Slaves produce nothing for themselves and have no control over their situation. They are unable to form intrinsic motivation (which is often based off praise at first) because they do not see themselves as willingly providing a good or service for someone and they receive very little in return.
It makes sense that children want rewards for their achievements. We just have to be careful that we aren't rewarding them for what we expect them to do anyway.... and that's what this system is doing. You can't guarantee intrinsic motivation which will spur independent thought, learning, and work ethic if you're paying a kid to take a test. Praise and grades should be enough for intangible work. Wanna pay kids to be in school? Make them do actual physical work for it! I don't even get paid for doing my paperwork; why should I? It's part of the job and I'm expected to do it anyway. I get paid for the hands-on part of actually dealing with people and making their lives better and I assume for most people it's the same way. You never get paid for simply filling out forms unless you sign up for those skeevy online survey things. You get paid for doing something that provides something good to someone else in some form. In areas where paperwork provides a service (like accounting), it's paid for. Tests are not a service, therefore you shouldn't pay someone to take them. Concrete rewards are best reserved for achievements above and beyond shutting your mouth in class and regurgitating information. For everything else, "good job" and encouraging pride in one's work ought to be enough.
The smart kids can and do cause trouble if they get bored enough, but whether it's cultural (many "dumb" kids come from "dumb" families who simply do not value learning and are only sending the kids to school to get their CYS caseworker off their backs), or learned (the "dumb" kids have been labeled and taught that they aren't going to succeed, and are in fact expected to disrupt, and therefore fall into that behavioral pattern) the end result is that dumb kids ruin learning for others.
That being said I have no issue removing disruptive children to a place where they can be better served and engaged in what they are doing at school. If that means sending them to the dumb class then so be it... you can't force someone to value education. You can only show them what education can do, and hope that they make the decision to educate themselves. Maybe the dumb class should be the class that gets to do all the manual labor, the litter pick-up, the bathroom duty... and it should be explained to them that if they want to move beyond picking up litter on Monday afternoon they need to get their asses in gear and make something better for themselves. Some might like the work and stick around with a better work ethic out of it, go to trade schools, etc. Some might realize they want more and work their asses off to move up to a smarter class. In both cases you've removed the disruption and produced good, hardworking citizens. There will always be a few for whom "nothing" works (generally because their home life is so bad that school can't balance it out no matter how much good they do there), and for those I feel sorry, but for the rest let's give them a chance to work at their own pace and with peers who are at their own level, instead of trying to standardize expectations as well as tests!
You gave us the answer already. If a child is properly socially adjusted, he or she will immediately shun those peers who don't help the group in some way, and those peers will either learn to adjust or they will be left behind. Society is all about group function, and a classroom ought to be a reflection of that. The issue is that instead of allowing children to partake in a society inside the classroom the same way they would outside it and to punish each other for transgressions, we have raised the THINK OF THE CHILDREN banner to protect the outliers and denied the classroom society its ability to function normally. Then we put a harried, poorly educated single adult in front of the class and expect that adult to moderate everything in order to produce the same social outcomes that the class would naturally grow into on its own (with guidance, of course - and with proper modeling from the outside world. One more great reason to go on field trips and community service outings is to widen the range of social experiences a child has!).
Now, I don't advocate leaving kids behind just because they don't "fit in". I think everyone needs to have some place to fit... but if a child is having issues in a regular classroom it'd be nice if there were more alternatives than special education or juvenile detention centers. I've known kids who in 4th or 5th grade, having come from working-class homes, decided that they wanted to continue the blue-collar tradition. It's not a great choice but it would make a lot more sense to help the kid understand that by sending them out to apprentice themselves for a year with a tradesman or trade school (and maybe they will like it - and there's nothing wrong with training more plumbers and mechanics!) than it does to do what we currently do: "It's school! You NEED it! You'll never get by in the outside world with a 5th grade education, so shut up and do your homework!"
Education is the cornerstone of democracy and it's fantastic that we are setting our bar "high" (yeah, right) for our most precious resource - our future leaders. However, not everyone can be president. Why not encourage trade work and usable skills to help kids realize why reading and math are necessary, instead of pretending they're useless as long as they're students? As a side effect, I'm pretty sure kids who are proud of what they're doing in school ALSO get better grades, plus gain better understanding... and you don't have to bribe anyone!
Technically, I'd say yes, crowds can make laws. Any group of people (or even single person) who can gain the approval of each other or another group of people have the ability to create rules. Book clubs, school boards, local administration, and your friendly HOA all have some power whether given to them by "the people" they are assumed to represent or by another representative. With this power they can make a whole lot of little laws as long as they don't supersede the laws written down by governments above their level (Town/County, State, Federal). No one really pays attention to this, because we aren't forced to follow the rules of the book club outside of the book club, and most of us will fight a group that starts reaching beyond what we perceive as their realm of power. The power of the People to make laws falls strictly within the realm of the People, and does not extend power over higher authorities.
This is the way I understand it, at least. You'd have to ask a constitutional scholar for a better interpretation.
I'm still using Win2k (though thinking about switching over to Ubuntu or a linux/XP dual boot when I can find the spare change for more RAM) and I am currently browsing using the latest Firefox. My games run fine (sure, it won't handle Sims 3...), Photoshop 7 opens and lags minimally.... it's all good. Honestly, if you don't NEED anything newer for work you can deal really well with a 7 or 8 year old system and slightly less than the latest updates on some programs (for instance, I see no need to upgrade Photoshop when I don't use all of its current features anyway). 10 years is pushing it, though. I would not say I'll be keeping Win2k around much longer.
Ok, that's a bit much. See above comment about talking to bus driver Re: making sure kid gets on bus. If kid does not, driver should radio other busses.
I do agree though that "losing" 5% of your class is an atrocious record for the school. What exactly goes on there in the afternoons?
If you have never been at a school at the end of the day I forgive you for your optimism.
Students may not have different busses every day but there is no way a teacher or aide can walk every single student in even a small (500 kids K-6) school to the correct bus and make sure they get on, and kids DO make mistakes if left on their own. Busses don't always pull in in the same order, so if they're all in before the kids are called, you can't rely on placement in line to help the kid find the bus. If they're called as they pull in, the kids may not hear it, may not be ready (being slow to pack) or may mistake a different bus number for their own. They're following friends, or they forget and they're scared to ask, or the bus driver doesn't know because they're a new kid anyway and all kindergarteners look the same to the driver, etc etc. And this is if the kid actually HEARS the PA system over the classroom chaos and their friend shouting to them about the newest Wii game and can they come over after school?!
The best thing a parent can do is make sure their child absolutely knows their bus number before school starts (I'm pretty sure you can call the school and ask, and they should be able to tell you a few weeks in advance of school starting, unless the district is run by the seat of its pants), make sure the teacher knows if the child needs any special consideration when loading busses the first few weeks, and let the driver know to keep an eye out to make sure the child boards in the afternoon. Drivers are capable of radioing other busses to check on student changes (like when Molly rides Susie's bus home instead of her own), but they need to know that Molly rides their bus first.
I see nothing wrong with handing them several small jars of powdered chemicals and a fine paintbrush. Just add whatever liquid is handy - spit would probably do in desert warfare, but other places might have water available. Paint your stripes on the infofuse any way you like. A small field manual (laminated business-card size) would probably be enough info to help a soldier transmit all kinds of messages.
Proper car maintenance (cleaning, waxing, keeping the tires filled to the optimum pressure, oil changes, alignments, new brakes.... should I go on?) is also a lot of work. The difference is that most people care for their own horses, and simply ignore their cars (or pay someone else to do it).
Feed = meadow grazing supplemented by locally grown grain in most climates, and hay in the winter. Unless you insist on buying corn feed grown by agribusiness, I'd say feed is far less expensive than gasoline, oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, antifreeze, and wiper fluid. And you don't need much land to feed a single horse. Animals don't need as many drugs as people do. And measure a vet against the mechanics' shops that exist for our cars.
Greenhouse emissions? More like free fuel! If more people owned cows, I'm pretty sure the efforts to easily turn waste methane into a fuel source would be coming along a lot faster. Manure = fertilizer. Scoop it up and take it home! Horse manure isn't as great as pig, but it'll do in a pinch. And while I see your worries about public health, at this moment there is probably a worldwide film of spit, chewed gum, blood, snot, other bodily fluids, and animal feces on our sidewalks and we still haven't been killed by Chewing Gum flu. I'd argue that horse shit is preferable to find in the streets, since horses and people share very few diseases, whereas spit on the sidewalk could carry any number of human pathogens.
You would be very, very surprised at what most cops don't know.
Some around here have displayed a lack of knowledge of citizens' constitutional rights, the state weapons laws (whether or not it's legal to carry in certain places, with or without a License to Carry Firearms which allows concealed carry), and I've heard and read stories of cops who refuse to tell someone they've detained whether or not they're free to go on the basis that they're buying time to dig for a reason to arrest, which is frankly a pattern of behavior I find unsettling. When cops work on the assumption that you are guilty until proven innocent during a Terry Stop, on the basis that they think they have articulable suspicion ("he was walking funny and looked at me wrong"), they're going to do everything in their (limited) power to find you guilty right then and there so they can drag you in to jail, and worry about proving it later because chances are you won't take them to court even if you weren't guilty of anything more than picking a wedgie as the cop drove past.
I'm not saying that all cops are bad or are ignorant of the law - far from it. But those who are seem to be popping up more often and getting away with more, and legal recourse is all well and good until they come knocking on YOUR door and you have to pay the legal fees to defend what should be a clear right not to be harassed by someone in uniform. I'm all for pulling a weapon (gun, baseball bat, cactus, court papers) on a cop if he's abusing his power and shrugging off his responsibility to the law. If we can't defend ourselves and our own rights, we can't expect the cops to be able to do it for us, because they are us - in uniform, with guns.
It should be everyone's goal to be happy in life, but liking what you do can take other forms than work. Some people will always end up stuck in certain jobs because of their circumstances. The key to happiness then is taking as much pride as possible in what you're doing within the company, and focusing on your own outside time as the time to pursue your real happiness. For me, that includes planting a garden and growing my own food. I already love my job but you'd be amazed how your life satisfaction can increase when you're doing something you love outside your job. Even those who love their jobs (teachers, medical personnel, moms) can get burned out if they don't have time outside their careers to explore other interests.
If you decide to change careers, work experience is work experience and a year in one field is as long as a year in another. I've turned several years of what appears to be unrelated experience in half a dozen fields into an ideal interview answer because every job contains some elements of human interaction and some elements of pride in one's work, improving the company, etc that you can easily carry over to your next position. It's a generalized skill set, and it may not net you the same job that 5 years of experience in your field will, but played right you can do a lot better than entry-level, and more power to you if you spent your spare time on your preferred career goals (ie, training on your own time) even while working that dead-end job.
The people who are happy in life don't always have the greatest jobs, but they know how to find satisfaction outside their jobs as well as inside and they know how to make changes instead of sitting there demoralized because they're still working at McDonald's.
While it's great that you insist there's no need to find work as soon as you graduate, I've found that it's rather the opposite. If you owe any money at all to the school or lenders as a result of getting your education, in 6 months after you graduate you're going to be writing them checks. Poverty is preferable to homelessness. Drudgery is preferable to both. Poverty is harder to dig yourself out of, and will greatly impact your ability to travel for work, relocate, buy a house or car (try even renting an apartment if you've been late on 3 months' bills because you took the time to make sure you were happy about your job prospects instead of sucking it up and finding something to get paid for), and it'll make you look like a real dick when you have to tell your friends you can't go out drinking because you're broke, while they're working. Getting a job you like and want is a lifelong process. Paying the bills happens monthly.
OP, if the economy still hasn't picked up in 2 years (keep your fingers crossed that it will!), where will you be except deeper in debt with another certification and no work experience? Since we can't predict the future, prepare for the possibility that it'll get worse. Go for work while you study, even if it's not obviously related to your field. Any experience is better than none, if only to show employers that you're willing to work and can hold a job. If you can, put something into savings in case a job doesn't magically appear when you graduate. Internships are awesome for this reason.
Now, if you get a full ride, you're problem-free! If not, check into scholarships and assistantships. There are a lot out there that the universities won't advertise, but sometimes they will list them on the department's web pages. And if you want one, apply early!
Not sending your child to school (homeschooling is fine, if standards are set and the children are tested periodically to ensure they're learning the required subjects) is denying them the opportunity to have a successful career in the future. Anyone has to agree that's child abuse.
Oh? I don't agree.
If you're abusing your child while keeping them at home and uneducated that's one thing, but children will learn no matter what their environment and in some areas I'd see it as protection not to send your kid to a failing, undersupported public school where they could pick up worse habits and lose motivation to learn at all. That's not to say the parents shouldn't be teaching the child some academics along with the practical skills of keeping a house (and working with them, not making the kid work by himself), but I've seen kids adamantly declare in 5th grade that they knew all they needed and were going to go learn a trade from their parents, and some of them probably could and would have done very well at it, if they'd been allowed. I know plenty of "stupid" people with rather successful careers doing electrical work, carpentry, plumbing, and factory labor and they make more than I do as a degreed child behavioral worker. You don't need a degree to succeed in this country, if you have work ethic and a good market for your skills. Formal academic education may help some of us, but it can't possibly provide jobs for all of us. Success is never a given and basing success on your level of education is aristocratic BS.
While I agree that writing/coding your own games in school would be an awesome project and something that would really tie things together from grade school all the way to graduation, there are a few problems involved here. Number one is that games DO exist outside the ones students might be tempted to write. Why would they bother trying to write a game on a computer at school if mommy and daddy can buy one that looks even BETTER from Wal-Mart? Sure, they won't be able to play it in school (or shouldn't, at least) but they will still have it at home and will compare anything they write/create themselves to the billion-dollar finished product they have at home, and make that their goal, which probably won't end pretty for most of them.
Second, what time do you propose a teacher should give up out of a full day of reading, math, phonics activities, science and social studies (which are already being shortchanged), recess, specials like gym, art and music, and support work like reading and math tutoring (which more and more students need, and which takes more time out of regular lessons), in order to teach kids the basics of coding, get them to understand a command line prompt, have them work on their games, etc? At this stage in our country's development there are very few children who have not seen or used a computer before they get to first grade, so trying to teach them to use a command line after they're used to a Start menu would be an exercise in futility, in my mind. There is not enough time in the day or school year to teach students this "extra" stuff, no matter how useful and fun and awesome we think it would be. And the teacher training would also cost millions in any given district. Most of the teachers I have worked with are too old to have learned how to use a computer for more than basic word-processing and gradebooks, and I am on the tail end of the generation that grew up with a command prompt - I still remember how to use one to bring up my games but I never learned to code anything because the programs were already in place for me to play games or write stories. The current generation of student teachers (of which I am one) is only slightly more familiar with the technology than the older teachers they will replace, and there is neither time nor money nor resources to train these teachers in coding languages, hire specialists to teach the classes, or hold after-school coding sessions in most districts.
Finally, the so-called "experts" that are working with students and computers, teaching how to use Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, or hooking up the networks, don't necessarily know what to do to keep students OUT of certain areas... not dissing the tech crews but I know our school wasn't exactly a powerful force when it came to network security and I'm sure that a dedicated student with some ability would have been easily able to get into places they weren't wanted. If students are being taught to code creatively you can bet that one in 30 will want to try coding that "virus thing" they heard about mommy's computer getting, and I doubt that all schools have an emergency procedure for sudden network takeovers by 5th graders. Going back to the "teachers are clueless about coding" thing - if a student in my room was coding a virus during a coding session the only clue I'd have is if I already knew the student as a troublemaker and caught on to suspicious body language or caught sight of a line of code with a variable named "kill" or something equally obviously destructive. What's to say a high school computer teacher knows any better?
The idea's great, and I'd kill to see kids learning the ins and outs of a computer instead of simply understanding that there is a screen and you can click on things on it, but it's hard enough to fit all our requirements in one day of teaching and I can't see any practical real-life application for knowing how to code your own pac-man game unless you plan on going into the games industry... which in 2nd grade, you wouldn't know anyway. If you want your kids to experience the awesomeness that you did, you'll have to teach it to them yourself.
I tutor local children in an after-school reading program, and if my personal experience at all reflects national (American) averages, we're screwed. Kids just fail to be interested in books.
The program runs 5 1-hour sessions per week over 3 nights, and recruits upwards of 30 tutors and 60-100 kids (I'm not sure of numbers, some kids are repeats/siblings, some tutors take 2-3 kids or work multiple nights). Our program director is always desperate for more room and more tutors because half the school district comes in for tutoring. That's not a good sign.
Last year when I was working with two boys, 3rd and 4th grade, I was appalled by how low their reading level was. I can't compare them to myself at that age because I was a voracious reader, but even remembering the other kids in my class, I think the boys I was tutoring were at least a grade level behind. And all they wanted to read was Captain Underpants. > For the uninitiated, those books are full of (purposeful) spelling and grammar errors... fun to read, but not the best for teaching reading.
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Slaves produce nothing for themselves and have no control over their situation. They are unable to form intrinsic motivation (which is often based off praise at first) because they do not see themselves as willingly providing a good or service for someone and they receive very little in return.
It makes sense that children want rewards for their achievements. We just have to be careful that we aren't rewarding them for what we expect them to do anyway.... and that's what this system is doing. You can't guarantee intrinsic motivation which will spur independent thought, learning, and work ethic if you're paying a kid to take a test. Praise and grades should be enough for intangible work. Wanna pay kids to be in school? Make them do actual physical work for it! I don't even get paid for doing my paperwork; why should I? It's part of the job and I'm expected to do it anyway. I get paid for the hands-on part of actually dealing with people and making their lives better and I assume for most people it's the same way. You never get paid for simply filling out forms unless you sign up for those skeevy online survey things. You get paid for doing something that provides something good to someone else in some form. In areas where paperwork provides a service (like accounting), it's paid for. Tests are not a service, therefore you shouldn't pay someone to take them. Concrete rewards are best reserved for achievements above and beyond shutting your mouth in class and regurgitating information. For everything else, "good job" and encouraging pride in one's work ought to be enough.
That's great, but can they solve a long division problem without a calculator?
I have no issue with different types of intelligences, as long as no one mistakes actors and basketball players for academic experts.
This. Mod this guy up!
The smart kids can and do cause trouble if they get bored enough, but whether it's cultural (many "dumb" kids come from "dumb" families who simply do not value learning and are only sending the kids to school to get their CYS caseworker off their backs), or learned (the "dumb" kids have been labeled and taught that they aren't going to succeed, and are in fact expected to disrupt, and therefore fall into that behavioral pattern) the end result is that dumb kids ruin learning for others.
That being said I have no issue removing disruptive children to a place where they can be better served and engaged in what they are doing at school. If that means sending them to the dumb class then so be it... you can't force someone to value education. You can only show them what education can do, and hope that they make the decision to educate themselves. Maybe the dumb class should be the class that gets to do all the manual labor, the litter pick-up, the bathroom duty... and it should be explained to them that if they want to move beyond picking up litter on Monday afternoon they need to get their asses in gear and make something better for themselves. Some might like the work and stick around with a better work ethic out of it, go to trade schools, etc. Some might realize they want more and work their asses off to move up to a smarter class. In both cases you've removed the disruption and produced good, hardworking citizens. There will always be a few for whom "nothing" works (generally because their home life is so bad that school can't balance it out no matter how much good they do there), and for those I feel sorry, but for the rest let's give them a chance to work at their own pace and with peers who are at their own level, instead of trying to standardize expectations as well as tests!
You gave us the answer already. If a child is properly socially adjusted, he or she will immediately shun those peers who don't help the group in some way, and those peers will either learn to adjust or they will be left behind. Society is all about group function, and a classroom ought to be a reflection of that. The issue is that instead of allowing children to partake in a society inside the classroom the same way they would outside it and to punish each other for transgressions, we have raised the THINK OF THE CHILDREN banner to protect the outliers and denied the classroom society its ability to function normally. Then we put a harried, poorly educated single adult in front of the class and expect that adult to moderate everything in order to produce the same social outcomes that the class would naturally grow into on its own (with guidance, of course - and with proper modeling from the outside world. One more great reason to go on field trips and community service outings is to widen the range of social experiences a child has!).
Now, I don't advocate leaving kids behind just because they don't "fit in". I think everyone needs to have some place to fit... but if a child is having issues in a regular classroom it'd be nice if there were more alternatives than special education or juvenile detention centers. I've known kids who in 4th or 5th grade, having come from working-class homes, decided that they wanted to continue the blue-collar tradition. It's not a great choice but it would make a lot more sense to help the kid understand that by sending them out to apprentice themselves for a year with a tradesman or trade school (and maybe they will like it - and there's nothing wrong with training more plumbers and mechanics!) than it does to do what we currently do: "It's school! You NEED it! You'll never get by in the outside world with a 5th grade education, so shut up and do your homework!"
Education is the cornerstone of democracy and it's fantastic that we are setting our bar "high" (yeah, right) for our most precious resource - our future leaders. However, not everyone can be president. Why not encourage trade work and usable skills to help kids realize why reading and math are necessary, instead of pretending they're useless as long as they're students? As a side effect, I'm pretty sure kids who are proud of what they're doing in school ALSO get better grades, plus gain better understanding... and you don't have to bribe anyone!
Technically, I'd say yes, crowds can make laws. Any group of people (or even single person) who can gain the approval of each other or another group of people have the ability to create rules. Book clubs, school boards, local administration, and your friendly HOA all have some power whether given to them by "the people" they are assumed to represent or by another representative. With this power they can make a whole lot of little laws as long as they don't supersede the laws written down by governments above their level (Town/County, State, Federal). No one really pays attention to this, because we aren't forced to follow the rules of the book club outside of the book club, and most of us will fight a group that starts reaching beyond what we perceive as their realm of power. The power of the People to make laws falls strictly within the realm of the People, and does not extend power over higher authorities.
This is the way I understand it, at least. You'd have to ask a constitutional scholar for a better interpretation.
I'm still using Win2k (though thinking about switching over to Ubuntu or a linux/XP dual boot when I can find the spare change for more RAM) and I am currently browsing using the latest Firefox. My games run fine (sure, it won't handle Sims 3...), Photoshop 7 opens and lags minimally.... it's all good. Honestly, if you don't NEED anything newer for work you can deal really well with a 7 or 8 year old system and slightly less than the latest updates on some programs (for instance, I see no need to upgrade Photoshop when I don't use all of its current features anyway). 10 years is pushing it, though. I would not say I'll be keeping Win2k around much longer.
Ok, that's a bit much. See above comment about talking to bus driver Re: making sure kid gets on bus. If kid does not, driver should radio other busses. I do agree though that "losing" 5% of your class is an atrocious record for the school. What exactly goes on there in the afternoons?
If you have never been at a school at the end of the day I forgive you for your optimism.
Students may not have different busses every day but there is no way a teacher or aide can walk every single student in even a small (500 kids K-6) school to the correct bus and make sure they get on, and kids DO make mistakes if left on their own. Busses don't always pull in in the same order, so if they're all in before the kids are called, you can't rely on placement in line to help the kid find the bus. If they're called as they pull in, the kids may not hear it, may not be ready (being slow to pack) or may mistake a different bus number for their own. They're following friends, or they forget and they're scared to ask, or the bus driver doesn't know because they're a new kid anyway and all kindergarteners look the same to the driver, etc etc. And this is if the kid actually HEARS the PA system over the classroom chaos and their friend shouting to them about the newest Wii game and can they come over after school?!
The best thing a parent can do is make sure their child absolutely knows their bus number before school starts (I'm pretty sure you can call the school and ask, and they should be able to tell you a few weeks in advance of school starting, unless the district is run by the seat of its pants), make sure the teacher knows if the child needs any special consideration when loading busses the first few weeks, and let the driver know to keep an eye out to make sure the child boards in the afternoon. Drivers are capable of radioing other busses to check on student changes (like when Molly rides Susie's bus home instead of her own), but they need to know that Molly rides their bus first.
Ok, so waxing's not important. :P But I'd argue the rest!
I see nothing wrong with handing them several small jars of powdered chemicals and a fine paintbrush. Just add whatever liquid is handy - spit would probably do in desert warfare, but other places might have water available. Paint your stripes on the infofuse any way you like. A small field manual (laminated business-card size) would probably be enough info to help a soldier transmit all kinds of messages.
Proper car maintenance (cleaning, waxing, keeping the tires filled to the optimum pressure, oil changes, alignments, new brakes.... should I go on?) is also a lot of work. The difference is that most people care for their own horses, and simply ignore their cars (or pay someone else to do it).
Feed = meadow grazing supplemented by locally grown grain in most climates, and hay in the winter. Unless you insist on buying corn feed grown by agribusiness, I'd say feed is far less expensive than gasoline, oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, antifreeze, and wiper fluid. And you don't need much land to feed a single horse. Animals don't need as many drugs as people do. And measure a vet against the mechanics' shops that exist for our cars.
Greenhouse emissions? More like free fuel! If more people owned cows, I'm pretty sure the efforts to easily turn waste methane into a fuel source would be coming along a lot faster. Manure = fertilizer. Scoop it up and take it home! Horse manure isn't as great as pig, but it'll do in a pinch. And while I see your worries about public health, at this moment there is probably a worldwide film of spit, chewed gum, blood, snot, other bodily fluids, and animal feces on our sidewalks and we still haven't been killed by Chewing Gum flu. I'd argue that horse shit is preferable to find in the streets, since horses and people share very few diseases, whereas spit on the sidewalk could carry any number of human pathogens.
I still play too much UO. Beats WoW, though. The bugs in UO are what convince me to take breaks from the game!
You would be very, very surprised at what most cops don't know.
Some around here have displayed a lack of knowledge of citizens' constitutional rights, the state weapons laws (whether or not it's legal to carry in certain places, with or without a License to Carry Firearms which allows concealed carry), and I've heard and read stories of cops who refuse to tell someone they've detained whether or not they're free to go on the basis that they're buying time to dig for a reason to arrest, which is frankly a pattern of behavior I find unsettling. When cops work on the assumption that you are guilty until proven innocent during a Terry Stop, on the basis that they think they have articulable suspicion ("he was walking funny and looked at me wrong"), they're going to do everything in their (limited) power to find you guilty right then and there so they can drag you in to jail, and worry about proving it later because chances are you won't take them to court even if you weren't guilty of anything more than picking a wedgie as the cop drove past.
I'm not saying that all cops are bad or are ignorant of the law - far from it. But those who are seem to be popping up more often and getting away with more, and legal recourse is all well and good until they come knocking on YOUR door and you have to pay the legal fees to defend what should be a clear right not to be harassed by someone in uniform. I'm all for pulling a weapon (gun, baseball bat, cactus, court papers) on a cop if he's abusing his power and shrugging off his responsibility to the law. If we can't defend ourselves and our own rights, we can't expect the cops to be able to do it for us, because they are us - in uniform, with guns.
It should be everyone's goal to be happy in life, but liking what you do can take other forms than work. Some people will always end up stuck in certain jobs because of their circumstances. The key to happiness then is taking as much pride as possible in what you're doing within the company, and focusing on your own outside time as the time to pursue your real happiness. For me, that includes planting a garden and growing my own food. I already love my job but you'd be amazed how your life satisfaction can increase when you're doing something you love outside your job. Even those who love their jobs (teachers, medical personnel, moms) can get burned out if they don't have time outside their careers to explore other interests.
If you decide to change careers, work experience is work experience and a year in one field is as long as a year in another. I've turned several years of what appears to be unrelated experience in half a dozen fields into an ideal interview answer because every job contains some elements of human interaction and some elements of pride in one's work, improving the company, etc that you can easily carry over to your next position. It's a generalized skill set, and it may not net you the same job that 5 years of experience in your field will, but played right you can do a lot better than entry-level, and more power to you if you spent your spare time on your preferred career goals (ie, training on your own time) even while working that dead-end job.
The people who are happy in life don't always have the greatest jobs, but they know how to find satisfaction outside their jobs as well as inside and they know how to make changes instead of sitting there demoralized because they're still working at McDonald's.
While it's great that you insist there's no need to find work as soon as you graduate, I've found that it's rather the opposite. If you owe any money at all to the school or lenders as a result of getting your education, in 6 months after you graduate you're going to be writing them checks. Poverty is preferable to homelessness. Drudgery is preferable to both. Poverty is harder to dig yourself out of, and will greatly impact your ability to travel for work, relocate, buy a house or car (try even renting an apartment if you've been late on 3 months' bills because you took the time to make sure you were happy about your job prospects instead of sucking it up and finding something to get paid for), and it'll make you look like a real dick when you have to tell your friends you can't go out drinking because you're broke, while they're working. Getting a job you like and want is a lifelong process. Paying the bills happens monthly.
OP, if the economy still hasn't picked up in 2 years (keep your fingers crossed that it will!), where will you be except deeper in debt with another certification and no work experience? Since we can't predict the future, prepare for the possibility that it'll get worse. Go for work while you study, even if it's not obviously related to your field. Any experience is better than none, if only to show employers that you're willing to work and can hold a job. If you can, put something into savings in case a job doesn't magically appear when you graduate. Internships are awesome for this reason.
Now, if you get a full ride, you're problem-free! If not, check into scholarships and assistantships. There are a lot out there that the universities won't advertise, but sometimes they will list them on the department's web pages. And if you want one, apply early!
However, not having an education can hurt you, while having it never will. Tell that to my $40k in debt.
Not sending your child to school (homeschooling is fine, if standards are set and the children are tested periodically to ensure they're learning the required subjects) is denying them the opportunity to have a successful career in the future. Anyone has to agree that's child abuse. Oh? I don't agree. If you're abusing your child while keeping them at home and uneducated that's one thing, but children will learn no matter what their environment and in some areas I'd see it as protection not to send your kid to a failing, undersupported public school where they could pick up worse habits and lose motivation to learn at all. That's not to say the parents shouldn't be teaching the child some academics along with the practical skills of keeping a house (and working with them, not making the kid work by himself), but I've seen kids adamantly declare in 5th grade that they knew all they needed and were going to go learn a trade from their parents, and some of them probably could and would have done very well at it, if they'd been allowed. I know plenty of "stupid" people with rather successful careers doing electrical work, carpentry, plumbing, and factory labor and they make more than I do as a degreed child behavioral worker. You don't need a degree to succeed in this country, if you have work ethic and a good market for your skills. Formal academic education may help some of us, but it can't possibly provide jobs for all of us. Success is never a given and basing success on your level of education is aristocratic BS.
Second, what time do you propose a teacher should give up out of a full day of reading, math, phonics activities, science and social studies (which are already being shortchanged), recess, specials like gym, art and music, and support work like reading and math tutoring (which more and more students need, and which takes more time out of regular lessons), in order to teach kids the basics of coding, get them to understand a command line prompt, have them work on their games, etc? At this stage in our country's development there are very few children who have not seen or used a computer before they get to first grade, so trying to teach them to use a command line after they're used to a Start menu would be an exercise in futility, in my mind. There is not enough time in the day or school year to teach students this "extra" stuff, no matter how useful and fun and awesome we think it would be. And the teacher training would also cost millions in any given district. Most of the teachers I have worked with are too old to have learned how to use a computer for more than basic word-processing and gradebooks, and I am on the tail end of the generation that grew up with a command prompt - I still remember how to use one to bring up my games but I never learned to code anything because the programs were already in place for me to play games or write stories. The current generation of student teachers (of which I am one) is only slightly more familiar with the technology than the older teachers they will replace, and there is neither time nor money nor resources to train these teachers in coding languages, hire specialists to teach the classes, or hold after-school coding sessions in most districts.
Finally, the so-called "experts" that are working with students and computers, teaching how to use Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, or hooking up the networks, don't necessarily know what to do to keep students OUT of certain areas... not dissing the tech crews but I know our school wasn't exactly a powerful force when it came to network security and I'm sure that a dedicated student with some ability would have been easily able to get into places they weren't wanted. If students are being taught to code creatively you can bet that one in 30 will want to try coding that "virus thing" they heard about mommy's computer getting, and I doubt that all schools have an emergency procedure for sudden network takeovers by 5th graders. Going back to the "teachers are clueless about coding" thing - if a student in my room was coding a virus during a coding session the only clue I'd have is if I already knew the student as a troublemaker and caught on to suspicious body language or caught sight of a line of code with a variable named "kill" or something equally obviously destructive. What's to say a high school computer teacher knows any better?
The idea's great, and I'd kill to see kids learning the ins and outs of a computer instead of simply understanding that there is a screen and you can click on things on it, but it's hard enough to fit all our requirements in one day of teaching and I can't see any practical real-life application for knowing how to code your own pac-man game unless you plan on going into the games industry... which in 2nd grade, you wouldn't know anyway. If you want your kids to experience the awesomeness that you did, you'll have to teach it to them yourself.
The program runs 5 1-hour sessions per week over 3 nights, and recruits upwards of 30 tutors and 60-100 kids (I'm not sure of numbers, some kids are repeats/siblings, some tutors take 2-3 kids or work multiple nights). Our program director is always desperate for more room and more tutors because half the school district comes in for tutoring. That's not a good sign.
Last year when I was working with two boys, 3rd and 4th grade, I was appalled by how low their reading level was. I can't compare them to myself at that age because I was a voracious reader, but even remembering the other kids in my class, I think the boys I was tutoring were at least a grade level behind. And all they wanted to read was Captain Underpants. > For the uninitiated, those books are full of (purposeful) spelling and grammar errors... fun to read, but not the best for teaching reading.