From: | IronRaven cyberraven@********.net |
---|---|
Subject: | the value of education (OT-rant, long) |
Date: | Mon, 12 Jul 1999 10:33:01 -0400 |
>What do you guys get taught about world geography - let alone common sense
>(referring to the air question).
It gets taught. But students haven't paid attention for so long, high
school instructors have to use the BOOK to point out minor things like
Australia.
The education system in America has been taken over by a cult that
believes that "self empowerment" and making learning "fun" is more
important that "facts and figures". An example is math- in America, in
most elementary and high-schools, it is possible to get 85%+ credit on a
math test without getting a SINGLE answer right, but showing "all your
work". (I will never be invited to work as a substitute teacher in my area
again, becuase I got dumped with the "brite" 8th graders, who had an
algebra class and could not answer "x" for 8X$ in MAY(!) and I kinda
insulted them, thier intelligence and the copitency of thier regular
teacher.) You aren't given respect. You earn it. That is where
empowerment comes from. And life isn't always fun. Calculus sucks. So
does death and being born, but they are part of life
The problem is spoiled Boomers and thier brain-damaged kids who think that
they should have everything handed to them on a silver platter is small,
easy-to-digest bits without doing any real work. I've gone to school board
meeting and watch parents and boardmembers berate the teachers and aids
because they aren't doing the kids work for them! (And some of what was
said would have been grounds to demand satisfaction by duel.) The idiots
are also deluded into thinking that every kid will be a genius and make
100K a year. Most of them won't, especially a 14 year old who works at a
1st grade level. The students don't do homework, or even personal research
on thier own, becuase they are too lazy and thier parents don't expect it
of them. As a result, I see kids doing work a grade-level or two behind
where they were a decade ago, with the truely smart kids struggling to keep
from loosing thier minds from boredom and trying to learn on thier own what
they should be learning.
In most colleges, the first year is spent teaching kids stuff that they
should have learned by the time they should have learned in high school.
And everyone is very quick to jump on teachers. I don't understand this.
There are two kinds of teachers- those who are great, and those that suck.
There is no middle ground. For those who are great, they are there becuase
it like a holy calling for them. For those that suck, it is just a job.
And there are more and more of them every year. Teachers aren't
appreciated by most people, who blame them for everything from Little
Johnny's inability to read to Little Suzie's third pregnancy at age 14 to
Little Mikey's pipe bomb stuffed locker. No other branch of public service
has seen such skimpy raises or has been expected to toss 10% of it back
into thier job for basic supplies. (In my area, the last pack of crappy
yellow penmaship paper is gone in Febuary, right around the same time as
the last roll of toilet paper.) Teachers don't want to get saddled with
sex-ed, and "self esteem building", and drug prevention, and all the other
crap that society has dumped on them beacause no one else is willing to do
it. This isn't their job. (If the polis wants that in schools, fine, they
need to expand the school building, lengthen the day, and bring in some
overly perky nitwit to do it.)
There is an ancient, and not at all funny joke: "Those who can do, those
who can't teach." I've seen it attributed to the Romans, so it explains
why the hatred of teachers is so ingrained with our culture. But is also
becomeing true that those that "can't" teach in public school. Becuase the
people who "can" either teach in private schools or get a job that pays
well and the boss is willing to give them what they need.
If you value your kids (or those you haven't had yet), I give four pieces
of advise:
1) Send them to a private school, at least for high school.
2) Send them to a good college that isn't afraid to throw someone with
less than a 1.0 (or <2.0 for two semester in a row) out, especially if the
average professor took a pay CUT to leave the private sector and become a
professor.
3) Be a PARENT, not a friend. This sometimes means saying "no", which you
should get used to (if you've never heard this word before, think about
getting your tubes tied), applying appropriate disapline (standing in the
corner is NOT suitable for trying to light the cat on fire) and having
tough discussions (like the "birds and the bees"). Be fair, but also
expect nothing but the best from them. If they aren't giving thier all, it
is a sign of trouble.
4) If they need help, provide it or pay someone to help them, don't rely
on the schools to do everything.
This may seem redundent, even demening, to some of you, and if you are
doing all of the above, I appologize. But remember, your kids will be
paying for you when you are 90 years old. Do you want to spend you last
days at home? Or in a warehouse of the dying with a numbered tag attached
to your bed all filled out for when you croak.
It also isn't fair to dump it all on the parents (but they deserve most of
it, eventually). Look at the new schools that are being built. One, maybe
two, entrances, with metal detectors. Random searches of lockers and bags.
Armed gaurds, with heavier weapons is the office. Bars on the windows
that can't be opened. Cameras everywhere. Every room and fifty-foot
section of hall can be remotely sealed off. Shutting off the lights
requires a lock-out key, in the few areas they can be shut off. The
perimeter is fenced in, fully lit at night, and monitored with more
cameras, many of these with aural pickups and low-light modes.
Maybe this is just me, but the only things missing is individualized
accomidations and razor wire, to make it a max-sec facility. Like the one
at Pelican Bay or formerly at Alcatraz. What makes people think that this
level of "safety" will change a single goddamn digit in the
"juevenile" (To
most of the world's point of view, during 14 or 15 makes you an adult. Only
the Euro-Americentric world and some parts of the Orient think otherwise.)
crime rates or the quality of education, is totally beyond me. All it is
going to do (based off the data developed from studies in the eighties
after they first started retrofitting this stuff into old schools, but were
buried because the finding weren't popular) is (a) make the meek meeker,
and thus greater targets, and (b) make the section of the population who
are little more than rabid animals, more antagonistic and increase thier
"pack instinct". For everyone, is going to increase the feeling of being
constantly monitored. I know a number of GOOD teachers (the ones for whom
it is a semi-religious calling) who have stated that they will quit and
work for McDonalds before they work in a "school" that is built like that.
>The basic game is based in seattle.. so whats changed in the education
system by
See above. There have been numerous references to "icon literacy" in
Shadowrun. This is used to a limited degree in American education already,
with mentally retarded students and pavlovian conditioning of animals. It
basically, if the red circle is shown, push button "A", but throw switch
"1" if the circle is green or pull cord "a" if the circle is actually
a
triangle.
Math is taught as punching buttons on a calculator. Composition is voice
recognition into a computer, and clicking the "grammer and spell correct"
icon. Literature isn't taught. Arts aren't taught. Only the most basic
history and geography. For foreign languages, there are chips.
Even in the technical fields, it is monkey learning assissted by brilliant
systems. For example, in electronics Ohms law and the calculation of
capacitors and so forth are taught as a bunch of readings from a meter to
be punched into a computer, and what that result means. OK, but they
aren't learning how that happens or how to figure that out themselves, such
as how to use a reference table and a pencil to figure out what a cable is
made out of by knowing the voltage and amperage at each end and the length
of the wire.
If you really want to learn, then you need to be rich enough to go to a
private school, not a public, corporate-run, school. That is being done
for a reason- it sponsers fuedalism, with a truely literate and educated
technocracy ruling over the barely literate middle managers and national
leaders, and in turn, the iconerate semi-drones of the peasant class.
>2060? Are UCAS citizens (even the smart ones) still not taught about the
rest of
>the world?
Only those who have a need to know according to thier destiny, as
calcualted by the finest corporate accountanting software money can buy.
BE A SHADOWRUNNER- FIDDLE WITH THE BOOKS!
CyberRaven Kevin Dole
http://members.xoom.com/iron_raven/
"Once again, we have spat int he face of Death and his second cousin,
Dismemberment."
"Briar Rabbit to Briar Fox; I was BORN in that briar patch!"