Before we finish up with education, I think it would be a good tyme to do a little week in review. The Dems and the media have been able to control the narrative about the capital "riot" by claiming it was the worst thing to happen in the history of ever. The real travesty is that it will be the reason for censoring and silencing conservative thought. AOC and others have been vocal about reprogramming Trump supporters. I guess it will be something lyke those Pray the Gay Away Camps. Since President Trump has been canceled, idiots lyke Cuomo can openly push for reopening, something our President has been saying since the lockdowns began. Our military personal is being screened to participate in the North Korean-style inauguration. Is this the start of a political party army? Caravans of immigrants are on their way to our country to get benefits not available to most natural-born citizens. On top of all of that Slow Joe has committed to rejoining the Paris Accord at a tune of $1.7 trillion and also push to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. It is a great tyme to be alive.
It is not all doom and gloom. In preparing for this week’s episode, I read up on Louisiana’s Fast Forward Initiative. For those of you unfamiliar, this initiative will allow 11th and 12th-grade students to earn an associates degree, earn a professional certificate, or work as an apprentice. I am normally against free college, as I will explain later, but this is different. If we commit to educating our children for 13 years, they should receive continued education if they finish high school early. So here is something I will say only a couple of tymes as my blog continues, good job Louisiana! These types of programs will make Louisiana an attractive place to move to. Open competition among states will yield great rewards.
And now, back to the doom and gloom. If you were to go sit in on a community college class on math and English, you would either laugh or cry. I am basing this on a small sample size, and my own experiences in college. How in the world did some of these people graduate high school? Are there standards anymore? To be fair it would be hard to put the blame on teachers alone, but life isn't fair, and neither am I. It is one thing to do the bare minimum and graduate high school, that's how I did it. It is another thing to graduate high school without any working knowledge of the English language whatsoever. The crap I had to read for peer reviews should embarrass their prior teachers. Based on this blog series I am in no position to judge writing, but I will anyway. Aside from English, math is the other subject that has seemed to have slipped through the cracks. I struggle immensely in math. I barely averaged a “C” in all my math classes in college, and still, I grasped it better than most of my peers fresh out of high school. What in all things holy is going on in high school?
Have we lowered standards? Do teachers just not give a fuck? Are teachers given proper support from the administration? Is bad nutrition eating away kids' brains? Is social media occupying too much of the teenagers' tyme? It could be a combination of all those factors. I don't know if standards have been lowered, but it sure seems so.
I do know that they have made a concerted effort in eliminating Special Education. I am going to sound lyke an asshole when I say that we need to separate children by mental capacity. At least in the classroom. Socially, there needs to be inclusion, but not so academically. We are doing our students a disservice by allowing unnecessary disruptions in the classroom. Special Ed does not simply apply to mental capacity either. Special Ed should include behavioral handicapped individuals as well. I have heard it said that they hope good students will be a good influence of bad ones. That’s horseshit. A bad apple can spoil a barrel, not the other way around. Kids learn at different speeds and levels; we should not force round pegs in square holes.
Are teachers a problem? I need to be really careful here as I am married to a beautiful English teacher. Yes, many teachers are the problem. The same way that many cops are the problem. It all boils down to unions. Unions protect bad teachers and cops. Unions have too much power and influence. Just look at the rubber rooms in NYC, where they spend $150million for teachers not to teach. Since they can’t fire these people, they send them to a nice quiet office and not teach. Seriously what the ….!? Accountability demands results. Teachers should be applauded for choosing to better society. They should be praised for putting up your snot-nosed kids day in and day out. They should be fired when they are incompetent or dangerous.
Is administration the problem? You betchya! Let's start with the offensive pay of school superintendents. Some districts pay over $400thousand a year! At one point Louisiana had the third-highest pay for supers for the third-lowest rank in education. Let that sink in! It is embarrassing to think that we pay so much for so little in return. They are some of the highest-paid governmental officials and the U.S. ranks 35th in the world for education. I could do just as bad a job for half that money. But the administration goes beyond their obscene pay. They have a flawed business model. It's a numbers game, and it starts and ends with discipline. More butts in chairs equal more funding. I am not going to break down property tax and other aspects that go into funding, this episode is too long as it is. Admin is reluctant to get expel problem children, not because they care about their well-being. They are reluctant because those problem children represent money. So instead of disciplining these bastards, they make teachers deal with them. It's lyke cops who arrest the same assholes over and over again and D.A.s and judges don’t do shit about it. Lyke cops, teachers get jaded. Who ends up suffering? We do. We end up supporting these losers for the rest of their lives.
The last thing about education I need to address is college. It is no surprise that I am not in favor of free college. I believe there are 3 ways to earn secondary education. One is to pay for it. The second is to earn a scholarship. Third and the way I did it, is to sacrifice four years of your life to military service. When I hear student loan forgiveness all I hear is "Fuck you, veterans!" Is it not my fault you spend over $100,000 on an education that yields a $30,000 a year job. Let’s say I need a new car for work and decide I need a Mercedes. So, I spend over $100,000 on my car and barely make $15,000 (people are shitty tippers). Should I get loan forgiveness for being a dumbass? How does this happen? Well, school counselors do a shitty job, colleges do a shitty job, and parents do a shitty job in teaching their kids about return on investment. Now don't get me wrong, a college education is a great thing to have, or so I have been told (it hasn't done anything for me yet). You must be smart about it. Spend 2 years at a community college and transfer to a four college. The Harvards and Yales are great schools and people should be proud for getting into and graduating from them, but so to are state schools. The one thing employers see when they see a college graduate, is a person who dedicated themselves to hard work. It’s 20% knowledge and 80% work ethic.
And that my friends is all she wrote about education. We can do better, and we owe it to our kids to do better. We need to think outside the box. As much as I despise common core, I do applaud them for at least trying something different. As for college, go or don't, I don't care, or do I want to pay for it.
One last thing, before you are silenced speak now and loudly. Badger your representatives. Let your voice be heard because I fear soon you will not be allowed to. See y'all next week. Jimmy V is the way.