Philosophy and HumanitiesI think, therefore I argue.
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Few things are more important to our national longevity, wellbeing, and security than well educated citizens. Nothing of such importance is so misunderstood and ignored in America.
I suspect that this important matter lacks sophisticated understanding by Americans because adult Americans had a poor education.
I claim that our education policy results from the intentionality of those who strongly affect public policy rather than misunderstanding by the citizens. I claim that the power of Corporate America greatly determines our public policy and thus our educational system, which is designed to graduate good producers and consumers.
I think that adult Americans must resist the temptation to store their critical intellect with their year-book in the attic when their school daze are over.
“Yet millions of families got into financial trouble simply because they understood that life is graded on the curve. The best jobs go to graduates from the best colleges, and because only the best-prepared students are accepted to those colleges, it is quixotic to expect parents to bypass an opportunity to send their children to the best elementary and secondary schools they can. The financial deregulation that enabled them to bid ever larger amounts for houses in the best school districts essentially guaranteed a housing bubble that would leave millions of families dangerously overextended.”
This is actually a topic that I have given much thought to. My wife is an elementary teacher at a low income school so I hear these types of things all the time. To be honest teachers are fairly compensated in the school districts where I live and where my wife works. Although their pay gets outpaced by a counterpart that goes corporate, that is the case with every public service sector; military, police, fire, etc. Especially when you consider the built in days off they have. What other job do you have over three months of the year just given to you as time off? Although teachers have very little discretionary paid time off, they do have some for use during a school year as well. Most of those teachers can also take tutoring jobs during the summers and pad their income by at least 10%.
I have my own observations about the shortcomings of the educational career path though.
Bad Teachers Stay Around - The sad fact is that there are a lot of BAD teachers out there. They started teaching because they wanted summers off and thought it would be an easy job. They also liked the job security. If a teacher can't be arrested for it, they can't be fired for it. My wife works with a teacher who was caught CHEATING on the Virginia Standards of Learning Test. This is a test mandated by law by the state. This teacher got a slap on the wrist. The reason why she tried to cheat? She is a lazy and careless teacher to begin with and the students in her class underperformed in every subject, every year. We're talking 30% pass rate when the other two teachers in her grade are getting 80% pass rates. I had a math teacher in high school who really did not care at all. Class would start, he would start going through problems on the board, and would not stop for anything, even questions. He did not care, even if you openly slept in class, he just made sure he went through all the motions. These teachers are in a system where they can not be removed for failure to perform, and that sort of system draws the lazy and careless people from society because they know they can get away with doing the minimum. They have built in raises, regardless of performance or success.
No Credit for Real World Experience - This is one that hits close to home for me. I WOULD LOVE TO TEACH. However, I would receive no credit in terms of salary for my ten years of experience working with IT and Government Relations, even if i were teaching those subjects. I find this asinine. There are quite a lot of people like me, who have a great deal of experience in the subjects being taught about, but would have to start at the lowest level salary. For most of us, we have financial commitments which make starting over cost prohibitive. I can continue on my career path and make over $60k a year, or go teach and make $32k a year. The teachers unions would never stand for newcomers to get full credit for the time they put in actually working with the subject matter rather than teaching it. But even if they were to give half credit, that would open up the profession to those who actually would enjoy it and be passionate about teaching, and arguably better able to teach given real experience. I have ten years experience... I start at the level of a fifth year teacher.
State/Federal Mandates - I see this every year with my wife's fifth grade class. Because of State and Federal tests and mandates teachers are forced to teach what is going to be on the test rather than the subject. In most cases they are not even allowed to deviate from that tactic because administrators are too afraid of a failing score. My wife tries to teach SUBJECTS and CRITICAL THINKING, but is often told she needs to teach what is going to be on the test and not waste time on the other stuff. That is sad and a product of legislation. The legislators hear a handfull of stories about teachers who are not doing their job and try to put standards in place to scare those few. What they actually do is lower the level of teaching across the board as good teachers are pressured into teaching to tests.
This is a subject I am a bit invested in. Our education system is FAR from perfect, but at the same time recognize that it is better than most of what is out there.
Do you really think doubling the salary is the solution?
Doubling the salary is not the solution but it is a very good first step.
If we make teaching the most sought after profession in America we would be taking a giant step for mankind. Fifty years ago we could find good teachers for low pay because women had no were else to turn. But today they have options.
The critisms outline some of the problems with the policy.
I think that this policy may have some important advantages over nothing but I am interested not in smoothing some rough edges I am interested in changing our educational system to meet the needs of its importance to our national welfare.
This is a subject I am a bit invested in. Our education system is FAR from perfect, but at the same time recognize that it is better than most of what is out there.
I have made no comparison studies of the American education system but many of the things that I read in the press and magazines seem not to agree with your opinion regarding the favorable comparison with other countries.
Nevertheless I find no satisfaction with our (American) educational system.
CA (Corporate America) has developed a well-honed expertise in motivating the population to behave in a desired manner. Citizens as consumers are ample manifestation of that expertise. CA has accomplished this ability by careful study and implementation of the knowledge of the ways of human behavior. I suspect this same structure applies to most Western democracies.
A democratic form of government is one wherein the citizens have some voice in some policy decisions. The greater the voice of the citizens the better the democracy.
In America we have policy makers, decision makers, and citizens. The decision makers are our elected representatives and are, thus, under some control by the voting citizen. The policy makers are the leaders of CA; less than ten thousand individuals, according to those who study such matters. Policy makers exercise significant control of decision makers by controlling the financing of elections.
Policy makers customize and maintain the dominant ideology in order to control the political behavior of the citizens. This dominant ideology exercises the political control of the citizens in the same fashion as the consuming citizen is controlled by the same dominant ideology.
An enlightened citizen is the only means to gain more voice in more policy decisions. An enlightened citizen is much more than an informed citizen. Critical thinking is the only practical means to develop a more enlightened citizen. If, however, we wait until our CT trained grade-schoolers become adults I suspect all will be lost. This is why I think a massive effort must be made to convince today’s adults that they must train themselves in CT.
“Thomas R. Dye, Professor of Political Science at Florida State University, has published a series of books examining who and what institutions actually control and run America. to understand who is making the decisions that affect our lives, we also have to understand how societies structure themselves in general. Why the few always tend to share more power than the many and what this means in terms of both a society's evolution and our daily lives. they examined the other 11 institutions that exert just as powerful a shaping influence, although somewhat more subtle: The Industrial, Corporations, Utilities and Communications, Banking, Insurance Investment, Mass Media, Law, Education Foundation, Civic and Cultural Organizations, Government, and the Military.” Newsletter Info
A democratic form of government is one wherein the citizens have some voice in some policy decisions. The greater the voice of the citizens the better the democracy.
Incorrect. Our government was purposely set up as a Representative Democracy, rather than a true Democracy purposely. You could argue that it was a matter of logistics of the day, but that is only a minor part of the reason. If you read the writings of our founding fathers you will see that the goal of a representative democracy was to give citizens a way to have an input into the government process (electing the candidate that reflected their views) while not giving direct power to the uneducated masses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by coberst
In America we have policy makers, decision makers, and citizens. The decision makers are our elected representatives and are, thus, under some control by the voting citizen. (1)The policy makers are the leaders of CA; less than ten thousand individuals, according to those who study such matters. (2)Policy makers exercise significant control of decision makers by controlling the financing of elections.
1. Incorrect. Policy makers can either refer to legislators or the heads of agencies that make regulatory decisions.
2. Incorrect. Legislators (policy makers), listen to corporate lobbyists not because of the financing of elections. That may have been the case up until the 1980's, but those days are gone. Campaign finance laws and ethics rules make that kind of control a thing of the past. The reason that business still holds the ear of legislators is because they employ constituents. If a legislator makes a decision that will harm the business, that will also harm the constituent when they lose a job. Nothing will kill a reelection like a high unemployment rate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by coberst
Policy makers customize and maintain the dominant ideology in order to control the political behavior of the citizens. This dominant ideology exercises the political control of the citizens in the same fashion as the consuming citizen is controlled by the same dominant ideology.
An enlightened citizen is the only means to gain more voice in more policy decisions. An enlightened citizen is much more than an informed citizen. Critical thinking is the only practical means to develop a more enlightened citizen. If, however, we wait until our CT trained grade-schoolers become adults I suspect all will be lost. This is why I think a massive effort must be made to convince today’s adults that they must train themselves in CT.
Your actually wrong here from a practical standpoint. I am a both a lobbyist and grassroots coordinator. I have worked on and consulted for virtually every industry and special interest that seeks to influence policy makers. The more intelligent and "enlightened" your population is the less likely they are to speak out in the political process. AARP has the most effective grassroots organization out there, and it is not because their population is enlightened, it is because they blindly believe what ever AARP tells them and take action when told to. Labor unions have a very strong lobby and it has nothing to do with their people having critical thinking skills. It is because they have discipline and when labor unions tell their members that an issue is important the members step in line and start calling legislators. Guess who has one of the least effective grassroots programs... Students and Universities. They are notorious for having a hard time getting their members to take action.
Quote:
Originally Posted by coberst
“Thomas R. Dye, Professor of Political Science at Florida State University, has published a series of books examining who and what institutions actually control and run America. to understand who is making the decisions that affect our lives, we also have to understand how societies structure themselves in general. Why the few always tend to share more power than the many and what this means in terms of both a society's evolution and our daily lives. they examined the other 11 institutions that exert just as powerful a shaping influence, although somewhat more subtle: The Industrial, Corporations, Utilities and Communications, Banking, Insurance Investment, Mass Media, Law, Education Foundation, Civic and Cultural Organizations, Government, and the Military.” Newsletter Info
If any 11 institutions actually "control and run America" we would have a much different government than we actually do. That sort of consolidation of power would actually make things happen much more smoothly than it does. Granted, there are organizations and industries that have pull with various legislators, but no one sits in a chair and calls the shots, not even the president. This is just another "vast right wing conspiracy" nut.
I am a both a lobbyist and grassroots coordinator. I have worked on and consulted for virtually every industry and special interest that seeks to influence policy makers. .
Astronomical instruments needed to answer crucial questions, such as the search for Earth-like planets or the way the Universe expands, have come a step closer with the first demonstration at the telescope of a new calibration system for precise spectrographs. The method uses a Nobel Prize-winning technology called a 'laser frequency comb', and is published in this week's issue of Science. Read » | 0 comments
Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers. The result is an autonomous helicopter than can perform a complete airshow of complex tricks on its own. Read » | 0 comments
