A clever, if disturbing, email is making its way around the internet this week… retelling Aesop’s classic story of The Ant and the Grasshopper, in a modern version… and I’ve become concerned about our public education system.
The email begins by sharing the “Old Version” with its “Old Moral”.
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
Not an exact translation of the original story… but close enough for government work. For readers who want to double-check the interpretation, here’s the Latin version:
Formicae fruges per hiemem humectatas siccabant. Has adit cicada, esuriens, et rogat paululum cibi ut sibi impertiant.
Cui illae, “Aestate,” inquiunt, “quaerere te oportuit.” “Non vacabat,” inquit cicada.
“Quid faciebas igitur?” “Cantationibus operam dabam,” inquit. Tum illae, “Si cecinisti,” inquiunt, “aestate, hieme saltato.”
We’re then treated to the “Modern Version” — an commentary on the modern Welfare State — which begins like this:
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving. CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to display pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
The “Modern Version” then proceeds to roll out a string of famous personalities — Kermit the Frog, Oprah, Reverend Al Sharpton, former President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among various other entities — to comment on the situation and suggest ways of transferring some of the Ant’s wealth to the Grasshopper.
But in the end, progressive government policies end up destroying the US economy, and the Free World collapses.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2020.
A couple of interesting, if contrasting, morals. But what has me concerned is the obvious failure of our modern American system of education.
We note that, in both versions of this fable, the Ant is referred to as “he.” But it’s common knowledge — or at least, it should be common knowledge — that the worker ants in a colony are females. The male ants mostly sit around, waiting for a chance to mate with the Queen, while the women are doing all the work of building the colony and laying up the supplies for winter.
But the person who composed the “Modern Version” of this fable consistently references the Ant as a male. I’m appalled that a modern writer — even if they’re politically conservative — would have so little respect for the labor contributed by the female of the species, as to credit all the productive work to a male.
Sure, we could argue that ants are very small animals, and not everyone is perceptive enough to notice that worker ants are females. But that argument only supports my disappointment with modern public schools.
If you look in the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 6, in the King James Version (translated in 1611), you will find this reference to ants:
Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler.
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?
If the people of England, back in 1611, understood that worker ants were females… but a conservative commentator in 2020 refers to a worker ant as “he”… What hope do we have for the future of our country?
Indeed. When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.