I'm not quite sure what the current literacy rate is in America but it's dropping through the floor. For example did you know that at one point in California, (I'm not sure about now) in order to graduate from high-school you had to at least be able to read a page of the TV Guide. I'll let that sink in for just a moment. These kids can't read a newspaper in order to learn what's going on in the world but at least they can see when their favorite crappy episode of Friends, Dawson's Creek, or The Parkers is on (not that there is another type of episode for the aforementioned shows). And apparently nobody seems to give a crap about it. Is it any surprise that kid's are growing up to be terminally stupid because nobody expects anything from them? But after all, you don't want little D-quon or Taquaisha to feel stupid because all they know how to do is listen to rap and have sex. And we don't want Jason or Suzie to feel like an idiot because they can't read, because after all it's more important that they know how to smoke pot and use a prophelactic than actually be able to communicate without using grunting and drawing pictures for everything. Why do you think we have so many dumb kids in America today that take what MTV says as dogma for their political views and standards? It's because they can't freakin' read for themselves and we as a society just turn a blind eye to it and just let them grow up depending on other people to do their work for them. Shame on us and shame on the schools that allow this to continue on.
You want the solution for this problem, here it is: raise the standards for education instead of using the philosophy of "drop[ping them] like [their] hot". Quit raising kids on the crap that expressing yourself is what's really important. Yes, it is important to be able to do that but if you can't read or write, who's going to listen to you? If you can't express you're ideas in writing, you're pretty much useless and you'll have to have everybody tell you what to believe and you have no way to know if they're full of it or not. There is a reason that literacy was such a big deal during the Renaissance. People understood it's importance and wanted to know how to read. Nowadays though, kids are raised on this crap that self-expression is more important, self-esteem and feeling warm and fuzzy about yourself is more important than anything else. Here's a news flash for you: nobody gives a crap how you feel about yourself. What they care about is if you can do something with yourself, and contribute something to society and be useful (which you can't do if you can't read). Schools need to have a standard for kids concerning reading, such as being able to read and comprehend a classic work of literature such as MacBeth, The Scarlet Letter, or the complete Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy quintilogy before they graduate (okay so the former isn't exactly considered classic because it's too recent, but it should be). If we don't expect anything from these kids, we won't get anything from them. Progressive education sucks and it's ruining the educational system. We need to go back to classical education (like what I was educated under) and expect more from kids. Otherwise, it's "dark ages, here we come!"
