Education Dumbed Down

http://lisann1785.tumblr.com/post/34546853085/i-recently-watched-niteline-on-abc-where-cynthia

I just found this blog and found the article so interesting that I decided to share it.

You can read the story of the invention of the feeding tubes and bedpan here: http://charismaallover.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/bessie-blount-a-black-woman-invented-the-feeding-tube/#comment-608

The author makes some great points. The article is about an interview done with the KKK spokesperson. Seeing that I'm not really interested in hearing anything about the KKK it's amazing that I got past the first few words but since I've read some of her other posts and found them interesting I decided to keep reading. She makes some excellent points.

It's no secret the KKK hates everyone who isn't white and probably even then they hate them if they are not blonde and blue eyed. Their viewpoint makes no sense. Everyone in the USA are ancestors of immigrants if they are not newly arrived immigrants. They believe everyone but caucasions should leave. There's only one problem with that. The irish, italians, russians, greeks, english, scottish, french, etc. were not the first ones to occupy this land, the native american's were. With that thinking they(the KKK) would be leaving too.

Of course their thinking doesn't make sense to anyone but them and they hate everyone who isn't white and they hate alot of people who are white if they don't share their viewpoint. So with that thinking, everyone but them would be leaving.

I agree that our history books don't tell the whole story. They tell the stories of the most popular but what about those people that contributed to history that have never been recognized. Inventions in this country are quite big and I do believe a bedpan and feeding tubes are a necessity in hospitals yet the woman that invented them has never been recognized. I didn't know who invented them and quite honestly never gave it much thought. But until today I never knew this. Why wasn't this in my history book? Why aren't the children today learning that this country was not always computers, cell phones(iphones, blackberries) and modern vehicles?

My uncle and I were talking one day and he made a very good point, he said today alot of kids don't even know what a cow is used for or where milk comes from. You ask alot of kids today where milk comes from and they will tell you Publix, Food Lion, Walmart. WRONG! On the surface, yes, that is where you buy the milk but supermarkets only carry the milk for consumers to buy. They don't make it, process it or package it. Now many supermarkets do have their own distribution warehouses where they package generic products. But the ultimate answer to that question is not Walmart. The milk comes from a cow on a dairy farm. The schools don't teach the kids what hard work running a dairy farm is. Some city kids wouldn't even know what a cow looks like if it weren't for TV. That's sad but an unfortunate pitfall of modern day landscape, architecture and technology. Children today don't really give much thought to where their food comes from or to any other modern amenity except they think they can't do without whatever the latest craze is. And I'm not belittling the computer, cell phone, automobile. Those are no longer luxuries but necessities in an ever changing world.

But the problem I see is children don't learn what it was like a hundred or two hundred years ago. The people of yesteryear didn't have these modern amenities. They had outhouses and walked to a creek often times a long way from their houses to get water. They worked the farms, many had to quit school to help out their parents. And no kid back then had the luxury of saying NO! They were lucky if they got their homework done let alone spend hours playing video games, if they'd had video games back then.

A friend was recently complaining that everything his daughter was learning in school was worthless because she wasn't going to use any of it in the real world. Granted, she probably isn't but if the schools are going to teach history, english skills, mathematics, for heaven's sake make sure when they leave the classroom and go to the next grade they know how to read and write proper sentences(at least write halfway proper english, I claim to be no expert by any stretch of the imagination but I do read well, something my mother taught me because the teacher didn't want to teach me), they know how to add without a calculator and know what went on in history besides just the popular stuff.

At least make sure they don't leave uneducated. Alot of schools today pass kids from one grade to the next without a thought as to whether they know how to read or write and do basic arithmetic let alone care whether they know the less important stuff like who invented the bedpan.

And kids not only need to know the basics but how to think for themselves and develop their own opinions.

BTW, the woman(Bessie Blount) who invented the bedpan and feeding tubes in 1951 was a woman of color. Now ask yourselves if history wasn't biased in some way?