Cartoon is making fun of **?? LOL

[GreenPartyVoter]

My kids are watching some dumb cartoon but there's this annoying little armadillo with a high-pitched twangy voice who wanted to "identimify" all the smart kids so he and his crowd could beat them up. In the end everyone left his team, but he said he was still going to rule the world one day.

Or maybe I just spend waaayyy too much time at DU and see **-bashing everywhere? LOL

[krispos42]

1. My Gym Partner's a Monkey

I'm watching it now with my kid. From what I could gather, the school the main character is in traded in letter grades for 'ambiguously good' stickers for grades. Things like rainbows and unicorn. Seems the school had threatened to be sued for damaging kid's self-esteem with low grades.

The main character decided "Hey, since there is no grading system, why bother working?". All the students follow suit, so the school become full of napping students. The principal is forced to go back to the 'archaic' letter grading system as a result.

When the first math problem comes on the board (1+2=?), the main character is warned against looking too smart because the animal instincts of the other creatures in the classroom is to attack and bring down the strongest competator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Gym_Partner

[soothsayer]

2. oddly, calvinism had the opposite effect (created the work ethic!)

I would have guessed the same thing sans grading system, but in real life remember how when folks believed that it was predetermined when you where born whether or not you would go to heaven, and there was nothing you could do on earth to change your fate. You'd think that would lead to 'well if I can't get in trouble with god, why not just be bad?' but instead it led to the protestant work ethic. Here's how: folks said Well I can't change my fate, but perhaps I can LEARN of my fate by how successful I am in this life. If i'm successful, ergo god loves me and i'm going to heaven. So those protestants started working until they had heart attacks, and it's never really slowed down a bit since! which is why protestants still dominate president and ceo positions, whereas us catholics (who prefer family values) tend to not rise above vp very much, but are verrry well suited to intelligence work (cia and fbi and nsa are overrepresented with catholics) cuz we are very comfortable taking orders from above without questioning them, and not needing to know things for ourselves (we are not encouraged to read the bible---better to let the priest interpret it for you, you might get confused).

[krispos42]

3. Interesting...

I just thought it was a commentary on the silliness of touchy-feely school districts!

"=_