sundries

[rm]

Last night Patty and I had a lovely dinner at the outdoor restaurant on the West Side. We haven't really formulated specific/definite weekend plans yet, but we have a lot of ideas. Movies? Boats? Hiding out at home which we would like to do more of while awake? (we're both somewhat inexplicably exhausted, but we think the heat is making us sleep less well).

The first of the kidney stone related medical bills as arrived. Over $500 for the ambulance, which is less than I suspected. Apparently I just have to sign some stuff and they will send it to my insurance company, although I'm highly doubtful about how much of this the insurance company is going to pay (although since it was called in for by a doctor at the urgent care I was at, that may help, but there are deductable issues too). Sigh.

The Art of Manliness is, as recently noted, often evil, but they have an installment in their continuing series on wardrobe and its care today.

Lt. Dan Choi was discharged yesterday under DADT.

The ranking of US residents ages 25 - 34 with college degrees has dropped to 12th of 36 developed nations. People are freaking out about the future of US competitiveness. I'm wondering what college degrees matter when they increasingly seem to teach things that should have been learned in high school, or earlier. Luckily, everyone's general sense is that it's all of US education, from K on up, that needs to be improved. Too bad about Texas and those textbooks then, huh?

Despite a long-standing Supreme Court ruling that immigration status/violations cannot be used to deny a child access to our public schools, 1 in 5 school districts in New York are effectively doing just that.

The rooftop bars of Manhattan: more challenging than you'd think.

There's going to be another benefit for Kimlee and her husband Chris this weekend. Chris recently suffered a traumatic brain injury, and the expenses are adding up.

Thanks to the near unending linkage to the SDCC WBC counter-protest, most of the ads on my LJ today about how many college credits you need for ordination from this or that religion-focused educational entity.

Comments

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

(we're both somewhat inexplicably exhausted, but we think the heat is making us sleep less well).

I think that sounds about right, and we're due for another scorcher tomorrow, argh.

Yeah, what is it about Texas seemingly being the arbiter of All the Textbooks? That's baffled me. But yes, there needs to be some root-and-branch investigation and overhaul of the US education system as it now stands, and I worry that the infrastructure and the will to do it isn't where it needs to be.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what is it about Texas seemingly being the arbiter of All the Textbooks?

According to stuff I've read, the state is so big, and the DoE so uniform, that when they order text books for the schools, it's easier for the publishers to re-edit the books for the whole nation.

[sethg]

Local school districts in Texas and California can only buy textbooks that have been approved by the state government. Those markets are too big for the publishers to ignore.

In other states, teachers and school districts have more flexibility in what they buy, but they can’t buy what isn’t being sold.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Basically, the Texas education system is so big that it's economically cheaper for the text book publishing houses to cater to their requirements and that forces everyone else in the country (who don't have as much numeric clout) to buy books based off the Texas standard. California is the other large market so pretty much all school textbooks are based on one of those two standards.

This bullshit would be ... well, different (not neccesarily better) if we had national standards. Then again, all the govt. is evil folks would be going on even more loudly about how Obama is trying to make us all satanists or whatever.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

(we're both somewhat inexplicably exhausted, but we think the heat is making us sleep less well).

By the time I got back to Texas, I was so profoundly exhausted for just that reason, I could barely think straight.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering what college degrees matter when they increasingly seem to teach things that should have been learned in high school, or earlier.

Yesssss. I think this every semester when my wife has to teach nearly all of her students, whether they are frosh or older students, how to write a basic essay, much less a research paper. And, of course, every semester, there are some lazyass students who think they can get away with cheating, or who claim to not know how to cite sources (despite the fact that she teaches them THAT too). Do they no longer teach the evils of plagiarism in high school? Does no one teach the 5-paragraph essay?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Granted, I went to private school, but I wrote two hour essay examinations in every subject from sixth grade on, SO I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I went to public school, then managed to get a scholarship to a private school for my last two years, so I got the essay before getting shipped off to college. But it was a near thing.

The students BAFFLE me.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Does no one teach the 5-paragraph essay?

I went to two private schools in New York City.

One was seen as the creme de la creme of such schools, the other a lower-tiered, but still good school.

Guess which school taught that lesson, and which didn't?

Guess whose teachers didn't realize that until it was too late for me to sit in on said lessons? ::facepalm::

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear.

[soukup.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering what college degrees matter when they increasingly seem to teach things that should have been learned in high school, or earlier.

THANK YOU. When I started out at university as a freshman, I remember thinking every day, "When do we get to something hard? Why is everyone having so much trouble with this stuff?" I'm taking grad-level courses now and I still feel that way.

[idunn.livejournal.com]

I felt so bitter when I got my first office job after college and wondered why I acquired debt to do a dull job that my B.A. didn't prepare me for, anyway.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

::finger to nose::

There's something wrong when a Broadway show has a song, "What Do You Do With A BA In English?" and half the world goes YES. THIS.

The hurdles are getting higher, and the rewards are getting lower.

[idunn.livejournal.com]

And seriously? While we'll always need people who can do office work, you dont't need a B.A. to do it ... but the American school system is so lacking in teaching basics like being able to organize one's thoughts and express oneself clearly, so we now assume that college will do that.

Also, it's now becoming de rigueur to get an advanced degree because even B.A.'s aren't cutting it. I majored in politics and foreign languages with an interest in going into government or law, and it was expected of me to get an M.A. or J.D. if I wanted to get anywhere. I decided to get off the carousel.

[sethg]

According to the Census Bureau (table 2c), the difference between a high-school diploma and a bachelor’s degree is over $2,000 a month in earning power for full-time workers. When you consider that people without at least an associate degree are significantly less likely to have steady jobs at all (table 2e), the difference is even more stark.

I don’t know how much this difference reflects the academic things people learn in college, how much it reflects that anyone who has gone to college has probably learned something about sitting still and not conspicuously mouthing off to one’s elders, and how much is just signalling.

It would be Good For Society if we re-established some kind of apprenticeship system, where 15–25-year-olds could spend about half their time in school and half doing some kind of actual work. Unfortunately I’m not sure how such a system could work economically, because employers would need some kind of financial incentive to put apprentices in positions where they would actually learn something.

[graene.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder how much that data is skewed by age, because there are still quite a few baby-boomer era workers for whom a college degree did make a significant difference in earning potential. Otoh, I do believe that people without degrees now have a harder time getting a job. My g-dmother once told me the whole point of a bachelor's degree to a potential employer was "here's the proof I can stick with and complete a long-term project."

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's also probably effectively screwed by race, gender and all sorts of things too. It may not be the college degree that's making people earn more so much as it is other demograhic factors taht correleate more frequently with said college degree.

[nicoli-dominn.livejournal.com]

Which college degrees matter certainly do depend on the course material and level of difficulty, as you said, but let us also consider the degrees that have been created only because of their relevance to the US's governance of business, such as the Business Management degree. I'm pretty sure that Business has been one of the most popular undergraduate degrees and minors for the past decade or so, and as a result, it has become almost as generic as a high school diploma. Almost every worthwhile business administration or management job requires a Master's in Business on top of the Bachelor's, and I think it's not only so hiring managers can weed out the most qualified of applicants more easily, but also because they recognize that having a Bachelor's degree in a business-related major does not necessarily give applicants all the skills and knowledge needed for many managerial positions.

I'm sure there are other degrees that have been manufactured as a result of the developing business world that would, in the absence thereof, have no relevance or use.

this line from rooftop bar article

[newwaytowrite.livejournal.com]

“I don’t know,” she said, her bored tone suggesting that she was as untroubled by her ignorance as I was exasperated with it.


This rang true and I encounter this attitude from people all the time. Like caring and having a brain is an unreasonable quality.

[azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com]

The educational system in the US is rotten at the root because of informal but strictly enforced race and class segregation. Nothing's ever going to change unless those core problems are addressed. We have a system now where public schools are funded by property taxes and segregated in such a way that the richer, whiter areas continue to have good schools and poorer, non-white areas do not.

I've taught remedial English in technical college before, and the situation was pretty bleak. I had to start off the class explaining what adjectives and adverbs were. My students knew exactly how much they'd been screwed over, and explained that most of their education from elementary on had basically been the equivalent of babysitting them for eight hours. The only person I had who was even remotely prepared for college had gone to a Catholic private school.