I can't do it. On this Fourth of July I resolve to henceforth never again watch one of those cringe inducing man on the street quizzes the networks insist on trotting out with too much regularity. Leno did it, so does Kimmel, O'Reilly and several others. They send out a staff gofer to ask the clueless minions questions such as: "Who bombed Pearl Harbor?" and "What president is on the $100 bill?" The idiots on the streets of New York and L.A. almost always hock up laughably preposterous answers that can only make anyone who didn't sleep through ninth grade history break out in a sweat as they attempt to recall how many years it took for the wheels to come off the Roman Empire.
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| Time to light a firecracker under some Americans |
In high school I was fortunate to have had at least two great teachers who demanded excellence from their often indifferent charges. I was a daydreaming reluctant student who tried to skate through school with as little effort as possible. In Clayton Liggett's English class that didn't fly. Mr. Liggett held daily races to the blackboard where we students were required to diagram complex sentences he had assigned as as homework. He sat in the back of the classroom and flung erasers at anyone who got the diagram wrong. There was no talking back and no break in the action. An hour flew by as the exercise actually became an adventure. Diagraming went on for an entire semester. The second semester of ninth grade year had all of us filing into Liggett's class to write a daily essay. He didn't tolerate laziness and expected you to come prepared with new material to inform and entertain him. He read every one. Clayton Liggett was a hard grader and superb teacher.
Barb Avery was another teacher who brought her "A" game everyday and expected her students to do the same. She loved American history and political science and wanted to make it come alive for the kids in her classes. She poked, prodded and quizzed us with material she knew backward and forward and liked nothing better than to joust with anyone who disagreed with her point of view. She wanted her students to be informed enough to have their own opinions and was willing to concede a point if you made your case. A's did not come easy in her history class.
We may have teachers like Liggett and Avery today but I fear they no longer are given the tools to do their job. Today, with student suspensions and corporal punishment nearly nonexistent, kids know they can usually do as little as possible without threat of reprisal. They have been raised by often indifferent or absent parents and have been rewarded with blue ribbons for merely showing up. A couple of generations of "We're all special" and "everyone is a winner" has, for many, removed winning and excellence as something to which a student might aspire.
The great American Louie Zamporini died yesterday. His story of survival from the horrors of a World War II Japanese POW camp as told in the wonderful book, Unbroken, should be an inspiration to all of us, especially students, but I fear that a TV reporter sent to the streets in search of peoples' thoughts about him would come back with disappointing results. We are becoming a nation of dolts.
It occurs to me that, like my father and his father before him, maybe I am just becoming a grumpy old guy. (Okay, grumpier.) However, I worry about a country that seems to revel in ignorance and is indifferent to or maybe even contemptuous of exceptionalism. If you doubt me all you need do is look at who we've elected. We seem determined to be "cool" and always look for the easy way. Of course the "easy" way is what makes rivers and men crooked.
In the words of Dean Wormer, "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life." It's also no way to keep a republic.
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| Senator Bluto Blutarsky |
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