{"id":810,"date":"2021-05-19T00:29:29","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T00:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/?p=810"},"modified":"2021-05-19T00:30:13","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T00:30:13","slug":"the-miseducation-of-a-burger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/the-miseducation-of-a-burger\/","title":{"rendered":"The Miseducation of a Burger: Ivan Denisovich? 3\u0432\u0443\u0447\u0438\u0442 \u0432\u0438\u043d\u043e\u0432\u0430\u0442\u044b\u043c \u0434\u043b\u044f \u043c\u0435\u043d\u044f!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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by Anonymous<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The purpose of this essay is to share an experience in the failure of the American public education system. I do not propose any reasons explaining the failure or remedies for it. I do not know how it happened, but it happened to me and perhaps you have a similar experience.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In high school I was living in the Northern Virginia suburbs outside of the Nation\u2019s capital. My school district was in the top ten school districts in the country. The average house sold for close to half a million dollars and the median household income was about a hundred grand or twice the national median. My friends and I all lived in houses with six bedrooms and finished basements with pool tables. Teenagers didn\u2019t work at McDonald\u2019s or the grocery stores; Mexicans did. Most of our fathers were paid by the warmachine and had moved around as a result. This was the fifth house I had lived in. We moved in when Dubya was first elected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a kid, I had every signal from adults that I was smart. I had good grades, read on my own, watched the news, and even had a better understanding of the stock market than most adults (buy MSFT). Most of my peers fell into this category. It wasn\u2019t a matter of \u201cif we would go to college\u201d it was a matter of \u201cwhich college we would go to\u201d. In sophomore year of high school, I took Advanced Placement (AP) World History. This was a major academic challenge to know-it-all smarty pants dipshits like yours truly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCAN YOU HANDLE A COLLEGE LEVEL COURSE???\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cC-O-L-L-E-G-E!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course was so serious it even required homework over the summer and that it would be due the first week of school. We had to read one book from a two-page list and write an essay about what it was about. I scanned the list and found \u201cOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich\u201d by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I couldn\u2019t pronounce the last name of the main character or the author, but I didn\u2019t care because it was \u201cOne Day\u201d how long could the book possibly be? The Signet Classic copy I got from Books-A-Million, (now a toy store name \u201cBAM!\u201d), verified my instincts: it was tiny. After that my instincts completely failed me in understanding the significance of this book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I followed the plot easy enough. I felt moved by many of the literary elements. As I sat behind the big bay windows of our house\u2019s front room, August summer sun blazing, I could not shake the immense Siberian coldness coming off the pages. However, I could not grasp why the book had any significance. I had read the intro and the back cover for clues of why this book deserved to be remembered. After much thought, I concluded that the author was some bleeding heart liberal that wanted people to feel bad for poor Ivan. You know what they say, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t do the crime if you can\u2019t do the time, you fucking commie criminal fuck!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t remember writing the essay, but I\u2019m sure I squeezed out 1.49 pages of size 12 double spaced garbage that started something like, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis essay is about the book I had to read for the summer reading assignment. The name of the book was\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was going to write more about the years that passed, how my education grew, my life experiences, and so forth to attempt to paint a picture of a capable semi-smart midwit; but as these memories come back to me, I cannot continue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father gave me some advice in my youth that is turning over in my head, gaining momentum,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhenever you feel like criticizing any one: do it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pluck the feathers from my cap, and replace them with black eyes! Throw apples at me and crush my moronic exoskeleton! Dear reader I had planned to regale you with anecdotes of misspent youth, of studying at university in a one room efficiency behind a bar with one good chair and yellow wallpaper peeling from the ceiling, of waking up in a hay barge after day drinking the day after finals, but no! I will not attempt to gain sympathy for my ignorance. I will not recall stories of wondering where all the ducks go when the pond freezes in a vain attempt to trick you into thinking you are like me. Judge me reader! Point me towards the nearest bridge! I am a sick man! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am too full of shame to continue my narrative of how my AP World History teacher also did not understand the significance of \u201cOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich\u201d.  I was still successful in the class and would receive college credit for it. Then a few years later I would read Nina Gourfinkel\u2019s \u201cLenin\u201d and not see it for the blatant piece of propaganda revisionist history that it is. Even in university, the few humanities classes I took, even the one that focused on Modernism, where we read the Communist Mani-fucking-festo didn\u2019t talk about Solzhenitsyn, kulaks, or Soviet lead genocide at all! Why did it take a Canadian lobsterman and a racist Indonesian spearfishing forum for a burger to learn these things? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I stated at the start of this essay, I don\u2019t know why, and I don\u2019t have any solutions to this educational catastrophe. While you may find me loathsome, I am not alone. I am part of an obese American consciousness that is waddling towards a persistent vegetative state . Wherever there are fat hungry idiots complaining that they can\u2019t go out to Fuddruckers because of a global pandemic, I\u2019ll be there. Wherever they\u2019s a cop arresting a multiple felon high on fentanyl, I\u2019ll be there (with my phone). Wherever people believe that voting for a third party in a non-parliamentary system of government is a good idea, I\u2019ll be there. And whenever people think of world history in terms of \u201cgood guys\u201d and \u201cbad guys\u201d, God damn it I\u2019ll be there too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Anonymous The purpose of this essay is to share an experience in the failure of the American public education system. I do not propose any reasons explaining the failure or remedies for it. I do not know how it happened, but it happened to me and perhaps you have a similar experience.   In high … [DO NOT CLICK]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-anonymous","4":"post-810","6":"format-standard","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":812,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions\/812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}