:: DADDIO: Uh....dude, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you are NOT "ok". Your WRITING is at about a 5th grade level…..Shaun: 5th grade READING level? Are you sure?
DADDIO: I am now. Maybe 7th grade level for the READING. Just perfect for the daily newspaper.
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Shaun: Oh, I'm sorry I don’t' use big, impressive words like "dude" like you do.
DADDIO: Big impressive words? Was someone here using big impressive words? I was trying to keep my wording simple because, based on the writing and the thought process I was observing, I thought I was talking to a 10th grade highschool student, and, for all intents and purposes, I guess I am. My apologies if you couldn’t keep up.
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::DADDIO: …Your WRITING is at about a 5th grade level, but because you think you've been around long enough to "turn out" to be something, I'd guess that you are probably a highschool student. Pretty sad. But don't feel TOO bad, you're in good company. You are probably every bit as literate as most of your ninth grade class.
Shaun: Oh, well actually I graduated high school a few years ago with a 3.92 gpa with distinguished honors in French, the Sciences and U.S. History and Govt. Scored 1300 on the SAT's, finished real estate academy and received my R.E license and……
DADDIO: Uh…ehhem…Shaun, that’s exactly my point. You’re a full grown adult licensed professional with great SAT scores but you’re writing at, what is considered in other industrialized cultures and was once considered here in the U.S., a middle school level at best. That’s MUCH more shameful than being a 10th grade highschool student in the same predicament, as I have speculated above. Consider what this says about the SAT exams.
(I know its confusing, but just ponder this for awhile, and experience the healthy stages of denial, anger, and sadness, and then please read on.)
It behooves you to identify the culprit in this crime against you. The public school system had 12 years (and about 1/7 th of all the waking hours of your life) to teach you how to read and write. Your parents paid money every year into the most expensive public education system in the world and gave up a lot of precious time with their young boy so that those bastards could give you a world class education. Is that what you got?
How much French do you remember? "Hi, where’s the bathroom?" And "I’d like to order the snails?" The Sciences? Tell me what you know of the sciences. It must be an awful lot after 12 years of study. Tell me how an electric motor works. Don’t look it up, just explain it to me right where you’re sitting. With twelve years of "the Sciences" under your belt, certainly they must have discussed this ever present device in great detail, maybe even had you take one apart and put it back together. No?
Tell me the chemical formula for gasoline. Explain how it’s manufactured. You use it every day, our countries youngest adults are expected to shed blood for it, and you mean to tell me you can’t rattle this off of the top of your head Mr. 12 year public highschool honors graduate?
How about agriculture? Do you know what BT corn is? Roundup Ready soybeans? You better, because chances are you and your kids are being slowly poisoned by these things as you read this.
U.S. History? How much gold was an Indian child expected to retrieve for early European explorers to prevent having his hands chopped off? Which tribes did our ancestors rape, kill, and pillage to gain control of what lands? Name a dozen of the thousands of treaties that have been broken with the natives of North America since then. Honors in U.S. history my ass.
Government? Explain communism to me. Democracy. Compare and contrast socialism and Marxism for me. Come on, now’s your big chance to show us what a primo education you got in public highschool.
And then there’s the reading, writing, and comprehension. Did you get your 12 years and 200,000 dollars worth? Not. To be painfully honest, your writing sucks, you think I’m using big words when I’m not, and your first attempt to refute my accusations of poor literacy did nothing but reinforce the living daylights out of my main point, that being: you got shafted big time the public school system.
Dude (and do mean dude), it would take about 6 weeks tops to reinstruct you in everything you really "know" about your "honors" subjects, and, for all the time and money that was spent, you should be literary genius in each of these areas. You didn’t become well versed in these subjects. You sat and stared at a blackboard for 12 years like the rest of us. Face it. Your parents got ripped off. YOU got ripped off.
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Shaun: …. received my R.E license and am now working on a career in law enforcement.
DADDIO: No shit? A cop!? I love it!!! Oh man, you and me are gonna be good friends. Please, just hang in there with me for awhile longer. We might need to go to email.
Shaun: I'm not exalting myself, Lord knows I'm just an average student, just like almost everybody else.
DADDIO: Hey, I respect your humility. I got no beef with that.
Shaun: My point is that public school works whether you like it or not. We're not being brainwashed like zombies.
DADDIO: Just for the record, if you HAD been "brainwashed like a zombie", would you know you had? I don’t think most brain washed zombies would know that they were brain washed zombies. Just a guess.
Shaun: ….People like me who went to public school know that school is what prepares you for a successful life. Maybe dropping out and becoming a bum with a cynical view on life was good enough for you, but most other people expect better of themselves.
DADDIO: Yawn. And just for future reference, don’t compare professional accomplishments with me. They can be extremely misleading and irrelevant, and, unless you really got that real estate thing crankin’, I probably make a lot more money than you do, so can it.
Look, nobody likes being called stupid – I understand that. I’m not here just to bully people and make them feel bad about themselves. It just seems to me that everybody is kinda sleep walking (myself included), and I’m just trying everything I can to wake up and hopefully rouse a few people out of their own delirium in the process.
Shaun, you’re probably a really nice guy to know in person. I don’t doubt it at all. I think you probably have big heart and your kids are probably as well adjusted as anybody’s. Underneath all your mental programming, you’re probably a damn Einstein, how could we ever know. I don’t dislike you. I dislike your mental/emotional baggage and the foggy glasses you’re staring through. I dislike it only a little less than my own. But I can’t hold back the message I need to give you, and I don’t know a nice way to say, "You’ve been totally fucked over by everything you’ve held dear." But you have.
And there are reasons for it. And it CAN be corrected. It can all be put right. It HAS to be put right. It will be put right eventually. Resistance is useless. Don’t you see? For me to believe this in the face of my pitch black worldview makes me not a cynic, but the ultimate optimist. Goodnight.
- Deep Daddio Nine
