In the news was an article with this statement: “The new test analyzes two of these proteins, carbon and nitrogen. Based on the makeup of these proteins, the researchers said they've been able to diagnose eating disorders.” Talking with a journalist as to how such a flagrant lack of basic knowledge could make it into the press, this was in Forbes, the journalist indicated that journalism had gone down hill in recent years with journalism schools pumping out cadres of graduates lacking the basic knowledge necessary to ask the right questions or interpret the answers. Knowing that most politicians are lawyers and many lawyers are burnt out journalists I came up with the Politician Sorter and Remedial School.
When a politician decides to stand for office it would be required to sorted. The sorter consists of a set of rooms with conveyer belts running along the floors from room to room. The conveyer belt would have chairs bolted to it, and for safety reasons the chairs would have restraints, much like an amusement ride. We wouldn’t want a budding politician to get up and hurt something now would we.
After the politician is restrained in a chair, the conveyer belt would move them into the first room. There the politician would, with the latest in voice recognition technology, indicate to the sorter the level of office he was running for. The system would, based on level of office, create some tests. The politician would then be transported to the next appropriate room, there he would take a test on the basic knowledge of a subject. The first subject being basic biology. Other rooms would have tests in basic chemistry, basic physics, botany, and the other subjects that all knowledge rests on. After each of these tests, the responses would be scored and the politician taken to the next appropriate room. Some of these rooms would be teaching labs in which the politician would be given remedial instruction on the subject they flunked.
After being able to pass tests on the basic knowledge, the politician would continue being sorted and instructed on levels of the fundamental life processes such as transportation, food and agriculture, energy and mining, health services, systems integration, risk and threat analysis, operations research and statistics, etc. appropriate to the level of office it had chosen at the beginning. After passing the test on knowledge about societies and other self organizing systems, the politician would be sorted based on responses to subjects such as the logico-mathematical expansion of the golden rule and removing the log from ones own eye before asking to take the nit from thy neighbors.
Once the politician is fully sorted they are released from the chair and escorted back outside. If it took them too long in the sorter to actually run for the office they indicated they can always stand for another office and be sorted again. Oh did I forget to tell you that they weren’t allowed to leave once they entered. After all having the arrogance to run for office in which their decisions would affect society and the lives of the individuals in that societies neighborhood without the basic knowledge needed to make reasonable decisions would be considered a crime against society punishable by remedial education. We wouldn’t want a budding politician to get up and hurt something now would we.-- cjacks, Oct 17 2006 Invincibly ignorant voters elect invincibly ignorant leaders. That's their democratic right. This solution tries to educate too few people, too late.-- pertinax, Oct 19 2006 Usual problem. Who gets to choose which questions to ask?-- DrBob, Oct 19 2006 random, halfbakery