[Novalug] [OT] The farce of the cost of college

Bryan J Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Tue Jun 9 07:11:38 EDT 2015


I think we all agree we're in trouble.

But I think it's the result of Americans wanting to polarize everything and
argue, from two, aligned sides. Our leaders and their actions wouldn't be
possible if we wouldn't blindly align and defend their positions.

But most of our fate was sealed long ago, when we wanted to focus on the
consumer purchasing dollar and higher education, instead of industrial
production and trades.  Today we're just moving money, starving off the
inevitable.

-- bjs

DISCLAIMER: Sent from phone, please excuse any typos
-- 
Bryan J Smith - Technology Mercenary
b.j.smith@ieee.org - http://linkedin.com/in/bjsmith

On Jun 9, 2015 6:06 AM, "Rich Kulawiec via Novalug" <
novalug@firemountain.net> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 06:28:07PM -0400, Bryan J Smith via Novalug wrote:
> > This is just as absolute-type polarizing as right-wingers talking
> > about Creationism in absolute terms.
>
> It's shorthand -- I could have made a much longer and more nuanced list
> but I was trying to be brief.  My point is that we are surrounded by
> a vast sea of entrenched ignorance on numerous topics ranging from
> terrorism (it's a non-issue: Americans are as likely to be killed by
> their own furniture than by a terrorist attack [1]) to basic physics
> (no, Apollo 13 couldn't just turn around and come back).  Worse, there
> are people *defending* that ignorance because it suits their agenda(s).
>
> Quite some time ago, in a similar discussion, I wrote this:
>
>         I expect high school seniors to know what a covalent bond is, to
>         have read Hamlet, to know the implications of the second law of
>         thermodynamics, to be able to order dinner in a foreign language,
>         to know why Catch-22 is the best catch there is, to understand why
>         speciation occurs, to grasp why Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin's
>         meeting at Yalta matters, to know why "We take XXXX seriously"
>         is corporate bullshit, and to recognize John Coltrane as a genius.
>
> That's also shorthand.
>
> Both are my way of saying that I think we should set the bar for
> educational outcomes high, and then we should fund it -- as much as
> necessary -- to make it happen.  I don't care if someone spends 2 years
> or 20 years studying Grecian pottery or in-flight control systems: a
> more educated population across the board on as many topics as possible
> is a good thing for any society.
>
> (Yes, some people -- a few -- will become perpetual students.  I'm fine
> with that.  In fact, I hope that happens.  It's a feature, not a bug.
> Once in a while, one of those people who is fooling around with something
> that everyone else thinks is pointless will come across something and
> say "Hmmm...that's odd."  Moments like that at places like Bell Labs
> have paid for the entire investment thousands of times over.)
>
> Alternatively, as Mark Twain put it over a century ago:
>
>         Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What
>         you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a
>         dog on his own tail.  It won't fatten the dog.
>
> Baltimore has failed to grasp this and is now planning on spending
> money on a youth jail at the same time that it's closing schools.
> That's off-the-charts stupid.  Everyone in the room with that decision
> should be fired instantly and banned from public service for life.
>
> There is no such thing as "too much money spent on education", if one
> is trying to build a society of healthy, happy, capable people with
> a thriving economy and a bright future.  We *have* the money, we just
> prefer to fritter it away on useless, pointless, insanely expensive
> things we don't need, like, oh, the DHS.  And that is why we're
> in deep trouble.
>
> ---rsk
>
> [1] See:
>
>         Americans Are as Likely to Be Killed by Their Own Furniture as by
> Terrorism
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/americans-are-as-likely-to-be-killed-by-their-own-furniture-as-by-terrorism/258156/
> **********************************************************************
> The Novalug mailing list is hosted by firemountain.net.
>
> To unsubscribe or change delivery options:
> http://www.firemountain.net/mailman/listinfo/novalug
>



More information about the Novalug mailing list