Reasons for optimism

@georgeob1,

Quote:

What is your question? The dissertation was on a theoretical aspect of Fluid Mechanics involving unstable turbulent flows of viscous fluids..

Were you not asked very specific questions as to your definitions of terms and as to the evidence you had to bolster your thesis? I can't imagine you just delivered the thesis and that was that.

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@layman,

I already did previously, I left a link earlier today from mediamatters which I admitted was a left wing site but it chock full of links.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/04/27/here-are-corporations-and-right-wing-funders-backing-education-reform-movement/210054#devos

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Draining the swamp. Concerns for the little guy who's been left out in this new economy. Knocking down the elites. How's that all going?

Quote:

Put together, Trump’s Cabinet and administration could be worth as much as $35 billion, a staggering agglomeration of wealth unprecedented in American history.

The median household income in the U.S.? About $55,000.

http://politi.co/2gmfRJs

1 Reply

@revelette2,

revelette2 wrote:

I already did previously, I left a link earlier today from mediamatters which I admitted was a left wing site but it chock full of links.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/04/27/here-are-corporations-and-right-wing-funders-backing-education-reform-movement/210054#devos

You cited that link for the purpose of "exposing" Betsy DeVos. I see nothing in the introductory prelude that says anything about a movement to make ALL schools private. Is there anything specific you can refer me to in that link?

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@revelette2,

revelette2 wrote:

There is currently a movement which would like privatize all schools which means public schools would not be an option. And no I would not want any child to go to a school which teaches any religious doctrine much less one I believe in. Never even said anything like that.

I'm aware 0f no such movement. I think you are fighting a ghost of your own imagining.

There are however many people who, seeing the pervasive mediocrity of our public schools, and the degree to which they are failing minorities and those with few options, advocate the recognition of chartered schools under private (generally secular) management to which those who choose them can send their children, using a fraction of the public funds that would otherwise go to public schools. I believe it is a very good thing. Our public schools system has long been thoroughly corrupted by a pervasive education bureaucracy together with teacher's unions, which seek only to protect their membership from accountability. It is failing the public and needs the competition toi restore itself.

Institutions, organizations and corporations of every kind decay over time. They need competition, externally applied stress and periodic recreation to remain effective. Our public schools have functioned (if that is an accurate term) in a vacuum, protected by self-serving unions and bureaucrats for far too long. They need

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@blatham,

Blackwater!
Makes me shiver my timbers this Thanksgiving Day. (Diane and I went to Denny's, snort, for a late breakfast. Our families will call our houses.)

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

Draining the swamp. Concerns for the little guy who's been left out in this new economy. Knocking down the elites. How's that all going?

Quote:
Put together, Trump’s Cabinet and administration could be worth as much as $35 billion, a staggering agglomeration of wealth unprecedented in American history.

The median household income in the U.S.? About $55,000.
http://politi.co/2gmfRJs

Is there some "point," other than displaying your contempt and disdain for financially successful people, that you think you are "proving" here?

All else being equal, I would rather have someone in public office who doesn't have a financial NEED to benefit from it than one who does.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

Quote:
What is your question? The dissertation was on a theoretical aspect of Fluid Mechanics involving unstable turbulent flows of viscous fluids..

Were you not asked very specific questions as to your definitions of terms and as to the evidence you had to bolster your thesis? I can't imagine you just delivered the thesis and that was that.

I was indeed. But that was in an hierarchial situation in which the academic questioners did indeed have power and authority over my work and sat in judgment over the merits (or lack of them) in what I knew and had done. This is a conversation among individuals. Very different.

Parenthetically I was a bit sick of the knowledge business by then, and requested (and got) an assignment to a fighter squadron immediatly after graduation. A few months later, onboard Kitty Hawk in the Gulf of Tonkin I found myself wondering about my own wisdom, but things worked out OK.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

There are however many people who, seeing the pervasive mediocrity of our public schools, and the degree to which they are failing minorities and those with few options, advocate the recognition of chartered schools under private (generally secular) management...

I'm too lazy to do my own research, but I recall hearing (probably from Trump) that the U.S. spends the MOST, per student, on education of any other country in the world. Yet, despite this exorbitant spending, we rank about 25th in successfully educating our children (in terms of knowledge of math, science, etc.).

I really don't understand how and why some people insist that we MUST maintain the educational status quo, unless maybe they have a personal financial stake in it.

Can one of you "Betsy DeVos is a traitorous criminal" types explain to me what the problem is with her? She seems to have devoted decades of her life, not to mention vast sums of money, to the cause of improving education. What's the problem? Is it, somehow, that her family has money, or what?

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@blatham,

I'm kinda curious. I have no doubt that cavalierly throwing around phrases like "radical right wing institutions" and dropping names like the John Birch society" is quite sufficient and persuasive when preaching to your left-wing choir, but do you really expect such cheap tactics to convince the mainstream?

Americans have a natural aversion to extremist groups (right or left). One notable thing about the Republican party is that they moved rather quickly and forcefully to eliminate "extremist" factions from any positions of influence within the party.

Maybe the Democrats could learn something from them in that respect. But in all likelihood the opposite will happen. They will go even farther toward leftist extremism.

The arguments now are that "Bernie would have won" and they are touting Farakan-supporting Muslims from the far left as being the ideal candidates for the "new direction" and new leadership they are seeking.

Good luck with that.

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@layman,

Clearly you don't understand. She's rich, politically active, and doesn't buy all the horse **** our Democrsat establishment feeds us about the education establishment that funds them. She might even know the (gasp!) Koch brothers, whom we all know are the very personification of evil (unlike George Soros who funds only the truth, virtue and the Progressive way).

Thinking about this brings to mind just how slavish and abject is the credulity and hypocrisy of these folks.

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@layman,

I went to private catholic schools for thirteen years. Three different ones a continent apart, for what we called grammar school, grades 1 to 8. I pretty much enjoyed all that.

Next, a high school that my cousin's family had already gotten me enrolled in even before we landed back in California. Turned out to be one of the most rigorous nunneries in the states, and then I was harrowed into the convent, except that my parents saved me by sending me on a work trip with my dad and other men. Even my religious parents didn't want that to happen. I was already signed up as a postulant, ready to buy the shoes. Luckily, I got a crush on the film editor (he treated me well, no baddy stuff).

That trip, making a film for Armour Inc., opened my eyes to much beauty around, but also deprivation, a start at my growing up.

As anyone but a newbie here knows, I am a 50 year atheist, and my take on the word is simple - that I am without theism.

That's it. No agenda except that I don't want my 300 plus million people
country dismantled.

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@ossobucotemp,

ossobucotemp wrote:

I went to private catholic schools for thirteen years... then I was harrowed into the convent, except that my parents saved me by sending me on a work trip with my dad and other men.

As anyone but a newbie here knows, I am a 50 year atheist, and my take on the word is simple - that I am without theism.

Well, Jo, do you think that attending catholic schools "ruined" you or gave you a "bad education?" I think many secular parents would much prefer to send their kids to quality catholic schools over public schools. They won't allow "faith" (for or against "God") to interfere with the best educational interests of their children, for some damn reason

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

I was indeed. But that was in an hierarchial situation in which the academic questioners did indeed have power and authority over my work and sat in judgment over the merits (or lack of them) in what I knew and had done.

But would you have it otherwise? Would you for example, have it that surgeons or civil engineers achieve certification without such rigor? Or, perhaps to ask this a different way, did you perceive the process as one mainly about a display of power or rather a process designed to promote and verify standards of grasp and achievement?

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@blatham,

No I wouldn't change it. The questioners were there to enforce the standards for the candidates and academic products they were judging. They didn't approve all who appeared before them and they did enforce the needed standards fairly well. There were all of the many imperfections that attend all human activities in the process, mostly arising out of the conflicting vanities and ambitions of the professors, and the candidates, involved. I don't presume to improve on it.

I've become quite familiar with the procedures for approving professional engineers and Geologists, and recognize the minimum standards they enforce. However, in all of this, I also recognize the organized restraint of competition that is also present in the process. That arises from the human corruption of the exclusionary component of the process. Those in the tribe don't wish to see too many new members. It's a bit like the reaction of Taxi companies to Uber.

However, none of that applies to the conversations here.

Anyway its Thanksgiving day here and our preparations for the event have reached the point at which I am allowed back in the kitchen and dining area of the house: my enforced exile is now over (women are the real tyrants of the world). It's a good holiday and, despite the fact that we don't agree on much, I'm glad you are here, and I wish you well.

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@georgeob1,

Same to you. We might pick up the notion in paragraph three later.

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@layman,

If more and more resources and government tax money goes into charter and private schools, there will be less money for public schools. The link was about way more than the Devo family, it was full of right wing groups and think tanks and corporations all focused on privatizing schools.

Most know better than to say they want to do away with the federal education department but that is their goal.

Fox's Eric Bolling: Trump Should Pick An Education Secretary "That Will Close The Agency Down"

I guess Trump listened.

I know ya'll think of the government as controlling but I think of it as the little guy's way of leveling the playing field of the big guys. Otherwise we have just a few rich companies controlling the whole country while everyone else is powerless. Which is probably why the government is called "We The People."

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@revelette2,

revelette2 wrote:

I know ya'll think of the government as controlling but I think of it as the little guy's way of leveling the playing field of the big guys.

That's how Lenin, Stalin and Mao rationalized their tyranny and mass murders. All they produced with it was mass poverty and suffering.

revelette2 wrote:

... Otherwise we have just a few rich companies controlling the whole country while everyone else is powerless. Which is probably why the government is called "We The People."

Unfortunately for you the ideas you advocate generally produce the opposite results.

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@revelette2,

revelette2 wrote:

Most know better than to say they want to do away with the federal education department but that is their goal....Fox's Eric Bolling: Trump Should Pick An Education Secretary "That Will Close The Agency Down"

Well, ya know, the country *somehow* managed to educate people BEFORE this vast bureaucracy was invented by Jimmy Carter in 1979. What has this department done for the country, exactly?

According to Andrew J. Coulson, speaking to congress as a representative of a nonprofit, non-partisan public policy research organization:

Quote:

We spent over $151,000 per student sending the graduating class of 2009 through public schools. That is nearly three times as much as we spent on the graduating class of 1970, adjusting for inflation. Despite that massive real spending increase, overall achievement has stagnated or declined, depending on the subject. … We have little to show for the $2 trillion in federal education spending of the past half century. In the face of concerted and unflagging efforts by Congress and the states, public schooling has suffered a massive productivity collapse—it now costs three times as much to provide essentially the same education as we provided in 1970.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the accomplishments of that Department, eh?

One might conclude that the only people who have anything to lose if this department is abolished are those that are employed (relatively lucractively) by it.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

revelette2 wrote:

I know ya'll think of the government as controlling but I think of it as the little guy's way of leveling the playing field of the big guys.

That's how Lenin, Stalin and Mao rationalized their tyranny and mass murders. All they produced with it was mass poverty and suffering.

On the flip side, it's also how Scandinavian social-democrats rationalized their projects of social and economic reforms. All they produced was a set of societies that consistently top most any ranking of social, educational, political and health standards.

1 Reply

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