On Apr 17, 10:18 am, Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:09:54 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping, without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration, not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive to do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

I MOST strongly
suggest the following book, which
is totally online and free to read with nice chapter
summaries (see link below), written by
a New York public school system
teacher of 30 years who did his research
and exposed the entire dirty
BIG secret (hint: keep an eye on
those benevolent money granting
foundations ) which is
supposed to be a book about our education
system but which, for me, was a whole
lot more, so insightful and incisive are
the author's observations:
"The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

Even if you disagree with his idea of how our
educational "system" came to be as it is now,
despite his rather compelling documentation and
arguments, I suspect you will find his
social commentary, and explication of our
modern culture a revelation.

"Those vast violence ridden boredom and envy filled social warehouses
that our education system has become, and the motivations
and theories of those who purposely designed it that way,
eventually substituting the dumbing down of the young
workers to be as a goal superiour to the popularly
expected one of educating the young, are all explained
though the perpetrators of this vast
self aggrandizing deception would probably
prefer to remain in the "background"."
from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto

Citizen JImserac

"Citizen Jimserac" wrote in message
...
On Apr 17, 10:18 am, Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:09:54 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping, without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration, not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive to do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people making it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this "indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are; complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe education hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow, they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress

On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:53:34 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people making it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this "indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are; complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe education hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow, they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress
===========
The operational phrase here is "complaints about education are
nearly universal." These have existed as long as there has been
"education," and include such "gems" as whining about the shift
from instruction in Latin to instruction in the vernacular, the
introduction of printed texts because it interfered with the
development of the student's memory, and the elimination of Attic
Greek as a HS graduation requirement.

Before I retired, I spent the last 15 years at the post secondary
[community college] level first as an adjunct instructor, then a
full time instructor, and administrator [Registrar and Director
of Institutional Research]. In many cases, much of the [new]
"educational" money received is not used for what most people
would classify as instruction purposes, i.e. either direct
instruction or up-graded facilities, but rather to generate
increasing numbers of reports and data, which no one ever reads
or acts on.

We now have entire departments involved with data collection and
report filing, including student loans. Indeed, at my last
school, the Student Financial Aid Office [separate from
institutional accounting] had more employees and worked more
hours that the local Credit Union, that handled about 10X the
dollar volume. Note that this significant growth in
non-educational activity was not voluntary on the part of the
institution or its Board of Regents, but were imposed by funding
or other regulatory/accreditation agencies. Conversation with
colleagues in public ElHi indicates the same pattern of
significant increases in non-educational activity. FWIW -- much
of this reporting could and should be eliminated by the
imposition of a standard data format, and the transmission of
this raw but formatted data to the agency involved, so that they
can slice and dice as they desire. Other, very time consuming,
activities can and should be eliminated, such as the surveys of
graduate income. Not only is it difficult to track down
graduates from 5 and 10 years ago, many will not respond, so the
data is worthless. Given that everyone earning a wage must file
an income tax return, and social security numbers are used for
both the return and student ID, the cost effective and accurate
method would be to send a list of ssns [in machine readable
format, not a paper copy] to the IRS, but noooooo...

Unfortunately, this is the same pattern that I observed in the
60s and 70s while I was employed in manufacturing, where the
reporting and accounting demands [and staffing] increased
exponentially, followed by collapse and off-shoring in the 1980s
and 1990s, largely because of excessive overhead/burden rates.

This confusion is significantly compounded by confusion about
what "education" means. It is a noun or a verb, a process or a
product? Indeed, it appears to take on different meanings for
even the same speaker, from sentence to sentence, leading to an
endless series of "problematiques," and confusion.

Many of the "problems" with education are due to its nature as a
continuously "moving target." Think of the problems that would
ensue in the machining trade if the inch used for tolerances kept
changing/shrinking. Processes that were adequate today [CsubPK
1.33] would be out-of-control tomorrow. Exactly the same thing
occurs with the amended and "re-normed" college admissions tests
such as the SAT and ACT. These are "normed" against selected
high school graduates, generally from private prep schools, are
then "adjusted" to fail a preset fraction of these applicants,
and then these are used to evaluate the "adequacy" of a general
high-school education, not for additional academic work, but for
"life!"

Even the word "adequate" is subject to confusion, as does this
mean a minimum level of knowledge or does it mean a desired/ideal
level of knowledge, and in either case who sets the standards and
how are these measured?

One major problem is that we have allowed the "experts in the
instructional topics," to set the "educational standards."
IMNSHO, these "subject matter experts" should not be allowed to
determine what "every child must know." For example, almost all
teachers of American history feel it is vital that the student
know and "appreciate" the importance of the "Northwest
Ordinance." Yet I know of no study showing any relationship,
causal or predictive, between knowledge about or appreciation of
the "Northwest Ordnance," and social status/income, criminal
history, etc.
FYI --
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyame...nes/ordinance/

It is good to see that people are interested in education, I
suggest:

(1) Define in your own mind what you mean by education. Most
likely you will wind up with education(1), education(2), etc.
Just be sure which one you are using when discussing "education."

(2) Pay particular attention to what your local schools feel the
object and standards are for "education." [What they do is far
more important than what they say.] Are their standards a
"minimum" or an "ideal," and is the intent to get their students
ready to assume their roles as adults or preparation for yet more
"education." These need not be contradictory goals, but one must
take priority, bearing in mind that college graduates are still a
minority of HS graduates.

(3) Determine how much of your local school funding is used for
actual "educational" activities and support, how much for
mandated but non educational services/activites, how much for
"administration," and how much for generation of baffle-gas
reports.

(4) "Observation and imitation" remains the primary method of
learning, not classroom instruction. To the extent possible,
take time to include your children in the operation of your
family, for example how much money you spend on food, rent, gas,
and other car expenses. It is precisely the [lack of]
appreciation of the magnitude of these expenses v income that
cause the most problems in young adults. Credit cards are now
far more likely to cause problems than "sex."


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:38:59 -0500, F. George McDuffee wrote:
[Snip George's readable comments]
Many of the "problems" with education are due to its nature as a
continuously "moving target." Think of the problems that would ensue in
the machining trade if the inch used for tolerances kept
changing/shrinking. Processes that were adequate today [CsubPK 1.33]
would be out-of-control tomorrow.
[...]

While looking at a page about Sunnen CNC hones[*] to understand C_pk
I noticed some references to air-gaging systems, which I'm not
familiar with, and for which a minute with Google didn't help much.
Is anyone here an expert re air-gaging systems, whatever they are?
[*] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...2/ai_n18706000
(which I viewed with some plugins turned off)

-jiw

On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:09:25 -0500, James Waldby
wrote:

On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:38:59 -0500, F. George McDuffee wrote:
[Snip George's readable comments]
Many of the "problems" with education are due to its nature as a
continuously "moving target." Think of the problems that would ensue in
the machining trade if the inch used for tolerances kept
changing/shrinking. Processes that were adequate today [CsubPK 1.33]
would be out-of-control tomorrow.
[...]

While looking at a page about Sunnen CNC hones[*] to understand C_pk
I noticed some references to air-gaging systems, which I'm not
familiar with, and for which a minute with Google didn't help much.
Is anyone here an expert re air-gaging systems, whatever they are?

[*] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...2/ai_n18706000
(which I viewed with some plugins turned off)

-jiw
==========
Good question.

Air gauging is a technique used to accurately measure the bore
diameter of very deep holes like rifle barrels. The principal is
that you have a short but very accurate guage pin a few
thousandths [or less] under the minimum bore size, at the tip of
the probe with a hole in the side. Air is supplied though the
tube that is the stem of the guage. The air flow will depend on
the space between the probe tip and the bore to be measured.
Clean, very well regulated regulated air is supplied through a
flow meter, typically one of the bouncing ball type, and the
max/min readings are located on the flow guage using very
accurate, typically jig ground, min/max setting masters. As long
as the ball is between the min/max marks on the flow guage, the
bore is within specs. You can also use intermediate setting
rings to get even finer measurements if desired. Rotation of the
part will indicate any out-of-round conditions at the probe hole
location [ball bounces], along the length of the bore.

for more than you wanted to know click on
http://www.coventrygauge.co.uk/Airga...oductindex.htm
http://www.frankcox.com/pages/airelectronicgauges.htm
http://www.marposs.com/site/family.asp?idappl=37
http://www.manufacturingtalk.com/news/brm/brm100.html
http://www.gtma.co.uk/default.asp?folder=160
http://www.edmundsgages.com/products/airgaging.htm
google on "air gauging" for 11k hits
google on "air gaging" 6,100 hits


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:07:50 -0500, F. George McDuffee
wrote:

[...]

While looking at a page about Sunnen CNC hones[*] to understand C_pk
I noticed some references to air-gaging systems, which I'm not
familiar with, and for which a minute with Google didn't help much.
Is anyone here an expert re air-gaging systems, whatever they are?

[*] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...2/ai_n18706000
(which I viewed with some plugins turned off)

-jiw
==========
Good question.

Air gauging is a technique used to accurately measure the bore
diameter of very deep holes like rifle barrels. The principal is
that you have a short but very accurate guage pin a few
thousandths [or less] under the minimum bore size, at the tip of
the probe with a hole in the side. Air is supplied though the
tube that is the stem of the guage. The air flow will depend on
the space between the probe tip and the bore to be measured.
Clean, very well regulated regulated air is supplied through a
flow meter, typically one of the bouncing ball type, and the
max/min readings are located on the flow guage using very
accurate, typically jig ground, min/max setting masters. As long
as the ball is between the min/max marks on the flow guage, the
bore is within specs. You can also use intermediate setting
rings to get even finer measurements if desired. Rotation of the
part will indicate any out-of-round conditions at the probe hole
location [ball bounces], along the length of the bore.

for more than you wanted to know click on
http://www.coventrygauge.co.uk/Airga...oductindex.htm
http://www.frankcox.com/pages/airelectronicgauges.htm
http://www.marposs.com/site/family.asp?idappl=37
http://www.manufacturingtalk.com/news/brm/brm100.html
http://www.gtma.co.uk/default.asp?folder=160
http://www.edmundsgages.com/products/airgaging.htm
google on "air gauging" for 11k hits
google on "air gaging" 6,100 hits


Unka' George [George McDuffee]


Most excellent explaination!

Gunner


"[L]iberals are afraid to state what they truly believe in, for to do so
would result in even less votes than they currently receive. Their
methodology is to lie about their real agenda in the hopes of regaining
power, at which point they will do whatever they damn well please. The
problem is they have concealed and obfuscated for so long that, as a group,
they themselves are no longer sure of their goals. They are a collection of
wild-eyed splinter groups, all holding a grab-bag of dreams and wishes. Some
want a Socialist, secular-humanist state, others the repeal of the Second
Amendment. Some want same sex/different species marriage, others want voting
rights for trees, fish, coal and bugs. Some want cradle to grave care and
complete subservience to the government nanny state, others want a culture
that walks in lockstep and speaks only with intonations of political
correctness. I view the American liberals in much the same way I view the
competing factions of Islamic
fundamentalists. The latter hate each other to the core, and only join
forces to attack the US or Israel. The former hate themselves to the core,
and only join forces to attack George Bush and conservatives." --Ron Marr

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than
sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping, without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration, not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive to do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people making it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this
"indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are; complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe education
hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow, they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress


I've thought many times that the guys saying how lousy the education system
is and how it indoctrinates students, puts out idiots, and is falling apart,
are products of that exact system. Yet somehow they managed to come out all
right and usually brag about how smart they are too. Seems like a
contradiction to me, but since it's usually right wing types saying this
that makes it understandable.

I'm a product of the California public education system myself and think
that I have a pretty good idea of how well it works. Decades ago when I was
in high school, in the old days, I think the system was pretty damn good.
The teachers seemed to know what they were doing and tried to teach us.
Unfortunately, people like me didn't care and didn't try. The result, I
think I came in about 450th in a class of about some 5 hundred. Looking
back, it is clear that a good education was being offered but I wasn't
taking it.

Later on I tried going to college...many times. I failed every time because
I didn't want to do the work. The teaching? I think it was pretty good and
the teachers seemed pretty dedicated to me to doing their jobs. Eventually,
I got an AA degree. Twenty years passed and I went back to college at age 48
to become a paralegal. This time I did the work and it was hard. I actually
had to put in a lot of effort to get through it. I kept at it until I
completed my bachelor's degree. I got good grades but again, it was hard and
I worked a lot of hours. The younger students didn't work hard. They played
around, didn't show up to class, didn't work very hard, except for a few who
also did the work. The teachers didn't play around either and assigned a lot
of work and didn't give good grades to anyone that didn't deserve it, at
least the vast majority of the time.

Then I went to graduate school. This was a big step up and was real hard.
All the lousy, lazy students were gone and only A level people were there.
Every teacher had a PH.D. Every one of them was really smart and really well
educated. They made it very difficult to pass their classes. I graduated
anyway because I was serious this time and worked at it. So what is the
bottom line about our education system? Overall, it's damn good. It's true I
didn't go to any ghetto schools, but I went to schools all over California
and the thing I found in all of them was that it was really up to the
student what you got out of it. If you wanted a good education you were able
to get one. From personal experience I know it's that way. If you don't want
to try then they system looks lousy. But if your really want an education
you can get a good one and it's a real bargain. So when I hear people say
the system sucks it just tells me they don't know what they are talking
about. Either that or when they had their chance they were too lazy or too
stupid to benefit from the great deal they had at their fingertips.

Hawke

On Apr 20, 10:53 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...



On Apr 17, 10:18 am, Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:09:54 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping, without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration, not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive to do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people making it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this "indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are; complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe education hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow, they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress

"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this
school thing as a conspiracy, even though the
project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators.
It was and is a fully rational transaction in which
all of us play a part. We trade the liberty of our
kids and our free will for a secure social order
and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain
in which most of us agree to become as children
ourselves, under the same tutelage which holds
the young, in exchange for food, entertainment,
and safety. The difficulty is that the contract fixes
the goal of human life so low that students go
mad trying to escape it."
Quoted from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto.

We are all prodcuts of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Citizen Jimserac

"Citizen Jimserac" wrote in message
...
On Apr 20, 10:53 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...



On Apr 17, 10:18 am, Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:09:54 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than
sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically
doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping, without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration,
not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive to do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people making it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this
"indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are;
complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe education
hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow, they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress

"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this
school thing as a conspiracy, even though the
project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators.
It was and is a fully rational transaction in which
all of us play a part. We trade the liberty of our
kids and our free will for a secure social order
and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain
in which most of us agree to become as children
ourselves, under the same tutelage which holds
the young, in exchange for food, entertainment,
and safety. The difficulty is that the contract fixes
the goal of human life so low that students go
mad trying to escape it."
Quoted from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto.

Gatto wrote an article for _Harper's_ a few years ago, which supposedly
summarized his argument. I remember thinking at the time that it sounded
like elaborated and generalized grumbling; the Prussian connection was
evidence of nothing much, IMO, as education has always been a kind of
socialization, and the Prussian model just happened to be the one that was
widely admired at the time American public education was becoming
generalized.

The trouble with Gatto's complaint, as well as most complaints about
education, is that the complaints all tend to sound the same, but the
solutions are all contradictory. The complaints are that we know too little,
that we think too little, or that we're unable to learn anything except what
we're spoon-fed. The solutions are that we spend too little time in school;
we spend too much time in school (Gatto's position). School is too
permissive; school is too authoritarian. We spend too much time teaching by
rote; we don't require kids to commit to memory the foundations of western
thought.

And on, and on, and on. No two critics see the problem in the same way, and
few offer remedies that aren't contradicting the *last* remedy that someone
published.

All they have in common is that they don't like what's going on. They all
seem to have a utopian vision of what education should be, but their utopias
contradict each other.

It makes one skeptical about the whole enterprise.


We are all prodcuts of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Citizen Jimserac

That sounds like a retread of most complaints about education we've been
hearing for 50 years or more. Now it's the Internet. Good luck.

--
Ed Huntress

"Hawke" wrote in message
...

snip

So what is the
bottom line about our education system? Overall, it's damn good. It's true
I
didn't go to any ghetto schools, but I went to schools all over California
and the thing I found in all of them was that it was really up to the
student what you got out of it. If you wanted a good education you were
able
to get one. From personal experience I know it's that way. If you don't
want
to try then they system looks lousy. But if your really want an education
you can get a good one and it's a real bargain. So when I hear people say
the system sucks it just tells me they don't know what they are talking
about. Either that or when they had their chance they were too lazy or too
stupid to benefit from the great deal they had at their fingertips.

Hawke

I generally agree. The opportunities are there. The motivation to take
advantage of it is lacking. And the idea that students are bored because
education somehow doesn't engage them, while tautologically true, only tells
us that those students don't want to be engaged.

--
Ed Huntress

On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:55:15 -0700 (PDT), Citizen Jimserac
wrote:

On Apr 20, 10:53 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...



On Apr 17, 10:18 am, Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:09:54 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping, without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration, not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive to do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people making it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this "indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are; complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe education hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow, they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress

"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this
school thing as a conspiracy, even though the
project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators.
It was and is a fully rational transaction in which
all of us play a part. We trade the liberty of our
kids and our free will for a secure social order
and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain
in which most of us agree to become as children
ourselves, under the same tutelage which holds
the young, in exchange for food, entertainment,
and safety. The difficulty is that the contract fixes
the goal of human life so low that students go
mad trying to escape it."
Quoted from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto.

We are all prodcuts of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Citizen Jimserac


Well said

Gunner


"[L]iberals are afraid to state what they truly believe in, for to do so
would result in even less votes than they currently receive. Their
methodology is to lie about their real agenda in the hopes of regaining
power, at which point they will do whatever they damn well please. The
problem is they have concealed and obfuscated for so long that, as a group,
they themselves are no longer sure of their goals. They are a collection of
wild-eyed splinter groups, all holding a grab-bag of dreams and wishes. Some
want a Socialist, secular-humanist state, others the repeal of the Second
Amendment. Some want same sex/different species marriage, others want voting
rights for trees, fish, coal and bugs. Some want cradle to grave care and
complete subservience to the government nanny state, others want a culture
that walks in lockstep and speaks only with intonations of political
correctness. I view the American liberals in much the same way I view the
competing factions of Islamic
fundamentalists. The latter hate each other to the core, and only join
forces to attack the US or Israel. The former hate themselves to the core,
and only join forces to attack George Bush and conservatives." --Ron Marr

"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:55:15 -0700 (PDT), Citizen Jimserac
wrote:

On Apr 20, 10:53 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...



On Apr 17, 10:18 am, Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:09:54 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than
sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically
doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping, without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration,
not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They
were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive to do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people making
it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this
"indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are;
complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe education
hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow, they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress

"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this
school thing as a conspiracy, even though the
project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators.
It was and is a fully rational transaction in which
all of us play a part. We trade the liberty of our
kids and our free will for a secure social order
and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain
in which most of us agree to become as children
ourselves, under the same tutelage which holds
the young, in exchange for food, entertainment,
and safety. The difficulty is that the contract fixes
the goal of human life so low that students go
mad trying to escape it."
Quoted from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto.

We are all prodcuts of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Citizen Jimserac


Well said

Gunner

But how would you know, Gunner? Aren't you a product of the system yourself?

Or are you one of those who bemoan the education system -- which is
practically everyone -- and who feels that he is one of the exceptions, who
avoided the "zombification"? But, if nearly everyone who criticizes the
education system is among those who escaped, that means nearly everyone
escaped. Which means, of course, that the "zombification" didn't work, and
that you aren't one of the exceptions at all. You're one of the mainstream.

You've got yourself on the horns of a dilemma, Gunner. And they have very
sharp horns indeed.

--
Ed Huntress

On Apr 17, 10:18 am, Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:09:54 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than
sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically
doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening
themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping, without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration,
not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They
were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive to
do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people making
it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this
"indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy
non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are;
complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe education
hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow, they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress

"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this
school thing as a conspiracy, even though the
project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators.
It was and is a fully rational transaction in which
all of us play a part. We trade the liberty of our
kids and our free will for a secure social order
and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain
in which most of us agree to become as children
ourselves, under the same tutelage which holds
the young, in exchange for food, entertainment,
and safety. The difficulty is that the contract fixes
the goal of human life so low that students go
mad trying to escape it."
Quoted from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto.

Gatto wrote an article for _Harper's_ a few years ago, which supposedly
summarized his argument. I remember thinking at the time that it sounded
like elaborated and generalized grumbling; the Prussian connection was
evidence of nothing much, IMO, as education has always been a kind of
socialization, and the Prussian model just happened to be the one that was
widely admired at the time American public education was becoming
generalized.

The trouble with Gatto's complaint, as well as most complaints about
education, is that the complaints all tend to sound the same, but the
solutions are all contradictory. The complaints are that we know too
little,
that we think too little, or that we're unable to learn anything except
what
we're spoon-fed. The solutions are that we spend too little time in
school;
we spend too much time in school (Gatto's position). School is too
permissive; school is too authoritarian. We spend too much time teaching
by
rote; we don't require kids to commit to memory the foundations of western
thought.

And on, and on, and on. No two critics see the problem in the same way,
and
few offer remedies that aren't contradicting the *last* remedy that
someone
published.

All they have in common is that they don't like what's going on. They all
seem to have a utopian vision of what education should be, but their
utopias
contradict each other.

It makes one skeptical about the whole enterprise.


We are all prodcuts of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Citizen Jimserac

That sounds like a retread of most complaints about education we've been
hearing for 50 years or more. Now it's the Internet. Good luck.

--
Ed Huntress


I think the complainers have forgotten what we had before the adoption of
universal public education. It used to be that everyone was ignorant and
illiterate except for a tiny minority of elites that were able to pay for a
private education or tutoring. When it was decided that everyone would
benefit from universal education some kind of system where all children were
to be "educated" had to be chosen. For many years the system we had was the
envy of the world and was unquestionably the best system invented to educate
the children of an entire nation. Now it's charged with doing the same job
for a country of 300 million with a huge number of children of different
countries speaking different languages as well an underclass and a huge
income disparity to deal with. All in all it's still doing a rather
remarkable job. In addition, if you look at what the statistics are when you
take out blacks and Hispanics you find that the system is excellent. An
objective view shows that the minorities throw the stats way out of whack by
pulling down the averages for the whole system. What's ironic is that the
minorities take the least advantage of our free system and by all accounts
they would benefit the most from it. What's that saying about advice most
needed is advice least heeded? Those who need it the most use it the least.
No wonder the system appears broken. I think it's not the system that's
flawed but the children who are in it.

Hawke

On Apr 19, 12:03*pm, Eregon wrote:
Too_Many_Tools wrote :





On Apr 15, 10:53*pm, Eregon wrote:
Too_Many_Tools wrote
innews:4a50e39d-af69-4b4f-
:

On Apr 14, 1:28*pm, Eregon wrote:
Larry Jaques wrote
innews:rgn604deg7di6h2c
:

On Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:46:56 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm,
Eregon quickly quoth:

CEOs are like Doctors in that they have to make all of their
money in a very short period.

WhatEVER are you talking about? *When's the last time you saw a
silver-haired doctor? *I see pictures of them in the newspaper
every week. Most doctors have a 40 year run, minimum. (Unless
they, too, suffer heart problems like their patients.)

This past Friday - two of them, in fact.

While some continue as "Family Practice Specialists" [AKA GP's],
the rapid

advance of medicine renders many specialists - including many
Surgeons - obsolete within 20 years.

For that matter, large numbers of Specialists have elected to
revert to being GPs simply because of the insanely-high
Malpractice Insurance Premiums demanded for their specialities.
[Neurosurgery, for example]

Agreed...it is good to live in a country where doctors just can't
bury their mistakes and move on to the next victum...err I mean
patient.

If you have been paying attention, you will note that insurance
companies are now laying the groundwork to ship patients off shore
for medical care...all types of it. The little detail they forget
to mention to the patients is that if something goes wrong, there
is no recourse legally.

If you don't like it, you can always pay the total bill yourself.

TMT

ROFLMAO!!!

Shipping patients offshore?

People come to this area from all over the world just for the Medical
Care. G

If Jerry Lewis hadn't come to this area for his Medical Care he'd
have died over a decade ago.

Perhaps you are ignorant of the Texas Medical Center in Houston - the
"home" of the Texas Heart Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, M.
D. Anderson Cancer Institute, and many others.

You really should learn more about things before you start flapping
your mouth about them.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I am feeling charitable tonight...here's a crumb for a poor
conservative.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/mar/25hospital.htm

Now who is flapping their mouth about things before doing his
homework? ;)

Be sure to thank your insurance company for putting profits before
your welfare.

TMT

He elected to go there - he wasn't required to do so.

One good reason that he might have made such a decision would be to keep
his employer from learning the results.

Another good reason would have been if he'd wanted to deduct the travel
expenses from his Income Taxes, including his "stopover" in Bangkok's Red
Light District. grin

If THAT was the reason, he'd have even more reason to conceal the actual
purpose of his trip: AIDS treatment.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

LOL...you get a freebie cite and still deny it.

It sounds like you got a Red State education.

Thanks for playing.

TMT

"Hawke" wrote in message
...

On Apr 17, 10:18 am, Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:09:54 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than
sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen
their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about
the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically
doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening
themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping,
without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration,
not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They
were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive to
do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people making
it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this
"indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy
non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are;
complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe education
hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow,
they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress

"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this
school thing as a conspiracy, even though the
project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators.
It was and is a fully rational transaction in which
all of us play a part. We trade the liberty of our
kids and our free will for a secure social order
and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain
in which most of us agree to become as children
ourselves, under the same tutelage which holds
the young, in exchange for food, entertainment,
and safety. The difficulty is that the contract fixes
the goal of human life so low that students go
mad trying to escape it."
Quoted from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto.

Gatto wrote an article for _Harper's_ a few years ago, which supposedly
summarized his argument. I remember thinking at the time that it sounded
like elaborated and generalized grumbling; the Prussian connection was
evidence of nothing much, IMO, as education has always been a kind of
socialization, and the Prussian model just happened to be the one that
was
widely admired at the time American public education was becoming
generalized.

The trouble with Gatto's complaint, as well as most complaints about
education, is that the complaints all tend to sound the same, but the
solutions are all contradictory. The complaints are that we know too
little,
that we think too little, or that we're unable to learn anything except
what
we're spoon-fed. The solutions are that we spend too little time in
school;
we spend too much time in school (Gatto's position). School is too
permissive; school is too authoritarian. We spend too much time teaching
by
rote; we don't require kids to commit to memory the foundations of
western
thought.

And on, and on, and on. No two critics see the problem in the same way,
and
few offer remedies that aren't contradicting the *last* remedy that
someone
published.

All they have in common is that they don't like what's going on. They all
seem to have a utopian vision of what education should be, but their
utopias
contradict each other.

It makes one skeptical about the whole enterprise.


We are all prodcuts of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Citizen Jimserac

That sounds like a retread of most complaints about education we've been
hearing for 50 years or more. Now it's the Internet. Good luck.

--
Ed Huntress


I think the complainers have forgotten what we had before the adoption of
universal public education. It used to be that everyone was ignorant and
illiterate except for a tiny minority of elites that were able to pay for
a
private education or tutoring. When it was decided that everyone would
benefit from universal education some kind of system where all children
were
to be "educated" had to be chosen. For many years the system we had was
the
envy of the world and was unquestionably the best system invented to
educate
the children of an entire nation. Now it's charged with doing the same job
for a country of 300 million with a huge number of children of different
countries speaking different languages as well an underclass and a huge
income disparity to deal with. All in all it's still doing a rather
remarkable job. In addition, if you look at what the statistics are when
you
take out blacks and Hispanics you find that the system is excellent. An
objective view shows that the minorities throw the stats way out of whack
by
pulling down the averages for the whole system. What's ironic is that the
minorities take the least advantage of our free system and by all accounts
they would benefit the most from it. What's that saying about advice most
needed is advice least heeded? Those who need it the most use it the
least.
No wonder the system appears broken. I think it's not the system that's
flawed but the children who are in it.

Hawke

Without checking the numbers and some of the facts, I'd say that sounds
about right on the surface. Asian-Americans seem to do very well indeed with
our educational system. It must be good for some people...maybe the ones who
have family support and motivation.

--
Ed Huntress

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#### ## ## #### ####




###### #### ###### #### ## ##
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##### ## ## ## ######
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###### #### #### #### ## ##

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:48:25 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:


"Hawke" wrote in message

No wonder the system appears broken. I think it's not the system that's
flawed but the children who are in it.

Hawke

Without checking the numbers and some of the facts, I'd say that sounds
about right on the surface. Asian-Americans seem to do very well indeed with
our educational system. It must be good for some people...maybe the ones who
have family support and motivation.

Asian-Americans (I hate politically correct hyphens) do better in
school because the Asian mindset is that of their teaching system.
School is severe and ruggedly enforced, and their children do better
because of that. It could never happen here, but we need more burger-
flippers here than the Japanese do, so it's OK.

I feel blessed to have had an educated and loving family behind me to
prop me up through several nastyass teaching experiences, including
the metal brace one teacher mandated that I use in my left hand (since
I was left handed.) One full school-day of crying + coming home in
tears put an end to that. Mom ripped her a new asshole.

I also had a few -real- teachers in my life, those who taught me to
want to learn and how to do so. [Thanks Ms. Hankins (2nd grade) and
Mr. Downs (high school civics) for your love and support.]

Hawke's half right. Many children are broken. Anyone with a chip on
their shoulder will have one helluva time learning through it. But our
school system is seriously flawed. I got more out of life because I
wanted to read. (Sci-Fi books made me what I am today, and I'm leaving
my body to science fiction. But, seriously, I was wider read than
most students (not so more widely read than other honor roll students)
and it helped me.

If anything, I'd like for all of our teachers to learn how to teach or
inspire curiosity. That's the key to getting more out of life. Without
curiosity, students are fodder for the lovely "Would you like fries
with that?" or union worker lifestyles.

Luckily, there are lots of curious kids in our schools today, despite
the teacher's union, the NEA, and uncaring parents/teachers. For a lot
of other kids, it's a choice, and it's sad that so many make the wrong
one in life. C'est la guerre, non?

--
It's a sad day when you find out that it's not accident or time
or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you.
-- Lillian Hellman

On Apr 18, 1:16 pm, Too_Many_Tools wrote:
On Apr 17, 7:09 am, wrote:



Interestingly enough, the younger people are increasingly blaming our
generation for the mess the world is in. They don't get bogged down in
dinosaur politics - its irrelevant to them - they just damn us all! -
as long as we can find a convenient left/right scapegoat to absolve us
from actually taking any real responsibility at a personal level, they
may well be right.

Andrew VK3bFA.

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other than sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping, without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and inspiration, not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Andrew VK3BFA.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I disagree...the vast majority of young people I know are working
their butts off trying to get ahead.

Considering that they will be handed the largest debt in history
because of the stupidity of their parents, they will be paying for
that debt for their entire lives.

In reality we have failed them.

The Greatest Generation made it, our generation lost it.

TMT

I know HEAPS who are as you describe, ie all the Kiddies I go to trade
school with - and others who are hopeless and will probably never work
in their lives.

I think Gunnerland is composed of the latter...glad I dont live
there..visit sometimes, but dont live there...

Andrew VK3BFA.

In article ,
Larry Jaques wrote:

I feel blessed to have had an educated and loving family behind me to
prop me up through several nastyass teaching experiences, including
the metal brace one teacher mandated that I use in my left hand (since
I was left handed.) One full school-day of crying + coming home in
tears put an end to that. Mom ripped her a new asshole.

Good on Mom!


I also had a few -real- teachers in my life, those who taught me to
want to learn and how to do so. [Thanks Ms. Hankins (2nd grade) and
Mr. Downs (high school civics) for your love and support.]

The very first thing a pupil should hear is: "You can learn. Learning is
one of the things people do best. Learning can be slower or faster for
some people, but everyone can learn and learning is fun. So let's get
curious!"

I had the pleasure (?) of being assigned to tutor a fellow student in
high school. Skip was considered slow. Maybe so, but he was also
thorough. In three weeks he learned enough to pass his final exam in
French with a low A. Since French was what would prevent him graduating,
we both felt really good about that. The very first thing I said to Skip
was: "You can learn this, it's just another way of talking." Turned out
the whole problem was he didn't do well in a classroom setting, but
glommed onto it one-on-one like he was born in France. Slow? I don't
think slow so much as needing a different way of learning that
particular thing.

I got a contract once from the VA to teach a guy basic blacksmithing and
metalwork. He was very interested, but also very hard on himself. He
seemed to think he should be able to perfect every manual skill in one
try. Finally had to tell him:" I said to do, not to do well the first
time. Do each skill many times. Well will come. One day you'll pick and
use the right technique without consciously thinking about it -- and
you'll laugh at yourself over how it will surprise you."

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:23:16 -0400, John Husvar
wrote:
snip
Turned out
the whole problem was he didn't do well in a classroom setting, but
glommed onto it one-on-one like he was born in France. Slow? I don't
think slow so much as needing a different way of learning that
particular thing.
snip
============
FWIW

Over the entire student body [there are always exceptions] it has
been know for the last 85 years or so that the *LEAST* effective
method of instruction, measured both as how much knowledge is
retained, and how long it takes to acquire the knowledge, is the
traditional "sage on the stage" classroom lecture / text book
method.

So what method do we stress??????


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

On Apr 22, 1:48 am, "Ed Huntress"

I will repeat...

We are all products of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

In addition I will offer the growing paroxysms of school violence,
which has accelerated since Columbine, as proof that the young
students will no longer suffer the zombification and strictures which
are forced upon them but will revolt, even to the death against it.

No, it was not video games, not arguments with the sports team members
nor our violent culture and media that had anything to do with it...
those things have been around for a long time. But the Internet and
the growing realization among young people that their future has been
mortgaged away, literally as well as figuratively speaking, inevitably
leads to the explosions of violence which have occured with increasing
frequency.

Look to the system itself, NOT THE STUDENTS, for the causes.

Citizen Jimserac

"Citizen Jimserac" wrote in message
...
On Apr 22, 1:48 am, "Ed Huntress"

I will repeat...

We are all products of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Yes, you said that. g That's quite a sweeping claim, predicated on the
idea that most school turns most people into "zombies" who can't think. That
isn't my experience.

Before I graduated from high school I attended 12 different schools in six
different states, two private and 10 public; I also attended one university
in the US and one in Europe, which had students from all over the world.
There were good ones and bad ones in that mix, to be sure, but I knew both
excellent and awful students who had been educated in a wide variety of
school types and systems.

The difference, as Larry also suggested here, seemed to be the students, not
the systems. Some were fortunate to have supportive families and/or a couple
or three exceptional teachers. That's what I experienced, as well. The worst
schools I attended produced a lower percentage of good students who could
think, who were creative and who were self-motivated by the time they were
upperclassmen in high school. The best schools produced more of them. But
those good schools also tended to be located in communities where education
was held in high esteem and there was little cynicism about school among the
students. The most outstanding example of that was the high school from
which I graduated: Princeton High School, a public school in a small town of
14,000 but located in the midst of Princeton University, Westminster Choir
College, The Princeton Theological Seminary, the Institute for Advanced
Study, and several top-rated prep schools, where more than a few of the
students were sons and daughters of university professors and where it was
cool to be smart and to get good grades. The school system was conventional;
the teachers were well above average; but, most importantly, the culture of
the students themselves was one that encouraged and motivated other
students.

That made all the difference. The opportunities to learn were there and,
while they were above average, they were based on the same state
requirements, the same institutional model, the same teaching credential
requirements, the same NEA, and the same salaries being paid throughout the
system.

Students -- or what they bring with them to school -- are the key. Families
are key to the students. Families collectively produce a community's culture
and attitudes. And attitudes in the general community shape the attitudes of
the students.


In addition I will offer the growing paroxysms of school violence,
which has accelerated since Columbine, as proof that the young
students will no longer suffer the zombification and strictures which
are forced upon them but will revolt, even to the death against it.

Columbine is proof that there are some very screwed up people attending our
schools, and that cultural aspects of the school environment itself can
provoke them to murderous behavior. How much the school, as an institution,
contributed to that is hard to say. In any case, the Columbine killers seem
to fit the profile you favor: misfits and loners who escaped being
socialized by the schools. They escaped it forever.


No, it was not video games, not arguments with the sports team members
nor our violent culture and media that had anything to do with it...
those things have been around for a long time. But the Internet and
the growing realization among young people that their future has been
mortgaged away, literally as well as figuratively speaking, inevitably
leads to the explosions of violence which have occured with increasing
frequency.

Look to the system itself, NOT THE STUDENTS, for the causes.

Citizen Jimserac

It seems likely that you had an unhappy experience in school. It also seems
likely that you've force-fit the events into your theory, finding "proof" of
what you're saying by presuming causative relationships where none probably
exist.

--
Ed Huntress

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:26:37 -0700 (PDT), wrote:


I disagree...the vast majority of young people I know are working
their butts off trying to get ahead.

Considering that they will be handed the largest debt in history
because of the stupidity of their parents, they will be paying for
that debt for their entire lives.

In reality we have failed them.

The Greatest Generation made it, our generation lost it.

TMT

I know HEAPS who are as you describe, ie all the Kiddies I go to trade
school with - and others who are hopeless and will probably never work
in their lives.

I think Gunnerland is composed of the latter...glad I dont live
there..visit sometimes, but dont live there...

Andrew VK3BFA.


You couldnt be farther from the truth.

Shrug

Gunner

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional,
illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an
unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the
proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

On Apr 22, 1:31 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...

On Apr 22, 1:48 am, "Ed Huntress"

I will repeat...

We are all products of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Yes, you said that. g That's quite a sweeping claim, predicated on the
idea that most school turns most people into "zombies" who can't think. That
isn't my experience.

Before I graduated from high school I attended 12 different schools in six
different states, two private and 10 public; I also attended one university
in the US and one in Europe, which had students from all over the world.
There were good ones and bad ones in that mix, to be sure, but I knew both
excellent and awful students who had been educated in a wide variety of
school types and systems.

The difference, as Larry also suggested here, seemed to be the students, not
the systems. Some were fortunate to have supportive families and/or a couple
or three exceptional teachers. That's what I experienced, as well. The worst
schools I attended produced a lower percentage of good students who could
think, who were creative and who were self-motivated by the time they were
upperclassmen in high school. The best schools produced more of them. But
those good schools also tended to be located in communities where education
was held in high esteem and there was little cynicism about school among the
students. The most outstanding example of that was the high school from
which I graduated: Princeton High School, a public school in a small town of
14,000 but located in the midst of Princeton University, Westminster Choir
College, The Princeton Theological Seminary, the Institute for Advanced
Study, and several top-rated prep schools, where more than a few of the
students were sons and daughters of university professors and where it was
cool to be smart and to get good grades. The school system was conventional;
the teachers were well above average; but, most importantly, the culture of
the students themselves was one that encouraged and motivated other
students.

That made all the difference. The opportunities to learn were there and,
while they were above average, they were based on the same state
requirements, the same institutional model, the same teaching credential
requirements, the same NEA, and the same salaries being paid throughout the
system.

Students -- or what they bring with them to school -- are the key. Families
are key to the students. Families collectively produce a community's culture
and attitudes. And attitudes in the general community shape the attitudes of
the students.



In addition I will offer the growing paroxysms of school violence,
which has accelerated since Columbine, as proof that the young
students will no longer suffer the zombification and strictures which
are forced upon them but will revolt, even to the death against it.

Columbine is proof that there are some very screwed up people attending our
schools, and that cultural aspects of the school environment itself can
provoke them to murderous behavior. How much the school, as an institution,
contributed to that is hard to say. In any case, the Columbine killers seem
to fit the profile you favor: misfits and loners who escaped being
socialized by the schools. They escaped it forever.



No, it was not video games, not arguments with the sports team members
nor our violent culture and media that had anything to do with it...
those things have been around for a long time. But the Internet and
the growing realization among young people that their future has been
mortgaged away, literally as well as figuratively speaking, inevitably
leads to the explosions of violence which have occured with increasing
frequency.

Look to the system itself, NOT THE STUDENTS, for the causes.

CitizenJimserac

It seems likely that you had an unhappy experience in school. It also seems
likely that you've force-fit the events into your theory, finding "proof" of
what you're saying by presuming causative relationships where none probably
exist.

--
Ed Huntress

Never mind me, I'm just one from many. My experiences are hardly
definitive and you've attended far more schools at all levels than
I ever did. But that very fact probably saved you from its
full effect. Besides, teachers are for the most part good
and well intentioned and they resent the system as much
as everyone else. Read Gatto's book, it's all there - the smuggled
in "guidelines" and "standards" about what our students
would or would not learn, could or could not learn,
should or should not learn and the role of "socialization"
(remember what was then called "social studies").

I took some education courses at Rhode Island College
in the late 1960's and I recall my astonishment at the
Maoist like intensity with which the views of Jean Jaques Rousseau,
Dewey and Horace Mann were propounded as if they were
the be all and end all of educational philosophies.

Citizen Jimserac

"Citizen Jimserac" wrote in message
...

snip

Never mind me, I'm just one from many. My experiences are hardly
definitive and you've attended far more schools at all levels than
I ever did. But that very fact probably saved you from its
full effect. Besides, teachers are for the most part good
and well intentioned and they resent the system as much
as everyone else. Read Gatto's book, it's all there - the smuggled
in "guidelines" and "standards" about what our students
would or would not learn, could or could not learn,
should or should not learn and the role of "socialization"
(remember what was then called "social studies").

I will put the book on my list and try to get to it. I've been catching up
lately. d8-)


I took some education courses at Rhode Island College
in the late 1960's and I recall my astonishment at the
Maoist like intensity with which the views of Jean Jaques Rousseau,
Dewey and Horace Mann were propounded as if they were
the be all and end all of educational philosophies.

Citizen Jimserac

The late '60s was a very strange time. I was in college then, too, and I can
imagine there were plenty of rabid ideologues in teacher's education, as
there were in many other fields. But those three were important thinkers who
had a powerful effect upon education, and, to some extent, upon politics. As
historical figures and original thinkers they were all important; you can't
teach the history of education, or understand how we got where we are,
without a serious study of their lives and ideas. I'd need to know the
context in which they were being taught to appreciate your judgment in this
case.

When education was extended to the general population, as someone else
commented in this thread, the question arose about what they were to be
educated *for*. Until that time education was for the elite, the future
leaders in government, business, religion, the professions, and so on. It
wasn't until our lifetimes that the general socialization objective came
under scrutiny.

So, here we are in 2008. What would you have kids learn today? What is it
that you think the schools are failing to teach? And what, specifically,
would you remove from the current curriculum?

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Hawke" wrote in message
...

On Apr 17, 10:18 am, Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:09:54 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

The young generally didnt give a **** about anything other
than
sound
bytes with zip data backing those sound bytes up.

Meism and Nowism along with Cliche politics is more their
forte.

Gunner

Well, yes - agree. They have largely given up, they have seen
their
elders engage in endless vituperative debate, and nothing
happens
except things get worse..why should they give a rats arse about
the
dinosaurs, thrashing around, making lots of noise, but basically
doing
nothing except blaming "someone else"....so, can opening
themselves,
listening to sound bites, me too isms - desperately hoping,
without
any real conviction, that someone will offer hope and
inspiration,
not
just more lies and broken promises.........

$4 gas is the least of our problems.....

Given up? The little skulls filled with mush never started. They
were
educated to be leftards..which took too much effort so they have
simply become semimoble couch potatos who bow to the latest
fashion
trends which make them all look the same, with little incentive
to
do
anything other than ****, get drunk and have a ready supply of
ringtones to download.

Gunner

And here we see a rare agreement between my views and Gunner's.
BOTH liberals and the right were
involved in the deceptive "re-engineering"
of our educational system over a period of
decades starting over 100 years ago.

Real education, it was decided,
was for the elite classes and
what was needed was a system
of "socialization" and indoctrination
to produce happy non-thinking
obedient worker drones
and cannon fodder for the military.

The logical problem with this kind of claim is that the people
making
it,
including Gunner and, perhaps, you, are all products of this
"indoctrinating
educational system." Presumably you then are either a happy
non-thinking
obedient worker drone, or cannon fodder.

It's clear that most people are aware of what the problems are;
complaints
about education are nearly universal, so it's safe to say that
nearly
everyone else recognizes the same things that you do. Maybe
education
hasn't
hurt them none; they can read the writing on the wall. Somehow,
they've
escaped the grand conspiracy to turn them into mindless drones.

--
Ed Huntress

"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this
school thing as a conspiracy, even though the
project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators.
It was and is a fully rational transaction in which
all of us play a part. We trade the liberty of our
kids and our free will for a secure social order
and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain
in which most of us agree to become as children
ourselves, under the same tutelage which holds
the young, in exchange for food, entertainment,
and safety. The difficulty is that the contract fixes
the goal of human life so low that students go
mad trying to escape it."
Quoted from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto.

Gatto wrote an article for _Harper's_ a few years ago, which supposedly
summarized his argument. I remember thinking at the time that it
sounded
like elaborated and generalized grumbling; the Prussian connection was
evidence of nothing much, IMO, as education has always been a kind of
socialization, and the Prussian model just happened to be the one that
was
widely admired at the time American public education was becoming
generalized.

The trouble with Gatto's complaint, as well as most complaints about
education, is that the complaints all tend to sound the same, but the
solutions are all contradictory. The complaints are that we know too
little,
that we think too little, or that we're unable to learn anything except
what
we're spoon-fed. The solutions are that we spend too little time in
school;
we spend too much time in school (Gatto's position). School is too
permissive; school is too authoritarian. We spend too much time
teaching
by
rote; we don't require kids to commit to memory the foundations of
western
thought.

And on, and on, and on. No two critics see the problem in the same way,
and
few offer remedies that aren't contradicting the *last* remedy that
someone
published.

All they have in common is that they don't like what's going on. They
all
seem to have a utopian vision of what education should be, but their
utopias
contradict each other.

It makes one skeptical about the whole enterprise.


We are all prodcuts of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Citizen Jimserac

That sounds like a retread of most complaints about education we've
been
hearing for 50 years or more. Now it's the Internet. Good luck.

--
Ed Huntress


I think the complainers have forgotten what we had before the adoption
of
universal public education. It used to be that everyone was ignorant and
illiterate except for a tiny minority of elites that were able to pay
for
a
private education or tutoring. When it was decided that everyone would
benefit from universal education some kind of system where all children
were
to be "educated" had to be chosen. For many years the system we had was
the
envy of the world and was unquestionably the best system invented to
educate
the children of an entire nation. Now it's charged with doing the same
job
for a country of 300 million with a huge number of children of different
countries speaking different languages as well an underclass and a huge
income disparity to deal with. All in all it's still doing a rather
remarkable job. In addition, if you look at what the statistics are when
you
take out blacks and Hispanics you find that the system is excellent. An
objective view shows that the minorities throw the stats way out of
whack
by
pulling down the averages for the whole system. What's ironic is that
the
minorities take the least advantage of our free system and by all
accounts
they would benefit the most from it. What's that saying about advice
most
needed is advice least heeded? Those who need it the most use it the
least.
No wonder the system appears broken. I think it's not the system that's
flawed but the children who are in it.

Hawke

Without checking the numbers and some of the facts, I'd say that sounds
about right on the surface. Asian-Americans seem to do very well indeed
with
our educational system. It must be good for some people...maybe the ones
who
have family support and motivation.


I think you hit on it exactly. The two keys are self motivation and family
support. Anyone with a modicum of either of those attributes is going to do
well in our system. Sadly, only a minority of people have those things in a
sufficient supply.

The best thing we can do for the people of this country is to provide a good
educational system for each new generation. I once heard someone say that we
can't guarantee that everyone will have a good home but we can guarantee
everyone will have a good school. If we were really serious about doing that
we'd solve a lot of the problems. One place to start is to pay for public
education out of the general fund and not have it paid locally the way it is
now. Wealthy areas have great schools. Poor areas have schools that suck. If
we provided the money to all schools equally and gave enough to ensure they
all were top notch I think we would see a big improvement in our schools.
Despite what some say money does do a lot to making one school better than
the others, like just about anything else in life.


Hawke

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:29:07 -0700 (PDT), Citizen Jimserac
wrote:

On Apr 22, 1:31 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...

On Apr 22, 1:48 am, "Ed Huntress"

I will repeat...

We are all products of some system or other
but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists
to escape the zombification process and become
real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it
and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet,
the medium in which we are now having this exchange,
the process is accelerated.

Yes, you said that. g That's quite a sweeping claim, predicated on the
idea that most school turns most people into "zombies" who can't think. That
isn't my experience.

Before I graduated from high school I attended 12 different schools in six
different states, two private and 10 public; I also attended one university
in the US and one in Europe, which had students from all over the world.
There were good ones and bad ones in that mix, to be sure, but I knew both
excellent and awful students who had been educated in a wide variety of
school types and systems.

The difference, as Larry also suggested here, seemed to be the students, not
the systems. Some were fortunate to have supportive families and/or a couple
or three exceptional teachers. That's what I experienced, as well. The worst
schools I attended produced a lower percentage of good students who could
think, who were creative and who were self-motivated by the time they were
upperclassmen in high school. The best schools produced more of them. But
those good schools also tended to be located in communities where education
was held in high esteem and there was little cynicism about school among the
students. The most outstanding example of that was the high school from
which I graduated: Princeton High School, a public school in a small town of
14,000 but located in the midst of Princeton University, Westminster Choir
College, The Princeton Theological Seminary, the Institute for Advanced
Study, and several top-rated prep schools, where more than a few of the
students were sons and daughters of university professors and where it was
cool to be smart and to get good grades. The school system was conventional;
the teachers were well above average; but, most importantly, the culture of
the students themselves was one that encouraged and motivated other
students.

That made all the difference. The opportunities to learn were there and,
while they were above average, they were based on the same state
requirements, the same institutional model, the same teaching credential
requirements, the same NEA, and the same salaries being paid throughout the
system.

Students -- or what they bring with them to school -- are the key. Families
are key to the students. Families collectively produce a community's culture
and attitudes. And attitudes in the general community shape the attitudes of
the students.



In addition I will offer the growing paroxysms of school violence,
which has accelerated since Columbine, as proof that the young
students will no longer suffer the zombification and strictures which
are forced upon them but will revolt, even to the death against it.

Columbine is proof that there are some very screwed up people attending our
schools, and that cultural aspects of the school environment itself can
provoke them to murderous behavior. How much the school, as an institution,
contributed to that is hard to say. In any case, the Columbine killers seem
to fit the profile you favor: misfits and loners who escaped being
socialized by the schools. They escaped it forever.



No, it was not video games, not arguments with the sports team members
nor our violent culture and media that had anything to do with it...
those things have been around for a long time. But the Internet and
the growing realization among young people that their future has been
mortgaged away, literally as well as figuratively speaking, inevitably
leads to the explosions of violence which have occured with increasing
frequency.

Look to the system itself, NOT THE STUDENTS, for the causes.

CitizenJimserac

It seems likely that you had an unhappy experience in school. It also seems
likely that you've force-fit the events into your theory, finding "proof" of
what you're saying by presuming causative relationships where none probably
exist.

--
Ed Huntress

Never mind me, I'm just one from many. My experiences are hardly
definitive and you've attended far more schools at all levels than
I ever did. But that very fact probably saved you from its
full effect. Besides, teachers are for the most part good
and well intentioned and they resent the system as much
as everyone else. Read Gatto's book, it's all there - the smuggled
in "guidelines" and "standards" about what our students
would or would not learn, could or could not learn,
should or should not learn and the role of "socialization"
(remember what was then called "social studies").

I took some education courses at Rhode Island College
in the late 1960's and I recall my astonishment at the
Maoist like intensity with which the views of Jean Jaques Rousseau,
Dewey and Horace Mann were propounded as if they were
the be all and end all of educational philosophies.

Citizen Jimserac


For the sake of Honest Disclosure..Eddy should mention his wife is a
school teacher......

Gunner

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional,
illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an
unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the
proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...

snip

For the sake of Honest Disclosure..Eddy should mention his wife is a
school teacher......

Gunner


She teaches pre-school and kindergarten mentally handicapped, as you know
perfectly well. You want to talk about that in the context of academic
excellence and self-motivation, you smug asshole?

--
Ed Huntress

On Apr 22, 7:14 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...

snip

Never mind me, I'm just one from many. My experiences are hardly
definitive and you've attended far more schools at all levels than
I ever did. But that very fact probably saved you from its
full effect. Besides, teachers are for the most part good
and well intentioned and they resent the system as much
as everyone else. Read Gatto's book, it's all there - the smuggled
in "guidelines" and "standards" about what our students
would or would not learn, could or could not learn,
should or should not learn and the role of "socialization"
(remember what was then called "social studies").

I will put the book on my list and try to get to it. I've been catching up
lately. d8-)



I took some education courses at Rhode Island College
in the late 1960's and I recall my astonishment at the
Maoist like intensity with which the views of Jean Jaques Rousseau,
Dewey and Horace Mann were propounded as if they were
the be all and end all of educational philosophies.

CitizenJimserac

The late '60s was a very strange time. I was in college then, too, and I can
imagine there were plenty of rabid ideologues in teacher's education, as
there were in many other fields. But those three were important thinkers who
had a powerful effect upon education, and, to some extent, upon politics. As
historical figures and original thinkers they were all important; you can't
teach the history of education, or understand how we got where we are,
without a serious study of their lives and ideas. I'd need to know the
context in which they were being taught to appreciate your judgment in this
case.

When education was extended to the general population, as someone else
commented in this thread, the question arose about what they were to be
educated *for*. Until that time education was for the elite, the future
leaders in government, business, religion, the professions, and so on. It
wasn't until our lifetimes that the general socialization objective came
under scrutiny.

So, here we are in 2008. What would you have kids learn today? What is it
that you think the schools are failing to teach? And what, specifically,
would you remove from the current curriculum?

--
Ed Huntress

Listen to what Gatto says:
(from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto,
"By the late 1960s I had exhausted my imagination
inside the conventional classroom when all of a
sudden a period of phenomenal turbulence descended
upon urban schoolteaching everywhere. I’ll tell
you more about this in a while, but for the moment,
suffice it to say that supervisory personnel
were torn loose from their moorings, superintendents,
principals and all the rest flung to the wolves
by those who actually direct American schooling.

In this dark time, local management cowered.
During one three-year stretch I can remember,
we had four principals and three superintendents.
The net effect of this ideological bombardment,
which lasted about five years in its most
visible manifestation, was to utterly destroy
the utility of urban schools. From my own
perspective all this was a godsend. Surveillance
of teachers and administrative routines lost
their bite as school administrators scurried
like rats to escape the wrath of their unseen
masters..."

Gatto goes on to describe how the school district
later tried to get rid of him by secretly canceling
his teaching license while he was on sick
leave and and they sent the legally required notice
to an address that he
had not lived at for 22 years. After several
hearings in which the required sick leave papers
that he filed had vanished, Gatto found a payroll
secretary who verified that he had filed
the proper papers and that people had come to her
office and made an effort to locate and remove
those papers. Gatto was eventually reinstated
and made teacher of the year two years later.

It was this battle with those cynical administrators
that taught Gatto how easily the impersonal
public school monster could be backed up
in the face of opposition that showed
any hint at all of exposing the entire sham.

Again in your post you have focused on the family
and on the student rather than on this administrative
structure, filled with well meaning people, which
seems to enact what a few money controlling agencies,
foundations and government offices desire rather
than act for the good of the students and their futures.

Citizen Jimserac

"Citizen Jimserac" wrote in message
...
On Apr 22, 7:14 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...

snip

Never mind me, I'm just one from many. My experiences are hardly
definitive and you've attended far more schools at all levels than
I ever did. But that very fact probably saved you from its
full effect. Besides, teachers are for the most part good
and well intentioned and they resent the system as much
as everyone else. Read Gatto's book, it's all there - the smuggled
in "guidelines" and "standards" about what our students
would or would not learn, could or could not learn,
should or should not learn and the role of "socialization"
(remember what was then called "social studies").

I will put the book on my list and try to get to it. I've been catching up
lately. d8-)



I took some education courses at Rhode Island College
in the late 1960's and I recall my astonishment at the
Maoist like intensity with which the views of Jean Jaques Rousseau,
Dewey and Horace Mann were propounded as if they were
the be all and end all of educational philosophies.

CitizenJimserac

The late '60s was a very strange time. I was in college then, too, and I
can
imagine there were plenty of rabid ideologues in teacher's education, as
there were in many other fields. But those three were important thinkers
who
had a powerful effect upon education, and, to some extent, upon politics.
As
historical figures and original thinkers they were all important; you
can't
teach the history of education, or understand how we got where we are,
without a serious study of their lives and ideas. I'd need to know the
context in which they were being taught to appreciate your judgment in
this
case.

When education was extended to the general population, as someone else
commented in this thread, the question arose about what they were to be
educated *for*. Until that time education was for the elite, the future
leaders in government, business, religion, the professions, and so on. It
wasn't until our lifetimes that the general socialization objective came
under scrutiny.

So, here we are in 2008. What would you have kids learn today? What is it
that you think the schools are failing to teach? And what, specifically,
would you remove from the current curriculum?

--
Ed Huntress

Listen to what Gatto says:
(from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto,
"By the late 1960s I had exhausted my imagination
inside the conventional classroom when all of a
sudden a period of phenomenal turbulence descended
upon urban schoolteaching everywhere. I’ll tell
you more about this in a while, but for the moment,
suffice it to say that supervisory personnel
were torn loose from their moorings, superintendents,
principals and all the rest flung to the wolves
by those who actually direct American schooling.

In this dark time, local management cowered.
During one three-year stretch I can remember,
we had four principals and three superintendents.
The net effect of this ideological bombardment,
which lasted about five years in its most
visible manifestation, was to utterly destroy
the utility of urban schools. From my own
perspective all this was a godsend. Surveillance
of teachers and administrative routines lost
their bite as school administrators scurried
like rats to escape the wrath of their unseen
masters..."

Gatto goes on to describe how the school district
later tried to get rid of him by secretly canceling
his teaching license while he was on sick
leave and and they sent the legally required notice
to an address that he
had not lived at for 22 years. After several
hearings in which the required sick leave papers
that he filed had vanished, Gatto found a payroll
secretary who verified that he had filed
the proper papers and that people had come to her
office and made an effort to locate and remove
those papers. Gatto was eventually reinstated
and made teacher of the year two years later.

It was this battle with those cynical administrators
that taught Gatto how easily the impersonal
public school monster could be backed up
in the face of opposition that showed
any hint at all of exposing the entire sham.

Again in your post you have focused on the family
and on the student rather than on this administrative
structure, filled with well meaning people, which
seems to enact what a few money controlling agencies,
foundations and government offices desire rather
than act for the good of the students and their futures.

Citizen Jimserac

=============================================

But what about the question of what is being taught, or should be taught,
and what should not be taught? Gatto is complaining about the
administration. How about the education?

--
Ed Huntress

On Apr 23, 10:25 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...
On Apr 22, 7:14 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:



"CitizenJimserac" wrote in message

...

snip

Never mind me, I'm just one from many. My experiences are hardly
definitive and you've attended far more schools at all levels than
I ever did. But that very fact probably saved you from its
full effect. Besides, teachers are for the most part good
and well intentioned and they resent the system as much
as everyone else. Read Gatto's book, it's all there - the smuggled
in "guidelines" and "standards" about what our students
would or would not learn, could or could not learn,
should or should not learn and the role of "socialization"
(remember what was then called "social studies").

I will put the book on my list and try to get to it. I've been catching up
lately. d8-)

I took some education courses at Rhode Island College
in the late 1960's and I recall my astonishment at the
Maoist like intensity with which the views of Jean Jaques Rousseau,
Dewey and Horace Mann were propounded as if they were
the be all and end all of educational philosophies.

CitizenJimserac

The late '60s was a very strange time. I was in college then, too, and I
can
imagine there were plenty of rabid ideologues in teacher's education, as
there were in many other fields. But those three were important thinkers
who
had a powerful effect upon education, and, to some extent, upon politics..
As
historical figures and original thinkers they were all important; you
can't
teach the history of education, or understand how we got where we are,
without a serious study of their lives and ideas. I'd need to know the
context in which they were being taught to appreciate your judgment in
this
case.

When education was extended to the general population, as someone else
commented in this thread, the question arose about what they were to be
educated *for*. Until that time education was for the elite, the future
leaders in government, business, religion, the professions, and so on. It
wasn't until our lifetimes that the general socialization objective came
under scrutiny.

So, here we are in 2008. What would you have kids learn today? What is it
that you think the schools are failing to teach? And what, specifically,
would you remove from the current curriculum?

--
Ed Huntress

Listen to what Gatto says:
(from "The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto,
"By the late 1960s I had exhausted my imagination
inside the conventional classroom when all of a
sudden a period of phenomenal turbulence descended
upon urban schoolteaching everywhere. I’ll tell
you more about this in a while, but for the moment,
suffice it to say that supervisory personnel
were torn loose from their moorings, superintendents,
principals and all the rest flung to the wolves
by those who actually direct American schooling.

In this dark time, local management cowered.
During one three-year stretch I can remember,
we had four principals and three superintendents.
The net effect of this ideological bombardment,
which lasted about five years in its most
visible manifestation, was to utterly destroy
the utility of urban schools. From my own
perspective all this was a godsend. Surveillance
of teachers and administrative routines lost
their bite as school administrators scurried
like rats to escape the wrath of their unseen
masters..."

Gatto goes on to describe how the school district
later tried to get rid of him by secretly canceling
his teaching license while he was on sick
leave and and they sent the legally required notice
to an address that he
had not lived at for 22 years. After several
hearings in which the required sick leave papers
that he filed had vanished, Gatto found a payroll
secretary who verified that he had filed
the proper papers and that people had come to her
office and made an effort to locate and remove
those papers. Gatto was eventually reinstated
and made teacher of the year two years later.

It was this battle with those cynical administrators
that taught Gatto how easily the impersonal
public school monster could be backed up
in the face of opposition that showed
any hint at all of exposing the entire sham.

Again in your post you have focused on the family
and on the student rather than on this administrative
structure, filled with well meaning people, which
seems to enact what a few money controlling agencies,
foundations and government offices desire rather
than act for the good of the students and their futures.

CitizenJimserac

=============================================

But what about the question of what is being taught, or should be taught,
and what should not be taught? Gatto is complaining about the
administration. How about the education?

--
Ed Huntress

He has PLENTY to say on the subject of curricula, and in depth
and in detail. Read the book!

CJ

"Citizen Jimserac" wrote in message
...
On Apr 23, 10:25 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

snip


But what about the question of what is being taught, or should be taught,
and what should not be taught? Gatto is complaining about the
administration. How about the education?

--
Ed Huntress

He has PLENTY to say on the subject of curricula, and in depth
and in detail. Read the book!

CJ

All right, I have it on my list.

--
Ed Huntress