9.05.2009

Ignorance in Education Award

Ignorance won’t take a holiday, so DemWit can’t.

POTUS wants to encourage America’s school children to study hard and set goals, and across the country right-wing parents are teaching their children lessons in prejudice and fear.

The likes of Fox’s Glenn Beck are telling these poor ignorant souls to keep their children home from school Tuesday to protect them from our president’s words.

Today DemWit presents the Ignorance in Education Award to one so-called educator who sadly typifies others across America:

Escambia County, Florida, Superintendent of Education Malcolm Thomas.

Here’s Thomas in his own words as quoted in the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal (LINK):

"We do not let teachers just watch television. It's going to have to fit with what they're teaching the children. We're in a district where our students struggle. We have bell-to-bell instruction, and we don't want to waste a single minute."

So, Escambia County schools, like so many with lily-livered superintendents, have the option to tape the president's words, which teachers might get permission to show later – if they can justify fitting them into their curricula.

I am 67 years old, and I sit here recalling my days at Viola E. Lake Elementary School in Jackson, Miss., where, in February, we cut out construction paper hatchets symbolic of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree and fashioned with our scissors Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat. In the morning, we would “waste a single minute” pledging allegiance to our country’s flag. We revered our president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. We were good kids, and discipline was the order of the classroom. We learned the "three Rs" and so much more.

So, DemWit salutes Supt. Thomas for exposing the ignorance pervasive in our nation today, even in our children’s schools.


UPDATE:
A voice of reason at the Pensacola News Journal:
"Students should hear Obama talk," a column by Reginald T. Dogan, 5 September 2009: LINK

11 comments:

bbj said...

BJ, thanks for this. I am just flabbergasted at the ignorance. Absolutely unbelievable. I really don't know what to say.

Sue said...

BJ I want to say I respect our wonderful President Obama, may God bless him and his family while they endure the hatred and bigotry these next 8 years hold for them!

Falzone for America said...

I recomend watching a movie called "Idiocracy"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

Directed by Mike Judge

Private Joe Bauers, the definition of "average American", is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakes 500 years in the future. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive.

It's campy humor but it could be a pretty good dramitization of what we have to look forward too on this planet considering the evidence of the past 50 years.

Good Southern Man said...

I read that article yesterday with a dropped jaw. Well-rounded educations are a thing of the past. We finally get rid of our Nero-like dictator and the country still longs for ignorance. Will Rome fall again?!

B.J. said...

FFA: The movie sounds interesting.

GSM, I know your favorite movie is “Planet of the Apes.” Everyone knows the ending of that film!

Wanna bet this same school district rails against evolution? I had conversation with a person who was going on about how liberals thinks we came from apes. I asked her, “Do you think the apes are embarrassed?”

BJ

Tiny said...

BJ, your comment about the "apes being embarrassed" takes the cake, icing and all. ROTFLMAO and Tiny needed that belly laugh!

This article is the zenith of the "Dumbing Down of America." It seems the big whigs fear that children will surpass them in intelligence and put the dumbos out of office.

Such a travesty must be avoided at all costs. Hence, lock the children in windowless rooms, allow no recess time and brainwash them with hog-wash. God, what a society we live in!

We were told for eight-years that other countries envied our freedom. They must be laughing up their sleeves at this type of freedom.

Yes sir-ee, you bet, the very type of ignorance for the whole world to envy. Freedom of ignorance. But hey, it's free, isn't controlled and/or rationed by the government.

What more could the mightiest nation ask for?

Katherine said...

In Florida in 1992 or so, former governor, Claude Kirk, of tv's
'Super Circus' fame, ran for the head of Florida's Dept. of Education.
Little would surprise me out of Florida.

My heart goes out to future generations, BJ. The ME generation has been a narcissistic disaster. We best get our priorities straight, learn something about community--fast. "Me" isn't a society.

Hoping you do take a break and have some fun this weekend, including
the season's end of corn on the cob. I've just made a huge batch of tomato juice from the last of the garden tomatoes. Gee whiz it's good.

Fondly,
Katherine

Sue said...

BJ thanks for letting me steal that email clip you sent, it is a great read, I keep reading it over and over LOL! Have a great day sweetie!

Ranch Chimp said...

Good point's to bring up Ms.Demwit. It is a dirty roten shame what they even have turned in this student address to by our President...the extreme right has just went looney to be honest...and that's coming from a man(me) who voted republican most of his life.

Take Care

Ranch Chimp said...

A note to "Good Southern Man" when he ask's will Rome fall again? You bet it will bud...I've posted about it a few time's myself...but all ole empire's of past become extinct sooner or later...that's moving forward. :)

Annette said...

BJ, I followed you from Sue's blog.. Great job and I appreciate your words.. I have been reading and lurking a few days.. Hope you don't mind me stopping by and giving you a shout out..

This school fiasco may just be the straw that broke their backs...I think they have really overplayed their hands this time. At least I hope between this and the Health Care matter, the GOPers have shot themselves in the foot. Pardon the expression..