A rose by any other name might forget to smell as sweet.

“He’s smart but he’s just lazy.” Parents say this to their children. Children say it to themselves and their friends. Even teachers have to say it to irresponsible parents to abnegate any guilt on way they raise their young ones. Actually, in many conscientious districts, many teachers have to substitute the word “lazy” for something less accusatory like “unmotivated” or “unengaged.” While this little phrase happily obviates accountability from all parties, it has wreaked havoc on the developing minds of way too many students. Many sassy little urchins neglecting to read, write, or think early in life will fail miserably when they grow into adulthood. They read at lower grade levels, their maturity is greatly delayed, and they defy reality by claiming intelligence. It’s time to let these students and their parents learn the horrible but liberating truth: They’re stupid, and it’s their own damn fault; it’s up to them to change that. Otherwise a teacher will just be wasting a criminal amount of time for nothing.

This is literarily utter blasphemy for any teacher to even think, but it’s sadly true for a growing amount of students. Try as educators or parents might, their explanations for the struggling students are false. All students being intelligent in their own way is a myth. On the other side of the argument, people should recognize that intelligence being solely dependent on a favorable genetic code is also myth. Common sense can easily thwart the former myth. If one student can successfully read Moby Dick and analyze its plethora of symbols, allegories, and allusions while the other can only read Dr. Seuss and achieve comprehension through the charming illustrations; then there is a tremendous disparity between in their verbal intelligence regardless of how they approach texts. One knows more while the other knows less; this is undisputable. The latter argument parallels a similar argument that genetics determines obesity. There is truth that genes can increase the propensity of acquiring intelligence or weight, but practice and discipline play a far greater role in how a mind or body develops. Perhaps coincidentally, scientist work as ardently on a cure for obesity as they do for mental acuity.

Acquired intelligence does not mysteriously descend on some students; rather, it’s earned. Intelligent people acquire knowledge and skills through solving problems, practicing logic, reading a variety of challenging texts, and composing ideas. Stupid people disband the possibility of acquiring knowledge by turning their brains off at every opportunity. They do not read; they ask others to solve their problems for them; they fidget and daydream at the first mental challenge; they have a very difficult time following directions; they lack any sort of curiosity; they seize every conceivable distraction that will delay the anguish of the boredom to which they’ve irrationally submitted. In concise terms, laziness creates stupidity and exists in conjunction with stupidity. The moment the brain stops working, it starts to degenerate. The moment some youth decides to give up books of a certain grade level, he stays at that reading level until he changes his mind about his reading –unless the grade levels adjust to suit his inferiority.

People must understand that learning process does not skip any steps, but it’s a gradual climb. A student that neglects his children’s books, then young adult books, then some provocative classics, will not be able to read and enjoy Shakespeare. He will simply whine, fidget, and eventually fail –assuming the teacher holds steady on grading standards and doesn’t cave in to the student’s desire for the easy art project. The same thing applies to a student given complex algebra when he still clings to the calculator to do simple arithmetic. All academic disciplines come in steps. People often forget those illustrated children’s classics or those little math games that made a picture, but these types of activities set the foundation for the books or professions that made their life. A stupid person lacks that kind of development and pursues every mental escape from breaking pencils to boozing later on in life.

The debilitating effects of a mentally lazy life will always trouble the person suffering from it. However, just like this person escaped working their minds, they escape taking blame for their inadequacy. Psychologist make their money by whipping up new theories for incompetence like a new strain of ADD, a various learning disorder, a new mental disability, or any various emotional disorder. Most people, smart or stupid, can claim some kind of special education hindering label -and its accompanying “medication”- by the time the graduate. Only a small minority truly qualify for such categorizations. The vast majority of them suffer from nothing except their laziness and its resulting ineptitude. Some even take pride in it, saying how lazy they are but how they cleverly they get away with not being clever.

Teachers have taken on the most abuse for the misunderstanding of stupidity. Most of them can spot the problem quickly, but they have no right to call it a problem or to attempt to solve it. Obviously, solving a problem without acknowledging is simply illogical and thus impossible anyway. Therefore, many teachers avoid the problem altogether by lowering the standard for intelligence thus nullifying stupidity. The stupid kids keep their self-esteem and the teachers are spared from the impossible task of bringing an unwilling kid up to grade-level material. Even the standards for certain grade-levels will decline for the purpose of assuaging spoiled kids that hate thinking. A quick glance at a English textbook in the mid-twentieth century and a glance at one now will instantly show the frightening decline in literacy.

For many people, the epiphany that illuminates an ignoramus of his own ignorance will be the spark of curiosity and lead to a respectable livelihood. For others, they will have parents devoted enough to take away their televisions and leave them no choice but to educate themselves. Unfortunately, the rest often fidget and vegetate their way through life and eventually find themselves wondering at their poverty and ongoing depression. That is the fate of the “lazy but smart” kid. Many of them had a warning from their old-fashioned teachers about this reality, but they heard from their peers, the media, and their parents that they were always smart enough but only a little lazy.

Consciously ignoring stupidity inhibits the work of educators while simultaneously disenfranchising the students who unknowingly suffer from it. Only stupidity results from the vice of mental laziness. These two qualities should never be permissible in a school or home for obvious reasons. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but stupidity by any other name might stink up a child’s opportunity for enlightenment.

Tracking (Part 3: Allegory of the Thirsty Horse)

As far back as Ancient Greece, the poet Hesiod rightly acknowledged the natural hierarchy of civilized societies with three divisions: those who think for themselves (a small portion), those who think as others think (a big portion), and those who don’t think at all (a small portion that seems big). This hierarchy has carried over through the millennia with every society, thinkers teaching and guiding the doers to solve problems while the non thinkers create more problems. As history progresses, the thinkers have established schools to eliminate non-thinkers somehow. Today, American schools try to do this by forcing all students to learn the minimum in the same way whether the students comply or not. Despite the lack of logic in the policy, and the cultural and productive standards diminishing year after year, this is the fair system. This is also an educational system that creates more and more purposeless non-thinkers unable to cope with reality.

Acknowledging this failure of a principle that neglects those who think for themselves and nurtures more non-thinkers, a new policy must arise to spare young Americans from a damning ignorance that they don’t want. This policy must promote independent thinking among the elite (those that strive for excellence), an adherence to good thinking for the rest, and a merciless contempt for ignorance and incompetence that plague a vulnerable few. On this principle of satisfying all three groups, schools must create a relevant institution that will serve the needs of thirsty young minds eager for the power to affect their own destinies. As it stands, too many schools are utterly irrelevant, and they inadvertently lock formerly energetic human beings into vegetating derelicts.

The following allegory illustrates the solution to schools’ responsibility to nurture young minds, and how they have handled them instead. “You can guide a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Instead of heeding this advice, schools have perpetually tried to come up with new ways to make their horses drink. They have tried punishments, coaxing, and a myriad of mind games with the students, but to no avail. The horses resent being forced to drink water and ask for Coca-Cola instead. Finally, the schools give up and comply. They replace the life-giving water with dehydrating Coca-Cola and await praise for at least leading these horses somewhere instead letting the owners have to worry about it. While the owners would prefer their horses drinking water instead of Coca-Cola, they have no solutions of their own. These owners have no water of their own, and the horses don’t seem to like it even though they need it so badly.

One just needs to remember the quote of these recalcitrant drinkers and stop trying to force these horses to drink. Simply forget the Coca-Cola and let the horses drink the water on their own. They will appreciate the water more because it substantially slaked their thirst instead of the cheap sugary thrill that left them even thirstier. The conflict does not stop there though. Coca-Cola has much more power and influence with famous computer generated polar bears gracing their commercials as opposed to water, so the horses will still vehemently demand the soft drink even after they enjoy the refreshing glass of water. The owner knows that a lifetime of drinking soda will rot the young one’s teeth, make one fat, plague one’s brain with headaches, and leave one sluggish and dehydrated. The horse does not know this, but he does know that he is thirsty and that he will get his Coca-Cola if he holds out on water long enough. The adult will vacillate in his reasoning, “Well, I know he really needs water, but he doesn’t like it. I remember that we never gave Coca-Cola to these horses before. But things are different these days. Younger horses have computers and internet… maybe they need soft drinks to quench their thirst. After all, that’s what everyone else gives them. And he is much happier when I give him coke…. And though I hate to admit it, it IS a lot easier.” And the unknowing horse of so few years has now determined how he will live his life; first, with the consent of his owner; then with time, the sanctimonious approval of the owner. The horse will eventually get tired of Coca-Cola and desire something more nourishing, but it won’t be there. The adult will just force more coke down his throat until the horse forgets the idea of drinking anything altogether, and lives an unhappy and unhealthy life forever after.

Now, replace horse with student, water with relevant nourishing education, Coca-Cola with idiotic busywork (otherwise known as the “Crayola Curriculum”), drinking with thinking, and the owner with school. Schools give busywork to all kids equally, allowing students to not think. By the time their minds beg to be used, the schools reply with more pointless busywork. Even if their souls cry out to be useful and virtuous, schools will tell them to wait for college and leave them to listen to the rappers sponsored by Coca-Cola in the meantime. By the time they receive their piece of paper, they have already lost their dreams, their capacity to achieve those dreams -had they existed-, and they desire the life that will keep them from thinking and achieving, two things they have associated with their low self-esteem.

These poor students needs purpose, and school should have provided that purpose. Educators could have done this by removing all sources of time wasting in the young person’s distraction-filled life. They could have shown and provided all the paths to a productive life. They could have thwarted the destructive messages that inculcate young minds today. They could have let the horse find its own place to drink from the long waterway instead of leaving only one place in the river or providing a harmful soft drink. Although illiterates and pleasure-seeking drones graduate in higher and higher proportions every year, this trend can be reversed with a different approach to education. Schools should just allow the students to choose what they will learn and track them according to their abilities.

As it stands, all kids follow the same educational requirements, sit in the same classrooms, and learn at the same pace. The majority either hate what they learn or they hate how they are taught, and they eventually develop a dislike for any kind of learning whatsoever. They need to have a choice in what they learn and how they learn, so they will not learn to hate and blame school.

Of necessity, the choices provided to the student must actually serve a productive purpose in society. Normally, the students could choose between high academic disciplines or vocational disciplines. With the exception of a few necessities for every functioning citizen like literacy, basic math, and basic civics; the student will pursue the required studies of his chosen discipline. Each discipline should allow two tracks: one for the exceptional students who strive for excellence, and another for students who desire competence. As for the students who prove to desire neither excellence nor competence, they will remain isolated from the rest of school where the issues that cause such a aberration can be fully addressed and corrected without stopping the other students from learning. The number of students needing drastic intervention would decrease significantly if elementary schools employed these measures instead letting the problematic study habits fester until high school.

Moreover, when a school gives a student a choice, it also gives that student a goal to pursue. This goal can be an actual set of skills that can help the student and distinguish him from an ignorant child he once was. On the other hand, college is not a goal. Like school, college serves as a means to a goal in life rather than function as a goal in itself. When students have a real goal like obtaining skills for a profitable or fruitful enterprise, they will actively seek edification and develop the discipline necessary for it instead of escape it.

Those that object to tracking and individualizing education as a means to establishing elitism and unfair segregation should look at the rampant apathy that hits American children as soon as they leave elementary school. They find out that they are tiny anonymous ants in a huge mess of a school working with a floating standard of quality. The school has set their unsure path, and the students will have nothing to do with it except how well they comply. They will drift each year through classes and it’s up to their backgrounds in how they respond. However, they know their response, good or bad, will receive the same treatment, so they really don’t exert much of themselves. For their whole academic career, they have no goals except some ambiguous sequel to high school known as college, which many of them could care less about since it offers them little more than what they already have learned to resent in high school. Most of them end up where most people without goals end up, in a life of unceasing mediocrity.

It’s time to give them a choice and stop relegating American students to this vicious cycle. The world’s best educational systems like Finland, Taiwan, and South Korea have recognized the necessity to track student and diversify the curriculum to suit their needs. Maybe it’s time to learn from them, so American students can start learning themselves.

Tracking in School (Part Two: The Shortcomings of Inclusion)

In efforts to level the playing field and ensure everyone the right to an education, many public schools have practiced the philosophy of inclusion. Inclusions means having the sluggish kids, even those with mental handicaps and severe emotional disorders, sitting and working in the same classroom as the best and brightest of the school. This practice naturally inflicts a blow to the idea of tracking, which separates students into different levels according to their ability. Those who advocate inclusion reason that those sluggish students will benefit from a mainstream education that provides proximity to normal kids. They reason thus: Like someone getting better at tennis by playing with someone better than themselves, these students will improve their study habits by being with better students. They will also find questionable (though never actually questioned) studies to support their argument. Unfortunately, they forget that the tennis players playing with those worse than them leads them to stagnate in their progress and even make them worse tennis players. Almost all intelligent people who have endured classes with ignorant troglodytes because of a school’s mission to equalize what nature has left unequal will tell you how little they learned and how much time they wasted in that class.

Most public schools have forsaken the remedial and special education track, so they could put these students in regular classrooms. They compensate for the kids' handicaps by providing a co-teacher to assist the teacher in the classroom. In theory, the co-teacher monitors the progress of the sluggish students and assists them when necessary. In practice, most co-teacher hardly show up to work (most of them seem to be coaches) and the teacher has ten extra students in his classroom that slow down the learning process of that classroom considerably. Rather than having the same expectation maintained for the whole class, teachers lower those expectations to cut down the failure rate and accommodate the mediocre students who normally act out when asked to actually learn. After a few years of this, the regular students internalize the academic ineptitude of their “special” peers and they plunge into special education status themselves. Due to this inclusion procedure, the number of special education students grow exponentially and the regular level descends into a greatly remedial level with the title of "regular".

Fortunately, thanks to ratings of U.S. News and the administrators who desperately need a few smart students to redeem their feral student body, public schools will try keeping an honors level geared towards taking AP tests at the end. By necessity, this honors bubble that holds about ten percent of a school body escapes the onslaught of inclusion advocates and allows those teachers (who are envied by every other teacher in the building) to set some actual expectations for their kids and work at their level without endangering themselves to a high failure rate.

Naturally, most schools have tried expanding the honors level with the same ideas of raising the general level of student performance and earning a place in U.S. News by practicing inclusion while still achieving. Unfortunately, the same deterioration of expectations results from this. The Honors teachers have less freedom in how they evaluate their students because the administrators have set a higher quota for more honors students, which must not be violated. Once more, inclusion knocks down a level, making the honors track just regular.

Therefore, for the sake of a few knuckleheads, all the other students have been sacrificed. Parents now fear of their children become dumber by going to school, which happens depressingly often. Most kids in public school who actually tap their intellectual potential will do it on their own. Too many times, school only serves to bring them down by asking them to put down Jane Eyre so they can pick up a glue stick and colored marker.

Charter schools, private schools, and schools in affluent suburbs exist and thrive because of this simple phenomenon. Desperate parents will do anything they can just to keep away from the dullards that now dictate public school curriculum. These are the schools that nurture the leaders of tomorrow and offer a glimmer of hope in the future. They also expose a disturbing disparity between the fortunate and the less fortunate. Those less fortunate, which include many middle class families, have simply accepted public schools functioning as daycares for kids until they reach legal adulthood. Like the teachers, they have also dropped their expectations of what education should be.

Luckily, more and more parents now call for reform, usually in the forms of charters, schools that run outside the guidelines of a district but still receive government funding. These schools allow an outlet for parents who can't afford to live in a rich suburb or pay the tuitions for private schools. The trend of charters will rise due to the choice they offer kids who want to achieve without the heavy weights of kids impatiently waiting until they day they can drop out ruining their classes. Unsurprisingly, public school districts will do all they can to deter their success, so they can remain blameless of neglecting the young minds that overpopulate their ugly campuses.

However, a great majority of children will remain imprisoned in the public schools filled with the detrimental miasma of inclusion. These schools need tracking to restore quality learning back into the building. This would address the needs of the good students, the regular students, and the poor students. Moreover, it would allow teachers to teach the whole class instead the ones that require the most attention, who are coincidentally the worst students. Noting the shortcomings of the present system, tracking for the three levels seems like a much better idea to explore than the irrational notion of forcing all kids into the same physical proximity with the hopes that intelligence will somehow radiate from the good students to the bad ones.

The Crumbling of the Ivory Towers

All schools now want to push all their students to college. It’s in their mottos, slogans, mission statements, “educational philosophies”, etcetera. All kids must pursue a four-year degree in some abstract study whether they like it or not. This academic priority is based on some brilliant research that shows that people with college educations earn higher salaries than those without college educations. Never mind that these statistics reflect basic pattern of American workers over ten years ago and not an actual guarantee of success. The schools remain convinced that this ensures a higher quality education, better numbers on tests and graduate rates, and step towards progress.

Unfortunately, the opposite seems to occur. Education, especially the seemingly untouchable ivory towers of higher education, suffers from these campaigns for a college education. The standards fall, the numbers for tests go down, and dropouts continue. It also doesn’t help that most school leaders can only feel obliged to preach and set deadlines but have absolutely no clue how to achieve it. Their method usually involves maintaining the same atrocious learning environment for the students while yelling at teachers more often and assigning them more useless staff development sessions. Obviously, when this does not work out, most people recognize this ongoing drama for what it is: Another way of hiding the gross inadequacies of public schools today.

However, this drama of making every student a scholar has successfully wreaked havoc on educational standards. Colleges must now sustain the vast onslaught of unprepared slackers ready to get their priceless piece of paper known as a college degree. To do this, many colleges have created developmental classes (in other words, a mini-high school sponsored by the exorbitant tuition of worthier students) or they have sacrificed their standards altogether. This sacrifice has led to a disturbing trend among universities who now forsake the fine-tuning of academic aptitude for “practical career know-how” in order to save face about plummeting standards. In particular, literature courses have opted for shorter multi-cultural books and contemporary short stories rather than tomes of the respected Western canon. While these books might exhibit openness to diversity, many of them are easy reads, and even the most sanctimonious professors acknowledge that. In the other disciplines power point presentations replace writing compositions, Wikipedia replaces actual sources for research, and derisive jibes (often spouted from asinine professors) replace competent discussion.

The academic standards of high schools have also suffered. In the spirit of making every student a college prospect, many schools have streamlined honors courses and loosened the methods of tracking that separate the wheat from the chafe in the student body. They now drag at-risk students (educational term for prospective drop-outs) literally kicking and screaming into an advance placement class where they continue to kick and scream for the whole year. The teachers would normally fail these dunces, but they have so many of these students that failure is not an option anymore. At this point of no return for the teacher, their expectations normally take a beating on their grade book for a few weeks before they inevitably drop to a lower level.

Naturally, schools pushing college have done away with programs intended as alternatives to college. Many have disposed of useful vocational programs that could immediately equip kids with practical skills that the job market always requires. Rather, they are forced into classes that attempt to teach them the beauty of poetry, obscure theorems in advanced algebra, and the cultural celebrations of Mauritania. While a minority might appreciate this well-rounded though not altogether practical curriculum, a majority usually space out and hone their skills as slackers just to get through their days. Kids who might want, or need, to work after high school often come into the workforce handicapped because school has trained them to lazy, dishonest, and irrelevant.

The strangest fact that high schools seem to somehow overlook is that most universities lie outside the price range of most kids, even middle-class ones. Parents and students begrudgingly paying off their loans understand that universities, both public and private, presently charge extortionate tuitions. These costs especially encumber students in states that have deregulated tuitions. Considering the quality of education received in these institutions that cater to profitable endeavors over educational ones, the notion of paying the equivalent of year’s salary of a white-collar worker is downright absurd.

Community college has become the only choice for many young adults seeking some kind of credential that might attract an employer. Unfortunately, they provide financial relief at the cost of accepting all students indiscriminately. Thus, the hopes some smart kids cherished in their bosoms of finally separating from the imbeciles of the class fly away. The state that needs them so badly has left them an additional two years of high school in the guise of a college.

To define success in terms of a college degree limits the definition of success completely. Students come in many different forms with many different mindsets. They all have a talent and a passion, and school must tap that precious resource in each of its students. Universities do not deserve the power that high schools give them, determining a person’s overall success in life. They should humbly serve as supplemental academic training to students desiring it. Other outlets need to exist for the other students ready to work or gain a profitable skill. A high school that respect this and aspire to opening more possibilities ultimately succeeds as a beneficial institution over one that alienates students and tears down academic standards due to their narrow-minded view that college is the only way.

More Staff Development Comics

There's something cathartic in drawing stick figures. I don't know what I'd do in these staff development meetings without them. It's actually a good way to think certain concepts through, like staff development meetings. I also felt like recreating a few interesting things I got to experience at my job.

Tracking in School (Part One)

As much as people hate to admit it, humanity comes in three forms: the high class, the middle class, and the lower class. The higher class enjoys the most freedom, the most influence, and the most the world has to offer, but shoulders the most responsibility. The middle class enjoys all these things as well, but to a lesser degree. The lower class does not enjoy these things but are dependent on others. The gospel rightfully acknowledges the three levels of almost all societies when Christ tells his story about the three men and the talents that their master dispenses. The first two do great things with their responsibility over the talents, but the poor man buries his share in the ground and produces nothing while the master is away.

People often argue with this outlook on humanity citing it as a lingering form of backward barbarism from the uninformed past. They optimistically posit their progressive idea of an equal plane being possible for all people. To them, the only thing that separates the lower class from the higher class is mere circumstance. These progressive minds continue to favor some kind of compensation to the lower class by taking away from the privileged upper class. Despite history providing numerous pieces of evidence to the contrary, they believe that this will fix the class disparities of humanity and push it towards a better future. In reality, this approach simply lowers the universal standard and makes almost everyone low class. At this point, all the proverbial servants will bury their talents and lose the ability to even conceive an idea of achievement or success. Fortunately, the society that makes this collective of inferiors will be lucky to even sustain itself. Like the Soviet Union it will either utterly implode and start from scratch again, or gradually compromise its ideals of equality for profit like China.

However, there is another poor, though not quite as extreme, policy that establishes and maintains an artificial hierarchy based on entitlement rather than merit. For example, Rome rose on the basis of a meritocracy. Wise leaders offered the possibility of advancement in the form of the empire's military and bureaucracy. People born of humble farmers in an obscure province could rise to become a general or imperial advisor in the great city of Rome. Unfortunately, Rome's downfall came when wise leaders foolishly mistook a privileged upbringing for a virtuous one and forfeited the system of rewarding merit to a system that rewarded breeding. In the hierarchy that flourished from roughly the time of Gaius Marius's military reforms (107 BC) to the death of Marcus Aurelius (161 AD) social mobility truly existed and virtue facilitated a rise in the ranks. Individuals made their mark on this part of history providing many admirable and impressive characters for posterity to enjoy forever after. These same individuals would have suffered terrible oppression brought on by inferior minds continuously in power during Rome's decline after the age of the Antonines. The government froze the classes that started saturating anyway, and the imperial government started to reduce the population to serfdom by heavy taxation. From this, one might as well make yet another speculation about Rome's reason for decline and say that the culture tried to oppose the natural hierarchy of man that transcends royal mandates. Rather they should have accepted it and explored the possibilities presented.

Great nations like early Rome come into prominence by embracing this natural order of humanity to a certain extent. They create opportunities for the three classes of people to find their designated place in society. The virtuous high class must lead, the middle must follow and maintain, and the lower class must correct themselves or suffer indefinitely. Plato wrote about this hierarchy in his Republic recognizing the necessity of virtue, but oddly enough, not of the freedom of choosing to be virtuous. True progression (as opposed to collectivists) results from "laissez faire" of natural virtue manifesting itself in individuals. Ayn Rand correctly asserts that those who are blessed with a wise upbringing and superior talents will bring up all the people around them by being left alone to live in greatness. This freedom allows the same souls suffering serfdom half of millennia ago to now enjoy being kings of their own households lazily imagining what their next luxury will be. Abject poverty of homeless starving people that consumed over half the population now affects a tiny portion of the population. As long as all people are free to prove themselves worthy of any of the three levels accorded by nature and morality, then human progress and a rising quality of life will follow.

However, this suitable hierarchy only comes when people are allowed to succeed AND fail. A false hierarchy doomed towards universal poverty exists when people aren't allowed to fail or succeed. The high class is artificially placed with the low class, and vice versa. Thus the world goes to the greedy and foolish men while the good guys perish. In history, this process starts as a decline and ends as a dark age. In modern terms, this mismatch constitutes the way of the third world. The cultures that preserve man's natural and moral hierarchy allow the good guys to govern the world responsibly (by allowing the people to govern themselves) while the foolish and greedy suffer punishment and receive correction. In history, this process starts as rise and ends as complete cultural hegemony. Only a few great nations have gotten near to a perfectly free state respecting a hierarchy of virtue and natural ability, but none have ever maintained it long enough to keep from declining once more into corruption. Fools will always be around to let the failures succeed and the successes fail, and they will always do so to their own demise.

They do it because they think they can break the hierarchy, but it will never happen. Humans will always have three classes of people: the leaders, a small group of people who have creativity, aptitude, and responsibility; the followers, a large group of people who have competence and responsibility towards the leaders; and the misfits, the smallest group of people who have neither competence nor responsibility. The leaders need promotion, the misfits need correction, and the middle need to set the highest standard possible.

Every group will always come in roughly the same numbers when they are born, but a suitable approach can maximize each group's potential. While the misfits will always be around each generation, they can be turned from destructiveness with extra help. Once people recognize the existence of these three groups, then these that have caused every failure in history might be corrected for good, and cut the hierarchy to two groups.

What better place to start this constructive liberating solution for society's corruption than school?

Some sketches during a staff development session

I had to attend a staff development meeting two days ago. As you can see, I had quite a bit of time to waste, so I drew some stick figures. It was just like being in high school.