And In This Corner.....

 As a boy growing up, I loved professional wrestling.  Back in the day before cable made professional wrestling a national phenomenon, it was a local production.  I discovered wrestling on one of the local stations out of Amarillo, Texas.  In those days, the local heroes were the Funk family.  They were led by the wrestling legend, Dory Funk who was semi-retired when I was a kid.  The NWA world champion was his son, Dory Funk Jr.  I rarely got to see his matches on our Saturday afternoon wrestling programs.  So my favorite and the favorite of all the boys in Gruver was Dory Jr.'s little brother, Terry Funk.  Wrestling was the ultimate story of good against evil, and the Funk family was definitely the good guys.  No one in their right mind would be caught cheering against any of the Funk family.

Dory Funk Sr. and Dory Funk Jr.

Terry Funk

After a few years of being a huge Terry Funk fan, my family moved to Graham.  One of my adjustments was the loss of my Saturday afternoon wrestling programs.  My Grandma Mae introduced me to Channel 11 out of Dallas and professional wrestling, LIVE from the Sportatorium!  I was really excited to see in the TV Guide that Terry Funk was going to be in the main event.  You cannot imagine how shocked and disappointed I was to learn that my hero, Terry Funk was the villain!  To make matters worse, the evil Von Erich's were the local heroes.  Talk about conflicted.  After living in Graham for awhile, I became a fan of Fritz Von Erich and his sons Kevin, David, and later Kerry.  Instead of practicing Dory Funk Sr.'s spinning toe hold, all the neighborhood boys became masters of Fritz Von Erich's dreaded Iron Claw.  

Fritz
Kevin, David, & Kerry Von Erich

No one in the Channel 11 viewing area would dream of cheering for any wrestler, other than one of the Von Erich's.  In the mid 1980's, pro wrestling went to a nationwide audience with favorites like Hulk Hogan and villains like Andre the Giant (another hero from my Amarillo wrestling memories).  The WWE exploded on cable channels and overtook the locally produced programs.  Wrestling became even more cartoon-ish with purely evil villains and purely good  heroes who eventually would win the hearts of the fans, even while losing matches due to incompetent referees.  Somewhere along the way, maybe because fans no longer had a "local" hero, things changed.  Fans split into two camps.  Of course the majority of fans supported the hero, the good guy, but some cheered on the bad guys.  The good guy was seen as too clean, too wholesome.  Pro wrestling seemed to push promote the villains even more than the heroes.  A large number of fans took pride in their support of the villains.  Eventually, this attitude seemed to bleed over into other sports.  In Texas from the 1970's through the late 1980's, everyone was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys.  People who moved to Texas from other areas might follow their former hometown favorite, but eventually they almost always became Cowboy fans.  Sure there were a few oddballs that grew tired of the way the Cowboys were worshiped, and became vocal fans of Bum Phillips' Houston Oilers, but they were rare.  But as the "pro wrestling" mentality became more prevalent, some football fans started buying Redskins' gear or worse, Steelers' merchandise.  Fans weren't necessarily cheering for a team, but they seemed to be cheering against the local favorite.  

When we moved to Colorado, I saw the perfect example of this attitude.  Of course in Colorado, the Broncos are the NFL team to follow.  At the time we moved, the Broncos weren't too far removed from their Super Bowl championships with John Elway as quarterback.  In the store I managed, Broncos' gear was the top seller, but it was followed very closely by the Broncos most hated rival, the Oakland Raiders.  The majority of the Raiders' fans weren't so much Raiders' fans as they were Bronco haters.  As a football or just overall sports nerd, I would talk about the Raiders, current or past and most of the Raider "fans" had no clue about their chosen team, either current or past.  I think it's just an example of the contrary attitude that most people used to outgrow after their teen rebellion years.  I think an increasingly large number of people no longer outgrow the rebellious stage, but take pride in their unique-ness.  

This attitude has spilled over from the entertainment of professional wrestling to legitimate sports, to the rest of everyday life in America today.  It's a little jarring to read history and learn about men spending the evenings in the local tavern discussing and debating religion, politics, science and so many other subjects from a base of knowledge.  Most Americans were self-educated.  They listened, they read, they were interested in gaining knowledge.  The quote from Emerson that I mentioned before, "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds," was a popularly held opinion.  A person's position on an issue should evolve as that person gains knowledge.  That no longer seems to be the case.  There is no longer a debate.  A person is a Global Warming believer or denier, a 9-11 truther or a Muslim hating Conservative, a Tea Partier or a Progressive, a baby killing pro-choicer or a woman hating right to lifer.  Having a debate about these issues is not a bad thing.  What is so destructive right now is how uninformed our positions are.  Rather than having an honest debate, we pick a side and defend it to the very end.  When the chosen side is not backed up by a base of knowledge, the debate soon turns to the name-calling we heard so much of during the most recent campaign season.  When opinions are not backed by knowledge, manipulation becomes much easier.  Honesty is not necessary if the public is not curious enough to do their own research.  

It is very discouraging to talk to people about the recent election and learn the basis of their choice.  It is almost never "for" someone or something, but "against" the other person or policy.  If our society is going to survive, we must have intelligent debate on issues.  We have to have intellectual honesty from ourselves and our candidates.  We have to force our politicians to be honest.  If they talk about the rich paying their "fair share," make them say what they believe is fair.  Is raising taxes on those making over $250,000 a year going to help solve our fiscal problems, or is it in the interest of redistribution of wealth (are they,  or are we honest enough to call it what it is - Marxism) to buy votes?  Is it all right for your candidate to listen in on cell phone conversations, or hold those suspected of supporting terrorists indefinitely without charging them with a crime, gather information from private e-mails, or to send our troops to war without the approval of Congress, but not ok for the candidate from the other side?  We need to read and learn enough to know what we believe and what we support.  Then we need to read and learn what candidates from all sides not only say they will do, but what they have done and are doing.  The sad thing is that we live in an age where all this information and more is easier to find than ever before in the history of mankind, we are just too lazy or uninterested to find it.  

I have seen interviews with a woman who said she thinks the president did an "acceptable job" in the Benghazi situation.  "Ben Ghazi is hard to predict, you can never tell what that man will do."  I have a friend who voted for Obama because Romney would cut programs that help single women.  But she works a job that pays her in cash, so she doesn't pay taxes on it.  I have relatives that vote Democrat because "I'm a fiscally conservative bleeding heart liberal."  How can anyone claim to be fiscally conservative and support the president and his $6 trillion and climbing debt?  I have another relative that when questioned about individual policies holds positions to the right of the most conservative Libertarian, yet votes Democrat every election because Republicans only care about the rich.  I know several people that didn't vote at all because there was "no difference between the candidates."  These are the pro wrestling voters, their votes have no basis in fact, only in emotion, or possibly in rebellion.  The political consultants call these people "low information voters."  Stalin had a more accurate, if less politically correct description.  He called them "useful idiots."  

 

What About Education?

I try really hard to give teachers the benefit of the doubt.  I had some excellent teachers when I was in school.  I originally went to college to become a teacher and some of my classmates were dedicated to educating children.  My aunt has been an elementary school teacher for longer than she would want me to write.  I know she is an excellent teacher.  My high school freshman daughter has had a couple of good teachers in the public school system.  Unfortunately she has had only a couple of good teachers.  Interestingly, especially to those who claim that we will only attract quality teachers by paying them more, she had great teachers in her first four grades of private school.  She did not attend an exclusive, prestigious, expensive prep school either.  She attended a small private school in a church in Texas.  Those teachers teach because they have a calling.  They are paid a fraction of the salary of the average first year public school teacher, with no health insurance or pension plan.  They teach because they know it's important.

Because of my background, I was a bit concerned about my daughter's education in a church sponsored school staffed by teachers who were not all certified by the state.  She started kindergarten at the age of four, because she had mastered the pre-school curriculum.  Her kindergarten class finished the kindergarten curriculum at the Christmas break, so her teacher was free to pursue advanced work for the students in the second half of the year.  Her education continued at that pace through the fourth grade, when we moved to Arizona and enrolled her in the public school.

The first change we noticed was the lack of classroom management.  Barely controlled chaos would be the best description for both fourth grade classes in her school.  For a child that's easily distracted, and what pre-teen or teen isn't easily distracted, a chaotic classroom is not the environment most conducive to learning.  And my daughter did not learn anything in her short time in Arizona's public school system.  We moved to Colorado.  One of the first things we did before accepting the relocation was check on the schools in the area.  The school in town did not have a good reputation, or good standardized test scores.  But there was a small school district only fifteen miles away.  The school had an excellent reputation and more importantly great standardized test scores.  In Colorado, parents can enroll their child in any Colorado public school with room to accept them.  The school we chose was very selective.  They gave my daughter a test to assess her skill level in reading, writing, and math.  She scored very well in reading - four grade levels above her actual grade.  She scored one grade ahead in writing and on level in math.  We quickly learned that the school was very good at teaching the test.  After moving again, we learned that teaching the test is at least teaching something.

Her education seemed to slow while learning the Colorado standardized tests at the previous school.  After moving, her education has consisted of whatever we can get her interested in at home, or whatever her flighty teenage mind takes an interest in today.  With only a couple (literally two that I can think of in her almost three years at this school) of exceptions, her teachers have absolutely no interest in the education of their students.  They are concerned about test scores, and sadly enough are such poor teachers that they are actually happy when 33% of their students test proficient in math!  They are ecstatic with reading scores in the 60% proficient range.   They actually brag about these scores!  Even sadder, they can brag about these scores because they are higher than the state average.  When my wife worked as a substitute teacher's aid, one of the grade school teachers told her that it didn't matter if a student was a good or poor reader in first grade.  By third grade they are all relatively equal.  We now realize that it's not because the poor readers catch up, it's because the good readers slip back to the poor reading level.  Oh, by the way, next time you are appalled at the horrible spelling in the comment section of your favorite blogs or news sites, listen in to your first grader's reading class.  My wife learned that, at least in our school system, vowels are not important.  They teach phonics without vowels!  "How do you spell star, Johnny?"  "S-T-R."  "Tht's rt, Jnny, gd jb."  No wonder our kids' reading scores are falling like a rock, excuse me, lk a rk.   President Bush's No Child Left Behind has been executed as No Child Gets Ahead.

I wrote last year about my daughter's 8th grade Social Studies class making a mobile to learn about the Constitution and current events, while the health care takeover was in the news.  I wrote a couple of months ago about how history is no longer being taught.  Now, let me tell you about her English class.  Think back to your freshman year of high school.  I know I read The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Romeo and Juliet. So far, with the exception of a couple of short stories, she has read nothing by an author I have heard of.  And I formerly owned a book store and still read constantly, so it's not like I haven't heard of a couple of respected authors.

While doing some office work the other day, I heard my daughter tell my wife that they watched a biography of Shakespeare because they are going to study Romeo and Juliet in the last few weeks of school.  My heart jumped!  They are actually going to challenge the students!  And they are going to learn a little history about Shakespeare first!  My heart almost stopped after hearing her next sentence.  "Did you know that Shakespeare was bi?"  Sure enough, the A&E biography the students watched suggested that Shakespeare's letters to his patron indicated that the two had a homosexual affair.  Reviews of the biography on Amazon, suggest the video would be a good starting point for a discussion on the subject.  Well, since the video was chosen because it fit perfectly into the 50 minute time slot for the class, there was no further discussion.   Would a discussion about the role of the patron of the arts in Shakespeare's time be relevant?  Like maybe that Shakespeare's over the top flattery of the man was an attempt to gain his financial support.  You know, he was "kissing up" to a rich man for money.  How will future biographers interpret "kissing up?"  Then you can link that conversation to the change in hand gestures.  Biting the thumb led to a sword fighting death in Romeo and Juliet.  Pretty dumb, huh?  Kind of like the display of a specific finger in traffic can lead to a fatal episode of road rage today.  Why wouldn't a professional teacher make the minimal effort necessary to create just a little interest in the subject?

A post I read last week about Wisconsin's teacher's union stated that too many teachers today are nothing more than degree-carrying babysitters with high paying jobs with excellent benefits and lots of time off.  Why else would the Wisconsin teachers fake sick days in order to protest Gov. Walker's new policy?  They were more concerned about their union's right to collectively bargain for benefits and automatically collect their dues than they were concerned about doing their job.  Doing the job that used to be a high calling - educating the children.  Why would a teacher's union in California draft a statement in support of a convicted cop killer in New Jersey?  The statement actually calls the killer an "imprisoned journalist."  A story I just read says one organization states the importance of teaching Marxism in elementary school.  That's another topic I wrote about last year, albeit kind of tongue in cheek.   I didn't realize that it was actually part of the plan!  Do teachers actually believe in these policies?

One comment on the Wisconsin story compared teachers to Muslims.  The more rational thinkers among us have argued that the United States is not at war with Muslims.  A small percentage of Muslims are radicals that are trying to kill as many infidels as they can.  The great majority of them are peaceful and do not agree with the practices of the radicals.  Well, the argument has become, "why aren't the non-radicals speaking out against their deadly brothers?"  Like I said at the beginning of this post, I try very hard to give teachers the benefit of the doubt.  If not the majority, at least a very large number, of teachers do view education as a calling, not just a good babysitting job.  Those teachers had better start standing up to their deadly, radical brethren with an anti-American agenda.