Good post, Kirk - and not a single word too long
My first boss used an indexing head as an example of the importance of what to
learn: You can try to learn and memorize all the different settings and hole
discs, or how to look them up in a book - but if you understand the principle
behind the indexing head, you can work it out for yourself *if* your basic
math skills are there to begin with.
--snip--
George,
I think your largest obstacle here lies in the last four words of
your last sentence. Saving, getting an education, investing and
managing your investments, raising children to become successfully
independent individuals capable of raising their own children...
all of these require a belief in the long-term consequences, both
good and bad, of our own actions and the actions of others.
Please feel free to contradict me, but I don't think that this is an
innate skill. I see it as something that, when it _is_ learned, has
to be learned by each individual. Parents, teachers, and bosses
can, if they choose, offer warnings and recommendations, but we
humans are a stubbornly conservative lot when it comes to deferring
our gratification; we are capable of change, but generally only if
we come to believe in some horrible and completely unavoidable
penalty if we continue along the same path.
Agreed. And a while back, the High School Diploma was considered a
sign of achievement, but somewhere along the road to Universal
Education it seems to have lost its luster. I don't know to what
extent this was the result of an emphasis on having teens graduate
from high school over ensuring that they acquired a high school
education, but the "social promotion" problem lends some credence to
this view.
When I hear President Obama saying that the taxpayers should assist
everyone in Getting A College Degree, I wish I could believe that
this wouldn't simply wind up being an Economic Stimulus For Diploma
Mills.
Find a way to do both and you'll have solved the funding problem for
undergraduate higher education.
> ... ==>Most people do not have making their boss rich at the
> top of their list of life goals.
---------
What's to contradict? The problem comes in when there is very
little perceived reward and lots of effort when you follow other
peoples warnings and recommendations. E.g. "I worked hard,
invested in a 401k, and now I'm screwed."
Indeed!!!!!
Most of this seems to arise because of serious confusion about
what an "education" is or means. There also seems to be
considerable confusion between identifier/predictor and causal
factors. *ALL* of the research in this area indicates that the single best
predictor of a persons adult socio-economic status remains the
socio-economic status of their same gender parent (or other adult
roll model/mentor). In fact, this correlation is so strong that
it is frequently omitted from statistical analysis in the studies
because it explains "all" the observed variation, leaving nothing
left to be explained by the latest "wonder" program under study.
This being the case, the fact that parents that can afford to
send their children to college are "well off," may have more to
do with the apparent benefits of college education than the
instruction itself.
To sum up, most college students are "pre-selected" for success
because their parent can afford to send the to college, i.e. the
more expensive the college, the higher the socio-economic status
of the parent, and the greater statistical likelihood of economic
success of the student.
However there are significant indications that there are other
"non-educational" factors in the apparent success of college
education in increasing income, for example the opportunities for
"social networking" and the potential to marry a higher
income/status spouse [boss's daughter?].
In one sense, an education [in the traditional liberal arts
tradition, not the trade school version] is a revamping and
expansion of the students mind to include a variety of
possibilities, options, techniques, methodologies, alternative
explications, etc., rather than a simple accumulation of trivial
pursuit "factoids." In point of fact, this frequently leads to
considerable family dissension before the student learns to keep
their mouth shut, and overtly starts questioning many of their
family's tacit/subliminal assumptions and meta-narratives [the
scripts that people keep playing in their head to make sense of
the world], and even worse starts pointing out the
inconsistencies and contradictions.
In the cases where the student is attending college/university on
scholarship, the opportunities for networking, and the expansion
of their perceptions to include alternative explications and
opportunities appear to be a major factor in their later economic
success, rather than any specific educational "nuggets," such as
"in 1066?"
This by the way, IMNSHO, is the fatal flaw of NCLB, standardized
testing, and outcomes/competency based education, as it is easy
to teach/test the factoids/nuggets and difficult to either teach
or verify the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy such as analyses,
synthesizes, and appreciates, as opposed to names, lists and
identifies. Sticking to "names, lists and identifies" also
results in much less parental friction, from el-hi through
university.
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
JN: I worked with a pair of very experienced helicopter mechanics on the
balancing and tracking of a Bell Jet Ranger Helicopter. They were using the
wrong polar chart. They were so used to using the polar chart in a rote way
that they wasted 2hrs getting confused and screwing up the helicopter. They
were only capable when they got the right chart. I own an experimental
helicopter that came without a chart. I had to learn the physics of the
tracking and balancing game and now find it relatively easy to balance my
rotor system. My understanding is useful on other helicopters that have no
charts already made up. Your first boss was dead right. It always pays to
understand what you are doing and not just act like a robot.
Stu
I skipped the meeting, but the Memos showed that Gunner Asch
wrote on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:42:53 -0800
And by taking around 8 million men out of the job market.
--
pyotr filipivich
We will drink no whiskey before its nine.
It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!
I skipped the meeting, but the Memos showed that Gunner Asch
wrote on Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:01:46 -0800
in rec.crafts.metalworking :
How can they afford the booze, if the money is tight?
Oh, that's right "Shut up and drink your beer, kid, we're too poor
to buy milk."
I just wish I had some bad habits I could quit and save the money.
pyotr
--
pyotr filipivich
We will drink no whiskey before its nine.
It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!
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