Robert Small, The blog thereof.

I’m scared. I suppose this doesn’t have quite the impact due to my rather bad paranoia, but it should.

I’ve recently spoken to children who actually told me that they wanted to be stupid. No, I’m not joking. No, these weren’t children who were in any way stupid or mentally challenged. Yes, I really am scared.

How is it that someone could honestly desire to be stupid? Children in Africa pray for school, they love it, they walk miles and miles for school just to learn a little. Apparently it’s out of fashion to like school in the wonderful civilised West. Apparently it no longer matters how we speak on the Internet, we can be guilty of shortening words, of using the wrong words and even worse and it not matter. I beg to differ. Actually, I don’t beg, I differ even if you don’t like it. I despise this ‘phonetic English’, moreover because I do not believe that it’s a true representation of the differences between words. There are many more vowels than there are in the alphabet, or we would have no need for vowel combinations. To simplify the orthographic representation of a language which is already absurdly simplified in it’s correct form must be pure folly. It’s a shame that the perpetrators often do not understand that they use words which already exist and so make their sentences ambiguous, even more that they probably don’t know what ambiguous means.

However, our lingual culture is not the only thing which is being attacked; learning other languages, mathematics, history, the sciences, etcetera. Why is it that we consider it our holy right to force our language on others without even beginning to learn theirs? What’s more it seems we require them – if they are to be foolish enough to stumble onto our Internet – to understand our slang and misappropriation of words. It’s little wonder that French workers are notorious for pretending not to understand English, when they’re having to put up with a barrage of media and culture which gives little heed to them or their wishes and furthermore often uses them and other ‘foreign’ cultures as objects of mockery. In fact, how can we be surprised that this does indeed cause anger and distaste. Just look at the way that many tourists act, many take drunk and disorderly to a whole new level.

Although at times maths is hard, often taxing and mostly seems directly irrelevant to you and the rest of your life it has more benefits than you may have thought. A little thought brings me to the conclusion that you probably already know this, as you are still reading. Doing maths helps keep certain parts of your mind active, those logical parts which help you on a daily basis. If you’ve ever done weights you’ll know that being able to lift heavier weights makes smaller weights a lot easier. The same works with maths, the bigger and more complex mathematics you can do the faster and easier you can do the simple stuff. Those areas of your brain are more exercised and handle the small jobs faster. Not everyone uses all parts of advanced mathematics, but a lot of people use areas of it.

As humans we have a considerable list of large mistakes to our names. Many of them involve not learning from previous mistakes, this is something we’re very good at. The old adage of putting your hand in the fire and not getting burnt may work on an individual basis but does not appear to work on a collective level. In spite of this history is apparently ‘becoming irrelevant to everyday life’, even though watching today’s events we see historic events playing out again. Nationalism becoming support for Nazi-like governments, laws designed to protect us being used against us, and giving up our ‘liberties’ for the promise of ‘freedom’. Until we learn from the lessons of the past we must appreciate that history is a lesson we cannot forget.

We trust scientists and technical engineers for our everyday wants and needs. We trust medical science to keep us alive, we trust mechanical and structural engineers to keep us on the road and from being crushed by our homes and places of work, we trust software engineers with our daily schedule. Why then is it that we still label these people ‘geeks’ and ‘nerds’ and despise them for it? The age we live in is becoming increasingly IT based yet anyone who knows much more than how to turn on a PC can become the target of ridicule. Those who chose to study the area are often lacking in basic skills, take a class of young IT students and ask them to build you a PC and you’ll understand what I mean. How can it be possible that anyone should wish to drop these sciences from our curricular?

I feel that part of the problem could be in the media they are fed, it is considered possible for someone who understands little about life and is in all other fields completely useless to become a ‘celebrity’. This becomes the aim of many people, and so a something-for-nothing culture has become rife. Thank God (or possibly Satan) for Simon Cowell.

So, please, instil in any children you meet a need to push their boundaries and really learn something. Pop stars may have their place, but we can’t all be famous and stupid.

Kind regards, Robert.