Ignorance is winning: Revisited

An essay I wrote in my English class last week. Got a 90 on it.

--Wag--

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In 1999, David Howard, a white man and aide to Anthony Williams, black mayor of Washington D.C., used the term, “niggardly,” to refer to the city’s budget. Marshall Brown, a black man and a colleague of Howard, errantly interpreted the term as racist and filed a formal complaint. In the heated uproar which followed, David Howard was compelled to resign his position, never mind that the word, “niggardly,” merely means, “stingy,” or, “cheap.” It has absolutely no etymological relationship to the racial slur despite the phonetic similarity of the two terms. (See www.wikipedia.com) Of course, an uneducated, ignorant individual might mistakenly hear the term and respond with a vehement, “What did you say?” As a matter of fact, an ignorant man created enough of an uproar to cause another individual to lose his job unjustly.

Ignorance won.

Regrettable as that is, it is even more appalling how people will go to great lengths to defend such ignorance. A few days after Howard’s resignation I had occasion to discuss the event with a classmate who insisted that the two words were based on the same origins. Her insistence raised a legitimate question to which I didn’t know the answer so I deferred discussion in order to research the etymology of the two words. Upon doing so, I returned to inform my classmate of what I had learned and she adamantly insisted that they just had to be related somehow. I handed the research to her and she simply stuffed it into a notebook and changed the subject, completely unwilling to explore it. Although she originally appeared to want to demonstrate that she was right she didn’t appear to be interested in learning new things.

Ignorance won.

Here’s a brief, “What if?” scenario. Imagine that you have worked tirelessly on your resume, proofread it, spell-checked it and asked several qualified people to proofread it. Finally, after hours of painstaking work it’s perfect. You then send it to a carefully chosen company for whom you wish to work. As misfortune would have it, the person in the human resources department of the company is an uneducated fool. Mistakenly believing you have misspelled a word he drops your resume into the waste can as, “unfit,” when in fact, it is he who is, “unfit.” Unfit to read resumes, that is. You fall victim to the ignorance of an individual you never met. The unfortunate employer will inevitably hire a less qualified individual.

Ignorance wins.

In the resume example above, would it be prudent to tone down your resume and be sure to use elementary-school terminology and grammar? It might ensure that you don’t fall victim to this potential form of ignorance. On the other hand, perhaps you really don’t want to work for a company with employees who are unable to read at a higher level. That the possibility even exists suggests that we are risking further descent into general ignorance.

Regrettably, our society appears to be lowering its standards rather than working hard to raise them with values of ever-increasing excellence. I have a neighbor who is a high school history teacher. We frequently discuss his students’ appalling lack of desire to excel at their school work. Worse, the parents of many students seem to encourage this lack of desire to achieve excellence. They seem to be unwilling to encourage their children to learn the subject matter presented. They are more concerned that their children are not, “offended,” by being failed on an exam or by being given a bad grade for bad work, even if they deserve it.

We also appear to be reducing our testing standards. Look at curved grading scales for example. An entire class can do work at a 70% level which indicates that they are a, “C,” class. However, because of curved grading, the standard is lowered such that 70% is now the top score and each of those students will get an, “A.” The grading scale is further revised downward. To add insult to injury, if a single student performs at a 100% level, that student’s grade is often removed from the grading pool in order to reduce the number of students who get a, “C.” That seems bad enough but many classes will even take each student’s lowest assignment grade and eliminate it from calculation in order to increase the student’s average score for the class. This policy is often implemented for all students in a class. If a student gets 100% on all work, no problem for him. But if another student fails to complete an assignment which reduced his grade from an, “A,” to a, “B,” he may get an, “A,” anyway. It points toward a self-destructive decline.

Ever-increasing ignorance wins.

Education is being further compromised by programs such as affirmative action. On the web site, www.balancedpolitics.org, we find a list of the pros and cons of affirmative action programs. Notably, the arguments in favor are weak at best (minorities should be compensated for centuries of oppression, etc.) which only serve to bolster the position that affirmative action is not necessarily a desirable thing.

So, consider the following semi-hypothetical scenario (I say, “semi-hypothetical,” because I’ve heard this scenario described as a course of action by a radio talk jock as a decision he made.):

An affirmative action program is in place at a medical school. Because they have filled their quota of students of one race they are required to admit students of other races. In reviewing applicants, they find plenty of highly qualified students but since they are of the, “wrong,” race, those applications are rejected in favor of other applications for students of the, “right,” race. Regrettably, these other applications are less stellar but the school’s hand is forced by affirmative action policy to accept inferior students. But they are of the, “right,” race and the school has preserved its required racial mix of students.

All is well, isn’t it?

Fast forward 10 years and the student completes med school, but he’s not the best student. Still, he gets his degree, passes his exams at a minimal level, and becomes a licensed physician. Here’s the rub, though. There is no way to tell if a student was admitted because of affirmative action or not. But what if there are people out there who refuse to see a doctor of a minority race simply because there is the possibility that he attained his position simply because of his race and not necessarily because of his academic abilities?

Ignorance won?

Are some people unwilling to take the chance with their healthcare? Does the affirmative action policy actually promote the very racism it claims to combat? There is a very good possibility that it does.

As a society, we seem to have become content to see our standards of excellence compromised over and over again. Standards are reduced in order to graduate incompetent students in spite of themselves. Public schools therefore retain their funding. Private institutions are able to tout their graduation numbers in their advertising fliers. Education is a money-making institution in the end, regardless of whether it is public education or private education. Our country continues to descend in a competitive world wherein scientists, mathematicians and specialists from other countries may very well outclass and outperform those within our own society.

I’m not particularly old but in the 27 years since I graduated from high school, I see this decline. Writing skills are not taught exceptionally well, even at a university level. Math skills are being taught at a level which is far below the levels they were in my backwoods high school. Physics and Biology are taught in colleges and universities at a level far below the level of my high school education.

No problem is worth stating without also proposing a solution. The question, of course, is, “How?” People resist change, are lazy, and hold to their traditional beliefs and brainwashing even to the point of irrational combativeness. We must follow the examples of the great reformers whenever necessary but also, whenever possible, we must follow the examples of the quiet few teachers and writers who, little by little, seek to improve the world with their refined, lofty thoughts and ideals, seeking ever to bridge the gap between knowledge & ignorance.

Will ignorance continue to win? Or will it go down in defeat as we work to reform our estimation of what it is like to work toward excellence?