Tue Jul 8, 2008 6:46AM2 comments ›
Tue Jul 8, 2008 — by Dennis O'Neil
Education, by Dennis O'Neil
The Four-Color Answer
Over the past few years, I’ve come to believe that not everyone gets the same education, even if schools and transcripts are identical. Some folk mentally compartmentalize: church goes here, family here, school stuff here, life in general there. So when they pass tests on what they’ve heard in classrooms, and at the end of a span of time, usually16 years and some august personage hands them a rectangle full of fancy lettering, they’re done with it. No more schooling, and no learning above what’s needed to live comfortably. Schooling in its compartment yonder, not touching this compartment, which is where we live.
That seems particularly true for liberal arts types, and vastly less true for engineers, doctors, dentists – students who go to the universities to acquire skills.
Although it’s been encouraged and enabled by the current “No Child Left Behind” calamity, which seems to be all about passing prefabricated tests and not at all about learning, this just pass the test attitude is not new. My favorite college professor, from whom I took at least six courses, told us that we’d better join the Book of the Month Club; if we didn’t, we’d probably never read another book after graduation. He was admitting that he wasn’t in the business of encouraging curiosity and a love of books and what’s in them. Rather, his task was just to help us grind through the requirements, pick up the sheepskin and…what? Remember to pay taxes. Don’t raise a fuss. Hang the sheepskin in the foyer, where visitors will see it.
The problem, I think, is this: There might be information over in the school compartment that is relevant to the contents of the living compartment. It might supply answers, or at least stimulate thinking.
Left in the ghetto of the school compartment, denied access to other compartments, and it is useless, and it will die. Worse, its lack might cause you to blunder.
Now: please imagine the following paragraph in letters 12 feet high, in Day-Glo.
RECOMMENDED READING: The Ten-Cent Plague, by David Hadu.
This excellent book tells how the comic book business was horrendously crippled, and hundreds of people thrown into unemployment, because the public believed authorities. Some, if not all, of these authorities, had self-serving agendas and very few of them even went through the motions of trying to validate their assertions. But then, nobody, from fretful PTA members to editorial writers, was demanding any proofs. They were just organizing book burnings.
Let’s recapitulate: citizens believed, and acted on, the claims of those whose positions in society were their only credentials. Very little doubt, very little questioning, just a rush to judgment.
We’re in the sixth year of a war that was initiated because of invalidated claims made by individuals who had much to gain by making them, whose expertise was, at best, dubious.
Am I conflating the 1950s collapse of comics publishing with Iraq? Well, the parallels do exist. But bad as the comics’ debacle was, the Middle East situation is far worse. So forget comics. But remember what you learned about…oh, say, the Spanish American War or the Vietnam War. The data is there somewhere, moldering in a compartment.
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and The Shadow – among others – as well as many novels, stories and articles. The Question: Poisoned Ground, reprinting the second six issues of his classic series with artists Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar, is on sale right now, and his novelization of The Dark Knight movie.
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Comments (2)
Russ Rogers (10:30 AM on Tue Jul 8, 2008)
The Scientific Method challenges established notions. It requires independent verification. It requires transparency, in that you not only have to give your data, you have to explain how your data was obtained. You aren't just allowed to make stuff up. It's a system of thought, study and shared experience that has advanced humanity farther in the last two hundred years, technologically and I would say even philosophically, than in the previous two hundred thousand years. Here's the problem with the Scientific Method, most of us don't use it. Not only that, we have an odd respect for people (like our President) who say stuff like, "Well, I make most of my tough decisions based on gut instinct." We respect and revere "the common man" while openly fearing and distrusting Intellectuals (Smart People) saying that it smacks of "Elitism"! How the hell does the son of a President, who skated through school, military service and business on his family's coattails become the voice of "the common man," while the mixed race son of a single mother, raised by his grand-parents, a man whose achievements are founded in his own intellect, ambition, drive, charisma and public service get labeled an "elitist"? Let's face it, we is stupid!
Our President thought his gut told him to go to war. I think our President has a deep personal relationship with "The Lord." I think our President thinks GOD put him in power and that makes him somehow infallible. I think Dubya Bush believes in his own manifest destiny. He keeps parroting the phrase, "Well, history will see if I was right or I was wrong. We'll let history decided."
Knock, knock. "President Bush...this is HISTORY. It's decided. You are one of the most incompetent Presidents this Nation has ever seen. Your lack of respect for the intelligence of the American People (in the People of All Nations) seems justified, in that you were actually re-elected. Your administration has proven to be criminally corrupt and yet you have stood firm in mouthing platitudes that people would be held accountable and then stonewalling and commuting sentences when the time for accounting has come. If only your incompetence was marked by an equal ineffectualness. Unfortunately, your cronyism, your self righteous and self centered "leadership" has lead to record deficits, a weak dollar, record energy prices, general economic crisis, the Nation's loss of position as a global moral leader and the protracted morass of a war that should have been avoided. You've abused the concept of "Executive Privilege" more than any President, including Nixon! You've chosen to systematically search for gray areas in the law in order to subvert the Constitution and subvert HUMAN RIGHTS. When gray areas can't be found, you are willing to ignore the law and morality entirely."
OK, enough with pretending to be HISTORY. It churns my stomach, it makes bile come up my throat that we have tried to justify TORTURE. People have seriously tried to take the position that "Water Boarding" isn't torture, it's just some form of "mock torture," when we put Japanese War Criminals to DEATH for using water boarding during WWII! How do we maintain the moral high ground on terrorists when we are willing to ignore our most deeply held tenets, when we are willing to subvert our own morals! We are telling the terrorists that "The ENDS justify the MEANS," that as long as you feel "in your gut" that you are right, it's justifiable to DO ANYTHING. It makes me ill with shame. We have lost the respect of the International Community, and rightly so. We are no longer the shining beacon of Freedom and Liberty that we claim. We are fatuous liars and torturers, in short cowards.
Thousands of American Soldiers have bravely died... for what? Overpaid mercenaries are protecting American Generals while underpaid enlisted soldiers have their tours of duty extended again and again. Be all that you can be, boys! Defend the concepts of "liberty and justice for all," while we work at subverting those concepts from the inside!
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed on OUR watch, while we are there claiming to have invaded them to PROTECT them ... from what? Osama bin Laden is still free! Tick tick tick. Seven years and he is still hiding in or near Afghanistan. Tick tick tick. Seven years and Afghanistan has not become a beacon of Democracy in the Middle East. Afghanistan has become the biggest producer of Heroin the World has ever seen. We've taken Afghanistan away from radical religious extremists and handed the reigns of power over to warlords and drug lords. Oofda. Is we stupid?
Alan Coil (5:49 PM on Tue Jul 8, 2008)
And thus we see the last of Russ Rogers for a while here at ComicMix. Will we find him at Gitmo in 2009? ;-)