OT: Purdue/PSU, was [rescue] ss2 under load

[Big Endian]

>David Cantrell wrote:
>
>>  Agreed on everything apart from the unionised bit.  There's nowt wrong with
>>  having people in a union.
>
>
>The only problem I have with teachers unions is when they try to dictate
>educational policy. Like right now, in this country.
warning: blatant blanket generalizations follow:

Having recently exited the public education system in Fairfax County 
VA (one of the highest ranking school systems in the country)  (C/O 
2k) I think that the school system is two things.  Its (A) a racket 
for the colleges to make more money( EVERY SINGLE STUDENT in the 
county school system is "encouraged" to goto college.)  Its also a 
highly corrupt political machine.  As a student I had the opportunity 
to observe teachers and staff, and I found numerous issues.  Being 
somewhat dyslexic I found that the worst part of things is that 1 in 
5 teachers care enough about my needs to give me personal 
assistance/attention, even WITH and administrative mandate(504 plan, 
IEP).  Another issue is the asinine policies dictated by the school 
board.  In an attempt to be more "accepting" of all students they 
have lowered the bar to the lowest common denominator instead of 
raising the bar and helping students to excel on a personal basis. 
However I am also encouraged by some of the programs there.  There 
are classes that you can be bussed to (if they aren't at your local 
school) that teach technical things like computers, publishing, 
automotive skills.  These programs have the highest level of teacher 
involvement, personal attention and adaptability.  Unfortunately 
these classes are actively DISCOURAGED for higher scoring students as 
a "waste of time".  The highest overhead (and the place where all 
this shit could be fixed) is in the "guidance" department.  Guidance 
is in charge of "helping" students chose classes and placing the 
students in classes.  The guidance "counselors" have the lowest IQ of 
anybody on the school staff, including janitors.  I ended up 
scheduling my own classes overriding both my counselor and the 
computer my junior year because they couldn't see something obvious, 
like flop two classes to fit a schedule.   The guidance counselors 
should be assisting the students become interested in learning by 
listening to the students and what they say about their classes, 
desires, interests, etc.  Lastly I think that students should be 
categorized early in their education, and put into various programs 
that suit their mechanisms of learning.  The idea is to take all the 
people that learn by wrote memorization and segregate them into 
classes that allow them to do so, and take the other students into 
other classes to find out how they tick.  Its expensive, it might 
have some social problems(this can be fixed by keeping all groups on 
a relatively even pace so there isn't any "stupid kid" group), but it 
will help kids in the long run learn more and be more interested in 
learning.

daniel
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"Fragile. Do not drop." -- Posted on a Boeing 757.