 years old and that evolution is still just a theory and a bad theory at that and that the sun orbits the earth and not visa versa. I guess there is a lot of work yet to be done to get us all smarter than the average bear.
It was a continuation of what I brought up recently from an article in the Wall Street Journal about how Obama will hopefully end the anti-intellectual basis of Republican rule in Washington. I don’t think anyone would disagree with me that President W. Bush is the antithesis of an intellectual and based his rule on a perceived sense of moral superiority that he thought gave him a mandate from god and to hell with smart people and their stinkin’ expertise.
Kristof writes that many intellectuals in Politics tended to hide their brains so as to appear less elite and more like an average Joe. He also points out that intellectuals don’t always make good rulers either but he feels we should start changing the anti-intellectual tone in this country away from ‘I don’t need to know where every country is’ to one of “it’s good to be smart’ and ‘it’s good for this country if its citizens were smarter than they are now’.
And I agree wholeheartedly. My parents urged us all to get as much education as possible even though they themselves had little because they had little to no opportunity to get one. They prided themselves on knowing their geography and history unlike Sarah Palin that confused the continent of Africa with a country named Africa?
A recent poll in Michigan found that a majority of parents did not see a college education as necessary for success in life; they believed their kids deserved to be happy and have fun in life and not labor at getting a higher education other than their required by law, K-12 education.
In Michigan you could go to an auto factory job right out of high school and live a “guaranteed” good life and retirement life. It worked for a long time UNTIL NOW!
Obviously I do not think everyone should have a college education or even need one; Bill Gates never finished college. But I do think that our K-12 educational system is woefully lacking and lagging schools in Europe and Asia; a high school diploma does not even guarantee that the graduate can read or write.
I think there has been a dumbing down process in place in our society for quite a few years now and that definitely needs to be reversed. Barack Obama will be a great role model to blacks in this country instead of just basketball players and pimps but also to all Americans who hopefully will feel a need to inspire their young people to get smart and smarter still.
Mr. Kristof, even though inspired and optimistic about changes to come, still laments that we live in a country where people still believe the world in only 6,000 years old and that evolution is still just a theory and a bad theory at that and that the sun orbits the earth and not visa versa. I guess there is a lot of work yet to be done to get us all smarter than the average bear.
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