Have you ever noticed how everything about nature is 100 % in sync with God? Can you name one person 100% with God? Kind of makes the Garden of Eden story real scary. Did we ever blow it or what.
Some strange musings on this muggy afternoon watching the birds without a care in the world.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Friday, April 27, 2012
two quick thoughts, pet peeves, and well?
It seems to me some of the people that would most benefit from a strong democracy and strong middle class are the ones trying hard to Co opt them.
It is crazy to me all this talk about trying to get rid of the EPA. It would be nice if we didn't have to waste taxpayer monry, but until corporations quit killing us with their poisons dumped in our air air and water we need it. Just think corporations like being considered as individuals, but try to hold them accountable for their actions well.... If a person poisons someone they go to jail. Corporations go to friends and try to remove the police (EPA). We don't need to remove the EPA to reduce waste we meed to remove the poisonous waste. Also save a fortune in medicare because we wouldn't have so many health issues no one supposedly knows the cause.
Pet peeves: bothers the heck out of me when you see a guy that has too perfect hair. Anytime a guy looks like he spent hours on his hair is weird. Media types get a pass, nature of business but for most everyone else come on .
And have you ever seen a married couple that looks alike, not the older couple that seemed to meld, but a couple where they really look alike. And worst the same haircut and I know this is wrong to say, but how narcissist can you get. Okay okay lol
And well got a voicemail where some of it is garbled noise but some of it sounds like the inhabitants of District 9. Real damn eerie.
It is crazy to me all this talk about trying to get rid of the EPA. It would be nice if we didn't have to waste taxpayer monry, but until corporations quit killing us with their poisons dumped in our air air and water we need it. Just think corporations like being considered as individuals, but try to hold them accountable for their actions well.... If a person poisons someone they go to jail. Corporations go to friends and try to remove the police (EPA). We don't need to remove the EPA to reduce waste we meed to remove the poisonous waste. Also save a fortune in medicare because we wouldn't have so many health issues no one supposedly knows the cause.
Pet peeves: bothers the heck out of me when you see a guy that has too perfect hair. Anytime a guy looks like he spent hours on his hair is weird. Media types get a pass, nature of business but for most everyone else come on .
And have you ever seen a married couple that looks alike, not the older couple that seemed to meld, but a couple where they really look alike. And worst the same haircut and I know this is wrong to say, but how narcissist can you get. Okay okay lol
And well got a voicemail where some of it is garbled noise but some of it sounds like the inhabitants of District 9. Real damn eerie.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Trying to race through the world with democracy
It seems Fox News is trying to convince the country that Obama is driving the country over a cliff at full speed. They are bent to get rid of Obama and trying to convince the country that this is the only way to save our country. Some modern day political snapshot of Thelma and Louise or something. Of course the idea of what they want to do after Obama is out is still missing beside the trite and true Republican broken record that offers nothing new just their noise.
Lets try another analogy. Lets take a look at a car that is trying to beat the land speed record. The people that build it are going to test it, when they get up to full speed if things start to break they stop, review progress fix what needs to be fixed and go forward till they are successful. They know that there is going to be problems. Each failure is met with another try, but they constantly work to make it better. They never let it go until it falls apart as it races across the landscape. All in all though it is a constant experiment because as they break one record there is another one to break.
Imagine democracy as the car, it is racing along through time, and at times there are things to fix. Unfortunately we cannot stop the car of democracy and put it back into the shop. We have to fix things as the car is racing along. We want it to be successful. This means we have to have the right engineers etc to be able to right wrongs, fix problems on the fly. Right now our engineers are Republicans, Democrats, the economic elite, and the media. At this point these engineers don't seem to understand they need to work together to make the car work. So we the passengers in the car (middle class in the US) are caught up going full speed over the cliff being led by people who don't seem to understand they are the problem.
We need to fix the car before all the doors, bolts, tires, and people go flying off the cliff. And the great thing about our constitution it allows us to find new engineers on the fly without having to change the car. Time to find the new to preserve the car and keep it going full speed ahead into the future. Our political system is still the best car built in history, lets keep it strong and on the straight ahead path to continue to beat new records.
People came to us in the 1800's because we offered hope, lets take the car to the people of the world and show them hope again. We can expand what we do without forcing it down people's throats. Our car can drive forward with people trying to copy us if we do this right. Vaguely crazy thinking from late last night.
Lets try another analogy. Lets take a look at a car that is trying to beat the land speed record. The people that build it are going to test it, when they get up to full speed if things start to break they stop, review progress fix what needs to be fixed and go forward till they are successful. They know that there is going to be problems. Each failure is met with another try, but they constantly work to make it better. They never let it go until it falls apart as it races across the landscape. All in all though it is a constant experiment because as they break one record there is another one to break.
Imagine democracy as the car, it is racing along through time, and at times there are things to fix. Unfortunately we cannot stop the car of democracy and put it back into the shop. We have to fix things as the car is racing along. We want it to be successful. This means we have to have the right engineers etc to be able to right wrongs, fix problems on the fly. Right now our engineers are Republicans, Democrats, the economic elite, and the media. At this point these engineers don't seem to understand they need to work together to make the car work. So we the passengers in the car (middle class in the US) are caught up going full speed over the cliff being led by people who don't seem to understand they are the problem.
We need to fix the car before all the doors, bolts, tires, and people go flying off the cliff. And the great thing about our constitution it allows us to find new engineers on the fly without having to change the car. Time to find the new to preserve the car and keep it going full speed ahead into the future. Our political system is still the best car built in history, lets keep it strong and on the straight ahead path to continue to beat new records.
People came to us in the 1800's because we offered hope, lets take the car to the people of the world and show them hope again. We can expand what we do without forcing it down people's throats. Our car can drive forward with people trying to copy us if we do this right. Vaguely crazy thinking from late last night.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
You know I can never be satisfied with what someone else does
Okay so a bit of tongue in cheek comment here.
I was reading about one of the mega million winners and what they planned to do with the money. They basically had done the right thing and went and got help etc before claiming the money. They talked about how they were going to invest it instead of spending it. All in good order and I wish them the best. I also wish I had won.
So it got me to thinking and since I am so anti wall street I couldn't help but wonder, what were they investing in. It seems since they got professional advice they probably are going to invest in many of the traditional avenues, probably a mixture of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, maybe some exotic investments for diversification etc. And who knows, I sure don't, but those are my thoughts. This is a retired couple so I think they feel comfortable with this traditional mix. And really not a bad thing overall. Especially if this was fifty years ago.
What kills me is this wealth is now sucked into the black hole of wall street. At a time when wall street is only interested in self it would have been nice if they had done something different (and they may have I don't know). Maybe worked with professionals to create a community development company or bank to help out new businesses, I am drawing a blank, there is another type of company that does seed work for start ups, anyway something along these lines, maybe not with all of the money, but with a good portion. Illinois is suffering greatly from the recession and this would have been a nice way to help out the area. Yes they would need professionals who could really analyze potential to make sure they invested wisely, but in local businesses and industries to create wealth outside of wall street.
It just boils down to one of my pet peeves that we need to develop more independent wealth outside of wall street to improve our economy. The strength of democracy is maintained by wealth spread out not concentrated to a few. So again I don't know how they invested, but I fear wall street will just use this money to seed their own fantasies and not go to what could truly benefit the country as a whole or at least their locale. And yes they probably do need to invest some in traditional avenues for their own long term potential, maybe not all.
Anyway wishful thinking on a beautiful cool sunny spring morning here in Texas.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
a sports reference to a political reference
okay so not a sports metaphor being used in a political context, but...
I was reading Sports Illustrated online the other day and ran across an article discussing pitching in Major League Baseball and specifically the trouble bullpens are having both with performance and with injuries. The article was somewhat lengthy, but the point being the modern baseball officials were not getting that there is a problem that needs a new solution. The writer's concern was that teams, the league, even doctors were not getting the stress being put on the modern closer and that new tactics were needed to solve the problem, you couldn't keep doing things the same way. There was evidence this wasn't working.
This in a round about way sums up how I feel about the current tax situation in our country. Nobody seems to get we need a whole new system or at least we need new ideas to solve the current problem. Right now our senate turned down the Buffet rule, and the whole thing has become a political lightning rod. Truth be told, whether we tax millionaires etc 30%, 25% 35% is really a moot point. It isn't the percentage that is as important as what we accomplish with our tax policy. First of course we need to balance the budget so some tax policy needs to be in place that works towards that goal. Another argument for another day. The second thing that needs to be decided is how we use tax policy.
Right now we actually use tax policy to effect some behaviors, such as cigarette taxes to try and make it too expensive to continue the habit, or we tax gasoline at the pump to also try and curb use by making it expensive and also to use it to help pay for road maintenance. An aside here, we are now paying tolls to private companies to help build and maintain roads, it seems our government has gotten away with giving people money and people are being double taxed in a sense that use these roads. Which brings up another argument for another day, anytime the government decides to spend money to solve a problem someone comes along and figures out away to take advantage of it. Government should never be in charging of spending, just policy. So which brings me back in a sense to the tax situation.
So we can completely discard using tax policy to effect behavior and create more straight forward taxes to raise money or we can try to create policy that favors solving economic problems. I have alluded to something like this in previous posts and said I would come back to it. Well this won't be long tonight since I want to work on that later, but in the general sense we can create tax policy that encourages certain behaviors and especially with the mega rich and corporations. They are working the hardest to get their tax rate lowered so lets really compromise. Why don't we lower the rates for the actual people and corporations who produce economic growth, (true growth which means new industries, new jobs, new technology, exportable products, not exportable jobs) and raise the rate for those whose activity only generates income for themselves. I have said this before and continue to feel wholesale changes in the way we look at what we do is needed. The pitching article just gave me another angle to try and get people to see what we are doing now is failing, what we need to do is change, not the percentage, but the whole outlook.
Real quick, I do have an idea where we could create some graduated income tax rates for people who make between $30,000 to $1,000,000 ( and these numbers are somewhat arbitrary). Basically my idea is that if in some range around these numbers people who generate income from wages, simple investing, real estate earnings and some other non complicated scenarios can be given the option to accept a straight forward rate and just pay that, no deductions, no extra forms, even maybe just paying quarterly estimated for their wages to keep it simple for themselves. Save the hassle and expense of a long drawn out tax season for many and for the government, refunds or amounts due would be minimal depending on small variations in income for the last few months. This would not work for everybody, especially small businesses or the self employed, but for many it maybe a way to understand what they are paying and feel more comfortable about it. Yes a working idea that needs some kinks worked out, but a thought. And yes there is a graduated feel to it, so people making 30-50k would pay a lower percentage than someone closer to a million, but not excessively higher. One kink is: people use their refunds as savings and we need people to save so something could be built back in such as IRA contributions to keep people saving some money.
Another quick thought and this is where the media and the politicians are missing the boat, there is all this talk that people don't think the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes, well actually the middle class thinks much more than that. People don't think the rich are contributing their fair share to society overall, it is not just the tax situation. Lack of understanding the bigger picture is another reason Washington doesn't get our problems.
Well some quick points as I hope to actually one day put my ideas down into a real essay that isn't just hammered out when I create a moment for myself. As they say, you make your own life and opportunities. One of these days I may actually take life up on this.
Cheers
I was reading Sports Illustrated online the other day and ran across an article discussing pitching in Major League Baseball and specifically the trouble bullpens are having both with performance and with injuries. The article was somewhat lengthy, but the point being the modern baseball officials were not getting that there is a problem that needs a new solution. The writer's concern was that teams, the league, even doctors were not getting the stress being put on the modern closer and that new tactics were needed to solve the problem, you couldn't keep doing things the same way. There was evidence this wasn't working.
This in a round about way sums up how I feel about the current tax situation in our country. Nobody seems to get we need a whole new system or at least we need new ideas to solve the current problem. Right now our senate turned down the Buffet rule, and the whole thing has become a political lightning rod. Truth be told, whether we tax millionaires etc 30%, 25% 35% is really a moot point. It isn't the percentage that is as important as what we accomplish with our tax policy. First of course we need to balance the budget so some tax policy needs to be in place that works towards that goal. Another argument for another day. The second thing that needs to be decided is how we use tax policy.
Right now we actually use tax policy to effect some behaviors, such as cigarette taxes to try and make it too expensive to continue the habit, or we tax gasoline at the pump to also try and curb use by making it expensive and also to use it to help pay for road maintenance. An aside here, we are now paying tolls to private companies to help build and maintain roads, it seems our government has gotten away with giving people money and people are being double taxed in a sense that use these roads. Which brings up another argument for another day, anytime the government decides to spend money to solve a problem someone comes along and figures out away to take advantage of it. Government should never be in charging of spending, just policy. So which brings me back in a sense to the tax situation.
So we can completely discard using tax policy to effect behavior and create more straight forward taxes to raise money or we can try to create policy that favors solving economic problems. I have alluded to something like this in previous posts and said I would come back to it. Well this won't be long tonight since I want to work on that later, but in the general sense we can create tax policy that encourages certain behaviors and especially with the mega rich and corporations. They are working the hardest to get their tax rate lowered so lets really compromise. Why don't we lower the rates for the actual people and corporations who produce economic growth, (true growth which means new industries, new jobs, new technology, exportable products, not exportable jobs) and raise the rate for those whose activity only generates income for themselves. I have said this before and continue to feel wholesale changes in the way we look at what we do is needed. The pitching article just gave me another angle to try and get people to see what we are doing now is failing, what we need to do is change, not the percentage, but the whole outlook.
Real quick, I do have an idea where we could create some graduated income tax rates for people who make between $30,000 to $1,000,000 ( and these numbers are somewhat arbitrary). Basically my idea is that if in some range around these numbers people who generate income from wages, simple investing, real estate earnings and some other non complicated scenarios can be given the option to accept a straight forward rate and just pay that, no deductions, no extra forms, even maybe just paying quarterly estimated for their wages to keep it simple for themselves. Save the hassle and expense of a long drawn out tax season for many and for the government, refunds or amounts due would be minimal depending on small variations in income for the last few months. This would not work for everybody, especially small businesses or the self employed, but for many it maybe a way to understand what they are paying and feel more comfortable about it. Yes a working idea that needs some kinks worked out, but a thought. And yes there is a graduated feel to it, so people making 30-50k would pay a lower percentage than someone closer to a million, but not excessively higher. One kink is: people use their refunds as savings and we need people to save so something could be built back in such as IRA contributions to keep people saving some money.
Another quick thought and this is where the media and the politicians are missing the boat, there is all this talk that people don't think the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes, well actually the middle class thinks much more than that. People don't think the rich are contributing their fair share to society overall, it is not just the tax situation. Lack of understanding the bigger picture is another reason Washington doesn't get our problems.
Well some quick points as I hope to actually one day put my ideas down into a real essay that isn't just hammered out when I create a moment for myself. As they say, you make your own life and opportunities. One of these days I may actually take life up on this.
Cheers
Thursday, April 12, 2012
A couple of random thoughts
Well for Maverick fans the Lamar ordeal has finally ended. It seems a shame that people who make millions of dollars cannot find it in themselves to give 100%. Sure it is possible to have a bad game or something, but continually not putting forth effort is a real insult to the thousands of fans that watch games hoping that their team wins. It is not just Lamar, but any athlete in any sport with the salaries that many command to not care or be consistent is just a slap in the face of both the fans (many of which nowadays are unemployed or underemployed) and the other players in the game. Lamar is gone, but lets not focus on him, lets go with all the athletes that do put forth the effort even if their team has a losing record. So hopefully the people who put forth the effort can get more attention than those that don't so young people can have better role models.
In that vain as a fan of the Mavericks I would like to thank Vince Carter and Delonte West as new players for showing up and giving it all even while this team has struggled. The media should focus more on them and the positive example they give instead of so much attention on what wasn't working. Again thanks Mr. Carter and Mr West along with all the other players who show up day in and day out to not only earn their keep, but show respect to the fans and players by being the best player they can be all the time.
Secondly there is a video on the web apparently showing a young man and his friends running around a mall playing like they are famous and convincing people he is part of the film the Hunger Games. The story I heard is by the end of the day, mall and retail stores were convinced of the charade and were even letting the group shop solo and escorted by mall security. Now I have not seen the video, but only heard about it on local radio so I could be a victim of another charade, but overall the fact that so many people could be taken in by such a simple trick may explain why this country is so easily taken in by Washington DC, politicians, and our government.
In that vain as a fan of the Mavericks I would like to thank Vince Carter and Delonte West as new players for showing up and giving it all even while this team has struggled. The media should focus more on them and the positive example they give instead of so much attention on what wasn't working. Again thanks Mr. Carter and Mr West along with all the other players who show up day in and day out to not only earn their keep, but show respect to the fans and players by being the best player they can be all the time.
Secondly there is a video on the web apparently showing a young man and his friends running around a mall playing like they are famous and convincing people he is part of the film the Hunger Games. The story I heard is by the end of the day, mall and retail stores were convinced of the charade and were even letting the group shop solo and escorted by mall security. Now I have not seen the video, but only heard about it on local radio so I could be a victim of another charade, but overall the fact that so many people could be taken in by such a simple trick may explain why this country is so easily taken in by Washington DC, politicians, and our government.
Friday, April 6, 2012
a bit more on education with some pseudo vindication and other quick thoughts
I wanted to get into a bit more detail about some education ideas I have since I talked about education last time and made comments that we need improvement. I talked about how standardized tests don't work and then lo and behold the Atlanta paper comments on widespread cheating going on with standardized tests. Yes the report is somewhat set up since the Atlanta school district is being investigated for cheating, but I believe the paper's report probably has some serious truth.
Anyway so that is my pseudo vindication and now to a bit more.
Changing how we think about education is very important. I want to create a framework for some ideas, yet by no means is this a complete program. It is an overhaul of how we think about education. This is the beginning of a philosophical change in how we approach educating our children. This is not completely unique and encompasses different ideas from various sources over the years. An aside here, I don't blame teachers, educators, administrators for our current system, it is what we inherited. There are good educators etc out there, it is the programs and systems that are failing.
It seems we start educating our children younger and younger, when I started school we began at first grade. Kindergarten was more something you started extra, not normally part of the public school system, eventually kindergarten was incorporated and now you see many more pre school programs part of the actual education process. It would be nice if we could keep our children at home longer, but with our economy and parents needing to work more than one job, this trend will probably continue. So lets start with preschool.
Many studies show children learn language at an early age. Let's take advantage of that for preschool. The program for pre school needs to include heavy language development and not just one language. Yes there is the debate about English only etc, but put that aside and realize learning more than one language is beneficial to the individual. The focus in preschool should be language development, reading, music, and arts. It should be stated that I am referring to ages 3,4,and 5 as preschool ages which incorporates traditional kindergarten age. Playtime is important for this program, also. The program shouldn't incorporate much more. Language and reading skills need to be the emphasis. This is important to help the children with all their education steps going forward.
Grades 1-5 is where I really think we need to make serious changes. We do not need to change the concept of grades 1-5 to move the students through the system, but change how we educate and measure progress. First and yes I know we love our competitive nature in our society, but we need to take competition out of education at this level. This means no grades. We need to completely overall the concept of A's B's etc. And if you think this is wrong to change, then stop and think about it for a second. Our goal is to give our children an education, we should focus on the end result, not the day to day measurement.
I mentioned in earlier post that we should work more with aptitude tests, not standardized tests and for these grade levels this becomes even more important. Next change to digest before trying to put it together in a practical way. We start giving serious aptitude tests to all the children before 1st grade. We then use these tests to determine class selection. Stop again, this doesn't mean we segregate high achievers from low achievers, these are aptitude tests, we use them to better educate each child. We look at how each child does on each test, then we make determinations which I am coming to in a moment. First I want to say the current way of randomly putting 25-30 children in a classroom and trying to educate them at the same pace really doesn't work well, ask most teachers. And the difference is:
To create the framework, lets say each grade has four classes per grade (remember this part is very general) and lets say we are going to focus on just a few subjects for grades 1-5. We will keep language arts, reading, and add math. We include exercise/play time for health, and add some rudimentary classes on most other topics, but we will not focus on them anywhere near as much, well arts and music will have some serious time included. The difference from the current situation is (we do segregate a bit here though) is to put high math achievers in one group, middle achievers in another, and lower achievers in another. Stop and think, yes it sounds contradictory that I said we don't segregate and I just did. The groups focus on the individual levels together, we put the children back together for other topics. So if you have four classes you can break up three groups, the high achievers in math spend a portion each day working together in math class, the middle group breaks out into two classes and the lower aptitude achievers work together. The goal is still to still have all the children learn the basics they need to for each grade level, but you are not hindering the high achievers from the aptitude tests and leaving behind the low achievers. Each group is allowed to move at the pace that best benefits them. At some point the high achievers may get ahead and learn more for the grade level, but we don't look at this within the current competitive system of students getting A's vs. C's but rather what they can accomplish. Each group can feel positive about their accomplishments and by the end of the year all groups can master grade level work. And no we don't standardize test them at the end of the year.We reevaluate. This is done for each subject so different students may end up in different potential higher achiever classes etc. At the end of the year we measure again and if we need to rearrange the classes we do. Individual effort will affect how each student does within each achievement group so we need to adapt to year by year growth. This is just a framework and there is much more development to be explained, but I want to get to the next level.
Grades 6-8 traditionally considered middle school. Children at this age go through many changes and one of them is they become more inquisitive. Our education system should focus more on this stage of their development. The focus now moves to science, philosophy, logic, civics,ethics, social studies and history. With this change you can see why reading development in grades 1-5 is primarily important. There is two types of learning for this level, one is traditional fact base, the other is to use their inquisitive nature to explore their world and learn how to ask and answer questions about their world. We spend so much time in primary grades on things like science fairs and projects that require potentially way too much of the parents doing the work. It would be better spent at this time. Students at this level are now ready to take on complex projects, research projects, and experiments. Our education system should stress these skills, not just memorization of facts. To truly develop an educated child we need to show them how to question, research, interpret data, and make conclusions based on use of fact. And not just in physical science, but in social sciences too. The strength of our country is based on how well the electorate can interpret what is going in our society and make informed decisions about what needs to be done and what is being told to them by our government and the people running for office. If you want democracy to thrive, you need a strongly educated society. This is the time to instill the values of learning into our youth so they can move forward into the next steps.
High School for this system falls more into what we currently do. Hopefully everyone is better prepared though to take advantage of their ability to put everything together as they prepare for adulthood. Now it seems I have completely lost sight of standardized tests, not necessarily. We do need to measure how well we are doing so at some point we introduce them along the way to make sure we arrive at where we should be. We take away any emphasis on them as the sole way to measure progress though.
High school becomes a preparatory step for what a child becomes as an adult. Yes this does include career type choices, but also how well they can do in making career type choices. We continue to use aptitude tests and now we use them to determine where they have strengths. This does not mean we pigeon hole them into only certain areas, this is a democracy with individual rights, but we help them choose areas where they can potentially thrive. A person can always choose what he wants, but at least he realizes he will have to work harder in certain areas to make up where his natural talents may not be the strongest. The student chooses though, not us, yet the student chooses wisely. Structurally though we can keep most of what we have for grades 9-12. A selection of courses from all areas such as math, reading, science, language arts, social sciences, etc is included with electives, but now electives can be for extra learning or to enhance the skill set a student may want to use in career or college preparation. And at this level we incorporate both a grading structure to help students learn to work hard to be successful and we put it all together from all the previous learning that success in one area does not make that person a better person overall, a well grounded respect for each other should be developed through all the grade levels and that each young child learns to accept who they are and who each student becomes. This way a person that shows great aptitude for a doctor is recognized for this, but overall the whole student body is respected for who they can become.
Okay this has been a bit much for a blog, and there are many questions that need to be answered, but again the above is the start of a framework for something better, not all the answers. Yes you may see holes in some of the philosophy above, but many of them I could try to answer and they are there because I am not writing a dissertation, but some quick ideas.
I previously talked about poverty in our society becoming much worse than traditional poverty has been historically. Nowadays we see an exponential growth in problems coming from poverty than the historical problem poverty has been. Improving our education is one way to start to eradicate the problems that our current situation is growing. The world will never truly get rid of poverty, but we have to address it and find ways to help people grow out of it. If not it balloons into bigger problems, people need to see hope, (real hope) or they accept what is going on now which is complete lack of faith in our society and way of life. Again some people will always fall into poverty, but there is a difference when people manipulate others for their own gain and with the drug cartels etc becoming governments in their own right, bigger problems will exist. The quick example of the difference is: at one point the immigrant population would come to our country and group together, yes many struggled and were at the poverty level and we had corrupt people taking advantage of their situation. The difference being that they saw hope, they carried their belief there was something better and eventually they grew into part of our middle class and even more success. Poverty still existed, but was a small part of the population, nowadays it is increasing and less people have hope. This brings about alienation etc from society which causes the bigger problems starting to develop.
And I have beat the horse to death about democrats and republicans not getting it, but as a conservative I find more derision towards the republicans because it is tiring to watch the republican leadership and fox news constantly twist facts around without any regard to the truth just to try and get their way. If you want to truly help our country deal with the issues and come up with solutions, just trying to talk your way into the white house is a failure for this country. This leads me to continue to stress the need for a new conservative party that looks at solving problems with a true conservative philosophy, realizing of course new ideas are needed.
Anyway so that is my pseudo vindication and now to a bit more.
Changing how we think about education is very important. I want to create a framework for some ideas, yet by no means is this a complete program. It is an overhaul of how we think about education. This is the beginning of a philosophical change in how we approach educating our children. This is not completely unique and encompasses different ideas from various sources over the years. An aside here, I don't blame teachers, educators, administrators for our current system, it is what we inherited. There are good educators etc out there, it is the programs and systems that are failing.
It seems we start educating our children younger and younger, when I started school we began at first grade. Kindergarten was more something you started extra, not normally part of the public school system, eventually kindergarten was incorporated and now you see many more pre school programs part of the actual education process. It would be nice if we could keep our children at home longer, but with our economy and parents needing to work more than one job, this trend will probably continue. So lets start with preschool.
Many studies show children learn language at an early age. Let's take advantage of that for preschool. The program for pre school needs to include heavy language development and not just one language. Yes there is the debate about English only etc, but put that aside and realize learning more than one language is beneficial to the individual. The focus in preschool should be language development, reading, music, and arts. It should be stated that I am referring to ages 3,4,and 5 as preschool ages which incorporates traditional kindergarten age. Playtime is important for this program, also. The program shouldn't incorporate much more. Language and reading skills need to be the emphasis. This is important to help the children with all their education steps going forward.
Grades 1-5 is where I really think we need to make serious changes. We do not need to change the concept of grades 1-5 to move the students through the system, but change how we educate and measure progress. First and yes I know we love our competitive nature in our society, but we need to take competition out of education at this level. This means no grades. We need to completely overall the concept of A's B's etc. And if you think this is wrong to change, then stop and think about it for a second. Our goal is to give our children an education, we should focus on the end result, not the day to day measurement.
I mentioned in earlier post that we should work more with aptitude tests, not standardized tests and for these grade levels this becomes even more important. Next change to digest before trying to put it together in a practical way. We start giving serious aptitude tests to all the children before 1st grade. We then use these tests to determine class selection. Stop again, this doesn't mean we segregate high achievers from low achievers, these are aptitude tests, we use them to better educate each child. We look at how each child does on each test, then we make determinations which I am coming to in a moment. First I want to say the current way of randomly putting 25-30 children in a classroom and trying to educate them at the same pace really doesn't work well, ask most teachers. And the difference is:
To create the framework, lets say each grade has four classes per grade (remember this part is very general) and lets say we are going to focus on just a few subjects for grades 1-5. We will keep language arts, reading, and add math. We include exercise/play time for health, and add some rudimentary classes on most other topics, but we will not focus on them anywhere near as much, well arts and music will have some serious time included. The difference from the current situation is (we do segregate a bit here though) is to put high math achievers in one group, middle achievers in another, and lower achievers in another. Stop and think, yes it sounds contradictory that I said we don't segregate and I just did. The groups focus on the individual levels together, we put the children back together for other topics. So if you have four classes you can break up three groups, the high achievers in math spend a portion each day working together in math class, the middle group breaks out into two classes and the lower aptitude achievers work together. The goal is still to still have all the children learn the basics they need to for each grade level, but you are not hindering the high achievers from the aptitude tests and leaving behind the low achievers. Each group is allowed to move at the pace that best benefits them. At some point the high achievers may get ahead and learn more for the grade level, but we don't look at this within the current competitive system of students getting A's vs. C's but rather what they can accomplish. Each group can feel positive about their accomplishments and by the end of the year all groups can master grade level work. And no we don't standardize test them at the end of the year.We reevaluate. This is done for each subject so different students may end up in different potential higher achiever classes etc. At the end of the year we measure again and if we need to rearrange the classes we do. Individual effort will affect how each student does within each achievement group so we need to adapt to year by year growth. This is just a framework and there is much more development to be explained, but I want to get to the next level.
Grades 6-8 traditionally considered middle school. Children at this age go through many changes and one of them is they become more inquisitive. Our education system should focus more on this stage of their development. The focus now moves to science, philosophy, logic, civics,ethics, social studies and history. With this change you can see why reading development in grades 1-5 is primarily important. There is two types of learning for this level, one is traditional fact base, the other is to use their inquisitive nature to explore their world and learn how to ask and answer questions about their world. We spend so much time in primary grades on things like science fairs and projects that require potentially way too much of the parents doing the work. It would be better spent at this time. Students at this level are now ready to take on complex projects, research projects, and experiments. Our education system should stress these skills, not just memorization of facts. To truly develop an educated child we need to show them how to question, research, interpret data, and make conclusions based on use of fact. And not just in physical science, but in social sciences too. The strength of our country is based on how well the electorate can interpret what is going in our society and make informed decisions about what needs to be done and what is being told to them by our government and the people running for office. If you want democracy to thrive, you need a strongly educated society. This is the time to instill the values of learning into our youth so they can move forward into the next steps.
High School for this system falls more into what we currently do. Hopefully everyone is better prepared though to take advantage of their ability to put everything together as they prepare for adulthood. Now it seems I have completely lost sight of standardized tests, not necessarily. We do need to measure how well we are doing so at some point we introduce them along the way to make sure we arrive at where we should be. We take away any emphasis on them as the sole way to measure progress though.
High school becomes a preparatory step for what a child becomes as an adult. Yes this does include career type choices, but also how well they can do in making career type choices. We continue to use aptitude tests and now we use them to determine where they have strengths. This does not mean we pigeon hole them into only certain areas, this is a democracy with individual rights, but we help them choose areas where they can potentially thrive. A person can always choose what he wants, but at least he realizes he will have to work harder in certain areas to make up where his natural talents may not be the strongest. The student chooses though, not us, yet the student chooses wisely. Structurally though we can keep most of what we have for grades 9-12. A selection of courses from all areas such as math, reading, science, language arts, social sciences, etc is included with electives, but now electives can be for extra learning or to enhance the skill set a student may want to use in career or college preparation. And at this level we incorporate both a grading structure to help students learn to work hard to be successful and we put it all together from all the previous learning that success in one area does not make that person a better person overall, a well grounded respect for each other should be developed through all the grade levels and that each young child learns to accept who they are and who each student becomes. This way a person that shows great aptitude for a doctor is recognized for this, but overall the whole student body is respected for who they can become.
Okay this has been a bit much for a blog, and there are many questions that need to be answered, but again the above is the start of a framework for something better, not all the answers. Yes you may see holes in some of the philosophy above, but many of them I could try to answer and they are there because I am not writing a dissertation, but some quick ideas.
I previously talked about poverty in our society becoming much worse than traditional poverty has been historically. Nowadays we see an exponential growth in problems coming from poverty than the historical problem poverty has been. Improving our education is one way to start to eradicate the problems that our current situation is growing. The world will never truly get rid of poverty, but we have to address it and find ways to help people grow out of it. If not it balloons into bigger problems, people need to see hope, (real hope) or they accept what is going on now which is complete lack of faith in our society and way of life. Again some people will always fall into poverty, but there is a difference when people manipulate others for their own gain and with the drug cartels etc becoming governments in their own right, bigger problems will exist. The quick example of the difference is: at one point the immigrant population would come to our country and group together, yes many struggled and were at the poverty level and we had corrupt people taking advantage of their situation. The difference being that they saw hope, they carried their belief there was something better and eventually they grew into part of our middle class and even more success. Poverty still existed, but was a small part of the population, nowadays it is increasing and less people have hope. This brings about alienation etc from society which causes the bigger problems starting to develop.
And I have beat the horse to death about democrats and republicans not getting it, but as a conservative I find more derision towards the republicans because it is tiring to watch the republican leadership and fox news constantly twist facts around without any regard to the truth just to try and get their way. If you want to truly help our country deal with the issues and come up with solutions, just trying to talk your way into the white house is a failure for this country. This leads me to continue to stress the need for a new conservative party that looks at solving problems with a true conservative philosophy, realizing of course new ideas are needed.
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