Plenty of battiness in the GOP belfry lately. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) wants to deport American citizens, as in the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) wonders whether the district represented by Rep. Raul Grijalva has been ceded to Mexico. Another Iowan, GOP congressional candidate Pat Bertroche, wants to implant microchips in illegals. And Colorado gubernatorial hopeful Scott McLobbyist thinks Arizona’s fascist immigration law is just peachy.
Have graying Yippies finally infiltrated the GOP? Or it it just that the lead in those Chinese-made flag lapel pins is wreaking havoc with their teensy brainpans?
Mad Blog Media 
The freaking GOP is doing everything they can to make sure every moderate or independent in the country has no choice but to vote Dem. They mock David Brooks, Colin Powell, and even David Frum, and look to Palin and Beck as their standard bearers. Honest Abe, Teddy R, Ike, and I’m thinking even Ronnie are all turning in their graves at what their party has become.
Seriously … try to name one reasonable Republican who hasn’t been kicked to the wayside. Chuck Hagel is persona non grata for daring to think that the war wasn’t a smart idea. Colin Powell is accused of being blinded by race for refusing to enforce his good friend John McCain after the Palin selection. Frum tries to say that the GOP needs to stop falling on its sword over every issue is it wants to be taken seriously, and he’s kicked out of the club.
But Michelle Bachman can’t find a free space in her speaking engagement calendar.
The Dems would get their butt handed to them in an election in any other country on this planet, for general incompetence, but over here they’re contenders because their chief opponent insists on shooting itself in the foot.
Aaaaarrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Depressing, isn’t it? Not that there are mindless assholes in office, but that there are actually enough morons out there to keep electing them.
WTF… Where are we getting these WingNuts in Iowa? Must be something in the water west of here.
It is embarrassing to be a white person any more. I used to think I was somewhat intelligent, but now I’ve upgraded myself to very intelligent. However, I thing the grading curve just got easier. Maybe it is the carbon monoxide we are inhaling.
Makes me not want to admit living in Iowa! Wasn’t BORN there, just live there so the wife can attempt to counter some of this stupidity by teaching philosophy at a local college. I believe trying to get 18 year olds to ignore what TV or their parents say and think for themselves must be the toughest job there is…probabaly harder than being a so-called “moderate” Republican these days. But I say let ’em go — right-wing bozos like Steve King (our representative in Congress, eccchhhh!) are heading for extinction.
Good luck and Godspeed to your wife, Larry.
My wife taught English 101 and remedial writing (eventually directing the entire remedial program) at a community college in Honolulu. My colleagues and I over at the University kidded her about it being “the educational equivalent of service on the Russian Front”. Of course, we were fighting the same rear guard action against the fall of American education.
Most of the students were not trained to be critical thinkers. Unless they had gone to exceptional schools, had exceptional parents, or a few exceptional teachers, they had spent their first 18 years having their tickets punched and expecting the same in later life. Trying to turn that around in two years at the local college was indeed a little like Paulus trying to defeat the Red Army at Stalingrad. The schools were funded with the expectation of high student retention rates, i.e., if you flunk someone who richly deserves it, you have failed and a smaller check will go to your dean or director. Nowdays, with a No Child Left Behind mentality, that “pass them or its your fault that they flunk” has gotten enormously worse.
We finally gave up and moved to BombTown, so we are better off than Paulus and the Sixth Army. Bottom line: until students are held accountable for their competence, the educational system will continue to flounder and we will keep seeing potentially good people raised as village idiots and fooled by political charlatans.
// Bottom line: until students are held accountable for their competence, the educational system will continue to flounder and we will keep seeing potentially good people raised as village idiots and fooled by political charlatans.//
I believe there are 17,000 high school in the USA. There are approximately 50,000,000 students enrolled in elementary and secondary schools across the land. And it’s a bit ridiculous to think that every one of them is average or should test in the same narrow performance band.
Football analogy: There are 11 players on a side, offense, defense, and special teams. But what if during your recruiting process, the only skills you looked at were those of the tight end and corner back, and you only were concerned with whether a player met some 70% benchmark. Do you think you’d field a decent squad?
Point is, of course lots of kids should fail, and lots of kids should over-achieve, and no one should get too wrapped up about either end of the bell curve during this exploratory period of their development. Failure is a sign that they need to either work harder or change their focus to something their good at, but it shouldn’t be something that we’re afraid to acknowledge.
The whole concept of shoving 50M kids through one big cookie cutter of a program makes my head hurt. You’re either going to have a huge number who fail or over-achieve, or else you’re going to have one seriously watered-down program which produces a meaningless degree. Shouldn’t even be called a degree. Just an attendance certificate. “I went to class more often than not and didn’t burn down the library while I was there.”
Having said that … looks like reasonable Republicans are in the same class as snipes, Sasquatch, and El Chupacabra. Goldwater used to joke at the end of his career that it was ironic that he was thad morphed into a liberal, without changing a single position. What’s even funnier is that now he’s considered a moderate.
Hey, Steve
I don’t think good citizenship is rocket science and it was not my intent to say a kid had to be on the Honor Roll and reading Edward Gibbon while in the shithaus to understand how to vote. But if you engage in social promotion, which the Hawaii Dept. of Education encouraged as their de-facto policy (although not admitting it) you end up with a lot of kids having a high school degree who are functionally illiterate and who cannot balance a checkbook. They were merely passed through the system. It cheated them, it cheated the taxpayer, and it set low standards for teaching. Of course, everyone got paid at the end of the week.
That was the kind of student who often showed up at the community college looking for someone to perform damage control, based on the screening exams in Math and English. Two thirds of the kids at my wife’s old CC could not place into Math 100 and about half could not make it into English 100, which were the already watered-down freshmen courses.
When a HS degree is that watered-down, its not surprising that large segments of the Republic can’t tell shit from Shinola. They never had to do it nor was it ever expected.
Sorry, O’G, to get so serious on a bike blog, but there is a fucking big hole in the Ship ‘O State.
Oh, yeah, underlying my cynicism of NCLB is the notion that you can drill kids to pass a standardized test more easily than you can teach them to think.
Gents,
As an editor, I get to taste the bitter fruit of the American educational system on a regular basis. Some of these kids — and by “kids,” naturally, I mean, “anybody younger than me” — should not be allowed to spray-paint graffiti on overpasses, much less try to write for publication.
If math and science are getting the same treatment as English, we are well and truly screwed.
But at least we have The Twitter Patrol. Jesus. I think I’ll go stick my head in the loo and flush it a few times.
Funny we’re talking education, specifically English. I struggle to find college graduates who write complete sentences when it counts. I’m not talking internal e-mails, tweets, and IM’s. I’m talking documents to clients or position papers.
About 12 years ago, I couldn’t find a soul under age 23 who could write. I still can’t. A couple of weeks ago, I asked a retired school administrator about this. She said the comprehensive exams that have been given in Texas since the late 80’s haven’t required a significant writing component. There’s reading. There’s comprehension. There’s math, and there are some other things, but writing wasn’t and still isn’t tested.
Ooooh, and math. Don’t get me started about math. My 2nd grader is completely confused by the extra crap her teacher requires her to do when it comes to simple two-digit addition and subtraction. My daughter is required to draw lines to separate the one’s from the ten’s colums. She is required to circle subtraction problems in such a way that the shape drawn “looks like a boot.” My kid is so flipped out about “drawing the lines and the boot” that she doesn’t actually know how to complete subtraction problems. I had to talk the poor kid down off the ledge this week. Then I assured her it was okay not to draw the lines or the boot. Then I showed her how to go through a math problem step-by-step. I, not her school, showed her how to borrow from the ten’s column and how to “carry the one over.”
She’s not asked to memorize any addition or subtraction tables. No one in her class is asked to stand at the board and write out a math problem. They don’t do flashcards. I guess flashcards encourage flashcard races which guarantee that not everyone gets a medal or a trophy or has high self-esteem.
One last bit of fuel for the fire. I am a freshman in college at the ripe old age of 53. It continues to amaze me at how poorly prepared for life so many of the kids fresh out of high school are to be a part of productive society. They get by somewhat in English and math, but as for current affairs, if it wasn’t on Entertainment Tonight or MTV, they don’t have a clue. How can they possibly have an opinion on the factors that shape our world?
Now that our news reporting has been reduced to sound bites, it makes it so much easier for the Rush & Beck show to influence their tiny brains into thinking that this is a black and white world. You’re either with us or against us seems to be the battle cry of the Young Republican as they hold up another paper target to shoot at and declare moral victory.
Jeff, it is not clear to me how one can really test for comprehension (either writing or math) without requiring a strong writing component. To wit, can you read something and explain it on paper rather than guessing on a multiple-choice test. So frankly, I am not sure what they are really testing, or if anyone has challenged the NCLB test-pushers on whether they are really testing comprehension. My wife is more the expert here since she ran those programs. But when I ask her about it, she heads over to the knife drawer and the dogs and I run like hell.
We had to institute our own writing program in my old geology department (as did several other science departments) because the students were not learning how to write coherent papers. Sure, they were taught to write sentences, sort of (they had no idea what diagramming a sentence meant) and some were taught paragraphs. Papers? Say what? Sorry, brah, but you have exceeded my attention span.
So I am in sympathy with those who are skeptical of our present school system performance. Just not sure the usual critics are up to fixing what is broken, as opposed to slapping a coat of pretty paint on rotten timbers. To me, it starts with doing what you are doing: working with your kid and instilling a sense of the value of education. Shit, when I was a brat in the previous century, my parents actually read books and went to the library. Stupidity was not an acceptable option.
Last comment on this one:
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=72779&title=dee-dee-dee-song
I know I said I would shaddup, but gotta post this link.
Boz: Glad you’re getting your undergrad degree. I hope you’re studying something you like. Good Luck!
Khal: Concerning the testing of comprehension, I have no idea how it’s done in Texas. I’m afraid to find out. With regard to painting rotten timbers, those who can’t write are now writing the textbooks and related multi-media infotainment websites. They are also becoming administrators with Masters degrees in Education. How did any of them write a coherent thesis? I don’t know. I’ve talked to them. Some of them were my clients. It’s scary because there are a lot of them.
Oh, and the accuracy of subject matter comes into question when you’re talking Texas education, e.g. Creationism/Intelligent Design.
Geez, sorry about stirring up this shitstorm! My wife teaches the college kids to write by rejecting papers (yes, they have to write some) with more than 5 spelling or grammatical errors. They correct ’em and turn ’em in again…and again until they’re acceptable for grading. I wonder if high school is really that much easier than when O’Grady and other old farts our age cheated our way through, doing the minimum while spending the rest of the time chasing girls or racing motorcycles?
“Stupidity was not an acceptable option.” And now it’s celebrated. “Elitist” is the worst name you can call someone. “I’m not voting for him … he thinks he’s smarter than me.” We should go ahead and start stamping “Confederacy of Dunces” on our money.
I lived in Georgia in the middle of the “evolution is just a theory” sticker controversy. The religious zealots (which, in Georgia, is redundant) put so much of the attention on the evolution issue that everyone missed the fact that they had removed any mention of the Civil War from high school American history classes. In an effort to raise SAT scores past their 47th place ranking, they tried to cut as much as possible to make room for classes that would directly impact the two subject standardized test. THAT is the impact of NCLB. We’re going to focus on getting everyone to meet a 70% standard on just a couple of subjects, and everything else can be damned.
I saw a TED presentation where some smart guy laid out every transformational discovery of the last 2,000 years, with the common denominator being that to come up with each great find, someone had to pull skills from two or more disciplines to connect the dots. Doesn’t bode well for us if we’re going in the cookie cutter direction. Don’t get your hopes up for flying cars any time soon!
How involved are parents in the education of their kids these days? This is another geezerly reference, but when my sis and I were sprouts, Dad was the bread-winner and Mom ran the ranch — she spent a lot of time using flash cards on us, hauling us to the library and generally making a game of learning everything from English to math. They were both fiends for education, having been denied it themselves, Dad by World War II and Mom by leaving home at 17 and going to work.
But today, I don’t see many parents at home full time — most moms and dads I know are holding down jobs to pay the credit card, mortgage, car payment, etc. It seems to me that we’ve ceded responsibility to the State for teaching kids everything from how to diagram a sentence to how to behave. The State, meanwhile, seems mostly interested in cranking out young drones to don paper hats and buy Chinese whizbangs. Doesn’t seem like a sustainable model.
In answer to that question about how to measure reading comprehension, my spouse reminded me it was done with something called the Nelson-Denny test, which many of us probably took in school. I recall that starting in about fourth grade, we (students in my little school about 20 miles east of Buffalo, N.Y.) were being tested annually and given “grade level” reading scores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson-Denny_Reading_Test
Of course, now there are factories training kids to pass the N-D. if they somehow didn’t manage to read. I’m not sure how you coach someone through a reading comprehension exam if they don’t have reading comprehension.
http://www.test-preparation.ca/high-school/nelson-denny.html
O’G, just an anectodal answer to your first question. My good friend Ramdas said he sometimes went to the PTA meetings in Hawaii when his kids were in school and was usually one of only one or two parents who showed up.
The TAKS reading comprehension test is a short passage followed by anywhere from 3 to 10 multiple choice questions, repeat. As grade level increases the passages are supposed to get longer and more difficult to read, but the number of questions seldom even reaches 10. Also the passage remains in front of the students for reference, not much of a challenge. What is really sad is that passing is required but very little effort is made to recognize students that excel, and social pressure is heavy to not excel because smart isn’t “cool”.
Sorry O’Grady, I guess you really paid attention and did more than the minimum in high school while yours truly dreamed of chasing girls and actually raced motorcycles. I did care about auto shop and worked enough in that category to get a couple high-school awards. My wife reports the education system is seems to be dumbing down each year, now they’re trying to make high-school credits count in college!
Actually around here the opposite is taking place, HS students are allowed to take Community College courses and if they pass they can then claim those courses as equal to the HS courses they would have taken, plus they can use those credits towards a Associate degree which reduces the amount of time they have to spend in regular college. This gets them out of the house and into the workforce 2 years quicker.