On my way home from work today I heard a report on the radio news that 1 in 5 British school children could not find their own country on a map. That's disturbing. I've known for a long time that geography has been a subject rarely perfected by American students, hell many American students can't find states on map. But, everyone should be able to find their own country on a map. 1 in 3 British kids can't find the United States.

This points to me something that has been glaring in the face of the industrialized world for decades, since I was a kid. With additional wealth and creature comforts comes, laziness. With laziness eventually comes ignorance. Our societies have become societies where people just assume that they will be healthy and wealthy, nobody cares about whether or not they work hard and earn their living. So many dumb people are getting rich that work to become passably intelligent seems to have become a waste of time.

I was a nerd when I was a kid, and I probably still could be considered a nerd if I could tolerate Star Trek. I liked to learn, it was easy for me. I never understood why other students weren't learning as much as me. (I know this all seems to be a real shock, if you've ever read my rants). I was naturally gifted and could learn quickly, but I wasn't the only kid who could learn with ease. Other kids simply didn't care so they spent their time learning to be basically... stupid. They learned that being intellectually superior wasn't beneficial to being popular or getting respect. Being a moron is good for one's social life as a child. This determination to not learn in elementary, middle and high school, is ruining our educational systems.

I'm not blaming this all on the students. I had a natural curiosity, that helped me to become the mental giant whose idiocy you laugh at now. Teachers, once upon a time, used to actually try to capture the curiosity of children to trick them into learning. Now, teachers try to spark children's imaginations, which is of course pointless. An imagination alone does not help anyone learn, sure it helps when you study the arts and literature, but the curiosity is the most important thing to spark in kids. Wasting your time telling kids hippy jackass things about opening their minds and using their imaginations does not help anybody learn geography or arithmetic.

Our ultra-liberal, complete lack of understanding children and letting everybody win, society is making us dumb as posts. Sure imagination is great, but curiosity about the things kids are interested is much more important. Kids like flash and style. Using these things to draw in kids and letting their curiosity guide them through a lesson is much more exciting than listening to Moonbeam tell them they're special. Do teachers even realize that calling children special does not build their self-esteem? Every 3rd grader knows that the special education students are the mentally challenged, don't lump me in with those guys.

This is a problem. I'm not saying that every kid on Earth needs to learn every single place on the freakin' globe. I am saying that children should all know the big countries, and the political divisions within their own nation (states, provinces, etc.). The fact that kids don't know where their own country is located geographically, that's sad.

But there is good news. The constant liberal brainwashing coming from the educational systems of the English speaking world is finally paying off. Kids worry more about the environment (despite the fact that they wouldn't know where to look for a rain forest to save it) than they do about the global war on terror. Not to worry kids, the terrorists would love to kill you, so you'd be best served by hugging a tree.


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