To Use a Crane to Crush a Fly

For reasons herein outlined, I don't intend to see Waiting for Superman. I would probably strangle the first "likely voter" I saw upon leaving the theater, and somehow I don't think that my cellmate would believe me when I told him that I'm a top. The anguish that our technocrats direct at the perceived failures of our system of education delights me to no end. Oh, no, we are failing to turn our children into readily employable automotons whose mecahnistic mental processes mitigate against any improvement in their own station, amelioration of their own working conditions, or consideration of the nature of control and ownership--indeed, cause them to work actively against their own best interests by inculcating a Stockholm-syndrome-like identification with the values and imperatives of a corporate ownership class that they themselves will never join! I can hardly imagine a world in which the very value of your innermost being is not weighed by having a degree in a related field and three years of progressively responsible work experience and/or an equivalent combination of education and experience, but I know it's not the kind of world that I want to live in. The highest human achievement is preparing the skilled workers of tomorrow . . . today. The highest human values are innovation and productivity. Any American child's failure to score within the top decile of all other children in all other countries on standardized quantitative aptitude tests is a grievous moral failure of society as a whole. Literally, literally, like, uh, literally, if your kid is bored in math class, then you are a murderer.