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Waiting For Superman

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Written by Jonathan Jacobs

     Inner cities are full of illegitimacy, violence, theft, narcotics, homelessness, and general impoverishment. Combine these horrid states of affairs with a recent trend toward growing unemployment and welfarism and what do we have? An intractable mess incapable of being cleaned up. What makes President Obama, or any other public official, believe for a second that voting billions in increases of our hard earned tax dollars from doing real jobs and out of the pockets of real people, will cure what ails inner city schools? I might have to pay for public school computers or free lunches, a fact that I equate with begging and at the least government coercion, but these “noble” initiatives will fail and fail miserably. Sure, my tax dollars might pay for a computer in a cesspool school, but will money find a way to teach a student to use it? Will my tax dollars go toward installing metal detectors? Even if they would, will the problem of guns and violence in schools be fixed? If students are advanced regardless of whether or not they are literate, or capable of passing any standardized test, will there ever be progress made toward improvement? Where is the accountability? Where is the spirit of self-study and American individualism? What happened to the old break-my-back to get it done spirit of the American people?

     Public school is the biggest waste of money in the history of mankind. Why should property owners pay for the schooling of other people’s children? Is that just? Is that fair? Is that even democratic? To me it is a perversion of democracy, and a stain on our nation’s reputation. People should pay for their own children’s schooling. For that matter, if parents are sending their child to a grade D or a grade F school, why not move to another town or city with a better school system? The rationale is that if I were to pay no taxes for the benefit of public school kids, then my neighborhood would fall by the wayside and crime would be rampant. Maybe so, but I still prefer to spend the money wisely, not based on some administrator’s wishes for new equipment at my expense, thanks.

     My favorite quotation from the film is “I don’t care what I have to do, she will go to college”. Does that include selling drugs or stealing? When the United States takes in people that do not speak English or know how to read, nor do they know anything about our culture or values or governmental system, can they be educated so they may become productive citizens? For those of you unfamiliar with sarcasm, that is a rhetorical question.

     All that people need to know is the producers of An Inconvenient Truth are the primary minds behind Waiting For Superman. In my opinion the real Superman or Neitzsche’s Übermensch, will be a politician willing to tell the people of this country the realities of how the public school system is being mismanaged. No more sound-byte lines, no more scapegoating, no more prevaricating, just the stone cold truth. If America is producing mush minds that can only be admitted to college via affirmative action (augmenting entrance test scores for select applicants) then we are all screwed. To replace candidates that are intelligent enough to pass entrance exams with those who are not, under the guise of this asinine pretend concept of fairness is disgraceful. It lowers everyone’s achievements. It demeans those that struggle to accomplish the best results.

     How can we fix America’s schools? By having more teachers with life skills, who are both intelligent and understanding. This will involve a batter teacher-student ratio, the premise that any student offended or dunderhead will be removed immediately to do hard labor, and the commitment of our nation’s leaders to stop using schools and teachers as political talking points instead of action points. There is too much distortion of the truth and not enough facing it. Tell us what you think people, the comments section is wide open.

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