It's Not The Teacher's Unions....

Replace that with THIS:



Cost of Living, by Robert Sheckley
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cost of Living, by Robert Sheckley

Subversive, by Dallas McCord Reynolds
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Subversive, by Mack Reynolds

Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Irvin Clifton
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Eight Keys to Eden, by Mark Clifton

The Fourth R, by George Oliver Smith
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Fourth "R", by George O. Smith.

Black Man's Burden, by Dallas McCord Reynolds
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Black Man's Burden, by Mack Reynolds.

CVS Craig Android OS 2.1 7" Tablet Deal $79 bucks with 20% off coupon

psik

"...who needs the 90% of crappy books."

Blasphemous...

I love books, and favor books that send me to the dictionary.

Deep thinking requires a deep, rich vocabulary. That comes from reading, all types of books.

While I appreciate the personal anecdotes, I never doubted nor questioned your intelligence.

Still what point are you making re: MIT having more required liberals arts courses than less technical schools?
They are just being silly?

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People are most conservative on issues that they know most about. --Ann Coulter

Thank you for completely jumping the shark PC. I strongly suggest your seek psychiatric help to abate your extreme right wing paranoia. If I'm a 'commie', so was Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Barry Goldwater.

Here's some interesting reading for you. Some folks in Russia, a very conservative country had the same fear of liberals. So you have a Brethren...the Stalinists.

February 27, 1989

Soviet Conservatives Try to Turn Back the Clock on Gorbachev's Policies

MOSCOW, Feb. 26— Russian conservatives, uneasy with the liberalization of Soviet society under Mikhail S. Gorbachev, have seized on the country's experiment in more democratic elections as a chance to fight for a return to more authoritarian ways.

While many candidates and voters say they view the elections to the new Congress of Deputies as a way to further the candor and freedoms allowed by the Soviet leader, conservatives in this city and around the country were boasting last week that they had already succeeded in blocking the nomination of several prominent people regarded as liberals.

A Disparate Alliance
The conservatives are a disparate alliance, including xenophobic fringe groups, like Pamyat, as well as large numbers of less extreme nationalists who yearn for what they see as the simple values of Old Russia and the Orthodox church.

Nikita F. Zherbin, head of the Leningrad chapter of Pamyat, delighted in the fact that Mr. Korotich had been forced off the ballot in Moscow's Sverdlovsk region, and described this as the first successful step in the conservative campaign to use the elections as a vehicle for its political ideas.

'I Am a Stalinist'
''We brought our case to the people, and the outcome speaks for us,'' said Mr. Zherbin, whose group regards the liberalization of Soviet society as a conspiracy by Jews, Masons and Westernizers.

Soviet Conservatives Try to Turn Back the Clock on Gorbachev's Policies

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith

If a person could read 10 books per day for 80 years that would be 290,000 books.

Amazon says there are 810,000 books available for the Kindle. They say there were 1,100 new releases on science fiction books in the last 90 days. We have a problem of infoglut. Even if we could select out the best 10% that quantity would still be huge.

I recently finished an SF book that I have to review. It is almost 400 pages. Back when I started reading the stuff the common length was 150 pages. I could find plenty of books under 250 pages that are better. But with all of these computers making writing easier there is more and more stuff being churned out. Everyone must use some kind of filtering even if they just refuse to read. LOL

Our problem is how to design the filter.

Since MIT can't solve a physics problem I really don't care what they do about Liberal Arts.

psik

Did anyone read this? Apparently Cliff Notes is too lengthy for kids to read today, so they will soon be making 5 MINUTE VIDEOS of classic books! If they can get them down to 2.5, they may really get somewhere.

Pajamas Media » CliffsNotes for CliffsNotes? Yeah, Pretty Much.

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“‘Sort of’ is such a harmless thing to say...it doesn’t really mean anything. But after certain things, sort of means everything. Like after ‘I love you’ or ‘You’re going to live’ or ‘It’s a boy.’

Demetri Martin

FWIW I have always thought that STANDARDIZED TESTING has a place in American education.

When I was coming up through school WE took what they called ACHIVEMENT TESTS every year.

They were nationally designed tests to measure the progress each student was making.

Sadly, when the outcome of those standardized tests is used to reward or beat up the school system, those tests go from being useful tools to measuing the STUDENTS" PROGESS, to inadaquate tools inappropriately measuring the SCHOOL SYSTEM.

So school system in defence of that process, being teaching to the TEST rather than teaching the subject matter so that kids can use that education in the world, they end up teaching so that kids can use that edcuation on a STANDARIZED TEST.

Its a subtle distinction to say, but when you see the difference in a classroom you'll understand why I fear that that is a BAD outcome.

No need to debate at all, check the link on Finland above for the easy answer. Yesterday, my wife got an email from a parent telling her she wasn't satisfied with little Joanie's grades. Perfect example of America and even your misdirected argument. Had little Joanie done her work, this would not be an issue. Has nothing to do with anything except a culture in which it is always someone else's fault. And when caught the excuses fly. You simply don't want to face reality, and look instead for simple foes to pin blame on.

And we can have both but we would need to define equality. Our greatest prosperity was when FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ worked at it. Certain European nations approach this utopia, they don't give up as easily as we do today. Another example in the change in our nation from 'can do' to whining.

Lessons From Finland: The Way to Education Excellence | Common Dreams

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Right wing intelligence on display here: http://www.usmessageboard.com/the-fl...st7235230.html

Observations from an old crank who happens to have lived long enough - to have done lots - to know just a bit about what is good about what is.

"Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority." Eric Hoffer

Yes editec. Most state tests (and the NAEP) give basically a pass/fail score. They do not break down the skills that need to be remediated. When I was in grad school, we were taught that assessments should be used to identify what kids DON'T KNOW, not what they do. And teachers should use that information for reteaching. State tests do not give enough info. At least here in NJ. In fact, we don't get the results until May.

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“‘Sort of’ is such a harmless thing to say...it doesn’t really mean anything. But after certain things, sort of means everything. Like after ‘I love you’ or ‘You’re going to live’ or ‘It’s a boy.’

Demetri Martin

So you're saying that the people responsible for our education are not at fault. There is no way they can influence the process? No way Jose'?

Jesus.

No wonder our schools are so fucked up!!!

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"I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." - Barack Obama From "Audacity Of Hope"

"...we would need to define equality."

Let me help you here:

. The meaning of ‘equality.’
1.The Declaration of Independence memorializes the proposition that all men are created equal. At the time, the ambiguity of the phrase allowed even slave holders to find it informing.

2. But, clearly, the document was understood at the time not to promise equality of condition- even to white male Americans! Equality, as an abstract, was modified by the American idea of reward according to achievement, and a reverence for private property.

3. But the concept has been modified with the growth of modern liberalism, and the ‘egalitarian’ impulse that fuels it. Here we witness the constant expansion into areas in which equality of sorts is seen as desirable and/or mandatory. The intuitive de Tocqueville actually remarked that Americans loved equality more than freedom!

a. The principle of equality prepared men for a government that “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided…Such a power stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd….The evils that extreme equality may produce are slowly disclosed; they creep gradually into the social frame; they are seen only at intervals; and at the moment at which they become most violent, habit already causes them to be no longer felt.” Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America,” volume 2.

4. Under the new definition, an exact similarity of material wealth or income should be the goal of ‘social justice.’

5. By the 20th century, the new ‘equality’ became a threat to freedom. FDR’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal claimed the rectification of inequalities as within the purview of government. LBJ’s Great Society championed the redistribution of wealth and status in the name of equality. Realize that the concomitant movement toward collectivism meant a decline in the freedoms of business, private associations, families, and individuals.
Once FDR applied the political concept of equality to economics, the destruction of freedom became the conclusion. Therefore, equality, as you apply it, or prosperity. But not both.

6. The accession of these views, equality vs. freedom, means that there can be no free market, for that would always result in inequalities. Compared to nations such as Sweden, the United States will, by the nature of its economic system, have greater differences in wealth and income.
The above covered in far better fashion in chapter four, of Bork's "Slouching Toward Gomorrah."


The German sociologist, Karl Mannheim, suggested that the elites of each era are selected based on these principles: blood, property, and achievement.
i. Aristocratic societies chose elites based on blood.
ii. Bourgeois societies chose elites based on property
iii. Modern democracies chose elites based on achievement.
“The real threat of contemporary mass society [is]…that it has recently shown a tendency to renounce the principle of achievement as a factor in the struggle of certain groups for power, and has suddenly established blood and other criteria as the major factors to the far-reaching exclusion of the achievement principle.” Karl Mannheim, “ Man and Society,” p. 91
If we recognize race, ethnicity and sex as the basis for reward, it becomes clear that the achievement principle has been discarded in America today.

Herein is the basis of our disagreements.
a) Conservatives believe in the principle of variety, while liberal perspectives result in a narrowing uniformity. Conservatives believe in choice of healthcare, education, religion, and various other areas. Under conservative principles, there will be differences in class, material condition and other inequalities. Equality will be of opportunity, not necessarily of result. The only uniformity will be before the law. Society will not be perfect. Consider the results of the rule of ideologues of the last century.

b) Freedom and property are linked. Private property results in a more stable and productive society. Private property and retaining the fruits of one’s labor has been proven successful from the Puritan’s Bradford, to the Stakhanovite Revolution!

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People are most conservative on issues that they know most about. --Ann Coulter

Excellent post midcan. When Gov Christie and then Gov Walker started going after teachers, I immediately thought about a main reason Finland's education system is number one.

From your link:
Not surprisingly, in a land where literacy and numeracy are considered virtues, teachers are revered. Teenagers ranked teaching at the top of their list of favorite professions in a recent survey. Far more graduates of upper schools in Finland apply for admission to teacher-training institutes than are accepted. The overwhelming majority of those who eventually enter the classroom as a teacher make it a lifelong career, even though they are paid no more than their counterparts in other European countries.

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith

My poor, suffering friend....

as much as I enjoy skewering you with metronomic regularity, today will be a reprieve...

I will forsake my usual penchant- due to the nature of your consolations this day, understanding your thoughts- such that they are- are elsewhere at this time, on this day, the 58th annivesary of the death of Josef Stalin...

may you find peace.

Just a question of protocol...do you put a black armband over the red one, or simply replace it?

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People are most conservative on issues that they know most about. --Ann Coulter

An awful 'wordy' surrender from you PC...

Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear.
William E. Gladstone

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Here, let me correct that for you....

1) Conservatives believe that there are moral truths, right and wrong, and that these truths are permanent. The result of infracting these truths will be atrocities and social disaster. Liberals believe in a privatization of morality so complete that no code of conduct is generally accepted, practically to the point of ‘do what you can get away with’. These beliefs are aimed at the gratification of appetites and exhibit anarchistic impulses.

2) Conservatives believe that custom and tradition result in individuals living in peace. Law is custom and precedent. Liberals are destroyers of custom and convention. To a conservative, change should be gradual, as the new society is often inferior to the old. We build on the ideas and experience of our ancestors. The species is wiser than the individual (Burke).

3) Liberals are impulsive, and imprudent. They believe in quick changes, and risk new abuses worse than the ‘evils’ that they would sweep away, since remedies are usually not simple. Plato said that prudence is the mark of the statesman. There should be a balance between permanence and change, while liberals see ‘progress’ as some mythical direction for society.

4) Conservatives believe in the principle of variety, while liberal perspectives result in a narrowing uniformity. Conservatives believe in choice of healthcare, education, religion, and various other areas. Under conservative principles, there will be differences in class, material condition and other inequalities. Equality will be of opportunity, not necessarily of result. The only uniformity will be before the law. Society will not be perfect. Consider the results of the rule of ideologues of the last century.

5) Freedom and property are linked. Private property results in a more stable and productive society. Private property and retaining the fruits of one’s labor has been proven successful from the Puritan’s Bradford, to the Stakhanovite Revolution!

6) Conservatives believe in voluntary community and charity, based on duties to each other, with the assumption that each person must do whatever he could to avoid requiring assistance, as opposed to involuntary collectivism, as in “let the government do it..” Burke's understanding that the "little platoon" - family, neighborhood, professional organizations etc - is the "first principle" of society has been consistently identified as providing the necessary inspiration for conservativism. And explains why conservatives give more to charity than liberals.

7) Conservatives view people as both good and bad, and for this reason believe on restraints on power, as in checks and balances, while liberals see power as a force for good, as long as the power is in their hands.

8) Liberals and Conservatives differ in the way to proceed. For Conservatives, data informs policy. (“More Guns, Less Crime” and “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”- Coulter) We use Conservative principles to the best of our ability, but when confronting new and original venues, we believe in testing, and analysis of the results of the tests. For liberals, feeling passes for knowing; it is based on emotion often to the exclusion of thinking.

9) Conservatives view results differently from Liberals. Liberals respond to success and material wealth with envy and hostility, encourage class warfare and an attempt to obviate any chance that it might happen again. The exception is when it is a Liberal with the wealth. Conservatives see success as the validation and culmination of the application of Conservative principles, most prominently Liberty.

10) Since Liberals see their view as a higher calling that that of Conservatives, they mistakenly believe that it is entirely appropriate for then to use, not logic, facts, nor accepted debating techniques, but ad hominem attacks on the physical appearance, personal history, or imaginary mental defects. Notice how the Liberal replaces intellect with emotion. This is, no doubt, based on a medieval concept of recognizing witches and demons. In fact, Liberals attempt to deal with opponents in similar fashion: recall Clarence Thomas’ “High Tech Lynching.”

PoliticalChic

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People are most conservative on issues that they know most about. --Ann Coulter

[quote=bodecea;3383412]Yeah I guess it is just the kids fault. All the teachers are doing the absolute best and its those darn slacker kids. Who is supposed to be the adult in the equation? Whose job is it to stimulate the students.
Perhaps if their was a system of merit pay and perhaps if it were not extremely difficult to fire bad teachers, the system would work a bit better. This country dumps more money into education (Fast Facts) and gets less each year but I guess its just the kid's fault as you state.