I gave a quiz to sixty students, and they have scored an average of 5/20 on it, just as I suspected. Here it is: If I asked you the capitals of the USA, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Egypt, Germany, Brazil, and Honduras, how would you do? And if I asked you what countries Havana, Shanghai, Sydney, Seoul, St Petersburg, Buenos Aires, Ottawa, Rome, Tokyo, and Baghdad were in, how many would you get? Passing is 13, and answers are at the bottom. In the mean time, to make my point, I wrote this:
Imagine you are given a quiz on world capitals.If your teacher asked you the capitals of China, France,
and the United States, would
you be able to say Beijing, Paris,
and Washington D.C.?
If you were a Mount Carmel Student, the answer would almost
assuredly be a “no.”And that is quite
sad for us, when one considers that MCHS hails from a country of no more than
300,000 people, or 1/20,000th of the world’s population.
But MCHS students didn’t only score poorly on world capitals
far away from home. The vast majority
couldn’t identify the capital of Honduras
(Tegucigalpa), and also were not aware that Havana was in Cuba.Indeed, not knowing such basic knowledge
would be an excellent predictor of a student’s knowledge of anything else from
those countries.
Why the disconnect?How could a country so small fail to grasp the importance of cooperation
and interdependence with the rest of the world, during the age of high speed
internet and multi-nationals?Yet that is
exactly what Belize (and Mount Carmel) has done, and continues to do, with what is
does emphasize in its curriculum.
Consider: Mount Carmel is one of two high schools in the
entire country with any semblance of a world history program, and even that is
there only grudgingly, a meager two hours a week for one year of high school,
when the rest of the world considers four days a week and two years of world
history a minimum.When it comes to
basic geography and the quiz our students so terribly failed regarding world
capitals, we are testing them on the countries and capitals of the Caribbean,
ignoring anything outside a perimeter of 1,000 miles, and much inside of it, as
Honduras and Cuba don’t fit into our Caribbean category and therefore don’t get
studied.
Doesn’t this show a complete lack of priorities?Can we tell ourselves with a straight face
that studying the geography of Saint Lucia and Dominica is as important as
knowing where China is, or that Cairo is the largest city in Africa, or that
the world’s financial capital lies in New York City?Does it show a lack of priorities that not a
single Mount Carmel student could identify the capital of the world’s second
most populated country, India,
where one out of every six persons in the world resides?
We keep defending this decision to ignore studying anything
from the outside world under the idea that our students are not ready for such
topics, “since they don’t even know who they are.”But what kind of statement is that, really?I may know that my ancestors immigrated to
the United States from the Prussian and Sudeten areas of Germany 150 years ago,
but is that “who I am?”Since almost all
of my immediate family are of German ancestry, does that mean I have to
specialize in farming, lager-brewing, or photography, since that is what
Germans were famous for excelling in their past?Am I rejecting “who I am” for desiring to
learn Spanish (and not German) and for loving to dance salsa, something never
correlated with German culture? Wouldn’t that be me “hating” myself?
Yet we are using that line of thinking when we teach our
students.We tell them that who their ancestors were is “who they
are.”And sadly, by ignoring the rest of
the world, as proven by a simple quiz on major world cities, we have been
giving them a distorted version of
who they are. Mount Carmel students are not being taught that Belize is part
of the world, but that Belize IS the world.A person is defined by all of the things they have experienced in this
world, not by the things that their great great grandparents experienced.
Like it or not, the world is globalizing.At exactly the point in the history of man
when we should be turning our focus outside, we willfully turn the gaze inside,
and it is a distorted gaze, at that. We give our students no favors by
pretending they are the same people as some of their far away ancestors were.
Answers: Washington DC, Moscow, Beijing, London, Paris, New Delhi, Cairo, Berlin, Brasilia, Tegucigalpa, and Cuba, China, Australia, South Korea, Russia, Argentina, Canada, Italy, Japan, and Iraq.
Probably the funniest website to come out in a long time is Stuff White
People Like. The whole site is hilarious, and it has become so
successful the writer got a book deal out of it, along with two months or
so on the NY Times Bestseller list, all within six months of beginning
the site.
I don't normally copy and paste, but post number 11 seems especially
fitting, considering my brother, who has spent all of nine months in
South Korea serving in the Army, has become recently engaged.
#11--Asian Girls
95% of white males have at one point in their lives, experienced yellow fever.
Many factors have contributed to this phenomenon such as guilt from
head taxes, internment camps, dropping the Nuclear bomb and the Viet
Nam War . This exchange works both ways as Asian girls have a tendency
to go for white guys. (White girls never go for Asian guys. Bruce Lee
and Paul Kariya’s dad are the only recorded instances in modern
history). Asian girls often to do this to get back at their strict
traditional fathers. There is also the option of dating black guys, but
they know deep down that this would give their non-english speaking
grandmother(s) a heart attack.
White men love Asian women so much that they will go to extremes
such as stating that Sandra Oh is sexy, teaching English in Asia,
playing in a coed volleyball league, or attending institutions such as
UBC or UCLA (please note that both schools’ colors of “blue” and
“yellow” are intentional also the “A” in “UCLA” stand for “Asian” while
the “B” in “UBC” stands for “Billion” try and figure out what the rest
of the letters stand for). Another factor that draws white guys to
asian women is that white women are jealous of them.
Take for instance the fact that Asian women well into their 30s and
40s retain teen / college girl looks without the help of botox, yoga or
a trendy diet (future posts). Asian women also avoid key white women
characteristics such as having a mid life crisis, divorce, and hobbies
that don’t involve taking care of the children (also future posts).
Should white guy / Asian girl marry, they produce hybrids that are
atheistically pleasing, but are very annoying. This practice is also a
means by which white people can catch up to the Asian peoples in the
population race, as most of the hybrids often act white rather than Asian.
I wrote it down on paper about eight months ago during a discussion with Jeremy, thought about it some more over some really long bus rides this summer, and am finally writing it somewhere permanent. Generally, they are songs that bring me back to some moment or time in life, and a couple may just be my favorites. But, if I were to make a soundtrack to my life, songs that would definitely be included are:
1. Pink Floyd--Time (Dark Side of the Moon)--Generally, songs don't inspire you to be a better person. I've thought about this song so many times that it even made it into two of my articles for the Daily Collegian, one of which can be found here.
2. Coldplay--Fix You (X&Y)--Not only is this my favorite song off of one of my favorite albums, it is also the song that brings me back to Denmark in 2005. Joking and crying at the same time, I remember five or six of us international students singing this together when the time to part came.
3. Creed--One Last Breath (Weathered)--I don't really like Creed. All of their songs were wildly overplayed, and you just got tired of them. But this song, I swear, every van ride to an away game during the varsity baseball season in 2002, always came on the radio. I think of fourteen 17 and 18 year olds trying to imitate Scott Stapp, Dan Leonard's being the best.
4. Marcy Playground--Sex and Candy (self titled)--Probably the dumbest song to make the list, but so it is with a basketball team of 8th-graders screaming "I SMELL SEX AND CANDY" despite never getting a sniff of the former, and the latter only when we made WaWa pit stops.
5. Ben Folds--Song for the Dumped (Whatever and Ever Amen)--ever since I first heard this song five or six years ago, there has always been something oddly comforting humming along to the chorus of "Give me my money back, give me my money back, you BITCH!" And don't forget to give me back my black t-shirt!
6. Shaggy--Angel (Hot Shot)--This song always brings me back to prom in 11th grade. No one knew what to do: slow dance, or dance in groups...really..slowly? It was an awkward moment during an awkward era.
7. Boyz II Men--On Bended Knee (II)--This song has to make it simply because it was my first "favorite" song.
8. GunsNRoses--November Rain (Use Your Illusion I)--We used to tailgate for high school basketball games during my senior year (yes, despite being one of the tallest three kids in school, I did not play). Tailgating is a white-trash phenomenon, and thus, the decision was made to make a CD of all the classic white-trash hits. The usual suspects were there--The Scorpions, Bon Jovi, Europe, but there was always that one song that we repeated, to hear it's nine minute tune another time.
9. Jack Johnson--Inaudible Melodies (Brushfire Fairytales)--the album of my days in Belize. I'm not sure if there is an artist more agreeable than Jack Johnson, and when you're living with six other guys in a 900 square foot house, that's important.
10. Mana--Labios Combartidos (Amar Es Combatir)--there needed to be a Latin song to this list, and this takes the cake, as I have used this song in class numerous times to prove a point about history, particularly the line "Labios compartidos, labios dividos, mi amor/Yo no puedo compartir tus labios" (and the awful translation of "shared lips, divided lips, I cannot share your lips"). There's a reason they sing it in Spanish!
11. Linkin Park--What I've Done (Minutes to Midnight)--Other than "Time," probably the song that's made me sit back and reflect most on. When you really listen to it, it's amazing a secular band would be so open about what they want in life.
12. Eminem--Sing for the Moment (The Eminem Show)--Politically speaking, this song contains an explosive line regarding personal responsibility (They say music can alter moods and talk to you/Well can it load a gun up for you and cock it too?/Well if it can, then the next time you assault a dude/Just tell the judge it was my fault, and I'll get sued) that I have used to make a point during a few discussions. I also think it's his best song.
13. Motely Crue--Kickstart My Heart (Red, White, and Crue)--I am really lame for admitting this, but, truth be told, to be a fan at sporting events, I have listened to this song to get pumped up to cheer. I'm a dork, and I judge myself, but I'd still do it
"So now that we know what wealth is and isn't, would you say that people today are more wealthy or less wealthy than they were 100 years ago?"
I've posed that question to five of my six classes already, as we have been discussing Adam Smith and his fundamental assertion that wealth is not gold or paper money, but goods and services. Gold, after all, is a shiny rock. Explaining how money was not real wealth came easier when I burned a two dollar bill in class a few weeks ago, since all it really comes to is a piece of paper with an ugly lady (the Queen) on it. The students seemed to understand this point more when I explained to them the exchange rates between the Zimbabwe dollar and US dollar (something around $5,000,000,000 to $1), but that didn't make Zimbabwe any richer since they had more "money."
But when faced with the question of whether we are richer or poorer today than people from 100 years ago, almost all of my students guessed that we were poorer today, and gave me incredulous looks when I explained, emphatically, that we were "absolutely, positively, 100%, no doubt wealthier."
Why? Because real wealth is goods and services, not paper money, and not shiny rocks.
Cruder examples seem to work better in these instances, so I will talk about poop. 100 years ago in Belize, there was no "going to the bathroom." The more proper phrase would have been "going to the bush," or "going to the hole," or at the best, "going to the outhouse." You did your business there, and then found whatever implement around to clean yourself, whether that was a soft leaf, a stick, a piece of cloth (if you were rich), or your hand. You stood up straight, and walked away. Your business sat there.
Contrast that with today. You go to a bathroom, you use soft paper to clean yourself, you push a lever and your business leaves to a faraway place, and the stench with it. No flies hang around, no dung beetles, and your chances of getting disease from other people's crap go way down.
That is real wealth. And while that would have been considered a luxury in many parts of the world 100 years ago, today it is taken for granted, and sometimes outdated (in Japan, the seats are heated, the toilet has weight sensors that flush automatically when you stand up, the toilet wipes itself if you splash, and sprays and dries you when you give the signal, sans paper).
Real wealth is things, and today, have we ever got things. We have ovens to cook our food, microwaves to cook them even faster, and toasters to cook them crunchier. Three things which serve the same purpose (heating food) in different ways, and everyone has them! We have cars to take us places quickly (as opposed to horses and buggies), paved roads to let us drive faster, and air conditioner inside to make the ride more comfortable. All of these would have been luxuries in earlier eras, but they are now taken for granted. Yet still, people still buy the phrase about the "poor getting poorer." Really?
I asked my mom about that a few months ago--would you say the poor 20 years ago were better off than the poor today, where "poor" people didn't have two TV's, Nike sneakers, a car, sometimes their own house, microwaves, ovens, refrigerators, cable TV, cell phones, iPod's, internet, and laptops? The era before, when those things weren't common, was a "richer" time for everyone?
I remember when my parents first bought a computer for my family. It was about 17 or 18 years ago when that massive box came to our house, and we thought it was the coolest thing. My parents shelled out something like $2000 for that thing, and for about a year we could one-up friends when we talked about the computer that was in out house, not to mention impress our teachers when we handed them a report that was typed.
Then something funny happened. All of my friends started getting these big ugly boxes too, and it wasn't such a big deal anymore. And by the time I was 12, it wasn't a pleasant surprise that my paper was typed, but a requirement.
That same year, we got AOL, and I was cool again. Internet, chat rooms, messaging girls with screen names like CeeCee113 from Ohio. But it happened again--a year later, everyone was online. No big deal--and then teachers started assigning homework where we had to use the internet, since, you know, everyone had it by then. Five years after that, we got DSL, which was a luxury for six months until everyone else had that too.
I went to BestBuy two years ago, just looking around, and I saw a laptop for sale at the price of $400 bucks. A quick review of its capabilities made me feel bad, since I had shelled out $1300 four years prior for my desktop, which had about a 1/4th of the speed but about 40 times the weight. I've even got some students from villages lacking proper sewer systems toting around brand new laptops to school!
This kind of stuff is real wealth. Goods and services which we saw as luxuries of the greedy are now in common usage, everywhere. Yet, for some reason, we still look back on the past and think about how rich our parents and grandparents were, and how hard it is for us today.
"The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer?" A complete delusion, if I ever heard one. A better, more correct phrase would be "the rich get richer, and the poor do, too."
