Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity
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Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know is Wrong
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The forum hosted by the Cato Institute features John Stossel, the co-anchor of ABC's 20/20 and author of Myths, Lies, And Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know Is Wrong.
Award-winning news correspondent John Stossel was named co-anchor of ABCNEWS' 20/20 in May 2003. He joined the highly acclaimed newsmagazine in 1981 and began doing one-hour primetime specials in 1994.
 Write a Review of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity
 
Competition can be Brutal, be careful what you wish for., July 11, 2006
Reviewer: wallyclark
There is always a loser in any competitive event. And competition is specially brutal when applied to a softie like education; it's as out of place as a delicate lady at a strip club. Education is not a competitive sport; it flowers best amid compassion and caring, and that cannot happen under external threats to employee, employer, or student, security.
Competition obscures the goals of true freedom; it places seeming progress and technology ahead of humanity’s core teaching of caring and even individual rights. History shows a trail of tears behind nearly every competitive upheaval; so, why should anyone believe in competition. War is competition; look what it is bringing and has brought us: nothing but sorrow and technological progress.
That progress is brutal. Technological progress can be deceptive progress; often it’s at the expense of ruining many lives, those that lose during the competitive event. We may use money, but must never use humans as fodder for the competitive spirit. Mr. Stossel has faith in the big corporation's ability to run America's school systems, but the corporations have their own problems with finance and rewards. Perhaps corporate money is a lure to those seeking it, and perhaps it is to competence as well, but why should a CEO make five hundred times more than his employees? Rewarding the organizer more richly than the worker is a heady and dangerous sport whose endgame is always dissatisfaction.
Mr. Stossel talks about how difficult it is to get rid of a poor teacher. So what? Look how hard it is to get rid of any bad idea in the public’s mind, war, slavery, sectarianism, nationalism, etc.. When principals have to administrate or walk, professors have to publish or perish, and teachers must teach or retire, or die: when students have to be graded, the pressure can be too much for sensitive, good people caught up in that grinder. They cannot flower.
Good teachers must not only have plenty support, but they must be able to work in freedom, without some competitive overseer and test scores breathing down their neck. That hot air alone causes teachers to make many mistakes. Besides, who tests the Principals and superintendents? Who tests the parents? Who tests society?Still, given support, financial and physical, what a good teacher needs most to suceed is to love his job and flock. Beyond this, test scores tell part of the story, but education is an ecumenical and ecological challenge, a test of wholeness and togetherness.
Yet, it is a difficult job to fix output and input qualities in education when so many causes are contiguously related. Music listening, television, and entertainment in general are potent ingredients, not to mention the affects of war and warmongering, in the crucible’s soup of education. Someone must tell Mr Stossel that competition is too simple, naive, and incomplete an ingredient in the mix to answer the global problems, or even the US problems, with education.
- Published:
2002
- LearnOutLoud.com Product ID:
M019022
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