Running out of time and I haven’t even started – none of these are terribly serious current problems so I am going to try to just have fun with this and just start proposing ideas and hopefully be in the time limit that I have to get out of here.
Indian Education versus NC education or US education. The delegation from North Carolina went to India and saw the Indian system where apparently math and science are forced early and there are elite high schools persist. A point was made that maybe the US system should have longer class days and make the students be more serious about their work. India produces more engineers so isn’t it better off?
Here’s my take – LOOK AT ME – I’ve got five degrees and will have more and I can do all sorts of stuff plus I am highly creative and I am not burning out. If someone wasn’t trying to kill or incapacitate me, I might actually be able to do some good for society. I am thoroughly an American product of education even if I got screwed up with every leg of it, starting in 1st grade where the teacher said I was a slow learner and would not hold a desk job because I had too much energy.
India gets students to learn math by force. Are they happy later? Are they creative? – Creativity is more important than any degree. Bill Gates didn’t invent jack and is only a so-so computer scientist. But he had the vision and the creativity to see how the pieces could be fit together. That’s what American Education can produce and it’s not the teachers that do it, it’s the culture that encourages exploration. Japan and India envy that. And Bill Gates will be only to happy to employ all the Indian Engineers and tell them what to work on as they don’t make those high level connections and just design the pieces – they’re intellectual thought is lower than the master one – which the US produces with its system – degree not included and not needed.
India – can give students knowledge – but there is never any application of the knowledge or that seems somewhat removed in the example given. It is just learning abstractly versus learning stuff in class that directly relates to what you are working on so that it’s relevant and you remember it.
Speaking from experience you can learn droves of science and math, but if you don’t use the 3rd law of thermodynamics in your reality and don’t need it – you can learn it three times and forget it three times – so more school days and education is not necessarily better education. DO NOT LISTEN TO THE TEACHERS WHO SAY IF I HAD 40- MORE DAYS I COULD DO SO MUCH MORE OR LISTEN SKEPTICALLY– the teacher can’t control whether if they get the student to memorize it that it will stick with the student, that’s the danger.
I would like a much more open system – let a kid pick up a trombone one day, go windsurfing the next, look at stars and astronomy the next, and then read Russian – whatever interests them. Get the kid the used to education themselves versus being taught by an adult that is the most critical lesson – when you’re older there’s no adult edcating you. There was a proposal for a school in new England where children could just learn whatever they want and in pieces it worked – kids didn’t always shy away from math and English – no one wants to be a failure. If you need a core curriculum than have a core – but encourage children to study and get credit for learning things on their own at an early age. That will be the best lesson of all. GET THE PERSON TO BRING OUT THEIR INDIVIDUAL TALENTS THAT SHOULD BE THE FOCUS.
The creative inventors – like for example the WRIGHT BROTHERS governor, many times do not have formal educations, but just take off on their own exploration. Education should be something where – I did this in my life and it worked – can I now go back and get credit for it by applying it to a course and maybe the course gives me more insight or – I just got this odd fascination with male bellydancing – is there a course in that I could take to learn about it – Instead of striving for a degree just take a bunch of classes that interest you at first – and encourage that – and have some record that always gives merit for that – you can still have specific requirements – where once a person has taken general courses the specific requirements for understanding x might channel them to spend a little more effort in this area of study that they wouldn’t otherwise pursue some of that is warranted – but a student should get some and maybe a lot of credit for studying whatever comes natural to him or her and not worrying as much about absolutely having to fulfill degree requirements to get recognition that they enriched themselves. That is the current systemic flaw – people have to check boxes in course lists in order to get any credit other than the some college – option – what should happen is students do what they want – employer gets lists and see strengths and shortcoming in student’s record and then asks student maybe to do z and y in order to be tried out an job or says students has a lot of skills and could these 3 jobs take pick. Employers have to be more willing not to use degrees as barriers to employment which is how they are used right now – if employer could see past the degree to course work and get a record written up – the HR office could work more with candidates to tailor their further studies or ask for x and y for student’s next year if the student wants that type of job – and employer and student with their demands work on education and education – “degrees” while still important – as demonstrating a student can finish something they start – may channel a student to take classes and may be good in that way- but now it’s not all important and a student is less likely to waste time in a course of study he or she does not like. And education could inform industry by channeling with degree students to pick up new skills that end up being useful on job. Have the three work together much more and let the student have much more freedom in developing what comes out naturally instead of doing what India does. Saw it in an India executive on Charlie Rose , “science is a good paying job” - that line of thinking is BS – B_llSh_t ! – Produce happy people who like what they’re doing – you ‘ll just be so much better off – money is a poor reason to go into a career. India doesn’t appear to get that.
India breeds arrogance and so do similar systems – when you have the elite system you have things like a doctor in psychiatry who will destroy a person’s career and life because he will not admit he is wrong and he does not like being challenged by someone he perceives of as lower status. He needs the affirmation that he is smart and best. He won’t perceive that destroying a person’s life is really something you should go to jail for particularly if you are also blackmailing patients to lie to get correct medical data on drugs – which of course the drug companies like – but doctor also wants to be a good doctor and wants his results to match expected and has leanred to lie to do that and that is a flaw in the education system that conditioned the doctor that way – that the person who reports the flaw is hurt and not rewarded. And the medical profession needs severe correction in that aspect in my opinion. The AMA should have much of its legal authority over patient’s lives stripped from it and should be reduced to a more advisory status and not be able to force medical treatment in most cases – they simply do not know enough and cannot predict with certainty to be given the authority over people’s lives – No one challenges them right now because you are not supposed to and its generally too frightening and scary if you are poor to challenge a doctor. – And they need challenges – Terry Schiavo was murdered and the medical teams did not seem to pick up on that – they did the professional things and screwed up. I should reread the case to make comment exact, but the way the medical teams seemed to rule cavalierly about what happened to Terry and didn’t smell anything fishy about husband inheriting and there’s an accident between them where she nearly dies – and that she might recover and they make their categorical no chance ruling that she won’t so the husband is cleared to inherit. That all smelled bad. I know my doctor declared I would be dead when I stopped taking medication about 240 days ago. – I’m still waiting to die now 6-8 times or more over when he said I would die. They don’t know and they won’t admit when they don’t know and that’s why they should lose legal authority over people and yes THAT’s WHAT I WANT TO STRIP THEM OF HOSPITALIZATION EXCEPT IN MOST EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES AND HAVE THE POLICE USE THAT ONLY AND STOP THEM IN END OF LIFE DECISIONS – DIMISH THEIR POWER ACROSS THE BOARD - THEY ARE UNCERTAIN AND THEY LIE TO MAKE THE DATA GO THEIR WAY EVEN BLACKMAIL A PATIENT TO NOT HAVE THEIR DIAGNOSIS TURN OUT WRONG – HAPPENED TO ME 2 TIMES AT LEAST – SO IT DOES HAPPEN AND NOT JUST ONE CASE –
Should American students be made more comfortable with math – yes but I would argue many of the symbols of math and its teaching style should be cleaned up – have my thing on cleaning up all academic nomenclature as a start to getting more collaboration across difference – be good if everyone understood one another – Mathematics current – I have an AS in Math by the way and wouldn’t mind 1 or 2 junior and senior level math courses- math doesn’t connect – students get bored because we teach technique first which isn’t interesting instead of concepts which are fascinating – the uses of integration are amazing – but getting that out of mathematicians or getting the links between that and looking at an integral tables is hard and usually doesn’t happen and it doesn’t help when like I wanted to go back and take Calc I again for the third time after acing Differential Equations because I never understood the concepts and my math teacher at CCAC told me that that would not happen. The reason he might say that is that I got a B at Carnegie Mellon University and CCAC does not want to show that CMU’s teaching was inferior and that I got the B because I had a visiting professor from France at CMU who was there to do research and not teach and he had a bunch of architects for calculus who don’t need it and most failed and he curved – the fact that many didn’t learn much was swept under the table and only came out because bonehead me went back and explored math. But this professor had a degree from CMU and didn’t want its reputation damaged by me saying that CCAC was better. Why spend 40k a year instead of 2k on tuition and I ask that question a lot and I don’t always get a good answer and wonder if the Dean of Yale, Harvard and Jared Cohon will organize a hit squad to kill me for suggesting they aren’t worth their price tag(luckily in their case I am joking). The basic reason they may be worth the money is the job connections and special programs which undergraduates don’t have much access to and the job connection just spawns all the corruption in society – You have your job not on merit, but because your degree is CMU and not Pitt and CMU spent more money getting you you’re job – they could care less about your merit – or don’t care too much.
But back to learning math in small ways– be nice if in lower grades more connections made to integration and derivative concept so they are not so nebulous- mathematicians are afraid to do this because it seems to confuse people – but some people will pick out the connections over the technique first and be inspired to pursue math. That would be a very good outcome. And I would be for mentioning in conceptual terms the advanced in even junior high – and not presenting it for the first time when students have to master technique – look at foreign language – we do that with communication first for many – we never do that with math – it’s grammar first – that’s why no one likes it. – I am for getting right answer and not approximating, but weave in higher concepts of math at same time. –Don’t like the approximation method.
Again employers help the system stay bad, by being lazy and only looking at people with degrees instead of being better at evaluating everyone applying for potential – essentially they say we don’t care if we miss a couple good people – it doesn’t matter - will get a good one probably and their resume will legally cover our asbestos. (and I don’t mean the material.)
Guy on UNC –TV – why are not prepared for the Indian onslaught – I would totally agree that Americans could be more humble and more inspired to work and are not prepared for intellectual competition with growing parts of world – but it’s more complicated than UNC presented because India and China will have different internal issues we don’t. In India the lack of infrastructure was one. – On working hard in school it should not be through force long term as this achieves poor results – help find their passions and working hard becomes natural.
Part of getting a good career and not feeling entitled is though not feeling entitled having to work some and not being told you’re great but being kept humble will breed much hungrier tigers in the future- our get fed too many undeserved compliments and are not prodded as much about the real problems that we should be looking at because they need to be “Safe” and also because of the racism and classcism in our society – how many people live just in their suburb and do not want to see greater US problems they cause or greater world problems or even to want to try to think about – getting kids used to thinking about it and being able to live with being from US when approaching outsiders who may cliam we’re rich nad lazy is a big need – if you’re working on solving that you feel a lot less bad about it.
Education
Now with all this said Governor – I wanted to mention my concerns about the 1 year residency period to become an in-state college student – PA didn’t have one that and I was resident in 3 months (went back to Pittsurgh in Match – will have to go back in Private apartment – for college tuition purposes which decreases costs to 25%. Have to admit extreme bias and this totally affects and I am more like a lobbyist here – but it is helping to bar me from exploring your states higher education until spring 2008 when I get resident rates – how about after a person pays their first set of taxes to NC they become resident even if 1 month or 1 day 0- essentially they paid therefore they get state services. But I am biased in wanting a particular outcome. It would also get more new arrivals in state into whatever job they’re going to take faster and I could see a long-term positive benefit for not arbitrarily making people wait a year to get ¼ tuition which is what in-state status amounts to.
ACLU – on bible as only document for honesty in court being discriminatory is right – maybe move to some state symbol for honesty in court that is neutral – take away bible issues – but prevent need for 12 different religious books – swear on lady justice herself instead of bible – the whole ceremony is actually foolish – it should just be understood that all remarks in court are presumed truthful and if they’re not person is subject to liability.
Kill the prescription drugs to kids - this I think is the most destructive thing in the US education system is teacher’s convincing parents that their children should be put on medication – this should stop because I would have been classified as hyperactive by my 1st grade and kindergarten teacher and Risperdal over time does do brain damage and does prevent brain connections from forming as it “calms” children – I speak from personal experience with the drug – and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD A CHILD BE GIVEN THIS WHILE ITS BRAIN IS FORMING OR REALLY AT ANY OTHER TIME – you creating zombies which will have high societal support needs and doctor’s will do to justify their reputations.
Finding out that I have to take 1,000 bank loan on 22% interest but can get buyers credit from three companies – for 14-18% - really 2 – but say three because I seemed to have been turned down from getting a credit loan at Best Buy because I didn’t have a saving account – the fact that I do margin stock trading and think savings accounts are for idiots hurts me when I go to apply for credit as I only have a checking account – they never think to ask about securities in their formulas – so I opened a savings account with a little money just to say I have one – bank would make way more money off me if I invested it. But no - And still I have close to the 1,000 on buyer’s credit which doesn’t allow for donations and in many cases can only be used in that store – though it varies – Wal-Mart is only in store – while it looks like amazon and ebay go more places.
Loan Consolidation – going back to higher education – the basic issues in higher education cost is colleges are building too many white elephants because that supposedly attracts students – but it increases tuition with little educational value – I am not going to address that right now =-
I would like to mention that the practices highlighted(if they are ) where there is only one lender in college and in new york – that preferred lender may give gifts to get preferred treatment and is the only lending company students get access to when they take out student loans. I don’t about the gifts – I do know it’s true that students only get access in many cases or at least in my two to one lender and are told very little about other people who want their business and are willing to cut them a better – deal – just consolidated my student loans a second time and got some bonuses for doing that – it involved trusting a paper statement sent to me in the mail – and then when I made the initial overture – another company quickly called and said I applied to them online and asked for same business and directed me to the online form – I ended up going with them almost and filing out the form without reading any of its consents – luckily the guy lied about 24 hour customer service and I called at 3am and was dismayed to find no customer service. This led to me canceling the policy, but had to fax cancellation notice and pay $3 to do that and the sign up confirmation was electronic and free and I didn’t have to make trip to center of town – could companies be required to give same electronic options to sign up as to close because that didn’t seem to fair that it was an electronic click to sign up – but to cancel had to fax signature – pieces of deal given unequal access – but you could sue to change that - The companies number for their boss also wasn’t callable from a pay phone and this disturbed me a bit and the company was edirect online with a pay phone possible number of 1-800 – but the bosses number of 1-8xx did not dial from a payh phone and I did not like having that company have my loand and their 1-866- faxnumber would not be given out by their pulbic line
Could states make website for listed consolidators and explain consolidation to students ‘ Could there be an improved website of vendors who have only limited contact in a specified form. Watch company can deal to someone But could provisions be in place to help students not get a loan they don’t need and to get advances when no other way is possible. Also have standard way to compare results.
And standardize the way consolidation offer is made d this person is truly corrupt, they will do many things besides
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