Your Child is Smarter than You Think.

When I mention my children, I usually feel like I'm bragging, but I really don't believe they're all that unusual.  Their friends and classmates impress me, too.  Furthermore, having taught public school, mostly in the inner city, I have seen plenty of bright young people I wish I could claim as my own offspring.  

If you've ever watched Olympic gymnastics or figure skating, or been to a concert or art museum, you know the human mind is capable of marvelous accomplishments.  But too often we witness a genius performance and we think "I could never do anything that well, and neither could anyone related to me."  We have to stop thinking that way.  

If many Americans seem stupid, it's not a natural failing.  I think it's engineered.  Businessmen (and the business of America is still business) know that if they want to make money, they need people who'll work hard for them for low pay and buy their products. Policy makers, city school boards, and the big broadcasting and publishing companies want a broad base of reliable, obedient drones who won't think too critically or ask too many questions of their "betters."  They may wring their hands and moan about how poorly underclass children perform in school, but they wouldn't want it any other way.  What if children from low income neighborhoods grew up to challenge the CEO's children for their jobs?  Nope!  It's in the corporations' interest to keep the public as uninformed as possible.

So how do they make people stupid?  Magazines that distract readers from real news with stories about celebrities' love lives.  Stupid television programs that make people stop reading altogether.  There are even parents who stifle their own children for whatever reason.  Imagine how different the world would be if, for the past sixty years, instead of mindless half hour sitcoms like Three's Company or shows like Glenn Beck, prime time television had offered full length dramas by the likes of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and August Wilson or operas by Mozart and Verdi every evening.  

Back in my public transit days, I remember watching a young mother with her preschool-age son.  The little boy was observing everything through the bus window and chattering about all of it.

"Doggy!  I see a doggy, Mama!"

"Shut up!"  

"Boo twuck!  I see a twuck, Mama, an' it's boo!"

"Shut up!"

"I can see a wed twuck!"

"Shut up!" 

Whatever was bothering that mother, I couldn't help wondering about that little boy.  I imagined him fifteen years down the road, in my class, with an assignment to write a five paragraph essay, insisting that he could only produce one or two sentences.