Sad......

[Just Duke]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0Y9j_CGgM

Although anymore I personally feel my education was for naught. Now I'm learning how to make saddles, six gun belts, farm and raise cows in lieu of degrading world resources just to extend my longevity.

[MtGun44]

Union teachers and "education schools". I remember being shocked when
the head of the teacher's union was caught on camera responding to
"when will the needs of the children come ahead of higher pay and more
benefits for teachers?" - The answer was "When they [the children] start
paying union dues." Nice.

Lots of other issues, like parents that do not care, etc.

Bill

[Love Life]

I had a man the same age as me ask me if I was kidding when I mentioned there were 2 world wars. I had no answer. I should have slapped him in the face.

[starmac]

Well that is all well and good, but just how many liberal arts , and social engineering graduates does places like china turn out? lol

Duke there is a lot worse ways to make a living than saddle making and raising cows. lol Saddle making itself is fast becoming a lost art.

[smoked turkey]

Duke, your education and mine was not for naught. It just taught us how to think. I also am working in an area that is outside of my original college degree. However, because of our training, I believe that we can do a better job at what we set our hands to do whether it is fixing the sink, or working building absolutely wonderful saddles. I have seen the effects of your work on here and you sir are one very talented person.

[Frank46]

I took a different path. Vocational high school. Studied electrical installation. But I think it was the navy that gave me a better education. I worked with steam powered turbines, pumps and generators. After I got out the local utility company was hiring and went down and took their employment tests. Spent the next 26 years working and operating steam pumps including some from 1911. Put bread on the table, a roof overhead, a wife and two daughters. Can't do much better than that. Then 3 years at a LNG plant and finally got burned out and packed it in. 24/7 for 30 years will do that. Frank

[km101]

Education is never a waste. Not only doe it teach you to think, it gives you a broader view of the world and how to live in it. Education teaches us social graces and how to live in society. There is too little education in the world today, and we are all the worse for the lack of it. Duke, education gave you the ability to channel your creative talents into other areas and do new things, either by choice or necessity. Education is creativity and adaptability and we need more of it.

OK, I'm off the soapbox now.

[41 mag fan]

Duke,
I have to agree with the video. It seems anymore the social system of this great country has eroded beyond hope. Without a solid social system, the education system falls to the wayside also.
My father in law (liberal) made a comment once that I have to agree with. A solid education of even white collar people produces less criminals. You'll still have your crimes of passion ect but overall the crimes will be less....and thats true.
Without an education, you have a system of uneducated people that only understand crime as a way of life, due to being uneducated

If somehow we could go back 100 yrs ago where the families were #1, not the dollar, the education system would follow suit.
What has happened is the computer age has made generations of dummies. Without a computer, calculator, ect ect people just don't know how to think for themselves.
Albert Einstein, Thomas Eddison, JP Morgan, Carnegie, Ford, and the list goes on, built their empires, fortunes, and this country not by using a computer but by using their minds that sits on top of their shoulders.

Whose the richest men in the world?? Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, ect ect are homegrown boys of the good old USA. We do have an education system that produces some real genuises, but compared to other countries, we are far down on the list. This gov't is more interested in letting the unions control our education, like Bill above posted, instead of laying down the law that the education of the people comes before the dollar and union dues.

You look at the other countries of the world, theres several things they have culturally that we the USA doesn't have as a whole. Take a look at Japan, China, India, even Taiwan, S. Korea, ect ect. they keep their families close knit, you get old you get taken care of. They don't go to a nursing home to live out the rest of their days. Instead they live their lives within a family unit, that family unit IMO produces a close knit socialism of family that ties into education emphasis.

Another major thing that follows right along with the social knit of a family is the gov't handouts. When you got a gov't, like what ours has transcended to, of freely giving out "entitlements" you'll have an erosion of social and educational values.
It's far easier to recieve a handout than to work at something like being educated.

These countries that produce some of the brightest people of the present time, don't give their people "entitlements". Those of that culture, have an inbred understanding that a solid education will get them out of the poverty they live in. They aspire to lift themselves out of it. They have something to "work" for, not given to them as an "entitlement".
They don't expect it, they work for it. Those close knit families that have several generations living under one roof, instill the education values to the next generations, due to they have tasted poverty, and know that a good education will lift their families out of poverty.


These foriegn countries, that are producing some of the brightest people in the world right now, also see the technology age we are in, will lift them to the top of the superpower chain, by investing heavily in an education system, and by sending the student to a foriegn country to learn, with the expectation they will come back to that country, and use that intelligence for the good of the country. Even countries with a huge population, China and India for example, the population as a whole is transcending to being educated, not just a small percentage. Each year that educated percentage of the population grows, and it's because the gov'ts of those countries are moving in that direction and the socialism of the close knit family pushes for it. A 2 prong attack I guess you could say.

Now one thing my FIL did say which will hold true also, as we move more and more to an automated age where the computer runs everything, those with a trade like construction, electrical, mechanical ect ect will be at the top of most needed. Skilled trades like these will be in demand and the people with those trades will be able to make a lot of money, due to being sought after. it might be another 20 yrs, but it's heading in that direction.
Just like your trade and knack for making saddles. Horses will always be a pet people will have and saddle makers will have a skilled trade in that niche that'll be sought after.

[Just Duke]

Duke, your education and mine was not for naught. It just taught us how to think. I also am working in an area that is outside of my original college degree. However, because of our training, I believe that we can do a better job at what we set our hands to do whether it is fixing the sink, or working building absolutely wonderful saddles. I have seen the effects of your work on here and you sir are one very talented person.

Thank you sir but right now I'm just a mere remnant of my past.
In my twenties I was 3 times the man that I am now and much sharper with better eye hand motor skills (proximal senses) along with enhanced spacial quantitativeness.
It is also not I that have the talent. I'm merely emulating the skills and craftsmen of days past while standing on the shoulder of giants. A creative anachronism.
At this present moment as we speak I'm thinking if I have enough shotgun hulls to load for a future move to the Greater Canadian Goose midwestern flyway season so your post is very much applicable and appreciated.

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

I'm merely emulating the skills and craftsmen of days past while standing on the shoulder of giants.

Th unfortunate part is that children today dont have many of these giants to emulate. All they got
is the freak shows on TV and video games.

[KCSO]

The only purpose of schools is to give one the tools to obtain an education. Some of the smartest men I knew never got past 8th grade but they had the basic tools and took the time to educate themselves. And most of them worked and produced for a living also.

[shdwlkr]

Duke
First you are not alone in taking a step back in time in skill sets. I am looking at possibly going back to a ranch type of life that existed around the first part of the 20th century. Yes I will take some of today's luxuries ( freezer, radio, washer, dryer, electric appliances and tools), but I want a wood cook stove, wood heat and maybe even learn to deal with being snowed in for the winter and have only my animals to care for to pull me out of the house. I hope to go back to farming and growing my own food again.
I had planned on being a mental health counselor but have run into a big road block seems the group ahead of me created a very bad taste in the mouths and wallets of those who allowed them to do field work so now they are taking very few interns. Forget the national debt of a student loan I have staring me in the face and no way to pay it off, forget that at my age we are seen as useless members of society, and most of forget that my brain still does function; something many young may never learn to do.
As to what you can do now and not do that is all in your mind no one else can decide for you what is a good life for you, what is a valuable knowledge to know and use, only you can do that.

What many have yet to realize is America is the newest 4th world nation in the world and we are very quickly going from a republic to a socialist state with few freedoms and even fewer choices in how we live and where we live.

If I could do it I would take me back a few decades and live my life when America was a free nation and respected in the world, but alas I can not do that so I will take me back in time and live as best I can with the limitations that exist today and just hope that I get to live to see things get better one day.

I can see when many things we just have to have today are nothing but junk, think computers, Ipads, cell phones, vehicles that burn fossil fuels, maybe even any kind of vehicle that doesn't have a hay burner for motivation even, most of the electric things we think we need because you will not be able to afford the cost of electricity. Yes that one is coming as more and more coal fired generators go off line forever. they produce something like 40-60% of our electric power think what it will be like when they are gone! Do you really think solar and wind power can pick up the slack? Nuclear? things are changing in America as we prepare to step backwards a few decades in living, working and living standards and few even see it coming. Should make for a really interesting morning when the electric is off and you wake up late in the morning late for work, no way to get that cup of coffee in 2 minutes, no way to shave, no way to iron that suit, no way to wash those clothes or dry them, no way to open that can of whatever, no stop lights working, no way to get fuel as the pumps aren't working, maybe even no way to get into work as the security system is down so the doors don't unlock, yes it is going to be and interesting ride ahead for all of us.

[Hardcast416taylor]

I worked myself through life and also went thru an apprentice program that got me a degree in Fluid Dynamics. Over the next close to 40 years working as an industrial plumber/steamfitter/pipefitter I came into contact with a good many "professionals" with degrees for something or other falling out of all their pockets. My opinion of most of them is that they couldn`t sharpen a pencil in a crank pencil sharpener without a book of instructions and assistence on which end of the pencil you inserted in the sharpener! Book learning is only so much good, practical hands on learning is the only true way to learn the how-to of something the correct and safe way.Robert

[starmac]

Hardcast we must have met a lot of the same people. lol The sad thing was some of them knew it and did their job accordingly, but some of them didn't know it and were in positions to be dangerous.

[Blacksmith]

I had a man the same age as me ask me if I was kidding when I mentioned there were 2 world wars. I had no answer. I should have slapped him in the face.

What do you mean two world wars there were eleven of them havent you ever read about World War ll?

I spent most of my working life translating for and educating both sides. As a Manufacturing/Industrial Engineer I stood between the very practical hands on manufacturing folks and the very theoretical and book learned engineer types and I will say both sides needed some learning. Actually neither side can progress without the other but both need to spend some time in the others shoes to be fully effective. An engineer with practical sense or a factory person the understands there are reasons they have these dumb specifications are both much better for their understanding.

[wgr]

I had a man the same age as me ask me if I was kidding when I mentioned there were 2 world wars. I had no answer. I should have slapped him in the face.

i would have told him sure was. both right after the first one

[45sixgun]

I am a public school teacher, and have been teaching for 14 years. I consider my college education a complete waste, and it took me ten years to pay it off. I consider the American education system a joke, a charade. I work in the top rated district in our state (for the past two years), and I won't send any of my children to be educated in it. We homeschool. I agree with most of what everyone who posted here has said. In my opinion the primary purpose of an education should be to create a good citizen, a moral and upright person, someone who can discern between right and wrong. Everything else is just supplementary. I just had a student teacher who was graduating from the state university with a master's degree in education. I documented twelve pages of her butchering the English language so badly I could only shake my head in astonishment (and she was going to be an English teacher). I had students who were more competent. When I presented this to her head professor, it got ugly and I learned the hard way you don't mess with paying customers. It's all a big facade. I often quote Mark Twain to my students, "Don't let school interfere with your education."

[Just Duke]

I am a public school teacher, and have been teaching for 14 years. I consider my college education a complete waste, and it took me ten years to pay it off. I consider the American education system a joke, a charade. I work in the top rated district in our state (for the past two years), and I won't send any of my children to be educated in it. We homeschool. I agree with most of what everyone who posted here has said. In my opinion the primary purpose of an education should be to create a good citizen, a moral and upright person, someone who can discern between right and wrong. Everything else is just supplementary. I just had a student teacher who was graduating from the state university with a master's degree in education. I documented twelve pages of her butchering the English language so badly I could only shake my head in astonishment (and she was going to be an English teacher). I had students who were more competent. When I presented this to her head professor, it got ugly and I learned the hard way you don't mess with paying customers. It's all a big facade. I often quote Mark Twain to my students, "Don't let school interfere with your education."

When they moved pops from NORAD we moved to a town that I would consider a white ghetto called Thornton CO which was ironically built on top of a trash dump and most suits the indigenous personnel.
So here I moved from ivy league middle aged urbane school teachers to a High School full of hippie school teachers that bragged about going partying with all my stoned out their gourd class mates that thought a thesaurus was a dinosaur. I locked horns with most teachers and we would just glare at each other. I to this day do not care for hippies weather they be teachers or students.
Myself, a crew cut, white button up shirt, pocket protector, aspiring rocketeer and the rest walking around with Peter Max note books, Led Zepplin t-shirts, ripped up bell bottoms, hippie hair, army jacket with kletter boots etc......
Bell Labs took and interest in my science projects and sent silicon wafers (components to make solar cells) to my school for me and we both had to literally fight the staff to get these material to me. Well I guess I did not miss much as I feel the space program has been a good place to dump all the melted down beer kegs and beer cans. Sorry, we science nerds find more applicable use for CH3CH2OH like...... fuel?
The 70's were a 10 year decline of the western civilization and almost set us back 30 years.
OH BUT BELIEVE ME WHEN I TELL YOU NOTHING GOT IN THE WAY OF THAT SILLY FOOTBALL TEAM!!!
The whole world there revolved around that football team at the school I was at. They would run about praising some deity that they won, they won!
Yea they won. Illiteracy is exactly what they won.
They also won debilitating injuries that would follow them into adulthood.
The players (i gave up my teddy bear, Monopoly game, hide and seek games at a young age in hopes to becoming a functional adult) of theses football GAMES were carried around on silver platters and worshiped by their peers for their winning the game. My observation witnessed a fabricated illusional euphoria they worked themselves up into during something they called pep rallies. As a control I attended 1 game and 1 pep ralley and received no physical or monetary gain from it and found it some what barbarous similar to one might imagine Goths battling it out without broadswords.
I'm just lucky I'm able to spell my name hence my script here is barely legible.

[Boerrancher]

I am just glad you typed it as CH3CH2OH instead of C2H5OH, as it shows you were taught enough to understand carbon and hydrogen bonding, which is far more than I can say for the majority of the folks in this country.

Best wishes,

Joe

[btroj]

First off, the role of schools is to educate. It is the role of the students to learn. Failure to learn has as much to do with students as it does with the teachers. Not to mention the role parents should play but often don't.

I also question the " degrading world resources just to extend your longevity" comment. What are you trying to say? The comment about the space program being a good way to "dump" all the empty beer cans in space also raises my brow. Are you saying you have become more environmentally aware with age? Both these comments sound like things I expect to hear from the current White House.

As for learning old school trades, they can be an excellent hobby. How wise a choice they are for a guy just graduating from high school I can't say. I bet they are fields with little job opportunity unless you know the people who run the shops currently.

The people who said we need more vocational schools is right. Our schools currently try to make everyone the same. Stupid. We need to have many types of educational opportunities for kids. Have a school eared towards math and science for those so inclined. Why not stop the shortage of people in these fields by increasing domestic production? Interested in the trades? We need a school for them. Teach them the skills they need for a good start, teach them the basics of business. A school for business types? Yep, we got one.

Like everything else, government and schools like the one big solution for all. Doesn't work well. We need flexibility. We need school systems that have the agility to adapt to current needs. We can continue to teach the same as we always have or we can enter the modern era and step up our game.

[btroj]

Joe, as a guy with a BS in Chemistry I would have no problem with either way of writing it. Heck, I would accept ETOH or ethanol too. Even grain alcohol would work with me. C2H6O is also technically correct.

C2H5OH is good with me. I'm not intoxicated with any one method.

[41 mag fan]

But you aspired above them and moved into a fruitful career. You're one of the ones who was looking into the future at your future, instead of going with the flow.

[Just Duke]

I also question the " degrading world resources just to extend your longevity" comment. What are you trying to say? The comment about the space program being a good way to "dump" all the empty beer cans in space also raises my brow. Are you saying you have become more environmentally aware with age? Both these comments sound like things I expect to hear from the current White House. .

I'll say this in laymans terms;
Were running out of food Jed so lets makes some cows.
The beer cans was sarcasm.
I have though watched a good many around us pass to soon because of recreational alcohol. Check the obituary section here on our recent loss HERE (http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?107801-Scarlett-has-left-us)

[Just Duke]

Th unfortunate part is that children today dont have many of these giants to emulate. All they got
is the freak shows on TV and video games.

The giants are still there. Only the children chose to just lay up there future in frivolous passive entertainment.
To open the doorway to the future you surely have to possess the key from the pass.

[WILCO]

I had a man the same age as me ask me if I was kidding when I mentioned there were 2 world wars. I had no answer. I should have slapped him in the face.

Had a teenager tell me he didn't know that we fought the Japanese.................

[3006guns]

I just responded to a post in which I stated that our California schools are now required to teach "Gay and Lesbian history". My wife, a teacher, is angry and yet there's nothing she can do as it is state law.

.....and you wonder why we have a shortage of gifted students?

[archmaker]

The education system is broken and we don't want to say it. One of my favorite things to remember is that 'good communication is about being effective", but what we have today is "communication that is efficient". Bear with me just a second. We have a system set up in our eduction that is efficient (GPA, SAT, ScanTrons, Multiple Choice, TAKS testing) all designed to inform the student and the population how we are doing. The whole system is setup to reward those that are the best at meeting the standarized test scores and doing better each year. This is efficiency in action.

But what we are missing is effectiveness, we are turning out students and adults who cannot think, that are not problem solvers. I see it at my clients and at where I work, we are strapped for people to come to work for us, but we can't find the problem solvers. All that is out there is those that can punch the checklist, those that efficient, but not effective.
We have traded effectiveness for efficiency, and . . .

Efficiency without Effectiveness just means that you are "going fast in the wrong direction".

BTW - I try to apply that lesson to everything I do.

[frkelly74]

We elected to home school our young charges and it has been working out very well. I , as teacher , now understand far more of the Algebra that I teach than I did when I was trying to learn it 40 years ago. I absolutely could not , at this point ,submit to the constraints of time and indoctrination required by public education. Our particular high school worships the swim team and "invested" $10,000,000 in a pool complex to support them, And they still charge the tax paying citizen by the hour to come in to swim. Dumber and dumber we go.

[1Shirt]

We can expect students to learn in school, but what they learn is different with each generation. I grew up before there were Teachers Unions, a Department of Education, and all of my teachers were dedicated. That is not the case today. We do have a Dept. of Education (but why I have never been able to understand)! We do have teacher unions and we still have some dedicated teachers, but for sure not all of them are dedicated thanks to the unions. What is not taught in schools, and unfortunately seldom in the home is responsibility, manners, morals, traditions, respect, and common sense. And as to teachers, particularly at the college level, is the old yankee saying "Them that know and can do-----and them that know and can't teach!"
1Shirt!
1Shirt!

[45sixgun]

I work in the top rated district in our state (for the past two years), and I won't send any of my children to be educated in it. We homeschool.
I wasn't real clear in the way I worded that. I've taught in this particular district for eight years. It has been top rated by the state dept. of education for the past two years. Standardized testing controls everything. I got into teaching English because I liked literature and I liked working with young people. Literature was still a bridge to morals, values, and issues of character, after God was thrown out. I still like working with young people, but forget about teaching literature. We were just informed that most of the standardized testing will focus on expository writing, so our instructional time will need to reflect that. This year my students have to take six different big standardized tests. This is all political. The tests are easily measurable for the districts and the government. (How do you measure the things that are really important?) The fact that the emperor has no clothes is becoming more and more obvious, so they try to clothe him with test scores. We have to gear all of our instruction to the passing of the test. It's so ridiculous. I'm a subversive teacher, and I still teach poetry and literature. I still focus heavily on character instruction, and I have to say, my students eat it up. They just love it because something inside them intuitively knows it's important, and nobody else is talking to them about these things. I'll probably get called on the carpet for it someday, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Some of you wrote about trade schools and learning skills. That's the ticket. That's the direction we're pushing our own biological children. I can remember getting out of college and going to work at a mechanic shop. I was also trying to teach myself to work on cars. The guys just shook their heads, cussed me out, gave me the finger, and asked me why they didn't teach common sense in college. They were dead right. Even though they were rough, they still liked me and would help me out.


In my opinion the primary purpose of an education should be to create a good citizen, a moral and upright person, someone who can discern between right and wrong. Everything else is just supplementary.
I think these shootings reflect the lack of this. The Colorado shooter was even a graduate student. These aren't dummies. They're "hollow men" as T.S. Eliot eloquently wrote in his poem. They have no frame of reference for discerning right from wrong. Worse than that they don't even know about right and wrong. It hasn't entered their minds that their actions can have moral value for good or evil. And that those actions have consequences (something fiction effectively teaches). Parents, teachers, media, and the government are so concerned with coddling their egos and making them feel significant that when they finally figure out the world doesn't revolve around them, they do something crazy to get back on the "American Idol" pedestal, even if it means killing a lot of innocent people.


What is not taught in schools, and unfortunately seldom in the home is responsibility, manners, morals, traditions, respect, and common sense.

Sadly true.

[btroj]

We don't have a problem with education any more than we have a problem with lack of gun control.

What we have is a society that fails to police itself. We tolerate poor behavior. At times we glorify it. We promote failure. We chastise "excessive" success. We worship those who aren't worthy and ignore those who are.

We have a society in meltdown. Education is a sign, a symptom. It is not the disease. Lack of self control, inability to self motivate, and a general lack of civility is the problem.

Sadly, I don't know if there is a good solution. I fear that things have gotten to a point where there is no turning back. We have turned our backs on the very notions that made this country great. Sadly, we have become its ruin.

[Just Duke]

It sure seemed like imagination and adventure were frowned upon even as old as I am attending school in the 70's. If one would have and "out of the box idea" oh my! you would be reprehended. Mercy sakes if one of their androgynous clones had an idea that was the least bit original they would surely have a faculty meeting and discuss disciplinary actions. We cannot advance as a society being cookie cutter. Heck being an engineer at my age I would never have a chance at another job. Companies want young people with new idea and imagination.
Here's an example;
I wanted to program our teletype computer to play chess. I was taken aside and rudely sat down by several teachers and sternly told "look dummy, we will never be able to play chess with a computer". Two years later a lady at the front door of Montgomery Ward greeted me per entering and said if I would fill out a credit application Wards would give me a free computer chess game. Wards had a huge saddlery dept and gun dept. at the time so I left with my computer, a huge wall tent, 4 rodeo saddles, 3 burner Coleman stoves (mine was stained with logwood dye) and a Model 27. I really liked the computer but sent it to my school teachers that called me dummy. I would like to note that 125 years ago these teachers would have succumbed to the rules of "natural selection". ;)