On 5 Aug 2006 07:27:58 -0700, "Too_Many_Tools"
wrote:

It has always concerned me when the young amoung us are not taugh basic
skills such as how to change a tire, how to use a saw, how to...well
you get the idea...there are basic skills that one needs to deal with
the world we live in. Well this article shows what that lack of
training, due to whatever reason, means as they get older.

When I drive through a neighborhood, it is a rare garage that has
anything like a workshop within it anymore....a reflection of the lack
of interest or knowledge of the homeowner to work with their hands?

Do your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the generation who
is succeeding us, have the basic skills that are needed in the world
today?

TMT
article snipped

If we don't get what we want, we get what we deserve….

Although this will draw the usual cries of "off topic" etc., I
feel that it is never-the-less one of the more important posts
that directly impacts the readers of these newsgroups and their
topics.

To put this screed in perspective, I spent the last 15 years of
my working career in post-secondary education at small to medium
sized community [junior] colleges. This could be a full-length
article, and I have indeed written several.

History clearly shows that any society/culture/economy where a
majority of its people loses (or never attains) at least a basic
level of understanding of its principal and major activities is
doomed in the long run (and most likely in the short run) because
they are unable to control what they have created (popularly
termed a "Frankenstein's monster"). Failure to understand
farming in an agricultural society, science in a technical
society, etc. is a disaster in the making.

It does not matter if the lack of understanding occurs because of
failure to teach and pass on hard-won knowledge, or new "things"
are introduced into the society/culture without a basic
understanding by the majority of the people *AND THEIR LEADERS*.

NOTE: Simply knowing "stuff" is not the same thing as knowing the
*RIGHT* "stuff" in this context. Indeed, it appears one of the
most definitive symptoms of this emerging and progressive problem
is an endless expansion of "education," with no rationale or
justification, into areas of limited or no utility, and in many
cases into areas more properly called magic, the occult, and
theology (in the sense that the assumptions and tenets can not be
proved or disproved by physical evidence). Consider how many of
our current "hot button issues" fit the occult and theological
templates of unseen forces and arcane knowledge limited to
specialist practitioners.

In the United States most states require a minimum of 180 days
and/or 1080 hours of student attendance per year. It should be
obvious that as this time is now fully "booked," when additional
"stuff" is added, something else must be dropped. With the
imposition of "Academic Trivial Pursuit" AKA "no child left
behind," what was imposed was instruction in the skills necessary
to score well on standardized objective tests [bingo cards] and
short-term rote memorization and rapid recall of "factoids."
What is being dropped are all vocational or "shop" classes. In
addition to creating a generation that has no knowledge of how
things work, the abolition of the vocational classes has lead to
a huge upsurge in male dropouts who were attending school only
for the vocational classes.

This is yet another example, where a critical public asset or
facility, in this case free compulsory education, has been
hi-jacked by the elite so they can impose their ideology and skim
the benefits (i.e. college preparatory education) while the vast
majority is deprived of the benefits (i.e. preparation for life
rather than for yet more education) although the majority is
expected to keep paying [more] for it.

The cure for this is local action, where the voters (parents)
fire the existing school board, and where the new school board
then fires the existing superintendents and principals, and so
on.


Unka George
(George McDuffee)

....and at the end of the fight is a tombstone white
with the name of the late deceased, and
the epitaph drear:
“A Fool lies here, who tried to hustle the East.”

Rudyard Kipling The Naulahka, ch. 5, heading (1892).