Are You Smarter Than A West Point Graduate?

A surprise summer television hit has been the show “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader.” Recently a West Point Graduate found out that, though he wasn’t smarter than the fifth graders in the cast, he was just as ignorant as the majority of them.

The question that he and the majority of the fifth grade participants failed was this: “In the following sentence, which word is a common noun?”

The sentence read: “I like the city of Baltimore.”

The West Pointer had already had trouble with another question and this was only, as I recall, his third question. The most objective of viewers could tell that he was stunned by the question and agonizing over his answer.

Additionally, his fifth grade ‘team member’ also looked quite concerned.

[One must know that a contestant on the show chooses one of the fifth grade participants as a partner for a few questions at a time. If the contestant answers incorrectly or is worried about his answer, he can ‘peek’ at his partners paper, ‘cheat’ by copying if he has no answer, or be ‘saved’ if the fifth grade partner has the correct answer.]

In any event, back to our West Pointer. As mentioned, his fifth grade partner for the ‘common noun’ question looked very puzzled. Of course, one can never take the facial expressions of puzzlement shown by the children as real. The kids have obviously been coached to act worried about their answers

But then the axe fell.

Foxworthy demanded that the West Pointer answer the question.

His answer?

The word ‘I’ was the common noun in the sentence.

“Wrong!” Foxworthy exclaimed.

Immediately the West Pointer blurted out, “Oh! It’s ‘Baltimore.’”

Uh – wrong again. That, of course, is a proper noun.

So – to stay in the game and redeem the ghosts of Grant, Sherman, Lee and Patton, the West Pointer had to be ‘saved’ by his fifth grade partner.

Her answer? “The common noun in the sentence is the word ‘the.’”

Huh?

The disaster and humiliation does not end there.

The remaining four fifth graders then had to reveal their answers to the question. Only two, that is to say, only two out of the five fifth graders had the correct answer: ‘city.’

Thus, of these five very bright kids who are one year away from middle school, only two could identify the common noun in the simply sentence, “I like the city of Baltimore.”

But the implications of this West Pointers humiliation go way beyond this funny little game show. The implications are an indictment of the teaching of English in our public schools.

Ever since the curricular cancer known as “Whole Language Curriculum” was introduced in American during the 70’s and 80’s, more than an entire generation has gone through thousands of American elementary schools with barely any instruction in the phonetic code, structure, grammar, and spelling of the English language.

Morons – idiots – ignoramuses - that is to say, elementary school teachers throughout America have been taught and in turn have taught their students that “the learning of reading and writing is a natural process like the way in which babies learn to walk and talk.”

Teacher guides have been issued in such schools that specifically command a teacher NOT to instruct children in the phonetic code that is the key to learning and speaking English. These teachers are told not to correct spelling errors.

They are not even to correct blatantly wrong answers if the child has a vague notion of the meaning of the words in a sentence.

For instance, this example came directly from a pro-whole language article aimed at so-called elementary educators. [I will paraphrase to save time.]

“Example: A child is asked to read the following sentence and tell its meaning to the class: ‘A young boy sat in the saddle as he rode the pony into town.’”

“Imagine that the child does not know the word pony. He reads the sentence, pauses at the word pony and then says ‘horse.’

“The teacher should commend the child and not point out that he or she is wrong.”

You may think I’m insane in writing this, but every word of it is true.

Whole language instructors believe that phonetic instruction is actually damaging. It interferes with [the insane idea] that people learn to read and write naturally.

If the child guesses that the word ‘pony’ is the word ‘horse,’ that’s o.k. Why? The most important thing to these moron-educators is that the child was able to guess the meaning of the word from context. [i.e. the boy ‘rode’ and was in a ‘saddle.’]

To teach the child the word is ‘horse’ would require phonetic instruction and decoding. Whole language instructors do not do that.

School systems that adopt the whole language approach also abhor the rote learning of spelling and the formal learning of the rules of grammar.

After all – these concepts – so these charlatans and frauds believe – will eventually come to the child ‘naturally.’

So, if one does not teach all these various rules and phonetic codes, there’s another item that will not be taught: “the eight parts of speech.”

In a more classical era, all children, by at least third grade, would have memorized the eight parts of speech, [noun, verb, pronoun adjective, etc.].

There’s a reason they used to memorize these parts of speech by third grade: they were needed to help explain the grammatical structure of a sentence.

Additionally – those basic concepts were, and are, never taught again after that age level. All teachers of the subsequent grades assume the child has achieved mastery of [not passing familiarity with] those concepts.

I have little doubt that the West Pointer could very well have also been a victim of whole language fraud when he was in elementary school. He is now about 29 years of age. When he was in elementary school, the whole language nonsense was spreading like wildfire through the public schools of the USA.

Further evidence in support of my contention that the show’s fifth graders are probably whole language victims: virtually none of these five bright children can spell correctly.

One of the brightest of the shows regular children recently answered the following question: “What was the state from which President Harry Truman came?”

The answer, as spelled by the child: ‘Misourie.’

Once again: rote memorization is despised by the teacher/frauds of today. Fifty years ago, every child would have not only memorized the fifty states, but would have been able to spell those names as well.

One must ask: Just when will this little child genius/actor/contestant get around to learning how to spell the names of the fifty states?

By fifth grade, all that knowledge was drilled into their little heads for permanent reference.

I know, I know – there are those of you who will say that the problem is computer spell-checkers. It may be, in part, true.

However, you cannot discount the fact that thousands of children are actually being deprived of spelling instruction and correction by the teachers hired to serve their best interests. They believe it stifles the child’s self-esteem. They also – insanely – yes, insanely, there is no other word but insanely – believe that children will just ‘naturally’ learn to spell as they get older.

I was raised by public school teachers. I was also a tenured public school teacher. If I had a child, he or she would never see the inside of a public school classroom.

After all, one doesn’t want healthy children put into a sick ward. And I would no more send a child of mine to a public school where the teachers are determined to cripple the child’s ability to read and write for the rest of his life.

Does Santa Claus Take Viagra? - A Look At Senator Obama's Ideas of Sex Education In Elementary Schools

So Senator and Presidential candidate Barak Obama – a man who has about as much trouble as the U.S. Mint when it comes to making money for his campaign – has declared that ‘age appropriate’ sex education should start in kindergarten.

The American public schools are now populated by teachers who, on average, are in the bottom quarter of their college graduating classes. These are the folks to whom we are now entrusting all the instruction that – prior to the discovery of day care centers – was the job of the parents.

These teachers are the same folks who – in Massachusetts anyway – screamed bloody murder when they were required to take a basic proficiency test showing – among other things – that they knew how to read and write in English. Of course – considering that one major city’s superintendent has repeatedly flunked the English portion of the exam, one can understand why the lesser lights on these faculties might object.

In any event – we are now having a miniature national debate on the topic of age appropriate sex education commencing in kindergarten.

Some years ago the big fad was requiring age appropriate ‘drug’ education in kindergarten.

I objected back then to the ‘drug’ education for little kids and I object to the stupid notion of sex ed’ for those same little kids.

My reasons can be summed up with one statement:

These are children who believe that a four hundred pound man, with no visible means of financial support and an eternal life span – comes down four billion chimneys once a year with toys he has personally selected for each one of them. They’re as sure of this as they are that they have two eyes, two ears, a nose and a head.

They actually are taken by adults to see this man at various of his hang-outs, including Wal-Mart and Toys R Us.

In addition – they rarely seem flummoxed by the fact that this same man – flesh and blood as he appears to them in an aluminum chair, surrounded by minimum wage elves – can be viewed – again, in flesh and blood with homeless elves in tow – simultaneously at three or four locations within ten miles of their homes.

The fact that: in some locations he’s tall; in some locations he’s short; in some locations his beard grows from a string; and, in some locations he’s even sober – does not once shake their seemingly Jesuitical faith in his existence and in his powers.

These are also the same little children who believe that a bunny of indeterminate height and with unclear motivation - also breaks into their homes once a year. Like Mr. Claus, the bunny leaves gifts and no signs of forced entry.

You’d think that if these kids were smart enough to deal with marijuana and sexuality, that they’d at least start taking a careful look at the forensics left by these intruders and begin to ‘dope’ out the fact that they’re being taken for a fantasy ‘screwing.’ [A-hem.]

But no. They not only do not figure it out, they actively avoid figuring out. About one thing, however, some are smart.

Once the awful truth dawns [or should have dawned] that:

“No Virginia, The Fat Man and the Rabbit are frauds. They are perpetrated by your parents to allow them to satisfy a primitive urge to be omniscient god-like actors pulling magical strings in your life in a subliminal act that projects their fervent desire always and forever to be able to protect you and magically to weave happiness into every day of your life. “

Depending on whether that truth ‘dawns’ on them or has to ‘hammered’ into them -- then – yes THEN we find out which of these kids will become lawyers and which will become future kindergarten teachers.

The lawyer-kids start doing the math at an early age. They realize that the local mailman can barely cover their neighborhood in one day. Even then they realize that at least once a week they get some piece of mail that mom has to take down the street to the ‘proper address.’ They start realizing that even a mailman, working in daylight, with a finite group of customers cannot keep them straight for a week.

Next, of course, is the chimney problem. The lawyer-kids have seen the department store fraud posing as Santa. They know him to be flesh and blood. [All doubt of that fact is soon removed since not too many real ‘spiritual-fairy-like’ characters have to take a ‘smoke’ break or go to the can – so the lawyer-kids’ Santa fantasy is further eroded.]

They look at this Santa guy and they know that he’s obviously suffering from the latest epidemic that is ‘obesity.’ They’ve probably seen that their own fat aunt can’t even fit into a plastic patio chair.
So, of course, how the hell can he fit down their chimney? And – what about the kids who don’t have chimneys?

In short order the lawyer-kids have ruined the fantasy – not so much for themselves – but for their parents.

However – and I’m now getting back to how we tell the difference between the future lawyer-kids and the future kindergarten teacher-kids.

The lawyer kids play it smart and never tell their parents they’ve figured out the fraud. Why? Because they’ve also wised-up enough to know that once the jig is up, that they’ll be confronted with economic arguments.

No longer will they hear, “Please don’t be disappointed if Santa doesn’t bring you the elephant….They’re an endangered species in parts of Africa and he’ll probably bring all the ones he has to kids in Kenya who need 800 pound pets and have a yard that’s big enough for them.”

Instead they’ll be slapped with, “What? You think we’re made of money? Whose gonna pay for the vet’ if the elephant gets a nose bleed? You seen their noses? Huh? Gimmee a break. You want an elephant – become a zoo keeper.”

So, the lawyer-kids keep their mouths shut. Eventually the parents realize, however, that the kid has figured it out. Kids that age are smart – but they ain’t smart enough to ‘hide their lights under a bushel.’ Eventually – like most bank robbers with a few beers in ‘em – they brag about their discovery and the con’ they’ve been pulling.

The parents tumble to the truth and Santa’s gone – poof! Of course the Rabbit goes right out the door with him.

The future kindergarten teacher-kids? Well – by about third grade the parents figure, “Good Lord, we hate to break the kid’s heart – but for God’s sake – the list of gifts she wants is growing faster than she is.

Those parents have to sledgehammer the kid with the truth.

So, even by about third grade, many sophisticated, hip, and with-it young Americans still have to disabused of the notion that an obesity victim on the verge of a heart attack can defy the laws of time, space and physics – not to mention the elfin labor laws – to drop retail merchandise under a tree after defying the law of bricks by traversing a chimney’s interior.

And to these children we are going to teach sex? We’re going to teach them about the ‘fantasy’ world of drug abuse?

Wait a minute….come to think of it….I’m not really being very creative here when I ponder my argument. Perhaps I am wrong.

Come to think of it – I suppose the sex ed’ and drug courses could be integrated.

Yeah – I think I can hear the kindergarten teachers ‘dialoguing’ with the ‘students’ right now.

Sally: Ms. Smith? How come Mr. and Mrs. Claus don’t have any children? If he loves kids so much, how come he doesn’t have any of his own?

Teacher: Well, Sally – you’ve presented me with a ‘teachable moment’ and I want to thank you. Class? Let’s learn today’s new word: ‘menopause.’ As you know Sally, Mrs. Claus is about the same age as God, and that’s very old isn’t it?

Sally: Huh?

Teacher: And when women reach a certain age, they cannot bear children anymore.

Sally: Like my neighbor Mr. Sullivan?

Teacher: Did you say ‘Mister’ Sullivan?

Sally: Yeah, my mom says he can’t bear children playing in the yard….They make too much noise. Mom says he’s a Jack’s Ass.

Tommy: Does ‘menopause’ mean you can’t stand loud noises?

Frankie: That’s ‘jackass’ you idiot!

Sally: Teacher! Frankie called me an idiot!

Teacher: Frankie, that’s not nice.

Frankie: Screw ‘nice.’ I don’t give a damn if Santa and his old lady are doin’ the ‘dirty’ – I wanna know if he takes amphetamines?

Teacher: Amphetamines?

Frankie: Yeah – ‘member you were tellin’ us how truckers took ‘uppers’ like meth’ so they could drive all night? An’ how they cracked up their trucks and killed innocent kids in the 4-H club?

Teacher: But –

Frankie: I just wanna know – how does some old cuss like Santa keep awake enough to drive all night? When I saw him at the mall he was plastered. My dad says there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to sober him up. So – I figured it musta been amphetamines he was using to mush that sleigh all night.

Sally: Santa’s a junkie!? Whaaaaa!!!!

And so I can hear it going and going…….a teachable moment all gone to hell.

You want to teach these kids about drugs?

They are taught that Snow White was put into a coma via an ‘apple.’ And without so much as receiving basic life-support – hung onto her beauty like some waxen-faced Lenin in Red Square’s Tomb.

They think pigs talk and build homes that can withstand, variously – winds varying in intensity from a Category 3 to Category 5 hurricane.
[The variation, of course, depending on the lung capacity of the wolf involved.] And let’s not forget that that a similar wolf appeared as a ‘transvestite’ in Little Red Riding Hood. Explain that one – eh?

Of course, the hardest character to deal with – a real psychedelically tripping junkie – is ol’ Mushroom Alice. Yup, she of Alice in Wonderland.

She didn’t get to Wonderland by taking the subway, my friends.

But enough with the examples. Let’s switch gears.

Right now we live in a nation with thousands of ‘educators’ at the kindergarten and first grade level who honestly believe in something called ‘Whole Language.’

It is an approach to teaching reading and writing.

Well – it is not an approach so much as it is a ‘belief system.’

These ignoramuses in these classrooms believe that children should never be taught the phonetical key to English. Thousands of these fools have created a couple of generations of children who have been diagnosed as ‘learning disabled’ because of the crime – there’s no other word for it but crime – committed by these fraudulent teachers in withholding the phonetical key to understanding the English language.

These so-called teachers have dumped over two thousand years of proven language instruction methodology. They’ve done so at the behest of idiot-professors of education.

I have written at other times about Whole Language. Most parents, unfortunately, cannot understand the problem with the program. Their failure is based on a need to trust the teachers to know what’s best for the kids.

I have news for them.

Many teachers have no clue what is best for the children. Many are barely able to teach the children how to read and write simple sentences. Many others are actually incapable of teaching these basic skills.

Yet, to these same people we are going to entrust teaching the abstract nature of drug usage and sexuality?

I think not.

Senator Obama may be smart, but he is certainly not wise.

You do not ever teach abstract concepts to those who lack abstract comprehension.

Until a child has disabused himself of the notion of Santa’s Magical Powers – as possessed by a real person at the real shopping mall – and started to get a grip on reality – you do not teach them about drugs and human sexuality in any classroom anywhere in this country.

Children in early elementary school do not have the intellectual tools nor mental developmental level to distinguish fact from fantasy. You do not confuse them with harsh realities that are also dependent on in-depth abstract comprehension.

Leave all this stuff to the parents. God knows, the parents of America have tried everything possible to avoid having to raise their own children. But – when it comes to discussions of drugs and sex at an early age – they should be on their own.