Calcuators have made the youth of today stupid.

Boy this thread keeps reminding me of old stories read long ago and now an ancient cartoon - does this mean we aren't learning from our history?

Anyway, a Bizarro cartoon by Piraro about 15 years ago featured a customer at a 7-Eleven type outlet standing helplessly at the counter while four of the store's staff crowded around the register trying to diagnose their difficulty, each offering some arcane bit of advice to try to get the computerized register to work properly. The hapless customer held in his hand the one item he wanted to purchse - the cartoon's caption: "The Pack of Gum."

Is us ain't learnt nothin' yet?

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

Yes, of course. It was just to illustrate the thinking that somehow imposing or reinstating relatively high taxes on successful individuals will somehow solve societies problems. But it is irritating to hear from politicians and especially individuals constantly how “rich†people are somehow the bane of society.

And, no, I am not planning moving. But I will still take the rich people hybrid tax credit! I do not pay AMT so I suppose I am not rich…

Rick

 

and you are joking about this too, right?

 

No, sorry, but no joke, our local educational system is excellent. As I stated earlier algebra is now being taught in the 7th grade. Calculus is the norm in High School. For me it was only an option in advanced High School classes. My kids are in band. Do extracurricular activities. All paid for by the public school system. Many of the teachers have been in teachers for over a decade if not more. I assume if they were unhappy they would find another line of work that pays more. They are free to quit anytime they wish.

Perhaps you think your kids should go to school 10-12 hours a day and start algebra in the 4th grade? What's your point? Throw more money at the NEA and some Washingtonian bureaucracy and shazzam, kids will be smarter? Please…

Have you personally seen a degradation of your children’s education compared to yours? Do you even have children? K-12 educational policies are primarily dictated by local school board members and their staff. Perhaps your school board and/or K-12 education system is lacking somewhat. Washington cannot and will not fix your problem. You should start a petition to signifcantly increase your local property taxes to fix your local school system if you think more money is the answer. Hmm, the phrase "lead balloon" comes to mind.

Rick

 

With respect to public schools, it all depends upon where you live.

Generally, the further you are from population, the better the schools. So while I grew up in a school system much like Viking described, for every one of me, there are probably like 15 kids being "shoved" through the other school systems because there aren't enough teachers to take the time to help these kids. Although, as I mentioned before, I blame parenting far more, but not everyone is given parents that give a damn...

 

I have to agree. If the problem can be solved locally it should be. The farther the money travels the more inefficiently it will be used. Local problem solves will have a better understanding of HOW to use the money and will certainly be more motivated. Their going to be held accountable to a much higher degree. If it can't be solved locally the state should step in. Then the fed. Jumping straight to the highest level is NOT the way to go.

 

I have to agree to a degree. I think good teachers are underpaid. But there are too many with emergeny credientials that are worse than nothing.

About eight years ago I looked into becoming a teacher. I found that a kid who took metal shop in high school could earn more money in the LAUSD than a teacher with a master's degree and twenty years of experience.

Many schools have too much money and there is too much politics in the mix. When you don't have the money you have to figure out whats really important and make the hard decisons. Having too much of other peoples money is not good for sound decisions.

Too much politics in the books too. Most of the school books I have looked at recently are crap. They may be good if you're trying to raise sheeple but not free thinking adults.

Finally, with a calculator, how do you know if you have the right answer? You have to know enough for a ballpark estimate. Calculators should probably be kept with cigarettes and porn--you have to be 18 to buy one.

 

I have to agree with Kiloran. I'm O-L-D. From the slide rule era, actually. I remember the first battery-operated calculators being introduced around 1971. They did the basic, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Cost was about $100.

As a teacher for many years, it is easy to see how the various funds towards education have been slashed. Ah, let them play video games.

 

Danny, i cant agree with you more... paper and metal has gone, plastic is in...however. i still go to the counter to pay for gas in cash... i just like the look on the cashier's face when i come back after filling my tank to get change for my $20...

 

I have to chime in on this:

You're a LAZY nice person SLOTH if you buy any of those guides. Most of the time, they don't even reveal anything other than what you would have come across anyway.

You should have grabbed the guide out of the kid's hand and whacked him UPSIDE THE HEAD with it.

 

I have read all the preceeding posts and thought about this. My wife is a grammer school principal, I work at Cal Berkeley. We are commited to PUBLIC education and we strive to promote it. However, education does not make you smarter or even more productive. It gives you the basics. It rounds you out, allows for considering different points of view and makes you more accepting of values and principals you never even considered before. It also <hopefully> makes you a more critical thinker. It certainly does not prepare you for the job market and it will not give you the overall picture. You have to gai that thrrough life experiences. My take on this is; the kids today are just as bright or brighter then my generation but were never expected to perform as we were.

In high school I worked behind the counter selling jewelry and later camera gear. I was expected to figure 10,15, 20, and 25% discounts for clients depending on their employers contracts with us. I was never taught how... it was expcted of me and with a little math knowledge and, an overseeing employer and his input, it was easy. Where do kids today work making minimum wage? Not at small privately owned stores where employers have a stake and concern for their employees, but at large clearing houses like Mac Donalds or Target. These places don't want or encourage thinking. They want cheap replaceable non thinking robot employees that rely on the register to make change. They are not expected to think or be creative. The employer likes them that way. You don't loose a valued employee when they leave because you have nothing invested in training and their skills. With nothing invested nothing is lost when an emploee leaves and the employee is simply replaced with another robot from a never ending pool of robots making minimum wage. You want and expect more from them... demand more, and you will probably get it. I do all the time in the lab.

It's not the kids, its not our educational system, it's not funding, or where and with whom you grow up, it's our multinational corporations greed and short sightedness whos only interest is in it's quarterly earnings and our willingness to accept untrained workers in menial positions so the stuff we buy is a few pennies cheaper. We are all to blame.

At Cal I see the brightest and our best, based on grades and test scores, but I am constantly amazed by their lack of worldlyness and their conventional thinking. It's been pounded into them. We can, and should, do better; within them, is our future.
-Paul R. Haller-

 

I play 3D games on my desktop computer and, you're right, they can give you some skills. The problem with them is that they're a sedentary activity and they keep you from going out in to the real world to interact with the people in your community. Interacting in the virtual world of computers doesn't count. When I was a kid, my friends and I would go out and play all weekend. We'd be out there all day in the winter and would only come in when our parents told us to. We were very physical and we spent a lot of time interacting in the real world, not in some virtual world. Video games are one of many developments that have made inactivity such a problem with children these days. These days, doctors are seeing children with health problems that used to occur only in adults and even then later in life. Video games in and of themselves are not the problem but engaging in them all day isn't good for the kid's health and doesn't promote interactive skills. As I said, I play them too but I don't do it for long periods of time. The trends are less physical activity and isolation. I don't see those as healthy factors in child development. Perhaps the real issue here is one of moderation, which is something that Americans have a problem with in general.

 

More like kicking and screaming against coming in!

Boy, remember the days where having a cool bicycle was the shizzle?

Now it's Xbox...

 

My kids are all home-schooled for the first two years and watch less than 4 hours of tv per week. We are trying to teach them the basics before they get into the 'system'. No video games except for dad until they are 10 years old.

 

This will not go over well on here but way too much of the available funding is spent on kids which for one reason or another will 'never' be a part of society unless you consider the welfare rolls and prison a vibrant part of society. In my state the drop-out age was changed from 16 to 18 which added many teachers, or should I say baby-sitters and wardens to the school tax-rolls.

 

I am particularily aggavated when I have to deal with a young person incapable of simple math. There is NO excuse for this.

I grew up working in Dad's confectionary store (started at age 9) and it was like this:
"thats 32 cents for your Camels Sir.....OK thats 35 (counting back change), 40, 50 and 50 is a dollar". The Dollar was left in plain view on the counter until the customer acknowledged the transaction.

Yeah it was the 60's...the beginning of the info age...now the masses are vegtables at the alter of the machine... a pity. Wanna good laugh.... jusk ask them to identify 10 common garden or wood working tools :lol:

Ahhh I feel much beter now....