“Equality” from the top down

Earlier I pondered a remarkable idea from Arne Duncan and the Department of Education — that mentally retarded people should be attending college. Yes, the government is spending millions on this, and naturally, the mentally retarded are being dumped not into Harvard, Yale, or the nice colleges attended by the children of those who come up with these policies, but into community colleges, traditionally attended by people at the bottom of the economic ladder who are trying to move up. That way, poor and lower working class people who only wanted to better themselves end up having class time wasted on people who simply do not belong in college.

To say that this sets a new low for dumbing down is understatement. But it helps explain the urgent insistence on eliminating the term “mental retardation” and replacing it with “learning disability.” While the ostensible goal was to end bigotry, as a practical matter it makes it more difficult for people fully comprehend what is a serious wrong.

Anyway, as I thought about this, I found myself sarcastically wondering why there hasn’t been more pressure to make trampolines wheelchair accessible, and I saw this:

Looks like discrimination to me!

 


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3 responses to ““Equality” from the top down”

  1. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    I was going to make a joke about breathing for credit 101 then I remembered The Marching Morons and the woman with a PhD in Typing.

  2. Gringo Avatar
    Gringo

    Earlier I pondered a remarkable idea from Arne Duncan and the Department of Education – that mentally retarded people should be attending college.

    I am reminded of the Wizard of Oz handing out certificates.

    Disclaimer: I worked 9 months at an institution for the mentally retarded/developmentally disabled while getting my BS. When I started working there, I was informed that the M.R. should no longer be patients, but residents. That made sense to me- after all they were living there, and what they had was a permanent condition, not something they would be “cured” of. I quit to go back to school full time. Several years later, I worked there again. I was informed there was a new term de jour to describe the M.R.” ” clients. Which didn’t make sense to me, because clients tend to be able to advocate for themseles. Which the M.R. cannot.

  3. anonymous Avatar
    anonymous

    Of course the colleges and universities are in favor of this. A large part of the impetus for the mania for credentials–the fanatical credentialism–found in the job market today is that a high school diploma used to mean something. It used to mean that this was a potential employee who could be depended upon to know how to read and write and perform simple arithmetic at the very least, and who was almost certainly trainable and capable of learning the complex tasks of any skilled trade, with appropriate on-the-job training.

    Then came “social promotion,” then came Affirmative Action, then came “stoonts” who can’t read their own diplomas. And businesses tried to administer tests of basic literacy, lest they hire someone who presses the big red button labeled “DO NOT PRESS WHILE RED LIGHT IS FLASHING” and gets messily chopped in half by the machinery. Only the civil rights racket stepped in and said that was “discrimination,” as if it were, and as if it weren’t necessary to distinguish between the competent and the incompetent.

    So the employers started that prospective employees have college credit. And it wasn’t long before the same persons that we just mentioned started getting college credits handed to them on printed transcripts that they could not read. Because failure to do so would be “discrimination,” you see. So employers started requiring a bachelor’s degree for jobs that any bright seven-year-old could do, like answering a phone or taking dictation, or pushing a hand truck with sheet metal to the stamping machine. And now in the 21st Century you would not believe how many individuals are out there with college degrees that they cannot read–there’s a quota to graduate them, you know, can’t incur the wrath of the EEOC, the Justice Department will get involved, there’s Affirmative Action not only in admissions but in outcomes.

    I’m personally waiting for the employers to start demanding a Master’s to work part-time as telemarketer for minimum wage, or to wash dishes in a restaurant and mop floors after closing. Why not? They need employees who will come in on time and sober and who can read the warnings on the bottles of cleaning chemicals. And the university system is only too happy to cash the checks. KA-CHING! And for the “learning disabled” and “disadvantaged yoots” who would be “disenfranchised” by this “discrimination,” well, guess who’s going to grad school? Guess who’s going to pay for it? Look in the mirror. KA-CHING!

    I don’t know where this is all going to end, but historians centuries from now are going to bust a gut laughing at us.