Tag: education

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Earnest Lights Over Muskogee

I’ve been ranting so much over SCOTUS lately, I thought I put out something a little lighter… This is a story I wrote years ago that I recently reworked, partly to remove some of Carl’s NSFW commentary on life.  Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Connors Junior College in the early 1970s was an interesting place as there was a large number of returning Vietnam veterans enrolled at the institution.  Carl was one of those.

I had started college at the University of Rhode Island.  My main motivation at the time was to avoid the Vietnam draft.  I did not have a clear picture as to my direction in life and thus was, at best, a very indifferent student.  When my birthday came up with a very high number in the draft lottery, the probability being drafted approached zero.  I dropped out of college.  With no real skills I started working as a factory hand in an injection molding plant in Cranston, Rhode Island.

My father around this time had been transferred overseas Continue reading “Earnest Lights Over Muskogee”

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Mr. California Wonders About Ignorance

John the Philosopher aka Mr. California asked me to comment on the following:

“Ignorance rules the unreflecting herd.” 1

Ignorance is defined by the dictionary as: lack of knowledge, education, or awareness.

My first thought is that this falls under the rubric of “Nothing new under the sun”. A Google search on — quotes ignorance of the masses — revealed many similar thoughts. Here are a few that I cherry picked:

“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” ~~ Thomas Edison

“It’s much easier not to know things sometimes.” ~~ Stephen Chbosky

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ~~ Isaac Asimov

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” ~~ Sir Winston Churchill

“Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession – their ignorance.” ~~Hendrik Willem van Loon

And I could go on.

My next thought Continue reading “Mr. California Wonders About Ignorance”

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The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane

The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLaneMaryMacLane

This is a memoir that was very popular in its time.  It was “lost”, and then rediscovered.   It is written by a 19 year old woman who lived in Butte, Montana in 1901.  Ms. MacLane was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Butte, Montana of 1901 was a mining time, and for many reasons Ms. MacLane did not feel like she fit into it.  For the times she had more than the usual education for a man and certainly for a woman.  She tells us she is a genius, and who am I to argue with her.  Later in life she became openly bisexual. The memoir openly speaks of her love for a woman that is beyond platonic.  I cannot imagine trying to come to terms with those stirrings in that place at that time.  It had to be difficult.   The following passage is but one of many that speaks of this.

“I feel in the anemone lady a strange attraction of sex. There is in me a masculine element that, when I am thinking of her, arises and overshadows all the others.

“Why am I not a man,” I say to the sand and barrenness with a certain strained, tense passion, “that I might give this wonderful, dear, delicious woman an absolutely perfect love!”

And this is my predominating feeling for her.

So, then, it is not the woman-love, but the man-love, set in the mysterious sensibilities of my woman-nature. It brings me pain and pleasure mingled in that odd, odd fashion.

Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in love?” Continue reading “The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane”

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The War on Drugs Has Unacceptable Costs

massincarceration_20110617_0
Click to see in larger size

This outrages me. If I was a person of color I would be beyond outrage. Then you add onto the statistics the fact that we are spending more on incarceration than we are spending on higher education while we are importing skilled labor because supposedly we do not have the skill sets in the U.S.A.

We have our priorities wrong on so many fronts.

The graphic is from the ACLU website

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So Wrong…

“Despite the jobless epidemic, U.S. companies are tripping over themselves to fill high paying job openings with workers from overseas. Companies, lead by Microsoft and IBM, have already maxed out their allotment of 65,000 H-1B visas. Indeed, it appears U.S. companies have set a three-year record in how quickly they reached the cap for H-1B workers.”

From this article:  Despite High Unemployment, U.S. Companies Are Hiring From Overseas At Record Pace

These supposed American companies prefer to hire foreign nationals when unemployment runs epidemic in this country.  They play all sort of games to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. (U.S. Tech Companies Could Double Overseas Cash By 2013: Moody’s). Long ago they have moved their spending on education overseas because they felt that they get “more bang for the buck” (Microsoft To Invest $1.7B In India).

We have made it such a financial burden on our young folks to get the education necessary to compete for these types of jobs it is sinful.  I have worked in IT for several companies including 3 or 4 Fortune 500 companies.  I’ve yet to see one invest significantly in training its American workforce.  Either you know it when you are hired, or you learn it on your own.  The alternative is to watch as they flood the offices with young Indian programmers.

I’m not sure that these ‘American” companies are not doing more harm to common US citizen than all the terrorist Cheney and Bush ever dreamed about.  The law as reinforced by the Supreme Court decision (Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit) desires to treat the legal construction, corporations, as persons.  If they are persons and citizens of this nation they are treasonous, undermining the very fabric of our society.

It is so wrong… and our politicians let them get away with it.  So wrong…

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Guardians of the Future

The saying is, “Children are our future.”  The meaning is obvious.  The children are the next generation that will carry on the human species.  Our hope as parents and as a specie is that the next generation will better,  have it better, increase the humanities knowledge ,  among many other things.

Children do not grow to functioning positive members of a society without some guidance.  Parents provide (hopefully)  a large part of this guidance.   Other significant guiding forces in young lives are teachers.  Without teachers, formal and informal, where would any of us be as people?   I can just about guarantee that everyone reading this can relate a story about someone who has taught them something or modeled behavior.  Frequently the impact of this is carried with the person the rest of their life.

We seem to be in a period of vilifying teachers within our education system.  We seem intent in denying them retirement, fair pay and decent working conditions.  We are asking them to do more and more with less and less.  We expect results this year that are stellar and next year are stellar plus.  Many teaching jobs have turned from teaching to paper work and preparing for standardize tests.  The burn out rate is high, and we seem to prefer it that way as it keeps young people coming into the system at the bottom of the pay scale.  Add to that the not so subtle process of privatizing education in this country.  At one level I am clueless why anyone would want to work in this mess.  But I am very glad there are, and that many of those  feel called and dedicated to guiding the next generation.

Below is a link to an article praising those who teach.  In the article was a wonderful little Rudyard Kipling snippet.

“No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be.  
Not all the books on all the shelves – but what the teachers are themselves. ”

Teaching: The Greatest Responsibility and Opportunity

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Bigotry – Confront or Ignore?

What does one do when confronted with bigotry/ignorance?  I have a black friend that when he talks about bigots prefers to refer to them as ignorant people.  I think he is right.  Bigotry is frequently due to ignorance.  I do know that this is not always the case, but I prefer to think that most folks just need a little education.  I also believe that it is not a good thing to let such attitudes go unchallenged.  To do so is to perpetuate the ignorance.

Several years ago I took a job in the Deep South.  I had previously been living in the Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas triangle.  There were several things that shocked or bothered me when I first moved south.  One of the primary ones was the use of the “N” word.  Continue reading “Bigotry – Confront or Ignore?”

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Korporations Have Hijacked Our Schools

Here is a link to an article that details how our schools are being taken over by korporations for purpose of creating commodity style workers. It sounds like a conspiratorial type idea, but… I don’t know if we have a bunch of corporate types in a back room planning this, but the effect is the same. And I believe real. Korporations want compliant workers. Besides lower wages, I think part of the rush to H1-B workers and off-shoring was to get a more compliant workforce. My experience, having worked with a multitude of H1-Bs, is that they do not buck the system and accept whatever is dealt out. Korporations 1, workers 0.

The link: Our Public Schools Are Churning Out Drones for the Corporate State

For whatever reason there seems to be a head long rush to divide us into a classed society. A rush to divide us into a society of the educated and the poorly educated. Education does not seem to be valued any more for the sake of knowledge, but only for what it can do for you career-wise. Most of the Meta values I am aware of are not derived from the korporate workplace.

This two class society scares me in another way. For a democracy to really work well, it is better to have an educated population. To have a population that is not influenced by every Glenn Beck that comes along. A population devoted to the NFL and reality shows, is not going worry too much about state of the nation until it is too late.

Most of my adult life I have worked for large korporations that include several Fortune 500 companies. While I do not think I am exceptional or different, I have always chafed in these places. There is something about being stuck in a little gray cube 8 hours a day that is not conducive to the soul’s health. The folks that run these companies know that. So the question becomes how do we keep the work force under control, and with the illusion that this is what life is all about? They obviously think the answer is to hijack the educational system.  With control of the education system the values and skills that benefit the korporations can be instilled early and often. They are well on the way to doing that. Continue reading “Korporations Have Hijacked Our Schools”

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Have You Hugged A Teacher Lately?

For a nation concerned with being competitive with the rest of the world we are doing all we can do to gut that competitiveness by gutting education. We refuse to tax those who could afford it, instead we want to gut, gut, and gut a little more in all pursuit of of some idealogical fantansy.

Having dated a school teacher for the last 3 years, I am not sure why anyone stays in the professional. I understand the burn out rate early in the career is high. I’m sure folks get into teaching for many reasons, and I know for many that reason is a need for a socially significant profession. We should reward folks for these occupation.

From what I hear teaching has turned into a bureaucratic nightmare. Plus teaching has become an exercise in teaching to standardized tests.

Below is a link to an excellent article and retro video about this issue.

Have You Hugged A Teacher Lately?

If you do a Google search on Teacher Burnout, I came up with close to 200,000 hits.

A couple of interesting quotes from the article:

“Nearly half of all teachers quit during their first five years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, but the numbers alone don’t convey the full severity of the problem.”

“It is often the best qualified teachers who leave first because they have the easiest time finding employment in other fields.”

Yet there is a group of politicians (and citizens) trying to make them the scapegoat for our financial problems.  Shame on them.

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Some Squirrelly Insights

It was sunny, but cold winter morning in St. Louis.  Robin and I were Supposedly, this photo is undoctored!!!preparing for our Sunday morning ritual of 99 cents bowling.   We were eating that great American breakfast of cereal and milk before we ventured out in -10 degrees (Celsius – that is) weather.  She had offered to fix some hot oatmeal or cream of wheat, but I had declined as we were running a little late.

Robin noticed them first as she was sitting closest to the window.  The backyard was just full of squirrels acting…well squirrelly.  There must have between 7 and 10 squirrels running across the yard, through the tree limbs, chasing each other.  Continue reading “Some Squirrelly Insights”