Friday, March 03, 2006
Spot The Idiot
McCARTHY: Sure. Otherwise you can't prove those 5,000 students of mine... we have had 5,000 less homicides in the world because they took the course. You can't prove a negative, but you do see results. It's only one course out of 16 years. I mean, it's crazy. Here we have the number one problem in America and on the planet?violence. Yet, how many schools are teaching in a systematic way alternatives to violence? Did you go to a high school where they taught you a course in peace studies?For the record, a day does not go by that I don't use algebra. Similarly, a day does not go by that I am not amazed that someone is paid actual hard currency to teach stuff like this. McCarthy is a "peace studies" professor at a university. Remember when a university was a place of higher learning?
DAVIDSON: No.
McCARTHY: You did not. I did not. But you went to a high school...
DAVIDSON: ...although I had some teachers who'd probably would if they could.
McCARTHY: Yes, absolutely. But did you go to a high school where they required you to go into an algebra course? Did you take algebra in high school?
DAVIDSON: Certainly.
McCARTHY: Yes. How often do you go home and talk with your husband about the latest algebraic insight you have had? Do you do that?
DAVIDSON: (Laughter) I can't help my high-school-aged daughter with her algebra!
McCARTHY: Exactly. So here it is irrelevant to our adulthood, but they make us take this nonsense. And geometry. If you like algebra, fine... pi r² x bachazoids, crackazoids, lunazoids, hemorrhoids... Who cares!! You ever see a help wanted ad for an algebraist? I haven't. But the world is crying out for peacemakers. We are not teaching the kids how to be the essential thing. We have conflicts all our lives.
Related Tags: algrbra, peace studies, idiotic, political correctness
