American Secondary Schoolers

1,242 words

DANCING PINHEADSRadical Traditionalists like me believe, or should I say, know, that civilizations are organic entities that are born, grow, climax, decay, and then die. Though few are willing to admit it, this fact holds true for the United States as well. Like every empire that has come before it, “the land of milk and honey” will ultimately collapse following a series of internal and external crises.

One of these crises, I’m firmly convinced of now, will be the lack of any capable people to staff the bureaucracy in the near future. I say this because I see the average American student on a daily basis, and my observations leave me little doubt that the dystopia foretold in the film Idiocracy is inevitable.

Today’s education system is a complete joke: the curricula are watered down and inferior; the students are complete idiots who scoff at learning; the students’ parents are either too busy to get closely involved with their education, or simply don’t care; education courses at colleges are too saturated with Leftist sociological studies and not enough practical application; and many teachers are of mean quality, hired because they know the right people. Add to this the endless array of technological and pop-cultural distractions that teenagers indulge in and the anti-authoritarian Zeitgeist that has been in place since the late 60s, and the education system is hopeless.

Let us first take a closer look at the curricula. Students today sit through classes that offer nothing in the way of academic rigor when compared to the classes of fifty years ago. Back then, secondary school kids studied all the major liberal arts, including Latin. English classes demanded that students read major works of literature from Tolstoy and Shakespeare, not the dull novels of John Steinbeck or Harper Lee. Math and science classes were certainly more difficult than they are now, as evidenced by the report A Nation at Risk. All of these highly cerebral subjects fostered mentally and culturally enriched students: Latin gave them a better understanding of English and enhanced their communication skills; math and science made them more rational problem-solvers; literature offered the same benefits as Latin, plus the added knowledge about history and life in general that came from studying the experiences of different characters from other times.

What have our youth now? Well, the math and science are still there, but the fact that most European and Asian students are better mathematicians suggests that our courses are not very rigorous. English classes are a complete joke. Most of the young people I meet nowadays have a horrible command of English (even American-born ones), and few have read anything other than Of Mice and Men and The Great Gatsby. Even many of my fellow college students from a year ago had substandard ability in writing; there was one event that I will never forget when a professor for one of my classes went off on a tirade about how she knows 8th graders that write better than my colleagues (not to brag, but she specifically excluded me from her insults). The possibility for any cultural enrichment has been removed due to the over emphasis on “multicultural education.” Instead of focusing for several weeks at a time on Greek, Latin, English, French, or Italian literature, as it used to be done, students are being bombarded with single works from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the US, within a few weeks. From this they learn virtually nothing about the host of cultures they are examining, only a confused mess of different narratives. History education barely even exists anymore, and it won’t be long before such classes are cut completely so that we can increase the math and science in an effort to keep up with China (which will not happen anyway). Believe it or not, I’ve actually met students from schools where history was only taught during detention, as a form of punishment.

Now let’s look at the students I keep mentioning.

Never before have I met a more undisciplined, unintelligent, ignorant, restless, uncontrollable — and in many cases, flat out uneducable — rabble. The majority have no desire to learn, which they make clear by their constant interruptions, side conversations (about the most irrelevant topics), requests to use the bathroom, and complaints about work. Those who actually leave the class to go to the bathroom walk as slowly as possible, stop into other classrooms to say hello to their friends, take forever once they get to the bathroom, and walk even slower on their return to class. My time in various attendance offices has informed me that at least a hundred students simply don’t show up to school or come in late each day, the majority of these being black and Hispanic. Many times it’s impossible to even confirm absences with parents, as they cannot speak English.

While sitting in the teacher’s lounge, I’ve overheard countless conversations in which teachers complain that their students don’t even know their times tables. Let me repeat that: high school students don’t know their TIMES TABLES! I was forced to memorize these when I was nine years old! That some still have not done so says that (A) they are of below average IQ, and (B) their elementary and middle school teachers were lazy scoundrels who simply passed them through the system. “Someone else’s problem,” they likely said to themselves. Of course, nowadays it’s virtually impossible to hold students back for poor performance. The same parents who were never there to check homework or help study suddenly appear to bitch and moan to the education board that their kids are geniuses and shouldn’t be held back.

Borderline public indecency is also rampant throughout public secondary schools. Young girls wear the most form-fitting and scanty garments available, and it’s not uncommon to see exposed lingerie. Slack-jawed degenerate boys still sag their pants for the world to see their boxer shorts. Lesbian couples make out in the hallways between classes, and whorish little white girls hang onto the arms of ape-faced, prognathic Negroes with lazy grins and charcoal-dark skin. The parents obviously could not care less, are trying to be fashionable, or are simply incapable of maintaining any control. Regardless of which is the case, it’s apparent that they should never have become parents.

The above problems are of course systemic. For one, it’s impossible to maintain a properly functioning education system when droves upon droves of subhuman mongrels flood society from Africa, Asia, and South America, all with their unique yet irreconcilable modalities. The classes need to be continuously debased for the sake of “cultural responsiveness.”

Another problem lies with American culture (if you can call it a culture) at large. Technology has completely consumed the youth generation via text messages, Ipods, video games, instant messaging, fantasy football, and of course, wit-dimming television shows. The idols provided to the youth from movies, shows, and music spew the same message of “rebellion” against all forms of authority, be it parents, teachers, counselors, etc., and parents seek to be fashionable by allowing the goalless rebellion to continue unhindered. Self-expression for the sake of “originality” and “being different,” no matter how ridiculous the results, is continuously drilled into the youth’s heads through the aforementioned sources.

The Frankfurt School has won the culture battle.

We are now left with a hopeless generation with only a small minority that is capable of really learning and synthesizing anything.

The future looks awesome.