Deranged Philosophical Outpourings

Sunday, February 17, 2002

I try to avoid watching/reading the news for many, many reasons, not the least of which is its wretched repetitiveness. Horrible shit happens day in and day out, and for some deranged reason some people like staying on top of horrible shit.

I like staying on top of horrible shit only if I can laugh at the same time; hence, I read Rotten, not CNN.

However, there is a certain trend -- and it's surely not that recent in America -- of people complaining about schools. The complaints can mostly fit in the sentence frame of "I can't believe the school is teaching X!", and fill your own damn X in. I don't care. X is everywhere and everything. "Teaching kids about sex?" "Teaching kids about science?" "Not teaching kids about religion?" Whatever.

Now, when complaints come from all corners, that makes me think one of two things: A:The Situation Is Intractable, or B:Something's Very Wrong Here.

Option B is an easy way to go. "The school system should be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up!" goes the cry. I'd be all for it, but it isn't going to happen, not unless the entirety of the MEA is destroyed in a freak meteor accident or something. These people have way too much stock, mentally and financially, in a shitty, shitty school system. If the school system were turning out well-educated people, fewer people would be having children, and schools would have less funding. Simple math, the kind even teachers can do. It's a who-you-know system to the exclusion of ability and innovation. Teachers teach teachers, and the teachers tend to be the lowest-common-denominator types who couldn't do anything interesting to begin with. Scrape the bottom of the barrel, have them teach the next generation, repeat. What the hell is that?

What about Option A?

Let's think about this for a minute. Whenever any service system gets large enough, it can no longer keep its customers happy. The school system is a huge, sprawling mess, approaching the level of government. Government will already tell you about this problem if you only ask them. The customer mass -- once at a certain level -- is viewed as an infeasibly fickle, impossibly difficult child. It's an accurate view.

What's my point?

Well, frankly, there's an old saying that "if you don't like the country, get the fuck out." In a lot of cases, this isn't possible; you can't get the fuck out because you're so damn poor, or what-have-you. Such is life.

But having children is something you do on purpose. There are a very, very few people who actually have children that they had no option abou having; they're very unfortunate rape victims. The rest of people say cutesy little things like "he was an accident", which is like calling a nuclear explosion "a little bomby thing". It's a gross scale distortion.

You cannot have kids accidentally. This is like saying you lost money in a casino accidentally. No, you took a calculated risk, and you lost. That means either that you like losing (wanted to have kids anyway) or that you made a noble risk and failed (you knew the odds). Sure, there are exceptions, but most of the people you see in a day aren't those exceptions.

Having said that, then you can fucking sure well make sure you have kids at a time when you can afford to deal with homeschooling them. And if you mentally respond with "But I don't want to have to deal with my kids all the time!" then please, here, here's a clue, see if it attracts another to you, because you're in desperate need of one. Shut the hell up. If you didn't want to cope with the fucking things, then...you shouldn't have been FUCKING. No fucking = no kids.

And if you could have had them when you could afford to homeschool, then you sure as hell don't get to bitch and moan because the fucking government isn't doing as good a job as you'd like for you. Are you drunk or something? "I can't be bothered to educate my children! Why can't you fuckers do a better job of it?" It's like bitching that the welfare system is hard to get into or something.

How about because those aren't their kids, asshole? If the kid's own parents don't give a warm shit about how well the child is educated, why should random strangers, chosen because of their butt-kissing abilities, give a warm shit about said child? Right -- they shouldn't.

Love is a fickle thing. Love is a supposedly guaranteed thing. Don't feel guilty if you don't love your kids, I say; that's really not required of you.

The only thing that is required of you is a certain decency and respect for a human being whom exists because of you. You made 'em -- you take care of 'em. There is a fresh human being, and they do not know that you're stupid and unable to plan and therefore are running late; they are trying to figure out what peanut butter is. Let them. You will have plenty of time to fuck their minds up later; give them some time to see how the world works first. They do not know whether pouring a glass of water down the front of your blouse is an appropriate response to a laugh; they might try it.

You can be a dumb asshole and hit and yell at your kids, or you can shut the hell up, act polite, and try to deal with what you did.

If you're very lucky, the kid will turn out likeable, and you'll have created a whole new person who's actually worthwhile. This is part of what having a kid is; it's a person who doesn't know you were a slut in high school, or killed rabbits with a soldering iron when you were twelve, or embezzle money. If you're a good person by the time you have kids, your kids will probably like you. Lucky you, you made a new friend.

Try to have kids after you have some money, though.
posted by Gregory 7:51 AM