Among Schoolchildren

The photo, with its bitingly witty and true caption, comes from from Lucianne.com:

Don’t worry about passing tests.
If you get big enough in life you can have them sealed.

By the way, look at the way those children are dressed in school, in their shapeless sweatshirts. How subversive of the very idea of education. The minimum dress code for schools should be a shirt with collar for boys and the equivalent for girls.

- end of initial entry -

James P. writes:

In addition to their slovenly dress, look at their terrible postures. Some of them don’t even seem to be looking at the President—is their attention span really that short?

I feel sure that if anyone of national importance had ever visited my grade school, we would have been instructed to sit up straight and pay attention to him.

October 22

Rose writes:

Most of the children are trying to look at Obama. Their seating arrangement makes it difficult—and it’s a fruit of the educational rot. In the “cooperative learning” style, students are placed four to a table, face to face, so they can help each other (i.e. the weaker ones can avoid looking bad by copying off the stronger ones). The teacher goes from group to group as a “facilitator.”

The antiquated system that existed in our schools had to go. You know, the one in which students are seated individually in rows, and the teacher is at the front of the room, signifying that she is an authority with knowledge to impart.

Kilroy M. writes from Australia:

Obama’s cavalier attitude is reflected in the dishevelled appearance and mannerisms of the children. His posture and expression reveal the “progressive” model of a plebeianised leader, one reduced in character and disposition to its lowest common denominator so as to be “relevant”. Great leaders who have been “of the people” needn’t act colloquially to be effective or inspiring. Churchill comes to mind. In his day, everybody connected with him so much so that he embodied “the people” in much the same way that a Monarch should (at least in theory). I can’t imagine Churchill striking such a pose in such an environment. For Obama, it’s only natural, and for his supporters, it’s probably a cause for celebrating the triumph of the common over the aristocratic.

Marco Jawsario writes:

That picture is indeed symbolic of our nation. Unattentive, shabbily dressed Hispanic kids around affirmative-actioned black executive, who is incapable of solving anything, with the aging and complicit white liberal man in the background. If this is our future, I want to find me another country here in the US.

October 23

Kristor writes:

The white guy in the background is clearly a Secret Service agent. Educators never dress that well anymore, even at college graduations.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 21, 2009 09:01 PM | Send