Saturday, July 18, 2020

Defund the Teachers!

Image by Roy Harryman from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

About 

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"We keep hearing that black lives matter but they only seem to matter when that helps politicians to get votes... The other 99% of black lives destroyed by people who are not police do not seem to attract nearly as much attention in the media." -Dr. Thomas Sowell


Dear Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

Defund the Teachers! I don't really mean it but since hyperbole rules nowadays a cranks gotta do what a cranks gotta do to get a little attention. 

After all, in an era of "alternative facts" (HT: Kellyanne Conway) wherein defund the police doesn't necessarily mean defund the police who am I to resist substituting slogans and sound bites for substance?

While I admit that Defund the Teachers! is hardly in the same league as a world-class slogan like Black Lives Matter it's (hopefully) an attention-getter and might snag me an extra reader or two.

[So you're admitting the title of this week's column is clickbait?] 

Is it, Dana? Is it just manipulative clickbait or is it clever SEO? Potato or potahto? Low road or high road? After all...

[What's SEO? No wait, we'll come back to that. Are you saying black lives don't matter?]

Of course not, black lives obviously matter. That's one of the reasons the slogan is a work of genius. Who in their right mind can argue otherwise? Who is arguing otherwise? How can you argue with a statement that any sane person accepts and simultaneously means different things to different people?


Even the international organization called the BLM Global Network has an agenda of sweeping generalizations bereft of specifics.

For example: "We disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable."

Alrighty then... But what, specifically, should The Fedrl Gummit, the state and local summits, and non-black fellow Americans do to improve the lot of African-Americans?

[That's not the point! The point is that...]

My point is that protests and taking down monuments, legally or by the mob, is a lot of "sound and fury, signifying nothing." I repeat myself, what, specifically, needs to be done?


As to clickbait and SEO: one man's/woman's/person's clickbait is another M/W/Ps search engine optimization

If you're not familiar with this term it simply refers to the tricks, tools, and techniques used to get you to find and/or click on one of the literally billions of choices available.

For example, low-rent techniques like the feeble ones I sometimes use, such as clickbatish title above (Defund the Teachers!) that's repeated in bold early on in the column and then sprinkled throughout the column to get the attention of the Goog.

As I've mentioned previously, and I'm mentioning again because the Crank is all about public service, a small but lucrative industry exists whose purpose is to find ways to get you to click on links and/or get the Goog to offer up said links when you go a-googlin'.

The Goog always wins by monetizing the data it's always collecting. The Goog never sleeps but you get some free software and services. That's fair, right?


Now, as to the title of this column, Defund the Teachers! Ever wonder how the Wokies have managed to turn American English into Newspeak (see Orwell, George: 1984) and place brainwashed, smartphone addled, whiny tattletales in every profession and on every corner so quickly?

America's education system, which consists of:

Overpriced colleges and universities, top-heavy with "critical" social justice administrators and compliance officers, as well as fake scholars teaching fake subjects.

"Mom and dad, I've decided to major in Feminist Geography." (If you only click on only one link in this missive, click on this one.)

And the schools of education staffed with "activists" cranking out woke primary and secondary school teachers for America's, um... slightly less than world-class public school system.

Which brings us back to Black Lives Matter.

[Huh? Has your brain always worked like this?]


With all due respect, and given the following, I'd like to make a specific suggestion.

BLM has been criticized because of how it spent 1.8 million dollars worth of donations in 2019.

(25% went to salaries, benefits, and payroll taxes, 46% to consultant fees, and the rest went to small grants, accounting, bank fees, information tech, insurance, and legal fees.)

Since the murder of George Floyd, BLM has received a flood of donations from both personal and corporate sources that are still pouring in.

Given that nationwide there are better than 1,000,000 kids on waiting lists for charter schools, many of which are located in underserved, poor/minority neighborhoods, why not spend some of that money on supporting or opening charter schools in neighborhoods where black kids are trapped in failed public schools?

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

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