Wall to wall stupid.

Reading the site in the last post, I came across an article on education and how, nowadays, there really isn't any. It reminded me of a few things.

One.

When I was at school, the acceleration due to gravity was 9.8 metres per second per second. We had no calculators. Nowadays, I hear that children (with calculators but apparently without the capacity for thought) are taught that the value is 10 because 'it makes the sums easier'.

Take heart then. You have not gained weight. Your mass is the same but gravity has increased so you only appear to be heavier. Unfortunately the stupidity of the upcoming generation is not illusion.

Two.

A young shop assistant had trouble with her till and found it difficult to add up the items I had presented her with. I told her the total. She ignored me. When she finally made her till work and saw the total, her eyes widened so far I thought they might drop out.

She said 'How did you do that?'

I picked up my shopping and said 'By not being an idiot' and left the shop. I've never been back.

Three.

There is a Posh School in the town. The pupils are clearly taught the rudiments of arrogance, pomposity and self-importance since they have no concept of 'queue'. Waiting at the bus stop, I watched these hideous little bastards arrive and walk to the front of the queue where they congregated so as to block the pavement. I left the stop and walked the half-mile or so to the stop before this one, so I was seated and scowling when the uniformed uneducated swarmed aboard. One day they will all wear suits that are currently empty. They'll still be empty when these mindless idiots put them on.

Four.

While I'm on the subject of the weakness of our 'hard-man' young, I have noticed that the tougher they pretend to be, the more likely they are to take the bus for any distance more than ten yards. I have watched them ride over distances for which I, a considerably older individual, would not even consider using any transport other than legs. In fact, in many cases they could have walked to their destinations in less time than it took to wait for the bus. Pathetic. For the record, the distance I travel on the bus is 25 miles. It would take most of the day to walk there but I can still do it.

Five.

One more bus anecdote. Two stops from my usual disembarking point, I noticed a horde of schoolchildren waiting as the bus approached. Now, I don't like crowded buses and as it meant only a half-mile or so more to walk, I decided to get off here. The bus stopped. The door opened.

I was faced with a sea of faces that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that British education has absolutely no effect whatsoever. Wall to wall stupid. None seemed to grasp the (to me, at least) simple premise that if they moved out of the way, I could get off the bus and they could get on. It's not complicated, surely? Yet their atrophied minds could not grasp it. Eyes so blank you could write on them. Mouths hanging open like sideshow targets. It was tempting but I had nothing vile to throw.

I barged through them. One tried to trip me. His leg will heal in time, and he might have learned that not all adults are teachers, and therefore not all adults are worried about getting sacked if they hurt these wastes of space. As self-employed, only I can sack me and in my business, the penalty for putting a little reality into the life of a terminally cosseted weakling is to be forced to drink whisky and smoke a cigar. I have already done my penance. See, an adult leg is a little bit more powerful than a child's. Especially when you compare an adult who walks, with a child who takes the bus for a half-mile. An adult who cares to see the world rather than wander through in a daze can spot a trip attempt coming, and it just takes a small raising of the foot for a toecap to connect with an ankle. Pure accident, of course.

When I was a child, we damaged ourselves and each other in play. We shrugged it off and kept playing. Fights meant black eyes at the least. I recall many with closed-up eyes who just used the other one for a few weeks until it healed. I have not seen a child with so much as a bruise in many years. These children are not equipped to survive. They don't know what it's like to be hurt and they don't know how to keep going and cope with it when they are. I despise them, it's true, but I also recognise that it's not their fault. The PC world we live in has bubble-wrapped them. They think they are invincible because they've never been hurt. They think they never will be.

They are wrong. It will happen and they won't be able to deal with it when it does. Still, in our wonderful new world, they'll always be able to blame someone else for their failures.

I will never take a job as a teacher.