What was worse for rugged individualism, the women's movement or the public educational system?About as easy to answer as who has more evil in their propaganda Bin Laden or Hitler.
Both the feminist movement and public education set out a goal of equality not excellence.
We were only as good as our weakest link they thought and rewards should be spread around to everyone not those that truly excel.
It is more important to feel good, than to strive.
Feminists still point to a woman's salary of 77% compared to a man's, and shout in that annoying Rosie voice that this is unfair.
Well there is one simple remedy to your personal salary and that is to become more valuable.
It is a competitive world boys and girls and you get paid what you are worth,if you can get paid more down the road, then in the words of Simon Cowell 'off you go.
'The feminist movement like most social movements started off in the right direction, thinking everyone should have equal opportunity, but that has been remedied for at least a generation.
What they refuse to comprehend is equal opportunity does not mean equal results.
The fact is some people are going to be more successful than others, or earlier than others.
That is not an example of unfairness, but human ingenuity.
And trying to squelch human ingenuity does not work.
The Soviets proved that, the dying UAW is proving it.
If General Motors survives their arcane policies, it will be because of operations outside the suffocating tendrils of this out dated institution.
The simple fact is if you are unhappy with your earning power, you have no one to blame but yourself.
And there is only one person that can fix it, you.
Make yourself a more valuable worker, start your own business, take a second job, try sales, go back to school, learn a new trade, or just get a different job.
The world does not owe you a paycheck of a certain amount, and if you think it does, well then apply for a government job.
You will get exactly what the pay scale says, and your work and your life will be predictable, safe, and mind numbingly boring.
Like feminism, public education tries to make everyone a homogenous mass.
Standardized tests, standardized grading, standardized classes, it is amazing we don't all come out of that most unsuccessful beaureaucracy a confederacy of dunces.
No child left behind equals no child moving ahead.
We can't have any dumb children if we don't have any smart ones, so lets just dumb them all downWe can now quantify exactly what every child should know at every age.
Therefore we know how far certain children need to go, and place all our efforts there.
It doesn't seem to occur to our educational gurus, that quantifying knowledge means placing boundaries on it.
Measuring learning means no new ground can be explored by creative young minds, because you can't pre-quantify the unknown.
Einstein said 'imagination is more important than knowledge.
'In today's system 'imagination is more threatening than knowledge.
'Imagination implies something the teacher does not know, and how on Earth can we measure that with a Scantron?We can't, nor can we measure anything but regurgitated facts with a multiple choice test.
These testing practices do not lead to new ideas, new ways of thinking, or any actual learning.
They record our ability to memorize, which is why every college student should get a refund for every exorbitant tuition dollar spent of classes that were graded with a multiple choice test.
Professor laziness equals pupil laziness, equals standardized thinking.
See the notes above about lessons learned from Soviet policy.
Its simple folks, we do the best we can, we strive the most we can, and then we be satisfied with those results, or try again.
You owe yourself your best effort, and you take the results as they come, and adjust from there.
Would you really want the world any other way?