Therefore, since your school experience was unsatisfactory, every student's school experience must also be unsatisfactory. Since your teachers didn't care, no teachers care. Your logic is astounding.
I never said "no teachers care", and I never tried to make the case that my situation indicated anything other than an example.
Your mischaracterizations border on outright dishonesty. Why?
They're not excuses
Then why bring them up every time there's a problem in schools? They certainly are excuses. Perhaps you didn't mean to use them as an excuse -- I'll buy that.
Next time someone asks why something wasn't done, or why something isn't better, try answering without blaming a lack of funding or bad parents or administration or any of the other old lines.
Usually, the non-excuse answers go like "We didn't do [something we could have done]. We'll try to do better next time."
You see how that sounds different than "we couldn't even try because we're underfunded"?
If you look at the history of education legislation, including "No Child Left Behind", you'll see that many mandates are enacted that increase school responsibilities without increasing funding.
NCLB did come with increased funding.
Your emphasis on the word "my" suggests that I don't care about my job.
Nope. Just using myself as an example again.
when your boss asks you to work harder, chances are you're probably already working as hard as you can
I can re-prioritize.
When your boss asks you to work longer, chances are they'll pay you for overtime.
Not me.
we were ranked as the number one urban district in the state. Our school was visited by the president, the governor, and the state superintendent (all in the same year)
It sounds like your school is the exception then. Just because someone at your school cares about something doesn't mean that it's common. (I could make some crack about your logic here, but nevermind.)
Read the rest of the posts on this topic. Is there a clear consensus that people are happy with education?
I don't think that the rest of us should have to settle for a broken system that doesn't help -- and sometimes hurts -- students just because it's working OK in your little corner of Ohio.
we also put up billboards thanking the community
So there were no billboards thanking the community beforehand. So thanks are not due to taxpayers in normal situations when there's not a huge "extra" tax?
you obviously don't know anything about education
So when someone's dissatisfied, they can simply be dismissed. No need address his concerns. All disagreement and dissatisfaction stems from ignorance of The Important Work we do.
How often does that argument work on people?
I know enough about education to know my experience wasn't a good one. I know I'm not alone in that. I know there are lots of people who don't think they're getting their money's worth from education.
Voters still decide what happens. Knowledge of education -- or of anything -- is not a requirement to cast a vote. You might want to keep that in mind when you choose to dismiss a person's concerns.
Nope. You don't need a math or science degree to be able to teach math or science. Like most things, if you care enough, you'll figure out how to get the job done -- degree or no degree.
I don't understand why people's aren't funding these programs out the wazoo!
Three reasons:
1. How would helping advanced students increase union dues to the teacher's union? You'd just end up going to college after 8-11 years of government schooling instead of 12. That would cost some school some funding.
2. It's not fair to the stupid kids. No one should ever achieve any more than anyone else. If they do, it must be because they cheated. (Note it's the same argument for why we should all hate anyone who's considered "rich".)
3. They don't care. If they did, you'd see a lot more action. They don't care about the disabled kids either, they just have to teach them to avoid getting sued.
You do know that the glamorized "sports player and musician" frequently helps millions of people, right? Even if that "help" is only entertainment, it's still valuable.
The collective value of that entertainment can very frequently be "orders of magnitude" more than the work of your average "scientist, engineer and general tinkerer" simply because of the number of people affected.
Plus the glamorization actually adds to the value.
I remember going to school. Our school was more-or-less normal. No one cared.
[some excuses... blah, blah,blah]
What's the deal with teachers and excuses? Is there an excuse class in teacher training or something? I almost wish I was in high school again so I could use lack of government funding as an excuse for not doing my schoolwork every damn time.
I would encourage you to stop by and volunteer
Here's the thing: I care about my job. I do the best I can. I'm not going to volunteer to help you do your job. I don't think my employer would buy "lack of government funding" in education as my excuse for anything that goes wrong because I was trying to do someone elses'. (Actually, they probably would, but I don't.)
Because I do a good job at my job, I end up paying lots of taxes. I bet you thank the volunteers for their help. I bet you don't thank the taxpayers for theirs.
we bring in two extra science teachers twice a year to help tutor our students who haven't passed the science portion of the Ohio 9th Grade Proficiency Test
What do you do for students who passed it easily? That's how we can tell if you actually care about the students or not. What do you do to help the students who aren't a problem for you? Anything extra? Anything that would indicate they're individuals instead of simply a part of the education process?
I agree that teachers aren't sadistic. Some teachers care about the education process. Almost none care about students as individuals.
Rather than parroting tired excuses for not performing, how about performing?
Why should a kid learn math and science? Why not learn how to be designated a victim and make excuses instead? It's easier, and if it were up to people like you, it would pay better.
I think if the teacher actually cares about the students as individuals, cares about the math and science, and cares about whether the students learn it, then the teacher will do a good job and find a way to get the students to learn.
So I'd say it's more-or-less hopeless in the current society with the current unionized system.
There's money to be made pretending to care though.
I don't think it matters whether I agree or I disagree with it.
I shouldn't get to decide whether jobs are outsourced. Neither should you.
When a company employs someone, they're buying a service from them. They're paying their own money. They should get to decide what they buy and who they buy it from.
They should decide based on whatever reasoning they want. Presumably, they'll decide based on their own best interests. If they agree with you or share your conception of reality, then they'll make the same decision as you would. Otherwise, they may make a different decision.
They can spend their money as they see fit. You can spend your money as you see fit.
The alternative is that people are forced into arrangements against their will -- which is morally wrong, ethically wrong, and not a stable way to organize a society, regardless of how much "it's all connected".
---
And no, I don't agree with your arguments, mostly because there are pages and pages of them. It's easier to agree with a one-line statement of opinion than pages of arguments with questionable analogies, questionable references to history, and unsupported assertions -- even if they're right.
Beyond the normal work, what does the employee owe the company if they make the opposite decision and decide not to outsource?
---
Also, why, when a company puts 10+ years into an employee, and that company's prosperity paid a salary while letting the employee be creative on the job does the employee feel no debt to the company? Does the employee feel like he can quit just so he can get paid more?
What if someone -- perhaps a manager deciding on whether or not to outsource work to India -- doesn't believe in your "it's all connected" "observation of reality"?
...sweat-shops... cruel animal abuses... pollute our lakes, rivers, and streams...
So it's OK to take jobs away from from poor countries to send them back to rich countries. Saying the word "sweat-shops" makes it OK. Caring about the lakes and rivers makes the people in those countries less hungry, perhaps. Ending animal abuse will save their children from disease, maybe.
I don't understand the limitation you and others apparently have where you can't imagine a smaller government. Right now, the government is more than 25% of GDP. That means it could be shrunk to 24% without going to 0%.
your theory assumes that those government workers have no possitive impact on society
Wrong. A "positive impact" isn't "production". Production is when you take a set of inputs -- labor, raw materials, capital, parts, etc -- and use them to build something or render a service that's worth more than those parts.
The government doesn't do that. The government just moves the parts (labor, money, etc) around from one person to the next. They don't add value.
A simple example confirms this:
Say you're going out to buy lunch. It's $3. You voluntarily pay. The merchant voluntarily accepts your money and gives you the food. You're better off with the lunch than you were with the $3. The merchant is better off with the $3 than with the food. Both your lives are improved. Value is produced.
A goverment transaction is much different:
The government takes money from Stanley against his will -- a tax. Stanley is worse off.
That's where the government transaction goes wrong. It can't share the productive aspect of the voluntary transaction. If it did, it wouldn't have been necessary to threaten Stanley to get his money.
Maybe later, the government does something witht the money. Stanley is still worse off. (If Stanley is better off, it means Stanley got more money than he was taxed. So Stanley got money taken from someone else and someone else is worse off.)
Private transactions produce value. At best, government transactions move value around, producing nothing.
Oh, enlighten me as to how giving people less money and fewer protections and giving the government less money to do their job helps to raise the standard of living in the US???
Because the government doesn't "produce". The government divides up and moves around things that other people produce.
Less money to government means fewer people in government. Fewer people in government means more people in the private sector, able to "produce". A larger producers/non-producers ratio means more produced per capita, which is a higher standard of living.
And "fewer protections"? What good or service is produced by the "protection" of, for example, a 30 minute lunch break at noon? How much money does the requirement of that break add to the GNP over the amount there would be if that break were voluntary -- solely a matter between the employer and the employee?
It all depends on if you think US wages are artificially high
Check out the question again. I didn't say "artificially high". I said "artificially maintain relatively high wages".
Wages are relatively higher in the US than in India. That's a fact. If a manager decides to leave jobs in the US instead of outsourcing them, even after he determines it's clearly advantageous to outsource, then he's acting against his shareholder's interests. I characterized that as "artificially maintain[ing]" the US workforce.
Is there a duty to do that?
5. Would you support relaxed regulations and tax cuts to help bring the cost of US labor down closer to that of foreign labor?
You mean lower our standard of living to bring jobs back here?
Actually, this would raise our standard of living back here.
What about question 6? (I guess you didn't really answer 1, 2, and 3 either, so whatever)
1. If outsourcing from California to India is "greedy" or otherwise morally wrong in some way, then what about outsourcing from California to, say, Alabama?
2. Do people in India or China have less right to make a living and feed their families than Americans do?
3. In a business, does management have a duty to artificially maintain relatively high wages in the US for equivalent work? Is that a higher duty than their duty to the shareholders?
4. What duty do the workers owe management in return?
5. Would you support relaxed regulations and tax cuts to help bring the cost of US labor down closer to that of foreign labor?
6. Which world leader is more just: George Bush or Fidel Castro. (This is just to determine who you're talking to.)
Slashdot Mirror
Why they did it is irrelevant.
The fact that some students are ignored is a confirmation that the system is broken.
Do you really think it's OK to take 12 years of someone's life and give them 6-7 years worth of education in return?
I never said "no teachers care", and I never tried to make the case that my situation indicated anything other than an example.
Your mischaracterizations border on outright dishonesty. Why?
They're not excuses
Then why bring them up every time there's a problem in schools? They certainly are excuses. Perhaps you didn't mean to use them as an excuse -- I'll buy that.
Next time someone asks why something wasn't done, or why something isn't better, try answering without blaming a lack of funding or bad parents or administration or any of the other old lines.
Usually, the non-excuse answers go like "We didn't do [something we could have done]. We'll try to do better next time."
You see how that sounds different than "we couldn't even try because we're underfunded"?
If you look at the history of education legislation, including "No Child Left Behind", you'll see that many mandates are enacted that increase school responsibilities without increasing funding.
NCLB did come with increased funding.
Your emphasis on the word "my" suggests that I don't care about my job.
Nope. Just using myself as an example again.
when your boss asks you to work harder, chances are you're probably already working as hard as you can
I can re-prioritize.
When your boss asks you to work longer, chances are they'll pay you for overtime.
Not me.
we were ranked as the number one urban district in the state. Our school was visited by the president, the governor, and the state superintendent (all in the same year)
It sounds like your school is the exception then. Just because someone at your school cares about something doesn't mean that it's common. (I could make some crack about your logic here, but nevermind.)
Read the rest of the posts on this topic. Is there a clear consensus that people are happy with education?
I don't think that the rest of us should have to settle for a broken system that doesn't help -- and sometimes hurts -- students just because it's working OK in your little corner of Ohio.
we also put up billboards thanking the community
So there were no billboards thanking the community beforehand. So thanks are not due to taxpayers in normal situations when there's not a huge "extra" tax?
you obviously don't know anything about education
So when someone's dissatisfied, they can simply be dismissed. No need address his concerns. All disagreement and dissatisfaction stems from ignorance of The Important Work we do.
How often does that argument work on people?
I know enough about education to know my experience wasn't a good one. I know I'm not alone in that. I know there are lots of people who don't think they're getting their money's worth from education.
Voters still decide what happens. Knowledge of education -- or of anything -- is not a requirement to cast a vote. You might want to keep that in mind when you choose to dismiss a person's concerns.
Nope. You don't need a math or science degree to be able to teach math or science. Like most things, if you care enough, you'll figure out how to get the job done -- degree or no degree.
See this post.
The "we should honor [someone] instead of actors and athletes" people need to work within the realm of reality.
Three reasons:
1. How would helping advanced students increase union dues to the teacher's union? You'd just end up going to college after 8-11 years of government schooling instead of 12. That would cost some school some funding.
2. It's not fair to the stupid kids. No one should ever achieve any more than anyone else. If they do, it must be because they cheated. (Note it's the same argument for why we should all hate anyone who's considered "rich".)
3. They don't care. If they did, you'd see a lot more action. They don't care about the disabled kids either, they just have to teach them to avoid getting sued.
You do know that the glamorized "sports player and musician" frequently helps millions of people, right? Even if that "help" is only entertainment, it's still valuable.
The collective value of that entertainment can very frequently be "orders of magnitude" more than the work of your average "scientist, engineer and general tinkerer" simply because of the number of people affected.
Plus the glamorization actually adds to the value.
It's true. Sorry to burst your bubble.
I remember going to school. Our school was more-or-less normal. No one cared.
[some excuses ... blah, blah,blah]
What's the deal with teachers and excuses? Is there an excuse class in teacher training or something? I almost wish I was in high school again so I could use lack of government funding as an excuse for not doing my schoolwork every damn time.
I would encourage you to stop by and volunteer
Here's the thing: I care about my job. I do the best I can. I'm not going to volunteer to help you do your job. I don't think my employer would buy "lack of government funding" in education as my excuse for anything that goes wrong because I was trying to do someone elses'. (Actually, they probably would, but I don't.)
Because I do a good job at my job, I end up paying lots of taxes. I bet you thank the volunteers for their help. I bet you don't thank the taxpayers for theirs.
What do you do for students who passed it easily? That's how we can tell if you actually care about the students or not. What do you do to help the students who aren't a problem for you? Anything extra? Anything that would indicate they're individuals instead of simply a part of the education process?
I agree that teachers aren't sadistic. Some teachers care about the education process. Almost none care about students as individuals.
Rather than parroting tired excuses for not performing, how about performing?
Why should a kid learn math and science? Why not learn how to be designated a victim and make excuses instead? It's easier, and if it were up to people like you, it would pay better.
I think if the teacher actually cares about the students as individuals, cares about the math and science, and cares about whether the students learn it, then the teacher will do a good job and find a way to get the students to learn.
So I'd say it's more-or-less hopeless in the current society with the current unionized system.
There's money to be made pretending to care though.
Answer: Whenever they can win. Whenever they're on the right side.
No, I don't remember any of those times either.
---
Oh yeah, in the Eolas patent case, they were on the right side.
I don't think it matters whether I agree or I disagree with it.
I shouldn't get to decide whether jobs are outsourced. Neither should you.
When a company employs someone, they're buying a service from them. They're paying their own money. They should get to decide what they buy and who they buy it from.
They should decide based on whatever reasoning they want. Presumably, they'll decide based on their own best interests. If they agree with you or share your conception of reality, then they'll make the same decision as you would. Otherwise, they may make a different decision.
They can spend their money as they see fit. You can spend your money as you see fit.
The alternative is that people are forced into arrangements against their will -- which is morally wrong, ethically wrong, and not a stable way to organize a society, regardless of how much "it's all connected".
---
And no, I don't agree with your arguments, mostly because there are pages and pages of them. It's easier to agree with a one-line statement of opinion than pages of arguments with questionable analogies, questionable references to history, and unsupported assertions -- even if they're right.
Beyond the normal work, what does the employee owe the company if they make the opposite decision and decide not to outsource?
---
Also, why, when a company puts 10+ years into an employee, and that company's prosperity paid a salary while letting the employee be creative on the job does the employee feel no debt to the company? Does the employee feel like he can quit just so he can get paid more?
Advertising doesn't tell the whole story?
Shocking.
What if someone -- perhaps a manager deciding on whether or not to outsource work to India -- doesn't believe in your "it's all connected" "observation of reality"?
Send him to prison?
So it's OK to take jobs away from from poor countries to send them back to rich countries. Saying the word "sweat-shops" makes it OK. Caring about the lakes and rivers makes the people in those countries less hungry, perhaps. Ending animal abuse will save their children from disease, maybe.
Why even pretend?
What if there were half as many government jobs?
I don't understand the limitation you and others apparently have where you can't imagine a smaller government. Right now, the government is more than 25% of GDP. That means it could be shrunk to 24% without going to 0%.
your theory assumes that those government workers have no possitive impact on society
Wrong. A "positive impact" isn't "production". Production is when you take a set of inputs -- labor, raw materials, capital, parts, etc -- and use them to build something or render a service that's worth more than those parts.
The government doesn't do that. The government just moves the parts (labor, money, etc) around from one person to the next. They don't add value.
A simple example confirms this:
Say you're going out to buy lunch. It's $3. You voluntarily pay. The merchant voluntarily accepts your money and gives you the food. You're better off with the lunch than you were with the $3. The merchant is better off with the $3 than with the food. Both your lives are improved. Value is produced.
A goverment transaction is much different:
The government takes money from Stanley against his will -- a tax. Stanley is worse off.
That's where the government transaction goes wrong. It can't share the productive aspect of the voluntary transaction. If it did, it wouldn't have been necessary to threaten Stanley to get his money.
Maybe later, the government does something witht the money. Stanley is still worse off. (If Stanley is better off, it means Stanley got more money than he was taxed. So Stanley got money taken from someone else and someone else is worse off.)
Private transactions produce value. At best, government transactions move value around, producing nothing.
What if someone -- perhaps a manager deciding on whether or not to outsource work to India -- doesn't believe in your "it's all connected" philosophy?
Send him to prison?
Because the government doesn't "produce". The government divides up and moves around things that other people produce.
Less money to government means fewer people in government. Fewer people in government means more people in the private sector, able to "produce". A larger producers/non-producers ratio means more produced per capita, which is a higher standard of living.
And "fewer protections"? What good or service is produced by the "protection" of, for example, a 30 minute lunch break at noon? How much money does the requirement of that break add to the GNP over the amount there would be if that break were voluntary -- solely a matter between the employer and the employee?
Check out the question again. I didn't say "artificially high". I said "artificially maintain relatively high wages".
Wages are relatively higher in the US than in India. That's a fact. If a manager decides to leave jobs in the US instead of outsourcing them, even after he determines it's clearly advantageous to outsource, then he's acting against his shareholder's interests. I characterized that as "artificially maintain[ing]" the US workforce.
Is there a duty to do that?
5. Would you support relaxed regulations and tax cuts to help bring the cost of US labor down closer to that of foreign labor?
You mean lower our standard of living to bring jobs back here?
Actually, this would raise our standard of living back here.
What about question 6? (I guess you didn't really answer 1, 2, and 3 either, so whatever)
I didn't say what you heard.
The world doesn't always owe you what you want from it.
If you don't get what you want, you should find a way to deal with it -- preferrably without causing a lot of trouble for everyone.
What if you don't always get what you want?
1. If outsourcing from California to India is "greedy" or otherwise morally wrong in some way, then what about outsourcing from California to, say, Alabama?
2. Do people in India or China have less right to make a living and feed their families than Americans do?
3. In a business, does management have a duty to artificially maintain relatively high wages in the US for equivalent work? Is that a higher duty than their duty to the shareholders?
4. What duty do the workers owe management in return?
5. Would you support relaxed regulations and tax cuts to help bring the cost of US labor down closer to that of foreign labor?
6. Which world leader is more just: George Bush or Fidel Castro. (This is just to determine who you're talking to.)
Why would you take a job unless you thought you'd be better off?
You wouldn't. So the answer is "Yes".
Here's a suggestion: Don't chase the "next new economy". Do something you like. Do something you care about. Do something you're good at.
If you can't find anything like that, then you're stuck with what you get.