No Yob Left Behind
Tuesday July 1, 2008
Categories: Decline and fall, Education
A Brit told me once how odd it is to keep running across Americans who think the UK is like the land of Tolkien and Lewis, still. This should disabuse some people: Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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LOL...I find this absolutely perfect! The student made a jab at the class and the prof, and the prof returned it with typical English wit. The kid still flunked miserably (less than 10% could hardly be considered passing), and was properly made to look the fool for his stupid act.
Instead of getting on the prof for this, why not come down on the student? After all, it is the student who flunked, not the prof. The kid gave a joke of an answer and it was treated appropriately...as a joke.
By the way...we know the name of the prof in this case. Why do we not know the name of the smart-*** student? I for one think it is time to restore a bit of shame to the world of education. Maybe it would put some pressure where it needs to be placed...on the student.
I often wonder if what's been going on in England isn't delayed divine retribution for Elizabeth...
Irenaeus: I or II? Or did you mean Elizabeth Hurley?
Erm, Rod, are you really complaining about someone who scored a '7.4' out of a standard 100 on a test got too high a score? I mean, if you don't fill in your SAT booklet at all, you get 400, which is equivalent of '25' on a 100-based system.
The scoring system is perfectly reasonable. Write anything that is even slightly legible, you get a few points. Obscenities, especially ones spelt correctly, are in fact English words and form sentences, and according to the rules give the writer an incredibly tiny amount of points.
u soould jus foccer of ifn no lik
Come on, Rod, please pick more important issues to get worked up about.
Rod, does it ever bother you that it'd be orders of magnitude more Christian -- and more MEANINGFUL and EFFECTIVE -- for you to devote all (even a fraction) of the time you devote to writing all these "downfall of civilization" posts to going out into poor Dallas neighborhoods and directly helping the poor? Tutoring kids? Teaching adults to read? Teaching them basic nutrition so they don't all develop diabetes (which is becoming practically the default condition of the urban poor)? Delivering food to the homeless?
It's inconceivable that you're doing much or any actual good with this blog; what you're doing is enjoying yourself and providing enjoyment to your readers, who (myself included) are a bunch of relatively educated, relatively well-off people. (Oh, and I suppose you're keeping your name out there / trying to increase your profile, for future employment and book contracts.)
That'd be just fine, were your blog not explicitly and inherently presented as a means by which you're trying to make the world a better place. Thus, per the preceding paragraph, you're falling quite short of what you say is your goal.
- And please, really: don't try to argue that you're doing much or any actual good with your posts. That would be an embarrassment.
- And, if you say this blog is _not_ a means by which you're trying to make the world a better place, isn't it then merely a place where you occupy yourself with fulminating again, praising, lamenting, or condemning whatever happens to catch your attention -- and isn't that rather subaltern?)
Yes, Rod. During those 30 seconds it took to post this entry you could have taught some kids more creative ways to swear. I personally feel I am a better person having read ossicle's screed, so it proves how much can be done in so little time.
The reality is that England's misbehavior problem is a real problem and it is getting worse. The odd thing about it is that the English seem so resigned to it. They complain, but seem incapable of gathering themselves together to address it.
I thought you'd have seen the humor in this story, Rod, being a fan of British comedy and all. Should the story have included a man in a dress?
I love it when people construct arguments that essentially self-validate by saing, "...and if you disagree with me, you're only proving my point/embarrassing yourself."
The one I always love is "You always have to be right!" or "You always have to have the last word!" "That's not true!" "See what I mean?"
Richard
Ossicle, let me explain something to you: this is a blog. I am a writer. Writers write. I write about stuff that catches my eye. Important stuff. Trivial stuff. Stuff in between. If you don't like it, fine, don't read it. Hundreds of thousands of people each month find something of value here. Anyway, in the time you spent writing that whiny post, you could have been teaching the flugelhorn to refugee children. Or something.
If I do good with this blog, fabulous. If I just give you something to think about and laugh with, or at, that's fine too. If coming here is a waste of your time, by all means find something more interesting to do with your time. I'm not stopping you, Chester.
Rod, your explanation is unnecessary, as I stated it myself in my initial post. You did not address my point. I'll do it for you, now that you've clarified: You do not intend to accomplish good by devoting a huge chunk of your time to this blog. You do not expect your posts here to have any significant effects on the subjects of those posts, even though you claim to care deeply about them. You're choosing to be self-indulgent rather than effective.
That's fine, I just thought you wanted to do more with your life.
Oh, and _my_ coming here is irrelevant. I never claimed to be anything other than a spectator (and occasional participant) here for the enjoyment -- the enjoyment of agreeing with you occasionally, of disagreeing with you more often (the same way some conservatives enjoy getting their blood pressure raised by reading and commenting on, say, Kevin Drum's blog or DailyKos).
I never said I was wasting _my_ time, I said _you_ were -- or rather, you would have been if certain conditions were true. It turns out those conditions aren't true, so it seems you're not wasting your time: You're doing what you want to do, fully aware of how far it falls short of what you could be doing with respect to things you claim to believe are of supreme importance.
Ossicle,
Rod's work on this blog does in fact make the world a better place. It provides those who would like to be exposed to a voice that is distinctive, articulate, provocative, and different from what one will find in many other places a chance to hear that voice if we so choose. Rod's voice is one with which I sometimes disagree, but it is one that I feel it worth my while to listen to. There clearly are more concrete actions one may take to make the world a better place than visiting a blog in one's spare time. But I would submit that for some of us the conversation here plays a worthwhile part to the broader conversations that seems useful to us as a means of working through the *ideas* on which one's more immediate actions in the world are always be based. I feel no need to vouch for my immediate actions -- material or intellectual -- to justify myself to you. But I will say as someone who works in education that even an anecdote like this one that Rod has shared with us and to which you take offense can be useful for someone whose labor is the necessary work of helping the coming generation learn to *think.* Maybe you should learn how yourself.
Rod, Ossicle's just being a typical sensate culture denizen here. "Use" or "good" can only be measured in terms of tangible output--if you were feeding specific numbers of hungry people or teaching a specific number of illiterates to read, that would be measurable good, but the notion that you could be doing a more subtle kind of good by encouraging thought and providing the opportunities for rational discussion is beyond the sensate culture inhabitant's ability to calculate.
Of course, by that calculation every single artist in America ought to put away their palettes and canvases, and go paint the exteriors of houses in underprivileged neighborhoods instead. What possible "good" does their art do? Why should they make subtle statements about the terrible state of, say, the inner city when they could go buy whitewash and make a *real* difference?
Sigh.
Ossicle, I consider yours an important "voice" that I am pleased to encounter on Rod's blog, so please take the following in that spirit...
Of all the millions of people in the US who look away from or deliberately avoid any hint of need or suffering, why do you pick Rod for your criticism? Why isn't just as simple as seeing that the man is paid to do this, it's part of his job, and where do you get off assuming that he spends none of his other time on charitable work of any sort? Is he just an easy target?
There are plenty of crusaders for change on the Web, most of them truly a waste of bandwidth; a rare few actually do effect change, albeit in small ways (that being the most one could expect from this medium).
My questions are somewhat rhetorical. I'm not asking you to justify anything to me or Rod. I am simply left to wonder: every content basher I've encountered turned out to be a hypocrite to some extent, or a self-righteous do-gooder who can't see past his own work for the value in others. I prefer to not make that assumption about you. But, do you see my point?
Oy, Franklin. Okay:
p=paragraph number
s=sentence number
- p2s1. Of those millions, a minuscule number spend tens of hours a week publicly bloviating about the downfall of Western Civilization. Rod is one of them. Rod is the main one I read. Thus I address Rod.
- p2s2. You have no argument. He chooses to do his job. I'm pointing out that the job he's chosen involves lamenting and wailing and puling about the downfall of Western Civ and the virtues of Christianity, instead of going out and doing more actual good for actual people on one Saturday than he does in a month of posts. As for my "assumption" that he does no charitable work (or a negligible amount), I have two very good answers. First, it's simply obvious. We all know a ton about Rod's life from his posts -- both his activities and simply how busy he is, between holding down multiple jobs and being a father. Second, what is not an assumption but a fact, and indisputable, is that regardless of how much charitable work he does, it's greatly cut into by the amount of time he spends lamenting and wailing and puling. In light of those two reasons, you do me a great injustice in p2s3: by no means am I merely picking on Rod because he's some sort of easy target. I criticizing him because I care deeply and agree with him about quite a few things, but his incessant, ineffectual, over-the-top bellyaching GETS ON ONE'S NERVES and forces one to say, WELL DO SOME GOOD THEN - THINK THIS JESUS FELLER HAD SOME TIPS!
- p3s1. No response.
- p4s1-s2. No response.
- p4s3-s4. Franklin, these sentences indicate that you must have been reading and writing in a hurry, because you're an intelligent person: In my two posts I made no claims whatsoever as to my own virtues or claims thereto. My objections all concern how Rod chooses to DO, given his absolutely unending stream of disappointments and condemnations. The disconnect annoys me -- which is my main motivation for my occasional posts -- but as it happens I care deeply about some of the issues he write about, and agree with him about a certain number of things, and thus am not indifferent or hostile to the fact that he's rather profligately not performing real actions to ameliorate any one of the hundreds of real human problems taking place at this very moment within a mile of his house. I still say that for a person who really cares as much as he claims to, teaching a single adult to read is more important that six month's of posts.
- p4s5. Do you see, now, that I'm not susceptible to charges of hypocrisy or self-righteousness, since I'm making no claims about my own virtues?
This is the weirdest thread I've seen in a long time. Ossicle is melting down, freaking out that by entertaining him with my blog posting, which I'm obviously forcing him to read, I'm failing to teach macrame skills to welfare-dependent Amish dwarves, or something.
I'm kind of enjoying this. Does that make me a bad person?
Obviously, Mr. Buckroyd got the genuine sense of humor that Rush Limbaugh misplaced years ago.
Ossicle, that was a fair response. You got some things rather wrong, but I hope that is easily clarified.
1) You took my ambiguous statements and took them as direct statements of observation or accusation. Please think about that. I ask you, honestly and sincerely, how my phrase "I prefer to not make that assumption about you" fails to prevent you from taking the preceding sentences personally.
2) I'm pointing out that the job he's chosen involves lamenting and wailing and puling about the downfall of Western Civ and the virtues of Christianity, instead of going out and doing more actual good for actual people on one Saturday than he does in a month of posts. You are stating opinions, both intellectual and aesthetic, as statements of fact. You are welcome to those opinions, subject to rebuttal by Rod and others, but I find your assumption that Rod can blithely trade work hours for "actual good", or arbitrarily decide that family obligations can be shirked, to be borderline ad hominem.
I shan't belabor any points further. I'll just close with this thought: if you assume that I hold ill will for you, you will be 100% wrong 100% of the time. If I have anything close to such feelings, I guarantee that you will not need to make any assumptions about them. You'll know them in no uncertain terms.
Weird, duh!
I just think it's cool that Erin Manning said
"Rod, Ossicle's just being a typical sensate culture denizen here. "Use" or "good" can only be measured in terms of tangible output--if you were feeding specific numbers of hungry people or teaching a specific number of illiterates to read, that would be measurable good, but the notion that you could be doing a more subtle kind of good by encouraging thought and providing the opportunities for rational discussion is beyond the sensate culture inhabitant's ability to calculate.
Of course, by that calculation every single artist in America ought to put away their palettes and canvases, and go paint the exteriors of houses in underprivileged neighborhoods instead. What possible "good" does their art do? Why should they make subtle statements about the terrible state of, say, the inner city when they could go buy whitewash and make a *real* difference?
Sigh."
Of course, by that calculation rap artist Snoop Dogg, encourager of thought, provider of opportunities for rational discussion, and denizen of the insensate culture should put a sock in it and go join Habitat For Humanity as another volunteer denizen of their sensate culture building houses for the poor. Sheesh! If he'd taken that advice we'd have no duet with Willie, now, would we?
Rod: Your reply is hilarious, and one of several reasons I continue to read your blog. I think you're still avoiding my point, and that you're 50% insane -- but I'm obviously 50% insane, too, to stick around someplace that irritates me so much. I'm quite sure that if we were ever to meet (I'm a NYC theater and TV writer who's been reading you since your NY Post days) we'd have an awesome time, provided I kept this moniker a secret. And I first read Confederacy of Dunces when I was about 8, at the urging of my parents, and have read it about 20 times since then. I still think it's one of life's great hilarities that the hero of your favorite book is a closeted gay man.
Franklin: I'm not being passive aggressive, but I don't follow your point #1. It may be because I took Rod' advice to heart and had a drink. (1 drink = 1 bottle of wine.) Feel free to elucidate, or drop it. (Not sure I've ever seen you demonstrate the latter, so perhaps I'll be back.)
As for your point #2, your final sentence #2 is a good one, and I confess that on the elevator down from my office after work this evening it occurred to me that Rod, Bob Cratchit-like, has to scrabble for every 'alf-penny he can so that he can feed his kids and his non-working wife. So my phrase (uttered in a voice husky from compassionate tears) that he should "[teach] a single adult to read" is not fungible with "getting Waldman to write him a check."
I'd only add -- and I expect no one here to rise from their knees on the pews to concur -- that there is, at a base level, a tension between one hypothetical guy who writes, say, a chess column in his spare time as a way to earn a little extra money for his family, and a guy in the same situation who writes fulminating mini-polemics about OTHER PEOPLES' FAILURES TO ACT MORALLY. (See an optometrist about that mote in your eye, will you, Rod? Washed the feet of the poor lately?) (And Franklin, let me hasten to clarify that I know you're not among those kneeling on the pew, I realize you're a Assyro-Babylonian ferromagnetic divination Snuffleupagus-wrangler who hangs out among the Christians and non-believers here as the (rather interminable) voice of reasonableness. No PEW for YOU.)
As for your point #3 (well, you don't number it, but it's your final paragraph) I have the tingly, dewy sensation of a drug-sniffing dog having just brushed my trousers with his shoe-black nose. There is something at once servile and threatening, which is enjoyable. I'm honestly not sure what you mean; I didn't intend to accuse you of harboring ill will toward me. If you're referring only to me saying at one point that "you do me a great injustice," that was just purple prose meaning "you're wrong," I know you don't have it in for me and, if that was the passage to which you were reacting, I regret my phrasing.
Ossicle, at this point I'm much more inclined to take the stated advice, in my case a pint or two of PBC Walt Wit, a good Belgian style wheat ale if you like that sort of thing.
I'll just do it briefly, to Wit: -p4s5 I in fact made no charge towards you of either hypocrisy or self-righteousness. I implied that your post could leave the reasonable reader with either or both impressions, and that I consciously chose to not take either impression.
I think we've both had our daily required dose of confusion. Pozdrav!
Are you in Philly? I might ask to take you up on that! :d
Wait, you're a writer who's telling another writer that his writing is a waste of time that he could be using to build housing for the homeless? Why are you wasting your time writing for stage and the small screen when you could be out growing maize for the hungry? Why are you wasting your time griping about a blogger who's irritating you when you could be saving humanity by making phone calls for Barack Obama?
Haha! I'm a Bob Barr man, myself. :D
Can't we all just get along?
For anyone still paying attention to the original post's subject:
"F*** off": Two points.
Cute puppies: Zero points. And you'd better apologize, mister!
Just missed me... I had to let my daughter have her time on the Web.
Yeah, Philly. Some of the best good beers anywhere, a couple of great ones (microbrews... yummm).
Let me know, and I'll be sure to invite my Assyrian Snuffleupagus friend to join us. Maybe we can make it a local night out with some other locals who haunt this space. madfedor@yahoo.com
ossicle, I'm in love.
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