The owners and the owned

A lot of people complain about the level of stupidity when people debate serious issues. This isn’t necessarily targeted at politicians or pundits or TV people (though a lot of them do rank high on the idiot scale. This is about individuals. The working class.

You know: a guy getting by on minimum wage who will be damned if he has to join a union, because it’s “socialism.” Or a woman with a disabled kid who works two jobs but still can’t afford health insurance, but will tell you that Obama’s health care plan will kill grandma, because that’s what Sarah Palin says. Or the retiree with multiple health issues who goes to the town hall meeting and says “keep the government out of Medicare” and votes for a congressman who plans to turn Social Security over to the private sector.

So this shouldn’t come as any surprise:

— The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 47% of adults (more than 200,000 individuals) in the City of Detroit are functionally illiterate, referring to the inability of an individual to use reading, speaking, writing, and computational skills in everyday life situations.

— We also know that of the 200,000 adults who are functionally illiterate, approximately half have a high school diploma or GED, so this issue cannot be solely addressed by a focus on adult high-school completion.

— The remaining 100,000 of these functionally illiterate adults (age 25 and older) lack a high school diploma or GED, another prerequisite for employment success.

In Michigan, according to the Huffington Post: Additionally, the report finds, one in three workers in the state of Michigan lack the skills or credentials to pursue additional education beyond high school.

Yes you can blame some of this on the education system. Schools give diplomas to people who aren’t qualified to get them, because it’s really a matter of moving cattle through the system. There’s only so much space in a school and if you make sure everyone is literate things get clogged up and nothing moves through.

But people aren’t cattle. And people have to take responsibility for their own education. There are kids who get through substandard schools with an education and who are able to do rational thinking because they want to learn. There are others who just show up in class to disrupt everyone else’s education and should be cast aside, but they aren’t, because there’s a belief that every child deserves an education. Every child does, but every child is obligated to work at it.

I guess I’m in this foul mood because of this Washington Post story from a few years ago:

“Quick review: One-fifth plus one-tenth, what’s the common denominator?” Lee asks as his class spins out of control. A cellphone rings jarringly. “What the [expletive] is that?” a girl blurts out. It’s 10:50 a.m., but the clock on the wall says 1:03. Lee continues without reacting to the growing chaos.

He mostly looks at the students who are looking at him. He points to the chalkboard and asks about X’s and Y’s in a voice that doesn’t rise. A 10th-grader who usually pays attention gets up to chat, going desk to desk. Lee glances her way, then finally asks her to leave. She goes, supposedly to the principal’s office, although no one tracks her and to students that notion seems almost comical.

The chatty girl returns 15 minutes later and continues to engage classmates from her seat.
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Lee asks a girl in the back about an equation. She doesn’t know, and Jonathan laughs.

“That’s why you’re failing,” he taunts.

“I have a 97.2 in here,” she counters. “Man, I have a 28.9,” a 10th-grader says, shaking his head.
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Jonathan gets up to check his average, which is posted on the wall. 28.3. “Ah, hell naw!” he bursts out. “He just don’t like me, that’s what it is,” he offers as he heads back to his seat. “I was about to beat him one time, that’s why he don’t like me.”

Jonathan brags: “I don’t need this class anyway. I got a class upstairs. She’s gonna give me a whole rack of work so I can get my math classes so I could pass.”

“I’mmo fail this [expletive] for real,” 28.9 says.

“If I fail,” Jonathan says, “I’m coming back and I’mmo smash this [expletive].”

A couple of desks away, the music blares. A girl chants a go-go rap loudly enough for everyone in back to hear. Jonathan joins in.

Lee walks over and stops at Jonathan’s desk. “Did you take down notes?” he asks quietly.

“I ain’t got no paper,” says Jonathan, staring at him, his eyes flat, leaning forward with his arms crossed.

“Turn off your phone and put it away,” Lee tells him.

“Man, go ‘head,” says Jonathan, waving him away. “You ain’t giving me no type of whatever.”

The teacher has given up, the students have given up. But resources are there for students who want to learn. This is in Washington and it’s pretty bad. If 47% of the adults in Detroit are illiterate, it has to be worse there.

But when people are illiterate, you can get away with abusing them pretty easily, because you can steer them to blame their problems on whoever the enemy of the day is.

George Carlin pretty much had it figured out:

Here’s one of the owners in action.

And here’s one of the tools of the owners scrambling to prove he’s a man of the people.

Related articles

• Study Finds 47% Of Detroit Residents Are Functionally Illiterate (outsidethebeltway.com)
• 47% Of Detroit Residents Are Functionally Illiterate (jroycroft.wordpress.com)
• Literacy / Detroit: 47-percent of adults in Detroit lack basic reading skills (skillsinfo.wordpress.com)