Land of the Incompetent, Home of the Ignoramus

When asked by Aimee Teegarden at the Miss Teen USA pageant why 1 in 5 Americans could not identify the United States on a map, Lauren Caitlin Upton of South Carolina inadvertently answered the question without actually giving an answer. Here is what she said:

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh… people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and… I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., err, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our”

Wow. Just wow.

Out of a sense of fairness, I would like to state that I think that she was most likely just nervous. Surely, no one is actually that stupid without fitting the medical evaluation of mentally retarded. In fact, she later corrected her original statement (and I use the term “statement” very loosely) by saying: “Personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on a map. I don’t know anyone else who doesn’t. If the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography in our education so people will learn how to read maps better”. That’s better.

The emphasis here is not so much on what she said at first, but what issue she brings to light. That issue would be the dumbing down of America. What is more telling is that this question even needed to be asked. The fact that 1 in 5 of all Americans couldn’t identify their own country on a map is very sad to me. In fact, it’s downright depressing. Have we really sunk so low in intelligence that we do not even know where we live? Are our educational standards that bad? The sickening truth is… yes, they are.

Somewhere along the line, the bureaucratic American education system decided that the educational requirement standards needed to be “adjusted” to suit people who were being left behind because they couldn’t keep up. Instead of helping these people catch up and actually committing to the work that it took, they made things easier for everyone else. The problem is, by making things easier on everyone else, we have actually made things harder in the long run.

This idea that we have to make things easier on people who do not grasp specific concepts is a cop-out and it is a short-cut to mediocrity. We should be challenging people to do better. If they have difficulty, then we should do whatever it takes to make sure that they get what they are being taught. Think of it this way: if a man walks into a state department of motor vehicles and asks for a drivers’ license but fails the test by giving incorrect answers to 50% of the questions, should we go ahead and give him the license because the test wasn’t geared for him to pass it? Do you really want less-than-qualified drivers on the road behind or in front of you?

Believe it or not, that was not a totally unrealistic analogy. The University of California at Davis turned away a white medical student in 1978 who was unqualified. He sued the school before the U.S. Supreme Court (University of California Regents V. Bakke) on the basis that equivalently qualified minority students were allowed to enter the school based on their race and that he was not afforded the same treatment. He claimed that this was “reverse discrimination”. The Supreme Court sided with him and he was granted entrance. So, now we’re allowing under-qualified people to become doctors because of their “disadvantaged status”? That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. What’s next, medical malpractice lawsuits against doctors who are minorities being dismissed as racist? It isn’t a matter of racism or discrimination. It’s a matter of common sense. If I go into emergency surgery, I want the most qualified doctor operating on me. I don’t want some doctor who got into school based on his or her skin color and still only achieved a solid 2.0 average. I want the person who actually worked his tail off and studied for his MCATs and got into school because of that and earned a 4.0. God forbid I get one of those idiots who doesn’t know right from left and removes the wrong lung if I have cancer.

We need to stop coddling people through life. We need to stop telling every single kid we see that they are each special for no reason. We need to make people earn what they are given. We need to grant diplomas and degrees to people who actually work for them. We need to drop this idea that certain people are disadvantaged when it comes to education and that we should make allowances for it and actually do something to eliminate the disadvantage. We need to stop making excuses for people and start encouraging them to try harder. We need to stop letting people think that it is perfectly okay to turn the same screw for 40 years at $35 per hour in an automotive plant without ever knowing how to read. We need to stop using material wealth as a measure of success. We need to rediscover the idea that a days’ work is actually worth something and that it feels good to complete it.

All over the world, Americans are viewed as ignorant. The bad part of this view is that it is not inaccurate. We are ignorant. We are ignorant of the customs and cultures of other nations. We are ignorant to the fact that we are not always right or better. This ignorance also leads us to project an air of superiority. We are like a playground bully who assaults the smart kids because he feels threatened by their intelligence. The ironic thing is… we are threatened by their intelligence, and rightfully so. The rest of the industrialized world is outdoing us because we coddle people from cradle to grave. We need to stop it before it’s too late.