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Michael Moore's Idiot Nation

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As Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Education provides essential information for surviving, without learning there would be no progress in the world. Being a privileged child growing up, I always attended well attained schools with limitless opportunities, but after reading essays such as, “Idiot Nation” by Oscar winning film writer and author, Michael Moore, and an American critical thinker, Jean Anyon with her essay “From the Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” and seeing through the eyes of Mike Rose, a professor at UCLA who grew up in a struggling background, in the essay “I Just Wanna Be Average”. I quickly began to realize …show more content…

In the essay “Idiot Nation”, Moore conveys the idea of how in today’s generation education diminishes the drive for learning because of budget cuts, creating a lack of student passion towards the subjects. His example of America’s lack of desire for improving their educational backround can be seen in this statistics, “99 hours a year an average American adult spends reading a book – compared with 1,460 hours watching television” (Moore 123). According to Moore, all Americans create themselves in being “ignorant” and “stupid” when it comes to basic knowledge. However, throughout Moore’s essay the reader may question the validity of what he says because of his sarcastic and domineering tone towards the “stupidity” of all Americans. The U.S does not prioritize education, and Moore provides legitimate facts that support the underfunded school systems. Schools decrease learning material by allowing “70 percent of those who graduate from America’s colleges are not required to learn a foreign language” overall limiting all American college graduates by only speaking one language opposed to the rest of the world being able to speak multiple languages. The government underfunds teacher’s salary’s, therefore, having no motivation to do their best in inspiring the future generations to become successful limits our society as a whole. One of Moore’s best points to support the lack of governmental intervention on education can be seen in the money the government spends on their own officials, such as a Congressman who makes around “$145,100” compared to the “average teacher salary of $41,351” (Moore 129). Moore’s essay may be a bit extreme and over exaggerated, but the facts he includes makes his essay very important. He gives the reader access to very important information many Americans would

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