No Child Left Behind

Oh, Miss Teen South Carolina. Surely you’ve seen the video by now. But is it all really that bad?

Okay, so she can’t form a coherent sentence, but still manages to burst out into some spontaneous exclamations (our education here! In the US!). Actually, it’s much funnier if you write out the response word for word with no punctuation:

I personally believe the U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa or should help the Iraq and Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.

Hilarity aside, the people that are targeting Miss Upton as “what’s wrong with America today” seriously need to come off the high horses. First off, I don’t believe that statistic is right, and The Machinist backs me up on that one. My clever friend Brian, who first showed me the YouTube clip and has a useful post on his own blog, says “Never underestimate the stupidity of the American people.” I’m not normally one to engage in such underestimation, but I find it very difficult to believe that 20% of Americans above a certain age cannot locate the US on a map. I don’t know if this survey even took age into account, but in any case, I’ve found no conclusive research that proves it.

Secondly, this girl is a beauty pageant contestant, for fuck’s sake. Most people I know are fairly quick to judge the intelligence levels of beauty queens. So is the fact that she gave a dumb answer to an unresearched question really any basis for serious cultural introspection? Personally, I think we should just laugh - which I’m still doing every time I come across the phrase “everywhere like such as”, by the way.

You can tell me to stop talking to judgmental people, but it ain’t gonna happen.

If you need a comparable example that is relevant to our national psyche, then consider the following. In 2002, National Geographic released the results of a geographic literacy survey that showed only 13% of Americans between 18-35 could locate Iraq on a map (a statistic I can easily believe). A few weeks later, Gary Trudeau (cartoonist of Doonesbury fame) drew a strip with an Iraqi official asking “Is it true only 13% of American kids can find Iraq on a map?” The American reporter to whom the question was posed then retorted “Yeah, but all 13% are Marines.”

After the strip was published, the quotation somehow got attributed to Gen. Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, and made the rounds around many proud Americans. Now that, in my mind, is a much bigger cause for concern.

“Never mind our own ignorance; we got the whip, we got a better bomb. We will use brute force to get our way.” Rhetoric that’s become dangerously commonplace over the past 6 years.

And cheers to you if you know where that lyric was from.