I've taken some time to review the things that have really been bothering me. I read a few web-comics, looked at some stupid internet pictures, and generally tried to de-stress myself. I'm still awful damn angry about several different things. I'll apologize right now for my use of minor vulgarity. Sometimes, I get so angry that I have a hard time restraining it.
I've got three big points that make me angry. One of them I hit on earlier when I ranted about the degree to which people tolerate the general bullshit that's rampant in the nation's educational system. Mind you, this is bullshit that is focused on staff and faculty conduct and how the institution in question looks at it. The other half of my beef with the educational system can be boiled down into a problem that I have with how there appears to be a systematic effort to reduce the educational part of that system to ... well... a pathetic attempt to cope with one's basic need to feed themselves. I know, that sounds horribly bitter and probably a bit too harsh. From where I stand, though, I've got to say it's hard not to view it that way.
Civics education has been reduced to a memorization of a time line and a vague description of what the different parts of the government is. At one point in time, people were taught about things like why the American Revolution took place, why our government functions the way it does today, and how it developed. Good citizenship wasn't merely a question of who went out and saved the most kittens that month, as many schools have reduced it to. It required something of a basic comprehension of what one's rights were and why they were important. It clarified the motto of the country: E Pluribus Unum. Now, we're lucky if people can recall the things protected in the First Amendment.
You've seen my thoughts on mathematics education. The kind of attitude that's present there is infecting all of the other academic disciplines. What kind of education is a child going to get when they are discouraged from reading material because it is complex? It happens frequently in the local school districts and has been for years. Why is there so much effort being focused on trying to make people forget that matters pertaining to philosophy were once taught in high school? I'm not saying that we should teach religion, at public schools at least. But the methods of philosophical inquiry and discourse are highly valuable skills that not only teach some one how to learn about things but how to think critically. Critical thought is actively being confined to convoluted word problems that are to be solved in methods that hardly make any sense.
I think that is probably what sums up my second, and quite possibly my biggest problem with the educational institutions of this nation. We're not teaching students how to think. We're teaching them how to regurgitate answers, be it factual or propaganda. We're teaching them to rely on technology to solve their problems ranging from simple mathematics to grammar and spelling. These people are not going to have the skills they need to possibly start their own businesses. They simply won't be able to comprehend the various demands placed upon them. When the graduation rate of the nearest major metropolitan center is less then half of the student population and they're hoping to possibly get it to a 60% rate within the next five to ten years, there's a very large problem.
I find myself sickend by the entire mess. It depresses me to see that parents have little clue of just how badly their children are getting screwed. It enrages me to see that the failures of the educational system to actually educate people have been such a protracted matter that there are many parents that don't understand what's wrong. Am I crazy, or is it a teacher's job to empower and guide their students in their efforts to learn, grow, and develop intellectually? Last I checked, that was what teaching was about. What I find myself surrounded by is this ... this stinking morass of incompetence and idiocy run by bureaucrats who desire to pad their already expansive posteriors with the gains wrought by the efforts of others, stolen from the funds reserved for the needs of others, and/or swindled out of the pockets of the local/state/national government in some elaborate embezzlement scheme that's never really mentioned. The educational system, like so many other systems in the government of the nation (on all levels) is rife with corruption and serves to alternately depress and infuriate me.
And then you have non-governmental institutions that are equally despicable. It's more then disgusting to learn how corrupt the health care system is. The entire thing is a protection racket and if you're not participating, you're going to get into a lot of trouble because it's being supported by the government. Sure, you can choose to not have health insurance and not take your kid to the doctors, who are more interested in getting a bigger paycheck then your well being. You can make the free-market choice not to participate in that. At the same time, you will face legal ramifications and the potentiality of having your child taken from you by the government (if not your own imprisonment) for being classed as abusive. It doesn't matter if you can't afford to take Junior to the doctor for that bad cold or that you can't afford the bottle of the prescription medicine. You didn't throw yourself on the altar of greed to make it happen at the expense of your ability to feed your child or go into indentured servitude to the credit card companies.
And folks, please, tell me if I'm wrong about those credit card companies? I don't think I'm going to get a whisper of disagreement anywhere in the house. These people encourage you to sell your freedom so that you can get what you need. The popular culture encourages you to sell your freedom to these abusive taskmasters for the sake of keeping up appearances with the neighbors and having all the creature comforts. Creature comforts that you never truly get to enjoy because you're constantly working to pay off the latest credit card bill. And heaven help you if you can't afford to do so or you can't afford to pay off some other debts! You immediately become fodder for the collection agencies.
Credit collections has become a place where sadists can have a verbal playground. I know, I've been the recipient of much harassment and efforts to make me feel ashamed, afraid, and generally miserable about myself because of the 'shame' that I have for being unable to pay the hospital bills from when I was at college (about 8 yrs ago) on time. I've been denied work in a collections agency because I was too nice. I was willing to work with people to find a reasonable solution that would allow them to pay the debt off over a period of time, even if it was $10 a month. Reason and compassion are two words that are stricken from the vocabulary of debt collections and credit collections. It is replaced with harassment and verbal abuse.
What the hell is wrong with the world? I can't manage to pay my bill on time because I live and work in an economically depressed area. I am making a good faith effort and sending what I can. It is not the minimum that covers the principal balance and the usury charged in addition. So I am some how deserving of verbal abuse, humiliation, and general maltreatment? To add insult to injury, this bill is not for some foolish purchase that I couldn't afford at the time but a life saving emergency procedure that I needed but couldn't afford. One that if I didn't get I would have died?
How is it a crime or some how worthy of such misery to do what you must to live? Especially when said action is not one that is prohibited by law? How is it a crime to be poor? I must be poor because I obviously can not afford to pay these obscenely high rates. If I desired to have housing that would meet my long term needs, I would need to seek the assistances of these brigands in the credit industry. These thieves, mind you, who can freely deny my request for aid because it doesn't look like they'll be able to send in their verbal knee-breakers to get the money out of me fast enough to connive another poor soul into this hell.
Oh, I know, I know. There's public assistance and I have availed myself of it in the past. I'm desperately hoping that we will not need to do so in the future. But if you look at the public assistance programs, they're designed to keep as many people in them as possible. Looking at the current status of the economy, we see that the middle class is struggling to make ends meet. The lower-middle class is just barely more then beggars and they are being told to give up and let themselves be beggars. If you're not making enough to pay all of your bills but you're making too much for public assistance, you're left in the position of trying to save every penny and use every scrap of creativity and luck you have to get through to each paycheck. While my dear husband and I are not at the extremes of this point, we are not financially well enough off to proceed forward as we wish we could.
It makes me angry. My anger is unfocused and mingled with a great deal of sorrow. My ancestors did not fight and die here so that I and my child would some day be indentured servants to some faceless machine. We are not here to be tools of the government, as happens for the people who spread the propaganda in the schools as educational materials, or slaves of the companies, who love to pay a subsistent wage that is only such because of excessively high pricing on things we need. We're here to be free persons building our own lives. Our government is supposed to secure our liberties, not take them away or fool us into believing that they're optional. Our employers and the persons whom we purchase goods and services are not supposed to be working together to reduce us to meaningless pawns where by they trade units of a fictional currency.
But our society.. our miserable and pathetically blind society seems to think this is how it is supposed to be.
And it gets worse as you go farther out into the world.
Once, the United States of America was a place of hope and liberty...
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