OF LEAD WHISTLE THE WILL DEAN WILL EVERYONE'S AND THE NETWORK IF ALL THE "EDUCATION AT ON~€, 7. Review the cartoon " If All the 'Education Happened at Once," which at the top of this page. As a class, debate whether or not education is trying to do too much today. EXTENDING THE CRITICAL CONTEXT MOORE IDIOT NATION 153 Idiot Nation When Michael Moore (b. 1954) held up his Oscar for best documentary during the 2002 Awards show and shouted "Shame on you, Mr. Bush" to a chorus of boos from the audience, no one who knew his work would have been shocked. A social gadfly and cinematic activist without equal for the past two decades, Moore isn't the type to shy away from telling the president what he thinks of him national nor is he the type to dis-guise his contempt for the general level of idiocy he sees in American society. In this selection from Stupid White Men . . . and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, his 2002 diatribe against our collective Moore zeroes in on the state of American education. Serving up generous examples his own less-than-stellar educational ca-reer, Moore takes us on a tour of the failings of America's schoolrooms -from libraries without books to in chief who can't distinguish between countries and continents. Along the way, he touches on topics like the cultural illiteracy of television talk show hosts, the growing movement for educational "accountability," and the corporate takeover of America's classrooms. He even offers a list of things every student can do to back against educational subservience. Before winning the Oscar in 2002 for his Bowling for Columbine, Moore directed Roger and Me which chronicled his attempts to question Roger Smith about a series of factory closures that devastated the econmny of Flint, Michigan, Moore's hometown. He is also the creator of the Canadian Bacon (1995) and the experimental Emmy-award-winning 1995 television series Nation. Do you feel like you live in a nation of idiots? I used to console myself about the state of stupidity in this country by repeating this to myself: Even if there are two hundred million stone-cold in this county, that leaves at least eighty million get what saying-and that's still more than the populations of the United Kingdom and Iceland combined! of the year in 1965 in the old American Basketball Association, and what Jake Wood had for breakfast Then came the day 1 found myself sharing an office with the ESPN game show Two-Minute Drill. This is the show that tests your knowledge of not only who plays what position for which team, but who hit what where in game between Boston and New York, who was Taken from an anthology Source: Rereading America Editors: Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's City: Boston/New York Year: 2005 a 1925 morning of May 12,1967. I don't know the answer to any of those questions but for some rea- son I do remember Jake Wood's uniform number: 2. Why on earth am I re- taining that useless fact? I don't know, but after watching scores of guys waiting to audition for that ESPN show, I think I do know something about intelligence and the American mind. Hordes of these jocks and lunkheads hang out in our hall-way awaiting their big moment, going over hundreds of facts and statistics in their heads and challenging each other with questions I can't see why anyone would be able to answer other than God Almighty Himself. To look at these testosterone-loaded bruisers you would guess that they were a bunch of illiterates who would be lucky if they could read the label on a Bud. In fact, they are geniuses. They can answer all thirtyobscure trivia ques-tions in less than 120 seconds. That's four seconds aquestion -includingthe time used by the slow-reading celebrity athletes who ask the questions. I once heard the linguist and political writer Chomsky say that if you want proof the American people aren't stupid, just turn on any sports talk radio show and listen to the incredible retention of facts. It is amazing -and it's proof that the American mind is alive and well. It just isn't chal-lenged with anything interesting or exciting. Our challenge, Chomsky said, was to find a way to make politics as gripping and engaging as sports. When we do that, watch how Americans will do nothing but talk about who did what to whom at the But first, they have to be able to read the letters There are forty-four million Americans who cannot read and write above a fourth-grade level -in other words, who are illiterates. How did I learn this statistic? Well, I read it. And now you've read it. So we've already eaten into the mere 99 hours a year an average American adult spends reading a book-compared with 1,460 hours watching televi-sion. I've also read that only 11 percent of the American public bothers to read a daily newspaper, beyond the funny pages or the used car ads. So if you live in a country where forty-four million can't read-and perhaps close to another two hundred million can read but usually don't -well, friends, you and I are living in one very scary place. nation that not only chums out illiterate students BUT GOES OUT OF ITS WAY TO RE-MAIN IGNORANT AND STUPID is a nation that should not be running the world-at least not until a majority of its citizens can locate (or any other country it has bombed) on the map. It comes as no surprise to foreigners that Americans, who love to revel in their stupidity, would "elect" a president who reads World Trade Organization. Province that precipitated the 1999 NATO invasion of Serbia after it demanded autonomy. including his own briefing papers-and thinks Africa is a nation, not a conti-nent. An idiot leader of an idiot nation. In our glorious land of plenty, less is always more when it comes to taxing any lobe of the brain with the intake of and numbers, critical thinking, or the comprehension of anything that isn't . . . well, sports. Our Idiot-in-Chief does nothing to hide his ignorance he even brags about it. his commencement address to the Yale Class of 2001, George W. Bush spoke proudly of having been a mediocre student at Yale. "And to the C students, I say you, too, can be President of the United States!" The part where you also need an ex-President father, a brother as of a state with missing ballots, and a Supreme Court full of your dad's buddies must have been too complicated to bother with in a short speech. As Americans, we have quite a proud tradition of being represented by ignorant high-ranking officials. In 1956 President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nominee as ambassador to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was unable to identify either the count prime minister or its capital during his Senate confirma-tion hearing. Not a problem Maxwell was confirmed anyway. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan's nominee for deputy secretary of state, William Clark, admitted to a wide-ranging lack of knowledge about foreign affairs at his confirmation hearing. Clark had no idea how our allies in em Europe felt about having American nuclear missiles based there, and didn't know the names of the prime ministers of South Africa or Zimbabwe. Not to he was confirmed, too. All this just paved the way for Baby Bush, who hadn't quite absorbed the names of the leaders of India or Pak-istan, of the seven nations that possess the atomic bomb. And Bush went to Yale and Recently a group of 556 seniors at fifty-five prestigious American uni-versities Harvard, Yale, Stanford) were given a multiple-choice test consisting of questions that were described as "high school level." Thirty-four questions were asked. These top students could only answer 53 percent of them correctly. And only one student got them all right. A whopping 40 percent of these students did not when the Civil War took place even when given a wide range of choices: A. 1750-1800; B. 1800-1850; C. 1850-1900; D. 1900-1950; or E. after 1950. (The answer is C, guys.) The two questions the college seniors scored highest on were (1) Who is Snoop Doggy Dog? (98percent got that one right), and (2) Who are Beavis and Butt-head? (99 percent knew). For my money, Beavis and Butt-head represented some of the best American satire of the nineties, and Snoop and his fellow rappers have much to say about America's social ills, so I'm not going down the road of blaming MTV. What I am concerned with is why politicians like Senators Joe man of Connecticut and Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin want to go after MTV when they are the ones responsible for the massive failure of American 156 LEARNING POWER education. Walk into any public school, and the odds are good that you'll find overflowing classrooms, leaking ceilings, and demoralized teachers. In out of 4 schools, you'll find students "learning"from textbooks published in the 1980s -or earlier. Why is this? Because the political leaders -and the people who vote for them have decided it's a bigger priority to build another bomber than to educate our children. They would rather hold hearings about the deprav-ity of a television show called Jackass than about their own depravity in ne-glecting our schools and children and maintaining our title as Dumbest Country on Earth. I hate writing these words. I love this big lug of a country and the crazy people in it. But when I can travel to some backwater village in Central America, as I did back in the eighties, and listen to a bunch of twelve-year-tell me their concerns about the World Bank, I get the feeling that something is lacking in the United States of America. Our problem isn't just that our kids don't how but that the adults who pay their tuition are no better. I wonder what would happen if we tested the U.S. Congress to see just how much our representatives how. What if we were to give a pop quiz to the commentators who cram our and radios withall their nonstop nonsense? How many would they get light? A while back, I decided to find out. It was one of those Sunday ings when the choice on was the Parade of Homes real estate show or The Group. If you like the sound of hyenas on Dexedrine, of course, you go with On this particular Sunday morning, per-haps as my punishment for not being at Mass, I was forced to listen to mag-azine columnist Fred Barnes (now an editor at the right-wing Weekly Stan-dard and of the Fox News show The Beltway Boys) whine on and on about the sorry state of American education, blaming the teachers and their evil union for why students are doing so poorly. "These kids don't even know what The and The Odyssey are!" he bellowed, as the other panelists nodded in admiration at Fred's noble lament. The next morning I called Fred Barnes at his Washington office. 25 "Fred," I said, "tell me what The Iliad and The Odyssey are." He started hemming and hawing. "Well, they're . . . uh . . . you know . . . . . . okay, fine, you got me -I don't know what they're about. Happy now?" No, not really. You're one of the top in America, seen every week on your own show and plenty of others. You gladly hawk your "wis-dom" to hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting citizens, gleefully scorning others for their ignorance. Yet you and your guests know little or nothing yourselves. Grow up, get some books, and go to your room. Yale and Harvard. Princeton and Dartmouth. Stanford and Berkeley. Get a degree from one of those universities, and you're set for life. So what MOORE IDIOT NATION 157 if, on that test of the college seniors I previously mentioned, 70 percent of the students at those fine schools had never heard of the Voting Rights Act3 or President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society Who needs to stuff like that as you sit in your Tuscan villa watching the sunset and checking how well your portfolio did today? So what if not one of these top universities that the ignorant students attend requires that they take even one course in American history to grad-uate? Who needs history when you are going to be tomorrow's master of the universe? Who cares if 70 percent of those who graduate from America's colleges 30 not required to learn a foreign language? Isn't the rest of the world speaking English now? And if they aren't, hadn't all those damn foreigners better GET WITH THE PROGRAM? And who gives a rat's ass if, out of the seventy English Literature pro-grams at seventy major American universities, only twenty-three now re-quire English majors to take a course in Shakespeare? Can somebody please explain to me what Shakespeare and English have to do with each other? What good are some moldy old plays going to be in the business world, anyway? Maybe I'm just jealous because I don't have a college degree. Yes, I, Michael Moore, am a college dropout. Well, I never dropped out. One day in my sophomore year, I drove around and around the various parking lots of our commuter campus in Flint, searching desperately for a parking space. There simply was no place to park-every spot was full, and no one was leaving. After a ing hour spent circling around in my '69 Impala, I shouted out the window, "That's it, I'm dropping out!" I drove home and told my parents I was no longer in college. 'Why?" they asked. "Couldn't find a spot," I replied, grabbing a and mov-ing on with the rest of my life. I haven't sat at a school desk since. My dislike of school started somewhere the second month of first grade. My parents -and God Bless Them Forever for doing this -had taught me to read and write by the time I was four. So when I entered St. John's Elementary School, I had to sit and feign interest while the other like robots, sang, "A-B-C-D-E-F-G . . . Now I know my tell me what you think of me!" Every time I heard that line, I wanted to scream out, "Here's what I think of you -quit singing that damn song! Somebody get me a Twinkie!" Rights 1965 legislation that guaranteed equal voting rights for Amer- icans. 'Lyndon Johnson's Society program of and social welfare legislation designed by Lyndon Johnson,thirty-sixth president of the United States, to eradicate I was bored beyond belief. The nuns, to their credit, recognized this, and one day Sister John Catherine took me aside and said that they had de-cided to skip me up to second grade, immediately. I was thrilled. When I got home I excitedly announced to my parents that I had already ad-vanced a grade in my first month of school. They seemed by this new evidence of my genius. Instead they let out a 'WHAT THE then went into the kitchen and closed the door. I could hear my mother on the phone explaining to the Mother Superior that there was no way her little Michael was going to be attending class with kids bigger and older than him, so please, Sister, put him back in first grade. . I was crushed. My mother explained to me that if I skipped first grade I'd always be the youngest and littlest kid in class all through my school years (well, inertia and fast food eventually proved her wrong on that count). There would be no appeals to my father, who left most education decisions to my mother, the valedictorian of her high school class. I tried to explain that if I was sent back to first grade it would appear that second grade on my first day-putting myself at risk of having the beaten out of me by the first graders I'd left behind with a rousing "See ya, suckers!" But Mom wasn't falling for it; it was then I learned that the only person with higher authority than Mother Superior was Mother Moore. The next day I decided to ignore all instructions from my parents to go back to first grade. In the before the opening bell, all the students had to line up outside the school with their classmates and then march into the building in single Quietly, but defiantly, I went and stood in the sec-ond graders' line, praying that God would strike the nuns blind so they wouldn't see which line I was in. The bell rang -and no one had spotted me! The second grade line started to move, and I went with it. Yes! I thought. can pull this get into that second grade class-room and take my seat, then nobody will be able to get out of there. Just as I was about to enter the door of the school, I felt a hand grab me by the collar of my coat. It was Sister John Catherine. "I think you're in the wrong line, Michael," she said firmly: "You are 40 now in first grade again." I began to protest: my parents had it "all wrong," or "those weren't really my parents,"or . . . For the next twelve years I sat in class, did my work, and remained con-stantly preoccupied, looking for ways to bust out. I started an underground school paper in fourth grade. It was shut down. I started it again in sixth. It was shut down. In eighth grade I not only started the paper again, I con-vinced the good sisters to let me write a play for our class to perform at the Christmas pageant. The play had something to do with how many rats occu-pied the parish hall and how all the rats in the country had descended on St. John's Parish Hall to have their annual "rat convention." The priest put a stop to that one and shut down the paper again. Instead, my friends and I were told to go up on stage and sing three Christmas carols and then leave the stage without uttering a word. I organized half the class to go up there MOORE IDIOT NATION 159 and utter nothing. So we stood there and refused to sing the carols, our silent protest against censorship. By the second song, intimidated by the stem looks from their parents in the audience, most of the protesters joined in on the singing-and by the third song, I had capitulated, joining in on Holy Night,"and promising myself to live to fight another day. High school, as we all know, is some sort of sick, sadistic punishment of kids by adults seeking vengeance because they can no longer lead the respon- sibility-free, screwing-around-2417 lives young people enjoy. What other ex- planation could there be for those four brutal years of degrading comments, physical abuse, and the belief that you're the only one not having sex? As as I entered high school and the public school system all the grousing I'd done about the repression of the Sisters of St. Joseph was forgotten; suddenly they all looked like scholars and saints. I was now walk-ing the halls of a two-thousand-plus-inmate holding pen. Where the nuns had devoted their lives to teaching for no earthly reward, those running the public high school had one simple mission: "Hunt these little pricks down like dogs, then cage them until we can either break their will or them off to glue Do this, don't do that, tuck your shirt in, that smile off your face, where's your hall pass, THE WRONG PASS! YOU DETENTION!! One day I came home from school and picked up the paper. The head-line read: "26th Amendment Passes -Voting Age Lowered to Below that was another headline: "School Board President to Retire, Seat Up for Election." Hmm. I called the county clerk. 45 "Uh, I'm gonna be eighteen in a few weeks. If I can vote, does that I mean I can also run for office?" "Let me see," the lady replied. "That's a new question!" She through some papers and came back on the phone. 'Yes," she said, "you can run. you need to do is gather twenty signatures to place your name on the ballot." Twenty signatures? That's it? I had no idea running for elective office required so little work. I got the twenty signatures, submitted my petition, and started campaigning. My platform? "Fire the high school principal and the assistant principal!" Alarmed at the idea that a high school student might actually find a 50 legal means to remove the very administrators he was being paddled by, five local "adults"took petitions and got themselves added to the ballot, too. Of course, they ended up splitting the older adult vote five ways and I won, getting the vote of every single stoner between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five (who, though many would probably never vote again, rel-ished the thought of sending their high school wardens to the gallows). The day after I won, I was down the hall at school (Ihad one more week to serve out as a student), and I passed the assistant principal, my shirt tail proudly untucked. "Good morning, Mr. Moore,"he said tersely. The day before, my name had been "Hey-You!-Now I was his boss. Within nine months after I took my seat on the school board, the prin-cipal and assistant principal had submitted their "letters of resignation," a face-saving device employed when one is "asked to step down. A couple of years later the principal suffered a heart attack and died. I had known this man, the principal, for many years. When I was eight years old, he used to let me and my friends skate and play hockey on this lit-tle pond beside his house. He was and generous, and always left the door to his house open in case any of us needed to change into skates or if we got cold and just wanted to get later, I was asked to play in a band that was forming, but I didn't own a bass. He let me borrow his son's. I offer this to remind myself that all people are actually good at their core, and to remember that someone with whom I grew to have serious dis-putes was also someone with a free cup of hot chocolate for us shivering lit-tle brats from the neighborhood. Teachers are now the politicians' favorite punching bag. To listen to the likes of Chester Finn, a former assistant secretary of education in Bush the Elder's administration, you'd think all that has crumbled in our society can be traced back to lax, lazy, and incompetent teachers. "If you put out a Most-Wanted list of who's killing American education, I'm not sure who yon would have higher on the list: the teachers' union or the education school faculties: Finn said. Sure, there are a lot of teachers who suck, and they'd be better suited to telemarketing calls for But the vast majority are dedi-cated educators who have chosen a profession that pays them less than what some of their students earn selling Ecstasy, and for that sacrifice we seek to punish them. I don't know about you, but I want the people who have the direct attention of my child more hours a day than I do treated with tender loving care. Those are my kids they're "preparing"for this world, so why on earth would I want to them off? You would think society's attitude would be something like this: Teachers, thank you so much for your life to my child. Is there ANYTHING I can do to help you? Is there ANYTHING you need? I am here for you. Why? Because you are helping my child MY BABY and grow. Not only will you be largely responsible for her ability to nuke a living, but your greatly affect how she the world, what she knows about other people in this world, and how she will feel about herself I want her to believe she can attempt anything-that no are closed and that no dreams are too distant. I am the valuable person in my to you for hours each day. You are one most important people in my Thank you. No, instead, this is what teachers hear: "You've got to wonder about who claim to put the interests of children first-and then look to milk the system through wage hikes." (New York Post, 12'26100) "Estimates of the number of bad teachers range from 5 percent to 18 percent of the 2.6 million total.'' (Michael Chapman, Investor's Business Daily, 9/21/98) "Most education professionals belong to a closed community of devo- tees . . . who follow popular rather than research on what works." (Douglas Carminen, quoted in the Montreal Gazette, "Teachers unions have gone to hat for felons and teachers who have had sex students, as well as those who simply couldn't teach." (Peter Schweizen, National Review, 8/17/98) What kind of priority do we place on education in America? Oh, it's on the funding list somewhere down between and meat inspectors. The person who cares for our child every day receives an average of $41,351 annually. A Congressman who cares only about which tobacco lobbyist is him to dinner tonight receives $145,100. Considering the face-slapping society gives our teachers on a daily basis, is it any wonder so few choose the The national teacher shortage is so big that some school systems are recruiting teachers outside the United States. Chicago recently recruited and hired teachers from twenty-eight foreign countries, including China, France, and Hungary. By the time the new begins in New York City, seven thousand veteran teachers will have retired-and 60 percent of the new teachers hired to re-place them are uncertified. But here's the kicker for me: 163 New York City schools opened the 2000-2001 school year without a principal! You heard right -school, with no one in charge. Apparently the mayor and the school board are experi-menting with chaos theory-throw five hundred poor kids into a crumbling building, and watch nature take its course! In the city from which most of the wealth in the is controlled, where there are more millionaires per square foot than there is gum on the sidewalk, we somehow can't find the money to pay a starting teacher more than $31,900 a year. And we act when we can't get results. And it's not just teachers who have been neglected-American schools are literally falling apart. In 1999 one-quarter of U.S.public schools reported that the condition of at least one of their buildings was inadequate. In 1997 the entire Washington, D.C., school system had to delay the start of school for three weeks because nearly one-third of the schools were found to be unsafe. Occupational Safety and Health Administration Almost 10 percent of public schools have enrollments that are more 65 than 25 percent greater than the capacity of their permanent buildings. Classes have to be held in the hallways, outdoors, in the gym, in the cafete-ria; one school I visited even held classes in a janitor's closet. It's not as if the janitor's closets are being used for anything related to cleaning, anyway -in New York almost 15 percent of the eleven hundred schools are with-out full-time custodians, forcing teachers to mop their own floors and stu-dents to do without toilet paper. We already send our kids out into the street to candy bars so their schools can band instruments -what's next? Car washes to raise money for toilet paper? Further proof of just bow special offspring are is the number of public and even school libraries that have been shut down or had their hours cut hack. The last thing we need is a bunch of kids hanging out around a bunch of hooks! Apparently"President"Bush agrees: in his first budget he proposed cut-ting federal spending on libraries by $39 million, down to $168 a nearly 19 percent reduction. Just the week before, his wife, former school Laura Bush, kicked off a national campaign for America's libraries, calling them "community treasure chests, loaded with a wealth of available to everyone, equally." The President's mother, Barbara Bush, heads the Foundation for Family Literacy. Well, there's nothing like firsthand experience with illiteracy in the family to motivate one into acts of charity. For who are exposed to books at home, the loss of a library is sad. But for kids who come from environments where people don't read, the loss of a library is a tragedy that might keep them from ever discovering the joys of reading-or from gathering the kind of information that will decide their lot in life. Jonathan for decades an advocate for disadvantaged children, has that school libraries "remain the clearest window to a world of noncommercial satisfactions and enticements that most children in poor neighborhoods will ever how." Kids deprived of access to good libraries are also being kept from de- veloping the information skills need to keep up in workplaces that are increasingly dependent on ra pidly changing information. The ability to con- duct research is the most essential skill [today's students] can have," says Julie Walker, executive director of the Association of School Librarians. "The [students] acquire in school is not going to serve them throughout their lifetimes. Many of them will have four to five careers in a lifetime. It will he their ahility to navigate information that will matter." Who's to blame for the decline in libraries? Well, when it comes to 70 school libraries, you can start by pointing the finger (yes, that finger) at Richard From the 1960s until 1974, school libraries received specific funding from the government. But in 1974 the administration changed the stipulating that federal education money be doled out in MOORE .IDIOT NATION 163 "block grants" to he spent by states however they chose. Few states chose to spend the money on libraries, and the downslide began. This is one reason that materials in many school libraries today date from the 1960s and early before funding was diverted. ("No, Sally, the Soviet Union isn't our enemy. The Soviet Union has kaput for ten years. . . This 1999 account an Education Week reporter about the at a Philadelphia elementary school could apply to any number of similarly neglected schools: Even the best books in the library at T. M. Pierce Elementary School are dated, tattered, and discolored. The worst many in a latter state of disintegration -are dirty and fetid and leave a moldy residue on hands and clothing. Chairs and tables are old, mismatched, or broken. There isn't a computer in sight. . . . Outdated facts and theories and of-fensive leap from the authoritative pages of encyclopedias and biographies, fiction and nonfiction tomes. Among the volumes on these shelves a student would find it all but impossible to locate accu-rate information on AIDS or other contemporary diseases, explo-rations of the moon and Mars, or the past five U.S. presidents. The ultimate irony in all of this is that the very politicians who refuse to fund education in America adequately are the same ones who go ballistic over how our kids have fallen the Germans, the Japanese, and just about every other country with water and an economy not based on the sale of Chiclets. Suddenly they want "accountability." They want the teachers held responsible and to be tested. And they want the kids to be over and over and over. There's nothing wrong with the concept of using standardized testing to determine whether kids are learning to read and write and do math. But too many politicians and education bureaucrats have created a national obsession with testing, as if that's wrong with the educa-tional system in this country would be magically if we could just raise those scores. The people who should he tested (besides the yammering pun-dits) are the so-called political leaders. time you see your state repre-sentative or congressman, give him this pop quiz-and remind him that any future pay raises will be based on how well he scores: 1. What is the annual pay of your average constituent? 2. What percent of welfare recipients are children? 3. How many species of plants and animals are on the brink of extinction? 4. How big is the hole in the ozone layer? 5. Which countries have a lower infant mortality rate than Detroit? 6. How many American cities still have two competing newspapers? 7. How many ounces a gallon? 8. Which do I stand a greater chance of being by: a gun shot in school or a bolt of lightning? 9. What's the only state capital without a McDonald's? 10. Describe the story of either The Iliad or The Odyssey. Answers 1. $28,548 2. 67 percent 3. 11,046 4. 10.5 million square miles 5. Libya, Mauritius, Seychelles 6. 34 7. 128 ounces 8. You're twice as likely to be killed by lightning as by a gunshot in school. 9. Montpelier, Vermont 10. The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem Homer about the Tro-jan War. The Odyssey is another epic poem by Homer recounting the ten-year journey home from the Trojan War made by Odysseus, the king of Ithaca. Chances are, the genius representing yon in the legislature won't score 75 50 percent on the above test. The good news is that you get to flunk him within a year or two. There is one group in the country that isn't just sitting around carping about all them lamebrain teachers -a group that cares deeply about what kinds of students will enter the adult world. You could say they have a vested interest in this captive audience of millions of young people . . . or in the billions of dollars they spend each year. (Teenagers alone spent more than $150 billion last year.) Yes, it's Corporate America, whose generosity to our nation's schools is just one more example of their continuing patriotic Just how committed are these companies to our children's schools? According to numbers collected by the Center for the Analysis of Com- mercialism Education (CACE), their selfless charity has seen a tremen- dous boom since 1990. Over the past ten years, school programs and activi- ties have seen corporate sponsorship increase by 248 percent. In exchange for this sponsorship, schools allow the corporation to associate its name with the events. For example, Eddie Bauer sponsors the final round of the National Ge- ography Bee. Book covers featuring Calvin and Nike ads are MOORE IDIOT NATION 165 uted to students. Nike and other shoemakers, looking for early access to to- morrow's stars, sponsor inner-city high school basketball teams. Pizza Hut set up its "Book-It!" program to encourage children to read. When students meet the monthly reading goal, they are rewarded with a certificate for a Pizza personal pan pizza. At the restaurant, the store manager congratulates the children and gives them each a sticker and a certificate. Pizza Hut suggests school principals place a "Pizza Hut Book-It!" honor roll list in the school for to see. General Mills and Soup thought up a better plan. Instead of giving free rewards, they both have programs rewarding schools for get-ting parents to buy their products. Under General Mills's "Box Tops for Ed-ucation" program, schools get ten cents for each box top logo they send in, and can earn up to $10,000 a year. That's 100,000 General Mills products sold. Campbell's Soup's "Labels for Education" program is no better. It touts itself as "Providing America's children with FREE school equipment!" Schools can earn one "free" Apple computer for only 94,950 soup labels. Campbell's suggests setting a goal of a label a day from each student. With Campbell's conservative estimate of five per week per child, all you need is a school of kids to get that free computer. It's not just this kind of sponsorship that brings these schools and cor- porations together. The 1990s saw a phenomenal percent increase in exclusive agreements between schools and soft-drink bottlers. Two hundred and forty school districts in thirty-one states have sold exclusive rights to one of the big three soda companies (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper) to push their products in schools. Anybody wonder why there are more overweight kids than ever before? Or more young women with calcium deficiencies be-cause less milk? And even though federal law prohibits the sale of soft drinks in schools until lunch periods begin, in some overcrowded schools "lunch begins in midmoming. Artificially flavored carbonated sugar water-the breakfast of champions! (In March 2001 Coke responded to public pressure, that it would add water, juice, and other free, caffeine-free, and calcium-rich alternatives to soda to its school vend-ing machines.) I guess they can afford such concessions when you consider their deal with the Colorado school district. Colorado has been a trailblazer when it comes to tie-ins between the schools and soft drink companies. In Colorado Springs, the district will receive $8.4 million over ten years from its deal with Coca-Cola and more if it exceeds its "requirement" of selling seventy thousand cases of Coke products a year. To ensure the levels are met, school district officials urged principals to students unlimited ac-cess to Coke machines and allow students to drink Coke in the classroom. But Coke isn't alone. In the Jefferson County, Colorado, school district (home of Columbine High School), Pepsi contributed $1.5 million to help build a new sports stadium. Some county schools tested a science course, developed in part Pepsi, called "The Carbonated Beverage Company." Students taste-tested colas, analyzed cola samples, watched a video tour of a Pepsi plant, and visited a local plant. The school district in Wylie, Texas, signed a deal in 1996 that shared the rights to sell soft drinks in the schools between Coke and Dr. Pepper. Each company paid $31,000 a year. Then, in 1998, the county changed its mind and signed a deal with Coke worth $1.2 million over fifteen years. Dr. Pepper sued the county for breach of contract. The school district bought out Dr. Pepper's contract, costing them $160,000-plus another $20,000 in legal fees. It's not just the companies that sometimes get sent Students who lack the proper corporate school spirit do at considerable risk. When Mike Cameron wore a Pepsi shirt on "Coke Day" at Greenbrier High School in Evans, Georgia, he was suspended for a day. "Coke Day" was part of the school's entry in a national "Team Up With Coca-Cola" contest, which awards $10,000 to the high school that comes up with the best plan for distributing Coke discount cards. Greenbrier school officials said Cameron was suspended for "being disruptive and trying to destroy the school picture" when he removed an outer shirt and revealed the Pepsi shirt as a photograph was being taken of students posed to spell out the word Coke. Cameron said the shirt was visible all day, but he didn't get in trouble until posing for the picture. No slouch in the marketing department, Pepsi quickly sent the high school senior a box of Pepsi shirts and hats. If turning the students into billboards isn't enough, schools and corpora-tions sometimes turn the school itself into one giant neon sign for corporate America. Appropriation of school space, including scoreboards, rooftops, walls, and textbooks, for corporate logos and advertising is up 539 percent. Colorado Springs, not satisfied to sell its soul only to Coca-Cola, has plastered its school buses with advertisements for Burger King, Wendy's, and other big companies. Free book covers and school planners with ads for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts and pictures of FOX TV personalities were also handed out to the students. After members of the Independent School Dis-trict in Texas decided they didn't want advertisements in the classrooms, they allowed Dr. Pepper and 7-Up logos to be painted on the rooftops of high schools. two high schools, not coincidentally, lie under the Dallas airport flight path. The schools aren't just for ways to advertise; they're also con-90 cemed with the students' perceptions of various products. That's why, in some schools, companies conduct market research in classrooms during school hours. Education Market Resources of Kansas reports that "children respond openly and easily to questions and stimuli"in the classroom setting. (Of course, that's what they're supposed to be doing in a classroom-but for their own benefit, not that of some corporate pollsters.) Filling out market-ing surveys instead of learning, however, is probably not what they should be doing. MOORE IDIOT 167 Companies have also leaned they can reach this confined audience by "sponsoring" educational materials. This practice, like the others, has ex- ploded as well, increasing 1,875 percent since 1990. Teachers have shown a Shell Oil video that teaches students that the way to experience nature is by driving there after filling your Jeep's gas tank at a Shell station. prepared lesson plans about the flour- ishing wildlife in Prince William Sound, site of the ecological disaster caused by the oil spill from the A third-grade math book fea- tures exercises involving counting Tootsie Rolls. A Hershey's-sponsored curriculum used in many schools features "The Chocolate Dream Ma- chine," including lessons in math, science, geography -and nutrition. In a number of high schools, the economics course is supplied Gen-eral Motors. GM writes and provides the textbooks and the course outline. Students learn from example the benefits of capitalism and how to operate a company -like GM. And what better way to imprint a corporate logo on the country's chil-dren than through television and the Internet beamed directly into the classroom. Electronic marketing, where a company provides programming or equipment to schools for the right to advertise to their students, is up 139 percent. One example is the Corporation, which provides schools with a 95 free computer lab and access to pre-selected sites. In return, schools must promise that the lab will be in use at least four hours a day. The catch? The ZapMe! Web browser has constantly scrolling advertisements and the company gets to collect information on students' browsing habits, infor-mation they can then sell to other companies. Perhaps the worst of the electronic marketers is Channel One Televi-sion. Eight million students in 12,000 classrooms watch Channel One, an in-school news and advertising program, every day. (That's right: EVERY day.) Kids are spending the equivalent of six full school days a year watching Channel One in almost 40 percent of middle and high schools. Instruc-tional time lost to the ads alone? One entire day per year. That translates into an annual cost to taxpayers of more than $1.8 billion. Sure, doctors and educators agree that our kids can never watch enough TV. And there's probably a place in school for some television pro-grams-I have fond memories of watching astronauts blasting off on the television rolled into my grade school auditorium. But out of the daily twelve-minute Channel One broadcasts, only percent of the airtime is devoted to stories about politics, the economy, and cultural and social is-sues. That leaves a whopping 80 percent for advertising, sports, weather, features, and Channel One promotions. Channel One is disproportionately shown in schools in low income communities with large minority populations, where the least money is available for education, and where the least amount is spent on textbooks and other academic materials. Once these districts receive corporate handouts, government's failure to provide adequate school funding tends to remain unaddressed. For most of us, the only time we enter an American high school is to vote at our local precinct. (There's an irony if there ever was one-going to par-ticipate in democracy's sacred ritual while two thousand students in the same building live under some sort of dictatorship.) The halls are packed with burned-out teenagers shuffling from class to class, dazed and confused, wondering what the hell they're doing there. They leam how to re-gurgitate answers the state wants them to give, and any attempt to be an indi-vidual is now grounds for being suspected to be a member of the trench coat I visited a school recently, and students asked me if I noticed that they and the other students in the school were all wearing white or some neutral color. Nobody dares wear black, or anything else wild and distinct. That's a sure ticket to the principal's office-where the school psychologist will be waiting to ascertain whether that Limp shirt you have on means that you intend to shoot up Miss Nelson's fourth hour class. So the learn to submerge any personal expression. They leam that it's better to go along so that you get along. They leam that to rock the boat could get them rocked right out of the school. Don't question authority. Do as you're told. Don't think, just do as I say. Oh, and have a good and productive life as an active, well-adjusted par-ticipant in our thriving democracy! Are You a Potential School Shooter? The following is a list of traits the FBI has identified as "risk factors" among students who may commit violent acts. Stay away any student showing signs . Poor coping . Access to weapons . Depression . and alcohol abuse . Alienation . Narcissism . Inappropriate humor . Unlimited, unmonitored television and Internet use Since this includes all of you, drop out of school immediately. Home schooling is not a viable option, because you must also stay away from your-self. coat Name of a self-styled group of students that included Columbine High School shooters Eric and hence, any potentially violent group of MOORE IDIOT NATION 169 How To Be a Student Subversive Instead of a Student Subservient There are many ways you can fight back at your high school and have fun while doing it. The key thing is to learn what all the are, and what your rights are by law and by school district policy. This will help to prevent you getting in the kinds of trouble you don't need. It may also get you some cool perks. David a college student who has helped me on this book, recalls that when he was in high school in Kentucky, he and his buddies found some obscure state law that said any student who requests a day off to go to the state fair must be given the day off. The state legislature probably passed this law years ago to help some farm kid take his hog to the fair without being penalized at school. But the law was still on the books, and it gave any student the right to request the state fair day off-regardless of the reason. So you can imagine the look on the principal's face when David and his city friends submitted their request for their free day off from school and there was nothing the prin-cipal could do. Here's a few more things you can do: 1. Mock the Vote. Student council and class elections are the biggest smokescreen the lo5 school throws up, fostering the illusion that you actually have any say in the running of the school. Most students who run for these either take the charade too seriously or they just think it'll look good on their college applications. So why not run yourself? Run just to ridicule the whole ridiculous exer-cise. your own party, with its own stupid name. Campaign on promises: If elected, change the school mascot to an ameba, or If elected, I'll insist that the principal eat the school lunch each day before it is fed to the students. Put up banners with cool slogans: for me-a real loser!" If you get elected, you can devote your energies to accomplishing things that will drive the administration crazy, but help out your fellow stu-dents (demands for free condoms, student evaluations of teachers, less homework so you can get to bed by midnight, etc). 2. Start a School Club. You have a right to do this. Find a sympathetic teacher to sponsor it. The Pro-choice Club. The Free Speech Club. The Integrate Our Town Club. Make member a "president" of the club, so they can claim it on their college applications. One student I know tried to start a Feminist Club, but the principal wouldn't allow it because then they'd be obliged to give equal time to a Male Chauvinist Club. That's the kind of idiot thinking you'll encounter, but don't give up. (Heck, if you find yourself in that situation, just say fine and suggest the that principal could sponsor the Chauvinist Club.) 3. Launch Your Own Newspaper or You have a constitutionally protected right to do this. If you take care not to be obscene, or libelous, or give them any reason to shut you down, this can be a great way to get the out about what's happening at your school. Use humor. The students will love it. 4. Get Involved in the Community. Go to the school board meetings and inform them what's going on in the school. Petition them to change things. will to ignore you or make you sit through a long, boring meeting before they let you speak, but they have to let you speak. Write letters to the editor of your local paper. Adults don't have a clue about what goes on in your school. Fill them in. More than likely you'll find someone who'll support you. Any or all of this will raise quite a but there's out there if you need it. Contact the local American Civil Liberties Union if the retaliates. Threaten lawsuits school administrators HATE to hear that word. Just remember: there's no greater satisfaction than seeing the look on your principal's face you have the upper hand. Use it. And Never Forget This: There No Permanent Record! ENGAGING THE TEXT 1. What evidence does Moore offer to support contention that America is a nation of idiots? To what extent would you agree with this blunt assess-ment of American intelligence? Why? What limitations, if any, do you see in the approach that Moore takes to gauging intelli-gence? 2. Moore shares a number of personal experiences this selection drama-tize disgust with formal education. How do your own elementary and high school memories compare with Moore's school experiences? Overall, how would you characterize his attitude towards schools and schooling? To what extent would you agree with him? 3. How accurate is the grim picture of American schools that Moore offers in this selection? Would you agree with his assessment of the class-room, the quality of the average school library, and the general ability of American teachers and of the staff who support them? 4. Who, in Moore's view, is responsible for the state of America's schools? To what extent would you agree? What reforms do you think MOORE IDIOT NATION 171 Moore would like to see, and what changes, if any, would you recommend? 5. How does Moore feel about corporate iuvolvement in public education? What possible conflicts of interest or ethical questions do you see arising in relation to the kinds of collaboration: . Sponsorship of sports teams and clubs . Exclusive contracts for soda and snackvending machines . Fast-food franchise "food courts" . of libraries, computer labs, etc. . Commercial instruction via cable . Free hooks with inserted advertising . Free courses on history or economics with business or corporate content . Volunteer "teachers"and tutors from corporate ranks What role, if any, do you think corporations should play in support of American public schools? Why? 6. What does Moore suggest that individual students do to "fight against the deadening effects of the educational system? What did you do when you were in elementary and secondary school to make your own experience more meaningful? Now that you're in college, what can you do to be a "stu-dent subversive instead of a student subservient"? 7. How does Moore's portrayal of the current state of American-education compare with the image of the American school as described by Horace (p. What seems to be the mission or goal of public schooling, according to Moore? How would you expect him to react to the goals that Mann envisions for the school? Would you agree with Moore? 8. To what extent does Moore's assessment of education support or chal-lenge John Taylor critique of "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher" (p. Do you think that Moore would agree with claim that mandatory public schooling amounts to the "compulsory subordination of all"? Which of these two views of teachers and teaching do you find more persuasive? Why? EXTENDING THE CRITICAL CONTEXT 9. Test Moore's central thesis about the idiocy of the average American by working in groups to devise and administer your own general information test. You can borrow questions from the many bits of that Moore offers throughout this selection, or simply pool your own knowledge supplemented with additional library research. Administer your question-naire to groups of fellow professors, family, friends, or members of the community at large. Then compare your results to see if Americans really are as uninformed as Moore suggests. As Moore suggests, even some top universities no longer require students to take basic courses in subjects like history or foreign language. How comprehensive are the general education requirements at your