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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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Sep 12, 2010 - 12:12am PT
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You boys are over thinking this one yet again.
Prattling on about parental involvement and lack of standards when the REAL problem with our current education system is quite simple.
To wit, it fervently believes and is solely based upon the notion that ALL children are destined to become highly educated college graduates.
The fact that all children do not is the fault of not enough community support, not enough diversity programs, not enough self-esteem enhancement programs and not most certainly not enough funding.
What then gets done is a lot of hand wringing over the lack of societal or parental involvement followed by attempts to enhance the "Challenged Learners" by what amounts to dumbing down the entire educational curriculum to accommodate the slow pokes. This frustrates the speedy brains and pisses off the Republicans.
An example of the Theory of Individual Equality taken to extremes.
Compare this line of hopeful group thinking with those of our parents... or grandparents ... or at least any generation that lived prior to our pampered Baby Boomer suburban pansy asses.
In the OLD days - it was a given that not every child was destined to be Einstein, no matter how many hugs the little snot received. Truth was that some folks were destined to be better with their hands than with their brains. Johnny was slow and didn't have the sense God gave a goat - but he had a strong back and didn't complain. So might as well teach him something useful.
Proof of this concept were the prevalence of Trade or Technical Schools.
Every town had one - the place for the ADD kids or the "troubled ones" - a place where we taught kids a skill, a trade, a ritual of self discipline and focus that would go on to reward them with an agreeable life providing they applied themselves to their trade.
Some of us are the children of these same people and they did alright by us.
So I would propose a certain degree of retrogression within our current educational model and get over the "No Child Left Behind" love-fest and instead, accept the fact that some child is always going to be slow no matter what.
But the least we should do is teach the guy how to drywall or plumb or anything that can be useful and rewarding for both him and us.
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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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Sep 12, 2010 - 12:40am PT
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Contrast you want - contrast I shall provide:
Me - A.S./ Electronics, B.A./Business Management, Specialized M.A. credits from Pepperdine to boot. Eighteen years in the Telecom industry from grunt to big shot. RIF'd in 2007 when the demand for fat fiber pipes dried up. Currently doing stupid work for a third of the salary.
Neighbor - G.E.D who went to work at Jiffy Lube. Good with his hands and liked cars so got a lot boy job with a local mechanic. Learned the biz, got his A.S.E. certs - now owns two repair shops and kills it during bad economies since people keep their old cars rather than buy new. Just bought a second house last week - cash.
My teachers lied to me.
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R.B.
Big Wall climber
Land of the Lahar
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Sep 12, 2010 - 12:44am PT
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Don't try to keep up with the Joneses ... just do what you know you can do and it will all fall into place.
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bmacd
climber
Relic Hominid
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Sep 12, 2010 - 01:37am PT
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good thread
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 02:27am PT
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so bluering, what's the problem? and how do we fix it?
let's say we should make the teachers perform better and fire them if they don't
some studies say that there have been large increases in support which have not been tracked by the student performance... so let's fire all the teachers and hire better ones?
now we might have a problem, a lot of openings for teachers, and few qualified ones, the teachers will take the better positions, the ones with higher pay, and avoid the low paying openings (they're smart)
in order to fill the low paying openings what do we do? hire less qualified teachers, or increase the offering?
we can reduce the number of teachers, but the study I referred to above shows this has a very negative outcome for the children's economic success at age 28...
why shouldn't the free market dictate what the salary of a teacher should be in this scenario?
the fact of the matter is that the teacher salaries have been suppressed for a long time, increased school costs are the result of a decades long policy of low wages for the job. Since the teachers have a choice, they are choosing to find hire paying work outside of teaching in many cases
what is the incentive to go into teaching K-12 at an average annual salary of $40k?
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 02:35am PT
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As has been noted it all starts at home. If a kid wants to learn she will learn.
Good teachers are certainly desirable but they are secondary.
Just go to Africa or India and look at kids sitting in shacks absolutely rapt.
They know it is a great privilege to be in school and they don't waste it.
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R.B.
Big Wall climber
Land of the Lahar
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Sep 12, 2010 - 02:56am PT
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I may be dum but I r not stuped ... ah never mind!
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Sep 12, 2010 - 10:36am PT
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Timely Op Ed Piece from WaPo this morning.
Assigning blame is easier than assuming responsibility is a favorite line of mine in it -
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 11, 2010
I want to share a couple of articles I recently came across that, I believe, speak to the core of what ails America today but is too little discussed. The first was in Newsweek under the ironic headline “We’re No. 11!” The piece, by Michael Hirsh, went on to say: “Has the United States lost its oomph as a superpower? Even President Obama isn’t immune from the gloom. ‘Americans won’t settle for No. 2!’ Obama shouted at one political rally in early August. How about No. 11? That’s where the U.S.A. ranks in Newsweek’s list of the 100 best countries in the world, not even in the top 10.”
The second piece, which could have been called “Why We’re No. 11,” was by the Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson. Why, he asked, have we spent so much money on school reform in America and have so little to show for it in terms of scalable solutions that produce better student test scores? Maybe, he answered, it is not just because of bad teachers, weak principals or selfish unions.
“The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation,” wrote Samuelson. “Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a ‘good’ college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school ‘reform’ is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers.” Wrong, he said. “Motivation is weak because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don’t like school, don’t work hard and don’t do well. In a 2008 survey of public high school teachers, 21 percent judged student absenteeism a serious problem; 29 percent cited ‘student apathy.’ ”
There is a lot to Samuelson’s point — and it is a microcosm of a larger problem we have not faced honestly as we have dug out of this recession: We had a values breakdown — a national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism. Wall Street may have been dealing the dope, but our lawmakers encouraged it. And far too many of us were happy to buy the dot-com and subprime crack for quick prosperity highs.
Ask yourself: What made our Greatest Generation great? First, the problems they faced were huge, merciless and inescapable: the Depression, Nazism and Soviet Communism. Second, the Greatest Generation’s leaders were never afraid to ask Americans to sacrifice. Third, that generation was ready to sacrifice, and pull together, for the good of the country. And fourth, because they were ready to do hard things, they earned global leadership the only way you can, by saying: “Follow me.”
Contrast that with the Baby Boomer Generation. Our big problems are unfolding incrementally — the decline in U.S. education, competitiveness and infrastructure, as well as oil addiction and climate change. Our generation’s leaders never dare utter the word “sacrifice.” All solutions must be painless. Which drug would you like? A stimulus from Democrats or a tax cut from Republicans? A national energy policy? Too hard. For a decade we sent our best minds not to make computer chips in Silicon Valley but to make poker chips on Wall Street, while telling ourselves we could have the American dream — a home — without saving and investing, for nothing down and nothing to pay for two years. Our leadership message to the world (except for our brave soldiers): “After you.”
So much of today’s debate between the two parties, notes David Rothkopf, a Carnegie Endowment visiting scholar, “is about assigning blame rather than assuming responsibility. It’s a contest to see who can give away more at precisely the time they should be asking more of the American people.”
Rothkopf and I agreed that we would get excited about U.S. politics when our national debate is between Democrats and Republicans who start by acknowledging that we can’t cut deficits without both tax increases and spending cuts — and then debate which ones and when — who acknowledge that we can’t compete unless we demand more of our students — and then debate longer school days versus school years — who acknowledge that bad parents who don’t read to their kids and do indulge them with video games are as responsible for poor test scores as bad teachers — and debate what to do about that.
Who will tell the people? China and India have been catching up to America not only via cheap labor and currencies. They are catching us because they now have free markets like we do, education like we do, access to capital and technology like we do, but, most importantly, values like our Greatest Generation had. That is, a willingness to postpone gratification, invest for the future, work harder than the next guy and hold their kids to the highest expectations.
In a flat world where everyone has access to everything, values matter more than ever. Right now the Hindus and Confucians have more Protestant ethics than we do, and as long as that is the case we’ll be No. 11!
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AllezAllez510
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 10:48am PT
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Thomas Friedman nails it. He got everything right except for the fact that the vast majority of our "brave troops" are not baby boomers.
I am an educator and I see this all the time, it's palpable. Kids have the attitude of 'why should I work hard and bust my ass if all that effort will be for naught?'
There are very few rags to riches stories for kids to follow these days, and the few that are out there are just entertainers or athletes.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 11:59am PT
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so bluering, what's the problem? and how do we fix it?
Ed, you hinted at it earlier. And I know you know this already...
Teach the kids the basics. Educate them. Stop teaching them how to be 'wordly' and progressive. Let them be themselves. Every child is an island.
Focus on the basics of math, basic history, english composition, sciences. Quit f*#king around with 'awareness' and 'sexual identity' crap!
Kids need the basics. They should be taught little else from gov't schools. The rest is up to their parents and themselves. As you pointed out earlier, the parents HAVE to play a role in encouraging their kids to perform at a certain level. Kids are lazy in school unless pushed to learn.
School is a prep for the real world of WORK. Sure, you learn some stuff, but it is a necessary 'ritual'. You have to get up in the morning and perform. Then you get to rest. And the weekends you may get some climbs in, maybe even after work if you're blessed enough to live in the Bay Area.
Overall? Defund and shut down the DOE. It consumes too many useless dollars. Instead, allocate the states an equal amount of federal dollars to be overseen by the Congressional Budget Office.
And stop teaching kids how to put condoms on cucumbers!!!!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 12:57pm PT
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School, or look for any easy degree in psychology, art, music history, etc.
Yeah, that's kinda my point too, nobody wants to actually work!!!!!
Do something!
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Sep 12, 2010 - 01:49pm PT
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One of my degrees is Psychology. Can you explain more what you mean? I'd like you to expand your thoughts.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 01:50pm PT
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Defund and shut down the DOE. It consumes too many useless dollars.
so that the only jobs left are at McDonalds...
I find your vision of education to be what I would expect, and your vision is very utilitarian and practical, fine American values.
Do you know what the DOE funds? and how the results of that funding have benefited the US economy? probably not. The DOE, its labs, and the general research enterprise in the country are facing a shortage of STEM talent (that Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) who have US citizenship, an essential piece of the country's future security needs in many technical areas.
US citizens tend not to go into those areas of critical need, and much of that work is left undone.
Getting rid of the DOE would make the matters worse, not better, as it maintains the facilities which much of the research is performed on, employees much of the highly skilled STEM workforce, and spins off small, high tech business.
The research the DOE is engaged in is often decades ahead of the commercial sector, the internet is a simple example. In the development of practical technology, much of that was created by innovative researchers trying to solve some "irrelevant" issue of research. The MRI which was developed for medical application not only used an idea from the 40s (I.I. Rabi got a Nobel prize for the basic physics that is applied) but technology innovations on superconducting magnets that came out of the accelerator research trying to build bigger machines to "smash atoms" at higher and higher energies. And the people involved in that development came from the labs and created businesses to develop those technologies.
There are many many more examples. The return on the research investment is put somewhere around 20, but it is hard to calculate in many cases... it could be much higher.
Education is a similar, long term investment whose return is difficult to calculate, but the papers like the one I referred to above make it clear that there are very large returns for modest investments.
I find your statement, largely ignorant of the facts, to be appalling.
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jstan
climber
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Sep 12, 2010 - 02:01pm PT
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If you look at work ethics you will generally find it in people whose families had to struggle just to survive for two or more generations. Look around the world. Forces in the US are preparing that kind of future for us as we speak. The answer will come in another 100 years. If we have not the strength to do better.
Blue:
Soon after I came to work in California my supervision sent me up to the manufacturing line in Santa Maria. I was working 16 hour days so I merely commuted 70 miles for the second shift. Upper level managers had simply thrown an f2 product into an f1 assembly line and a half million dollars had been wasted. But there was an even bigger cost to the techs on the line.
I figured out one unit and took it to the young lady to have bias resistors cut around 3AM. I had looked at easily two dozen units each with 160 resistors and not one unit had been cut right. Five of my six worked. The lady had seemed very down so I went back, literally jumping up and down saying, "You did it! It worked!"
She began to cry saying, "I'm so glad something worked. She clearly was not lucky enough to have a safety net on which she might fall. Her job was literally all she had. And it had not been working.
Blue if you want your baby to have the power he needs to have if he is deal with stupidity and laziness in the chain above him he needs to learn everything he can. As his father it is your job to drive him.
Do it!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 02:12pm PT
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I guess bluering meant Department of Education?
I'm sure I'll hear about it...
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Captain...or Skully
Big Wall climber
Transporter Room 2
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Sep 12, 2010 - 02:18pm PT
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Pretty funny, Ed.
All good. Doesn't make you wrong, just mistaken.
Ignorant? Maybe, this time.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 02:48pm PT
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The Evil One speaks verily as our family has a number of new sheepskin holders
in those catagories who are all either un- or under-employed. The one nephew
who got a business/econ degree had more job offers than he could shake a checkbook at.
And then there is the niece, currently a junior at a major institution, who
is studying Environmental Science. She thinks she wants to be a Park Ranger.
We just spent a week together in Wyoming where she expressed her distaste for
hiking and being outdoors in general. Am I missing something?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Sep 12, 2010 - 02:49pm PT
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Mr Fattrad: Where is there evidence (not anecdotal) that universities are graduating too many of these individuals? I'd like to see that evidence. And you noted above something about Business majors. Are there too many of them? Too few? What do you use for evidence for these statements?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 02:54pm PT
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Do you know what the DOE funds? and how the results of that funding have benefited the US economy? probably not.
I knew I'd be called ignorant for stating the obvious. Kinda like get called a racist for border control.
Ed, does more tax dollars equal better education?
You should be able to follow this logic concisely, no?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Sep 12, 2010 - 03:03pm PT
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yeah, yeah...I'm (let me guess) a BushBot....
whatever, dude.
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