Posted on 07/28/2010 6:11:52 AM PDT by Stillwillin
A conversation with a valedictorian
Among the congratulatory plaudits and cliches passed out at the annual commencement ceremonies, one valedictory speech was delivered this spring with a refreshing twist... Forsaking the typical "first day of the rest of our lives" quotations and Dr. Seuss, Goldson chose instead to fire a clear shot across the bow of public education, a deliberately incendiary projectile from a departing star member of the ranks.
(Excerpt) Read more at communities.washingtontimes.com ...
It's just as well. If you can't learn Mandarin you would never learn the math. :-)
The Wife taught our girl ...
I ask this out of true curiosity rather than as a criticism so, why The Wife and our girl instead of My wife and our daughter? Is it a cultural background thing or just a personal preference?
In an interview she said she started a club for Human Rights and Social Justice... hmmm, what are these code word for?
I have three pearls of wisdom for this young skull full of mush.
1. The more precicely you plan, the harder destiny will hit you.
2. The most difficult lesson to learn is which bridge in life to burn or which bridge to cross.
3. He who would like to have something he never had, will have to do something very well, that he hasn’t yet done.
Or maybe that was precisely.
“When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost?”
She’ll be lost. The individual’s inner workings are what drives people to success ultimately- whether they fail or succeed is up to them. Education in and of itself does not lead to success- it is merely a tool, like a screwdriver or a shotgun. It is what you do with the tool that matters.
And the Rhodes Scholars? ouch, far leftists.
Growing up in the 40's and 50's that was basically true of most....and I grew up in Detroit. Neighbors watched out for all the kids and if you did something wrong, your parents knew about it..school was for learning and if you got into trouble, (very few did) you were expelled etc etc etc....A 3 muskateers bar was scored in 2 places to make 3 pieces for sharing and you were suppose to take the smallest piece....seems quaint, but I feel sorry for the kids that are coming up now. It gets worse every year.
Did you read as far as her interest in “social justice” and Marxism as an alternative?
I considered that, too, plus her interest in living in a Marxist commune so as to experience a system other than our own.
For some reason some people, especially the young, are intrigued by the From each ... To each idea in the Communist Manifesto while rejecting Love thy neighbor as thyself and Do unto others as part of a religious myth though each lead to the same place. Some just want to try to improve human nature without a God to rely on and the Communist Manifesto seems the way to do it.
You can explain that it has never been successful even after seventy years in the USSR and about sixty years in China. You can point out the millions killed in trying to make it work and they still want to give it a try. Useful idiots, for sure! Ain't gonna happen.
Also, I am not sure where she will find a Marxist commune. I think she will find that these "communes" are now Communist countries under strict central control. I understand there are communes in Israel but I am not sure of there structure. I am certain it is not Marxist.
Maybe she should give Islam a try. I am sure she would like that.
However, I think she is smart enough to see her way through and perhaps even decide to explore the intellectual beauty of our Constitution and the Bible.
Let me explain my point a bit better.
Those who hold the “People are basically good” worldview deny the doctrine of sinful, fallen mankind.
They believe that, if put in the right environment, people will act “good”. This leads to statism, the belief that putting the right people in charge with enough power will lead to heaven/utopia on earth. With such a “vision”, anyone that stands in the way is “evil”.
Also, they believe that they themselves are “basically good”, and not sinners at heart. This leads to several wrong conclusions/beliefs and actions. One, they must justify their “good personage” through believing in feel-good, empty causes (such as liberalism in general, environmentalism, statism to “help the less fortunate”).
The second and most damaging aspect of this is that they don’t understand that there is no “balance scale” of good works vs wickedness that God judges us on for eternity. Thinking there is such a scale makes them work for their salvation instead of trusting in the only Way.
"I'll be visiting a commune - staying three weeks learning how to organically farm. I figured I would take an alternative route by visiting an alternative living environment."
A commune? "In my sociology class, I was learning about Marxism. I wanted to see what it was like to live in a different economic system."
...if she continues down the path she's contemplating then the answer is, yes.
Let her explore but keep her influence far away from educating our children. Young skull full of mush........
“Is it a cultural background thing or just a personal preference?”
It’s just our jokin’ around between ourselves.
Yeah but to me she’s basically a self-absorbed little whining brat. The system is to blame, but not in the way she believes. The system taught her that everything is about her, that she is not responsible for her own actions, and that she is entitled to ... well anything and everything apparently. Unless Erica learns that helping others is the path to happiness she’s going to continue to be a bitter person prone to tantrums like the one she threw at her graduation. She ruined that memory for all those people, how selfish!
The assertion that "people are basically good" is a very different one from "people behave well when there are consequences for doing otherwise." Your anecdote illustrates the latter.
A couple of weeks in a commune working a farm will teach her the value of capitalism and freedom. A young skull full of mush usually starts out like this and it takes a few years of toil and aimless wastes of time to figure the world out. This is what the Marxist's count on to make their utopian hell. Before long, she will long for the days of going to the mall and listening to her Ipod instead of toiling all day in a field of weeds that need a good chemical weed spray. She had me there until the social justice "thingy". Go to Detroit and save those people if you can. They are all waiting for the next batch of young idealists to hand them their next meal. Hopefully, right before she cuts her wrists, she will escape back to reality and pursue what is best for America. Otherwise she will descend into the hell of just being another Obama voter wondering why things never go right.
Even better! How many of you are there?
:-)
Just we three.
An Enlightened, Committed People Who Understand The Principles Of Our Constitution- The Most Effective Means Of Preserving Liberty |
"Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant - they have been cheated; asleep - they have been surprised; divided - the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson? ...the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it.... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free." James Madison
America's Constitution is the means by which knowledgeable and free people, capable of self-government, can bind and control their elected representatives in government. In order to remain free, the Founders said, the people themselves must clearly understand the ideas and principles upon which their Constitutional government is based. Through such understanding, they will be able to prevent those in power from eroding their Constitutional protections.
The Founders established schools and seminaries for the distinct purpose of instilling in youth the lessons of history and the ideas of liberty. And, in their day, they were successful. Tocqueville, eminent French jurist, traveled America and in his 1830's work, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, wrote:
".every citizen ... is taught . the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution ... it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon."
On the frontier, he noted that "...no sort of comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and the dwelling that shelters him.... He wears the dress and speaks the language of the cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious about the future, and ready for argument about the present.... I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous districts of France' " He continued, "It cannot be doubted that in the United States the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of the democratic republic; and such must always be the case...where the instruction which enlightens the understanding is not separated from the moral education.."
Possessing a clear understanding of the failure of previous civilizations to achieve and sustain freedom for individuals, our forefathers discovered some timeless truths about human nature, the struggle for individual liberty, the human tendency toward abuse of power, and the means for curbing that tendency through Constitutional self-government. Jefferson's Bill For The More General Diffusion Of Knowledge For Virginia declared:
"...experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government), those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate...the minds of the people...to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth. History, by apprizing them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future...it will qualify them judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.."
Education was not perceived by the Founders to be a mere process for teaching basic skills. It was much, much more. Education included the very process by which the people of America would understand and be able to preserve their liberty and secure their Creator-endowed rights. Understanding the nature and origin of their rights and the means of preserving them, the people would be capable of self government, for they would recognize any threats to liberty and "nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud." (Adams)
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
However, I do have a difficult time sympathizing with a young person who visualizes himself or herself coming out of college as if off a production line, ready for some sort of bleak consumer existence and tragically identical to the others, a poor victim of a soulless education factory. It's a bunch of self-pitying garbage, IMHO. Anyone that happens to has only himself or herself to blame - you're a college student, my dear, not a machine. Oil yourself. And it is one of the fondest, and falsest, illusions of youth that he or she is original but that nobody else is.
The young lady has been taught the use of some small and hopefully useful portion of an immense array of intellectual tools in her four or five years in an undergraduate institution. That doesn't make her a craftsman. Not yet, not for a very long time yet, and only after a whole lot of hard work. She may actually learn something on a commune, such as that the cows need to be milked daily even if you think you have more interesting and self-actualizing things to do. And that ditches don't dig themselves. And that humility is an invaluable intellectual and moral asset.
“A degree from most American colleges is worth what a high school diploma is worth in Europe. Ours is a joke.”
True but it’s still the standard pedigree for the vast majority of employers.
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