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Post by AztecWilliam on Jan 8, 2011 23:04:45 GMT -8
I will not be shocked if at least one member takes me to task for placing this thread here rather than in the political section. Nevertheless, I have to say straight out that anyone who does that will be wrong. Sure, there are political considerations discussed in Will's article (which deals with the United States' declining scientific research effort), but more important is a basic question regarding what America values. That kind of question goes beyond partisan politics. I am reminded of what one of the North Vietnamese leaders said about the difference between his people (and culture) and that of the U.S.A. He said roughly the following: "We are willing to fight for 100 years to achieve our goal. You will tire of the effort soon enough." That kind of commitment can lead to great accomplishments whereas other less far-sighted cultures just can't be bothered. The latter type of country will suffer the fate they deserve. (Of course, the Vietnamese I cited failed to add that he didn't care how many millions of his people he was willing to sacrifice or how little freedom he was willing to grant the survivors when he and his fellows finally took over, but, hey, no one is right all the time!) I am also reminded of the old fable about the grasshopper and the ant. Read Will's column and decide into which category the U.S.A. falls. Pay special attention to the percentage of college graduates in science and technology that are being turned out by the U.S. and some other leading countries. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/31/AR2010123102007.htmlAzWm |
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Post by aztecwin on Jan 9, 2011 8:48:12 GMT -8
Very interesting. I can't help but think of all the wasted time and effort that is now a part of public schools that could be devoted to advanced programs.
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Post by AztecWilliam on Jan 10, 2011 11:38:56 GMT -8
Very interesting. I can't help but think of all the wasted time and effort that is now a part of public schools that could be devoted to advanced programs. We can't expect schools to make kids who are not interested in science and technology decide it's worth the effort to pursue careers in those fields. Frankly, a whole lot of kids today are not interested in working very hard at any academic task. As (since my retirement) a substitute teacher, I see lots of kids in lots of schools. You can't become an engineer or scientist if you do learn math, and there are simply masses of kids who are struggling even with fairly simple math. And that mirrors the greater problem of kids not seeing education as worth a lot of effort. But, then again, they are not terribly eager to put much effort into anything. What so many kids do today is spend hours watching TV, playing video games, or texting each other endlessly when they could actually talk with others face to face. They aren't learning much of anything in school and they are, in too many cases, living a fantasy life instead of picking up social skills by interacting with other human beings. This is a cultural trend that is as insidious as it is difficult to counter. I taught one year in a school in the San Gabriel Valley (just east of downtown LA). The ethnic breakdown was about as follows: Hispanic=83%, Asian=11%, Euro-American (I just coined that term!)=5%. There were academically solid Hispanic kids, but as a group they could not lay a glove on the Asians. The Asian kids would sit around in little volunteer study groups before school and at lunch while the Hispanic kids were relaxing or goofing off. That's a cultural issue. I'm not sure why the cultures of some other countries are so supportive of education in general, and sci. & tech. in particular. Whatever those counties have, we pretty much lack. (Personal story about culture. My wife and I sold a town home in Mira Mesa some years back. The buyers were a young Vietnamese couple. They could not finalize the deal, however, until they brought an elderly male relative to check out the place and offer his advice to the youngsters. I'm not sure whether the purchase would have been killed had the old man given a negative opinion, but I do know that the young couple were following an Asian tradition of honoring the old for their perceived wisdom and decades of experience. In the U.S., if you are much past 50 you are considered a fogie, someone good for a laugh, perhaps, but not much else.) AzWm |
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Post by JOCAZTEC on Jan 10, 2011 15:54:47 GMT -8
Why do some or more teachers think that they are so special?
I mean, okay, so you get into college and then decide teaching seems like a way to avoid the private sector and all the stress of real work. So you end up in a class room studying until you finally, credentialed, go to the classroom to teach your whole life. There are many teachers who don't do this of course, but the ones that end up "experienced" in a classroom, like so what? You don't have any outside the class.
I haven't received any invitation from any of my kids' teachers to sit down and talk with them, since Mr. Norris who taught my kids in the fourth grade. Why?
HAM
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Post by aztec79 on Jan 11, 2011 20:02:11 GMT -8
"What so many kids do today is spend hours watching TV, playing video games, or texting each other endlessly when they could actually talk with others face to face. They aren't learning much of anything in school and they are, in too many cases, living a fantasy life instead of picking up social skills by interacting with other human beings. This is a cultural trend that is as insidious as it is difficult to counter."
this is the biggest problem by far today, and not just for kids. People are slowly losing the ability to communicate with one another, important interpersonal skills are being lost.
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Post by JOCAZTEC on Jan 13, 2011 8:00:02 GMT -8
The communication loss is due to the lack of asking questions, to the other person, then listening to the answer, while waiting patiently for the other person to ask back.
You know. You've been working for years and you hear the other person walk in, un-announced, and start in with, "Well, I don't know why this thing got so screwed up..." and when you say to that person, "Do you have any questions?" and they say, "Yeah I have lots of questions." "Can you ask them?" They say, "Sure!" and then proceed with, "Well, I don't know whey this thing got screwed up..."
Mindless circles...and yet no communication.
HAM
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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2011 15:26:49 GMT -8
Very interesting. I can't help but think of all the wasted time and effort that is now a part of public schools that could be devoted to advanced programs. We can't expect schools to make kids who are not interested in science and technology decide it's worth the effort to pursue careers in those fields. Frankly, a whole lot of kids today are not interested in working very hard at any academic task. As (since my retirement) a substitute teacher, I see lots of kids in lots of schools. You can't become an engineer or scientist if you do learn math, and there are simply masses of kids who are struggling even with fairly simple math. And that mirrors the greater problem of kids not seeing education as worth a lot of effort. But, then again, they are not terribly eager to put much effort into anything. What so many kids do today is spend hours watching TV, playing video games, or texting each other endlessly when they could actually talk with others face to face. They aren't learning much of anything in school and they are, in too many cases, living a fantasy life instead of picking up social skills by interacting with other human beings. This is a cultural trend that is as insidious as it is difficult to counter. I taught one year in a school in the San Gabriel Valley (just east of downtown LA). The ethnic breakdown was about as follows: Hispanic=83%, Asian=11%, Euro-American (I just coined that term!)=5%. There were academically solid Hispanic kids, but as a group they could not lay a glove on the Asians. The Asian kids would sit around in little volunteer study groups before school and at lunch while the Hispanic kids were relaxing or goofing off. That's a cultural issue. I'm not sure why the cultures of some other countries are so supportive of education in general, and sci. & tech. in particular. Whatever those counties have, we pretty much lack. (Personal story about culture. My wife and I sold a town home in Mira Mesa some years back. The buyers were a young Vietnamese couple. They could not finalize the deal, however, until they brought an elderly male relative to check out the place and offer his advice to the youngsters. I'm not sure whether the purchase would have been killed had the old man given a negative opinion, but I do know that the young couple were following an Asian tradition of honoring the old for their perceived wisdom and decades of experience. In the U.S., if you are much past 50 you are considered a fogie, someone good for a laugh, perhaps, but not much else.) AzWm Fairly true ,but not so true in the rural south.,and some part s of the Midwest. Still yes mam Yes sir there. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2011 16:54:48 GMT -8
Jacques Barzun I think nails it when he says we are in a decadent age. As he says, the term implies
"no loss of energy or talent or moral sense. On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance. The loss it faces is that of Possibility. The forms of life as of art seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the inevitable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces."
I think this is what we see in our youth of today. They are a reflection of the times. Video games etc are distractions that are essentially coping mechanisms for those who don't see themselves as contributing members of a society that already has everything. What society needs is not clear to them. Society tells them they need a college education, preferably is the sciences or engineering but those things are "hard" and most kids know intuitively that they do not possess the drive or intellect to achieve in these fields so they just shut down.
A great book
FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE
500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present
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Post by 01aztecgrad on Jan 30, 2011 7:32:28 GMT -8
The number of science or technology graduates is completely meaningless. The vast majority will do nothing more than hook on with a big company and toil away on some team trying to reduce the size of a widget for 30 years. They offer no more value to society than a carpenter or laborer. The people who are truly exceptional, the 1% referenced in the article, will self select a career in science or technology. The people who are going to change the world aren't waiting to be turned into a scientist by a great teacher. They are the kids who are naturally gifted and inquisitive, and in reality are going to know more about science than their teacher by the time they get to high school. George Will is correct that it's important to make sure there is funding for the work of the "elite", but that is unrelated to providing more money to schools to churn out more widget makers. The quote about Japan applies to all of the countries that think the key to innovation is producing a lot of engineers or scientists. They expend so much time and effort producing a lot of mediocre talent, that they don't provide the resources demanded by the people who will come up with a revolutionary idea. Self selection means the people who go into those fields in the U.S. are those who actually have an interest and ability in science and technology, so they won't have to compete for resources with as much mediocre talent. It also allows people with other skills, like marketing, operations, finance, and sales to focus on those areas. There was nothing revolutionary about Microsoft or Apple in terms of the technology they produced. They won because the supporting functions were managed better than their competitors, not because they had the best engineers. |
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Post by AztecWilliam on Jan 30, 2011 23:24:30 GMT -8
Why do some or more teachers think that they are so special? I mean, okay, so you get into college and then decide teaching seems like a way to avoid the private sector and all the stress of real work. So you end up in a class room studying until you finally, credentialed, go to the classroom to teach your whole life. There are many teachers who don't do this of course, but the ones that end up "experienced" in a classroom, like so what? You don't have any outside the class. I haven't received any invitation from any of my kids' teachers to sit down and talk with them, since Mr. Norris who taught my kids in the fourth grade. Why? HAM Actually, most teachers are so exhausted planning lessons, grading papers, taking insults from students, and then having to spar with parents who are mostly incapable of objectively evaluating their own children's work ethic and capabilities that they have little time left to feel that they are special. A more typical thought might be, "What did I do to deserve this?"  I started school in the first grade (kindergarten hadn't been invented yet! ;D) in 1948. Therefore, I have first-hand knowledge of how kids behaved and were treated in school in the late forties and the 1950s. Trust me, it was a different world back then. Kids were in almost all cases very reluctant to talk back. By the late 50s things were starting to deteriorate in terms of student behavior and their respect for teachers. The situation has gotten worse since then. Let me offer an analogy. Some sports coaches are great, some aren't. Take a so-so coach and give him the 1927 New York Yankees and he is going to win some games. Put at great coach in charge, and those Yankees are going to win World Series after World Series. Now, take a great manager, Casey Stengel, and give him the NY Mets in 1962. ("Can't anybody here play this game?") You think Stengel was a great manager one year and a terrible one a couple of years later? I doubt it. Same with teachers; give even the good ones an extremely problematic group of kids and they will struggle. Some of what you say is worthwhile. Personally, I started teaching when I was just short of my 24th birthday. I had worked, of course (the best job I ever had was as a ride operator for three Summers at Disneyland!), but not long-term full time. After 17 years teaching I quite to become a famous computer book author. Ha! That lasted a while until I realized I was actually unemployed. I then worked for several years in the computer industry but finally went back to teaching and finished my career at Fallbrook H.S. My experience working in private industry was quite valuable. I would recommend to anyone interested in teaching that they work full time at something else first. Military service would be great, too. (Though I say that after observing others, since I myself did not serve.) It gives you a valuable perspective. Teaching is a very high stress job. I have run into a lot of former teachers. These were not retired teachers; they gave up after serving only a few years. (My mother was one such.) People who haven't taught are really unaware of how difficult it is to try to get today's kids to put serious effort into their studies. If you have a class filled with kids whose parents are college grads, you are lucky. Most of them are great to work with and have strong support at home. The problem is that the kind of student I just mentioned makes up maybe 1/3 of the student population. Maybe 1/3. For the 2/3 or more who are the hard cases, you need a brilliant teacher such as Jaime Escalante (If you haven't seen the movie "Stand and Deliver," you ought to. It's a great film about a great teacher.) The problem is, there are and always will be only a few Jaime Escalantes. Most teachers will be mediocre, and a few at the bottom will be unsuited for the profession entirely. If you give the mediocre teacher a class of kids such as the ones I mentioned above, those kids are probably going to learn a fair amount. But if you put that mediocre teacher in charge of 35 hoodlums, well, what do think will happen? There just aren't that many great teachers out there, just as there are not too many baseball players who can consistently hit both the 98 mph fastball and the wicked curve. I always wonder what those who criticize teachers think is going to happen if the "bad" ones are all kicked out. You think there are thousands and thousands of Jaime Escalantes out there being denied a chance to get into a classroom and turn their way-below-grade- level charges into honor students? Uh, I don't think so! Bottom line: Based on over 30 years in the classroom, I contend that we are lucky to have as many good teachers as we do. Those who think otherwise should ask themselves this question: Would I want to be a public school teacher?AzWm |
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Post by JOCAZTEC on Feb 1, 2011 14:42:08 GMT -8
My experience working in private industry was quite valuable. I would recommend to anyone interested in teaching that they work full time at something else first. Teaching is a very high stress job. AzWm 1. I agree that all teachers should have about ten or more years of work in the private sector, small to medium business or non-profit, non-governmental entities. 2. Any job can be a high stressed job. Anyone want to explain the U. S. Postal Service? Anyone just hate their boss but don't have the courage to quit? I like to let teachers teach, but when I find that the teachers are not their to teach, and only went in to teaching on a whim...well. HAM |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2011 13:02:32 GMT -8
I will not be shocked if at least one member takes me to task for placing this thread here rather than in the political section. Nevertheless, I have to say straight out that anyone who does that will be wrong. Sure, there are political considerations discussed in Will's article (which deals with the United States' declining scientific research effort), but more important is a basic question regarding what America values. That kind of question goes beyond partisan politics. I am reminded of what one of the North Vietnamese leaders said about the difference between his people (and culture) and that of the U.S.A. He said roughly the following: "We are willing to fight for 100 years to achieve our goal. You will tire of the effort soon enough." That kind of commitment can lead to great accomplishments whereas other less far-sighted cultures just can't be bothered. The latter type of country will suffer the fate they deserve. (Of course, the Vietnamese I cited failed to add that he didn't care how many millions of his people he was willing to sacrifice or how little freedom he was willing to grant the survivors when he and his fellows finally took over, but, hey, no one is right all the time!) I am also reminded of the old fable about the grasshopper and the ant. Read Will's column and decide into which category the U.S.A. falls. Pay special attention to the percentage of college graduates in science and technology that are being turned out by the U.S. and some other leading countries. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/31/AR2010123102007.htmlAzWm Diversity leads to Cultural Disintegration. |
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Post by aztecwin on Feb 21, 2011 17:16:33 GMT -8
Diversity leads to Cultural Disintegration. Among other things. I always think that "Diversity leads to Mediocrity". |
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Post by Bob Forsythe on Feb 22, 2011 17:47:37 GMT -8
Why do some or more teachers think that they are so special? I mean, okay, so you get into college and then decide teaching seems like a way to avoid the private sector and all the stress of real work. So you end up in a class room studying until you finally, credentialed, go to the classroom to teach your whole life. There are many teachers who don't do this of course, but the ones that end up "experienced" in a classroom, like so what? You don't have any outside the class. I haven't received any invitation from any of my kids' teachers to sit down and talk with them, since Mr. Norris who taught my kids in the fourth grade. Why? HAM Maybe because you don't believe they do "real work". =Bob |
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Post by The Great Aztec Joe on Feb 23, 2011 12:44:00 GMT -8
Why do some or more teachers think that they are so special? .... I haven't received any invitation from any of my kids' teachers to sit down and talk with them, since Mr. Norris who taught my kids in the fourth grade. Why? HAM I never waited for a teacher to call me. My first batch of children attended public school. Before they started class I went to school to introduce myself to the teachers on an individual basis and to let them know that they could call me at any time day or night if an assignment was not turned in in proper fashion. I worked with the teachers to ensure that my children had a quality education. When in public school they were straight A students. It is amazing what a little parental involvement can accomplish. |
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Post by Bob Forsythe on Feb 25, 2011 17:37:55 GMT -8
Why do some or more teachers think that they are so special? I mean, okay, so you get into college and then decide teaching seems like a way to avoid the private sector and all the stress of real work. So you end up in a class room studying until you finally, credentialed, go to the classroom to teach your whole life. There are many teachers who don't do this of course, but the ones that end up "experienced" in a classroom, like so what? You don't have any outside the class. I haven't received any invitation from any of my kids' teachers to sit down and talk with them, since Mr. Norris who taught my kids in the fourth grade. Why? HAM Maybe because you don't believe they do "real work". =Bob And is always typical, JOC refuses to respond because JOC is an Orange County coward who always runs and hides when he's called out. Typical accountant. Calling you out, JOC. Got anything to offer or do you just run back to your OC burb hole? =Bob |
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Post by theman on Feb 25, 2011 18:41:38 GMT -8
Maybe because you don't believe they do "real work". =Bob And is always typical, JOC refuses to respond because JOC is an Orange County coward who always runs and hides when he's called out. Typical accountant. Calling you out, JOC. Got anything to offer or do you just run back to your OC burb hole? =Bob =Bob You are one bitter, cheap and angry dude. Every post of yours today is a bitch against someone or some organization. |
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Post by ncaztec82 on Feb 26, 2011 10:00:02 GMT -8
I'd like to contribute to this thread, and shake the dust off my useless SDSU Philosophy degree, but today is game day. See you after the weekend. Cheers!
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Post by Bob Forsythe on Mar 8, 2011 16:32:39 GMT -8
And is always typical, JOC refuses to respond because JOC is an Orange County coward who always runs and hides when he's called out. Typical accountant. Calling you out, JOC. Got anything to offer or do you just run back to your OC burb hole? =Bob =Bob You are one bitter, cheap and angry dude. Every post of yours today is a bitch against someone or some organization. It's a political forum Bunky; figure it out instead of offering crap about how "bitter and cheap" you think I am. JOC consistently tosses out these trolls but doesn't have to cojones to engage in a defense of them. Dude, it's politics and when right wing nuts like JOC offer nothing of substance, I'm going to call him on it )not that he'll ever respond given that he's nothing more than a bomb thrower. Now run off and learn something before you decide to argue with the adults. =Bob |
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Post by theman on Mar 8, 2011 21:46:48 GMT -8
=Bob You are one bitter, cheap and angry dude. Every post of yours today is a bitch against someone or some organization. It's a political forum Bunky; figure it out instead of offering crap about how "bitter and cheap" you think I am. JOC consistently tosses out these trolls but doesn't have to cojones to engage in a defense of them. Dude, it's politics and when right wing nuts like JOC offer nothing of substance, I'm going to call him on it )not that he'll ever respond given that he's nothing more than a bomb thrower. Now run off and learn something before you decide to argue with the adults. =Bob Hey Cheese Dick, this is the Culture and Values forum...fiqure it out. Secondly, I marveled at how angry, bitter and cheap you were when I read all those posts you had on Feb 25. You should go back and read them...but that would be painful even for you. I've since realized every post you have has to include some put down of someone. I'm sure your a nice guy in real life. Just a Dick in cyberspace. |
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