You are from the Midwest. You are culturally deprived, so you would not understand it anyway.
Some may reply to the following, that it is an isolated incident and a trivial sum, then rant hysterically about how much the War in Iraq costs and how THAT is destroying the US economy, which funds could be far better used to improve our educational system

I submit that it is, not trivial, but an example of the same type of mentality that now controls our educational system, and is to a large part one of the reasons why, after funding for Public Education has tripled, the results have been a decrease in the quality and effectiveness of our Public School Systems.

And people wonder why our children cannot seem to learn to read, write and do simple math?

Actually they can but it seems to be more possible if they are in private schools or home schooled,

If you wonder why that is, read the following and reflect.

The NEA has been more patronizing than patron to the towns and villages of Middle America. An example: in 1969 NEA grantee George Plimpton, editor of the American Literary Anthology/2, confounded observers by paying $1,500 for a poem by Aram Saroyan consisting of the single misspelled word, "lighght."

When an assistant to an Iowa congressman asked Plimpton what Saroyan's poem meant, the editor replied, "You are from the Midwest. You are culturally deprived, so you would not understand it anyway."(54) We are subsidizing superciliousness; taxpayers are mulcted and then mocked, and if they complain, it is "good old-fashioned American small town hysteria,"(55) in one NEA staffer's phrase.

PS this brilliant work of Art also received a $750 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

I am going to use the NEA website as a source for that claim.

Aram Saroyan's seven-letter poem - lighght - for which a federally funded effort indirectly paid $750 - was among those selected for the anthology.

Originally I meant to use "Why Johnny Can't Read" as a title for this, but the quote I ended up using illustrates the demarcation between Red State Flyover Land and Blue State Beltway arrogance so much more effectively.

Technorati Tags:Pork:Education

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