Why the Kids Don't Stand a Chance.

It is true, I am an impressionable youth and I do not have a chance of becoming successful in my life. The evidence? How about the 19 years I have spent on this planet, each day being fed with lies and bullshit that it has become damn near impossible for me to distinguish between what is true and what isn't.

There isn't a specific date from my youth (with 9/11 being the exception) where I can remember and chronicle everything that happened that day. My childhood was a blur of firsts, people, and events that no longer matter to me. My first steps? They don't matter, I have car payments now. I bought plane tickets just 3 weeks ago so I could get to my parents house for Christmas. I walk for exercise, I bike for exercise, but sometimes saving the environment takes a back seat to my 'saving time that turns insignificant anyway' attitude. We take for granted the things that made us who we are, and instead focus on the things that keep us happy. Like television. I sometimes wonder if there is a correlation between people who can tell you the names of all the actors on their favorite TV show, and the people who would struggle to come up with the name of their U.S. Representative. I know its not a realistic marker but that is beside the point. The point is that these days people want to know where their favorite movie stars eat lunch, and who they eat it with, and yet don't bother to concern themselves with their own lives.

If the kids are the future, I sure hope that a few of us have learned some things. The country and our teachers tell us what they want us to know, not what we should know. And that is a big problem because there is not much learning going on outside of class. Video games have shrunken that attention spans of the people who play them, leaving the mind unable to give 100% focus for more than 15-20 minutes at a time, which leaves much of the time spent in a classroom wasted. But while bad things can be said about video games and their impacts I do not think this is where the problem lies, it lies with the quality of education.

Im not here to preach about recession, the shrinking middle class, the war for oil, the tea bangers or the educational opportunities between the rich and poor. I am here to talk about the content that the children learn, how much of it originates in the class room but also how people extract things out of the different mixed media's that rule this country. And I can tell you exactly where it starts. 

The leaves are beginning to turn, the warm summer wind has been replaced by the harsher gusts of autumn and you are in second grade- staring out the window dreaming about recess and how, today, you are finally going to make it all the way across the monkey bars. Your teacher draws the attention of the class, picks up his chalk and writes Christopher Columbus on the board. And here it comes:

"Columbus discovered America. In fourteen hundred ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

You are only 7 (maybe 8) and already your entire view of the world is skewed. 

In reality, as I am sure any one of you could tell me, America was not discovered by Christopher Columbus and his band of marry men. There had already been people living, quite comfortably I might add, in this piece of land for thousands of years before Columbus got lost at sea. And I say lost because thats what he was. He thought he was in India, hence christening the people living there as 'Indians.' And, as I toe the dangerous line that gets me off topic, do you really think that these civilizations needed a short, balding, unemployable, cantankerous man to tell them that they existed? No, probably not. 

So why change the story? Well obviously it is more Euro-centric, a word i had to make up to illustrate my point, and it creates, Christopher Columbus: The First American Hero. A national icon that every generation of American school child ignorantly worships.

But if government sponsored school curriculum can lie to us in our most innocent youthful phase, how can we expect to hear the truth? Our heads are full of so many false notions that we do not even realize it. They say that one lie begets another and from there it is a very slippery slope. And the only way to avoid the lies is to find the truth in things, ignorance in not a bliss but a folly.

It is important to understand but many times that is difficult. I have heard that understanding the past is the key to the present and it is something I would fully agree with. You do not know where something is going until you see from whence it came. 

It always interests me to look back at the histories of companies or institutions and see a little bit about what the world was like before I was even a thought. For example, BP and its origins in Iran as a ruling body or that the FBI was created to find boxer Jack Johnson when he skipped bail and fled the country. But what I found to be most fascinating was the story of Santa Claus. The prototype for the Santa we know in America today originated in Turkey. He gave presents out all year long, wore a green and white suit, was thin, and had a partner named Black Pete who would kidnap the naughty children. What caused the change you ask? Coca-Cola did actually. Coke's colors are red and white and if Santa was to be the official spokesperson for Coke, especially in the winter months, he needed to dress the part and look kid friendly. And viola, the first spokesman was born.

I fear I may have dodged my point here, which may have, inadvertently, proven it. What is learned is not as important as its analysis, and especially in todays age it is important to question everything. Good questions get good answers but not all good answers hold the truth. Lies are a fundamental building block of society, and these original lies turn into misconceptions, and these misconceptions are shared. Eventually everyone believes that Columbus discovered America. But before one can break a misconception they have to understand its history- you have to know the 'why' before you can comprehend the 'why not.'

Do I have your attention?