POLITICAL SCIENCE: A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS

Of all those arts at which the successful excel, nature's chief masterpiece is speaking well. Even so, those with a mediocre knowledge of words are understood by the widest possible audience. Excellent communications and interpersonal skills falls dead centre on the bell-curve.
The race is not to the swift! The medium is the message!
Politicians do not always remember that they represent the average citizen. School board trustees do not always remember that they are politicians. This is perfectly understandable perhaps, for the best of them are exceedingly unlikely to match eleven year-olds on objective tests. In the early days of testing, it must have been quite a shock for them to encounter their own scores or perhaps those of their own children.
We can sympathize with them. We can understand them. But, can we forgive them for making schools all over the planet run backwards for half of the students in them?
The hiring committees of the business world advertise for excellence and hire mediocrity every day. Is it any wonder that truly ungodly quantities of drugs and alcohol are needed to get the work done?
For prime time television audiences, the most literate half of the population has ceased to exist.
If women prefer successful mates, is it incomprehensible that they will tend to avoid men who read and write?
Would it be fair to say that ignorance, stupidity and illiteracy has turned our education system into a veritable suicide machine?

This item by George Noviss was included in Montage June 2002 The Mensa Newsletter for Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener/Waterloo, London, Windsor/Sarnia

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