Random Thoughts

Jump to BYU Editorial, The Quackery of Education (Also see talks on the religion page)

My response to a junk mail that included the claim, "I am" is the shortest sentence in the English language.

BYU Editorial. Here's the only editorial I've ever had printed (and it wasn't even a real paper):

The Daily Universe, ~May 13, 1995

To the Editor:

With graduation approaching and having recently been accused of neither possessing nor expressing strong enough opinions on fruitless discussion topics, I sought a trivial matter to bicker about in an editorial. After a little thought, I figured if one is good, ten must be better, so following is a compilation of observations and opinions from my four years here at BYU.

Somebody who was given far too much authority doesn’t realize that you can’t work out to Wham, Lionel Ritchie, and cheesy love songs in general.
The ACLU, the NRA, Fox TV, and all those pyramid marketing schemes/scams that leech off of BYU’s RM’s who learned the Missionary Guide a bit too well are all run by the dark side of the force.
"It’s a piece of junk, nobody would want it-so why lock it?" I would say before I learned that somebody here is in dire need of a bike. (I’ve had two bikes with a combined resale value of about $10 stolen on campus—obviously, I didn’t learn my lesson the first time.)
Architects who design buildings without windows should be incarcerated in the catacombs of the Clyde Building.
Instead of arresting Cody Judy, they should have arrested those self-proclaimed heroes who jumped him. Judy knew his stunt wouldn’t put anyone’s life in danger. For all our "rescuers" knew, however, he could have had his finger on a detonator as they pummeled him.
Theory’s nice, but practically useless. "Blasted microphone!" the professor would say each day as he began his lectures on electrostatics, incomprehensible due to the static interference. (Of course none of us students had a clue how to fix it either.)
Was there some rule saying "do unto others as was done unto you," or why do Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to distribute information at the campus entrances get laughed at and treated so rudely, often by RM’s?
The misguided fanatic who came up with the NCAA’s Title IX should be forced to watch women’s bowling for all eternity.
Nice effort, but Environmental Week flyers probably shouldn’t be blowing all over campus during Environmental Week.
What’s all this about killing yourself to graduate early and make space for others? The way I figure, if everyone takes an extra year to graduate by taking one less class each semester, we’d have classroom space for a few thousand more students here.

I don’t mean to complain—I’ve really enjoyed the whole BYU thing. But the Nike ad said everyone needs to write an editorial once, and this was my chance. Not that it did anyone any good, but it felt good just to say it.

Krey Price, Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Quackery of Education

This isn't my thought, but here's an interesting statement on education from Alexander's Messenger (from around the turn of the century, I think):

"Among the changes for the worse, which the world has witnessed within the last century, we include that specious, superficial, incomplete way of doing certain things, which were formerly thought to be deserving of care, labor and attention. It would seem that appearance is now considered of more moment than reality. The modern mode of education is an example in point. Children are so instructed as to acquire a smattering of everything, and as a matter of consequence, they know nothing properly. Seminaries and academies deal out their moral and natural philosophy, their geometry, trigonometry, and astronomy, their chemistry, botany, and mineralogy, until the mind of the pupil becomes a chaos; and, like the stomach when it is overloaded with a variety of food, it digests nothing, but converts the superabundant nutriment to poison. This mode of education answers one purpose--it enables people to seem learned; and seemingly, by a great many, is thought all sufficient. Thus we are schooled in quackery, and are early taught to regard showy and superficial attainments as most desirable. Every boarding school Miss is a Plato in petticoats (I like that part), without an ounce of that genuine knowledge, that true philosophy, which would enable her to be useful in the world, and to escape those perils with which she must necessarily be encompassed. Young people are taught to use a variety of hard terms, which they understand but imperfectly--to repeat lessons which they are unable to apply--to astonish their grandmothers with a display of their parrot-like acquisitions; but their mental energies are clogged and torpified with a variety of learned lumber, most of which is discarded from the brain long before its possessor knows how to use it. This is the quackery of education.

Sad, but even truer today...

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