Why do I hate republicans? Because they lie, lie, lie, lie, and are so smug about it. Their base doesn’t actually believe they lie, they deflect and counter with “but Hillary” or some other such crap. The biggest problem is that they create huge economic problems that democrats then have to fix, and they actually blame the democrats for the problem in the first place. Most of the economic problems stem from the fact that republicans lower taxes without reducing spending, essentially stimulating the economy with debt. By the time the damage becomes significant the repubs are out of power, and dems are in charge.
R’s look back at the economy when it was undergoing the debt fueled stimulus, not at the eventual problems caused by their economic ineptitude. They promote tax cuts for the rich, while at the same time being stingy with the poor. Blaming the poor for being poor. The whole border thing: the border is not in a crisis. The continual emphasis on problems, exaggerating the negative. The way they twist everything. The lack of substance to justify their extreme anger and vitriol, they can only respond with slogans and soundbites. They have essentially been brainwashed, but accuse the other side of the same.
Why do I hate democrats? Because they have destroyed education. The number one question I ask democrats is do our kids have to actually learn anything in order to graduate? What are the consequences for not learning anything? What are we doing to make them learn? The BLM related violence in our cities, and the denial that there was any violence. All of the WOKE stuff, the cancel culture. The way everything negative for minorities is because of systemic racism. They make everything racist, then say it is racist to question them.
The problem is the extremes are both wrong, and it does not seem there is a middle ground. I blame repubs for that. Starting with Tom Delay and going through Gingrich and Limbaugh, they have weaponized hatred.
I want to mention that one of the reasons why the fear and concern about the virus can be dismissed is who it kills: the elderly, typically in nursing homes, who have already been forgotten by society. It is like they don’t exist anyway, so who cares if they die? They didn’t die, they were already dead.
Why does your freedom fetish lead to dictatorship? How is it that republicans reject the idea of the collective good?
I want to talk about what is a team. With the steam engine, lights, no one man created them. Standing on the shoulders of giants, etc, Different people, but placed in the right circumstance. One person has an idea, another person has another idea, neither can make their idea work. They have problems, maybe different problems. One sees what the other is doing, they have a solution to the problem they have that they could not solve themselves.
You have to place people in a situation where they are able to work together to solve a problem. You have to believe that no one man can solve it by themselves, which is typical of big, hard, complex problems. They cannot be working toward different goals, though, and there also needs to be different roles. One leader. Someone to direct, guide, make decisions. Others to come up with different ideas.
Look at the ICE, the idea that was developed was the only one that worked, the only one that could work. There are not multiple solutions. There is an external combustion engine, but it has different properties, works in different applications. It is also the only solution for its application. While in some situations there may be multiple solutions that work, often there is only one that works best. That is the solution that not only needs to be developed, it is the one that needs to be improved. There are different perspectives required, but they have to be working toward the same goal. This doesn’t work, that doesn’t work, but together they do. Have to look more deeply into how development occurs. Right person, right place, right time, but for several people at once. How do I apply this concept to our schools, to education? Are social problems different from engineering problems? What we have right now in our social arena, our political arena, we have conflict. Your way is wrong, no your way is wrong, the truth is both ways are wrong, but the conflict means that each position fights the other and each get more and more wrong. Each side has to recognize that their way, their solution is wrong, has to accept that. If both are wrong, how can we create something that is right? I would say that this is where a team is the solution, a team is required to solve the problem, but a team has to be able to work together. This is where we are breaking down right now. It absolutely feels like we are not only better at fighting each other than working together, but that we get more personal satisfaction from fighting.
So, a team needs different perspectives and requires people to fill different roles, but they all have to be working toward a common goal and not fighting each other. An effective leader can help insure that, but the team members also have to self-police. Everyone has to be able to truly listen to others. You have to overcome mistrust.
What I want to say is that it takes a certain attitude to work together to solve problems. You have to believe that you have something to contribute, but you also have to believe you cannot do it alone. You have to have help, you have to want to help. I don’t think I could have done this when I was younger, I did not have the maturity, nor did I have the knowledge or experience. My knowledge and experience now is both wide and deep. The lesson from Samuel Insull is that even something as important and powerful as electricity could not be used effectively or productively until certain standards were created, allowing an infrastructure that could be expanded indefinitely by being affordable and convenient. This is a powerful lesson, made more powerful that Sam was personally destroyed in that process, while the process and system he created grew and grew. We have to do the same for our educational system. I have to allow myself to be the whipping boy as long as I can stimulate change.
Donald Trump’s way is the way of conflict and division. It is a way of firing up and motivating his supporters, but it does not solve problems. I want to take some of those lessons, but actually be able to solve problems. Be divisive, a focal point for change. We are not going to please everyone, might as well accept it. That is the Trump model, that is the Dan Patrick model.
Here is an idea: pay for an individuals education up to a certain point, where ever they want to go to receive that education. Allow the student to progress as far as they can during that time, but have a cutoff. Require some assessment ( a means of accountability) to be required. What the left needs to realize is that they cannot (no one can) socially engineer a way out of our problems without creating other problems. These other problems are often worse than the original problem. Take college, for example. Companies and businesses need some way of identifying productive workers, and college was a really good way. Now, with admissions criteria being eroded, college is no longer a good indicator. What social purpose does college serve besides allowing people to get good jobs? Is it serving those purposes? If the answer is no, then we are destroying a system that has worked for decades to create something that does not work. The message from the right is that you have to fit into society, and not try to force society to change to meet your demands. If you don’t fit, that’s your fault. We have created systems (schools) designed to pull people up into the middle class. Take advantage of them, do not tear them down just because of what they represent. They work if you allow them to work, as demonstrated by decades of success.
The left is seen as whiny and demanding, weak, a promoter of racial resentment. Voters see Democrats as “preachy” and “judgmental.” The policies identified with “woke” have failed, and in the process of failure have alienated the working class, and not just the white working class. I see that too many students are just plain lazy, and have gotten away with it for far too long. It is in fact the lazy that have been forcing change on our schools, changes that have allowed the lazy to become even more lazy. They are not, actually, satisfied with not working, they want to gain the benefits as if they did work hard. This is what has to change. Schools have been changing because they have been criticized, but there will always be criticism. We have to call a halt, to say at some point that we just don’t care if you are critical. You have damaged the system enough, it is now time to change course. We want to be sympathetic, to have empathy, but it has just created a crack and the left has exploited it, doing their best to widen it further and further, creating new battlefields. It was the disabled, then the definition of disabled has grown and grown so that it now includes the lazy and the defiant.
One idea to open up school choice is to allow military veterans (or those in the military) to be able to put their children in any approved private school and have the state pay for it. The Hazlewood Act, which is a Texas education benefit that gives free tuition to veterans who served on active-duty missions. Approval would have to be debated. If a school is not approved, the state will pay for a student to attend an approved school.
There is absolutely a valid reason to make students memorize stuff, and it has to do with the work and effort it takes to memorize. It is a kind of brain exercise, and it develops a skill that can last for the rest of a students life. This is related to why a student need to work many math problems. Practice is essential, and it teaches students to follow a procedure. Of course its hard, that the point.
Discipline in the classroom is getting more attention, particularly in NC. There was a hearing, need to look it up. But their suggestions were not helpful because there were no consequences. There has to be both incentives and consequences. Maybe get families to pay a fee if their children flunk?
One more thing: why are teacher training schools not focusing on content, specifically the online content that is available? Not just making them aware of it, but how to use it, how to modify it, how to create simple and easy lesson plans with that content.
About those jobs that don’t pay enough to live on. When they were a small fraction of the workforce, consisting of mostly teens, it was not a big deal. There was a path to the middle class through unskilled labor, mostly factory work. That has now eroded. There are many more low wage service jobs, and far fewer better paying factory jobs. A lot of the factory jobs that remain require skills, an education. This is what has left a large swath of America behind. We have to either create more, better paying jobs for the un-educated (but willing to work hard), or transition those unskilled to become skilled in areas of demand. Why do service jobs pay so little? Because people do not value that service. They see that they would have to pay more for things they don’t think are worth it (fast food, cashiering, stocking). People don’t have to buy a new TV every year, but they go to the store all the time. They see those costs directly, they don’t want those costs to go up. We need a larger body of better paying jobs. Another thing is that people do not like the jobs they have. They don’t get personal satisfaction, they don’t value them.
