Bob Alexander: Where Did All The Dumbasses Come From?

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Dumbass awardAfter reading through this morning’s news I had to get away from the computer and go take a walk. I can get through the Canadian news without too much difficulty, but sifting through news from the U.S. is becoming as difficult as trying to watch an entire program on FOXNews. There’s just too much dumbassery to absorb and I no longer have the stomach lining for it.

After I got back from storming through the neighborhood, and with a fresh cup of coffee in hand, I came up with The Answer. Not an answer … THE Answer.

Kay Crisman Petrini

If Kay, and other teachers like her, were allowed to do their jobs unhindered by bureaucracy and lousy paychecks, the rule of dumbasses would be over within a generation.

The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking defines critical thinking as the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Critical thinking. That’s what the best teachers inculcate in their students. And it’s not necessary to have every teacher be a Kay Petrini. If a child has the opportunity to have two or three or four Kay Petrinis sprinkled throughout the elementary and high school years, that’s usually enough to ignite the life-long fire of critical thinking. And then on graduation day there will be one more person who will be able to tell the difference between Shinola and that other stuff.

I’m not talking about creating the American Übermensch. Not at all. See here’s how it shakes out.

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