(ThyBlackMan.com) I have always said to my closets folk that the problem with America, in particularly Black America is that we do know or understand that there is a difference from education and schooling: that there is a chasm between being educated and being schooled. Although my folk get it I hesitantly accept that the vast majority do not and will not. Now I will try and describe this in an historical context making use of the current political discussion of gun control as well as an event recently that occurred in a faculty meeting last week.
For many of us, fact and reason and logic and thought has nothing to do with what we believe, agree with and or select to accept as truth, albeit what we accept as truth is mainly dogma. I came to this conclusion again recently when in a faculty meeting. I was asked not to work problems on the board as much and use the technology available. It was their suggestion that doing such was not in concert with the mission of integrating technology in the classroom. I retorted that use of technology is not the same as integrating technology in the class room. I received a bunch of sneers and false assertions
until I made the argument mathematically. I suggested use and integration are not even synonyms and that I could prove such mathematically if the faculty asserting the argument that they were, were mathematically inclined.
As I explained, in calculus integrating complex functions shows us how use and integration are not even close to being the same things, even if in its simplest form it pertains to the use of technology in the class room. First of all, the integral of a complex function is always defined by the integral of a complex-valued function of a real variable and are generally evaluated by finding the ant derivatives of that real variable. Such processes always evince that many times extra effort is required to make the right side equal to the life; which means such entails much more than just stating such is the truth. Which takes me to the second example of gun control.
If I take the same methods of integrating complex functions to the extent of asserting mathematically more gun control will equal less gun deaths, then I must accept the premise that a singular variables can only define an implied integral of a complex function by defining the integral of a complex-valued function of the real variables gun death and gun control. I could in semantic terms say that if gun control works (what Obama presently is proposing with the exception of mental health back ground checks is already in effect in Chicago) then Chicago should be the safest city in America – but it is not. Plus, it is more fun to using the dialectics of calculus to prove my point.
First, one would have to ask if saving lives is the central important issue here. Calculus suggest it is not, for if it were maybe more laws on swimming pools would be needed or sticking with gun control (especially among children), hand guns should be targeted. Why, well according to the CDC, cars, poisonings and even swimming account for annual deaths those deaths by fire arms, in particular when it applies to children. In fact less than 70 deaths for kids under age of 15 were due to accidental firearm use and when will look at all firearm deaths for children, the date proves more die from accidental drowning than being killed by an fire arm. Now I know the focus is on assault rifles, but this true is feculent.
What is confusing is that more than 66% of all gun deaths in the US are suicides – this according to the UN, CDC and FBI. Secondly, although there are more than 200 million rifles and shot guns owned by American citizens, 75 percent of the murders in Americas (suicides not included) are committed with hand guns with 4 percent and 5 percent being committed with rifles and shotguns respectively. These are FBI and Justice Department figures aggregated from state and local police affiliates. And I won’t say that the FBI also notes that more people are killed by bats and that rifles combined.
Thus complex mathematics would assert that the singular variable of gun control, in particular if it targets large ammo magazines and assault rifles will not do much if anything to save lives. This is if saving lives is paramount to controlling guns.
Now what does this have to do with education and schooling? Well a lot. To start with, going to school don’t mean you are being educated, it just means you learn to go to a building in a class with a group of folks the same age being trained by a single individual. So much for socialization, since in the real world folks interact with people of all ages and persuasions. Unfortunately it is this mentality that has people, who in many cases behave like pet rocks, believe and accept anything they hear if it comes from TV or even worse someone they select to be their savior – a President Obama for lack of a better example.
Yes rocks and even worse rocks run by bricks. Who know maybe they will try to ban the word “gun next.” After all it was just reported that Elementary School Girl Threatened Wit
h Arrest over ‘Paper Gun’ and that of a Pennsylvania kindergartner suspended from school for talking about a soap bubble toy gun. Then there was the six year old boy earlier this year who was suspended for making a gun with his fingers and saying POW. Our irrational acceptance of things regardless of fact is scary to me. It is as if we would prefer to let emotion dictate our thoughts over, logic, fact and/or reason. We already allow politicians to persuade us that a war can even be waged over emotion (terror).
People say there is no gun control movement in Washington but I suggest there is. They want to target assault weapons but as I noted hand guns are involved in more deaths that rifles or shot guns. Not to mention as I noted, 66% of all gun deaths are suicides and if safety was concerned, swimming pools and automobiles would be the focus of attention but they are not. Watch, they will try to target more than assault rifle – whoops, that’s right, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein just did today.
Maybe I’m more like Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz than the average person. I think his book was the first I read, in high school on war – Vom Kriege (On War). Or even worse, more like Joseph T. Chew who said: Expecting a carjacker or rapist or drug pusher to care that his possession or use of a gun is unlawful is like expecting a terrorist to care that his car bomb is taking up two parking spaces.
Desiderius Erasmus was correct, “In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.