Ignorant louts do spout a lot of foolishness; but for pure, 24-carat inanity, give me a Ph. D. every time.
In the December 2013 of Hillsdale College‘s newsletter, Imprimis, Larry Arnn quotes this blather from the Teachers Guide for Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition, 1991, published by the outfit that administers the SAT tests, written by “an English professor from Agnes Scott College in Georgia.” If you’re wondering why Arnn does not identify this clown by name, read on.
The quotation is rather long, so I’ll just give you the italicized portions.
“Instruction has become less a matter of transmittal of an objective and culturally sanctioned body of knowledge, and more a matter of helping individuals learn to construct their own realities.”
Whoa! Aren’t the loony bins full of individuals who construct their own realities? But Kluge Hans continues:
“Contemporary educators no doubt hope students will shape values and ethical systems… acquiring principles that will help them live in a mad, mad world.”
Does this SAT-wallah understand what he’s just said?
First he’s going to teach students they can construct their own reality–as in, “I am the rightful heir to the Throne of England,” or “See that beautiful woman over there? She is madly in love with me, even though she denies it and tries to act like she hates me.”
And then, having taught his students to be mad, he sorrows that that world is mad!
If you have children in high school or college, chances are they’re being “educated” by dunderheads like this one. And at great cost.
And just to clue you in, Prof. Whoever You Are–there ain’t but one reality. It was here before you were born and it’ll be here after you die. So deal with it.
(PS: Kluge Hans [“Clever Hans”] was a horse who was said to be able to do arithmetic, around a hundred years ago. It turned out to be a hoax.)
Consciousness and thoughts create reality and we could make a better world, you jackass.
Dear readers, it looks like this poor sod is already well on his way to creating his own reality. Soon he won’t be able to tell it from the real thing.
Kool-Aid must be his favorite drink. Rudeness is one of their ‘qualities’. Use insults to dissolve any possibility of intelligent conversation from intruding upon their ‘reality’.
The hypocrisy of this “educator” is stunning. Making our own reality is, at its essence, the very definition of madness. Then talking about the madness of the world around us, in the next breath, is the pot calling the kettle black. These educational theories are a major source of madness.
The world has its share of madness, but there’s still a lot of stark reality. Plant seed, care for the plants and you can produce a harvest of edible crops. That’s reality. Imagine a better way if you will, bit if that better way doesn’t produce a real-world crop, someone will go hungry.
From the current state of affairs, we can surmise that they actually have created their own reality. The problem is they’ve foisted it upon the rest of us.
About my University colleagues who preached that there was no objective reality, I used to say, “Try decreasing their paychecks or increasing their course loads, and then see whether or not they believe in objective reality.”
Open manholes don’t seem to recognize the careless walker’s self-created reality.
It’s all becoming a swamp of useless philosophies and not much in the way of sound knowledge. If you watch the people whom are under the spell of this nonsense you can see them pause while they make up a backstory to support the conclusions they already hold.
This adage fits Kludge Hans: “Reality is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”
Whichever way you look at it, it’s twaddle.
I had to work at the Ford plant, and at hamburger places, to pay my way through college. Had I wound up with this doofus teaching me, I’d have felt very ill-used.