(10-21-2018 07:56 PM)TechRocks Wrote: (10-21-2018 06:54 PM)JRsec Wrote: (10-21-2018 06:40 PM)TechRocks Wrote: (10-21-2018 06:28 PM)JRsec Wrote: Voting is a private matter and Americans in vast numbers are now simply responding to polls to either mess with them, or outright just tell them what they want to hear. I happen to think this is a fantastic rebellion against corporate attempts to manipulate public opinion and therefore public policy.
I can hardly wait for the midterms. I guess nothing will surprise me though I'm growing more confident the closer we are to the election. I sure hope a lot of people have been messing with those dim pollsters.
Our weak link are the young right out of college and high school who haven't experienced enough life yet to realize what a crock of crap they've been sold by their so called teachers.
It is why I insist that ultimately we need to take back the classrooms from the left, not so right wing philosophy is taught, but so that they are taught to think and reason for themselves, and truth is again something that is searched for.
I would imagine that you and I were raised during a time when high school teachers didn't have an agenda, left or right. I recall Mr. Mayard teaching our civics class, I learned a lot from him, and Mr. Stagg teaching a history class where we learned about communism. I'll never forget......three steps forward, two steps backward, was his way of describing their slow but steady push to take over the world.
While it is true that none of my teachers made their political bents known to the class, high school was pretty much nuts and bolts with Logic, Western Civilization, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus, Chemistry and Physics with some form of English every year and your basic coverage of History. It was in the day before Texas Instruments revolutionized math, and dulled brains, and yes I had a slide rule!
In my undergraduate I learned the fine points of Communism from a man who doing his graduate work at Georgetown and was actually a secretary for the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, from a former Ambassador to Formosa who personally knew Chiang Kai Shek and Madame Chiang, and the one who taught me international law had also been an Ambassador to Iran and Argentina and had written speeches for JFK and LBJ. My Criminology instructor was a retired FBI agent, and my State and Local government instructor one of our past Governors.
So there was no 3 steps forward and 2 steps back version of the spread of communism. It was more full fledged domino theory at the time. What was the most fascinating aspect of my education were the parts where these folks laid down their books and then told us what actually happened behind the scenes. There are academics who write their theories about history and political science and then defend their dissertations and thesis before other academics, and then their are guys who know because they were there and can tell you not only what happened but who was involved and what was discussed away from the public records.
Having grown up in much of our history I am appalled at the spin that passes for history today.
But of all of my professors there was one that stood out even more and she held a Masters of Mathematics from MIT, a Dr of Philosophy from Cincinnati, and a Dr of English from the University of Chicago. She refused to accept any work that lacked proper documentation, which did not conform to a disciplined approach to the assignment, and wasn't as interested in your position as your defense of it. She taught Logic, and Literary Criticism.
And having returned to school later in life for my Masters none of the professors in the late 80's and early 90's could shine the shoes of the ones I had from the 60's and 70's.
I had to suffer through all of their political views, read the garbage that passed for theory, and endure emotional presentations void of substance from my fellow students. The human brain had apparently "taken" as Don McLean so wistfully put in in
American Pie, "the last train for the Coast", the day that free thought died!