Hating Boys

It's no secret that I regard Fred Reed as one of the most enlightened reprobates spewing forth electrons from his keyboard today.  A link to his work is over on the right side of the links column. Fred has a unique way of hitting the nail on the head, over and over again.  If you want to know why the education system in this country is as bad as it is and why things are only getting worse, listen to Freed.

The two lowest-scoring careers are education, overwhelmingly female, and public administration. Thus we have morons, administered by slightly worse morons, trying to teach boys who, at the high end, are so much smarter than the teachers as to constitute another species.

He's right.  Boys don't belong in todays public schools.  No child does.  Public schooling is an insidious form of child abuse.  It wasn't always that way, but it is now.  I witnessed the fall of public education first hand as a student.  As I've followed the news stories over the last 30 years or so, it's only gotten worse.

Fred makes a good point over all about intelligence, performance and failure.  A smart kid will get bored in classroom.  A teacher doesn't want bored kids.  Bored kids act up.  Bored kids find stuff that won't make them bored.  Bored kids are a problem.  Bored kids get extra attention.  Extra attention adds stress.  Stress produces side effects that can be very harmful.

Using a roomful of little boys and girls to validate a middle-aged women's emotional needs isn't teaching, its cruel and unusual punishment.

My own educational career was extraordinarily lackluster.  It started out well enough in a small country school.  It went down hill after that.  My dad moved us to a big city for his job.  I had a horrible year that first year in the city.  Over the course of my career, I was double promoted, held back, sent to prison a boarding facility, ended up in one of finest private schools any ware, got kicked out for moral violations, did one last year in public school, was told despite all A's except French, I wasn't going to be allowed to graduate, told the school to F off I had a scholarship for college, and became a high-school drop out.  Along the way I was diagnosed as dyslexic, was sent to remedial class, took honors and advanced classes, narrowly avoided MENSA, CLEP'd out of economics in college, and managed to get an AA, BA, and MBA.  My LSAT's were good enough to get me into most law schools, but I decided not to go.  When I wrote my dissertation proposal for my Ph'd application to CSTU the men on the dissertation committee were impressed enough to suggest I do the work at one of their alma mater's.  I was intrigued but the $270,000 price tag was too steep.  Eventually I dropped the whole idea of a Ph'd.

I guess all of that is a long winded way of saying,  I've run the gambit of American education, including an invitation to attend an ivy league school. I've come to the conclusion that public school sucks and you can learn what you want on your own