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Teacher Sells Ads On Tests
Tom Farber, a calculus teacher at Rancho Bernardo high school in San Diego, has come up with a unique way of covering district cuts to his supplies budget. He sells ads on his tests. "Tough times call for tough actions," Tom says. The price of an ad on a Mr. Farber Calc test is as follows: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, and $30 for a semester final. Most of the ads are messages from parents but about a third of them come from local businesses. Principal Paul Robinson says reaction has been "mixed," but adds, "It's not like, 'This test is brought to you by McDonald's or Nike.'" I see his point. Being a local business whore is much better than being a multinational conglomerate whore.
Perfect place for Cliffs notes ads, eh?
"Next test, use our notes and suck less!"
*snicker*
A Human Right
I mean - if we can get businesses to supplement education funds in any way that is not a rise in taxes, why not?
I think we could put ads on School Buses and more of this type of stuff - sure, have some oversite, but lets get some money where it belongs without forcing businesses and citizens to raise taxes.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
I put my copyright notice next to every answer.
Doesn't work so well on the scantron forms though.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
These carry more value than just the money they bring in. They are encouragement that a kid's efforts in calculus (and education in general) are valued by the parents and local businesses.
Face it, the general message a well behaved student without academic problems gets is that they are the last people to spend money on.
t
If people weren't so hell bent on not paying taxes we wouldn't have this problem. I hear people say "I don't have kids, why should I pay for school tax"
Guess what? You went to a school? You PAY for a school! Otherwise, go live in a third world country.
Did you know that in California it takes a 2/3rds majority to raise taxes but only a 51/49 vote to spend more money??? Now we're having massive teacher and police layoffs because republican assholes and cheating democrats aren't willing to man up and pay their dues.
I love paying taxes.
I use them to buy civilization.
The American Council on Education, providing funding to US education until 2008.
If you can't be bothered to support your schools well enough that the teachers can print out tests, then you shouldn't be pissed the instructor is having to subject your child to ads to be able to afford to print the tests. This isn't even the teachers getting a (well deserved) raise, this is about not having the supplies that directly contribute to your child's education.
Ads on tests. Bad prescedant? Yes.
Can't be bothered to do anything for your child's education outside taxes? Worse prescedant? Yes.
If you have three Pepsis and drink one, how much more refreshed are you?
I had a calculus teacher in New York in 2001 who wanted to rent his desk as ad space to help pay for education. So this isn't exactly novel.
This is a great idea! Young people LOVE taking tests and the next time they go past Bennys Burger(TM) they are guaranteed to think that is THE place to go! Soon methods like trying to associate your brand with cool music or a sports star will be history.
Sponsored by Bennys Burger Inc(TM).
Sponsored by e^ipi = -1!
This is Rancho Bernardo? That's not exactly the inner city. Maybe charge $2 more per seat at the football games and have a properly funded Calc class.
I wonder if you could take out an "ad" with certain calculus notes buried within it...like having the Ideal Gas Equation or Hooke's Law as a tiny part of a graphic... ^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
If this is how they need to make ends meet, it could be the taxpayers own fault. I watched many school funding bills fail on election day. I say 'kudos' to this professor for his ingenuity, but the system as a whole is screwed.
This test brought to you by CDABCCDACDBBACCADBC and the bonus question is 42.
"To err is human, to mod Funny divine."
Another failure brought to you by zombcom
While not a bad idea, the implementation could be much better...Picture this test:
1) McDonald's $2 Big Mac contains two all-beef patties that are cylinders of height 0.5cm and diameter 5cm. Burger King's $3 whopper contains two beef-like substances that are cylinders of height 0.3cm and diameter 4.5cm. How many more times valuable is the Big Mac versus the Whopper, assuming a sandwich's value is directly proportional to the amount of beef (or beef-like substance) in it?
2) A Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki 6" sub contains 250 kcal of lean, healthy energy. A Wendy's Baconator contains 975 kcal of thigh-hugging and gut-enlarging fat. If all the energy of these sandwiches were put into a 100kg person climbing a ladder, how much higher would the 100kg person have to climb in order to use up all the energy (assuming all energy spent is put into the potential energy from climbing)?
The possibilities are endless! We'd never have to worry about education funding again!
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
Before you get angry at this, think about the present state of public schools. When I was still going to school about 3 years ago, I was in a public school district that had to cut basically everything that wasn't absolutely essential due to a budget crisis. The schools were in shambles, and teachers had no supplies to do anything. One of my science teachers wanted to send a team to do Science Olympiad, a competition that involved performing experiments, taking tests, and building contraptions. The thing is, due to the budget cuts, the schools wouldn't pay for it. So, out of his own generosity, (teachers don't get paid much to begin with), he paid for all the supplies and the fees to go. This wound up probably costing him into the thousands, just to send his students to a competition. Many teachers don't have the materials they need to teach what they want to teach. If selling a space at the bottom of a test will give them a small relief to be able to buy materials and such, I think this is an excellent idea.
but I totally support this. It's funny.
I wish my math tests had ads for lesbianwhores.com.
Of course when I had math tests, the Apple II was state of the art, and the intertoobs were still APRAnet.
Fuck, I'm old. :-(
Driving by a local high school that had loads of banners from local businesses and other similar things, I pondered how long it will be until kids start attending 'Coca-Cola Middle School' instead of 'George Washington Middle School'...
This test sponsored by www.testanswers.com
Its a distraction form the test and the learning process. PLUS, as a tax funded institution, no content should be allowed without the prior approval of the parents.
As an alternative, get the advertisers to supply students with backpacks of materials and supplies at the start of the semester. They can slap a sticker on everything.
I went to RB high, and had Mr. Farber for Pre-Calc in 2002-2003. This doesn't exactly surprise me, he's an intelligent guy that looks for all sorts of opportunities.
Unfortunately the man isn't exactly the friendliest guy in the world and is a gigantic jerk to students that aren't on track to finish 2nd year Calc before going to college, and was probably the worst math teacher I had at RB high.
he also married a former student half his age (eww)
Really it isn't. I've recently been trying to figure out how to make Public Schools more like the Post Office, i.e. not operating in the red, and the answer I keep circling back to is advertising. Are there better ways? Maybe, but I can't think of any. And no, I don't mean full on advertising like blaring announcements between classes with videos to boot, but maybe corporate funded text books, yes I know historically they are inaccurate, that only allow for example problems to use their product/brand.
is it like an american airline passenger flight takes off from New York travelling 430 mph with 300 passengers who booked their holiday to exciting London with expedia.com Meanwhile a Virgin Atlantic flight takes off from Heathrow travelling at 550 mph.....
Where advertising goes follows influence.
Once the schools depend on this, they will be preyed upon by anyone that advertises.
Personally, I am outraged.
Instead of putting ads on tests, quietly cutting days from the year, and making shorter hours. They should loudly cut the days by 1/3, or cut off the days they can't pay for the end of the year. Let the parents know the effects of shooting down' taxes for education. Don't hide the effects from them.
When they ahve to pay a 500 bucks a week for day care, suddenly those taxes won't seem so bad.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I know I should really hate that he's doing this, but I don't. It's kind'a nice.
Sure beats what my EE lab prof did... he stapled McDonald's applications to a final and shouted "None of you will ever be electrical engineers! Yer' gonn'a need that last page..."
Man, what a bastard.
The world shall be right when armies have to have bake sales and schools are fully funded.
My biggest concern is: what happens to the "profit" left after buying his supplies?
I'm not sure what to think of this though. But I can certainly understand why he thought it necessary. I have to wonder...how fully funded are the athletic programs there? I'd bet the football team gets what it needs with no questions asked.
A school librarian I use to work with had a comical article hanging up that I'll never forget. Basically it's written up to look like a letter from a parent who's ticked off with how much teachers get paid. The "parent" demands that the teacher get paid just like a babysitter. But when he starts doing the math for $$ per hour, times X hours, times X kids, times X days in the year...it was coming up with a MUCH larger figure than the initial amount being argued about.
Medical books have been advertising medications for nearly 5 years, and the tests have been made on these medications. So when doctors graduate, they don't have a fundamental understanding of the physiology they are dealing with, but instead, mounds of debt, drug companies telling them what drugs to use to treat what symptoms, and a lot of angst-filled bosses.
The reality of the situation is that this country is in a _lot_ of debt, and for those who don't have debt there are people who are figuring out ways to scam them into being in debt.
There was another story about how municipalities have been charging/billing people for accident response from firemen and police. I say, the municipalities charge the federal government and state government a "tax collection fee" consummate to the amount they should be paying them and cut the federal and state share.
Large institutions are all scams; no man can understand the needs of millions, only his own and therefor, large institutions run by a single man simply exist to lift wealth from everyone else.
This is so utterly wrong that I honestly feel sick. If this is happening, then it means that society as a whole has failed at one of its three primary purposes. Capitalism has gone from a financial model to a political one, and now a societal one.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
As soon as I can download cut-out overlay patterns from Adblock...
Q. Explain The Ramanujan conjecture.
A. I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords.
* This question brought to you by the Foundation for Corporate Speech Rights *
PS, I don't.
If I were on the school board, I would vote to have the teacher fired.
Certainly he is clever, but there are times and places for everything, and ads on school tests do not make the cut.
"Teacher teacher! I tried to answer question number three but the space was taken up by an intrusive Viagra advertisement!!!!"
Given the state of education today, I have a sponsor suggestion...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"$10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, and $30 for a semester final"
Sounds like a pretty cheap price to stick a cheat-sheet on your test under the guise of "advertisement".
See here from VideoSift).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Don't like it? Fund your fucking public schools, idiots.
Talk about an outrage!
Hey, the McLean Students vs. iParadigms has an appeal hearing scheduled for later this week.
Sorry to hijack the thread.
Due to my involvement in the trial, I have to post anonymously, and hope this gets modded up.
Most advertising works by having you correlate a service or something positive with the advertised product. Commercials between your favorite shows, contextualized ads on websites, previews before movies etc.
Tests aren't positive for most people. In fact I am pretty sure most people don't like tests. Works as well as advertising space on barf bags.
This portion of brain-melting hell brought to you by Joe's Honeywagon!
I think the real question is why a structural engineering firm puts out ads on high school tests... lots of 16-year-olds contracting bridges and highrises these days?
What an idea! Instead of reading "This is legal tender valid for all debts, public and private," or "In God we trust," read "Taco Cabana rocks" or "Get a Dell."
It might even put a smile on George Washington's face, if there was a plug for Viagra underneath his picture.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
...wait till the kids start coming home and complaining that the questions were too hard to read because they were in super fine print on page 4 in the bottom right hand corner hidden among 20 pages of ads.
If we can't differentiate between an ad catalog and a student's test paper, we shouldn't fool ourselves into pretending we're providing kids with an education.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Start, say, around the time of the American revolution, replace all United States citizens (every single one) with a completely uneducated people. Further posit that no educated people can be gained, and ponder the probable effect on history. (Hint: The United States would probably not be any sort of an economic power, for starters)
Benefiting everyone is not necessarily as cut and dried as 'There's an X dollar difference for you as an individual'.
Code or be coded.
Being a local business whore is much better than being a multinational conglomerate whore.
I think you mean to say that whoring for a local business is better than whoring for a multinational conglomerate. The businesses aren't getting f'd by the quiz, the quiz is getting paid to be f'd by the business - see?
That said, I think the Principal has it all wrong. They would likely get a lot more buck for their bang from the big multinationals than they will from Hank's Hardware.
Sad...
My old high school had a company put in 'free' televisions in every classroom, in return for forcing the students to watch several minutes worth of commercials every day. I think the outfit was called 'Channel One'.
Take out an ad with your crib notes. What's high school calc these days? Single derivatives and definite integrals? I have a problem getting perspective on that stuff, since it seems so easy in hindsight. No idea what you'd put on a cheat sheet. And of course you'd have to be steggy about it, since the teacher would be wise. Dumb idea, wouldn't work, sorry :-)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"If because of your teachers' responding to budgetary shortfalls you are developing a calculus, ZAPP'm, with...
Ad-Subtract?
Now, Deluxe Edition: Add-Subtract"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Why is advertising in schools and on public property OK? Shouldn't schools be a neutral place for learning, critical thinking and discussion without corporate interference?
Why should a fundamental human right be something which can be bought and sold?
How come everyone assumes people won't accept a tax increase to fund education?
Why do the people who complain about higher taxes line up at Wal-Mart on Black Friday to buy bagloads of crap they don't really need?
Why is there always money for wars no one wants but never enough for education?
As long as the cash goes back to the classroom and not his personal piggy bank, I think it's a great and creative solution. I only wish more teachers were this resourceful.
"Teacher Sells Acid on Tests"
Johnathan, what's this I hear about you not turning in your mid-term? And where on earth are your pupils!
Don't know if anyone saw this post yesterday by Steve Pavlina on his "Personal Development for Smart People" blog. At the end of a long postmortem about his recent "juice feast" experiment, he described a vivid dream he'd had the week before:
I don't get why these local businesses and parents are willing to pay for ads on a math test when they could just drop off a ream of paper and a laser printer cartridge instead?
Why doesn't the teacher just ask for the supplies that are needed? Have kids bring them to school in exchange for some kind of bonus/credit/bragging-rights or something! Does it really have to jump straight to advertising? On a freaking TEST? Come on!
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
my wife is a 3rd grade teacher and a few years ago went from 500/yr for classroom supplies to 250. she, rather I, spend between 1K-2K a year in supplies for the classroom. Just because she orders something doesnt mean she gets it. When the supplies come in she has to get hers first else they get taken by other teachers. She has to beg to get a clip of staples and only gets one at a time when she does. so this is why I spend the money to get her what she needs. The business I work for supplies about 300/year now in paper, pencils, and markers. so that helps a ton. btw, the feds only give her a 250 tax deduction for being a teacher. so I think this ad thing is a great idea for businesses that dont know how to donate to a school or classroom, or that they even should or can donate. hats off to this teacher for a great idea, but just waiting for some adult bookstore or church that will sue because they cant advertise...
I should take out an ad for:
f'(x)=lim(h=0,(f(x)-f(x+h))/h)
That'll show the little bastards!
oh, I think I must buy an ad there! I want to place the message "If you had studied more, you wouldn't fail this test and get a well paid job. Now you'll flip Hamburgers at McDonalds!"
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Well, my school's budget was cut about 15% for the 2009 calendar year.
How did that affect the quality of the education? Not one whit. It just means that my wife cooks more lunches in the kitchen instead of going out or ordering delivery.
Used textbooks, online open-source text books, Gutenberg project for literature, Usenet and other free discussion boards for interfacing with professionals and experts in various topics, the public library 8 blocks away, friends and acquaintances and contacts I have acquired over the last 20 years in over a dozen different industries, etc..
Yeah, you guessed, my kid is home schooled. As are all 8 of his near aged peers. We don't need a big building, we don't need a bunch of government workers and teacher union drones telling us how to be efficient or how to educate our children.
How many 11 year olds in your public schools can spec, order, assemble, install, secure and configure her own Ubuntu workstation and CentOS / myth based media server ?
Namaste----
-------
"Dad? Do I need the experimental options turned on to get a low-latency kernel compiled for my audio station?" -- beautiful words from a beautiful daugher to a very proud daddy.
If it's a public school, the money made needs to be given away to the best score on the test or something similar. The teacher has no right to keep it if he is paid from tax money.
Comparing schools of today with the schools that existed 30 years ago is completely unfair. Consider the dramatic changes in society over the last 30 years: how many schools in 1971 had computers in them? Or internet access? Now computers are needed in schools because nearly every existing job requires them. So there is a huge increase in needed expenditures for schools that did not exist 30 years ago.
Also consider the dramatic changes in students over the last 30 years. Many more students now arrive at school hungry and unprepared to learn than in the 70s. So now schools have begun providing breakfast programs and remediation for students who are far behind where they need to be.
Finally, perhaps one of the biggest increases in costs has come from staffing expenditures - both in salaries and in benefits (health care costs have skyrocketed). Although teacher salaries are still low (considering the education needed to get a position as a teacher), they have improved over the last 30 years. So my point is that direct comparisons between schools of today and the schools of the 70s is completely unrealistic and ignores huge societal changes that have impacted the role of school in society.
For your point on the test scores, I would suggest reading the Manufactured Crisis by Berliner & Biddle. They point out many of the problems with using test scores over a long period of time to "prove" or "disprove" educational improvement.
My mother is a teacher in California working especially with the mentally disabled for over 25 years, highly educated with several specialized education degrees, writes about education, and she could barely afford rent on the salary they gave her (about 45k in '99, if I remember correctly) teaching non-college education. She moved up to administration since, while teaching was, in her words, way more important, she couldn't pay the bills for the family. Now, she's unemployed due to cutbacks for the special education system in the past year - CA is pretty much trying to drop the entire program to save money.
I understand where this guy's coming from. My mother always spent hours of time and hundreds of dollars outside of the classroom to get kids supplies they needed - many of her textbooks were paid for out of HER pocket since the school would not supply them. She had to do her photocopying at a copy shop since the school couldn't afford to pay for her copies of the kids' reading material.
I learned a lot about the financial side of this whole debacle while she was teaching. What's sad is that the best way to make a living as a teacher is in the college system, but I'd argue that teachers in the lower levels of education are fundamentally way more important. Lots of kids do fine without college, but getting them educated while they still have a functionally (i.e. tax-paid) free education system available is so crucial.
The reason for the introduction of the public school system was that private enterprise manifestly could not provide universal education (which, for better or worse, was and is deemed a public good). I don't think that things have changed so much that you could guarantee that universal education could be maintained without government interference of some kind (at least a law stating that all citizens must have some level of education).
So which is it, Mr. Libertarian nutjob? Should government do away with any requirement for education of its citizenry? Or should it just let private industry fail to provide the necessary service to achieve it? If the first, what is your solution to the sizable number of people whose parents don't deem education worthwhile enough to invest in? If the second, what has changed between the late 19'th century and today that makes you believe that private enterprise can achieve universal education? Or do you just want a return to "separate but (un-)equal" school systems using a tiered system of private and (due to money migrating away to private schools) crappy, underfunded public schools?
That is all.
This provides an excellent opportunity for enterprising cheaters put their cheat sheet on the test itself; just a matter of money.
Just imagine getting a pop-up window on your pop quiz. Pencil Enlargement!!!
After the test, enjoy a nice cold one.
- Joe's Beer Distributors
Feel sexy for the next test.
- Angel's Intimate Apparel
Stay Safe.
- Planned Parenthood
Go Army!
Your Local Recruiter
I dunno, they've been doing that for decades, and it's not exactly as if the modern classroom weren't already chock full of various forms of advertisement, subliminals, etc. Perhaps we should just have salesmen start administering tests, and instead of grading it, you get feedback on what you should buy, and then get told to get through school and get a job to buy it. Wait a second ...
"But seriously dude, what is that in the radiator?"
I don't see how the school board or the PTA could let it come to this level. There are many other ways to raise money for schools, our teacher in 6th grade would sell bagels for .50 during break using profits to cover shortfalls in class expenses. That was back in 1993 so these problems are only getting worse. I think that his method got the point accross, but he must have exhausted any other way of getting the money. If anyone has a serious problem with his solution they should step up and help this school raise the funds in a better way.
Samzenpus is about 2 weeks behind the Fox and Friends morning show on this one.
This test brought to you by "C = dV/dt"
I was writing an exam a year ago, lamenting my poor salary, and thought about ad revenue on exams.
However, I considered something far more subliminal than outright "This test is brought to you by..." and it doesn't have to be on exams-only. It can be on quizzes, homework questions, etc. I'm a Physics teacher, so this is really more for my field than others.
Just work businesses and pop culture icons into the problem wording. I often will write problem sets with my favorite superheroes in mind (ie rather than a projectile motion problem with a man playing baseball, Batman is the one playing baseball), but I don't get paid to do this. It's trivial to add this sort of fluff to all of your problems, and it wouldn't change the educational content at all. If anything, students seem more able to grasp concepts and solve problems correctly when there are icons that are easily identifiable. When I write problems involving superheroes, for instance, those quiz scores often have a much higher average than problems where "Superhero XX" is replaced by "A man" or "A woman"
How much could I get a political party to pay me for working their candidate into at least one of my problems on every problem set/quiz/test? "George Bush is snowboarding down a mountain at velocity v, etc."
What's unethical is the unwillingness of the American public to adequately fund our public schools.
Fry: So you're telling me they broadcast commercials into people's dreams?
Leela: Of course.
Fry: But, how is that possible?
Farnsworth: It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain just like this liquid gets into this egg. [He holds up an egg and injects it with liquid. The egg explodes, covering him and Leela in yolk.] Although, in reality, it's not liquid, but gamma radiation.
Fry: That's awful. It's like brainwashing.
[Leela wipes the yolk from her hair.]
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and written in the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
A water tank on West Street has shutoff valves produced by Wilson Valve Company, which leak water at a rate given by the formula:
r = w * .0001/sec
where w is the volume of water currently in the tank. If the tank is filled to its full capacity of 8000000 liters at the beginning of the week and left alone for a full month, how much water would be saved by using shutoff valves from Morrison Valve Company, which have a leak rate of only (r = w * .000025/sec)?
Bow-ties are cool.
Delicious. Though you should also accept "snacktacular."
How sad that I still remember that...
Provide an ability to homeschool your own kids?
Constitutionally Correct
Being a local business whore is much better than being a multinational conglomerate whore.
How's that for charged (and missing the point) editorial? Pretty distasteful.
Amphetamines: Need to stay up for another one of those all night cram sessions?
IHOP: (same pitch as above)
Have gnu, will travel.
bash.org:
"omg its zack wtf: my math teacher staples burger king applications to failed tests"
AltSlashdot. Because f'k the beta
What statistics do you have that private education was failing those that attended private schools in the 18th and 19th centuries? Is it possible that those who were educated in trades and crafts were done so adequately?
What makes you think that public education can't exist concurrent with universal private education? Why does public education have to be simultaneously universal and state-funded?
It's very clear that (like a lot of other socialist goals) until something is universal and "properly funded", it isn't "good enough". Universal, publicly-funded education is one of the best examples and reasons against other universal, publicly-funded programs like healthcare and housing.
My grammar school was doing this sort of thing back in the 80s -- a lot of our folders and notebooks had local business ads printed all over them. I'm sure they'd have sold space on the back of test papers if they had the technology at the time . . .
It's a disgrace that teachers in the U.S. have to resort to things like this. it's a disgrace that teachers are compelled to spend their own money to buy basic and necessary supplies for their students. It's a disgrace that schools have to resort to using kids to sell cookies and candy and other junk to raise money.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
...the atomic weight of bolonium is "delicious" or "snacktacular"
I always thought it was 209 grams per mole. But then this other source gives 124 grams per mole.
Well isn't this par for the course. I used to see my high school, the one in TFA, in the national news all the time. Which was odd because it only opened in 1991. One kid brought Madonna's Sex book, some football players had rape charges against them, students where throwing guinea pigs in the open windows of passing cars, my old bio teacher getting teacher of the year and then comming out of the closet just a few years later and all kinds of other things that I saw in national news sources. Now I can put something else on the list.
The good news is that the school performs very well in national scores so despite the insanity the kids there do pay attention to the tests. If it weren't for the tests I wouldn't have passed. :) So maybe they can make some money on this. Though I do worry about conflict of interests. An oceanography test brought to you by Exxon could be a bad thing.
Ascii artist &
hmmm...if I could only find a way to supplement my income at work by selling ad space on my technical papers, presentations, maybe even emails. I'm sure the boss would love that attempt.
I would be instantly infuriated by this. I am in my mid-20s, and I listen to old classic rock, hot-rod old cars and despise the way things are making sites like oldversion.com prove their worth.
Sometimes you really do get it right the first time.
My country (Australia) has both private (1/3 students) and public schools (2/3). Education is administered at state level here, so a direct comparison to the USA may not be applicable.
Quality of education is about the same in both the public and private systems. Some of the elite private schools always place highly in the year 12 results tables. I'll point out that the results are manipulated because they are able to do things like give scholarships to talented students and quietly ask less intelligent students to leave at the end of year 10. Public schools can't do this. Even the best private schools still get beaten regularly by state selective schools, which are public schools for gifted students that you have to sit a test to get into.
There is also evidence to suggest that public school students do better at university and in the real world than private school students with equivalent year 12 marks. This is due to having had to fend for themselves more during high school instead of having their hands held the whole way through.
As for cost, you're dead wrong about the private system being cheaper. Public schools get 1/3 of government funding for education and the private schools receive 2/3. Only 1/3rd of students go to private schools. I should also mention that private schools charge fees ranging from around AUD$2000 to AUD$20000 a year, depending on the school. In total private schools have a lot more money to play with than public schools, and deliver the same quality of education. So private schools also fail on the count of being able to do it cheaper than the public system (although I think more spending in the public system would allow it to be better resources).
Parents don't pay more attention to what their kids learn at private schools. The number one argument in the media for sending children there is that they will be taught "values" (most private schools are religious). These "values" are always loosely defined at best. The real number one reason parents have for choosing a private school, according to a survey by an education professor, was that the parents like the uniforms better.
when you used politics to force non-citizens and citizens alike to pay for your teaching-hobby that not everyone gets the benefit of its consumption. I raise cows, chickens, turnips, and custom Linux and HURD kenels through GCC for my clients and they pay me in full and benefit in non-tax manner of SERVICE COST that evem applies to teachers. Get off your research-level hogwash and find people to pay for your social experiment, rather than de-classifying everyone to your new-age custom of Tax Everyone 2008 because you think everyone owes you money for continuing your psychopathic search of self-help through associative disorder Education System leach-therapy.
If your education tax costs 10 people with their own children to send an 11th/foreign family to Education, then there is no principal that prevents the same legislation to be enforced to buy my tiger rocks and Linux kernels: all of which are non-existant in a wildreness of society. Out hee, thought is secondary while decision is primal -- physical value compared to your intellect for sal is an unequal trade.
right down to the fear of being challenged that his tiger rock Education(tm) is rendered null and void when the light of statute prevents anyone of unsound mind or predominantly under 21 from signing a contract to be guardianed by the employees of your multi-cultural state-wide corporation that sometimes teaches a little relevant fact rather than socialization skills of story problems.
I can feel it in your whimper that you want the first cut of compelled service through taxes. Society benefits as a whole you say? Only the undersigned to the contract benefits, geekoid. Your all-encompassing slanderis equally mocked by homeschoolers. Go back to your Nanny McFee Goverment School and lick the teets of repression so the phantoms of the the people rep-resented in legislature can vote eachother's enSlavicment.
Stop doing government's job for them and maybe they will start doing it once people start rioting.
I don't know if they do this anymore, but in elementary school they would hand out paper book covers that were plastered full of ads. There was no rule that said you couldn't use the book cover inside out to hide the ads. But the point is that ads in educational materials is nothing new.
Either that or you really should get that checked out by a doctor.
"I see his point. Being a local business whore is much better than being a multinational conglomerate whore. "
Which is even better than your mother, who is just a stupid whore.
When I was in high school they would give us book covers that were made entirely of local ads and have us put them on the ragged worn out old text books they gave us. It was never discussed, but I assume they were being paid something for that.
Now that I think of it my math classes had the same problem with photocopies. The teachers would always pass out old sheets from years gone by that we weren't allowed to write on. We would have to copy the sheet by hand onto our own paper making sure to leave room to show all the steps the teacher wanted to see. Even if those weren't the steps you used or if it was so simple you knew the answer just by looking at it. Man that was tedious, I felt more like a scribe than a student. If I had to choose between all that writing and having to look at a few more ads there wouldn't have been much of a choice at all.
Can the Kentucky Creation Museum buy advertising on a biology test with questions about evolution?
Is that a conflict of interest (as well as logic and evidence) or would it just be ironic?
Here's a teacher who gives tests that take up more than a page or two. They cut his copying budget so he literally can no longer afford to give tests. So he finds an alternative revenue stream to bridge the gap.
Tell me how this is different from a bake sale? No matter the method it's using private funds to cover a difference in allocated budget money and required money for an educational function.
Yes, education has a lot of money thrown into the bucket. But how is it being spent? Obviously there wasn't enough in that school's budget to cover his copying costs for the year. What else is being underfunded and where does that money go?
I'm not going to demonize the typical targets - athletics and special education. Instead I'm going to generalize and compare this to the business environment. If you look at the relative cost-benefit ratio of the various aspects of what makes up public education then you would be dismayed at what is given priority.
If you really care about where the money is going run for school board and get involved. Join the parent-teachers association, even if you have no children. Don't just whing about it on a forum, get out there and do something.
Of course. There are already regular cycles for obtaining parent input to school curriculum already. A teacher already has to submit what he is teaching before the semester and it must be adhere to the what the community has decided to teach. Ads are content. What if the local church wants to put an ad on the test!? I would guess a smart ass like you hates religion and wouldn't stand for it. Parents and administration need to create guidelines and criteria for content.
A teacher simply does not have the authority to start a program like this nor the authority to introduce unapproved content.
But the more important issue is that these are on TESTS. Not only is it a distraction from the test content, but its presence on the test implies that this subjective content is objective like the rest of the test material.
Most of your post came across as rather incoherent. However I think that you are stating that formal education has little benefit and that it should be disbanded. If I am wrong in this interpretation, I apologize.
I do disagree that education has no benefit. It has a long term benefit in that a better educated populace contributes to a more robust economy, which allows your clients to expand and utilize your programming/computer skills (you mentioned some software that I am not familiar with) more, thus increasing your income and therefore benefiting you.