Thread: education rant!

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Originally Posted by Sinister

Oh, Scooter, I agree with you about our generation, most of 'em are pathetic.
Can you imagine what it'll be like in another 20 years when these potato-heads are actually running everything!

god help us all

Well, even if they did teach it I doubt if they teach the differences between a shogun and a sumuri. I love history now but I when I was in school I thought it was the most useless thing ever and a total waste of my time. Besides it was half bunk anyway.
And yes, our education system is turning out and graduating functional illiterates, sadly.
Here is one reason why, A few years ago I had a friend who wanted to be a coach and phys-ed teacher, so she has to do her year of student teaching and gets stuck in a junior high. Maybe toward the end of summer I see her and ask her where she is teaching and she said she isn't and has no plans to ever again. When I ask why she said there isn't enough money in the world to get slammed around, spit in her face and called an effin c--t, and not be able to do anything about it. All you can do is write them up and call security to have them removed.
Respect starts at home, these are our kids people. I'm not an advocate of violence but sometimes a good trouncing might just be the ticket.

That being said, I see more and more people on the internet that will spell threw when it should be through, can't tell the difference between their and there or to and too, are and our and that g--d--m text thing is totally ruining our written language in the younger generations.

Willowbilly, i know what your saying about not having the control they need! The company im with just scored a huge contract with the local school board for repairs on campus. Ive been working on the school i grew up around, and boy things have changed around there! It was always a rough school, but it has gotten way worse. The kids like to throw the ball in front of my car, or just plain jump out it front of me when im driving around campus. I know they want me to say something so they can fight with me, but ill go to jail and they know it!

And i hear ya on the spelling too! I have noticed that too, but im guilty of bad grammer! Funny thing is i was great at spelling in school, when i first started on this board is when i realized i had forgotten how to spell common words. In my career ive never had to write, so over the last 15 years i forgot. I was never good at math, but in the last 10 years it has really hurt me! Im not sure what im gonna do when i start my college courses?

I am thankful I have spell check on Thunderbird, mostly because my fingers hit the wrong keys though.

Some well considered and thoughtful responses here.
Unfortunately this problem is world wide; it's the same here in New Zealand.
Our schools are churning out kids who can't read, write, or do simple maths.
Okay, punctuate this to mean its exact opposite: "A woman without her man is nothing."
Beyond the ability of fully 80% of the kids I've tried it on.
So what's the answer to educating kids?
I don't know, but I'm sure that 'politcal correctness' and 'discipline' are two of the key words.
Too much of one, and not enough of the other.

One good thing about East Texas is the schools, my kids got great education there and the kids are yes ma'am and no ma'am. You can sign a thing so they can spank your kids. Mine all knew I signed it too, even though none of them ever needed it. And they still gather around the flag pole and pray, don't much give a crap what the supreme court says about that.

A woman; without her, man is nothing.

A woman without her man, is nothing.

A woman without; her man is nothing.

I don't think any of those are what you are looking for.



The toaster said, "mother is broken."

I will always remember that one: I knew it was wrong but lost the points anyhow, because I thought it was funnier that way!

I have started 3 times to reply to this thread and each time I realized I could write a book on this subject. Rather than go on and on about all that is wrong with education and the breakdown of the family unit, let me just say this:

Most of today's kids just don't give a damn! Not all of them, but well over half. No matter what we teachers do, we can't make them care. We can present the material in various entertaining ways, but if the kids don't care they will not learn and retain the material. The old addage "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" certainly applies. X-box, Nintendo, text messaging their friends, surfing the 'net, and finding the next drug, drink, or f**k is all that matters. Mom and/or Dad will take care of everything else. They always have; they always will...

We are being beaten in the international markets by engineers and medical people from China and India. Their colleges graduate ten times as many highly qualified people as ours. Why? Because in those societies, education is the only way to achieve anything above abject poverty. Our kids get everything handed to them from the time they are born, they expect it to always be that way, they are not appreciative of what they get, and they don't really see education as anything more than an inconvenience and an interruption. That attitude will prevail as long as we continue to spoil our children and let them do as they please with no consequences...

Originally Posted by J. Robinson

Our kids get everything handed to them from the time they are born, they expect it to always be that way, they are not appreciative of what they get, and they don't really see education as anything more than an inconvenience and an interruption. That attitude will prevail as long as we continue to spoil our children and let them do as they please with no consequences...

I work at a Big 10 University and I am sad to say I see it every day. I cannot believe what some of these kids drive, ride, wear everyday. And there doesn't seem to be a work ethic at all. We are forced to use student help as much as possible, but it seems ,anecdotally speaking at least, that 1 in 10 will actually give you a days work. Most have this attitude that they are owed and if you get on them about not showing up on time, texting, or being on face book, on someone elses computer no less, when they should be working they get angry because you are depriving them of their "first ammendment rights". I asked one kid what that meant and he stuttered and blathered on so if was obvious he did not.

Both my sons worked their way through college and two MA degrees each, but their children, now college age, say they can't work because "it is just to much pressure for them". The trouble is it seems my kids are buying into that crap.

I think the future is of American dominance is lost forever.

Well said Jim.......................but then what should we expect from kids (and adults for that matter) when the expectation is that the nanny state will provide..............what's the point of "wasting time" on education.

Good points J. Today im gonna add rude to my rant! Kids have no respect for adults! I told you guys ive been working at one of the local schools, well today i was working under the bleachers doing some repairs. The pe class was out there and all the kids were just wondering around unsupervised, when some kid spits on me from the top of the bleachers, i ignore it and keep working ,when i get hit again! It was all i could do not to beat the crap out of these kids! No respect!

I caused alot of trouble when i was young, i was extremely rude and obnoxious, but never , i mean never, would i have ever disrespected someone like that!

[QUOTE=J. Robinson]I have started 3 times to reply to this thread and each time I realized I could write a book on this subject.

I started over three times also. Each time I did so I bogged my skinny rear end down in a bunch of wordy B.S. by trying to comment on nearly every line of thought presented in this excellent thread.

Didn't work. I wound up deleting the whole mess and stomping out to my "play pen" (that's what my wife calls my little shop).

Uncle Bob's frustrating experiences with the CETA program and technical schools are not uncommon. "Continuing Education" programs offered by a lot of high schools, junior colleges, and other such entities frequently suffer from mismanagement, lack of proper promotion, and, I'd suggest, lack of understanding by "academic" (as opposed to more practical and job-oriented) administrators. As an example of that, here's an experience of my own: I was living in a fairly large midwestern city when the public school system decided to offer some trade skills oriented courses at night. One of those courses was oxy-acetylene welding, I (and maybe a dozen other people) went down to sign up. A guy from the registrar's office and the class instructor were at the meeting. The instructor got up and said that the class was open to only those people whose jobs were "welding related". In other words, if a knowledge of welding isn't needed for the job you have, then go away.

HUH? ....... Like in Uncle Bob's situation, the "smart ass" in me woke up and I said "What? Are you telling us that if there is some poor devil out there washing dishes and he wants to improve himself and learn a good paying trade HE CAN'T TAKE THIS COURSE BECAUSE WELDING ISN'T RELATED TO DISH WASHING!"

The instructor loved me. The registrar gave me a dirty look and said they would consider "some individual circumstances".

Welding wasn't related to my job, either, so I did what was necessary .... I lied!

In the case of automotive training, there must be bunches of prospective students, people for whom cars is their main interest in life, out there who need only a nudge in the direction of conveniently located schools offering to teach them all about cars and things car related. In my area there are two long established institutions, Tarrant County College and and farther south, Texas State Technical Institute, and both are considered very good. My own nephew graduated from TSTI and went to work for a large European car company. He is now service manager for the firm and, to shorten this long, boring speech, he recently completed construction of a big new home, and it wasn't cheap. To touch on Uncle Bob's posting once again, the money is there!

I graduated from high school in 1951. No comments, please I know that a lot of you guys don't exactly qualify as "spring chickens" either. Anyway, at that time, any young man who didn't pursue a career in engineering was just something less than a man, so I enrolled in engineering classes even though I had absolutely NO aptitude for math and/or science. The result was that I wasted lot of my hard-working dad's money and a year of time.

...... And to give an idea of how good my grades were, I got drafted right after my freshman year.

I think I would have been better off had I found a good technical training school.

That's assuming such schools were available in prehistoric times!


Jim