Children are masters of the bleeding obvious (but is it their fault?).

Nicole, age 11, would like you all to know that "Anger is a feeling. Violence is a choice." And she wants you to know this in service of the "Hands and Words Are Not For Hurting" project [See previous post on the ridiculousness of THIS particular entity]. Now don't get me wrong -- Comrade X likes kids. What Comrade X DOESN'T like is that kids are rewarded for putting no effort at all into their work and for a complete lack of critical thinking (it is even doubtful that this is even Nicole's thought, and highly likely that it came from a pre-packaged list of phrases), which, I assume, is a reflection of the complete lack of critical thinking abilities on the parts of teachers and administrators in the public schools here in that part of the Pacific Northwest where the public school systems rank in the bottom five in the nation. Yes, I blame the teachers -- at any point, Mrs. Whatever or Mr. Whatsisface could have said, "Yeah, no shit, Nicole, anger IS a feeling. So is peristalsis. So is sadness. So is despair. So is revolutionary fervor." Duh! And violence is OF COURSE a choice, unless you suffer from some sort of mental disease, which proviso Nicole does not here allow for.

Now, Comrade X is well aware of the idiocy and ill-preparedness of primary (not to say college) teachers in this part of the country as he has seen, first hand, a group of them go through their one-year "teacher training" program (Comrade X was involved with a non-revolutionary at the time, a woman so obsessively narcissistic that she couldn't even SEE classes other than the glittering bourgeois mediocrity she aspired to and wanted to be queen of), and was able to be present at a presentation of "projects" designed by these teachers as lesson plans in their courses. A sampling:

1. One group decided to teach Shakespeare's sonnets. After listening for five minutes, Comrade X felt it incumbent upon himself to point out that a.) they were incorrect about the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet; b.) they were incorrect about the metrical scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet; c.) they were incorrect about the content of a Shakespearean sonnet; d.) they were incorrect about the structure of a Shakespearean sonnet; e.) they were incorrect about the creation and publication dates of Shakespeare's sonnets. In addition, Comrade X continued by pointing out that any of the above information could be found in two seconds (or less) by looking it up on Wikipedia, and asked if perhaps they had done so but certain learning disabilities kept them from reading the information accurately. Or perhaps a certain degree of laziness prevented them from looking it up at all. And, Comrade X finally noted, he was surprised that these people were English majors as undergraduates, and lamented the shoddy state of an English department that did NOT make EVERY student take a course on Shakespeare (none of these students had, and were relying on misinformation they hazily remembered from high school -- which misinformation they were cheerfully going to pass on to the next generation of high schoolers). Comrade X then walked away in disgust, leaving the blank stares and gaping mouths of these future teachers behind him, only to walk into this presentation:

2. Yet another group of English majors was presenting a "unit" on Frankenstein. Now, I'm not sure anyone reads Frankenstein in high school, but if they do, they will not glean anything from the guided readings of THESE people. A man and a woman were presenting, and asking questions. The questions seemed irrelevant to the text and missed the main points entirely, so Comrade X asked questions back, which caused the woman to turn away and address other audience members while the male member aggressively and obnoxiously tried to tell Comrade X that his particular reading of the text was wrong and that this proto-teacher's reading was right, intimating that he shouldn't ask questions outside the "teacher's" rather limited (and wrong -- did I mention it was wrong?) interpretation which prompted Comrade X to ask the following: 1.) Is there only one reading of a text?; 2.) If the meaning of the text is so fixed and transparent, why do students need you to point it out to them?; 3.) Is telling a student that they are wrong and that they need to do it the teacher's way the best course for encouraging critical thinking? Comrade X, unwilling to listen to more ignorant belligerence, left that presentation rather unsatisfied and very deeply worried about the state of education in this country.

3. One final example from the many presentations Comrade X saw that day. This one was about Japanese internment camps in World War II. Instead of presenting any factual information and asking hard and important questions about legality and morality, this group chose to read aloud love letters written between two people, one interred in a camp and his wife who was on the way to the camp (or something like that), then led the audience in a calligraphy exercise. This was their contribution to the "addressing diversity" portion of their teacher education. Comrade X of course could not keep his mouth shut: 1.) Why did you focus on bathos instead of pathos?; 2.) What does calligraphy have to do with ethnic diversity, other than pointing out that different cultures write in different ways, which I think every kid who ever read a Japanese comic or saw a movie of ANY sort from ANY culture already knows?; 3.) What did I actually LEARN from this other than that it's hard to paint on rice paper?; 4.) Are you trying to say that even though they were in the camp it wasn't that bad because they were in love? Because that's what it SOUNDS like you're saying.; 5.) How is this history -- you are all going to be history teachers, it says here on the handout -- and what constitutes history? The glossing over of actual factual material and difficult questions of interpretation for a bait-and-switch time-wasting kindergarten-level activity?

Well, Nicole, age 11, I don't blame you for your blatantly obvious statements standing in for acute observations. If your teachers are no smarter than you are, how are you supposed to learn anything?

Teachers of the world, unite! Raise your revolutionary consciousness! The mind is the greatest weapon in the fight against oppression! But you wouldn't know that if you went to school around here ...