State University Needs Lesson In Priorities
In the propaganda put out by governments at all levels, considerable emphasis is often placed on the importance of education and the respect those in public office profess to have for their fellow civil servants pursuing the subdued honors of educating the next generation rather than the more obvious glories of elected position.
In the state of Maryland, such lofty sentiments about aiding in the dispersion of knowledge are little more than beguiling words when it comes to putting the state’s money where the mouths of the politicians are.
At the University of Maryland, those facilitating the orderly transfer of knowledge are so valued that the servants of the people are required to render tribute for the privilege of arranging the storage necessary to drive their own vehicles to work. Campus employees much pay at least $314 a year for a parking permit.
However, it seems even this is not enough as permit prices are going to increase to $345 for employees making under $50,000 and $517 a year for those making over $50,000. According to the February 3, 2005 edition of the Diamondback, the increase will in part go to finance increases in employee insurance benefits and overall utility bills.
But while university and state administrators sing the blues of hard times, from very same edition of the paper detailing the parking crisis is a story that causes the reader unfamiliar with the twisted logic of higher education to question whether resources there are being allocated in the manner most expeditious to facilitating the university’s core mission and its responsibilities to those charged with carrying out these tasks. For while the faculty and staff are being compelled to aide in shouldering a $80,000 Department of Transportation Services budget, things aren’t apparently that tight as the Health Center had no problem dispensing 200,000 free condoms --- some of which were flavored --- provided by the Maryland State AIDS Administration.
As will be expected, the kneejerk enthusiasts of decadence will snap, “It’s nobodies business at a university who uses condoms.” And in a sense they are correct.
If college students want to be treated as adults, shouldn’t they be required to procure their own prophylactics out of their own disposable incomes?
Those continuing to wallow in their own debauchery will no doubt continue to insist upon the need for privacy. What better reason then to eliminate campus condom distribution programs?
For where will privacy be better protected: at the campus health center where heaven only knows whom you might bump into from one of your classes or at a store or supermarket removed from the prying eyes of college gossips where the only faces recognized are those of the presidents whose visages demarcate the denominations of currency?
Those still affectionate towards the condom racket will no doubt whine, “But students couldn’t otherwise afford condoms.” If that’s the case, should they really be carrying on in such a manner as to need them?
One of the purposes of a college education is to make one a civilized individual, one aspect of which is realizing one cannot always satisfy one’s desires at the moment one would necessarily like to.
One does not take on the responsibilities of a mature relationship unless one can afford to do so. The mature individual does not expect the government to pick up the tab for their assorted pleasures.
In the financially trying times in which we live, policy makers must carefully determine the educational priorities of the jurisdictions over which they govern. Will they use what resources are available to properly compensate those charged with the responsibility of turning the lofty ideals of education into a concrete reality or will they squander them fostering salacious pursuits that degrade both the individual as well as the broader society?
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
The Sweet Taste Of Winter Vindication
Few things can compare with being labeled a lunatic only to have one’s opinions and observations later confirmed as insightful commonsense. Recently I got to experience this brand of joy in reference to two different issues.
This past holiday season, news consumers could hardly turn on the television or surf the Internet without coming across stories about the escalating campaign to undermine Christmas in the conflict having the ultimate goal of abolishing Christianity as the foundation of American society. To many, this culture war crescendo comes as a surprise; I predicted it as far back as 1994 and have written at least one column regarding the controversies surrounding Christmas every year since then.
I feel vindicated even more, however, on the second issue. In spring of 2004, I wrote a couple of columns on the impropriety of applauding unwed American Idol contestant Fantasia Barrino as a role model worthy of emulation by the youth of the nation.
From the response to the columns, you would have thought I suggested everyone ought to toss their grandmothers into oncoming traffic. After getting over one thousand hits at one website, in an act of unparallelled gratitude I was shortly thereafter banished from its roster of columnists.
If authors and analysts are going to be that concerned about tickling the ears of readers, why not just go ahead and become a liberal? Though many so-called “Conservatives” refused to address the issue, Larry Elder is to be commended for eventually tackling the matter head on.
In a column titled “Children Having Children”, Elder lets Fantasia really have it for not only having an out of wedlock child but for glamorizing it in her ditty “Baby Momma” and in mooching off the public dole just because she couldn’t keep her baser impulses in check. Those wallowing in hedonism and wanton impropriety whine it’s nobody’s business that she had a child outside marriage.
Really? That might be true if Fantasia, her baby, and the sleazebag fathering her child were the only ones involved in this story; but, as Elder details in the column, Fantasia had her own welfare apartment and sat on her rear-end all day platting her rugrats hair and watching TV.
Since she was picking the pockets of taxpayers to finance her lifestyle at that time, as citizens we have the right to say whatever we want since we were the ones putting the roof over the heads of her and her child and food in their bellies.
Many theologically confused Christians hoodwinked into embracing a weak-willed sissy version of Jesus that would not demand anything from anybody invoke the usual cliches of judge not lest ye be judged, the need to forgive, yada yada yada. Yet to receive forgiveness and absolution, doesn’t one have to be sorry? But with lyrics calling unwed motherhood a “badge of honor” it would seem Fantasia really isn’t sorry about anything.
If those on welfare don’t like what the gainfully employed have to say about them, they are perfectly free to forego these lavish handouts. After all, a musician such as Fantasia should understand that he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
Student Seeks To End Summertime Mental Enslavement
While the case of a student suing his school on the grounds that summer homework ruined his vacation might not be the best use of the nation's overly burdened court system, the lad does have a bit of a point.
On what grounds, exactly, do schools have the right to compel students to complete assignments during those times of the year when students are not under the school's legal authority?
The school claims these requirements are not an undue imposition since they only apply to honors courses in which the plaintiff volunteered to participate.
While that might apply to this particular Wisconsin jurisdiction in question, it does not settle the matter on a broader philosophical level as some schools such as those in Prince William County, Virginia I wrote about way back in the mid 90’s do not make it an honor's only requirement but rather mandate that all students do book reports and such over the summer.
In the same spirit as that motivating Bill Clinton when he said he opposed tax cuts on the grounds Americans would not know how to spend their own money properly, educrats claim students not given assignments to do over the break would otherwise allow their brains to whither. What of it?
Since the brains belong to the students and under the custodianship of their parents, aren’t they free to do with them as they see fit when school is not in session? Besides, other than basic reading, who uses most of what they learned in school anyway?
Maybe if schools did not devote so many resources to intellectually dubious pursuits such as diversity appreciation, environmental awareness, and indoctrination in evolution, schools would have more than enough time to teach those essentials education propagandists insist there isn’t enough hours in the day (and hence the year) to teach.
For students still ensnared for whatever reasons in the clutches of the public education leviathan, these institutions serve as centers of indoctrination in the ideology of total state control. For what other lesson do students learn from summertime homework than that, even when not on duty, their lives belong to those running the New World Order?
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
Government Releases List Of So-Called "Real Colleges"
The government has released a database of colleges accredited in a manner approved by the Department of Education.
The purpose of the database is to serve as a reference to protect employers from hiring those whose credentials come from so-called diploma mills. Often these schools require little more than a check to acquire a degree.
However, the database may also stifle the innovations in distance education that have arisen over the past few years since it equates "unaccredited" with "underhanded". Already the Washington DC Fox affiliate, WTTG Channel 5, is calling it a "List Of Real Colleges and Universities", making no distinction between the unaccredited schools that require a significant amount of work and those that merely accept your check and will even pad your grades based on what one is willing to pay.
Education bureaucrats and even a few misguided Congressional Representatives argue such oversight is necessary to protect the American people from those wielding faulty degrees. You know, the usual rubbish about Homeland Security and all.
But apart from certain professions such as medicine, does it really matter where someone has acquired their knowledge? Why should someone whose been to Harvard automatically be considered more intelligent than someone who has gained as much wisdom and experience (if not more and probably of better quality not intellectually contaminated by the radicalism of subversive academics) through a life of independent study and career experience in fields say such as business, government, or journalism?
Who is actually more deserving of the appellation of "doctor"? Is education, after all, a measure of the knowledge one has acquired or how many hours one has wasted under the yolk of windbags that couldn't find employment doing anything else?
Some might not have much of a problem with the government decreeing which schools are or are not legitimate. But in this day when national security and the increasing complexity of life are constantly invoked to justify increasing levels of intrusion into our lives, what's to prevent a similar approach being taken in determining which churches are deemed acceptable in terms of promulgating governmentally sanctioned theology?
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
