While mocking the decreasing intelligence of "our students" and the problem of "dumb students," Michael Lucinski ("Rep. Salamander Gingrich," Nov. 28) found no better parameter to introduce his dim picture of the students' intelligence and knowledge in the United States than students in Kabul, Afghanistan. With joyful impunity, Lucinski sermonizes Spectrum readers into Afghan students being the prototypical and faultless exemplification of educational retardedness and inefficiencies, with almost no effort exerted at setting a context for his diagnosis of the U.S. educational illnesses - other than "a society dominated by silicon implants and 'Entertainment Tonight.'" Nor does he bother to dig beyond his generalization about Kabul students to allude to a country ravaged by wars, poverty and foreign interference.
He has the right to show disappointment with his classmates' dysfunctional sense of geographical mapping; but what does he have to say about the apparent insensitive cultural mapping his column might be suggestive of? "[W]ith a minimum amount of drool," one can realize that Afghan students, human beings as we all are, are no less intelligent than students in the United States. It is rather the situational and technical circumstances and factors, well shut out of the argument, that make the whole difference in performance and outcome. "Kidding aside," the question isn't about "reintroducing morality," reducing violence at schools or teaching students "how to return fire." For ideas and suggestions, please contact Buffalo's 500 teachers or so to be laid off pretty soon.
