WORTH READING Kids.....(Easy scapegoats aren't they?)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Again for the record, I often distribute articles that make people  
angry to provoke thinking djf


Begin forwarded message:

From: "Anthony Watson" <anthony () neo-liberalism org>
Date: November 16, 2008 5:46:48 PM EST
To: <dave () farber net>
Subject: [IP] Re:    Kids.....(Easy scapegoats aren't they?)

Hello Professor:

At the risk of sounding obsequious, I again want to thank you for  
running this list.  However, I can barely articulate my disgust with  
this thread.  Here we have a bunch of “holier than thou” academics  
scapegoating the “kids” for education’s failures.  There they are in  
their public sector ivory towers, tenured and protected by their  
unions.  Poor private sector parents paying enormous amounts of money  
for tuitions may have a case for their entitlement ideas given the  
amounts of money they are shelling out.   I could go and on about the  
advantages that educators have over private sector workers, but I have  
not the time given my own private sector pressures.  Like trying to  
pay the mortgage while paying into an enormous black hole called  
social security too, a black hole most educators manage to avoid  
through public sector pension funds that will actually be there when  
they retire.

On issue after issue, a dead body can be put at the doorstep of  
professional educators…let me count the ways.  Favoring foreign  
students over domestic, because they pay larger tuitions.  Or creating  
the huge conservative backlash by making the 1970’s and 80’s  
university so hostile to any free thought.  If you did not bow down to  
liberal dogma as a student in these years you were flunked out and  
drummed out of academia.  Or perhaps the “Political Science” for a  
buck that allowed the global climate change debate to remain  
unresolved until there is barely a North Pole left.  Or the “I’ll do  
anything to get my research to be funded” mentality even if it means  
taking DARPA money that makes my scientific research classified and  
used to make weapons rather than really better the state of humanity.

Interestingly, this thread reminds me of Bill Gates blaming schools  
and kids for the messed up state of America and its education system.   
Here is Bill Gates’ critique of dumb American kids and the rules he  
thinks American kids fail to live by, because educators are too soft  
on them!
<<<<<<<<<
Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will  
expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You  
won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both .
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your  
Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it  
“Opportunity”.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine  
about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they  
are now.  They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your  
clothes and listening to you
talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain  
forest from the Parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing  
the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but  
life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and  
they'll give you as MANY TIMES
as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest  
resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off  
and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.   
Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually  
have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to Nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for  
one.    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Really though in defense of education, I would say the following-à

What does Bill Gates know about helping schools teach children to be  
successful in business?  First and foremost, Bill Gates got his entree  
to the IBM boardroom through his Mom's contacts. She was on the Board  
of Directors.   He is not quite the self-made man, he would want us  
all to believe he is.  He never flipped burgers.  He had intellectual  
property, which he ripped off from an older developer.    His Mom was  
on IBM's board and got him the meetings that got him the sales of his  
pirated operating system.   DOS was licensed exclusively to the giant  
corporation and he made a mint.   He keeps telling Congress that he  
needs to hire more foreigners to work at Microsoft.  He keeps pushing  
for greater increased H1B visas quotas while laying off American  
programmers.

The American school system is producing less and less high tech  
engineers and developers, not because American kids are stupid.  It is  
because they are SMART!  They can see what happened to American  
programmers in the dotcom flameout.  They see the government making  
trade deals with India that include promises to allow more foreign  
workers.  They see Indians all over the engineering and programming  
jobs, having the inside track.  If you are smart, why would you go  
through the pain and suffering that an engineer goes through to get  
his degree only to get outsourced or have to train your H1B visa  
replacement.  Instead if you are a smart American student you become a  
lawyer or a doctor or even a plumber, jobs that will not be outsourced.

Bill Gates is the most UNPATRIOTIC S.O.B., I can imagine and so are  
the sniveling and sniping educators on this thread.  Bill Gates sells  
America's future for today's profits while destroying the American  
middle class by importing foreign workers that he can pay less.  He is  
a master of labor arbitrage.  Many educators sit in their ivory towers  
and blame the students for the mess that is the American education  
system rather than looking at their own commitment to the kids, they  
are supposed to be educating.

The kids are not the problem!!!!  It is the adults in positions of  
power that do little else, but blame the kids for their own failures.   
You are either part of the solution or part of the problem and blaming  
American kids, THIS COUNTRY’S FUTURE GENERATION, is in no way  
productive.  This thread makes me sick!

Enough said…

Yours very truly,

Anthony Watson



>Begin forwarded message:
>
>From: Rahul Tongia <tongia () cmu edu>
>Date: November 13, 2008 4:22:35 PM EST
>To: dave () farber net
>Subject: Re: [IP] Re:    re: Kids.....
>Reply-To: tongia () cmu edu
>
>Dave,
>
>I can vouch for a student *formally complaining* when I didn't respond
>to her email about a HW due on Monday. Except the student emailed
>after 5 or 6 PM friday. And complained early Sat. morning.
>
>Why is this? Part of this shift may be due to grade inflation and
>expectations.  Are faculty also facilitating this? There are studies
>that show that a lenient or high-scoring faculty member gets better
>reviews/evaluations. Forget how well he/she served the students.
>Thus, faculty tend to want to "keep the customers happy". Universities
>are to blame for this in how they evaluate faculty.
>
>I also think we have bi or multimodal distributions. Some students may
>be demanding, overly so, but others are quite deferential (esp. some
>international students).  I certainly don't want submissive sheep for
>students. But I don't want students who think they are right by  
default.
>
>Rahul
>
>
>David Farber wrote:
>>Begin forwarded message:
>>From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
>>Date: November 11, 2008 11:35:52 AM EST
>>To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
>>Subject: [Dewayne-Net] re: Kids.....
>>[Note:  This comment comes from reader Mike O'Dell.  DLH]
>>From: Michael O'Dell <mo () ccr org>
>>Date: November 11, 2008 6:49:25 AM PST
>>To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
>>Subject: re: Kids.....
>>my major professor had a phrase he would use (back in the 70s!!)
>>to express his outrage at wacko "student expectations"
>>"This is NOT a #$%@$!%@ High School with Ash Trays!"
>>a bit dated, obviously, but the sentiment is no less the case
>>30 years later.
>>-mo
>>RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>
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