Is The Bottom 20% Killing America?

“Attention students, m’kay.  There will be a presentation by the special education department in the gymnasium Friday during lunch and recess, m’kay.” – South Park

If they make a show about the Biden Administration, will it be titled “House of Tards”?

In what will probably be one of the more controversial posts I put up, I figured it’s time to discuss the boat anchor on Western Civilization:  the bottom 20%.  It’s in response to seeing the X® up above, because it got me thinking of just how right the author is.

Let’s look at high schools, for instance.  When I was in high school, there was a room for the special ed kids (we called them speds) so impacted by genetic or environmental trauma that they were effectively never going to do much in society.  Think Down’s syndrome.  We didn’t have a lot of interaction with those kids, because they were so far down the rabbit hole of human cognition that they were operating, on their best day, at the level of a four- to eight-year-old.

The second set of low achievers were tossed into the school’s “alternative” program.  This, as far as I could see, consisted of coming to school and smoking cigarettes outside the alternative building.  I recall my AP Chemistry teacher glancing out the window and remarking to the eight students in class, “Oh, look, the alternative kids are out playing advanced volleyball.”

I recall this really cracking me up.

How does the Spanish Dr. Who greet people?  Buenos TARDIS.

When I was in high school, this wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is today.  To be a sped was a social stigma.  Not that we treated them poorly – far from it.  But the cheerleaders weren’t going to date the dude who was 4’2” and communicated in a series of grunts and hoots.

Today, there are roughly 7.5 million kids with learning disabilities so profound that they are required by federal law to have an Individual Education Plan, so, per one article that’s 15% of kids in schools (school being between the ages of 5 and 18 for most kids).  Most of these IEPs are not for gifted kids, rather they’re for people who can demonstrate disabilities.

I hear Michael J. Fox and his kids set up a parking lot just for disabled people.  Park n’ Sons.

Parents, especially low-income urban parents, love having their children on IEPs.  Why?  Having an IEP does quite a few things:

• Bulletproofs the child from being flunked. It can be done, but it requires more paperwork than would be required to launch the Boeing® Starliner™ again.
• Bulletproofs the child (mostly) from being suspended for behavior. Until they curb-stomp a teacher for taking away their Nintendo Switch® and are charged with a felony.  But, hey, the parents say, “He’s a good boy, he was on an IEP.”
• Depending on the IEP, the current trend is to require that they be placed in classrooms with “normal” children, becoming a boat anchor on the rest of the class, dragging down progress. Think about having a class with Whoopi Goldberg in it.  But she’s violent.  It would be like that.
• Depending on income, an IEP may make the family eligible for up to an extra $943 a month – tax free.   We give parents incentives to have children that have the impulse control of Diddy at an Epstein party.
• Depending on the IEP, the school district may need to provide what counts as essentially free day care until the age of 22, thus providing an environment where free-range 22-year-olds can stalk kids as young as 13. Thankfully, I think most of the 22-year-olds are out killing people rather than stalking 13-year-olds.
• Using Pennsylvania as a guide, having a student with an IEP costs between $5,000 and $77,000 more per year than having a “normal” kid.
• Children with IEPs are often given more time for things like tests, and are excused from things like deadlines. This one ropes in the parents of low-performing children of GloboLeftist parents who want Rachel to get into Harvard®.

Yeah, you can see just this one program from just one federal law (the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, with the horrible acronym IDEA) has spawned trillions of dollars in direct spending, but has also destroyed the educational experiences for those left in the normie-tier classrooms.

If you win a pumpkin carving contest, is it a hollow victory?

In my experience, after I was out of the general education part of high school (think P.E. and Earth Science) I was in very few classes with any Special Ed kids – it’s not like they were going to sign up for Physics or Advanced Algebra.  I guess in 2024, Rachel might try to do that and her parents would berate the teacher with all of Rachel’s special needs, “Oh, did she not get a Hostess® Cupcake™ and an extra two hours to take the test?  She must have had a low blood sugar and been under stress that’s why she got 40% on the test, you monster!”

But in the classes I did share with special ed kids (P.E.), they were horribly disruptive.  In one case, one of the students – Down’s syndrome – managed to lock himself in an unused gym locker.  These lockers were big enough to hold a 4’2” kid if they hunkered down, since they were designed to hold football gear.  I’ll spare you the details, but I’m sure that coach went home that night going, “They don’t pay me enough to do this job.”

What would happen if we didn’t spend these misplaced compassion dollars into society?  First, the parents would have to foot the bill.

Tough, right?

Well, that’s life.

I’m oddly proud of that one.

Second, classrooms could eliminate students who wouldn’t or couldn’t behave.  Having a child lacking that much in control indicates that structured education won’t help them at all unless it’s enforced with an electric cattle prod.  That horrible law, IDEA, just turns school into a holding pen for unsocialized brutes.

Eliminating those disruptive “students” would allow the rest of the students to learn.  And, perhaps, just a few of those disruptive students with poor self-control with appropriate and judicious use of cattle prods might just learn some self-control.

Again, the parents could and should be held responsible, and if the kid is booted from school, lift child labor laws and allow them to work 40 hours.  Oh, and unless the child is profoundly (Down’s syndrome or worse) disabled?  No SSI benefits.  Did I say parents?  Yeah, let’s be real.  90% of these kids don’t have parents, just a parent.

This one misguided GloboLeftist program, IDEA, has probably cost the United States between $1.5 trillion (low end) to $3.3 trillion (median) over the last 20 years.  The result?

What’s the difference between a Taliban outpost and a Pakistani wedding?  I don’t know, man, I just fly the drone.

Our schools are in shambles, and our test scores are dropping, and the environment makes The Road Warrior look like a conversation between reasonable people.  All of this is for the lowest 20%.  Imagine how bad it would be if we had spent double that.

Certainly, there are kids that can do wonders with a little bit of additional help.  Dyslexia, for instance, is very treatable.  I mean, what would happen if famous dyslexics Whoopi Goldberg or Alyssa Milano could actually read?  They might not be the grifters that they are today.

But we can probably do that for less than $4,000 a year per kid.

This is only one example where the lowest 20% sets the rules for everyone.

• Who are the people doing the crimes on the subways? I assure you, these are the crimes of the lowest 20%.  Why do we not have clean and affordable public transportation?  The lowest 20%.
• Who are consuming the most public services? Yup, the same, and the perverse nature of our welfare system provides incentives for these people to have lots of children, which they often do via a revolving carousel of gene donors, who are also of the lowest 20%.
• Who are doing the vast majority of murders? Eliminate the lowest 20% of the population from the statistics, and the United States would be the very safest nation on the planet.
• The kid who shot up Parkland High School? I’ll bet a No Prize that he had an IEP, and was of the lowest 20%.

The solution is glaringly simple.

We have to stop coddling and funding the lowest 20%.  Period.  Social Darwinism only works if those who are exhibiting negative qualities face negative consequences.  People respond to incentives, and if your incentive is to produce a never-ending stream of children that get rewarded for having no impulse control, well, you’ll get what we see in the cities.

Did Darwin tell his children that they were adapted?

The good news is the same as I have been preaching forever:  bad times will winnow out this most artificial construction.  A society cannot long produce a feral fraction that creates a low-trust society.

This particular boat anchor won’t cause society to fail, but the anchor will surely be surprised when it is cut loose.