RR #1

Michael Moore’s article “Idiot Nation” is a stab at how Americans choose to educate themselves in the present day. He goes on to say that Americans are not necessarily completely helpless, we just choose to memorize trivial facts about popular culture, versus challenging our minds with anything relevant or viable to how our country is operating. We even go as far as not researching who we’re putting into political offices, who are just as illiterate and jaded as the majority of American citizens. Moore states that it is the politicians who are ruining our country, contrary to what the politicians themselves say. In the article, it is said that political leaders accuse teacher unions and education school faculties as being the primary downfall to this country’s declining education rate. Which is absolutely ridiculous. Moore states, very effectively, the way teachers SHOULD be treated; “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 piss them off?” This gets the point across in my mind. Politicians today are so ass-backwards that they believe spending gratuitous amounts of money on the military will better our nation more than educating the new generations with the upmost importance. I think everyone’s heard the term “knowledge is power”, and I don’t think this statement fits any truer than right now. The Fed is trying to overcompensate for our incompetent politicians by overly arming our nation and practically imperializing our countries. If this hasn’t made an alarm go off in your head yet, something is wrong with you. I whole-heartedly agree with Moore in his approach to this issue. We need to dump all these old-farts in government that are littered with lobbyists, and get this country back to its roots of freedoms and liberties. In 2010, the average teacher’s salary in Sweden was $112,000, compared to our current wages for educators (around $35,000). Something like this needs to be done. The United States is so overly concerned with other country’s issues that we can’t seem to focus on our own. My proposition is to completely dismantle the Federal government. This corporation is what is driving our country into the dust, driving the power back into the people’s hands is what’s going to bring us back to glory. It’s pretty obvious to tell that I agree with Moore when it comes to the state of the nation. He utilizes Aristotle’s Appeals throughout the article, but personally, they were simply confirmations for me. I already had the majority of these feelings towards the State. This article simply brought them more to the surface. One appeal that did stick out to me though, was his use of Pathos in his portrayal of “children as billboards”. I was horrified at how low the school system had to sink to simply stay afloat. These schools were so deeply in bed with these corporate sponsors that they even had days named after the companies. I will not name them, due to my personal politics about keeping brands out of education. But what this statement did, was made me look back at my education, which was primarily private, and I could not imagine being assaulted with corporate media in the class room. This tugged at my heart strings and made me more engaged in the text as I contemplated their situation.