Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for August 02, 2024

Be careful, Goat; remember, you’re the smart one here.

And those who come from generational wealth built off unethical means. Wouldn’t hurt to hold them back either.

‘We’? Speak for yourself, Rat.

Public school has been holding back the gifted and talented for decades.

Vote R and they’ll stop that, and benefit the dummies.

Why raise the bridge when you can lower the river?

Nowadays only the perception of smart is what is seen! even if the person is dumb as an onion!

Harrison Bergeron..

Giving advantages to smart people? Don’t worry, Trump will take care of that.

You’ve read Kurt Vonnegut!

Is that you, Harrison?

Today’s strip reminds me of Kornbluth’s The Marching Morons.

Send in the sapiosexuals!

Holding QUALIFIED, INTELLIGENT persons back, began with the advent of “affirmative action”, a term that has now been replaced with DEI. Of course DEI is inclusive of a much larger pool of applicants

Smart kids have been held back in schools for generations now.

That’s a dumb strategy, literally.

Ha ha ha Democrats suck !

Not all smart peoples Rat. To be more precise it cunning and duplicitous peoples who is has all the advantage.

The weird democrats will not like this comic; hits too close to their policies.

“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. The 200th Amendment to the Constitution makes it illegal for anyone to make another person feel inferior.

The Dept. of Education is on it since 1979.

Rat is basically saying that the world has to be stupid.

From this very site: “As of July 17, 2024, GoComics will no longer offer commenting on political cartoons.” So don’t ruin the commenting for Pearls with political talk.

It’s funny how Asians are touted as “People Of Color” until it comes to jobs, college admissions, etc. See the latest version of Assassin’s Creed.

I’m pretty sure that’s part of the republican agenda.

The dumbing down of American is in full swing and has been for some time now.

“They” already are, Rat. For example, downfunding education promotes ignorance which makes frightening people, and thus control, easier.

This is a plank in the Dem platform. All people MUST be treated equally. That means if you’re too smart, we must eliminate Advanced Courses in high school and place you in a regular class so you are dumbed down. If you doubt this statement, you haven’t been paying attention.

Americans hate, loathe, fear and despise anybody with a brain.

Start? That we has been with us always, Kind of like the rich are with us always. What passes for smart anyway? Helping society or enriching oneself at the expense of that society? The pursuit of knowledge ( or creation of any art form) solely for the results? How smart is that?

We already do, when they’re kids. It’s called the factory model school system. It’s designed to make all kids the same regardless of personal potential.

Do you sense quite a lot of panic from the trumphole trolls here? It’s like they can’t make up stuff fast enough!

Pastis read Harrison Bergeron?

Sounds like Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron.”

All this and no one mentioned the real problem: parents who don’t give a $*!# if their children learn anything or not. I was fortunate to have parents who insisted every day that I do well in school…public school.

Rat must be a stupid person.

And technically, that’s where our Society is already doing.

As a smart person… I protest.

Intelligent people are held back, few are in high political office.

It’s always been that way.

The Donald will take care of that … he’s started with his gang of 75 million. Not to forget our Legal System.

too many stupid smart people in this world

I remember the smartest kids at school were often bullied – either becasue they wore glasses or just because – wait for it – they were smart and did well in class.

Hey, rat sounds like what my director is doing to my manager right now. Only he’s doing it because she’s a woman and he doesn’t think she belongs (despite her having 17 years in the department under her belt)

I don’t think smart people are given much if any advantage – the egregiously wealthy on the other hand…

I’ve started to think if other industrialized nations have the same self-defeating policy of splitting up the population into groups, highlighting their differences by skin color, language or national origin. I say self-defeating because, to me, all these policies (affirmative action, DEI, etc.) seem to divide people more rather than making them into a united group, all Americans. In the end, setting a group apart for preferential treatment (even if said group have been disadvantaged in the past) is fostering a dominance by a minority, which is antidemocratic by definition.

Ivy league schools admission practices have been doing that for years.

Smart people, pretty people, tall people, strong people, athletic people, talented people……

We are holding them back. Some schools have dropped advanced placement classes because they were seen as an inequality. Equity is if we all can’t be smart, then none of us can be smart.

Evidently you think that two whites make a wrong.

we can’t afford to start such a program before December 2024

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has it’s limits.” E. Einstein

Isn’t that exactly what the Rethuglicans are doing?

Being white, male, hetero, reasonably smart, growing up a good neighborhood, born into a reasonably affluent family, easily got into college, etc. etc., I know d**n well that I am privileged, much more so than most. So I have no problem with reasonable affirmative action. My issue with it is that upper management often uses it as a way to look good and pat themselves on the back, and uses it as another way to advance themselves (and in reality don’t give a hoot about those that are being assisted, since it isn’t their share of the pie that’s getting smaller).

We’ve been holding back the smart people since the 1960s with the “mainstreaming” of students and then teaching to the lowest common denominator.

No Child Left Behind = No Child Gets Ahead

Schools do their best to level the playing field. To fit in smart kids play dumb.

I think Kurt Vonnegut wrote a story about this thing.

Nice hate!

I saw a commercial for a cradle/crib that rocks when the infant cries. So now people don’t have to hold their crying baby, just let the machine rock it. Now how sick is that?

TV, man, woman, broccoli.. no wait. man, woman, refrigerator…no, it was woman, man covfefe.. darn, I wish I was that smart