Majority voters determine how smart everyone else is?
Morgan Quitno Press released this list of the “smartest states” list. Without further ado, here it is, color coded to make it more fun to play with:
Looks kinda grim for all those people who mocked the “Al Gore voters are smarter than Bush voters” thingy from the past. However, Morgan Quitno has kept these records for some time, so, the data’s not static. Let’s look, for example, at what’s happened since those voters got lumped into the red-blue discrimination thing by the media:
Well, that doesn’t really prove much either. Except maybe the smarter you get, the more likely you are to vote red this time? Maybe, maybe not. But as usual, my bottom line is this:
Pick which year you want to apply. In most states, that red-blue tag fluctuates not only over time, but in some cases from one election to the next. My blue/red “statistics” are meant to mock that silly label. It’s the most useless label there is. Not one single state is red or blue, every single one of them are several hundred thousand to millions of mixes of the two colors every single election.
I can’t explain how that ranking got to be where it is. To think that the state that offers us some of the most liberal teaching in the universe, California, could be one of the dumbest really did surprise me ( heh, heh, NOT! ). I really didn’t expect them to be right smack in the middle of several states almost always portrayed as backwards hillbilly hicks. I guess when Mayberry RFD gets remade, they’ll do it Berkeley? The next time, The Beverly Hillbillies will strike it rich in Los Angeles and move to Gatlinburg? ( Yeah, I’m enjoying this a LOT more than I should! )
I was also kinda surprised to see Massachusetts where it is, considering my trashing their school systems’ banning games. I guess sitting around learning nothing but how to read books kinda skews this report?
Other than that, nothing, when using the TWO charts together surprises me. The second chart shows that some states are addressing the issue of education, and some apparently not. Those that are not, or are misdirecting their efforts, will flunk over a five year period. It’s kinda scary tho that the state with largest population, and by far the most electoral votes, is doing so poorly. Really, that is scary. Get with it California. It’s time to stop spending resources trying to figure out the most politically correct thing to teach, and just go back to teaching the fundamentals for now. If your kids can’t read, political correctness is totally moot. And that goes for the rest of the country as well, no matter how well you ranked this time.
