As a high school senior, I am surrounded by an overwhelming amount of stupidity. You know what they say about too much of a good thing? Well, it's much worse to have too much of a bad thing- just one lesson that many of my classmates haven't learned. Annoying pranks, insane driving, weekends so wild that one wouldn't know where to begin in explaining them. Then there's the never ending ignorance. Yes, you have the freedom of speech, but you should also have morals that tell you that calling someone derogatory names is bad. And then there are the activists that are ill-educated. They seem like they know everything about a subject because they'll ramble on for hours about how unjust something is, only to have no argument in defense when anyone questions them. Teenagers are idiots, but it's not our fault.
Okay, maybe we're the ones that post videos of people attempting ridiculous stunts and failing on the Internet. Maybe we're the ones that spend all of our money on over priced jeans. But we are not the ones who run this country.
Before I go on, I'd like to make it clear that I am in no way trying to diss any parents, adults or politicians except maybe the person who proposed the huge budget cut for the New York Public Library. I'm in high school. There's, like, four thousand teenagers trying to rebel politically/ socially/ religiously against their parents, surrounding me on a daily basis. Of course there are some beliefs that are difficult to accept, but I've managed pretty well the past four years. My point is, I don't really care if someone is Democrat, Republican, Liberal, whatever- I'm more concerned about which person is going to screw things up the least.
Some people screw things up pretty badly sometimes though. The New York City Council and Mayor have proposed a $33 million dollar budget cut for the New York Public Library. The NYPL had already received budget cuts the past couple of years forcing them to cut back on hours and services. With this new budget cut they will have to cut back hours even more, essentially only being open four days a week. Not only that, but employees would lose jobs, most services would be eliminated and the library would be unable to expand it's resources.
This is more than an inconvenience for many New Yorkers. How will the unemployed who've chosen to save on Internet costs, instead utilizing the library's Internet, find a job? How will the needy children who love to read and learn expand their knowledge? With a reduction of programs for kids and teens, what will young people do instead?
A library is not a luxury. Education and knowledge are essential for any society to grow. What would happen if the government suddenly decided to cut all funding for schools? Oh, sure, it might give them some extra money to fix some roads or whatever, but a few years down the line they'd be stuck with a bunch of unskilled, uneducated losers who are unable to support themselves. In the end it would cost more money to support them later on.
A budget cut will create more problems than it will solve. Ignoring and dealing with problems later on is not a good solution. Even my idiotic classmates know that. It's like the high school ABC's- "Deal with things as they come up, because it sucks to deal with them later on." We know that if you let all the little annoyances in a relationship build up, then you and your significant other wont last long. We know that trying to block that test we failed miserably out of our minds is useless and that we should just retake it right away.
People do stupid things and sometimes we need to point and laugh at them until they quit doing it. Sometimes we need to look beneath the stupid and see the genius.
