My understanding of the issue is that Texas orders such a large number of text books that Texas gets what Texas wants and the rest of the country gets the same thing... because it's cheaper that way.
They're kinda like Walmart, save this is an issue of education and not consumer goods.
I agree that drugs aren't the solution to these symptoms, but happiness can be found within the framework of our society. I'm sure I'll be labeled a troll and that many will decry what a heartless, unfeeling bastard I am for the following statement: Depression is a choice.
Before anyone starts pounding the table, I have suffered through depression and for a long time viewed it through the lens of the victim. But a mentor of mine spent eight painstaking years teaching me the power of our belief systems, and once I came to understand what she was really saying the statement above became very clear to me. Depression is the result of faulty belief systems and the conflict that arises within ourselves do to adhering to those belief systems. Once seen, belief systems can be changed or destroyed, but whether seen or not they create our reality. It empowered me to be the protagonist in my own drama and to stop blaming aspects of my life that I was unhappy with on factors outside my control.
Society does not have an answer to this problem, only each individual does.
It's the trend of any product that is manufactured today. Spend less money to manufacture more product so the consumer has to replace said product often. As others say, we now exist in a throw away society, hence in the States we had GW encouraging Americans to rack up debt in the wake of 9/11...gotta protect them share holders!
Although I will not defend the actions of LulzSec for numerous reasons, I also will not give a pass to a CEO. In most cases, the chief executive officer is the highest paid officer in a given company, as such, they bear the greatest burden of responsibility. Leadership is not taking the accolades while passing off blunders. Leadership takes responsibility for the bad while passing praise below to those who helped make it happen. The buck stops with the CEO, and yes I realize they are not responsible for the day-to-day security of the company, they are responsible to the share holders. As such, their fiduciary responsibility requires that they are responsible for making sure that LulzSec et al. has a harder time doing what they do. Your comparison is a straw man argument and meant as an emotional appeal that does not deal with the reality of the CEO's role. Extreme compensation means extreme responsibility, CEO's shouldn't be able to have their cake and eat it too, though that is the world we seem to live in.
What's good for GE is good for GE share holders. If the the board of GE is not acting in this way they are not fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility. GE does not care about America anymore than it cares about any other country. Go away shill.
....Lawyers suck. With that said, if you sign a contract of any kind without passing it by a lawyer, you're being an idiot. I didn't RTFA so I have no clue if this individual did this or not, but this is common sense. Don't trust anyone else to look out for your own best interest, ever.
I truly do not understand why a person would willingly pigeon hold themselves in this manner. Sure, you save a couple bucks on the front end but you lose valuable experience and exposure on the back end. Your education is an investment in you, why invest in only one part of you?
And if you want to move past a BS at some point, you're putting yourself behind the 8-ball. Your application will read like a 2-d caricature...
It all matters. Math, science, art, philosophy, engineering...they all tie together and knowledge acquired in one realm is transferable to other realms. It provides a foundation for creative thought.... but maybe you just want to debug code for the rest of your life.
Math/physics majors tend to do slightly better on LSAT, but the philosophy majors are right behind them.
Philosophy studies logic and rhetoric for their own sake alone, while math and physics utilize them to solve problems. An argument can be made for both sides of the coin, but philosophy was the genesis of all fields of study. Hence you're a ph.d....
A 12 year old who'd rather play than work, who would of thunk it! I stand by what I said earlier, Socrates too lamented about the kids these days. And your sons generation will lament about the kids one day too, your doom saying is nothing new nor is the sky about to come crashing down on all of us.
And yes, the traditional manifestation of the American Dream is dead. Low-skilled manufacturing jobs, which were the bulk of the jobs that provided the American Dream for my parents generation are gone, and these jobs are gone forever. If you want to blame anyone for that, blame all of us. Consumers want cheap products therefore products will be produced where it is cheapest to make them (case and point being the flood of manufacturing that is leaving China and headed to Indonesia, wage inflation is making other countries look far more affordable).
Your son is just fine at this point in his life. Play is the most important thing a child can do, it is how we come to understand the world and yes video games are a form of play. A time will come when he'll have to buckle down and compete in this world but he is many years from that time, and in the mean time he should be playing as much as possible. It is the gateway to creativity and the new American Dream will manifest through the use of creativity. It is the one thing that cannot be outsourced. And even if it can be outsourced, countries like China and India are hardly bastions of creativity and my limited exposure to their education systems leads me to believe that very little emphasis is placed on creativity and much greater emphasis is placed on route learning. (And yes, there are some INCREDIBLY creative individuals who come out of these societies, it's just that the majority of their resources are spent developing other aspects of the mind...aspects that computers are taking over).
Socrates complained about "the kids these days" as well, so I'm guessing that your perception of college students being "vapid drones" is nothing new. The world changes, and kids tend to change the fastest because there are the least number of society driven inhibitions indoctrinated into them. This generation of "vapid drones" merely reflects the changes that constant access to media is having on us.
And, uh, last I checked most 18-22 year olds arn't incredibly ambitious, driven nor self-sufficient and I doubt this is new. They care about getting drunk and getting laid, this is a phase of life. Let them enjoy it.
And to be fair, we did have a generation of 18-22 year olds, in recent history, who contributed a great deal to society. But that was because of extraordinary circumstances and in my opinion is not directly linked to their inherent nobility or altruism (The generation who came of age during WWII).
Perhaps if the word "jock" were used in the NFL's name some correlation between these two instances could be argued for but given the fact that the NFL does not ever refer to the players who play for it as "jocks" your comparison loses all relevance. In fact, I would wager most NFL lineman would take offense to being called "jocks". Maybe not some of the skill positions that tend to rely more on pure athleticism but there is an unsettling fact that man slashdotters don't want to accept, many players in the NFL are actually very smart. And if you want proof of that, take some time looking at premiere offensive lineman around the NFL. They often went to universities like Stanford and Harvard and recieved 4 year degrees in real programs while maintaining high GPA's. And they do all of this while being "professional" athletes. I use quotations because the NCAA designates them as amateurs while reaping the financial windfall that is college sports while creating a system that requires these young men and women to devote incredible amounts of time to their selected sport and providing very little means to support themselves in college. And folks wonder why kids at Ohio State were selling memorabilia and signatures...but that's a completely different soapbox:)
Although I agree that the meme is funny, given that slashdot has a large population it is inevitable that some of us will be what society considers "attractive". But maybe our less attractive brethren think that this very trait invalidates our geek credibility.
But then, no one wants to hear an attractive person bitch about double-standards...because most of them are positive.
Nah, I've just gone the patent route so that in the future should anyone create anything remotely similar I can tie them up with civil litigation! Why go through all the work when I can have someone else do it for me and reap the rewards?
Right, trolling, erm I think that's you my friend. And I'd guess you're also the AC who went on a rant about how anyone who respects these folks ought to be "raped right alongside them". Last I checked, two wrong's don't make a right....
But hey, keep posting as an AC trolling this forum to hell! No skin off my back....
Also, I'd suggest dealing with your own repressed issues, because clearly you have many otherwise you wouldn't be ranting as an AC about something that is completely and utterly outside your control. People like Lulzsec have always and will always exist, and it's best to just ignore them and move along with your life.
Though I have never read this book, I plan on doing so. I know this sensation very well, and often find that my "gut" feelings turn out to be correct even if it takes me a few days to understand the "why". Does she talk at all about the imagination? I find losing myself in daydreams to be an excellent mechanism for bridging the conscious and sub-unconscious divide.
The planet doesn't care what we do, it'll be here long after we're gone. Sustainability makes sense for us if we'd like to continue to exist on this planet, but it means nothing to the planet. We could make this planet uninhabitable to most forms of life for the next 100,000 years and it won't matter to the planet. The most catastrophic disasters in the history of the planet have not destroyed all life on this planet, so why should we think that this is within our capability? Life is persistent and the planet does not care whether we exist or not.
I'm surprised no one has brought this up in the comments I've read this far, but there is actually a fairly simple math equation that can be used to calculate a rough estimate of what your BAC is at a given time. There is a very precise one using differential equations but I don't have the mathmatical expertise to explain that one so I'll leave it to someone more skilled in this area.
((Person's Weight) / 150) * (# of drinks)*(.025) - ((# of hours the body has been eliminating alcohol) * (.018))
The.025 only works for one 12 ounce regular beer (about 5% alcohol), one 14 ounce light beer (about %4.1), one 1 ounce shot (100 proof or %50) or 1 4 ounce glass of wine (about 13% alcohol). Bigger glasses of wine or higher alcohol % beverages change the equation obviously.
So yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say that half a bottle of tequila and 6 beers is going to take a very long time for your body to eliminate the necessary alcohol.
I am not a lawyer, I am not criminal forensic investigator, I just was a poor sap who sat on a DUI trial recently. Don't use this as a means to figure out if you are safe to drive, because that's just stupid. That said, it's interesting information.
Truth be told, your technical analysis is above my pay grade. I don't say that to dismiss your point, but just to say I won't comment on the specifics of the skype protocol and what it offers for the internet. With that said, I believe you've missed the forest for the trees in my comment. I was merely taking the position that innovation is driven by networks of people, not superior technology. The position that I illustrated was not born from any research I did, but the research done by a professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. I saw him speak on this very topic and he had a very compelling argument for the conclusions he reached during this speech.
And I am soon to be a student at UC Davis, GSM. I don't bring this up to toot my own horn (and it's only a very good business school not an elite one), but rather to say that there's a possibility that I may have begun drinking the kool aid:)
Moreover it doesn't address the social learning that takes place in school. By forcing a gifted student into classes with more "mature" students you put them at a disadvantage socially on a number of levels. I realize this is Slashdot and we don't entirely value the process of social education here, but it is arguably the most vital component to having success in the modern economic environment.
I failed miserably at my first passion because I had not forced myself to become acclimated to certain sorts of social settings that were vital to my success. By nature, I'm a shy and introverted person, but I cannot escape the fact that my own fears and insecurities prohibited from finding the success I desired. I have accepted this and moved on to other things, but do so with the knowledge that in order to find success in future endeavors I must address these shortcomings.
The world does not spin on brilliance and intellect alone, it's about people and working with and for people to attain common goals. Social education is more important than any other sort of education and by pushing gifted students up on the ladder quickly we run the risk of robbing them of this opportunity and hamstringing them in future endeavors.
I went to a fairly prestigious high school in the bay area that was private. I can say based on anecdotal experience, shared by peers who were in public schools, that the teachers at my high school on the whole were "superior" to those at the public schools. If nothing else, the bar was set far higher for us than for those in the public school. A good friend of mine, who is extremely intelligent, shared with me his high school experience and essentially for merely showing up he was lauded for his brilliance. This caused to be somewhat problematic for him when entering a fairly good public university in the state of California. He no longer was lauded for being brilliant by merely showing up and caused him to have to reevaluate his entire approach to education and the amount of time he dedicated to his education.
The high school I went to required us to take no standardized tests, they did not participate in any state wide ranking and did not even publicly rate the graduating class (although, I have since found out, because my sister now teachers there that they do indeed rank the class by GPA but only disseminate the information to universities students apply to). Instead of standardized tests, a huge emphasis was placed on critical thinking skills. Skills that have immense market value and differentiate individuals significantly in any market place (be it in getting into a university for undergraduate or graduate studies or being more employable after education).
My graduating class was 80 students. Eight of my peers went on to attend universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. So nearly 10% of my class, despite the fact that our GPA's were hard capped at 4.0 (there were no honor classes at my high school) went on to attend some of the most prestigious universities in the country. Certainly there were socio-economic factors that have nothing to do with talent that were at play, but with that said can you show me a public school anywhere in Canada or the United States that produces those kinds of results?
And lastly because of the small size of the school, the teachers were able to spend an immense amount of time and energy working with individual students improving various aspects of their scholastic process. I remember long hours spent with my favorite English teacher, working one-on-one to improve my critical thinking and writing skills in an ungraded setting. This was done because the teachers cared about us as people and invested themselves in our futures. This trait is not readily apparent among teachers in the public school system, though I doubt it is the fault of the teachers themselves and more a product of the way that the public education is setup and the logistical difficulties of educating a very large number of people with very divergent skill sets.
The public school system in the western world has issues, and the public model cannot simply adopt the private model and expect success because of logistical reasons. With that said, based on my experience and the anecdotal information gleaned from peers who attended public schools, my current intention is not to have children until I am in a position to be able to afford to fund their entire education privately because that is what will give them the necessary advantage to succeed in the modern world.
The system is as it is, and will only change over a long period time with small incremental changes. It's fun to get on a soapbox and pontificate about the way the world should be, but at the end the day one must come down from the soapbox and deal with reality as it is else be lost in the riptide of change. (Also, let me state that the soapbox statement is not an attempt to troll or an attempt to insinuate that you were on a soapbox of any kind but merely placed to illustrate something that many individuals do while engaged in this sort of discussion, you are not doing this.)
Slashdot Mirror
My understanding of the issue is that Texas orders such a large number of text books that Texas gets what Texas wants and the rest of the country gets the same thing ... because it's cheaper that way.
They're kinda like Walmart, save this is an issue of education and not consumer goods.
I may be woefully misinformed though...
I agree that drugs aren't the solution to these symptoms, but happiness can be found within the framework of our society. I'm sure I'll be labeled a troll and that many will decry what a heartless, unfeeling bastard I am for the following statement: Depression is a choice.
Before anyone starts pounding the table, I have suffered through depression and for a long time viewed it through the lens of the victim. But a mentor of mine spent eight painstaking years teaching me the power of our belief systems, and once I came to understand what she was really saying the statement above became very clear to me. Depression is the result of faulty belief systems and the conflict that arises within ourselves do to adhering to those belief systems. Once seen, belief systems can be changed or destroyed, but whether seen or not they create our reality. It empowered me to be the protagonist in my own drama and to stop blaming aspects of my life that I was unhappy with on factors outside my control.
Society does not have an answer to this problem, only each individual does.
It's the trend of any product that is manufactured today. Spend less money to manufacture more product so the consumer has to replace said product often. As others say, we now exist in a throw away society, hence in the States we had GW encouraging Americans to rack up debt in the wake of 9/11...gotta protect them share holders!
Although I will not defend the actions of LulzSec for numerous reasons, I also will not give a pass to a CEO. In most cases, the chief executive officer is the highest paid officer in a given company, as such, they bear the greatest burden of responsibility. Leadership is not taking the accolades while passing off blunders. Leadership takes responsibility for the bad while passing praise below to those who helped make it happen. The buck stops with the CEO, and yes I realize they are not responsible for the day-to-day security of the company, they are responsible to the share holders. As such, their fiduciary responsibility requires that they are responsible for making sure that LulzSec et al. has a harder time doing what they do. Your comparison is a straw man argument and meant as an emotional appeal that does not deal with the reality of the CEO's role. Extreme compensation means extreme responsibility, CEO's shouldn't be able to have their cake and eat it too, though that is the world we seem to live in.
What's good for GE is good for GE share holders. If the the board of GE is not acting in this way they are not fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility. GE does not care about America anymore than it cares about any other country. Go away shill.
I think there are many acronyms that exist to represent this dichotomy. We always used PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair).
What about my intuition stat? I prefer my unconscious mind to do my work for me, I find it's far better at it than my conscious mind :P
....Lawyers suck. With that said, if you sign a contract of any kind without passing it by a lawyer, you're being an idiot. I didn't RTFA so I have no clue if this individual did this or not, but this is common sense. Don't trust anyone else to look out for your own best interest, ever.
Eh, your pops would have been quite disappointed. You get a B.A. in Philosophy not a B.S. :)
Though, from the perspective of humor, I'd much rather my B.A. be a B.S. :)
I truly do not understand why a person would willingly pigeon hold themselves in this manner. Sure, you save a couple bucks on the front end but you lose valuable experience and exposure on the back end. Your education is an investment in you, why invest in only one part of you?
And if you want to move past a BS at some point, you're putting yourself behind the 8-ball. Your application will read like a 2-d caricature...
It all matters. Math, science, art, philosophy, engineering...they all tie together and knowledge acquired in one realm is transferable to other realms. It provides a foundation for creative thought.... but maybe you just want to debug code for the rest of your life.
Don't forget philosophy.
Math/physics majors tend to do slightly better on LSAT, but the philosophy majors are right behind them.
Philosophy studies logic and rhetoric for their own sake alone, while math and physics utilize them to solve problems. An argument can be made for both sides of the coin, but philosophy was the genesis of all fields of study. Hence you're a ph.d....
Maybe because we understand intrinsically how important play is, yet society tries to beat it out of us. It's really too bad...
Play is the most important thing any of us do besides loving another human being.
Well played, sir. Morpheus raises an excellent question ;)
A 12 year old who'd rather play than work, who would of thunk it! I stand by what I said earlier, Socrates too lamented about the kids these days. And your sons generation will lament about the kids one day too, your doom saying is nothing new nor is the sky about to come crashing down on all of us.
And yes, the traditional manifestation of the American Dream is dead. Low-skilled manufacturing jobs, which were the bulk of the jobs that provided the American Dream for my parents generation are gone, and these jobs are gone forever. If you want to blame anyone for that, blame all of us. Consumers want cheap products therefore products will be produced where it is cheapest to make them (case and point being the flood of manufacturing that is leaving China and headed to Indonesia, wage inflation is making other countries look far more affordable).
Your son is just fine at this point in his life. Play is the most important thing a child can do, it is how we come to understand the world and yes video games are a form of play. A time will come when he'll have to buckle down and compete in this world but he is many years from that time, and in the mean time he should be playing as much as possible. It is the gateway to creativity and the new American Dream will manifest through the use of creativity. It is the one thing that cannot be outsourced. And even if it can be outsourced, countries like China and India are hardly bastions of creativity and my limited exposure to their education systems leads me to believe that very little emphasis is placed on creativity and much greater emphasis is placed on route learning. (And yes, there are some INCREDIBLY creative individuals who come out of these societies, it's just that the majority of their resources are spent developing other aspects of the mind...aspects that computers are taking over).
Socrates complained about "the kids these days" as well, so I'm guessing that your perception of college students being "vapid drones" is nothing new. The world changes, and kids tend to change the fastest because there are the least number of society driven inhibitions indoctrinated into them. This generation of "vapid drones" merely reflects the changes that constant access to media is having on us.
And, uh, last I checked most 18-22 year olds arn't incredibly ambitious, driven nor self-sufficient and I doubt this is new. They care about getting drunk and getting laid, this is a phase of life. Let them enjoy it.
And to be fair, we did have a generation of 18-22 year olds, in recent history, who contributed a great deal to society. But that was because of extraordinary circumstances and in my opinion is not directly linked to their inherent nobility or altruism (The generation who came of age during WWII).
Things only happen when they have to....
Perhaps if the word "jock" were used in the NFL's name some correlation between these two instances could be argued for but given the fact that the NFL does not ever refer to the players who play for it as "jocks" your comparison loses all relevance. In fact, I would wager most NFL lineman would take offense to being called "jocks". Maybe not some of the skill positions that tend to rely more on pure athleticism but there is an unsettling fact that man slashdotters don't want to accept, many players in the NFL are actually very smart. And if you want proof of that, take some time looking at premiere offensive lineman around the NFL. They often went to universities like Stanford and Harvard and recieved 4 year degrees in real programs while maintaining high GPA's. And they do all of this while being "professional" athletes. I use quotations because the NCAA designates them as amateurs while reaping the financial windfall that is college sports while creating a system that requires these young men and women to devote incredible amounts of time to their selected sport and providing very little means to support themselves in college. And folks wonder why kids at Ohio State were selling memorabilia and signatures...but that's a completely different soapbox :)
Although I agree that the meme is funny, given that slashdot has a large population it is inevitable that some of us will be what society considers "attractive". But maybe our less attractive brethren think that this very trait invalidates our geek credibility.
But then, no one wants to hear an attractive person bitch about double-standards...because most of them are positive.
Nah, I've just gone the patent route so that in the future should anyone create anything remotely similar I can tie them up with civil litigation! Why go through all the work when I can have someone else do it for me and reap the rewards?
Right, trolling, erm I think that's you my friend. And I'd guess you're also the AC who went on a rant about how anyone who respects these folks ought to be "raped right alongside them". Last I checked, two wrong's don't make a right....
But hey, keep posting as an AC trolling this forum to hell! No skin off my back....
Also, I'd suggest dealing with your own repressed issues, because clearly you have many otherwise you wouldn't be ranting as an AC about something that is completely and utterly outside your control. People like Lulzsec have always and will always exist, and it's best to just ignore them and move along with your life.
Maybe the goatse trolls arn't so bad afterall....
Though I have never read this book, I plan on doing so. I know this sensation very well, and often find that my "gut" feelings turn out to be correct even if it takes me a few days to understand the "why". Does she talk at all about the imagination? I find losing myself in daydreams to be an excellent mechanism for bridging the conscious and sub-unconscious divide.
The planet doesn't care what we do, it'll be here long after we're gone. Sustainability makes sense for us if we'd like to continue to exist on this planet, but it means nothing to the planet. We could make this planet uninhabitable to most forms of life for the next 100,000 years and it won't matter to the planet. The most catastrophic disasters in the history of the planet have not destroyed all life on this planet, so why should we think that this is within our capability? Life is persistent and the planet does not care whether we exist or not.
I'm surprised no one has brought this up in the comments I've read this far, but there is actually a fairly simple math equation that can be used to calculate a rough estimate of what your BAC is at a given time. There is a very precise one using differential equations but I don't have the mathmatical expertise to explain that one so I'll leave it to someone more skilled in this area.
((Person's Weight) / 150) * (# of drinks)*(.025) - ((# of hours the body has been eliminating alcohol) * (.018))
The .025 only works for one 12 ounce regular beer (about 5% alcohol), one 14 ounce light beer (about %4.1), one 1 ounce shot (100 proof or %50) or 1 4 ounce glass of wine (about 13% alcohol). Bigger glasses of wine or higher alcohol % beverages change the equation obviously.
So yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say that half a bottle of tequila and 6 beers is going to take a very long time for your body to eliminate the necessary alcohol.
I am not a lawyer, I am not criminal forensic investigator, I just was a poor sap who sat on a DUI trial recently. Don't use this as a means to figure out if you are safe to drive, because that's just stupid. That said, it's interesting information.
Truth be told, your technical analysis is above my pay grade. I don't say that to dismiss your point, but just to say I won't comment on the specifics of the skype protocol and what it offers for the internet. With that said, I believe you've missed the forest for the trees in my comment. I was merely taking the position that innovation is driven by networks of people, not superior technology. The position that I illustrated was not born from any research I did, but the research done by a professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. I saw him speak on this very topic and he had a very compelling argument for the conclusions he reached during this speech.
Andrew Hargadon
His Book
And I am soon to be a student at UC Davis, GSM. I don't bring this up to toot my own horn (and it's only a very good business school not an elite one), but rather to say that there's a possibility that I may have begun drinking the kool aid :)
Moreover it doesn't address the social learning that takes place in school. By forcing a gifted student into classes with more "mature" students you put them at a disadvantage socially on a number of levels. I realize this is Slashdot and we don't entirely value the process of social education here, but it is arguably the most vital component to having success in the modern economic environment.
I failed miserably at my first passion because I had not forced myself to become acclimated to certain sorts of social settings that were vital to my success. By nature, I'm a shy and introverted person, but I cannot escape the fact that my own fears and insecurities prohibited from finding the success I desired. I have accepted this and moved on to other things, but do so with the knowledge that in order to find success in future endeavors I must address these shortcomings.
The world does not spin on brilliance and intellect alone, it's about people and working with and for people to attain common goals. Social education is more important than any other sort of education and by pushing gifted students up on the ladder quickly we run the risk of robbing them of this opportunity and hamstringing them in future endeavors.
I went to a fairly prestigious high school in the bay area that was private. I can say based on anecdotal experience, shared by peers who were in public schools, that the teachers at my high school on the whole were "superior" to those at the public schools. If nothing else, the bar was set far higher for us than for those in the public school. A good friend of mine, who is extremely intelligent, shared with me his high school experience and essentially for merely showing up he was lauded for his brilliance. This caused to be somewhat problematic for him when entering a fairly good public university in the state of California. He no longer was lauded for being brilliant by merely showing up and caused him to have to reevaluate his entire approach to education and the amount of time he dedicated to his education.
The high school I went to required us to take no standardized tests, they did not participate in any state wide ranking and did not even publicly rate the graduating class (although, I have since found out, because my sister now teachers there that they do indeed rank the class by GPA but only disseminate the information to universities students apply to). Instead of standardized tests, a huge emphasis was placed on critical thinking skills. Skills that have immense market value and differentiate individuals significantly in any market place (be it in getting into a university for undergraduate or graduate studies or being more employable after education).
My graduating class was 80 students. Eight of my peers went on to attend universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. So nearly 10% of my class, despite the fact that our GPA's were hard capped at 4.0 (there were no honor classes at my high school) went on to attend some of the most prestigious universities in the country. Certainly there were socio-economic factors that have nothing to do with talent that were at play, but with that said can you show me a public school anywhere in Canada or the United States that produces those kinds of results?
And lastly because of the small size of the school, the teachers were able to spend an immense amount of time and energy working with individual students improving various aspects of their scholastic process. I remember long hours spent with my favorite English teacher, working one-on-one to improve my critical thinking and writing skills in an ungraded setting. This was done because the teachers cared about us as people and invested themselves in our futures. This trait is not readily apparent among teachers in the public school system, though I doubt it is the fault of the teachers themselves and more a product of the way that the public education is setup and the logistical difficulties of educating a very large number of people with very divergent skill sets.
The public school system in the western world has issues, and the public model cannot simply adopt the private model and expect success because of logistical reasons. With that said, based on my experience and the anecdotal information gleaned from peers who attended public schools, my current intention is not to have children until I am in a position to be able to afford to fund their entire education privately because that is what will give them the necessary advantage to succeed in the modern world.
The system is as it is, and will only change over a long period time with small incremental changes. It's fun to get on a soapbox and pontificate about the way the world should be, but at the end the day one must come down from the soapbox and deal with reality as it is else be lost in the riptide of change. (Also, let me state that the soapbox statement is not an attempt to troll or an attempt to insinuate that you were on a soapbox of any kind but merely placed to illustrate something that many individuals do while engaged in this sort of discussion, you are not doing this.)