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Just a thought

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I need to rant...


Kitt

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Something was said in my hearing this morning that makes me want to sound off. A supposedly learned man made a very sweeping statement that condemned an entire group of people. It was a basic case of prejudice, but rather than an ethnic group or the gay community, it was pretty much anyone who did not hold a college degree from the "right" university that he was condemning.

 

Why do people feel they have a right to pass judgment on people they neither know nor care to find out about? There is no way the man this morning could have possibly spoken to so much as a tiny fraction of the people involved in the slight, let alone been able to make a judgment as to if they are educated. Yet he felt confident enough in his knowledge to make sweeping statements condemning a group of literacy volunteers. Seems no one, in his opinion, should be "teaching" without a degree. Uneducated rubes, as he called us, have no place being literacy volunteers.

 

Well please allow me to offer my “uneducated opinion”. It is uneducated as while i did attend a well respected university, I never completed university study. Life simply got in the way. But life itself is an educator, and when a man who is young enough to be my son gets so overwhelmingly pompous, I find it difficult to resist the urge to turn him over my knee and educate him on basic etiquette.

 

 

Think before you speak. God, or Allah, or Jehovah, or whomever it is you believe in gave you a brain for a reason, use it! I would like to think your mother would be as appalled as I was at the way you put down an entire group of people. In this case it was a group of volunteers who put in a large amount of time to try and help people who want to better themselves and improve their reading skills. You don't need to be a university professor to teach reading to the illiterate or to someone for whom English is a second language.

 

Gee I wonder what it would be called if someone hated that much on a group of gay men or an ethnic group instead of less skilled volunteers. Wait – there is a term for that, isn't there? It’s called “Bigot”.

 

Yes, I know on the grand scale badmouthing a bunch of literacy volunteers falls way below homophobia or ethnic prejudices. Please don't yell at me for the comparison. I just feel bigotry in any form needs to be addressed and eliminated.

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Having a piece of paper which says you've been through a university  doesn't equate with being educated - as this guy demonstrates. Making a generalisation like that is not acceptable even at pre-university level.

It's also arrogance and ignorance on his part to presume that quality of teaching is defined by the courses a person has taken. Good teaching depends far more on things like commitment, life experience, personality and communication ability.

He himself is demonstrating a lack of real education and when he pontificates like that he should be regarded as a waste of space.

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Mark Twain is supposed to have said, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

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Some people have to look down their nose in order to feel superior.  My mama told me you can't throw dirt without losing ground.  DDK

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I'll never forget when I was a sophomore in the academy I attended in high school (yes, most of the south screams bigotry) my algebra teacher actually said, "If anyone can catch on to this statement, no work today.  The statement he allowed was, "Two things I hate, bigots, and N.....rs on the beaches."  I immediately piped up.  Of course I got it correct and then, I slammed him for what he said.  Yes, I was in an Academy, but it was only because the public schools were more or less black.  It wasn't a fraction black, but black.  But, if I'd been male, my Dad said I'd been there.  I can understand that.  But, he was paying a premium for me to attend an academy that let things like this happen?  Nope, he was furious, and we moved for my senior year back to my home town where I graduated with all my friends I'd grown up with. I was actually one of the bussed students to a black school during integration in my hometown.  It went like clockwork.  I feel at times, the south is misrepresented.  But, I don't have to defend myself as far as bigotry.  My work place is 90 percent blacks, and they are awesome and dependable and make my life easier.

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Kitt, there seems to be a elitist movement going on so people can justify making excessive incomes, explains their unconscionable antics or allowing them to dump on others by blaming those in dire straights that it is all their fault.  It makes them feel better about themselves and they don't need to show any empathy or concern for anyone else. 

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My mother-in-law is the same way.  She's always put down my husband for not going to college, while her other son did.  Of course, my husband now makes six figures and is high demand, because of his tech skills and is actually better off than his brother is.  For her, it seems like it is all about the degree on the wall.  I just want to roll my eyes at her every time she mentions it--and it seems like she does every time we see her, which fortunately, isn't that often. 

It shouldn't matter if you have a degree on the wall to be a good person.

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