…at least you do if wokeness has eaten your brains and you have the common sense of a shallot. This is just tragic, nauseating news. (Spike Jone’s rendition of the 40’s hit, in contrast still makes me laugh, and that’s why I need to hear it right now…)
The Oregon Board of Education decided unanimously—unanimously!—that high school students won’t need to demonstrate basic skills in reading, writing or math to graduate from high school until at least 2029. The state instituted the elimination of the basic graduation requirements in 2020. The pandemic, you know. It justified wrecking everything, and the more infected with the Great Stupid a state is, the worse its carnage.
Many Oregonians submitted public comments insisting the standards should be reinstated, arguing that pausing the requirement devalues an Oregon diploma. 1) Gee, ya think??? 2) NONONONONO. The reason for an education is not “the value of a diploma,” but the value of being educated.
ARRGGH. The delusion that the credential is what matters and not what the credential should signify is how we end up with policies like this.
But—oh come on, you can guess what the “but” is, right?— “leaders at the Oregon Department of Education and members of the state school board said requiring all students to pass one of several standardized tests or create an in-depth assignment their teacher judged as meeting state standards was a harmful hurdle for historically marginalized students…”
The Oregonian further explains why the state decided the wise move is to ensure that most such students begin their journey into the world ignorant and illiterate:
“Higher rates of students of color, students learning English as a second language and students with disabilities ended up having to take intensive senior-year writing and math classes to prove they deserved a diploma. That denied those students the opportunity to take an elective, despite the lack of evidence the extra academic work helped them in the workplace or at college, they said.”
“Denied those students the opportunity to take an elective“???? What like sports? Glee club? Chess…no, these kids couldn’t play chess…Tic Tac Toe Club? What kind of priorities are those? “Well, Billy, it’s important that you go your Give Palestine Back To Palestinians Club, so never mind that math assignment!”
This is systemic racism, fueled by systemic assholes.
Let’s listen to Spike and his maniacs again…
Ethics Alarms 
Has anyone asked why these students are marginalized?
Bingo. Marginalization began when social promotion in the primary grades became normalized. This is merely an extension of social promotion. It perpetuates what I call rational marginalization. Hiring an illiterate person in today’s world is irrational. The illiterate become marginalized because they were never held accountable to achieve academically because it might stigmatize the precious child. This is why we have so many functional idiots in Congress even though they have degrees.
Perhaps this category of thought and conclusion demonstrated by the OBE is not a product of racism but rather a result of the umbilical cord historically linking productivity and value being severed.
Like tolerating the federal government spending beyond tax revenue as a form of taxation via inflation on the stupid or ignorant, people want what they believe to be valued without generating something of value with which to exchange for it.
Loot a store with no penalties at one end of society, government spending without limits at the other…. in between we have the OBE telling people the have succeeded and been educated without paying the price of studying and learning.
One of the superintendents I worked for said (I’m paraphrasing a bit), ‘We must give students what they need’. At the time, BW (before wokeness), she meant give them the education they need to be productive and successful member of society. Bless her, she did not mean, “Give them a diploma.” She meant, “Give them an education”.
The dropping of standards is an admission by educators that they either cannot or will not do the job they are being paid to do. Many will default to ‘cannot’, and then blame ‘systemic racism’, which is what it seems they are doing in Oregon. When they do, they must be challenged to explain why they cannot overcome whatever vestiges of systemic racism remain, why they haven’t mastered their job to the point where they can identify and compensate educationally for whatever shortcomings might be burdening their students.
I can’t say for sure, but I hope that the superintendent I had would have said about ‘harmful hurdles’, “Don’t give them a ladder, don’t knock down the hurdles; instead, teach them to mitigate harm and to leap.”
“requiring all students to pass one of several standardized tests or create an in-depth assignment their teacher judged as meeting state standards was a harmful hurdle for historically marginalized students…”
What they’re doing in reality is the exact opposite of helping these so called “historically marginalized students”. Without the most basic skills they’ll be relegated to menial jobs or dependence on government assistance for survival. But perhaps that’s their goal.
Or they’ll “have to resort to petty crime and dealing drugs to survive.”
Then they should be prosecuted.
“But perhaps that’s their goal.”
Bingo.
At a different level, this reminds me of the story told by a friend who was a librarian at a Princeton University library. She had a work/study student who wasn’t really studying, and he certainly wasn’t showing up at the library to do his work. When she confronted him, he said, blithely, “I don’t have to DO anything. I got in, didn’t I?” These kids will be able to say, “I don’t need to pass no stinkin’ test, do I? I showed up to get my diploma, right?”
If this isn’t the racism of low expectations, I don’t know what is.
Well, what do you expect? My strong suspicion is that the people making these policies never had to be competent at anything. They just needed a degree to meet the formal requirements of their job and from then on, they have never had to really do anything. It is probably beyond their ability to understand that people actually need to know things, do things, or have skills. How much work does John Fetterman actually do? What work did Diane Feinstein actually do in the last 8 years or so? How many journalists for the New York Times actually understand anything they are writing about?
Example: Automotive journalists. It is rare that I find an automotive journalist who knows anything about cars. How did they get these jobs? They seem to come from wealthy families and wanted a job in ‘journalism’. Despite knowing little about cars, they make a lot of money at their jobs. A good example was a round table discussion of Motor Trend magazine journalists. The moderator asked them what kind of cars they own. Only the Hot Rod Magazine journalists owned a car, and they couldn’t actually work out how many ‘cars’ they own (Do you mean ‘drivable car’ or something with a VIN?). No one except the Hot Rod people could have explained why raising the deck on the LS and Hemi V8’s gave better pushrod angles, but caused other problems. There was an obvious difference between the knowledgeable and enthusiast Hot Rod writers with the more ‘upper class’, detatched, and disinterested writers from the more respectable Auto Trend magazines.
Example: Elon Musk recently railed against the ‘work from home’ crowd. He noticed that there is a group of people, with a prominent voice in society’ who think everyone should ‘work from home’. As Musk noted, they say this, while complaining that their Door Dash was late and how long Amazon shipping is taking. They really don’t notice the ‘little people’ who get things done.