Dumb and Dumber: Parody or prophesy for Montgomery Public Schools?
Dumb and Dumber is the 1994 movie that chronicles the comedic misadventures of a pair of good-hearted fools — Harry and Lloyd — on their cross-country road trip in pursuit of Lloyd’s unrequited crush. Each has just been fired — Harry as a pet groomer, Lloyd as a limo driver — freeing them to hit the road.
The movie’s subtitle tells us some of what else we need to know about the pair: “For Harry and Lloyd every day is a no brainer.” But, more accurately and consequentially, Harry and Lloyd themselves are no brained. Hence the title.
The movie’s perhaps most famous scene exemplifies the pair’s folly throughout. A bus emblazoned with “Hawaiian Tropic Bikini Tour” on its side stops alongside Harry and Lloyd walking down a desolate stretch of highway after their ride breaks down. A trio a bikini-clad beauties pop out. One says that they are looking for two oil boys to grease them up before each competition on their tour. Harry enthusiastically tells the ladies that there is a town three miles ahead that is bound to have a couple of willing guys. Not realizing that they have missed the ride of their lives, as the bus drives away, Lloyd laments, “Wow! Two lucky guys are going to be driving around with those girls for the next couple months.” Despondent, Harry replies, “Don’t worry, we’ll catch our break too. We just have to keep our eyes open.”
And so on. The movie parodies the happy-go-lucky lifestyle of two ill-educated men. If Harry and Lloyd were a mere aberration, then we could simply laugh and leave the movie at that — a parody. But the movie may be more prophesy than parody. And, if so, the pair’s lifestyle and educational status is no laughing matter.Montgomery Public Schools (MPS) and its surrogates are deliberately, even if unwittingly, cultivating the next generation of Harrys and Lloyds. And they’re doing so before our very eyes — with apparently little, if any, pushback from parents and the community.
A recent example of that cultivation, as reported by a Montgomery TV station earlier this month, is a career fair held by Montgomery nonprofit Community Miracle. That career fair was for either middle- or high-school students (the story mentions both but is ambiguous as to which the fair was directed) who don’t want to go to college.
“We’re giving them an opportunity to see what they can be without a four-year college degree,” Community Miracle founder Dorothy Johnson explained. She intends to host more such career fairs “to help pour into the youth and steer them on the right path.”
The career fair follows and reflects MPS Superintendent Melvin Brown’s conception of secondary education for some Montgomery students. Earlier this year, the Montgomery Advertiser reported that Brown said “career academies” are a possibility for Montgomery high schoolers.
Our country will long need pet groomers and limo drivers, as well as mechanics, plumbers, x-ray technicians, and house painters. But equally, if not more so, it will long need those same people to have the skill to discern when they are being manipulated and lied to by tv commercials, politicians, and the news media. It will long need those same people to be able to compose an intelligible letter to the editor. And it will long need those same people to have the courage and confidence to stand up to and speak out against injustice. In short, it will long need those same people to be civilized human beings and responsible citizens.Not long ago, to be educated meant to be liberally educated — to have a well-furnished soul. A soul that allowed one flexibility and options to move and to act in the world and among people. That education cultivated man as man (i.e., as human being), man as citizen (i.e., as informed, engaged, responsible member of the political community), and only then man as worker (i.e., as producer and consumer). That tripartite hierarchy in not innate. We aren’t born educated; we must become educated.The age of 11 or 13 or even 17 is too young for a child to choose or prioritize a career. Unless a child has a strong calling and aptitude for a certain career, which seldom occurs in a teen, let alone an 11-year-old, that child, as an adult, will almost invariably change careers at least once in his or her lifetime. Wasting time on career prep thereby diminishes the time available to cultivate the child’s broader, nobler — and, yes, more useful and transferable — aptitudes and faculties, like writing, public speaking, otherwise using well the English language, and thinking abstractly, creatively, and independently. None of these is easily or well cultivated in technical education.In a speech delivered in Arizona last month, President Biden recognized, “The soul of America depends on the souls of all Americans.” The purpose of education — maybe especially secondary education — is the cultivation of the child’s soul.
But that ship has sailed; is far out to sea; and will likely not soon return to port. Today, increasingly, technical education — the cultivation of man as merely worker (as producer and consumer) — defines education and otherwise reigns. But if we allow the continuance of that reign, we must recognize what we are doing — to children, to ourselves, and to the larger community — and count the cost. And don’t be fooled. That cost is the proliferation of and — worse — the normalization of Harry and Lloyd. That cost is Dumb and Dumber.
Bart Spung is a nonpracticing lawyer and lives in Montgomery.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Dumb and Dumber: Parody or prophesy for Montgomery Public Schools?
