Bayonets And Books
Laura Bush is in New Orleans today trying to instill a little umph factor into a program that will attempt to bring 125 accredited teachers into the most troubled schools in New Orleans, which is the most troubled public school system in the state of Louisiana. Louisiana as a whole educates its public school students almost as bad as it can be done. On a national scale the 60,000 or so public school students in Orleans Parish are getting the worst of the worst. So I applaud Laura Bush and I certainly do not hold her husband against her. I mean he is a perfect example of the danger of a poorly educated soul wandering around without a sense of anger management. Here each year the kids born into this educational wasteland kill each other at a rate of about 200 a year (over the last thirty years), with an occasional spike like the 420 murdered in '94 and the 360 murdered the year after that. Numbers that will seem small and inconsequential if our questionably elected leader is allowed to carry out his plan for controlling the oil fields of the Middle East. A thing he proposes to do for the security of this great country and ostensibly for the betterment of the country(ies) we will be blowing up. I think we are too far from home. I think Laura has the right idea. I think we should bring our toys and warriors back home and into our inner cities. We could deploy troops around our worst schools, battleships in our gulfs and lakes, and we could use our nifty pin-point accurate missles to blow up entire prison populations. It could be called Operation Learn or Die. I'm just brainstorming here. Navy Seals sitting in the back rows of junior and senior high schools, cleaning their fingernails with their bayonets, challenging the challenged, "if there are forty pounds of plastic explosive in a crate and I've got seven crates, how many total pounds of explosive do I have!?" I'm really not trying to save Iraqi babies, I would just like to see someone in power try to save our own. There is in this single small USA town a thirty year pile of young ill-educated murdered bodies 6,000 large. If it is violence our war cabinet craves, it is here. If it is domination of evil regimes, that is here too. I would like to see a sum like the 37 billion dollars we have spent thus far "liberating" Afghanistan given to Laura Bush and her ilk, and let them give it a go. That's what I'd like to see. I am implying that a serious attempt to educate our least educated would pay dividends a thousand fold. That's what I believe.
Right on. But the powers that be don't really want people educated; the people's ignorance is power's bliss. The notion that we as a culture care about children is one of our greatest hypocrisies. If we cared about them, we'd spend the money; we'd do the things you suggest. I've been hearing this stuff all my life; how important "the children" are. Bull! There's always something more important. We couldn't care less. I won't even mention the sexualizing, and the crap we feed them, but the latest wrinkle is using them to fuel the economy, like throwing wood on a fire. We give 'em credit cards in the cradle, breeding a better batch of consumers to keep things rolling, even as the "real" money disappears into a mountain of debt. Somewhere, Capitalism and the Protestant ethic have parted ways. They'll all be broke when they turn 21, but then they're adults, and who cares about them? Besides, they'll all have kids of their own by then to pass the bill to. And the beautiful cycle continues.
"Don't like 'em as a child, try 'em as an adult" A.W.
Yeh, pretty true. I was just experimenting with a brief wallow in optimism, or trying to kick start myself back into some sort of positive contribution to the local problem.
I just saw "The Substitute". It's a train wreck of a movie whose premise is a mercenary taking a subsitute teacher position at a Miami high school. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than turning all the kids and money over to the Catholic church.
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Laura Bush is in New Orleans today trying to instill a little umph factor into a program that will attempt to bring 125 accredited teachers into the most troubled schools in New Orleans, which is the most troubled public school system in the state of Louisiana. Louisiana as a whole educates its public school students almost as bad as it can be done. On a national scale the 60,000 or so public school students in Orleans Parish are getting the worst of the worst. So I applaud Laura Bush and I certainly do not hold her husband against her. I mean he is a perfect example of the danger of a poorly educated soul wandering around without a sense of anger management. Here each year the kids born into this educational wasteland kill each other at a rate of about 200 a year (over the last thirty years), with an occasional spike like the 420 murdered in '94 and the 360 murdered the year after that. Numbers that will seem small and inconsequential if our questionably elected leader is allowed to carry out his plan for controlling the oil fields of the Middle East. A thing he proposes to do for the security of this great country and ostensibly for the betterment of the country(ies) we will be blowing up. I think we are too far from home. I think Laura has the right idea. I think we should bring our toys and warriors back home and into our inner cities. We could deploy troops around our worst schools, battleships in our gulfs and lakes, and we could use our nifty pin-point accurate missles to blow up entire prison populations. It could be called Operation Learn or Die. I'm just brainstorming here. Navy Seals sitting in the back rows of junior and senior high schools, cleaning their fingernails with their bayonets, challenging the challenged, "if there are forty pounds of plastic explosive in a crate and I've got seven crates, how many total pounds of explosive do I have!?" I'm really not trying to save Iraqi babies, I would just like to see someone in power try to save our own. There is in this single small USA town a thirty year pile of young ill-educated murdered bodies 6,000 large. If it is violence our war cabinet craves, it is here. If it is domination of evil regimes, that is here too. I would like to see a sum like the 37 billion dollars we have spent thus far "liberating" Afghanistan given to Laura Bush and her ilk, and let them give it a go. That's what I'd like to see. I am implying that a serious attempt to educate our least educated would pay dividends a thousand fold. That's what I believe.
- jimlouis 2-20-2003 5:18 am
Right on. But the powers that be don't really want people educated; the people's ignorance is power's bliss. The notion that we as a culture care about children is one of our greatest hypocrisies. If we cared about them, we'd spend the money; we'd do the things you suggest. I've been hearing this stuff all my life; how important "the children" are. Bull! There's always something more important. We couldn't care less. I won't even mention the sexualizing, and the crap we feed them, but the latest wrinkle is using them to fuel the economy, like throwing wood on a fire. We give 'em credit cards in the cradle, breeding a better batch of consumers to keep things rolling, even as the "real" money disappears into a mountain of debt. Somewhere, Capitalism and the Protestant ethic have parted ways. They'll all be broke when they turn 21, but then they're adults, and who cares about them? Besides, they'll all have kids of their own by then to pass the bill to. And the beautiful cycle continues.
- alex 2-20-2003 6:05 pm [add a comment]
"Don't like 'em as a child, try 'em as an adult" A.W.
- steve 2-21-2003 5:17 am [add a comment]
Yeh, pretty true. I was just experimenting with a brief wallow in optimism, or trying to kick start myself back into some sort of positive contribution to the local problem.
- jimlouis 2-21-2003 7:05 am [2 comments]
I just saw "The Substitute". It's a train wreck of a movie whose premise is a mercenary taking a subsitute teacher position at a Miami high school. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than turning all the kids and money over to the Catholic church.
- mark 3-07-2003 11:05 am [add a comment]