Three years ago two tiger parks in India reported that while they had no tigers, they had plenty of officials to manage them. “State Minister of Forests Rajendra Shukla said that the [Panna National Park] reserve, which three years ago had 24 tigers, no longer had any … this is the second tiger reserve in India, after Sariska in Rajasthan, where numbers have dwindled to zero.” They ought to form a club with the Philppine forestry department, which has thousands of foresters and no forests left to manage either.
On second thought, the Indian park rangers ought to make common cause with educators. Despite the ever increasing amounts of money spent on educating elementary and high school students, and despite the relentless rise in the numbers of educators, the dropout rate in America is rising. Every 12 seconds, a student drops out. As an article in Education Week put it:
Every school day, more than 7,200 students fall through the cracks of America’s public high schools. Three out of every 10 members of this year’s graduating class, 1.3 million students in all, will fail to graduate with a diploma. The effects of this graduation crisis fall disproportionately on the nation’s most vulnerable youths and communities. A majority of nongraduates are members of historically disadvantaged minorities and other educationally underserved groups. They are more likely to attend school in large, urban districts. And they come disproportionately from communities challenged by severe poverty and economic hardship.
Advertisement
The problem, according to the artcle, is that the students are “underserved”. The solution to this problem therefore, is to increasing the size of the servings. Increase the portions.
But failing that, government can simply make it illegal for students to drop out, whether they are interested in what the educators serve up or not. NPR reports on President Obama’s proposal to require every kid to stay in school until 18.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on every state to require students to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18. “When students don’t walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma,” he said.
The White House cited studies that showed how raising the compulsory schooling age helps prevent kids from leaving school.
It makes sense in way. If a student is compelled to stay in school he can’t drop out. But maybe being “in school” is not always the same as learning. The NPR article quotes a skeptic who thinks that proscribing dropping out is useless.
But according to Russell Rumberger, an education professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of the book Dropping Out … all you have to do is look at the 21 states where the compulsory schooling age is already 18. In Nevada, the dropout rate is 58 percent; in Louisiana, it’s 43 percent; in California, it’s 37 percent. The other 18 states aren’t much better.
Then there are states like Kentucky, where kids can leave school as early as 16. That’s been the law since 1934, and yet in recent years, Kentucky has dramatically lowered its dropout rate by focusing on the causes.
Whatever cause Kentucky fixed, one cause that may afflict the whole edifice is that the educational system has to some extent, become about employing teachers rather than instructing students. Just as tiger reserves in India have become excuses to employ bureaucrats rather than having anything to do with tigers; just as the nonexistent forests in the Philippnes continue to require armies of foresters to manage them, so too do the hordes of dropouts require more teachers to serve them.
At least the teachers will have jobs. As the Cato Institute pointed out, “the assertions that public school employee unions seek to grow and to raise their members’ wages are entirely uncontroversial … It is also common knowledge that they consistently oppose ‘school choice’ programs that would ease parents’ access to competing nonunionized private and charter school alternatives.” It has been about jobs for a long time and nobody even denies that any more.
But once an organization’s purpose has shifted from its original mission to self-preservation the last link between logical cause and effect are severed. It becomes its own reason for existence. Cato notes that there is now no way to derail the vast public educational enterprise, whatever it does or not. Public sector unions have simply become too powerful to abolish.
In the vast majority of states, unions are free to use members’ dues for any political activity so long as the member has not submitted a formal request asking not to have their contributions used for that purpose. Not surprisingly, unions sometimes make this opting-out process difficult—such as by limiting the period during which members may opt out to just 30 days of the year, or even refusing to honor such requests unless workers file charges with the National Labor Relations Board.
Under these circumstances, the solution to every educational crisis will always be the same: throw more money — more payroll — at the problem. The AJC describes the administration’s plan to turn the dropout rate around. It quotes Education Secretary Arne Duncan who says the solution is more simple. Spend more money.
“President Obama’s agenda addresses the dropout crisis with an unprecedented commitment to turn around our lowest-performing schools, including the 2,000 high schools that produce half of our nation’s dropouts and as many as three-quarters of minority dropouts. With $4 billion available for these turnarounds, we have the resources to transform these schools from dropout factories to college graduation academies. Our agenda also includes new resources to support states’ efforts to build data systems that measure whether students are on track for graduation – and how to help them if they’re not.”
Maybe President Obama’s plan will work, and just maybe increasing the number of park rangers in India will bring back the tigers. But chances are they won’t. At any rate, the tigers may move to Texas. Texas?
CBS reports that Texas ranches have now become home to “more exotic wildlife than any other place on earth”. The ranchers have turned the preservation of exotic animals into a business and have outperformed every wildlife organization on earth. There’s only one catch: the ranchers make money while doing it.
The scimitar horned oryx . . . the addax . . . the dama gazelle – three elegant desert antelope that you’d hope to see on a journey through Africa, except that their numbers are dwindling there. Which is why Lara Logan went to Texas — yes, Texas. There, on large grassland ranches, some exotic species that are endangered in the wild have been brought back in large numbers. But there’s a catch: a percentage of the herd is hunted every year by hunters who pay big money for a big catch. The ranchers say this limited “culling” gives them the money they need to care for the animals and conserve the species. But animal rights activists don’t buy that argument, claiming the hunts are “canned” and that hunting is wholly inconsistent with conservancy …
It’s thanks to trophy hunters like Paul, who come here in the thousands to hunt these animals every year, sold on the idea of an African hunting experience in Texas. It’s open season on close to 100 species of exotic game all the time here because exotic animals are considered private property. Paul allowed us to come with him as he went on this hunt if we agreed to use only his first name. …
Here, he and a guide are searching for a scimitar horned oryx for him to take home as a trophy. If they find one, it’ll cost Paul $4,500. Other animals, like this dama gazelle, cost around $10,000. And the rarest, a cape buffalo, has a $50,000 price tag. Exotic wildlife has become a billion dollar industry in Texas supporting more than 14,000 jobs.
The rancher’s scheme sounds very much like the theory of sustainable forestry. Since animals — and trees — eventually die in the wild, the idea is to cull them at about the same die they would have died anyway. It’s not a new idea. Ray Bradbury described it years ago.
It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its delicate watchmaker’s claws close to its oily reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh. And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those two delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands which might pick up and examine men like toys, while the snake neck coiled. And the head itself, a ton of sculptured stone, lifted easily upon the sky. Its mouth gaped, exposing a fence of teeth like daggers. Its eyes rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of all expression save hunger. It closed its mouth in a death grin. It ran, its pelvic bones crushing aside trees and bushes, its taloned feet clawing damp earth, leaving prints six inches deep wherever it settled its weight …
“There’s the red paint on its chest!” …
The Monster, at the first motion, lunged forward with a terrible scream. It covered one hundred yards in six seconds. The rifles jerked up and blazed fire. A windstorm from the beast’s mouth engulfed them in the stench of slime and old blood. The Monster roared, teeth glittering with sun.
The rifles cracked again, Their sound was lost in shriek and lizard thunder … Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche, Tyrannosaurus fell. …
Another cracking sound. Overhead, a gigantic tree branch broke from its heavy mooring, fell. It crashed upon the dead beast with finality.
“There.” Lesperance checked his watch. “Right on time. That’s the giant tree that was scheduled to fall and kill this animal originally.” He glanced at the two hunters. “You want the trophy picture?”
A little gruesome. But at least there are tyrannosaurs in Bradbury’s world, not just Indian rangers. Readers of this site will recall this almost exactly mirrors the debate I had many years ago in the Philippines with the country representative of an international environmental organization. He was opposed to growing trees commercially on the flatland near the road. I argued that growing trees commercially would destroy demand for illegally logged timber because the sustainably grown commercial wood would undercut wood that had to be trucked in from the hills. His argument was ever the same: “Yes, but how can you manage trees for profit?” He fairly spat out the word.
Profit is the problem. Even if it saved trees. Profit is still the problem. Even if it saves tigers — or even students.
Why did the environmental organization country representative hate a solution which would obviously protect what remained of the forests? Maybe because environmentalism has long ago stopped having anything to do with the environment; and is now entirely about environmentalists. Just as the tiger parks are now all about Indian rangers; and the fictive Filipino forests are now about government foresters. It is not entirely impossible to one day have schools whose sole purpose is to warehouse the youth while the unionized teachers take home a paycheck.
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
Every 12 seconds, a student drops out.
Someone should have a talk with him, and maybe he’d stop. (rimshot)
I can’t get too excited about the schools these days until we have an economy students can graduate into anyway, but your point is valid, and I’m sorry about the tigers, too. Maybe we can depopulate Afghanistan, replant it to jungle or whatever tigers like, and take proper care of kitty. One problem solved, at least.
“it is not entirely impossible to one day have schools whose sole purpose is to warehouse the youth while the unionized teachers take home a paycheck.”
This closing line gets to the point. Teachers are paid based on attendance numbers, ie: quantity of customers. The teachers rightly equate population statistics with economic viability. With demographics in decline one would expect schools to be contracting. The high school I went to in Southern California was closed due to a diminishing student population and charter schools diminish this supply of students all the more. The problem with the teacher’s union approach is that it is entirely anti-market, anti-capitalism. It is corrupt in its design and has the added detriment to society by espousing goals that perpetuate their cronyism and market capture, in effect, it is a monopoly, the very kind that the teachers rail against. Teachers in California take students out to overpasses with signs to “protest” anti-profligate-spending bills.
Finally, how does it help the majority of students that a few thugs are compelled into the classroom by law? It is a step towards interment and state propaganda and military indoctrination. I’m agin it.
In the video presentation no-one mentions the elephant/ donkey in the room: the Feds MANDATE — by way of matching funds — of the union template, nationally.
—–
The Federalization of dang near everything is at the heart of America’s problems.
Let’s start with the Federal Income Tax. Its unstated presumption is that the cost-of-living is the same across the nation.
The premise is absurd. The Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Alaska — as well as major urban centers — require double and triple the national average — just to get by.
The DoD acknowledges just that when allocating off-base housing allowances for our service members.
—–
And then there’s the religious fervor surrounding the bizarre faith in a fully normed human genome.
If so, how to explain the Olympic Marathon and the NBA?
At least, in Europe, there’s a recognition that MOST of humanity is NOT well served by a college education.
Most people need — and want — to enter the adult world while still in their teens.
Beyond that, there’s the stigma that the educrats spew upon those disinclined to dance to their piper.
It is proclaimed far and wide that the ONLY way to success is via the NEA gauntlet.
Supreme Court activism in the last seventy years has done us in. Emotionally difficult cases make for BAD LAW.
—–
The tragedy of Dred Scott and Roe v Wade is that both FEDERALIZED issues that should have ALWAYS been remanded to the States.
Their bad example is now a staple of Court over-reach: we’ve got European style Federalism — which is to say no Federalism at all: it’s Centralism.
With it comes CENTRAL PLANNING and the hubris of our ‘betters’ now run amok — Leading us with behinds.
“and take proper care of kitty”
Josh, Afghanistan is one of the world’s largest sand boxes. Its’ so crazy, it might work!
well either there will be money for union teachers or there won’t be. looks like there won’t be. unions are like cancer, they never stop until the host is dead. in this case the union friendly states will die, leaving places like texas, etc to pick up the pieces.
“it is not entirely impossible to one day have schools whose sole purpose is to warehouse the youth while the unionized teachers take home a paycheck.”
This is, of course, the desired end state for the bulk of public sector workers. Bulletproof income stream security regardless of behavior with no metrics to meet, and “work” that never requires breaking a sweat. Private conversations with public employees in their few quiet honest moments will reveal that even many of them acknowledge that most of the work is done by one-third to one-half the workers, and that many of them would stay even if their pay was cut because they know that they could never survive in the private sector and that the lure of an unfireable job is really the only reason they took the position in the first place.
Like NMFS, which has three employees and grant recipients for every groundfish license in the Atlantic, when at the inception of Magnuson-Stevens the ratio was reversed, but no reduction in agency workforce or pay ever occurred.
Like the art teacher interviewed during the Wisconsin troubles, who said that there was no way to empirically measure her performance so that there existed no reason, ever, for which she could be fired.
The endpoint to this game is exactly as mentioned. Each time a community “fails” to raise its taxes, the municipality’s government threatens to shut the library or youth center three days a week. Never do they offer to take a small pay cut, or let employees go. This ultimately ends up with employees, with all their perfect income stream security, sitting home collecting their pay and benefits and the facility permanently closed. And the librarians demanding that the taxpayers hire another generation to sit home and do nothing and be compensated as though they were librarians when the current crop retires.
Do not think for an instant that the bulk of the public workforce would have the slightest moral qualm about letting this happen, should it transpire. Events in California, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin, and elsewhere are prima facie evidence that this is so.
3. blert
“And then there’s the religious fervor surrounding the bizarre faith in a fully normed human genome.”
Mister, you said a mouthful. This belief is so corrosive, and on so many levels.
The evidence of this corrosion surrounds like the ocean surrounds fish, yet the people who believe that we are all exactly equal either cannot or will not acknowledge it.
And ultimately, who would want to live in a world where there were no differences in talent, or skill? Sounds damned boring to me.
This hearkens back to an article I believe was posted here, by Wretchard himself, which described the evolution of a social program along the lines of “The Big Idea, The Big Man, The Big Whale” or something like that.
The moment we allowed public service unions to form, and allowed them to use dues to lobby, I believe we stepped from the “Big Man” portion of the evolution, straight to the Whale. As long as one half of our two-party system is slavishly beholden to these unions, nothing can be done to repair the education system. We are, not far from situation expressed in the final sentence of today’s article.
It’s one of the most depressing trends in our society today.
“With $4 billion available for these turnarounds, we have the resources to transform these schools from dropout factories to college graduation academies.”
What’s next? Do we mandate students stay in college until they’re 26 or have a masters degree? I guess that’s called sustainable education.
A note to the GOP candidates, you want my vote,it’s real simple, earn it. As it is, I feel I’m standing between Obama and the GOP. They both have a gun to my head. Obama’s going to pull the trigger and then dismember me. The GOP is just going to pull the trigger. Some choice.
If those tigers are forced to stay in school until they’re eighteen, it might all turn out right.
num @ 6: Private conversations with public employees in their few quiet honest moments will reveal that even many of them acknowledge that most of the work is done by one-third to one-half the workers, and that many of them would stay even if their pay was cut because they know that they could never survive in the private sector and that the lure of an unfireable job is really the only reason they took the position in the first place.
Well, sadly, the 80/20 rule is alive and well in every private sector job I’ve ever seen, too.
And over at one of your tax-supported TBTF bank jobs, my buddy was telling me he hadn’t had any work to do for three months, but they were going to extend his contract anyway, and he was going to take it, and now the news is that he’s going to be converted to a permanent position.
If only that woman’s husband could get a nice job offer like that, huh.
Do I blame my buddy for taking this? He’s good people, and pretty well skilled. He’s also around 60yo. I declined to stay in these kinds of positions, although I’m of that age as well, and am far from assured of getting equivalent (or any) income, even if I *do* work. Will my karma points balance my fate? I dunno, I’ll have go get on Google and ask Obambus about that.
“With $4 billion available for these turnarounds, we have the resources to transform these schools from dropout factories to college graduation academies.”
Wonderful! What’s next? Do we mandate these students stay in college until they’re 26 or have a masters degree? You know sustainable education.
A note to the GOP candidates. You want my vote, earn it. As it is I feel I’m standing between Obama and the GOP and they both have a gun to my head. Obama’s going to pull the trigger and dismember me. The GOP is only going to pull the trigger. Some choice.
Public sector unions have simply become too powerful to abolish.
Union payrolls, workers comp, health care, and pension liabilities make up the all-consuming majority of most state, county and municipal expenditures. County treasurers laugh when you ask them about discretionary spending – there isn’t any. Their annual budgets are almost entirely consumed by public union contractual obligations of one sort or another.
Abolishing public sector unions should be the numero uno target of anybody who really wants to reform government and not just talk about it. That would be a bigger pro-democracy boost than electing the “right” person to the WH.
$100 billion of the Stimulus-to-Nowhere went to “education.” Where it went is still a mistery. For that amount of money we could have bought Gingrich his Moonbase, and would’ve had enough left over to move Tiffany’s there just for Callista. And Duncan is talking about FOUR billion? What a piker!
I graduated from high school at 17 by accident of birth. Would a new law require that I stay another semester, instead of moving on to college as I did?
Has anyone followed the demonization of for-profit colleges? Again, that awful “profit motive” thing! Here’s what gets me about that:
For profit colleges (FPCs) have . . . how much facilities overhhead? Don’t they usually not have actual campuses, but rent commercial space? “Non-profit” universities (NPUs) have expensive campuses, which they continually love to expand. NPUs have sports teams with extravagantly-paid coaching staff, and college presidents who live in a schol-supplied mansion. And, by comparison, the FPCs have . . . what? Not even intramurals, not even a gym or gym classes, no cheerleaders, nada, zip. And more to the point: how do tuition rates at FPCs compare overall to “NPUs?” Are there any FPCs that cost, say, $45K/year? Even if there are some genuine results scandals with some FPCs, the real scandal is that a majority of today’s college “graduates” have, basically, and eigth-grade education coupled with an awful attitude.
“NPR reports on President Obama’s proposal to require every kid to stay in school until 18.”
Or what? Lock them up? Re-education camps? Considering they have no education to begin with, would it be redefined as a primary education camp? And if that works, why not make all schools education camps where you HAD to learn? (Whoa, that slope looks mighty slippery- better take a couple steps back)
Why not allow students to decide on one of two paths during high school, college bound or work bound? Whichever you choose you are trained appropriately. As my dad used to say, all dads probably (except liberal dads of course), the world needs plumbers and pipefitters too. Self-determination works pretty damned well in the military and very often you can cross-train into other fields. But then, you have to have graduated from high schools first. (sometimes a GED will suffice but only with good ASVAB scores).
Introduce them to hard-skill work training early and you can head off a lot of trouble.
“Readers of this site will recall this almost exactly mirrors the debate I had many years ago in the Philippines with the country representative of an international environmental organization.”
Is it in the archives?
Why not allow students to decide on one of two paths during high school, college bound or work bound? Whichever you choose you are trained appropriately.
When I was a boy in Italy, the divergence started after 5th grade: trade school — where you learned an actual trade skill and German (post-war Italy; Germany was the Marshall Plan powerhouse), or academic school, which started you on a path to a profession, even if it just meant working in a bank after graduating from public school; you could, after all, move up in the banking business from there, depending on how good or industrious you were.
Those were simpler times, but not so different that today’s Ameican public K-12 schools have any excuse for turning out “graduates” who spend — lierally — half their first two years’ college curriculum on remedial courses.
It must be an awful experience to have to endure the childish slop taught in schools. In my junior (and last) year in high school back in the early 60s, we still took turns reading out loud from our story books, stumbling over words such as ‘a’ and ‘the’.
I remain firmly convinced that education will improve only when we lower the educational requirements for teachers. It is only then that parents and students alike will accept a larger and more effective role in education
The end result will be a society as portrayed in the movie “Idioacracy.” Its a grossly fun and depressing movie, a huge satire on comtemporary society.
And this would differ from our current situation how, precisely?
THE PENDULUM
The pendulum never stops. When it begins at the top of its arc, favoring one over another, and forces are set in motion to bring it to equilibrium, it does not stop its swing when all is equal, it continues its swing to the top of the opposite arc until the one who was most disadvantaged is now the most advantaged. And so it goes, and so it shall always go.
The pendulum’s amazing grace
Is captured in its steady pace
It swings a measured arc in time
Steadfastness at its most sublime
And yet the pendulum disturbed
Can act in many ways perturbed
Once set in motion to correct
A perceived flaw that leads direct
To acts that cause the weight to swing
In greater arcs that soon will bring
A dislocation of the way
In which affairs of man obey
The laws of nature as defined
By mankind from time out of mind
For pendulums don’t ever rest
They do what they always do best
They rest not bottom of the arc
When seen no tigers in the park
But move yet still as they will please
Despite the lack of forest trees
The pendulum is never still
It swings eternal, always will
Given the state of higher education in America these days, maybe ‘dropping out’ is the rational thing to do. If one can overlook the social stigma that comes with leaving high school then he’ll grasp that it doesn’t necessarily mean that the ausgedropptkindern are in limbo, like overstocked rag dolls abandoned in a store closet somewhere.
No. At the early ages of 18, 17, 16, and even 15, a young man or lady may find gainful employment in the cash economy (where minimum wage laws hold no sway, and which evade statists’ best efforts at capture), gain admission to a for-profit vocational school which administers its own entry exams (rather than relying on unionized teachers’ “gold-stars-for-all” credentials in its admissions process), or try their hands at agency; she may go on to qualify for a real-estate agent’s cert, and he, an aircraft engine repairman’s degree.
The sky’s the limit.
And the early bird catches the worm. Could be those with the temerity to “drop out” will have the jump on those who don’t in the new-normal economy.
It is entirely possible that, released from the state’s mandatory campuses, an entire nation of “drop-outs” might chart entirely new courses for themselves. And ones far superior to the ‘lives’ that the visionaries in unionized academe have planned for them.
Here in the backwaters of the Socialist Workers Paradise of Michigan, a law went into effect in the not-too-distant past. In summary, if your municipality went bust, the state would appoint an Emergency Manager, and said manager now had the authority to tear up anything in order to get said municipality back to a positive cash flow. It should be noted that this new plan replaced an existing plan, which accomplished . . .. well . . . . nothing.
So, new system in place – check. Along comes a financially distressed municipality – check. EFM gets appointed – check. So far, all is running consistent with the previous plan. Until . . . . .
The EFM (Emergency Financial Manager, I believe) started making statements like “That contract will have to be modified” The local power brokers, in their confusion, responded, “Surely, good sir, you meant to say ‘studied?’ And, good sir, surely you have brought along a tidy sum of ‘stabilization’ funds from The Capital, which we could gladly help you direct to their best use?”
“No, we aren’t going to be doing that any more.”
I have lost track of how many times Rev. Jackson has come to that town, moaning over how the poor citizenry has been disenfranchised, and now the whole thing is going to a statewide referendum. It will be Wisconsin – but on a simmer over an election cycle versus the rolling boil they had.
To the posters who wonder how you break the public union cycle, believe it or not Michigan actually has the latest counter: “Go ahead and negotiate whatever you want, but when the bill comes due, know this – there will not be one damn dime of public money coming from Lansing to help you out. We’ll issue a steely-eyed forensic accountant instead. Happy days!”
r @ 23: there will not be one damn dime of public money coming from Lansing to help you out.
Lansing? Is that where money comes from? I always wondered.
I knew it wasn’t Washington or New York these days, I thought maybe Beijing, but I guess Lansing is as good as anywhere. I’ll send out a tweet, hope that Jerry Brown is following, expect to see him there shortly, large empty buckets in hand. Don’t you know we in California need a 400mph train between Bakersfield and Fresno? Do you know how many undocumented immigrants we need to pay, to build something like that? Lansing will be proud.
I’ve come to the realization that term limits for teachers would work. Say you could only teach in public education 10 years. After ten years you have to get a job in “the real world.” Some teachers would come straight out of college, do their bit and move along into the normal economy; no big change from the present. But you’d have a big influx of folks from the normal economy assume the teaching role – with real world experience. Virtually every managerial job involves some degree of teaching your employees, educating your vendors or customers, etc. I did some substitute teaching years ago and frankly – there is not magical skill taught in and “Education” class that isn’t as easily picked up in the workplace by your standard, run of the mill “leader.” As a plus, this would mitigate the pension liabilities and eliminate tenure effectively. And of course gifted teachers – those who have a natural knack to convey info clearly (NOT something learned at teacher’s college) could always teach later in private school or in private industry or at college level. Would the teacher’s unions hate this? Absolutely. Is there any proof that this would result in poorer education for students that the current dysfunctional system? Your call.
#11 Josh
I’m going to have to disagree with much of your post.
Is the impulse to paycheck uber alles and some of the 80/20 thing extant in the private sector, as you say? It is, but…..
-the way the public sector is set up, it is a natural magnet for those whose goal is, entirely or nearly entirely, that the position is a guaranteed paycheck and pension NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS IN THE WORLD OR WHAT I DO/DON”T DO, and damn the task that the position is ostensibly supposed to do. The level to which this motivation exists in the private sector is not at the same level. Never. Ever. Not even close.
-the examples you give for the private sector are limited. If you’re talking about TBTF banks or rent-seeking, regulation-dependent institutions, or government contractors, I would argue that they aren’t true private sector, and don’t have the same constraints and dynamics that the private sector truly has.
-even if individuals like this occur in the true private sector, they run up against two inexorable forces that will either remove them or force a change of behavior, to wit: the ability to be fired QUICKLY for cause which negates the drooled-after perfect job security, and authentic competition which limits the ability for advancement if competence or work ethic isn’t present.
I give you a lot of credit for not staying in that sort of a position and it’s a measure of the type of human being that you are that you behave the correct way. Good for you.
nmu @ 26: I’m going to have to disagree with much of your post.
Well, I wish I could, too.
Remember, creative destruction is a big part of capitalism and markets. We are still a rich and fat society, and there is a lot of cargo cult entrepreneurial system, rent-seekers in the VC ecologies, not just in the TBTF world. I can tell you stories of people who have long records of failure, yet they are given new opportunities just about endlessly. Remember the VC rule, one out of ten is good enough, and there are nine out of ten willing to play the other roles.
I certainly know how many civil servants can hardly even be found, much less found to be doing the work they are paid for. Standards are *slightly* higher in the private sector, yet I’ve had that where-is-George experience in the private sector, too. George is at his other job, is where George is. Give George credit for effort, I guess.
What I see at Megabank is our (!) love for the H-1B workers, a nice third-world, entitlement, rent-seeking culture at the lower levels. Results are not really ever the point, and appropriately nor are they forthcoming, and there is amazingly little management upset at this at the first *six* or so levels of “management”, and if there is any upset at the *next* six or so levels of management, it is effected by alternative expenditures, not by cleaning up the mess.
Is it worse in civil service? The Russian tradition says it all, “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”. But then it gets even worse when government contracts that stuff to EDS or Accenture, maybe the work gets done but at IMMENSE costs. The world can be very difficult.
–
I give you a lot of credit for not staying in that sort of a position and it’s a measure of the type of human being that you are that you behave the correct way. Good for you.
Well, don’t be too quick in your praise, I certainly sat through a couple of months of very marginal project, I did keep trying, but there was little point to it. Perhaps I stayed because leaving would have hurt someone’s feelings, yeah, that’s my story. But in my next opportunities I was not asked to do nothing, first I was given six months to do six days work, and I did, and then I was asked to start efforts that would have been utterly worthless but were going to cost the budget millions – and were being managed completely against all official process, and nobody cared in the least. All of that I found more offensive than doing nothing, and I pleaded artistic differences or something and walked away. Perhaps I should have made my position clear to someone in a position of authority, but no, I just go on the Internet and whine about it. Modern life.
–
But on another topic entirely, a more cheerful note:
https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/bullet/
Sandia’s self-guided bullet prototype can hit target a mile away
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M — Take two Sandia National Laboratories engineers who are hunters, get them talking about the sport and it shouldn’t be surprising when the conversation leads to a patented design for a self-guided bullet that could help war fighters. (Click here for a video showing the prototype’s flight.)
Sandia researchers Red Jones and Brian Kast and their colleagues have invented a dart-like, self-guided bullet for small-caliber, smooth-bore firearms that could hit laser-designated targets at distances of more than a mile (about 2,000 meters).
…
What these are, are little $150, 4-inch guided missiles!
Now and then, your tax dollars at work, come up with a winner!
(hat tip to New Scientist)
Saw an interesting little piece on FNC the other day. It seems a teacher no longer wanted to be part of the union and quit it. He was presented with a bill from the teacher’s union for something like $538.00, the cost of ‘services” provided by the union for negotiating on his behalf. He is going to court on the issue.
Here, public schools are being closed due to the reduction in property tax revenues that accompanied the housing bust. Each time this occurs there is outrage and people complain that sufficient support is not being given to education. But apparently they just want the money to come from a stash somewhere.
2009Refugee #23:
That’s interesting new concerning Michigan. I wish them luck. But frankly, I kind of hope that the recall against Gov Walker, who turned Wisconsin around so well, is successful. Probably the best thing that could happen would be for Gov Walker to be replaced by yet another union toadie and then the whole place goes to hell. I have nothing against Wisconsin, but somebody’s got to serve as an example. And if the people in Wisc can’t serve as a good one they may as well serve as a bad one.
Obama’s plan to keep them all locked up until age 18 is another page straight out of the EuroTrash handbook. If those youths are not out on the streets looking for work, they don’t show up in the unemployment figures. The rate is going below 8%, whatever it takes!
Next page from the EuroTrash handbook is to start demanding 3 or 4 years of college to do jobs which really don’t require it. That’s another 3 or 4 years of someone out the labor pool.
Full employment, here we come! Just don’t count the number of people who actually have jobs.
Josh – California’s problem is different. The ‘no more sugar’ message can only come from Washington. I understand the snark, though. Here in flyover country we used to joke that every time a squirrel met a tire on a California highway, Bill Clinton would issue another couple billion of disaster area relief.
I don’t offer the Michigan example as anything but a template: if you cut off the funding that falls out of the sky, you get the parasite constituencies to turn on each other. If you weaken them that way, they can be defeated. I have no idea if it is scalable to the point that Washington could tell Gov Moonbeam to build any train he wants – on his own dime. Obviously, under current management, it’s not likely.
That said, there are enough states biting their own bullet that it’s not beyond imagination – someday.
RWE – intersting point, but I love a good underdog story. I’d like to see him stick around.
““When students don’t walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma,” he said.”
SNAP-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…
Forcing students to stay in school longer might help in some situations (it gives some students a extra chance), but if they leave at 18 just as poorly educated as if they had left at 16, then it didn’t help them one bit.
Technically, I am something of a high school dropout, as I never bothered getting a diploma or GED. I took a few electives at the local high school because they were of value to me, but otherwise I just skipped the high school classes and at the age of 16 enrolled at the local community college instead. Admittedly, that may not work for everyone, as there are certainly those for whom the repetition is beneficial. However, my suspicion is that 4 years of high school are unnecessary for many people, at least for purely academic reasons. There may be other benefits, such as access to sports and social activities, but those pale in comparison to the priority we ought to place on actual education.
Josh, I agree that very large private sector companies end up having an awful lot of useless layabouts and people doing less than nothing. I think that’s just the way things work at a certain scale, and there is not yet any known way to avoid this.
However, if a private sector firm is pulling along many barnacles, at least the firm is earning the money to keep them along for the ride. The public sector, of course, is taking the money at gun point from private sector workers. So ethically speaking, free-riders in the public sector are significantly more egregious than those in the private sector.
The POTUS’ plan is just another “one size fits all” progressive fantasy of a well-programmed and propagandized population segment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvPpAPIIZyo
I am a recent retiree who has gone back to college to study history, a long time dream of mine. I had not written an academic essay since 1969, so I was understandably quite nervious about being in classes with students who had just graduated from high school and were accustomed to working in an academic atmosphere. In very short order I discovered that my classmates were unmotivated, lacked a knowlege of elimentary school grammar, had not background in history, and were rarely prepared for class. I may have been rusty but my classmates were grossly inferior to me. When a 62 year old pensioner is consistantly the star of his college class there is somethig drasticly wrong with our public education system.
35/OB—
I did the same thing when I took off two years at age 48. I was older than all but one of my professors. It was easy and with a few exceptions my impressions of the students was the same as yours. The exceptions were the ones who were working and going to school at the same time.
I’m with peterike on the public versus private waste fraud and abuse. One has a self limiting control based on cash flow and a board of directors and the other has a board of directors that votes to requisition money from those who have no say in it.
I just recently started working again and had the worst day yet because I have finished my hot projects and the others that I have submitted are in for “review”. I was not busy and I hate it. Yet I must hope that they have more in store for me. I am used to being worked to death and not appreciated so I guess I am just a masochist.
Murder is a crime…. suicide?
octa bright – When a 62 year old pensioner is consistantly the star of his college class there is somethig drasticly wrong with our public education system.
True but it also says that our 60 something pensioners are a treasure that we should not dissuade from being productive in our society. The baby boomers could create their own nation out of dirt and sand and make it shine. I am sure that is how John Galt would feel.
and I add, education should not be bought with borrowed money for most, it should be earned while going to school. Parents try to shield their children from real work, thinking they should have degrees before they dirty their hands and ‘educators’ are happy to see money poured into mediocre learning.
Joosh #24:
When that supertrain was going to be built here in Florida the Mayor of Tampa made one of the all time great statements I have ever heard from a politican:
“I hope that the government pays for the entire cost of the train so that they taxpayers won’t have to.”
This is even better than the Yerps in the street saying the banks should pay for everything if the government does not have enough money for all their welfare programs.
Admittedly, the Mayor no doubt meant that if the All The Other Taxpayers paid for the train then His Taxpayers would not have to. But no doubt Gov Moonbeam The 2nd views things the same way.
octa bright
“When a 62 year old pensioner is consistantly the star of his college class there is somethig drasticly wrong with our public education system.”
I have to disagree.Not with there being something wrong with public education but that a 62 year old shouldn’t be the star of his history class.
You’re 40 years older than your classmates. That’s 40 years of living history, so to speak, and most likely a few years in the school of hard knocks, which is the best education of all.
OK, Wretchard. Let me see if I have this right. We start right away shipping American school teachers, Indian tiger guards and Philippino foresters to Texas. Ranchers there feed them and fatten them up, then someone comes to shoot them. It sounds like it makes sense, but who will that be again who shoots them? High school students, right? F
I marvel at a strangely shaped volume from the 1950′s that my dad gave me. It is a treatise and instructional pamphlet on penmanship. Remember penmanship?
They don’t teach it anymore, not here in Virginia at least. Educators here mock the very attempt.
The world, in their eyes, will conform to their projected trends. Their world respects critical thinking over motor skills.
What is important is that you buy into their planning. That your writing is legible, or even fundamentally comprehensible, well, less so.
To steveaz #22:
My nephew did exactly that.
He attended a Philly public high school for two weeks, determined that it was a waste of time, dropped out, went to community college and obtained Microsoft certification and joined the Geek Squad at age 18 with a car he could drive home.
He is now in management at Best Buy; they have not asked him for further credentials, like, oh say, a high school diploma or GED.
A little semantic confusion on the part of our esteemed host needs correcting. Teachers teach and Educators do not. An Educator is an senior functionary who spends little or no time in a classroom. They are ostensibly managers but in fact they are really administrators. The days when the Principal was really the Principal Teacher are long gone. Dysfunctional organizations, including almost all government entities and most large corporations these days, are distinguished by the domination of the Human Resources Department, which is often stuffed with lawyers and diversity coordinators, and the reduction in the role of what once was management. In a successful organization managers hire and fire and the Personnel Department maintains records and issues paychecks.
No unwilling student should be forced into a classroom. To do so is to trample on the rights not only of that student and possibly their parents or guardians, best not to assume family structure, but also the rights of the other students. That does not mean that the disruptive student should be allowed to win by opting for a day turning a profit as a street pharmacist. My suggestion is to sit them in a room with two screens and headphones and let them choose between watching Charlie Rose or Milton Friedman. Let them be Free to Choose.
I once told Roy Innis of Core that he should move against the teachers unions and he should base his argument on the XIIIth Amendment.
Josh@27: “Sandia researchers Red Jones and Brian Kast and their colleagues have invented a dart-like, self-guided bullet for small-caliber, smooth-bore firearms that could hit laser-designated targets at distances of more than a mile (about 2,000 meters).”
Hmmm. Reminds me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pxjnl1yuXk
17. Don Rodrigo
“Why not allow students to decide on one of two paths during high school, college bound or work bound? Whichever you choose you are trained appropriately.
In the U.K. in the 1950′s there was a similar divergence at age 11 to the one you describe for Italy. We all took a standardized exam called “the 11+” in grade 5. If you passed you went on to grammar school. If you failed you went on to trade school. I don’t know what the pass mark was – it was fairly high and may have been 80%? Not sure. There was plenty of time allowed to do the exam – at least 60 minutes I think.
Here is an actual exam from the 1950′s, for eleven year olds, no calculators allowed. I’ve posted this before because it’s a great illustration of the difference between going to school to learn and going to school to feel good. As in your Italy, in 1950′s U.K. by the sixth grade students had already been sorted into trade schools and grammar schools. I don’t know how the fifth grade students from today’s Feelgood High would perform on an exam like this. It would probably be banned by the school because it would hurt the kid’s feelings, or something.
GENERAL ENGLISH
1. Make adjectives from these nouns: beauty, slope, glass, friend, doubt, expense, delight, sleep, danger, sport.
2. Write these lines of poetry in the usual way, putting in capital letters and the correct punctuation: the evening is coming the sun sinks to rest the rooks are all flying straight home to the nest caw says the rook, as he flies overhead it’s time little people were going to bed.
3. Choose the correct word from those in brackets:
a) She gave the (fare, fair) to the conductor.
b) I am (confidant, confident) of success.
c) Why does she (die, dye) her hair?
d) His sister has (wrote, written) him a letter.
e) The screw fell off because it was (lose, loose).
4. Fill in the relative pronoun in the following sentences:
a) That is the coat ………. my brother took away.
b) The man to ………. I spoke was very disagreeable.
c) The boy ………. ball I kicked was offended.
d) The man ………. does his duty is always brave.
e) He asked me ………. I intended to do.
5. Each of the following sentences contains one error. Re-write the sentences correctly:
a) This is not an Infant’s School.
b) I am told that Tom Jones’s brother have won a scholarship.
c) The bishop and another fellow then entered the hall.
d) When the dog recognised me it wagged it’s tail.
e) The matter does not concern you or I.
f) Talking to my friend, the bus passed me.
COMPREHENSION
Read the following:
‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said, ‘And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head – Do you think, at your age, it is right?’
‘In my youth,’ Father William replied to his son, ‘I feared it might injure the brain; ‘But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none, ‘Why, I do it again and again.’
‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘as I mentioned before, ‘And have grown most uncommonly fat;
‘Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door – ‘Pray, what is the reason of that?’ ‘In my youth,’ said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, ‘I kept all my limbs very supple.
‘By the use of this ointment – one shilling the box – ‘Allow me to send you a couple?’
Now answer these questions:
a) Father William was certainly a queer man. Mention two queer things that he did.
b) When he was young, Father William thought that one of his pranks might do him harm. When he was old, he changed his mind. Why?
c) What does ‘incessantly’ mean? What is a back-somersault?
d) What does the word ‘supple’ mean? How did Father William keep supple? Do you keep supple in the same way?
e) What signs of old age did Father William show?
ARITHMETIC
Read the following:
1. 3,755 is multiplied by 25 and the result is divided by 125. Write down the answer.
2. A motorist leaves home at 10.15am and drives at 32 miles per hour. He stops for lunch from noon to 1.45pm and then continues his journey at 30 miles per hour. How many miles has he travelled by 5pm?
3. An aeroplane uses 100 gallons of petrol for a flight of 150 miles. How far could it fly using 40 gallons?
4. Write in figures: twelve thousand and twelve.
5. A race started at 23 minutes past three and finished at 23 minutes to four. How long did it take?
6. Simplify:
a) 1,000 – 10
b) 25 x 12
c) 615 divided by 3
d) 0.5 + 0.75
e) The fractions 4/5 – 7/10
7. Of 800 people living in a village, half are men and half women. A quarter of the men leave the village to join the army. How many more women then men now remain?
8. Multiply 7,296 by 479.
9. Which of these numbers is divisible by 4 without any remainder: 214, 230, 226, 224, 218?
10. Add all the odd numbers between 12 and 20.
GENERAL INTELLIGENCE/KNOWLEDGE
Read the following:
1. The letters ERBDA are just the letters of the word BREAD mixed up. Now, straighten up the following:
a) AAANNB is a fruit which comes from abroad.
b) ROHES is a large animal.
c) GRATEAMR is a girl’s name.
d) DWEBORRA is an article of furniture.
e) SAIRINS are used in Christmas puddings.
2. Select and write down one of the answers below which makes the best answer to the following:
A woman who had fallen into the water was dragged out in a drowning condition by a man, but she did not thank him because:
a) She never felt thankful for small things.
b) She did not know the man well enough.
c) She was feeling better.
d) She was still unconscious.
3. Complete the following by giving words expressing sound and ending in ‘ing’.
e.g. the humming of telephone wires.
a) the …………….. of leaves
b) the …………….. of anvils.
c) the …………….. of brakes.
d) the …………….. of stairs.
4. In each of the sets of words given below there is one word meaning something rather different from the other three. Find the different word in each line and write it down:
a) alike, same, similar, somewhat.
b) pigeon, duck, goose, swan.
c) bus, conductor, passenger, driver.
d) this, that, the, those.
e) firm, rough, solid, hard.
f) desk, book, cupboard, drawer.
g) spade, earth, sand, gravel.
h) pretty, nice, charm, lovely.
i) justice, merciful, pitying, forgiving.
j) tumbler, cup, mug, jug.
k) fishing, rowing, climbing, swimming.
l) scarlet, blue, red, pink.
m) sewing, cotton, needle, calico.
5. Each of the following sentences here can be made into better sense by interchanging two words.
Re-write the sentences correctly: E.g. Milk like cats – Cats like milk.
a) Our black cat had a retriever with the fight next door.
b) The sea went to the family for a swim.
c) The shepherd whistled by the gate and stood to his dog.
d) A was stung by Joan bee.
e) Sailors have to climb able to be.
It was Rush Limbaugh who said Liberals finally settled on being champions of the environment because trees, rocks and tigers can’t say “no thanks, go away.”
Incidentally, I once worked on a white paper that I never finished for the design of a smart bullet. The basic design was a bullet that had an IR lens, a quadrature detector, a microprocessor, a coin battery and piezo-electric actuators for control. The actuators had power issues so I started to look to design a silicon micro-gate. The ballistics could programmed in the barrel. Where I went off the deep end is when I started to design it to ignite a small rocket motor at apogee. A little more sophistication and it would be effective against low flying aircraft. Anyhow, fun stuff. My career in weapons design, racing yachts, and motorsports never really took off. Too bad, I work on a bunch of boring crap.
Steve @46,
Unfortunately, the exam you posted uses the word “queer.” The word, when it is not uttered by a ‘bi-spirited’ or openly gay speaker, is taboo on the grounds that it is hate speech.
Change “queer” to “odd,” and California’s public school system might let their 8th graders take your test. But leave “queer” in, and some student union group will have you hoisted on your petard!
Jon @ 32:
“There may be other benefits, such as access to sports and social activities, but those pale in comparison to the priority we ought to place on actual education.”
Ah, but that’s the problem right there. I would surmise that American schools are the only ones in the world that put a higher premium on students’ social lives than their academic ones. If I was supreme leader for one day, I would suspend all sports programs and social activities at any high school with a drop out rate higher than 5%.
My family has recently started home schooling. In three months (for a 6th grade student), we completed the entire 7th grade year of Saxon Math. We will have 8th grade completed by late spring.
This is working at a leisurely pace, mind you. We spend about 3.5 hours a day on literature, writing, grammar, mathematics, history, science, and music. We will be adding in a foreign language sometime this spring. I get to learn it too (and hopefully Rosetta Stone is as good as they claim)!
No stress or overload, and if my daughter doesn’t grasp a concept on the first try, we work until it is mastered.
For social activities, we have Book Club, 4H (drama, costuming, rabbits, and poultry), all types of sports depending on the season, and riding lessons/riding club. We will be adding lessons in self defense/gun training at some point through the Appleseed program-plus other activities as Curious Sarah develops her interests.
Best of all, I get to spend lots of time with my girl, and I am enjoying every minute of it (even the pre teen moments).
HER plan (not mine) is to finish High School work ASAP, get her certification as a Monty Roberts join-up techique horse trainer by 16, then on to college and train as a vet with a specialty in (surprise) horses. Why the heck should she be warehoused in a big box school until she is 18? Ridiculous!
My grandkids will never see the inside of a public school if I can help it (and I come from a family of teachers)!
43 Joan, get your nephew to read this from Forbes:
Best Buy going out of business…
Why everything seems to be going swimmingly until it doesn’t. We are in the Railroad Business, right?
tom
E2 @ 50
On the contrary, social and physical development has long been a cornerstone of the most successful school system, the British ‘Public’ schools, in fact it is probably what differentiates them from British state schools.
It is also well known that giving a student a reason to be in school, eg. being a member of a sports team, is a strong incentive to stay in school and that also goes for many social activities, clubs, groups etc. Our problem, (Canadian public schools) is that we do not have the resources to provide these opportunities and the attractiveness of the alternatives, electronic games, TV, etc has grown literally exponentially.
The sad part is that a really good round education gives you the wherewithal not just for work but for living well too and that is what I most regret about the deficiencies of today’s education environment.
51. Beth:
I want to point you to this humanities website for history (especially American), social studies and literature:
http://edsitement.neh.gov/
It also has a huge index of humanities websites as resources, plus interactives, and links to other subject matter sites.
46. stevesmith
In the U.K. in the 1950′s there was a similar divergence at age 11 to the one you describe for Italy. We all took a standardized exam called “the 11+” in grade 5. If you passed you went on to grammar school.
Yes, I took such a test.
When my parents moved back to the U.S. the following year I found American 6th grade to be no challenge at all, except for having to deal with adolescent girls (Italian schools were segregated by gender).
The solid imprinting my young brain got from 4 years of Italian schooling (I took 1st and 2nd grade in one year) carried me all the way through American high school, even though I was often an indifferent student.
I am convinced that most Americans ought to be able to get a superb education in the 13 years of K-12, IF the little buggers were made to actually work at it, and the subject matter was more challenging and substantive. Note that I left out pre-school, which the Moon-bound school kids of the 30′s and 40′s never needed.
My understanding is that for millenia the purpose of education was to delve into and learn about the philosophical and material underpinnings of life, civilization and culture with a view to try and produce a better human being. With the expansion of education availability in recent centuries the purpose drifted from producing a better human being to producing a “good citizen” with the latter gradually eclipsing the former as the primary goal. Neither concept has vanished entirely and there is still a strong notion that education can produce both a good person and a good citizen. The problem is that the curricula presented is aimed at neither result though it is still assumed that both of these are being accomplished.
The study of philosophy and religion, for many centuries the backbone of education, have been reduced to electives or eliminated altogether (as near as I can tell these subjects have vanished completely in government schools). And along with this has come a gradual deemphasis on history, literature and the arts which, being the vehicles by which the values of religion and philosophy were delivered to the mass of people, were reduced in importance as the primary subjects were being dismissed. Math and science are fading as well but still hold some importance because one of the goals of education these days is to produce someone who can function well enough to get a job and produce goods or services. However, with the rise of various isms over the last two centuries or so education has come more and more to become a vehicle for indoctrination into specific avenues of thought and behavior. The goal is not to “broaden horizons” but to pare these down and set people within narrow borders. And if science and math make this more difficult to accomplish then these subjects too will be marginalized or modified in such a way as to reinforce those borders.
All of which is a long way of saying that education for its own sake is idiocy and that what is taught is more important than the mere fact of being taught at all. Education has gone from a pursuit of truth to a pursuit of political orthodoxy. Small wonder our schools produce more and more functional illiterates or credentialed ignoramuses. I do not blame young people for dropping out of schools that teach them nothing meaningful or useful. Human beings crave meaning and the desire to be useful and to accomplish meaningful things is very powerful and when thwarted humans sometimes strike out on their own to learn these things or they sink into apathy and just drift along to graduation and the possession of a piece of paper that is becoming more and more untrustworthy as verification that the possessor knows anything at all. And without good counsel and guidance and some knowledge of the morality, traditions and lore preserved by people over thousands of years some young people, not being grounded in anything resembling a moral framework that teaches anything beyond taking what you want and hating whatever prevents you from taking what you want will make very bad choices in life and damage or destroy not only themselves but many others who get in the way of their desire.
Are teachers who teach nothing useful or meaningful or park and forest managers who have nothing to manage to be wondered at?. What could these people do if they did not have these sinecures? Right now the state can provide for such as these but it is now becoming more and more clear that the state may not be able to support these sort for much longer. People with actual educations have seen this coming for decades. Now the possibility – no – probability of this happening is slowly gelling into a certainty and millions are terrified of this looming future. And because they see themselves as unable to do anything else and certainly unable to do anything that will keep them living anywhere near the lifestyle to which they are accustomed they have no choice but to fight tooth and nail to preserve what they have and if the whole mess collapses they can take comfort in knowing that virtually everyone else will go down with them. And there is no shortage of politicians who will use this fear to mobilize these people in an effort to take and hold power.
As we post and blog there is an enormous webinar being conducted in the U.S. by the Dept. of Ed. Arne Duncan, hundreds of scholars, thousands of teachers, and over a million students are (supposedly) participating in the Digital Learning Webinar. As a matter of fact, today, Feb. 1st, is to be declared Digital Learning Day. Woo Hoo! PHHHHHHTTTTTTT ! ! ! !
One more gigantic orgy of vainglorious flapdoodle that serves no other purpose but to pretend to fix something, while hiding the actual purpose: to create new categories of high-paying, parasitic, publicly-funded positions for people who will accomplish nothing and benefit no students whatsoever.
And may I remind you, again, that $100 billion of the Stimulus was earmarked for education. That’s $100 billion on top of the vast sums already being spent to ill-educate American kids and young adults. Since the likely timeline for spending that $100 bil is 3-4 years, that is comparable, in constant dollars, to the highest amounts spent on the Apollo program over the 3-4 years of maximum budgeting for that program. What exactly is this huge sum supposed to be buying? There is no way it can be spent in a few years, so where is it really going?
But the Educational experts believe that school should teach the “correct” values of social justice. Three guesses as to what “correct” means. Here is the correct point of view from a Canadian expert, as reported in the National Post.
However, Charles Ungerleider, a sociology professor at the University of British Columbia and former B.C. deputy minister of education, thinks it’s important that schools get into teaching ethics and values because that is “one of the strengths of schooling in a democratic society.”
“Parents are the primary educators of their kids and the primary communicators of values,” he said. “But the reason that we send children to public school is, in fact, to develop and inculcate the values we all share and to overcome any limitations a parent may have in exposing kids to alternative points of view.”
You see, those gosh darn parents have values not shared by educators. It is the duty of public school to overcome any points of view or values that the poor kids may have picked up from those limited and very annoying people who call themselves mom and dad. The expert’s “we” in “we all share” is undoubtedly a reference to the Teachers Union. Reading, writing, math, history, biology, physics, chemistry, geography, geology, foreign languages, art, literature, curiosity, clear thinking and competitive sports, apparently are not as important as indoctrination with the progressive values shared by members of the Teachers’ Union.
These educational experts and their young victims seem to believe that perpetual prosperity of developed countries is a given. That just isn’t true, any more than perpetual poverty of third world and developing countries is a given. Ignorant lazy people can’t compete with knowledgeable, hungry, hard working people no matter how much self esteem the incompetent slackers may have.
!$%?!!??*&!!!, bad public education is irritating.
Why thank you, Don Rodrigo!
It still amazes me how much good material is out there, much of it for free.
Sadly, I think that much of what is called “education” in the US has turned into a political slush fund, since the naive and the generous are
easily touched by appeals “for the children”.
That being said, I know quite a few decent and even wonderful teachers. However, the system itself (at least in my state, California) is rotten.
Why thank you, Don Rodrigo!
It still amazes me how much good material is out there, much of it for free.
Sadly, I think that much of what is called “education” in the US has turned into a political slush fund, since the naive and the generous are
easily touched by appeals “for the children”.
That being said, I know quite a few decent and even wonderful teachers. However, the system itself (at least in my state, California) is rotten to the core.
#56 Sen. Blutarsky
You post nails the dynamic and motivation and officiousness of the public sector of which I speak with diamond clarity.
Those few paragraphs should be required reading for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. Possibly the entire West.
Thank you and post more often. Please.
Chris @ 53
I’m not saying that sports and other activities are bad, but they should always take a backseat to academics. So, if you have schools that are failing academically, I think the natural thing is to drop the sports programs until the academics turn around. Most schools in the US have a policy that kids have to earn a 2.0 (C grades) average to play sports, so for the kids that are already failing and at risk of dropping out, sports aren’t going to keep them in school.
Additionally, Americans’ obsession with sports has a detrimental effect on all other extra-curricular activities. I would guess that most schools budget way more money for their football teams alone than they do for the band, orchestra, choir, drama program, debate team, etc.