Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Tuesday, June 28. 2011

3 items

You know about the warning, but do you know who Miranda was?  Or how he died? Or what became of his killer?


Black racism against Asians and whites (h/t Doug Ross). Never reported because it doesn't fit the narrative.


Fraud Up and Down Our Educational System. A quote from London:


     Once these high-school graduates hold a diploma in their hands, however questionable their skill level, they are deemed college-ready. Since America has a college for everyone and the society is committed to mass education, students who can read at only a marginal level or who cannot solve quadratic equations are seated in institutions of higher learning.
    Surely something has to give. Invariably remediation must take place, but that is insufficient to deal with widespread incompetence. Obviously course content and requirements are modified. A physics instructor at the City University in New York told me recently it is impossible to teach real physics when your students are incapable of engaging eight-grade math.
Posted by The Barrister at 16:15 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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Nice little article on fraud in education.

Of course the masses have been known to kill the educated, so I don't feel particularly optimistic.
#1 DrTorch on 2011-06-28 17:09 (Reply)
I agree. Those who rail against the NEA, administrators, and the inept teachers they protect (or in some cases are unable to fire) are missing the key - parents. Teacher's unions, leftists academics, politicians who are clueless - or worse, administrators, and the insane rules they work under are all corrosive to education, but if there were enough parents who knew and cared about the fraud that is education at all levels of school today, it would change. Some are ignorant, some are complacent, and some don't really want their kids to be smarter than they are. There just aren't enough of the rest.

Having said that, I think our only hope is to allow real school choice so that the community can see what is possible and how that is different from what their kids are getting. Having education homogenized just anesthetizes the parents who don't see any real differences (that is financially attainable). After all, it helps for parents to be involved with their kids' education, but it doesn't require it. Even if school is a babysitter for the parents and the school just happens to also dispense quality education, Mom and Dad would be just as glad.
#1.1 mudbug on 2011-06-28 18:24 (Reply)
Thank you for linking to my post! I've added Maggie's Farm to my blogroll.

I remember attending community college and being amazed at how many students needed to take a year or more of remedial courses before they could take college level classes in college! They had all graduated from high school, but lowly me with my GED needed no remediation and was able to get a 4.0 GPA. Go figure.
#2 Zilla (Link) on 2011-06-28 17:50 (Reply)
Some years ago I examined dropout rates and number of students at various grade levels. Some urban high schools which claimed to have low dropout rates nonetheless had a big difference in number of freshmen compared t number of seniors, such as 600 freshmen, 400 seniors, and a 5% dropout rate.

This.does.not.compute.
#3 Gringo on 2011-06-29 00:26 (Reply)
I dropped out of high school and now I'm in college. In high school I "didn't fit the mold"and was thus treated like crap most of the way through. The public school system where i lived was awful. Where do you expect people to get some proper edjamacashuning if not in college? I see it as another case of the private sector just providing yet another service better than .gov can. of course there will always be young people that you think shouldn't be in college, but who are we to decide how they live their lives. Many may never earn a degree but I'm sure they'll gain something of value from their experience at college.
#4 Jon b goode on 2011-06-29 04:11 (Reply)
"students are incapable of engaging eight-grade math"
That's not math, that's arithmetic. He's saying they can't do arithmetic. They didn't learn the three Rs in eight years.
#5 Ray on 2011-06-29 12:03 (Reply)
Oh boy--you picked the subject nearest and dearest to my heart. Let's start back in the early 80's shall we? To begin with:
1. Women's leadership group (NOW) demands easier access to teaching jobs for "needy" women (read that as divorced with kids, or African/American).

2. The solution was unanimously supported by teacher's union. The solution how simple: create shorter training (education) course requirements for teacher trainees. That is to say, if you got a GED you could become a teacher in most major cities with less than 2 years of "higher education". The unions taught these gals formulas for presenting material. Things to say to students--but, never gave a tinker's damn if the women themselves understood the subjects they were teaching.

With regard to FRAUD--I tried to report fraud of the highest order and my husband never worked again for the past eleven years. Department of Education does not have the courage to confront the unions and their heavy hitting (murder anyone?) thugs. Go to Chicago--force the unions to release their hold on the teachers and you might, you just might be able to produce high school grads on a par with those graduating from high school in India, Korea, China, Taiwan, etc., etc. You might!
#6 faculty wife on 2011-06-29 12:22 (Reply)
Real physics takes calculus, not just arithmetic or algebra. When I took 3 semesters of physics at MIT the first semester was carefully coordinated with the people teaching first semester calculus.
#7 RonF on 2011-06-29 13:02 (Reply)
Here is an example:

http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_c980ed72-9d3a-11e0-881d-001cc4c03286.html


In about five years from now she will be a Teaching Assistant and then a teacher. She will probably have not actually attended much high school, get a GED, and then go through a "special training" program affiliated with her local state college/union.
#8 faculty wife on 2011-06-29 20:48 (Reply)

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