Straight Out Of The Marxist Playbook

Via Robert Shibley at Insty’s place:

One academic who has written about his approach is Professor Asao Inoue, who claims that individualism is an undesirable aspect of “whiteness.” In his courses, students are not graded down for failing to write in standard English. Instead, he has implemented a “labor based” grading system in which students are graded on the basis of the amount of effort they claim to have put in on an assignment.

Why is this out of the Marxist playbook?  Marxism postulates that what counts in production is not output, but input;  i.e. that the eight hours worked by an assembly-line worker is equivalent to the eight hours worked by the company owner.   (Also see:  women’s professional tennis prize money “parity” at Wimbledon.)

Of course, anyone with a brain knows this to be false, but in the (Marxist) scheme of “equity”, reality has to conform to the dialectic.  Or, to put it into quasi-academic language:

The Marxian process of change through the conflict of opposing forces, whereby a given contradiction is characterized by a primary and a secondary aspect, the secondary succumbing to the primary, which is then transformed into an aspect of a new contradiction. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Too Lenient

Nothing like a little pupil-teacher interaction, is there?

Jonathan Martinez-Garcia, 17, was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison in June after he ambushed the teacher – identified only as Sade – by asking if he could speak about his grades at El Dorado High School in April 2022.

During his June 2023 sentencing, it was revealed that the deranged student knocked the teacher unconscious. She later woke up with her pants and underwear down before the student threatened to burn her alive, prosecutors said. At one point in the attack, Martinez-Garcia told her: ‘Can’t you die already?’

The teacher was strangled from behind with cord during the attack and had her wrists cut, she now suffers from chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder, needing a walker to move around.

The teenager sickeningly smirked in court while his victim was recounting her terrifying experience. He later made the same expression when the was sentenced.

I’m thinking that the little shit needs at least 50 years, minimum, before parole is offered — with weekly whippings of, say, 50 strokes. See how much he smirks then.

But no doubt someone will have a problem with this quite reasonable suggestion.

Evil Totalitarians Etc.

“But what about the Chiiiiiildren?”  I can hear the wails already, in response to this latest example of Antipodean totalitarianism:

Cellphones will be banned in schools across New Zealand, conservative Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Friday, as his fledgling government looks to turn around the country’s plummeting literacy rates. The move would stop disruptive behaviour and help students focus, he said.

New Zealand’s schools once boasted some of the world’s best literacy scores, but levels of reading and writing have declined to the point that some researchers fear there is a classroom “crisis”.

Luxon declared he would ban phones at schools within his first 100 days in office, adopting a policy tested with mixed results in the United States, United Kingdom and France.

I know the thinking behind this:  what has changed with schoolkids since (say) 1980 when literacy rates were X, but which are now X/5?

Cell phones!!!!!!

So it’s to the banning table we go.

Of course, what has also changed in the interim is that (dare I say it) teacher quality has plummeted, teaching methodology has deteriorated, and classroom educational standards have dropped.

But those are sehr schwierig (nay, even impossible) issues to tackle, because we know that all teachers are dedicated professionals who have only the kids’ best interests at heart, teaching methodology is much better now that we’ve dropped silly things like rote learning of arithmetic tables and lowered spelling standards in favor of feelings, and we won’t even talk about topics like strict grading and corporal punishment (eek).

It’s so much easier just to ban cell phones.

Now understand that I’m actually in favor of banning the fucking things in schools because at best, children have the attention span of gnats and the blessed ability to Goooogle stuff is so, like, cool and easy and twenty-first century, Dad;  while old-fashioned learning is difficult and so, like, nineteenth century.  (I’m hopefully assuming that the modern generations are actually aware of the existence of a 19th century, but let’s move on.)

And I’m not interested in the supposed safety of the Chiiiiildren that cell phones are supposed to bring.  In fact, the proven negatives of cell-phone slavery amongst kids outweigh every single aspect of supposed in-class student safety, so there ya go.

Have the little shits turn their precious phones in at the school doors, to be returned when they leave the premises.  And have “backup” phones permanently confiscated when found.

So go for it, KiwiPM Luxon:  ban the poxy things.

And then, when literacy rates remain stubbornly in the basement, you can tackle the real problems, as outlined above.

Actually, No

I think we all remember this little incident, where a 6’6″ schoolboy thug beat a teacher’s aide unconscious over a Nintendo Switch.  No?  Here’s the story, along with his mother — predictably — begging for clemency because “prison will kill him”.

Here’s the thing, Mommie Dearest:  your precious little baby belongs in prison, because he has demonstrated quite beyond doubt that he is a menace to society.

And frankly, I don’t care that he’s autistic, any more than I would care that voices in his head are telling him that Switch Is God, and therefore beating someone savagely is somehow acceptable.

He belongs in prison.  And if that “kills him”, that is just too bad — because if he’s allowed to run free, who’s to say that he won’t go nuts and beat someone (to death, this time) because they wouldn’t give him Cheerios for breakfast?

Maybe — just maybe — he should be confined to a mental institution instead, except that such institutions are usually staffed with bleeding-heart psychologists wearing wizard hats, who solemnly declare that after a few months’ therapy, little Johnny is Ready To Be Released Into Society.

Whereupon little Johnny murders someone else, because he doesn’t like Mondays.

And then people like myself call for the psychologist to be executed for being an accessory to murder (which they are, in cases such as these) under Hammurabic principles.

So the whole thing spirals out of control, simply because we as a society somehow think that mentally-retarded sociopaths like this Brendan Depa shouldn’t be incarcerated and kept from being a danger to anyone they come into contact with (e.g. a 5’4″ slender teacher’s aide).

Throw him in jail and melt the key.

The fact that modern prisons are dangerous places is a topic for another time, but it’s irrelevant to this discussion.

And some people might disagree with me, but they’d be wrong.