This is why I seldom complain about the atrocious spelling and grammar on/., because I make a lot of typos. On the other hand, it's clear that much of the horrible spelling and grammar aren't from typographic errors, but are caused by the fact that many people can't spell or write.
You're right, of course. I was just being obnoxious. Becoming a parent is a huge responsibility. A child is not an accessory for your well-appointed house, nor is he or she a tick-mark on your cirriculum vitae to make you look grown up.
A child is a unique human being with huge needs, but also huge potential. It's amazing how many people don't seem to understand that.
Yeah, because God forbid we have more o' them poor lazy colored people in the world. That's what Margaret Sanger said, and damn if she weren't on to something.
My high school was 8:20 to 3:15 minus lunch. But elementary school is definitely shorter.
My kids in ES go from 8:25 to 2:20, I think. Not counting the bus ride, etc. This is the actual start and end of the school day, but that's still pretty short.
Regardless, it's over 1000 hours a year. Maybe not enough to perform miracles, but it's enough to have something to show for it.
You contradict yourself. You say teachers nee more money (I agree). You also say to kill the union.
It's not the union's responsibility to set wages to attract good teachers, it's the government's. The union tries to help, sure. At least in theory. But if the government doesn't want to pay for good teachers, no amount of wrangling from the union is going to fix that.
And vouchers won't help schools, it will simply destroy the public school system.
In some places, like Washington, D.C., less than an hour from the really good school system my kids attend in Loudoun County, Virginia, this would be a good idea. D.C. spends more per student than almost any public school, or all but the most exclusive private schools, in the country, yet it can barely keep the buildings from collapsing, leave alone hire good teachers and actually educate anyone. Only in government is failure and incompetence rewarded with more money.
The correct answer is to address the root of the problem, not the symptoms. Engage the parents, make them care about their children's education.
You know, I'm tired of this argument. I agree with it, but it misses the point. It seems that the answer to bad schools is for the parents to do more. It seems like parents not doing enough is an excuse for the schools to suck. Parents will not save their kids if the public schools are failing them, and in places like D.C., we've seen that the solution literally scuh-reemed about by people (mostly on the left) doesn't work. You can't just throw money at a problem caused by poor planning, poor management and general stupidity all 'round. Oh, and adopting every stupid idea that comes out of the fever-swamps of supposedly higher education on how to teach our kids doesn't help either.
Yes, it's the parents' repsonsibility, but if you are charging them exorbitant taxes and taking their kids for over a thousand hours a year, you'd better have something to show for it, regardless of parental participation. If you want the parents to be responsible, then give them the means to do so... a real option to failing public schools.
Then increase the quality of teachers in areas such as math, science, and computers. This requires paying more, to lure them away from industry. But engage the parents first, the change has to come from there.
Well, seeing as how the politicians who are complaining most about spending in education are often the same ones who have created and continue to enable, reward and even enforce the victim mentality to 4 or more generations of poor, I don't think that will ever happen until we get a generation of politicians who recognize the need for personal responsibility. This doesn't even happen much with the politicians I tend to agree with, leave alone the ones who I think have ruined our public education system.
I'm lucky enough to be able to afford to live in a place where the schools are very good. My kids' teachers have all been experienced, competent, professional, and very nice people. On top of that, the special ed services we have required have been well-managed and done with care, attention and genuine concern for the children. I have great respect for the school system here in Loudoun County, Virginia, including the educators and administrators. We don't spend as much per pupil as Washington, D.C., a mere toddle along the Toll Road away, and yet there is a radical and diametric difference between the school systems.
Are the parents more involved in this more affluent community than the poor parts of Washington? Undoubtedly. But is that really all the excuse D.C. needs for its abysmal record on education? You seem and many others seem to think so, and this is sad. Money is not always the issue. D.C. has all the money it needs, but they don't deliver. Yet, _they're_ jobs aren't in jeopardy.
Of course, parents need to be involved. I am, even if I think I should do more sometimes. My kids are doing fine in
The fact is, a teacher has 8 hours to try and teach 30 kids at once.
What school system are you in? School days are usually a little over 6 hours. Leaving out recess, lunch, etc, it's probably more like 4 hours to actually teach.
But you have a valid point. However, everyone wants to foist the problem on parents. Just because parents need to participate in education doesn't excuse the schools from sucking, which many do.
But the outrage is not that the image was considered holy. It's just a photograph. The outrage is because it was a mindless and content-free attack on the Holy Father. She did not nail 95 theses to the cathedral door or otherwise state in any way her problems with the Church and/or the Pope. She merely made a statement which was equivalent to "The Pope sucks." or maybe similarly immature "Na-nanny boo boo!"
Again, this is childish. A real response and valid criticism would be expressed in written or spoken words, perhaps even a song. Otherwise, people would do it all the time. You'd have Howard Dean up there tearing up pictures of President Bush (it's less ad hominem (and less silly) then his usual comments), or Karl Rove tearing up pictures of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, which would be no less inflammatory than his recent comments.
That's the problem with so many modern "protesters". All they can do is complain, and often they don't even do that but rather just call people names. If you are going to protest something, make a point, back it up with facts, offer a reasoned argument. Otherwise you might as well be sticking out your tongue and going "Neener neener neener!", and deserve to be treated like the spoiled child you are acting like.
I never have a problem with first-timers and other inexperienced people as long as they seem to care about what they are doing, or trying to do. Unfortunately, they often don't seem to care, and that's incredibly frustrating to the customer. It's easy to be patient if the person is clearly trying. It's not easy when they themselves seem unpatient, uncommunicative, uncaring or otherwise unpleasant.
Books are good. Books are cheap. Books are durable. If you can't deal with books, you can't learn. With computers, students will spend far more time screwing around with the machines (playing, fixing, trying to figure out lousy software, etc) than they will learning. Also, every dollar that pays for a laptop comes out of potential salaries for teachers. On top of that, kids now have the added reponsibility of carrying around and caring for a piece of equipment and the amount of worry and hassle associated with that will come out of time spent doing schoolwork, homework and studying.
I would bet that the more computer experience and knowledge a person has, the less likely he or she would think this is a good idea.
I've been using computers for 25 years, and I can't imagine a bigger mistake when it comes to using technology in school than this.
Well, OK, stuffing everyone in pods full of red goo and using their bodies to generate electricity while forcing their minds to live in a virtual world that contains Keanu Reeves would be worse.
Imo, this money should go towards more teacher training/more teachers.
Yeah, but mindlessly pissing money down a hole has been touted as the way to fix education for so long, hardly anyone knows how to do anything else, even though it has never worked.
Hire good teachers. This requires paying a decent salary. Dismantle the teachers' unions, which serve only themselves and are largely responsible for the horrible mess our education system is in, by locking in bad teachers and bad ideas. Hold schools accountable by allowing vouchers, which will force competition.
Based on my experience as a volunteer teacher and feedback from kids, parents and other teachers, I'm pretty good at it. Kids like me and I like them (and I've got 4 of my own). We communicate well and the kids seem to both learn and have fun. I would love to teach professionally, but I can't afford the huge pay cut and I will never take a job that requires me to join a union.
Very unstable. He spoke backwards, fer cryin' out loud.
Nothing is quite so fun as an isometric game with a 8-way joystick. I picked up an implementation of Marble Madness for my kids' Gameboy, but it's just too darn hard to play. You can map the four diagonal directions to the 4 diagonals of the pad, which is highly-counterintuitive from a "muscle-memory" point of view (at least for someone with 20+ years of playing games with cursor keys), or you can map it to the 4 regular directions and constantly map them in your head (playing with the Gameboy tipped 45 degrees sort of helps).
And like true political-correctness, your funny title obscures your real job. The first thing I thought of was "Toilet Fixer" when in fact you probably were a "Dish Washer".
I worked at K-Mart in High School as an "Retail Inventory Dispersement Technician" or in English, a stock boy. Later I moved up to "Agricultural Supplement Distribution Engineer" and "Cash Transaction Processing Faciliator". In other words, I was a cashier in the Garden Shop and loaded top soil and cow manure into peoples' cars. It was a good job, and I didn't feel the need to make up silly titles for myself.
I think the corporate blither-speak has come about for the same reason as other political correctness: People who are trying to sound intelligent without being intelligent and people who are trying to sound important without being important. There's a direct inverse correlation between this nonsense and plain old ordinary competence and common sense.
Bart: Whaddya got?... "Billy Graham's Bible Blaster?" Rod: Keep firing; convert the heathens! Bart: Got him! Rod: No, you just winged him and made him a Unitarian. Todd: Look out, Bart! A gentle Baha'i! Bart: All right! Full conversion! Thanks guys, this really cheered me up. Video: Second Coming! Reload, reload!
I applied for a developer position with AT&T many years ago (1987 to be exact). They scheduled an interview with me at 8 in the morning. The "interview" consisted of filling out an application and taking what they called a "Telephone Aptitude Battery" which consisted of very fundamental math problems that could be solved by any half-intelligent 10th grader. I was out by 9 o'clock, which was ridiculous since I had to leave at 5 to get there on time. Needless to say I never heard back from them, nor would I have been interested if I had.
The only feedback I got was that I did well on the "test".
None of these legislators have any connection with the average citizen. We need to amend the Constitution that all members of Congress, the Executive and Legislative branches do their own taxes, handle their own insurance and fill out all the government required paper work for their staff and/or employees.
We will need more taxes revenues to finance our spending like a drunken sailor. We should give you a justification for it, seeing as how we waste so much money, billions literally fall through the cracks. But we might be able to slip it in a way that you won't notice, like so many other taxes you pay... indirectly. If not and you complain, we will suggest that you are unpatriotic.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why I seldom complain about the atrocious spelling and /., because I make a lot of typos. On the other hand, it's clear that much of the horrible spelling and grammar aren't from typographic errors, but are caused by the fact that many people can't spell or write.
grammar on
Yeah, and since the U.S. pays the lion's share of the U.N.'s operating expenses, it is actually we that can sanction them.
I think the U.N. needs to get their house in order before they can claim (however falsely) any moral authority to control the Internet.
Is there a genocide or three going on they should be looking into?
You're right, of course. I was just being obnoxious. Becoming a parent is a huge responsibility. A child is not an accessory for your well-appointed house, nor is he or she a tick-mark on your cirriculum vitae to make you look grown up.
A child is a unique human being with huge needs, but also huge potential. It's amazing how many people don't seem to understand that.
I "waist" a lot of the time. Mostly by eating donuts.
"Nazi" should be in quotes, you immense dunderhead!
Um, Slashdot has no control over my life, receives no money from me and has very little, if any, effect on me. How is it a union?
I can guarantee you, I belong to no union.
Yeah, because God forbid we have more o' them poor lazy colored people in the world. That's what Margaret Sanger said, and damn if she weren't on to something.
My high school was 8:20 to 3:15 minus lunch. But elementary school is definitely shorter.
My kids in ES go from 8:25 to 2:20, I think. Not counting the bus ride, etc. This is the actual start and end of the school day, but that's still pretty short.
Regardless, it's over 1000 hours a year. Maybe not enough to perform miracles, but it's enough to have something to show for it.
And thanks to my awful proofreading, undoubtedly caused by my public education as a child [wink], I have managed to use "they're" instead of "their".
How embarrasing.
You contradict yourself. You say teachers nee more money (I agree). You also say to kill the union.
It's not the union's responsibility to set wages to attract good teachers, it's the government's. The union tries to help, sure. At least in theory. But if the government doesn't want to pay for good teachers, no amount of wrangling from the union is going to fix that.
And vouchers won't help schools, it will simply destroy the public school system.
In some places, like Washington, D.C., less than an hour from the really good school system my kids attend in Loudoun County, Virginia, this would be a good idea. D.C. spends more per student than almost any public school, or all but the most exclusive private schools, in the country, yet it can barely keep the buildings from collapsing, leave alone hire good teachers and actually educate anyone. Only in government is failure and incompetence rewarded with more money.
The correct answer is to address the root of the problem, not the symptoms. Engage the parents, make them care about their children's education.
You know, I'm tired of this argument. I agree with it, but it misses the point. It seems that the answer to bad schools is for the parents to do more. It seems like parents not doing enough is an excuse for the schools to suck. Parents will not save their kids if the public schools are failing them, and in places like D.C., we've seen that the solution literally scuh-reemed about by people (mostly on the left) doesn't work. You can't just throw money at a problem caused by poor planning, poor management and general stupidity all 'round. Oh, and adopting every stupid idea that comes out of the fever-swamps of supposedly higher education on how to teach our kids doesn't help either.
Yes, it's the parents' repsonsibility, but if you are charging them exorbitant taxes and taking their kids for over a thousand hours a year, you'd better have something to show for it, regardless of parental participation. If you want the parents to be responsible, then give them the means to do so... a real option to failing public schools.
Then increase the quality of teachers in areas such as math, science, and computers. This requires paying more, to lure them away from industry. But engage the parents first, the change has to come from there.
Well, seeing as how the politicians who are complaining most about spending in education are often the same ones who have created and continue to enable, reward and even enforce the victim mentality to 4 or more generations of poor, I don't think that will ever happen until we get a generation of politicians who recognize the need for personal responsibility. This doesn't even happen much with the politicians I tend to agree with, leave alone the ones who I think have ruined our public education system.
I'm lucky enough to be able to afford to live in a place where the schools are very good. My kids' teachers have all been experienced, competent, professional, and very nice people. On top of that, the special ed services we have required have been well-managed and done with care, attention and genuine concern for the children. I have great respect for the school system here in Loudoun County, Virginia, including the educators and administrators. We don't spend as much per pupil as Washington, D.C., a mere toddle along the Toll Road away, and yet there is a radical and diametric difference between the school systems.
Are the parents more involved in this more affluent community than the poor parts of Washington? Undoubtedly. But is that really all the excuse D.C. needs for its abysmal record on education? You seem and many others seem to think so, and this is sad. Money is not always the issue. D.C. has all the money it needs, but they don't deliver. Yet, _they're_ jobs aren't in jeopardy.
Of course, parents need to be involved. I am, even if I think I should do more sometimes. My kids are doing fine in
The fact is, a teacher has 8 hours to try and teach 30 kids at once.
What school system are you in? School days are usually a little over 6 hours. Leaving out recess, lunch, etc, it's probably more like 4 hours to actually teach.
But you have a valid point. However, everyone wants to foist the problem on parents. Just because parents need to participate in education doesn't excuse the schools from sucking, which many do.
The way some schools are run, this might no be so far-fetched.
But the outrage is not that the image was considered holy. It's just a photograph. The outrage is because it was a mindless and content-free attack on the Holy Father. She did not nail 95 theses to the cathedral door or otherwise state in any way her problems with the Church and/or the Pope. She merely made a statement which was equivalent to "The Pope sucks." or maybe similarly immature "Na-nanny boo boo!"
Again, this is childish. A real response and valid criticism would be expressed in written or spoken words, perhaps even a song. Otherwise, people would do it all the time. You'd have Howard Dean up there tearing up pictures of President Bush (it's less ad hominem (and less silly) then his usual comments), or Karl Rove tearing up pictures of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, which would be no less inflammatory than his recent comments.
That's the problem with so many modern "protesters". All they can do is complain, and often they don't even do that but rather just call people names. If you are going to protest something, make a point, back it up with facts, offer a reasoned argument. Otherwise you might as well be sticking out your tongue and going "Neener neener neener!", and deserve to be treated like the spoiled child you are acting like.
I never have a problem with first-timers and other inexperienced people as long as they seem to care about what they are doing, or trying to do. Unfortunately, they often don't seem to care, and that's incredibly frustrating to the customer. It's easy to be patient if the person is clearly trying. It's not easy when they themselves seem unpatient, uncommunicative, uncaring or otherwise unpleasant.
Books are good. Books are cheap. Books are durable. If you can't deal with books, you can't learn. With computers, students will spend far more time screwing around with the machines (playing, fixing, trying to figure out lousy software, etc) than they will learning. Also, every dollar that pays for a laptop comes out of potential salaries for teachers. On top of that, kids now have the added reponsibility of carrying around and caring for a piece of equipment and the amount of worry and hassle associated with that will come out of time spent doing schoolwork, homework and studying.
I would bet that the more computer experience and knowledge a person has, the less likely he or she would think this is a good idea.
I've been using computers for 25 years, and I can't imagine a bigger mistake when it comes to using technology in school than this.
Well, OK, stuffing everyone in pods full of red goo and using their bodies to generate electricity while forcing their minds to live in a virtual world that contains Keanu Reeves would be worse.
But only barely.
Imo, this money should go towards more teacher training/more teachers.
Yeah, but mindlessly pissing money down a hole has been touted as the way to fix education for so long, hardly anyone knows how to do anything else, even though it has never worked.
Hire good teachers. This requires paying a decent salary. Dismantle the teachers' unions, which serve only themselves and are largely responsible for the horrible mess our education system is in, by locking in bad teachers and bad ideas. Hold schools accountable by allowing vouchers, which will force competition.
Based on my experience as a volunteer teacher and feedback from kids, parents and other teachers, I'm pretty good at it. Kids like me and I like them (and I've got 4 of my own). We communicate well and the kids seem to both learn and have fun. I would love to teach professionally, but I can't afford the huge pay cut and I will never take a job that requires me to join a union.
Very unstable. He spoke backwards, fer cryin' out loud.
Nothing is quite so fun as an isometric game with a 8-way joystick. I picked up an implementation of Marble Madness for my kids' Gameboy, but it's just too darn hard to play. You can map the four diagonal directions to the 4 diagonals of the pad, which is highly-counterintuitive from a "muscle-memory" point of view (at least for someone with 20+ years of playing games with cursor keys), or you can map it to the 4 regular directions and constantly map them in your head (playing with the Gameboy tipped 45 degrees sort of helps).
And like true political-correctness, your funny title obscures your real job. The first thing I thought of was "Toilet Fixer" when in fact you probably were a "Dish Washer".
I worked at K-Mart in High School as an "Retail Inventory Dispersement Technician" or in English, a stock boy. Later I moved up to "Agricultural Supplement Distribution Engineer" and "Cash Transaction Processing Faciliator". In other words, I was a cashier in the Garden Shop and loaded top soil and cow manure into peoples' cars. It was a good job, and I didn't feel the need to make up silly titles for myself.
I think the corporate blither-speak has come about for the same reason as other political correctness: People who are trying to sound intelligent without being intelligent and people who are trying to sound important without being important. There's a direct inverse correlation between this nonsense and plain old ordinary competence and common sense.
if the myth were true, they would have to sell them for less than it costs to make them
But that's not what the parent said. He or she said it takes more energy to produce them then they will generate in their expected lifetime.
That has little or nothing to do with the actual cost. Energy, in most forms, is still reasonably cheap.
Your sarcasm is quite lame. COBOL wasn't designed for speed, it was designed for high lines-of-code counts to satisfy productivity metrics.
The true language designed for speed is: assembly.
Bart: Whaddya got?... "Billy Graham's Bible Blaster?"
Rod: Keep firing; convert the heathens!
Bart: Got him!
Rod: No, you just winged him and made him a Unitarian.
Todd: Look out, Bart! A gentle Baha'i!
Bart: All right! Full conversion! Thanks guys, this really cheered me up.
Video: Second Coming! Reload, reload!
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/BABF10
I applied for a developer position with AT&T many years ago (1987 to be exact). They scheduled an interview with me at 8 in the morning. The "interview" consisted of filling out an application and taking what they called a "Telephone Aptitude Battery" which consisted of very fundamental math problems that could be solved by any half-intelligent 10th grader. I was out by 9 o'clock, which was ridiculous since I had to leave at 5 to get there on time. Needless to say I never heard back from them, nor would I have been interested if I had.
The only feedback I got was that I did well on the "test".
The funny thing is that war in Iraq is peanuts compared to all the other pork barrel stuff we the people subsidize.
$200 billion is some real money, but compared to trillions a year, it's chump change.
None of these legislators have any connection with the average citizen. We need to amend the Constitution that all members of Congress, the Executive and Legislative branches do their own taxes, handle their own insurance and fill out all the government required paper work for their staff and/or employees.
I bet we'd have a flat tax in 15 minutes.
Yeah, but here's the context:
We will need more taxes revenues to finance our spending like a drunken sailor. We should give you a justification for it, seeing as how we waste so much money, billions literally fall through the cracks. But we might be able to slip it in a way that you won't notice, like so many other taxes you pay... indirectly. If not and you complain, we will suggest that you are unpatriotic.