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| Captain Crane? WHAT HAPPENED?? |
On one of the TV fan pages I stalk on Facebook, a person who wishes to be un-identified commented:
What's really sad is how some people think the actors and actresses should look the same today as they did 30+ years ago. Or they role they are in is real.
In a 2014 reunion photo from CHiP's, there were several people that couldn't recognize some of the supporting cast from a group photo taken there. Others couldn't understand why Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada looked old.
That's scary.
(No, it is not a CHiPs fan page!)
My concern here is that kids have not been taught to recognise cues, or clues in what they watch. They are not being taught TO think, but are taught WHAT to think. Ordinary things (to us) like recognising something as being from forty years ago, escape many. Old cars, red shift on film stock, dreadful '70s fashions and soundtrack music...all combine to define a period. Students are no longer taught to gather evidence, or notice tell-tales. Training in situational awareness, or historical awareness, is lacking. The commenter above has (perhaps) unknowingly fingered one of the most damning things about modern education: that the students are not trained to think.
The Prexy is wanting to provide FREE 2-year college, because rights and stuff. What this equals is two more years of public indoctrination, high-school plus; this for college prepped kids who have seventh grade reading skills, most of whom cannot count back your change. (To me, the ability to count back change is only one step below having opposable thumbs.)
I knew how animation worked as a very young child. In the fourth grade, I had classmates who were sure that they were actors in suits. I learned despair early on.
I see no cure at this time.
4 comments:
"I learned despair early on."
No doubt. Though I think you misunderstand some things. Most really aren't able. Most shouldn't be "educated" to the level they are. For one thing, that destroys the education system, fragile as that was in any case. To be honest, a 7th grade reading skill is as good as it gets for a typical human. Forget algebra, actual biology, or physics, those are so far beyond most that it is hilarious that they are being "taught" in most highschools. It is we who are not typical. For... good and ill, I suspect.
I remember talking to those in my classes, through various levels of education, encountering what you have and more. I can think back to conversations I have had with teachers and professors, preachers and parents. I encounter people today who either really can't think, have no clue about the world around them, and just coast from birth to death.
Few have a clue, and of those, only a very few wish to engage that. It is dangerous. It is. The first thing you need to sort is yourself. I, personally, am a mess. Neither logical, nor righteous, even with great effort. Just the need for effort exposes the weaknesses. Then you have to look at the world around you, other people, teachings and systems. Realizing most of them don't even try, many can't, and the few who might often sell out so as not be considered different (if that usually fails).
It is dangerous because you realize how thin the perceptions are, how weak the teachings, how flawed self and others are. No one wants to know that. Not anymore. It used to, or for times has been, understood. Now few can tolerate that truth.
You and I learned despair at about the same time it seems.
And yes, children are not being taught to think. This is the next stage in evolution on the planet. Not the evolution of people, but evolution in general. As our phones and related portable electronics become more intelligent, people will grow less and less so. Eventually (and perhaps sooner than we think), people will simply be methods of transportation for the machines. We will care little except how we look, or sound, or respond. Otherwise we will simply be providing movement for the machines (easily replaced, easily maintained), until some quantum jump in engineering renders us useless.
Oh and I met David Hedison about ten years ago at a Dragon*Con. I totally geeked out . . . I mean Geeked Out! I was so struck I called him "ma'am" twice (and cannot still fathom why). He took it very good naturedly, like the gentleman he was.
Interestingly enough, just came across this in the course of my reading:
"The seeds of the 1964-65 New York's World's Fair were first planted by a poetry-loving, idealistic, and well-connected real estate lawyer named Robert Kopple. One night in May 1958, while dining at his Roslyn Long Island home with his wife and young daughters, Kopple turned the the conversation towards current events. He was shocked to hear what his children had to say. "We were discussing the world," he later explained, "and I found that my daughters, who were then nine and twelve, had very little contact with what was going on in it. Everything was in terms of black and white; everything was hate."
(from "Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World's Fair and the Transformation of America" by Joseph Tirella)
Ah "presentism". Keeps ones' brain from hurting, what with thinking and all, and boosts the ole sense of self rightiousness.
So who pays for this "free" 2 yr college krap? Oops, forgot ... WE do!
Suits? I thought those actors always looked like that!
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