Have any of you noticed that:
To excel in math, one must learn multiplication tables by rote memory. Only then, after exercising that memorized knowledge for a time period, can an understanding of math's "whys" come later. To excel in reading, rote memorization is NOT a workable approach; instead of memorizing letter patterns, one must learn to read phonetically by spelling out the words. What works for math has the opposite effect when learning to read.
The government schools, in their continuous attempt to thwart children's educations, do exactly the opposite of what works. The government schools, with your tax money, now discourage the teaching of multiplication tables by rote memorization but teach reading by the "look-and-say" method which is memorization of spelling patterns. In doing so, they ensure that children will neither be able to read nor calculate.
The government school system, with a sneaky and typically always unknown accomplice named Hollywood (some won't understand why I say Hollywood is the government schools' accomplice), often produce many young graduates who are little more than HYPER-HORMONAL THUGS WHO CANNOT READ OR SPELL.
We've had a decade of economic prosperity. Several things are converging to help ensure that prosperity will NOT continue:
- Fuel prices are high
- A recession will surely hit if it has not began already
- The American investment economy has lost billions in market capitalization within the past 12 months
- And, I believe, that we reached a critical mass of government-schooled ignorants about 4 years ago and they are now entering the lower echelons of the corporate workplace.
Until now, this critical mass of a government-trained negative workforce has not hit the major economy because so many graduates of our recent schools worked in industries such as fast-food and similar places. Such businesses have more flexibility with employees who have no training in critical-thinking skills and no fundamental education.
How has MacDonalds been able to sustain their growth these past 4 years or so given that their labor pool contains so many of these graduates? Technology has held off the decline. By putting pictures of items on the cash registers and by putting mammoth keyboards of buttons on these registers that handle every possible occurrence, the fast-food industry helped delay the impact of employees who cannot make change and who cannot get orders correct without these advanced smart registers. Other industries with a high degree of entry-level workers, such as grocery and discount stores, also use technology to help level the lower-than-normal entry workers.
We've just recently surpassed the critical mass where society's mechanisms will not be able to reverse the massive amount of negative education that government school graduates are now getting.
I have noticed that, in the past several months, more and more service-related tasks such as getting our car repaired or getting a correct order at a drive-through or getting a repair done properly at home, almost always now takes one return visit to "get it right." We must now begin to expect this "double-take" if we are going to survive with our sanity intact. We must expect that our orders will typically be incorrect, that our repairs will require a follow-up visit, and that the items we buy will more likely have defects than they would have a few years ago. Then, things will continue to get worse as the critical mass continues to grow. Fortunately, we are now about to enter the second generation of homeschooled students. Within another two generations, the sheer number of homeschooled children will begin to reverse the effects we are now seeing. Unfortunately, America will have a huge void to reverse at that point and it's much more difficult to get a drop of oil out of a bucket of water than it was to put it in.
January 8, 2001
Greg Perry is the author of 65 books on computer programming.
