Anyway, if teachers are going to vote to almost eliminate history, geography, literature, languages, art and music from their teachings, then maybe they SHOULDN’T vote.” -Jeff

Thanks for the kind words, but I think you missed my point. Show me some hard numbers that a majority of teachers vote for higher taxes, let alone vote to eliminate history, geography, and so on, and then we can talk. Until then, you’re talking out of your ass.

Also see this from Business Week’s chief economist, Michael Mandel:

“For the last 20 years, a college degree has been the rarest of anomalies–a low-risk, high-return asset…However, as a general rule, high-return, low-risk investments are ephemeral.”

Yes, and indeed, how much worse is it when large groups who are deluded enough to believe that pursuing their self-interest is positively related to the overall good of society.

Tangentially; the persistent public belief in the value of higher education, the growth of the education “industry”, and related special interest groups has, possibly, resulted in an educational “bubble”. That is that to say that (with exceptions in the “hard studies”), the average 16 or 17 year veteran student has not received something close enough to what he or his parents have paid for (the ability for critical thinking and actual intellectual superiority to those who did not attend an institution of higher learning). This, or it’s extent, is not generally acknowledged to this point and hence the bubble.

Anyway, if teachers are going to vote to almost eliminate history, geography, literature, languages, art and music from their teachings, then maybe they SHOULDN’T vote.

This mode of thinking is a direct challenge to enlightenment principles in which the study of nature itself was of intrinsic value. Systems of ethical and value judgment were a separate venue applicable to the use of technology and the human condition, but did not directly impinge upon scientific appraisal of the world.

Here we see yet another example of the systematic bending of all knowledge to fit a greater moral framework. This sort of systematic correcting is akin to medieval religious systems of thought or the forcing of a modern evangelical viewpoint on all human thought. Academia seems to be in the troughs of a soft inquisition under which bodies of knowledge must justify their relevance to the new political and ethical order.

The academic practitioners aren’t much different from their most hated religious enemies. After all raw knowledge has no intrinsic value to their cause and worse may lead to incorrect and unacceptable thought and action.

Kirt Vonnegut’s son Adam, a pediatrician connected to Harvard served on the admissions board for Harvard’s med school. He said if admissions offices were truly fair at Harvard, at least 50% of the new entrants would be oriental women.

Want to fix education quick? eliminate Schools of Education. Hire teachers based on what they know in the fields they are to teach, not on a batch of how-to courses they are forced to take to protect schools of education and keep them functioning. Home schoolers who do ok do not need to have parents with certificates from schools of education to teach their children.

When we just put a space ship on Mars, and we sequence this and that genome, and we make so many medical breakthroughs, and I see some test results of those going to our better universities, then I am not convinced that our young are going down the academic tube into a cesspool.

Be of good cheer. Remember not that many years ago you did not have to go to a law school to become a lawyer or to dental school to practice dentistry.

“Sorry, Miss Jones, we just can’t trust you. We know you’ll vote to increase your own salary? What do you mean you can’t vote on your own salary? You vote to raise taxes, don’t you? Which is just like a publicly-traded company…no listen, this is a good analogy. Miss Jones? Wait! What? You voted for Bush? Hey – don’t get me off track. And don’t give me any of that guff about educating tomorrow’s generation – we know just how greedy your are. What? You say your new husband wouldn’t want higher taxes either – he likes keeping the money he earns? Miss Jones, your lies get you no where. You will be assimilated.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sokal

That’s an excellent reminder that there’s no winning with these people, because they’re activists, and interested only in power. You cannot defeat their “ideas” by showing that they are wrong or nonsensical because ideas are not the point. They no more care about ideas than a troll cares about ideas. If they lose one, they’ll be back, with their “ideas” repackaged in some other form.

There is nothing magical about 70% = C. In PSSC Physics that might be an A. And 90% = A+.

Note: the test was biased to find the top people to send them on to more demanding work.

It all depends on what you want to sort for. 70% = C gives you better definition of C, D and F work.

A 25% = C test gives you better definition of B and A and A+ work.

How long do you think a publicly traded company would last if employees got to vote themselves their own salaries. Wouldn’t the temptation to loot the company be overwhelming? They would eventually go after not only the companies profits but its assets as well. The market would discipline such behavior to some extent but imagine that company now has a total monopoly. Want external discipline would exist?

Powerful public employee union create a circumstance very similar to this. They have a concentrated block of voters who can and will vote for higher taxes to fund their own salaries and benefits. 20 million people work for government at all levels. All those people coerced into unions and funded with dues paid from compulsory taxation makes for a very, very dangerous feedback loop.

People can instantly see how stupid this would be in the private sectors but when it comes to government, they seem to suddenly switch their brains off.

This anecdote applies completely to the teaching of ethics and cultural relevence of science. It’s fine to have such courses at the graduate level, being taught to people who already understand science and are looking for wider context. But to teach it to children who have yet to learn what science really is will simply confuse them and turn many away from science before they even have a chance to understand it. It’s simply the wrong place and time for advanced material.

I agree about the gov’t employees! I’m sick of gov’t mail carriers, firefighters, police, EMTs, secretaries, district attorneys, safety inspectors, and kindergarten teachers being able to vote. It’s just… ridiculous! You’re totally right.

Evidently things haven’t improved much in England.

The next reform would be to require that at least 25% of elementary school teachers would be majors in mathematics, science or history so that these subjects are taught reasonably well ( or in the case of science and history, taught at all which is often not the case in grades k-6). Very hard to teach something well that you have not learned yourself.

It’s not “the unions” by the way that created this mess, or at least not all of it. The states set the standards for licensure and have universally opted ( for decades going back before the rise of the NEA and AFT in the early 70’s) for large quantities of Ed graduates with minimal GPA requirements because it’s preferable to have a steady supply of cheap, warm bodies to provide subsidized daycare than to go the more expensive route of demanding a well-trained workforce and experiencing the labor shortages that would arise immediately and last for years.

Many “educators” seem hostile to the whole idea of *knowledge* as something that is to be valued.