Jerome Stern Moralism

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It seems everyone has a piece to say on the way we educate children in America. Stand in any busy public space and you’re likely to be within a stone’s throw of some mouthpiece with a few choice thoughts on education. This is convenient, because a large portion of these people could really benefit from having a stone hucked at them. Enter Jerome Stern, our very own discount Shel Silverstein. Jerome’s platform is inundated with Orwellian fearmongering as he hopes to convince anyone who will listen of the terrors of public schooling. To be fair, Jerome’s writing is clearly dated. References to AIDS and the Japanese show plainly the patina forming on this relic of a paper. And, to Jerome’s credit, some of his grievances have proven accurate. The opening stanzas lay bare the ignorance of the war on drugs and the lack of competent sexual education for students. In the 1980s, Teachers and advertisements fed young minds …show more content…

Stern raves about some nebulous “they” who wishes to control the thoughts and minds of the populace. Where the first entries had clear ‘villains’, whether they be the church or concerned parents, the following stanzas direct their bilious contempt toward some sort of shadowy globalist conglomerate. It’s easy to state that the reason that teachers don’t assign Mark Twain to school children is because Twain was rebellious and provocative and ‘The Man’ wants to keep people submissive. But in actuality, it’s far more likely that they find the racial undertones of Twain’s works to be objectionable. I myself believe that political correctness is almost universally a sham, and while it 's true that schools do shy away from certain authors because of their content, any reasonable person must concede that, in the midst of the era of outrage culture, it would be easier for the school to assign a book that won’t cause

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