I want this too...

Let's Return to a Belief in the Power of the Mind

By: Elizabeth Rock

When education and intelligence have become a cause for suspicion, not respect; when we prize aggression over thought; when Salinas County is closing its libraries, but there is always funding for sports stadiums; when our scientists and engineers are coming from other countries because our students find those subjects too "hard"; when we give the same weight to unproven ideas as we do to hard science; when we tolerate mediocrity and errors, thinking "it's good enough..."; I say it's time for a huge resurgence in the power of the mind.

It's time to put a premium on intellect again.

I want all of us to aspire to greater brainpower. I want us, and especially our kids, to want to be smart--really, really smart----again; to admire smart people the way they admire rich people. I want kids to want to be smart the way they want to be professional athletes and rap artists.

I want young people to devote the kind of energy to their brains that they devote to eating worms on "Fear Factor." I want young women who can't be bothered to read, but will devote months to pretending to love someone for his money, to want to find the cure for ovarian cancer just that much. I want us to spend as much time on the strange shadings of Thomas Jefferson's complex world as they do on the slightly less-nuanced world of Nick and Jessica.

I want us to innovate again. I want us to export something besides the concept of bling and "Wife Swap." I want Shakespeare to be the new hot sex talk. I want brains to be the next bling.

We need to be critical thinkers again. Because once we wake up, kick our brains into overdrive and stomp on the gas again, everything else will fall into line.