DUMBED DOWN AMERICANS, PART DEUX

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As evidence of Victor Davis Hanson’s contention that our gummint-run skoolz are producing, well, morons, I submit this video of Miss South Carolina in the Miss Teen USA pageant:

For those of you who laughing too hard to pick up on her lack of an ability to string words together to make a coherent sentence, here’s a transcript of what she said (or didn’t say):

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.

Huh? That makes Stengelese and Yogi-isms sounds eloquent by comparison.

Watch the reaction of the host, actor Mario Lopez, as he tries to suppress himself from snickering at this bimbo’s incoherent answer to a simple question: “Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map. Why do you think this is?”

One e-mail response to World Net Daily sums it up:

Unless you haven’t noticed, social studies classes are no longer taught in public schools. … Any child that shows up for roll call can expect to pass the grade level he or she is in. Ability has been replaced with ‘feeling good’ about one’s self image. Why can’t many Americans find any country on a map? … Miss South Carolina isn’t the only idiot walking the streets. Have you ever watched Jay Leno’s ‘Jaywalking’ segment on ‘the Tonight Show?’ Miss South Carolina? Sure she’s pretty; but if she isn’t a product of the No Child Left Behind doctrine, I’ll eat my hat.

Go back again and read Victor Davis Hanson here. Once again, the money quote on curriculum:

We should first scrap the popular therapeutic curriculum that in the scarce hours of the school day crams in sermons on race, class, gender, drugs, sex, self-esteem or environmentalism. These are well-intentioned efforts to make a kinder and gentler generation more sensitive to our nation’s supposed past and present sins. But they only squeeze out far more important subjects …

So literature, history, math and science gave students plenty of facts, theorems, people and dates to draw on. Then training in logic, language and philosophy provided the tools to use and express that accumulated wisdom. Teachers usually did not care where all that training led their students politically — only that their pupils’ ideas and views were supported with facts and argued rationally.

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