Who are you referring to, might I ask?
Or you can get raw with these strings. Either way, the violin is sweet yet lethal.
Do it!
Posted on 07/06/2011 10:07:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
How about those on the other end of the bell curve?
The takers outnumber the makers and Dear Leader will get his social equality-we’ll all be destitute.
Colleges need to understand that if they continue on their path of not educating and just collecting money from students and government, just as our jobs, education will leave the country also.
Education is the most critical issue in California, more serious than even the budget crisis. When Gray Davis first ran for Governor, he promised that Education was to be his highest three priorities, but instead Mr. Davis has shown us what they really were all along: Re-Election, Re-Election, and Re-Election. What were the results? Education spending per student has increased nearly 30%, while classroom performance remains relatively unimproved and at the bottom of a nation producing a third rate primary and secondary education product. The system is broken and the State is nearly bankrupt. So what can we do?
One answer is to free California’s teachers from the overwhelming power of national unions. Teachers should have a choice whether or not to support an often radical political agenda. Unlike Gray Davis, if you elect me Governor of California, I will enforce the law that prohibits unions from requiring campaign contributions in dues payments without teacher’s permission (Beck (487 US 735), 1988).
Second, we must reverse the trend toward large unified school districts that has effectively excluded parents from affecting public school decisions. The purpose of consolidation was supposedly to reduce the cost of overhead through economies of scale and to strengthen the districts’ collective bargaining power, but that isn’t how it has turned out. Instead, district bureaucracies have become enormous and the resulting issues are so complex that parents are pushed aside by an organizational machine controlled by union lawyers.
I plan to assist formation of corporate service associations for school districts so that they can divest operations into smaller, more personalized institutions while retaining the organizational muscle to deal with the unions. Smaller school districts will give parents a stronger voice on district boards over the issues that matter to them. The principle need to make this possible is to develop programs for children with special needs. Here is where can turn to parents for solutions.
Some would argue that parents on local School Boards aren’t qualified to make administrative decisions about public education, especially over programs for children with developmental challenges. So, I’d like to talk about an education success-story that not only proves that argument wrong, it points toward a total transformation in public education.
Home education is enjoying a renaissance in America, and religious freedom isn’t the principle reason. Parents are choosing to home school to assure educational excellence for their children, whose learning habits they know best. A family bond of patience and discipline is a critical factor in student success, especially in a challenging situation. What many people don't know about home-schools is that they have a high percentage of students with genetic, behavioral, and developmental disabilities that had often been poorly served by public institutions. Even with that statistical disadvantage, SAT, ACT, and STAR test scores strongly indicate that home education is producing superior results across the entire spectrum of individual ability.
So parents ARE competent to make choices about their children’s education, and home schools successfully manage nearly every type of specialized educational problem. So what are they doing right that we can apply to public institutions?
As home-educators have grown in number, they have been organizing into loosely knit education cooperatives that point to a new form of public education: a decentralized, customer-oriented network for lifelong learning, using products customized to meet individual interests and abilities. That promises what 21st Century public education could really become: a multi-disciplinary market of customized learning products and services.
We are already starting to see the effects of this change. Software and curriculum companies are finding a growing market of customers committed to gaining competitive advantage. Colleges and universities are offering online degrees because they need superior students to assure productive alumnae. Superior teachers could get rich transmitting their ideas and methods to a mass-market. Where better to develop those products and sell them to the world than California?
We can use private and home education as if they were R&D laboratories developing and testing proven learning tools and services. Public school parents on school boards could then select those products that the State would fund for use in public schools. It is a gradual transformation, from experimenting on our children with untested academic theories, to contracting for innovative tools and methods that have been proven in the marketplace.
All we have to do is let it happen and keep government from regulating new educational methods out of existence. If you elect me Governor, that is what I will do. Federal education dollars aren’t worth the price of Federal control and bureaucratic requirements. Private and home education both leave the State with more money to spend per-child and provide a competitive incentive for public schools to keep their customers.
Together, let’s help California rise from the ashes of a broken system and lead the way once again, into a world of exciting possibilities for our children.
Any human then could use any means imaginable to acquire the necessary knowledge to pass We Test tests. Any school would do, no accreditation required. The Internet is loaded with coursework and curricula, libraries and lab-simulators. Any human with the drive and intelligence to learn on their own could then qualify for a job. No saving for decades, no brainwashing, completely transferable work, at any pace one can withstand. Any employer could then simply select from a menu of We Test specifications instead of a diploma, at any level. We Test tests.
One would think that this should have happened a long time ago, but in fact there is one thing standing in the way that makes the realization of this seeming inevitability a matter of now or never.
State licensing requires degreed credentials obtainable only at said profligate, bureaucratic and unaccountable institutions charging outrageous fees and demanding excessive time as only a State monopoly could command. Why not just amend the legislation specifying education for state licensure by adding the simple words, "or equivalent"?
As an example of how little it would take, consider my wife. She just passed her board certification exam as a Clinical Nurse Specialist in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. She walked into H&R Block, sat at a computer, took a three-hour exam harder than anything she'd endured in her Masters' Program at Cal State San Francisco, and within five minutes after completion had her passing grade. If the private system can handle a test that specialized, why can't it test arithmetic, algebra, US history, or college chemistry? Instead of bricks and mortar, it would be e-books in quarters. Why not?
How can that be??? The Dept. of Education's yearly budget is $70 Billion!
So, if we want to focus on "science" why then condemn "science"?
I never allow that particular erroneous view to interfere with my taking the time to read something else some other place. It's just IGNANT!
Scrap Davis-Bacon and all prevailing wage laws
Probably a good idea. Might solve the problem of employers hiring "off the books" illegals to save cash.
Enact national right-to-work laws
No-brainer, but, is it a Federal area or is this a states-rights issue?
Kill defined benefit plans for public workers
Why should they have anything but a 401k-like, private sector type plan, or even that if the entity can't afford it?
Scrap student loan programs entirely
I would agree generally, but perhaps put something in place that makes it easier for private student loans to be obtained, regulation and tax-wise. The reason costs increase so fast is the fact that with easy loans there is no downward pressure on tuition. Same would be true for trade schools if they saw a resurgence. This is not an easy fix, really. The idea behind loans is to prevent people being locked into a certain class, a reasonably smart kid with broke-ass parents needs some options (scholarships are another), but this does need changed from what we have now.
End all support for for-profit colleges
I'm not sure about this one...on one hand, the "University of Phoenix" type schools are thought of as lower-quality, but, in the right environment a for-profit school could be superior.
Revise corporate tax laws
No brainer.
Stop corporate tax repatriation holidays
Are they saying to TAX repatriation or NOT TAX them? Not taxing makes more sense - to bring the money back to our shores.
Slash military spending. The US can no longer afford to be the world's policeman.
Agreed with a caveat: We still need to beef up border control and anything directly related to terrorism, and I think we need to stay with Israel, but Germany doesn't need a US military base anymore...
It seems that basically, we have to make a choice...if we want good wages we have to educate ourselves properly, not get 4 year, $80,000 degrees in basket weaving or liberal arts. The only degrees really worth the money are in law (but we have too many in this field), sciences, medicine, and, business to some degree. Even these professions don't necessarily need 4 years in all the excess crap, focus instead on what they are planning to do.
Instead of this, there can be a higher focus on educating for specific trades and skills.
As far as being "well-rounded" - this stuff should really be established in high school and prior. Even some trades can be done at the high school level, IMHO.
I have an MBA, and while I think I did learn a lot from it, it so far hasn't been worth the student loan I'm paying off.
A big part is kids choosing the wrong majors - American kids often opt for more “easy” or “fun” stuff, while Asian kids are taking the hard sciences, engineering, technology, etc.
3.U.S. universities are run for the benefit of teachers, teachers' unions, and administrators, not for the benefit of students
This problem actually starts much earlier with publically funded kindergarten.
Hillsdale College actually has a successful student loan model in place to replace the government debt slave model. They have lined up their own set of lendors to offer their students something better. Their default rate is virtually non-existent because their kids actually learn something useful.
If a tiny little liberal arts college in Michigan can do it, then it can go nationwide.
“I’d have a shovel in the hands of the long-term unemployed from 8am to noon, and from 1pm to 5pm I’d have them studying algebra, physics, and geometry.”
How’s that going to work when the majority of these long term unemployed have not even mastered the basics of Fractions?
Any politician that tells you that he/she has a plan to create jobs is blowing smoke up your butt. There is no fixing the job situation. It isn’t going to happen-not by any act of congress anyways.
“How about those on the other end of the bell curve?”
They will tout that bale and carry water as they always have. Is there something different for them?
that isn’t 100% true. Plenty of highly educated people are finding themselves unemployed or underemployed. This is about competition amongst a growing pool of job seekers in a climate of decreasing employment opportunities.
College is a scheme to finance the lives of stupid liberals way beyond what they are worth.
They will tout that bale and carry water as they always have. Is there something different for them?
I was hoping there would be jobs in private industry instead of living off the government. Workers with mind have a future, workers using muscle are not needed as they once were.
Nope, but that is irrevocable without an entire economic and technological collapse. The former is close and the latter not inconceivable considering the growth of Neo-Luddite views and appalling ignorance of the masses.
Who are you referring to, might I ask?
Or you can get raw with these strings. Either way, the violin is sweet yet lethal.
Do it!
How about those on the other end of the bell curve?
Those without the ability to get a college degree. There used to be manual jobs in manufacturing but they don’t exist in this country as they once did. What will those people do to earn a living and support a family if we are not going to bring the factories back.
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