The future is now.
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| Image by natureaddict from Pixabay |
This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.
Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.
"It's Tough to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future." -Yogi Berra
Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,
Idiocracy (comedy/Sci-fi) is the title of a movie released in 2006 that I recently sort of watched (I bailed early) because some recent events reminded me of its existence.
I happened to catch a well-done preview back when it was released that I remember discussing with a friend at the time.
We wondered if the movie was as good as the preview made it out to be or if the brief clips featured were radically better than the movie as a whole, a not uncommon phenomenon. I've discovered that they were, very much so in fact.
(The columnist drifts off...)
Have you ever wondered if there are Hollywood specialists that make these miniature movies? That is to say, previews, given that so many full-length movies don't come close to living up to the quality promised by the preview?
I looked it up and there are, it's almost an industry unto itself. There's a lot of time, energy, and money spent to get us to watch a given production.
{They should hire the people that make miniature movies about movies to make the actual movies.}
(The columnist finds his way back...)
Idiocracy is a movie about a dystopian future in which "evolution has made humanity stupid because people no longer had to be intelligent and physically fit to survive due to the benefits of technology" according to Wikipedia.
Some recent developments in the educational-industrial complex, specifically within the higher education division, are what triggered a synapse or two in my little gray cells that led to me recently remembering and subsequently streaming the movie. Ironically, it's a stupid movie, about stupid people.
BREAKING CAMPUS NEWS. LAUNCHING MEDIA CAREERS.
The stories are written by unawokened college students that write reports about what goes on these days on campus.
I highly recommend reading it as the outrageous stories about colleges and universities occasionally reported by the mainstream press are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The College Fix publishes such stories seven days a week.
For example, I'll bet you didn't know that you can minor in protest art at the University of Maryland.
Or that there's a tiny, fully accredited "early college" (you can drop out of high school and still get a college degree) called Bard College at Simon's Rock, in Massachusetts.
Bard College at Simon’s Rock starts degree program for ‘queer leadership’
Bard is starting up a new degree program this fall so as to become “the first intentionally queer-serving college in the world.” Changing the world one student at a time, for only $61,600 a year.
An additional $21,201 covers living on campus, health insurance, a campus health services fee, an activity fee, and the fee (650 bucks) for the Writing and Thinking Workshop.
(There's an enrollment fee of $500, but only for new students, and new international students pay an additional one-time international orientation fee of $300.)
You know, if I didn't know better... never mind. Gotta love a package deal, you know what I mean? For less than 85k a year, Bard is developing leaders to liberate a significant segment of our many marginalized minorities from oppression by the Normies.
{I wonder if Simon, or Simon's descendants, get a cut of the action? Ba dum tss.}
I wonder what goes on in a Writing and Thinking Workshop?
Meanwhile, at the other end of the Republic, courtesy of John Stossel, I give you Professor Asao Inoue who teaches at Arizona State. "If you use a single standard to grade your student's languaging, you engage in racism."
{Launguaging?}
You betcha. From Languaging Everyday Life In Classrooms (a fascinating read): "It is through languaging that people act on each other, performative and commissive
acts through which people establish their and others’ personhood." -David Bloome and Faythe Beauchemin
{Languaging?}
Maybe this video featuring Mr. Stossel engaging with Marxian professor Inoue will help.
So what do the students think? Perhaps the dystopian future portrayed in Idiocracy isn't as inevitable as current trends in the Republic would seem to indicate?
Here are some fun facts as revealed by Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice Survey of 2023 of 3,004 students that I picked up from a College Fix article.
"Students report that difficult course materials and exams, required attendance and deadlines are all impediments to their college success..."
"...obstacles listed as 'Impediments to Success' included school-life balance, unclear expectations, and mental health struggles."
I recommend learning to speak Chinese.
Poppa loves you,
