In the first Republican Presidential debate, Donald Trump reiterated his proposal to build a fence between the United States and Mexico, and even said he’d get Mexico to help pay for it. Given Trump’s current polling figures, millions of Americans believe that it’s a “common sense” proposal.

The fence issue illustrates one of the big problems with so-called common sense ideas. Often they’re anything but sensible. The land border with Mexico stretches 1,969 miles, and the Department of Homeland Security has already fenced some 651 miles of that border, mostly near urban areas and international bridges. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, with over 58,000 personnel and a budget of $4 billion, also patrols that area and the more remote borderlands in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, using 16,875 vehicles, 269 aircraft, 300 watercraft, and 300 camera towers, as well as aerial drones.

While the number of illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico annually has declined more than sixty percent since 2000, the Border Patrol still apprehends more than 100,000 illegals annually, and agency cost estimates to fence the entire border top twenty billion dollars, not including annual maintenance. And even fences are not secure, since each year the agency repairs more than 4,000 breaches in the existing fencing. To effectively seal the U.S.-Mexico border would require the equivalent of a 1,969-mile Berlin Wall, and maintaining and staffing it would likely cost well over $100 billion over the next ten to fifteen years. And illegals would then take to the seas, or tunnel under it. Also, does anyone really think Mexico can come up with that kind of money when they can’t even control the crime syndicates in Mexico?

In the meantime, there are over eleven million illegal immigrants in the United States, and trying to apprehend and deport them would require the equivalent of Nazi Germany’s SS troopers. Gee… a Berlin Wall and the storm troopers… what ever happened to America, the land built on the hopes of aspirations of immigrants, the land where 95% of the entire population consists of immigrants and the descendants of immigrants?

Likewise proposals to “bring back American factory jobs” are nonsense. The United States manufactures far more than it did twenty years ago – and it does so with far fewer workers through the use of computers and automation. Those kind of jobs are never coming back.

Yet tens of millions of people swallow such simplistic political promises. Yes, we need a better handle on immigration and better jobs for millions of Americans, and a lot of other improvements, but simplistic political promises based on wishes and so-called common sense aren’t going to do anything effective to deal with either.

1. Almost everyone is suited to college.

2. College’s principal function is to prepare a student for a specific occupation.

3. Everyone should complete college in five years or less.

4. Colleges should meet all student needs.

5. Popular professors are good professors.

6. College courses should be entertaining.

7. Student evaluations improve college level education.

8. Colleges should accommodate all ranges of personal beliefs.

Each of these “myths” is widely held by a great number of college students and their parents, as well as by a significant segment of the U.S. population. Each has a grain of truth behind it but is effectively misleading if not totally false.

Not everyone is suited to college, either in terms of intellectual ability, ambition, inclination, and determination. While everyone needs a skill set to succeed in providing for himself or herself, the traditional college education isn’t always the best place for each individual to obtain that skill set. Often, for some individuals, it’s absolutely the worst place.

With the increasing cost of college, more and more students have to work to pay for their education. Working means they have less time to devote to studying an often these students either take lighter course loads or drop out for a semester here and there to obtain the money to continue. Others, such as in Utah, often take off several years for various reasons, including church missionary work, voluntary “sabbaticals,” or even just to “find themselves.”

College is not a vocational school. Most college-educated young people graduating today will change jobs and/or fields at least several times after graduation, yet some state legislatures and others, such as accrediting bodies, are now “grading” colleges on the percentages of graduates employed in their undergraduate field of study.

Colleges are now required to provide an ever-greater range of “personal” services to students, going far beyond course advisors to counseling, special arrangements for test-taking, study-abroad programs, even design-your-own course/major options. This proliferation of “services” is a significant factor in increasing college costs. At the same time, students are less and less willing to spend time outside the classroom in pursuit of their studies. Even so, the demands for more “services” and options continue to grow at the same time as colleges and universities are trying to reduce the instructional costs by utilizing more adjunct professors and fewer full-time faculty.

There are good professors and popular professors. Some few popular professors are good, and quite a few not-so-popular professors are good. Studies show, however, on average, that the very most popular professors are the least demanding and easiest graders.

Likewise, education is about widening the students’ knowledge bases and skills, and for most students, that process is often uncomfortable. Courses that are primarily entertaining seldom stretch the students to improve their capabilities and understanding.

A rather wide range of studies show that the more student evaluations are employed as an evaluation tool, the greater the likelihood that the curriculum is being dumbed down. The age period when most students attend college is that period of their life when they’re the most self-centered and, therefore, the most resistant to change. It’s also the period when they need to come to grips with the fact that they are not special and that they are not the center of the universe. That’s a large part of what a good college education does. Students at this age evaluate based largely on what they want, not what they need. Giving them what they want is the easy way for colleges to fill seats… and create empty and/or closed minds.

When I taught, I had students who were offended by the beliefs and the words in certain assignments, and who wanted special assignments in place of those works assigned. There have been numerous court cases of students demanding not to have to read passages that conflicted with their personal and religious beliefs. A college education is not about restricting knowledge, but about exposing students to a wider range of information and opinion. They’re not required to agree with it, only to be exposed to it so that they know what it is and what it represents.

If these “myths” continue to proliferate, colleges will continue to become more like high schools… and neither the students, nor society, need another four years of high school.

An article in the latest Scientific American presents the case that the success of homo sapiens in dominating the planet and essentially wiping out the Neandertals and Denisovians, if not other yet undiscovered hominid species, resulted from the ability of humans to cooperate on a larger scale than other hominids.

It appears from the fossil and archeological evidence that we’ve so far discovered that Neandertals never congregated in large groups, and yet they were successful in making weapons and hunting rather large game. They were physically stronger than homo sapiens, and their brain size was comparable, possibly even larger. But it’s pretty clear that over time, they never had a chance once homo sapiens moved into the same territory.

The article also postulates that the human tendency toward cooperation is at least partly genetic. If so, this leads to a very interesting corollary – that prejudice indeed “has to be carefully taught.” And, in fact, human history bears this out in large degree. In every war and conflict that there appears to be a record of, and probably in all those without any records, at least one side has gone to great lengths to dehumanize the other side… and in many cases, both sides have attempted to dehumanize their opponents.

The same is true in terms of discrimination. From the beginning of slavery in the United States, blacks/Afro-Americans were considered inferior. Even the vaunted Constitution only counted each of them as three-fifths of a person. The same pattern exists with regard to gender discrimination, particularly of women, with pervasive and long-standing suggestions that women were inferior because they were “emotional” or “weak” or whatever else would make them “lesser” than men.

Yet experience, science, and history all refute such allegations. There have been great “black” civilizations and cultures and some pretty abysmal “white” ones. There has been no shortage of black “geniuses” or white idiots, or vice versa. And whenever women have been given equal opportunity and resources, they’ve done just as well as men in terms of intelligence and achievement… and in innumerable instances far better than the “best” men in almost any given field.

Given all this, it seems apparent that, because humans actually have a tendency to cooperate, dehumanization has become a cultural tool for overriding the cooperative trait and for gaining personal power. We don’t necessarily think of it that way, but even I find myself doing it, for instance, by calling people “idiots” when they do something stupid or thoughtless. Admittedly, individuals can be idiots, as we all know, but idiocy is generally individual, not cultural, and there’s a very fine line between accurately assessing someone’s lack of ability on an individual basis and applying that “lack” to an entire group in order to dehumanize them, yet dehumanization persists,and it’s usually used in pursuit or maintenance of power.

Some long months ago I contacted an organization about scheduling something. I waited, and waited, and heard no response. I tried again, and again. No response. I nosed around and found the personal email of the head scheduler, and inquired again. I got a curt response saying that I couldn’t be accommodated because I’d made my request too late, despite the fact that I’d made mine months before others who had been accommodated,although the scheduling was supposedly on a first come, first accommodated basis. When I pointed this out, the response was equally curt, to the effect that too many people had requested to be scheduled. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The personal email address was: Me@[person’s name].net.

I wondered about this. I have friends with email addresses such as Bob@BobZwerkel.net [this is fictional, I hope] or djs@djsplace.com, but then I started looking around, and discovered more than a few email addresses where the primary initial name was Me@ wherever.com. I think most of us use some identifier in our email address so that people can easily remember or find it, and I don’t think that’s particularly egotistical. Perhaps I’m just horribly outdated or old-fashioned, but using the word “me” as the initial identifier in the email address seems incredibly self-centered.

Is this another facet of the “Me” Generation? A blatant – or thoughtless – declaration to the world that “I’m the only important person at this address.”? A convenient quick decision with little consideration for what others just might think? A disregard for convention? Another generational thumbing of the nose at manners or what they believe to be phony and false modesty? Or something else entirely?

I have no idea, but, given the responses of the person whose email address spurred these thoughts, that person was anything but modest or helpful, and I have to wonder what percentage of the people who have email addresses at Me@me.com are that self-centered and dismissive.

Last week, a former fire fighter from a neighboring town was shot dead by a local police officer. The officer was responding to a 911 call that reported a man severely beating a child. When the officer approached, the man shouted something and raised a gun, aiming it directly at the officer. The officer fired twice.The man died on the way to the hospital.

The news story in the local paper had a headline that read, “Victim Had the Greatest Heart” or words to that effect, and went on to quote friends and relatives about how the victim was such a good person and how it was all such a tragic mistake. What was never mentioned was that the victim was indeed a very good person – when he was sober. What was not mentioned was that the dead man had a history of violent actions and arrests when he was intoxicated, and there was absolutely no doubt that the dead man had been carrying a loaded weapon.

Several of the other incidents that made headlines this past year featured similar cases, such as a young man who robbed a convenience store and attacked a policeman, and was shot by the officer, but whose family insisted he was a good-hearted young man. Or the young woman who tried to run down police officers on foot with her car. She had been previously arrested for various problems, including another high speed chase, but her family insisted she was a good girl. Or the St. Paul man who tried to run down two police officers with his SUV. Family said he was good hearted, despite the fact that he had a court-ordered restraining order because of violent actions. Or the Denver man with a felony record who was driving a stolen car and was shot when he tried to run down two police officers, also described by family as “good-hearted.”

I’m sorry. Good hearted people don’t beat up others. They don’t steal goods, money, or cars. They don’t try to run down police or shoot at them. And, if one of these so-called “good-hearted” individuals gets shot by police officers who are threatened with weapons or vehicular force, the officers shouldn’t be vilified. Yes, it’s always regrettable when a police officer has to use a weapon, especially when the results can be lethal… but in a nation with 300 million firearms, like it or not, there are going to be cases where people who break the laws and attack police in one way or another are going to be shot.

Just don’t tell the world that people who’ve perpetrated violence, robbery, and assault are good-hearted. That’s not helping anyone, especially those unfortunate unarmed individuals with no criminal record and no acts of violence who are truly good-hearted and still get shot, by either police or criminals.