Sabotaged Minds

If you took your Father's Day to go trout fishing in the Chattahoochee River, and if you caught anything that you considered worth keeping and that won't make your toenails fall out once you have eaten it, you may have acquired a copy of the Sunday, June 15, 2008 edition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution to prepare your catch for the freezer. And if you paused long enough in the @issue section of the paper, you may have seen these two articles...

“Higher ed, lower bar”
(This article was reprinted from the June 2008 edition of The Atlantic under the title "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower".)

“You say sabotage, I say checklist for my job”

The first article seems to square with my experience of being a student in some post-baccalaureate classes I took from Georgia State University. I was taking a secondary education classes to obtain my professional educator's certification to teach in the state of Georgia (which I no longer do, by the way). One of my professors actually confided in me how depressed he was over the lack of ability of his students to engage in well structured thought. His complaints echoed in my mind as I read the editorial by Professor X. These students were heading out the door eventually to teach the students of the state of Georgia.

As I read the second article, I couldn’t help but think to myself that our culture has actually internalized these sabotage techniques as the way to business of any kind. And I finally realized the problem. It’s not that people don’t want to think, it’s that they CAN’T think. And we have taught them to be this way.

Dudes, we are toast.