Bad Education, Bad!

You may think that education of our youth is not your responsibility because you don’t have children or your children are grown and no longer at home.
Education is every ones responsibility. Next time you are out walking in a park, take a look at those children around you. Those are our future nurses, police, doctors, mechanics, etc. I don’t know about you but when I am ready for the nursing home I want the best educated person tending to my needs. If I should ever need heart surgery I want the best doctor performing it. When my car breaks down I want the best skilled person working on it. Don’t you?

We take for granted that if our children are going to school and getting A’s & B’s everything is ok. Is it OK that only 79% of Nebraska students graduate from high school and out of that 79% only 32% have enough education to get into college? NO, that is not OK!! We live in a college town that cannot produce students who can go on to college. What do you think is going to happen to our economy if we continue to believe that our current public education is OK?

Lincoln Public Schools website says that “Education systems in the capital city provide employers with a ready supply of skilled personnel.” I wish this statement was 100% true but it is not. Too many of our youth do not even know how to make change while working as a cashier or do not have enough writing skills to fill out a resume. The dropout rate has only increased over the last 10 years. I have not found anything on LPS websites that says how they are going to change the dropout rate or the low scores of our youth in math and science. LPS is run by highly educated individuals, they must know how economics work, so why haven’t they changed?

Education here and across the USA is about the adults, it is about the teachers, it is about tenure, it is about money. LPS website says more about the opportunity it gives to teachers then they do about opportunities they offer to your child. I am not saying all teachers are bad, because there are good teachers out there that want children to get the best education they can give them however, they like our children are stuck in a system that does not work. What incentive does a good teacher have to excel when their pay is the same as the teacher across the hall who says, “I get paid if I teach or not.” The pay is set by the teachers union and it doesn’t allow schools to compensate good teachers. So as a good teacher it can be very frustrating to be working across the hall from a bad teacher who gets paid the same as you for doing less work. One might then ask why do teachers join the union. The answer could very well be that some schools have a contract with a teacher union agreeing to only hire union teachers or when new teachers are hired they are asked and sometime coerced into joining a teachers union.

As parents and tax payers you have a right to know how LPS handles bad teachers. I strongly urge you to find out. I think you will be shocked at what you are told (if you are told anything). Most teachers are protected by a teachers union which has made it almost impossible for a school to get rid of a bad teacher. In short this means if a teacher is verbally or physically abusing your child they are probably going to get away with it. Teachers Unions have been allowed to go beyond their intended purpose and have stretched their arms into politics. As the old saying goes money is power, unions money is part of our city’s education committee. Union money pays to get bad teachers off the hook for giving our children a bad education and our government lets it happen.

When I was in high school I had an English teacher who came to class and told us, “read this book and be quiet”. He would then leave the class room and go to his office to smoke. My parents, including several other parents, wanted the issue dealt with. It never was he continued to teach. That was my freshman year; the teacher was still there when I graduated.

Do you know that Nebraska has been unsuccessful in passing a charter school law? In the last 10 to 12 years there have been a few attempts, but none that have even made it out of the education committee and on to the senate floor for a vote. The bills that have been submitted so far would not have allowed for a strong law that would give the kind of autonomy needed to produce effective charter schools. Why shouldn’t a parent be allowed to choose the best school for their child? Not allowing charter schools is wrong. The number of students enrolled in U.S. charter schools more than tripled from 340,000 to 1.3 million between the school years of 1999-2000 to 2007-2008. As of February 2010, 40 states and the District of Columbia have operating charter schools. So why doesn’t Nebraska allow charter schools as an opportunity for our children?

Charter schools scare the unions because they work, because charter schools are focused on the student and increasing achievement for students. Charter schools also have performance measures for their teachers. However, charter schools can only teach so many students, so they are required by law to hold a lottery every year to fill student slots. A single mom working two jobs, trying to keep her son out of the gangs hopes that luck is on their side and his number will be picked. Getting a good education shouldn’t be the luck of the draw. If charter schools had the kind of money the teachers union does to spread around during election year I am sure they would get a charter school law passed.

Oh I am sure you will hear from the “powers that be” that there is no data out there that proves charter schools work. There is data out there , the government officials and the teachers unions have decided that data doesn’t exist. They have the ostrich mentality of burying your head in the sand. If you can’t see it, it can’t be true.
Large technology and engineer companies have had to look over seas for highly educated individuals because they could not find the skilled labor they need right here in the USA. For the last 30 years educators and law makers have only been concern with the status quo. We need to change our education system. Our world is changing around us and our schools need to change too.

Our children are our future if we don't start giving them the best education possible, then what future do any of us have?

Reference:
http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/
http://www.thecartelmovie.com/
http://www.lps.org/hr/recruitment/our_community.html
http://www.publiccharters.org/node/981

1 thought

For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life, but there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one.
-Souza

So Called Techies

I found myself needing to rip this out about "So Called Techies". Just because you figured out how the wide variety of gadgets around your smart phone, pads, laptops etc work doesn’t automatically make you a techie. You are just a skilled user and nothing more.

Until you can actually describe how any one of them work, DO NOT tell me you are a techie. A trained monkey can run any one of those apps on your smart phone. Ignorance is bliss shouldn’t be part of technology but it is. So called techies tend to belief not knowing something is often more comfortable than knowing it. Thinking they are so smart just because they read about technology or because they have a smart phone that does all these fancy tricks makes them a techie! UGH!

Create an App, write a program or teach a computer class do something more with your so called knowledge besides twiddling your thumbs on your phone.

So what gives me the right to jump on my soap box and give the “so called techies” a bitch slapping. Because I can and because “true” techies don’t brag about what they know. “True” techies ask their own questions and find their own answers. “True” techies don’t believe everything they read. They analyze then decide and sometime wait for the results to show them. “True” techies know how to think outside the social media box.

You are not a techie because you can build a computer either. Building a computer has become as easy as the instruction in a Lego box. Of course it would be different if you had the skills to use a breadboard to build a basic chipset. If you don’t know what the hell a breadboard is look it up.

Most so called techies have no idea what a tcp ip stack is or even how to write one. That cell phones comes from a generation of radio designs. Oh and btw ”cell” in cell phone has more to do with the placement of the towers then it has to do with the phone itself. So called techies can’t even explain how a modem works. Let alone what one is.

I have been in computer technology for over 23 years and I myself do not call myself a techie because being a techie is a demotion to knowing how to run a smart phone app.
And I am a hell of a lot more then that!

No technology for 24 hours?

Some have asked the question what would happen to the world if there was no technology for 24 hours? Technology is the process by which humans modify nature to meet their needs. Most people think of technology in terms of computers, software, cell phones, apps, aircraft, viagra, microwave ovens etc. Technology is not just simple tangible items. Technology also includes knowledge engineering know how, technical skills and a degree of expertise. Technology is the study of the natural world.

So with that said, what would happen if we had 24 hours of no technology? Nothing would happen, 24 hours with no technology is an illogical question. Theoretically it cannot happen unless the goal is to remove humans from the earth. Then you don’t need me to tell you how that would be History channel has already done that just watch Welcome to Earth Population 0.

Yes I am well aware some people out there would say oh no you are wrong, it would be chaos!! How would it be chaos? Think about that question “What would happen if we had 24 hours of no technology”? Right where you are right now think about the items around you, think of how they where made
a pen, paper, technology poof gone,
phone, electricity, refrigerator, technology poof gone.
the wood, nails, sheet rock & paint in your home, technology poof all gone.
Grocery & Clothing stores gone, canned food gone, blue jeans gone and so forth and so on.

If stripped of all our technology we will be left standing in the middle of nature buck naked not knowing what to do.

Not every question put to women & men requires a dooms day scenario, so please try to think outside your media fear induced propaganda box.