Sometimes I Wonder

Tired and in a fairly bitter mood today, I entertained myself by focusing on the worst parts of my job. Sure, I hate my hours (I was never meant to get up early enough that I would be able to see the sun on my home from work), and the behavior issues (I'm actually not having many of those this semester, but I will when I start teaching the lower level classes again after Christmas), but what really frustrates me is the complete lack of higher level thinking skills these kids possess. We're not talking about the kids who are struggling to pass; I actually leave my remedial classes more fulfilled because every thing they get right feels like a huge success. I'm talking about the kids in college prep classes with good grades and good futures ahead of them.

I know part of this is the age. They're just starting to get a good grasp of the difference between literal and figurative and reading between the lines is just starting to be possible for the average kid right around the time I'm getting them, but it still shocks me just how much of what I consider to be basic reading skills these kids lack. Their social ignorance is astounding and leads to their inability to understand a lot of the literature they read and reduces their vocabulary, and when they run into a word or two that stump them, they shut down and have no clue how to decode the sentence or passage. At that age, I was perfectly able to figure out what new words meant on the fly from their usage in the sentence and instinctively went to the footnotes on the page for the words that I couldn't piece together from context clues. I wanted to know what the writer meant and wouldn't let a few new words stump me. Most of my students, on the other hand, fly through the reading, pronounce the word phonetically and don't seem to care that they have no clue what they just read means. Now, I'm perfectly aware that I'm of above average intelligence, but it really disturbs me that there are people out there who make me look a little dim and yet much of the population is able to grasp less of their world than I am and doesn't seem to care to even try. It baffles me that they wouldn't want to understand, wouldn't want to know more about why things work and not just focus on the simple regurgitation of facts and formulas.

I'm perfectly aware that it takes all kinds, and that people really aren't any dumber now than they always were. What we perceive as a drop in the quality or cinema and literature is really more a dilution of what's produced by the higher-than-ever rates of literacy people with disposable income and leisure time. That means more dumb people than ever before can read and afford the time and money it takes to watch a movie or read a book. What results is a simple fact of economics. You make more money by selling more of your product, which leads to a bunch of dreck created to entertain the masses that overshadow the truly good stuff that caters to a much smaller niche customer base of more intelligent consumers. Most people attending Shakespeare's plays were ignorant, illiterate and only there for the melodrama, sword fights and sexual innuendo that pad the more intellectual aspects of his work. The classic era of literature came in a time when only those with unusually large amounts of leisure time, money and education were reading those books. Authors were able to write at a higher level because there was no lower denominator to aim for to sell more books. The masses weren't educated enough, wealthy enough, and too busy to buy and read anything. Our seemingly dumbed down society is really more of a factor of universal education making stupid people able to read and drive the media and making the more intelligent less important economically.

Still, it worries me that so many people aren't interested in understanding their world. How can we expect to solve any of the world's problems in anything short of evolutionary time when people never made themselves learn critical thinking skills? People are just too willing to memorize their formulas and take things at face value. It's one thing to struggle because you're not capable. It's entirely another to be ignorant because you don't care. Sometimes I wonder if the Romans didn't have it right with their bread and circuses keeping the masses occupied so the more worthy could make the important decisions without disruption. The only problem is that I know it's all too likely that I'd be one of those stuck watching the fat lady in the side show and not the guy in the fancy toga debating foreign policy.

I'll try keep the mood of my final NaBloPoMo blogs a little more upbeat, or at least try to work in a few more farcical elements in with my cynicism if I'm inspired to write more negativity.