Posted on 01/09/2008 8:40:53 AM PST by reaganaut1
Granting lazy whiners a free pass to a degree that is worthless, at a college where they won’t have to worry about paying tuition because the children of Whitey are paying full tuition.
But it doesn’t matter because they will get free “affirmative action” anyway.
She is already working with the head of the NAACP in this area and has been offered a job with the largest civil rights firm in the city.
Actually, affirmative action in the university is illegal in this state, so they do it on the basis of the essay.
“Nobody is giving any grades away to blacks.”
Radiohead, I’ve read your postings in the past, and I have no doubt you earned your grades. However, I currently work at a law school, too, and I know for a fact things are being rigged so minority students (blacks and Hispanics) are given preferential treatment. Even in something as benign as determining the criteria for law review status, faculty members argued against a purely merit basis. Their reason? “We’ll never get any black students on law review that way.”
Our first year class had approximately eight minority students. Of that number, three fell below the minimum grade requirements and were dismissed. The ABA has deemed this can’t happen again. We had our first evaluation last October. Their first recommendation? Nothing about the quality of the classes. Nothing about the electronic/book resources. No, the first thing they chose to address was our lack of diversity; we MUST get more black and Hispanic students, ability and merit be damned, apparently.
It’s unfortunate because one of our most conservative students is black. He’s constantly embarrassed at this kind of pandering.
Your son is taking physics in 4th grade? Has he had calculus already too? (You can’t do the electricity and magnetism or derive Newton’s equations of motions without differentials or integrals, after all.)
As far of the grades are concerned, I asked the young woman if she was spending a lot of time studying, if law school was as hard as they say it is. Her answer was that she was actually kind of slacking off because they were studying contract law at that time and she was never going to use it, and besides she said, that they have a kind of weird method of scaling the grades, which means that she cannot get any grade lower than a B+, so she was just letting the other kids fight over the A’s.
Interpret it any way you like.
I think Poland’s got it right. Higher education is free in the public universities, however there are fewer of them and only the brightest can get in them. Those who do not excel can go to the private universities. If they can’t afford it, well then, that’s tough luck. They should have tried harder in their primary education.
“race doesn’t get you any brownie points”; that’s a load of crap and you know it. And yes, On the “state bar exam”. The “examiners” know and you know that to. I are too a scumbag attorney and I know how the State Bar types think. In fact I had a hoot with them one time after a series of articles on diversity in their Bar Journal, I called and complained to some dumbass babmbi bitch at the State Bar that they’d forgotten to include “Anglo-Normans” and how I wanted a committe set up for Anglo-Norman representation in the Young Lawyers group to push the advancement of Anglo-Normans. She took me seriously and promised, (and did), to mail the necessary paper work. She had no idea what “Anglo-Norman” meant, but being exotic it must’ve been an overlooked and oppressed minority. Hell I could’ve convinced them to have the Bar Exam printed in Celtic Runes. They don’t think, they are “program” people.
But hey, what does it really matter? It’s not the “Blacks” problem; its the Liberal Gov’t problem which has embraced the idea that “diversity” = anything except White. And in the final analysis, all of this will seem like a tempest in a tea pot because when the Mexicans are the majority minority, they aren’t going to care a damn about no stinking “diversity”, and the only affirmative action program they’ll care about is payola. Which, in the long run beats a Marxist Dictatorship any day.
“Your son is taking physics in 4th grade? Has he had calculus already too? (You can’t do the electricity and magnetism or derive Newton’s equations of motions without differentials or integrals, after all.)”
Actually, I think people make physics *too* hard. Physics, in a nutshell, is the science of motion - inertia, action and/or reaction. If one has a good basic knowledge of the four function of math (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) then one can work out the equations. All of Newtons laws are elegantly simple - the devil is in those little details we keep adding in, like friction, changing acceleration, etc. But at their heart, they are just addition, fractions, multiplication, and/or division.
For instance, take Newton’s First Law:
Inertia, OR
Objects in motion tend to remain in motion, and objects at rest tend to remain at rest.
This is a simple law that can be introduced through the use of experiment and demonstration; but to be more fully understood, higher math is necessary.
Then there is Newton’s Second Law:
Force = mass times acceleration, OR
acceleration = force divided by mass, OR
mass =Force divided by acceleration
There is nothing there that cannot be computed with basic arithmatic. Put in an unknown and you’ve got at the most, basic algebra, which my son already knows how to work.
Now to Newton’s Third Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposit reaction.
This can once again be taught with the same techniques used in teaching the first law... it is also a great way to work in a day at the gun range and call it science (shoot gun, get knocked back!) In fact, all of physics can be used as an excuse to go squeeze off rounds at the range. But I digress...
Like the understanding of math, in which we learn by studying the basic functions first, so we also do with physics. By developing the understanding of the basic laws of physics, we are able, later, to learn the more complex puzzles of higher physics. And in doing so, we must embrace higher math in order to advance. It is an unending dance - in order to advance in science, one must advance in math. They are intrinsically linked.
In the basic laws of physics there is nothing that is too complicated for most of us who have a basic knowledge of mathematical function. But teachers especially have a tendency to make science and math too complicated - in reality, they are systems, languages and truths, and the simpler and earlier they are taught, the better they will be learned. Then, when the basics are understood, we can advance in all forms of science and math.
My son now has an extensive knowledge of biology, geology, and astronomy; he has a basic understanding of chemistry, physics and genetics. But now that the basics have been introduced, the real work begins - that of advancing in all these interlinked disciplines of study...
So, while calculus is certainly a necessity to fully understand and work with physics, I’ve never considered to be a *prerequisite* to the introduction of Newtonian Law and the basic elements of physics.
Interesting reply and interesting home page. Curiosity is getting the best of me; what exactly *is* a John Birch Bohemian?
I’m glad you did, and tell that boy of yours to keep working, as he’s got a better chance at it than I did. My HS algebra teacher told me that the reason I needed algebra was to graduate from high school. Being a smart-***ed kid, I said “oh, yeah!” and flunked the first year. He gave me a “D” the second year. I finally passed College Algebra as a 47 year-old adult, working on an engineering degree, but crashed and burned on Trigonometry. Now I’m a special ed teacher, in an elementary school.
Tell him good luck, and God Bless, and he carries my dreams with him!
I agree with you - a physical science course is not the same as physics. I am lucky enough to have my mother, who was a physics major at the University of North Texas in the 1950’s, living with me. Mother has a broad knowledge of what the true study of physics entails, and before the hand calculator that meant working on some equations for WEEKS...
So when my son does his work, he gets grilled by *her*.
In this case, I would consider my son to be studying elementary physics, since he completed his middle-school-level physical science textbook last year in third grade. As to whether or not he’s the next Einstein or Hawking, well, I believe he would rather be the next Werner Von Braun (minus the Nazi connections). My son’s love of science is propelled more by it’s potential applications for weapons design/space flight rather than by it’s more esoteric theoretical applications.
Regardless of whether or not he is the next “Hawking” or “Einstein”, he must become the best “Himself”. After all, the world already has Hawking and Einstein; but my son can only truly fulfill his God-given potential by becoming his best self, whatever that may be...
From the time he was three years old, my son said he was going to become an aerospace/weapons design engineer. Truly, I never thought I would hear a heated dinner-table diatribe from a nine-year-old over what *he* considers to be the limiting design flaws of NASA’s Orion project... or why we should be working on a more powerful version of the “Ion thrust” engine.
Until he explained it to me, I didn’t even know there *was* such a thing as an “Ion thrust” engine. I just told him if he was so sure that his design was better than the one coming from NASA, then he better get busy working on his finished design so he can submit it.
Autocad, here we come!
Thank you dear - and thank you for being a special ed teacher. (That was my specialization.) I know how important a job it is - and congrats on getting the College Algebra finished!
Think of yourself as a Dream Weaver - the guide who leads others to *their* Dreams...
“Curiosity is getting the best of me; what exactly *is* a John Birch Bohemian?”
I think it’s a hippie chick with a blue book and a gun...
My father described me as being “to the right of Rush” on foreign policy and a pro-life libertarian/constitutionalist on most social matters; but I also teach school, wear prairie skirts and designed my own self-sufficient solar geodesic dome homestead (which fate deigned I could not build as long as my mother insisted on living in an all-electric modern house).
Ah well. I’m a little weird, but I’m fun.
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