Politically Inconvenient Facts
By Lee Culpepper (09/06/07)
In case my "drcoolpepper-email address" has fooled anyone, I better confess that I'm not actually a doctor; however, I may have discovered a new mental illness. I'm calling it Politically Inconvenient Serious Specifics Disorder (or PISSD). From my research, I estimate about fifty percent of the American population is PISSD. Ironically, those who suffer from this disorder generally despise labels, unless they are labeling others, of course. For instance, PISSD people might be quick to label someone who uses facts in arguments as mean or stupid. PISSD people also might "feel" they are above partisan politics – despite indisputable evidence contradicting their "feelings."
If you haven’t noticed, I like to mock political correctness, particularly PC agendas contaminating public schools. As a result, former colleagues and people I have never met, but who have read my columns, have developed serious and classic symptoms of PISSD. Some PISSD-former colleagues even argue no such PC agenda exists in education. I concede the extent of damage PC inflicts upon children remains unknown but only because PC is breeding faster than ever inside public schools. Consequently, PISSD people who deny PC’s propagation in public schools puzzle me.
In fact, a PISSD-former colleague of mine who suffers from a reading comprehension problem – I noticed his deficiency because I am an English teacher -- accuses me of not focusing on the two real issues facing education today -- the incompetence of many teachers and the status quo of mediocrity. The fact is my writing addresses both issues just about every time I sit down at my keyboard – I call the technique enforcing my argument; others might call it repetition. Regardless, I assert that both issues (teacher incompetence and mediocrity) are the offspring of political correctness; conversely, my PISSD-former colleague “feels” PC in education doesn’t even exist, and even if it did, average teachers could not teach it effectively. But what produces incompetent teachers? Hmm, the politically correct fantasy of a world without competition couldn’t possibly have anything to do with that problem. And nope, the watered-down standards that have led to a surge of students having above-average grades that boost their self-esteem -- but not their self-respect -- surely don’t have anything to do with political correctness either. Meanwhile indisputable facts and personal experience attest that American students are falling behind their foreign counterparts, not to mention performing worse than American students from a generation ago.
No, the real problem with education, according to this PISSD teacher, is that politicians on both sides of the fence and I (the delusional English teacher and barbaric Marine) are distorting the “actual” issues in education so that America’s capitalist economy continues running smoothly! Wow, now I’m totally confused because this PISSD teacher insisted he was above partisan political views and my myths about PC! Furthermore, he “feels” schools have always “sucked” (his word) and have never taught students to think. When I innocently asked him why he thought SAT scores began falling between the 1960s and the early 1980s, he implied I was stupid because the increased diversity among students taking the test naturally explained the drop in scores. But when I asked him how diversity explains the significantly lower number of students achieving the highest scores – simply raw numbers having nothing to do with factoring in lower scores -- he refused to acknowledge me. I guess he was PISSD.
According to this PISSD teacher, capitalism is the obvious culprit in America’s public education. The fact that my mentor’s husband, a prominent surgeon, could not begin teaching high school biology tomorrow because he doesn’t have a teaching credential – clearly has nothing to do with PC eliminating competition or ensuring mediocrity! Of course, my friend’s husband can educate other medical doctors and cure patients, but he’s not equipped to teach teenagers about biology or chemistry because he lacks a puppy-mill teaching credential. That parents pay taxes but cannot send their children to a public school with a retired surgeon teaching science because the surgeon refuses to waste his money on a meaningless teaching credential isn’t a problem either. Nah, according to this PISSD teacher, education’s problem is that kids are not taught to think because America needs them to “work menial jobs” in its capitalistic society, and politicians don’t want students smart enough to exercise the right to vote!
Give me a freaking break! I have no other response when I am confronted with such sheer idiocy. Maybe kids are not being taught to think because PISSD teachers like the one to whom I’m referring don’t know what thinking is! If the teacher doesn’t know the difference between facts and feelings or serious arguments and ridiculous opinions, how can his students? People who don’t know how to think are the same people who vote for socialist politicians responsible for the sorry state of compulsory government education.
When you “think” about it, facts and their persistency are just inconvenient to those PISSD people who “feel” they are smarter than everyone else, at least everyone who relies on serious specifics, not feelings.
Lee Culpepper
Related reading:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4322
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4947
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell071900.asp
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell070998.html
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