Human Advancement

From Andrew Sullivan , via Billy, I see this charming video of a precocious 8-year old mouthing her parent's - or somebody's - platitudes about the virtues of athiesm, the vices of religion, and how what we really need is a world full of empathy and absent Republicans. I'll just say that whoever's behind this is... well, lets ask little Ricky Sherman.

Ricky is the son of a prominent atheist activist from Buffalo Grove, Illinois - just a few miles from where I grew up. Call it divine intervention if you will, but in the extended quote labled "Memory Lane" here, Ricky, in his tender innocence, inadvertantly nails it when asked what "we" are. "We" of course, being Ricky's father by himself, with the unwilling inclusion of a kid who just, unlike the little girl in the video, can't get the parroting quite right.

Please don't think I'm one of them. They're not really atheists - leftism is their religion. People who do this kind of thing to their kids could use a dose of that ol' time religion, right upside their heads. It's not the answer, but it would be an improvement.

My nephew started Kindergarten this year, unfortunately in a government school. I fear for the future of this amazingly intelligent child, but at least his mother is determined to protect him from an environment that is overtly hostile to intellectual growth and achievement. And, he's got some of the same genes I got, and shows every sign of being the same arrogant, stubborn bastard I've always been, so there's hope for him. I just wish I was there to help.

Anyway, my sister tells me that the grading system in this cognitive hell is a greatly simplified one, one that seeks to boost a child's "self esteem" while at the same time eliminating any hint of those things that lead to genuine self esteem. Rather than the horribly competitive and distinguishing marks such as A, B, C, D, and F, the new system rates students as "Beginning", "Developing", or "Secure".

Beyond the mind-numbing (deliberately so) political correctness of the terms, the thing that struck me is that the highest pinnacle to which a young mind can aspire is to be "secure". Isn't that just the perfect microcosm of everything that is wrong with not just our obsolete government education system, but everything that is wrong with this country as well? Forget achievement, forget weighing risks against benefits, forget striving to be better, smarter, faster, stronger, whatever it is - just strive for security.

Let's teach our young people, who are at this point in their lives all potential and little actuality, who should have a whole life of value production ahead of them - but who have yet little to their names besides what has been given to them - to seek first and foremost to protect what they have. Teach them to stay where they are, to start from nothing and to make sure they don't lose it. That way, when they grow up and still have nothing, and no idea how to go about getting anything, and see every other person who strives for something as a threat, they will naturally seek out the only means available to them to have something instead of nothing - and that which will protect them from a big bad world of a rapidly diminishing population of producers.

And so the curtain closes, endarkenment prevails.