By SAM HOLLEMAN
From Aristotle, who is one of the greatest philosophers in human history, to crazy Steve who used to live in my neighborhood, it has become a well known fact that children are the future. And if this is true, then America is headed for some dark times.
Back in the 1500’s (during the enlightenment period in Europe), people would go to these things called salons. Now these do not remotely resemble the establishments where women go to get their hair done and chit chat about how Beth from down the street told Michelle’s cousin’s best friend’s sister her hair looked “nice” and everyone knew she wanted to say her hair cut was horrible because bangs were so last year.
The salons from the 1500’s were the equivalent of a club in America. Basically, a wealthy person would hold a party and people would come to it. But, to attract as many people as possible, the host would invite celebrities to come (the owners of clubs today still use this technique). During this time period the celebrities were not movie stars or television stars, the celebrities of that time were philosophers, free thinkers.
And at these parties, there was no binge drinking, beer pong, or even the ever popular listening-to-high-frequency-sounds-mimicing-the-action-of-smoking-marajuana-in-order-to-get-high that Fox 35 news is sure everybody is doing. Instead, peasants and average people would sit around and listen to these philosophers new ideas. These people listened to some of the greatest intellectual minds of their time, and the next generation of this great country have what can only be referred to as a Snooki.
The children during the enlightenment period listened to new ideas and thoughts, and kids today listen to Snooki say things like, “A crow comes and starts quaking at us…or not quaking, what does a crow do?” This is what kids have to look up to. This is who kids have to idolize. If kids are the future, then the future, at least from this perspective, looks pretty dim.
Furthermore, the health of the future is a homburg gray (Sherwin-Williams SW 7622). Obesity is rampait in America; this is no CNN breaking news update. America is the third fattest country in the world with a solid 67 percent obesity rate. But something even more concerning is the fact that 15 percent of children and adolescents are overweight. There are approximately 67 characters on Sesame Street, 15 percent of 67 is just over 10.
So imagine watching an episode of Sesame Street without a cookie monster because he ate too many cookies (chocolate chip, of course), became morbidly obese, and had a heart attack, and where the count was forced to start counting calories instead of numbers on his weird singing organ because his doctor said if he doesn’t lose a lot of weight, he could die.
Nobody wants to live in a world like that, and Sesame Street is just a television show. Everyday real people in the real world are diagnosed with obesity. Now children are facing this issue at an age where they should be learning the ABC’s, not their BMI’s. Children are the future, and the future looks nothing less than grim.
Moreover, children are becoming less intelligent every year, not only academically, but culturally. Programme for International Student Assessment conducts a report every three years that compares the knowledge of 15-year-old students in 70 countries. According to this report, America is ranked 14 in reading, 17 in science, and 25 in math.
Japan scored higher on the PISA report than America; a country that not even 200 years ago was still a feudal society with peasants and all that jazz. Now they surpass us in education. The intelligence of our children does not just prove to be weak academically; the cultural exposure children receive is also far less than stellar.
Television is a large part of the life of a child, the average person watches about 151 hours of television every month, which puts a lot of pressure on the writers, directors and producers of television shows to create quality, intelligent programming, but instead of rising to the occasion, they decided to sink to an all time low.
Apparently, shows about cooking, eating, driving trucks and living in Orange County as a house wife are now high end television. People do this stuff every day. It is not entertainment; it is called a job, and if filming a person doing their job is now considered entertainment, then someone might as well go around and film a guy doing a different job every episode. Oh wait, the Discovery Channel already did this, called it Dirty Jobs and had it last eight seasons.
This is what the youth of America has reduced itself to, and it is frightening to think the people who find watching a group of people walking around the Jersey Shore with more spray tan on their body than clothing entertainment will soon hold the future in their hands.
Children are the future; it is inevitable. All America can do is try and fix this generation because if we do not, America is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions, Old Testament, real wrath of God stuff; fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria: a country filled with Snookis.
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You rock my world kiddo