Mr. Dutcher on Oklahoma's Reading Levels

Found this courtesy of a Facebook friend. Read it and weep. Any emphasis is mine and in bold:

Twelve percent of Oklahoma’s adult population is “below basic” in prose literacy. Ms. Gregory equates this to a reading level of third grade and below.

Another 31 percent of the population reads at the “basic” level. This is between the fourth grade and seventh grade reading levels.

In other words...43 percent of Oklahoma’s adult population reads at a seventh grade level or lower.

[snip]

...more than half of Oklahoma’s high-school graduates read at the basic level or below, i.e., at a seventh grade level or lower.

Arguably even more appalling is the revelation that 13 percent of Oklahoma’s college graduates read at that seventh grade level or lower.

{snip]

The study, Reform with Results: What Oklahoma Can Learn from Florida’s K-12 Education Revolution, points out that “the reading scores of Oklahoma students over the past decade not only have failed to improve, they actually have declined. This drop came in spite of a 42.8 percent increase in the inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending in Oklahoma between 1998 and 2007.”

I keep telling people that any reasonably interested parent can do a better job than the government schools. I am neither lying nor exaggerating. They are abominable. They will actually stunt your child's academic development--that is, even if your child does well, that is "doing well" only in relation to the other inmates children in the system. You parents who think your child is doing well in government schools would be appalled at how much better your child could be doing if only you took them out of those little indoctrination facilities and taught them yourselves.

Your frame of reference is badly skewed.

I am continually stunned that otherwise knowledgeable people allow their children to attend government schools. Please think about this for a moment. They are funded by government, staffed by government, managed by government--and yet, somehow, you seem to expect that your child will emerge from this environment without a profound reliance on governmental thinking. If he or she does, it is in spite of, not because of, his or her education. You cannot rationally expect a government entity to teach basic, common-sense skepticism of government.

You cannot reform this ugly sow. It was birthed in a desire to produce workers who were sufficiently educated to be productive workers and insufficiently educated to do the independent thinking necessary to challenge the status quo. You cannot fix it. It is flawed by design. All you can do is leave it.

From Brilliant to Moron in Ten Seconds Flat (or Vice Versa)

I just read a post by yet another left-winger who simply cannot conceive of two brain cells coexisting within the skull of a right-winger.

I will concede quickly that I have often read commentary like that coming from the right-wing end of the blogosphere and aimed at left-wingers. I find it just as regrettable there.

What gets me--when it's aimed at me, at least--is that politics is not the only thing I write or talk about. I've been in the position, more than a few times, of someone exclaiming about how learned and brilliant I am (Yes, the ol' IQ tests well above Mensa standards, if you want to know). As long as I'm talking about a subject that hasn't yet become a bone of contention, that is. But let the talk drift to politics--and boy...

...within seconds, I kid thee not, if that person is a leftist, more often than not, I, the formerly brilliant commentator on topic X, become a drooling halfwit. Clearly without the mental wherewithal to have done the reading and cogitating necessary to arriving at a well-informed, well-thought-out opinion. It's like leftists abhor the very thought that someone reasonably intelligent and well-informed might arrive at a conservative opinion, like that possibility somehow threatens them.

I've also seen this kind of thing in reverse, usually as regards homeschooling. When that subject comes up, invariably I am, at first, a drooling moron who doesn't understand how crucial government indoctrination is public schools are to this country. After a little explanation as to the real facts of the situation and the results we have obtained, I quickly become so brilliant that my results cannot be replicated by normal people: "Well, that may work for you and your family, MOTW, but you're clearly smarter than most people..."

Feh. After a while, you get kind of tired of it.