I really, really hate idiocy, even from a distance. Of course, when it is far enough away that it can't hurt me, I just sort of love to hate it in a "bad policitian" way, and nobody gets hurt. Alas, when idiocy hits close to home, it loses its innocence. Case in point: this summer.
Now, bureaucracy is well-known as a common spawning ground for idiocy. It matters not what form the bureacracy takes; large or small, formal or informal, this form of management is the proverbial armpit of society, and the idiocy it produces can be compared to the rank odor armpits tend to emit when not properly maintained. Unfortunately, the analogy fails when one realizes that deodorant has no counterpart to buffer the effects of the idiocy.
A case in point of idiocy run wild is the 2000-2001 Derby High School yearbook. The arts are almost lost in the shuffle amongst poorly written and poorly reasoned articles about movies, dating, and the football team. While the orchestra recieved a 1/4 page photo and no article, Napster, which has very little to do with education, got a half page and an essay. Even the freaking snack bar at the Derby Plaza Theater had a larger picture than our beloved orchestra. Each bloody sport got two whole pages - four if there was a girl's team! Is there anything wrong with this picture? Why did this happen? Simple. Idiots ran the yearbook committee last year. Everyone knows the school was saturated with them even while the Class of 2000 still walked the not-so-hallowed halls of pseudo-academia. However, in those days there were people with enough sense to give at least some credit to those of us who were to some degree cultured. Given this year's travesty of a yearbook, what new-promoted sophomore will have any incentive to attempt to broaden his or her horizons? The message sent by this awful volume is that the jocks get the girls, and the people with the best P.R. have more success than those with competence in a relevant field. (No, football is not a viable career.) While it would be bad enough if such as message, which is certainly not new to today's youth, did no more than stunt a generation's humanity, this sort of idea is what creates jock majors and anti-intellectualism in colleges. Most of the students in the yearbook will be heading off to a public university upon graduation. If those schools are filled to the brim with guys who still idolize professional athletes and girls who still worship sweaty dumb guys, what will happen to those students in the long run? Can they even be called students anymore?