Time: Sat Aug 16 20:17:30 1997
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Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 20:12:21 -0700
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: It's Getting Dumb Out There (fwd)
<snip>
>
>The Dumb Leading the Dumber
>
>by Walter Williams
>
>[Reprinted from Issues & Views, Fall 1996]
>
> Employers wonder why many college graduates can't write memos,
perform simple computations, or just plain think. Here's a tiny portion of
the answer about what's happening to education from my university.
> George Mason University's Center for Service-Learning & Student
Leadership sent invitations to its "Hunger Banquet." The event was billed
as educating "the GMU community on the dramatic effects of world hunger.
The meal dramatizes the unequal distribution of resources that can
contribute to world hunger." Furthermore, the evening would contribute to
student development of "critical, analytical and imaginative thinking to
make well-founded ethical decisions." Unable to attend, I
>asked a Ph.D. student to go and give me a report.
> After donating either two cans of soup or $3, each student drew a
color-coded ticket that decided his category for the evening. Students who
drew "First World" tickets, 16 of them, were escorted to their table by a
well-dressed host. They ate their four-course meal on a linen-covered table
adorned
>with fresh-cut flowers, while being entertained by a flute and oboe duet.
They were told they represented wealthy Americans--i.e., 15% of the
population.
> Thirty students drew "Second World" tickets. They had hamburgers,
sodas and veggies, and sat at bare tables and ate with plastic utensils.
They were told they were the 25% of our population who were just barely
making it.
> The 140 students drawing "Third World" tickets were handed about 3
ounces of water and a half a cup of rice, that they ate with their hands,
while seated on the floor. They were the impoverished, representing 60% of
Americans.
> A speaker from the Coalition for the Homeless said hunger and
homelessness were caused by lack of affordable housing, lack of jobs paying
living wages, and lack of affordable health care. He told the students that
we have plenty of resources to combat poverty but choose to spend it on
defense. The event was
little more than propaganda, indoctrination, and lies for young minds
already brimming with mush. Even more insidious, it was the kind of event
that fosters class envy. To give the bulk of the students water and rice
and say they represented 60% of America is hideous.
> The facts are: 14% of Americans are poor, not 60%. Obesity, not
emaciation, is more of a problem for America's poor. America's poor have
more meat and housing space than average-income Europeans. In 1993,
federal, state and local poverty expenditures were $324 billion; national
defense was $291 billion.
> Since 1965, the nation has spent $5.4 trillion on poverty. That's
enough money to buy all manufacturing equipment, every office building, the
entire maritime fleet and every airline, railroad and trucking company, TV
and radio station, power company, hotel, retail and wholesale store in the
nation.
> Topping off the evening's propaganda, Canada's socialized medicine
was held up as a shining example of what Americans should have. Nary a
mention was made of Canadian patients going to U.S. hospitals in droves,
women waiting for three months for a pap smear, and any major U.S. city
having more MRI and CAT scan machines than all of Canada.
> George Mason's "Hunger Banquet" is simply a small part of
widespread indoctrination, propaganda and miseducation at America's
universities that misleads and confuses our young people and promotes class
envy. It happens for at least two reasons: the 1960s flower children are in
administrative positions, and members of boards of trustees, whose duties
are to direct and oversee, are derelict in these duties. -- Walter Williams
is Chairman of the Department of Economics at
>George Mason University (Fairfax, VA) and author of The State Against Blacks
>(McGraw-Hill) and, most recently, Do The Right Thing: The People's
Economist Speaks
>(Hoover Press).
>
>
>---end of article---
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
tel: (520) 320-1514: machine; fax: (520) 320-1256: 24-hour/day-night
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========================================================================
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