I've bottomed out, I just Googled Dumbing down: "Dumbing down is viewed as a pejorative term for a perceived over-simplification of, amongst other things, education, news and television, or as a statement of truth about real cultural trends in education and culture." I had already accepted the fact that in the United States we had "dumbed down" our educational system, but this news blurb is ridiculous:
Elizabeth Brannon, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, studies how human adults and infants, lemurs and monkeys think about numbers without using language. She's found that both human infants and macaque monkeys who've seen the same number of objects repeated in different-looking sets recognize when there's a new number of objects. She also found that college students and macaque monkeys have similar speed and accuracy when doing a rough sort of math by summing sets of objects without actually counting them.
Bruce Hammond, a Washington, D.C.-based college admissions consultant and co-author of "The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College believes that the current economic crisis is a boon for the wealthy parents of less than gifted children. "Some students will benefit from the turmoil, especially at colleges with high tuitions and scarce resources". "These places continue to jack it up," Hammond said of tuition increases, "so if you can pay the full outrageous fee in this economy, as long as you can walk and chew gum you will be admitted. And if you're pretty good — average, even — you might get a $10,000 merit scholarship."
I admit that I am a sports Junky. Most days, come 4:00 PM I am jonesing for an ESPN update. If you are like me, I am sure you have responded to at least one internet poll asking if you believe, or forgive the elite baseball played who admitted, reluctantly, that he took steroids. He has asked that we understand that he was young; that he was young and that he was stupid. He fails to remind us that he was 25 years old and that he was receiving a salary of more than $20,000,000 a year. He had access to more advisors and resources than most leaders of small countries.
Wall street managers are asking the public to forgive them for their role in the economic collapse. They also want to continue to receive big bonuses, paid with our tax contributions! They argue that huge sums of money are necessary to retain good employees. Back in March, after JPMorgan agreed to buy Bear Stearns, it offered cash-and-stock bonuses of as much as 100 percent of annual output to top-performing Bear Stearns brokers. But those looking from the outside in are skeptical. How much does it take to retain good people? The truth is, there are an awful lot of talented unemployed people right now. There's a mythology that there are only a precious few geniuses that can run these places.
Some of those geniuses of finance may live in our neighborhood; but only if you have not yet defaulted on your mortgage. I would love to travel the country this summer. My fantasy would be that I would be an invisible observer, a fly on the wall at summer barbecues. I would love to take the temperature, an emotional reading, of average "Joes" as they grill their hotdogs and burgers.
I would observe the backyard ritual of families of teachers, civil servants or retail clerks. Families maybe now reduced to only one wage earner after layoffs take their toll. Hard times probably mean that the dogs of this summer's events are the generic "On Sale" mystery meat dogs; no more expensive "all beef red hots". I wonder what will be their reaction as the smells from their neighbor's barbecue come wafting over the picket fence. Undoubtedly, the unemployed Wall Street banker or analyst neighbor will still be able to afford marinated steak tips and roasted mushrooms (probably portobello also called portabella: side note for those of us more familiar with the hot dog menu ).
I also imagine that the background music will be the same at all of these summer barbecues: Sympathy For The Devil by the Rolling Stones:'
- So if you meet me Have some courtesy
- Have some sympathy, and some taste
- Use all your well-learned politesse
"So if you can pay the full outrageous fee in this economy, as long as you can walk and chew gum you will be admitted." The same folks who brought us this latest disaster, will have the means to ensure that their children bring us the next:
- Or Ill lay your soul to waste, um yeah
- Pleased to meet you Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
- Just as every cop is a criminal
- And all the sinners saints
- As heads is tails
- Just call me lucifer
- cause Im in need of some restraint
'Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me'. Mea Culpa. [may-ah cool-pah] an acknowledgment of guilt [Latin, literally: my fault]
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