We may not want to say it but we all know the way to insanity. (Or, alternatively, you can hum the Burt Bacharach tune popularized by Dione Warwick). The question is: Do we know the way back?
1. Headline,
Aug 11, 2021 ... SALEM, Ore. (WTVO) —
"Oregon governor signs bill ending reading and math proficiency requirements for graduation"
"U.S. now ranks near the bottom among 35 industrialized nations in math"
Math performance of American 15-year-olds declined significantly on international PISA test.
Which countries were in the top 10? In numerical order from 1st to 10th: 1. Singapore, 2. Hong Kong, 3. Macao (China), 4. Taiwan (Chinese Taipei), 5. Japan, 6. BSJG (China), 7. Korea, 8. Switzerland, 9. Estonia, 10. Canada. (Note: BSJG stands for Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu Guangdong provinces in China).
U.S. students stand at 43rd place; although the government spent almost $15,000 for elementary and secondary (FTE - full time equivalent) students, exceeded only by Luxemburg, Austria and Norway. Only S. Korea that is in the top ten list in math proficiency belong to the top ten list in expenditures. On the other hand, No. 9 Estonia (math proficiency) spent just half of what the U.S. did for its students. The educational system in the U.S. had apparently lost its compass. Can we be hopeful it can find its way back to San-ity?
2. Headline: Clearly not a shining example of an $80,000 a year college education.
"Peter Fray-Witzer, a student enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio, wrote an op-ed in a campus newspaper complaining that 'cisgender men' were going to install radiators in his 'safe space' dormitory".
Miriam Webster defines Cisgender : "of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth". In other words, it is a person born as a male behaving as a male; likewise, a female at birth behaving as a female. Read quote below about what happened:
"A student at an $80,000-a-year ultra-liberal Oberlin College in Ohio claimed in an op-ed that he was left ‘angry, scared, and confused’ because ‘cisgender men’ installed a radiator in his ‘safe space’ dormitory".
The English language just topped a little over 1 million words, as of last count. "Currently, there is a new word created every 98 minutes or about 14.7 words per day".
William Shakespeare created in his entire lifetime a total of 1700 words; many of them do not make it in normal conversation today. A "safe space" used to mean that one has enough clearance to park a vehicle in one's garage. Or, assurance a ship captain has while maneuvering his vessel through the Panama Canal. Today, some students are so emotionally fragile, they need to be reassured of a place of refuge for comfort and safety but please don't let a regular maintenance guy come to fix the heater. Pick one from the other extra five gender identities but please no run-of-the-mill serviceman or servicewoman. That is scary and confusing.
What is going on? We had better find a way back to sanity? Is this the epigraph to describe the country today,
"One flew east, one flew west, / One flew over the cuckoo’s nest."
"Although this may have nothing to do with the meaning of the nursery rhyme, most European cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests and build no nests of their own. The baby cuckoo is raised by parents of a different species along with their own babies but usually grows more quickly than its non-cuckoo nest-mates and pushes them out to die".
The cuckoo - far from having the oft quoted bird brain - exhibits one of nature's cleverest adaptation for survival. By letting other host birds raise its chicks, the female cuckoo can lay as many as a dozen eggs by cleverly laying one (and only one) egg at a time in a dozen different bird's nests. The female cuckoo is thus freed from the responsibility of caring for its own young, and in so doing it can lay more eggs than any mother bird could. The most sinister part of it is that the one cuckoo egg, once hatched, will first immediately push every other chick out of the nest until it is the only one left and the host mother bird will unwittingly raise it as its own. (There are several YouTube videos online that show how the cuckoo chick manages to get rid of its nest mates until it is the only one left; those with a faint heart may not want to watch it).
If we as a society are not careful, we will end up with one cuckoo bird to take over the national nest. Those who advocate to change this, cancel that, remove this, excise that from the vocabulary, transform this and that, do not come from the majority but from the tiniest corners of social media, hidden from the everyday citizen. However, their views, once hatched in Twitter, Tiktok, Facebook, etc. can cause the demise of one established norm.
Society must continue to respect the voices of the minority but the latter should not be allowed to arbitrarily rule. In a democracy, that is. This is what is happening today. One cuckoo egg can and will push away the rest out of the national nest. Five or so junior members of congress can drown out the majority. But much of society does not seem to see it.
"Seconds pass with every door. Minutes pass with every street. Elijah never realizes that he's lost, so he has no trouble finding his way back". - Author: David Levithan
All society can hope for is that it realizes that it is lost.
The Cuckoo Cuculus Canorus
The tiny host mother bird feeding a cuckoo chick. The host mother bird will remain clueless the entire time. Imagine, the tiny mother bird gathering such an enormous amount of nutrients to feed the oversize chick, more than it normally would have had to if it were raising its own real tiny chicks.
Over 28 trillion dollars of national debt continues to go up - feeding the proverbial cuckoo.
I encourage the reader to read the previous musing, "2050: The Ebb of the Tragic Trajectory .."
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