Comment Katz is playing the Blame Game (Score 1) 543
Well, after three articles carpet bombing the same concept over and over again (one to introduce the concept, two to thump his chest about how right he is), all Katz can say is that public education is to blame and that the non-conformists need protection to ensure their dignity. Gimmie a break.
Katz is just as guilty of stereotyping as the media and the "ethically corrupt" educational society/system. Jocks have all the advantages, administrators and teachers stack the deck against the non-conformists, cheerleaders are a bunch of nine inch nailed harpies who's primary function in life is to point out the inadequacies of their somehow "lesser" peers. They're all bad characatures of the images from films like Back to the Future and a thousand different 80's "coming of age films". I'd like to think we could expect better of Katz.
Instead, we get the same tired story (three times!) that the media is giving us, except with a slightly different slant: High School as an institution is to blame. What a crock. Katz spices it up with testimonials from the dispossesed of the US secondary education system, providing their worldview as the only proper one, and the worldview of their peers as a demented perversion of the utopian vision of a world where everyone is respected for their views.
I'd say Katz's knowledge of modern high school administration ranks right up there with his grasp of quantum physics. It's far more complex than he portrays, and his seemingly willful ignorance of its true nature that I find increasingly disturbing. The true nature of a school is a place where widely different social and cultural groups try to come together to learn the basic skills they need to function in our society. Why doesn't Katz acknowledge this and make any attempt to get to the psychological, behavioral, and social root of what happened in Colorado?
My guess is that he has no clue, but he feels compelled to chime in on his own personal blame game....
Katz is just as guilty of stereotyping as the media and the "ethically corrupt" educational society/system. Jocks have all the advantages, administrators and teachers stack the deck against the non-conformists, cheerleaders are a bunch of nine inch nailed harpies who's primary function in life is to point out the inadequacies of their somehow "lesser" peers. They're all bad characatures of the images from films like Back to the Future and a thousand different 80's "coming of age films". I'd like to think we could expect better of Katz.
Instead, we get the same tired story (three times!) that the media is giving us, except with a slightly different slant: High School as an institution is to blame. What a crock. Katz spices it up with testimonials from the dispossesed of the US secondary education system, providing their worldview as the only proper one, and the worldview of their peers as a demented perversion of the utopian vision of a world where everyone is respected for their views.
I'd say Katz's knowledge of modern high school administration ranks right up there with his grasp of quantum physics. It's far more complex than he portrays, and his seemingly willful ignorance of its true nature that I find increasingly disturbing. The true nature of a school is a place where widely different social and cultural groups try to come together to learn the basic skills they need to function in our society. Why doesn't Katz acknowledge this and make any attempt to get to the psychological, behavioral, and social root of what happened in Colorado?
My guess is that he has no clue, but he feels compelled to chime in on his own personal blame game....
