education

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Why Democrats Will Lose the House and Senate


Ever since 1932 when Franklin D. Roosevelt took on Herbert Hoover for the Presidency, first in the mind of voters has been economics, with the exception of 1944, a war year. Roosevelt’s campaign built on the failures of the Hoover administrations failures in the banking community, something Hoover, trained as an engineer, had little clue on a cure to the nation’s ills. In most elections the cry of “it’s the economy stupid!” has taken center stage. This election cycle is no different!

For about two months following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Democrats made hay. But since then, starting in early August, inflation and supply chain shortages have been front and center in the national consciousness. Democrats have stubbornly stuck to their abortion issue.

The year between presidential elections, the party not in power has historically made gains and frequently taken control of the house and senate. That, all by itself, should have put the Democrat Party on alert. But add to it, inflation and the declining purchasing power of the dollar, Americans, as history shows, will vote with their pocketbooks!

Nancy Pelosi has a compelling long-term outlook for our nation’s future. But that, unfortunately, is not how the American public at large votes. Democrats needed to keep such issues among elected officials and then educate the American public in non-national voting years, the importance of such issues. But even more, and along those lines, Democrats have shown little action in showing America why Republicans have no better chance of changing the economic climate than do they. They have not shown that what is being experienced in the US is in fact a global issue in economics. By simply making Americans look beyond America’s borders would at least give Americans pause to reconsider political campaign claims.

The Democrat’s war cry should have been “What is the Republican plan to change our economic ills?” Republicans do not have a plan, just a war cry. Leading Democrats needed to admit that they, any more than Republicans, can do precious little to cure what is actually a global issue. About 23.5% of Americans have a college degree, however, most of them have no education in economics. In a country where education should be of primary concern, few politicians, from any party, take the time to actually educate their electorate. I suspect that is because to do so would cause that electorate to actually question their political claims.

Democrats resistance towards addressing the top 5 issues on Americans’ mind, none being abortion, will not only lead to their losing both the house and senate, but in my estimation, the Senate will break 53 – 47 in the Senate and about 235 – 200 in the house, both in favor of Republicans.

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A Problem With Public Education Today


I am part of the largest group of people in the U.S. population today, Baby Boomers. We are fast retiring from the workforce. But are we done with working? To that question, many of us would say “no.” Many of us have advanced degrees which are comparable to subjects taught in high schools today. So what is the problem particularly with a national shortage of teachers today? The idea of teacher testing.

I have a master’s degree in U.S. history, a departure from my degree in engineering, a field in which I worked 40 years. In today’s job market, which until this fall, I worked as a substitute teacher. In most districts, substitute teachers are paid the same rate whether you have a high school diploma or a master’s degree. It is difficult to understand the reasoning behind that. Some districts do make a financial difference, but it is minor. Personally, I feel very underpaid and for that reason I have decided to not participate in substitute teaching this year.

Around the year 2010, after I had retired from the Federal Government and over 30 years of service, I took the Massachusetts tests for a teaching certificate. I passed 4 of the required tests, failing only one that was full of “teacher speak.” Those are terms that are peculiar to teaching and not found elsewhere. I did not retake that test as there is no handbook on such jargon. Such tests, and how courses are taught in teachers’ schools, need to be changed to align with common English phraseology.

All states have a requirement that a regular classroom teacher have taken a teaching course of study in college and have passed a certain set of exams to qualify. In the case of primary school teachers, that they have taken college courses in their desired field of instruction is entirely reasonable. But after that, such a requirement becomes less necessary upon succeeding grades, 4 through 8. In particular, where middle school education is concerned, most school districts have taken an approach to education that is similar to that of secondary education. That is, students see two or more different teachers during the day. Additionally, to their curriculum, the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) has been added as a single course. This is a response to today’s world.

Now, back to the “Baby Boomers” and their possibilities. Between STEM, mathematics, social studies, physics, chemistry, and other fields, there are many retirees who are either as knowledgeable or more than present classroom teachers. Now, especially considering the teacher shortage, states would do well to drop the impediments facing such people to joining the ranks of teachers. They instead should only be required to participate in and successfully pass an online course that teaches teaching techniques, classroom behavior, and student expectations.

I fear, however, that teachers’ unions would opposite such a move, much to their detriment. But to ignore this, as yet, untapped source of knowledgeable persons, is to shoot yourself in your own foot. Many such retirees could easily serve as much as 20 years in a school system, and, as they already have a pension, would have no need of a state supported retirement making them much more cost effective than life-long teachers.

The solution to your national teacher shortage is obvious. What is not obvious is why states refuse to consider these people and make changes to accommodate them. Personally, I feel fully qualified to step in as a teacher of U.S. History were that offered, particularly with my 15 years of experience in substitute teaching.

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Where Racism Does Not Exist!


For the second year in a row, I have been tasked with teaching kindergartens. Last year it was in Somerville, Massachusetts and this year is in Greenville, North Carolina. In Somerville I had a class of about 40% Latino students and this year in Greenville, I have a class that has 16 black students, 1 Hispanic student and 1 white student. At this age of 5 years, I dare say, most American children have no concept of race. They are pure in heart and mind. They are the perfect American.

If they are perfect at age 5, what happens by the time they are age 12 and all that has changed? The answer is quite simple. It is primarily the influence of their parents. They teach their white children, their black children, their Hispanic children that it is “us” against them. Secondarily, it is the influence of their peers and of the social norms of their neighborhood.

For 14 years now, I have been teaching in racially diverse school rooms. I can say that between 90% and 100%, the children in these classes have maintained their color blindness. They are racially mixed and most times to turn their backs on any one particular group would bring an end to those whom they call friend. They are mostly unwilling to do this.

It is easy to say that this sort of discrimination is part of white culture. But the white culture is not alone. Certain parts of black culture and Hispanic culture are also discriminatory.

When I was a child, my Roman Catholic orthodoxy taught me religious discrimination. We Catholics were right while all Protestants were not going to heaven. A ridiculous idea in most of today’s culture. Black culture was so tired of the overt discrimination they felt that they took to the streets to protest and, at times, these protests turned violent.

It was my father who greatly tempered my Catholic doxology with his Protestant Unitarian view of the world. They sought to find the expected good in all people.

Almost always through the eyes of young children, we find a perfect world. Yes, a good part of that is their lack of understanding of the world at large. Their world is one of family, school and play friends. Why cannot adults garner the same attitude as their children? Because they lack the understanding necessary to see all people in the same light. They have mostly allow other people to do their thinking for them, a most unhealthy way of life.

Whjle their may be nothing we can do for older prejudiced adults, their is something we can do for children and adults. We can educate them as to while certain minorities feel so angry as they do. They are not angry just to be that way. They are angry because of the overt and covert discrimination they have felt. Fully enlightened education will work. That education must begin at an early age. We as parents, as educators, as leaders of the community must see to it that our children and young adults are witness to a culture of good-will and acceptance.

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Unforeseen Positive Effects of COVID-19


COVID-19 has interrupted our normal activities in ways no one could have seen. One of our most sacred institutions, church/temple/mosque, have closed leaving us to finding a service on-line or just relying upon our experience with our particular faith. Many people have been told to not leave their homes, which, except for bad snowstorms and hurricanes, you never see.

Americans are indeed freaked out about COVID-19. They have raided food stores the likes of which has never been seen in the U.S. And some of their favorite haunts have either been closed by order of the city or because the business’s owner simply cannot afford to support a small number of people using his services.

My wife, who works as the bursar for one of Boston’s major educational institutions, has been working from home for over a week now. And this work from home has reached into many businesses, who formally did not use telecommuting or used it sparingly, to have most of their workforce telecommute.

I have been working in public education for over 10 years now in the k-12 public schools. These schools have slowly been computerizing and now most, at least in my area, use something called “Google Classroom” regularly for their students. Teachers can transmit assignments and have them turned in via this method. But it has also shown the shortcoming in this type of education. Students can ask questions via email but this method can be very slow. What needs to happen, and maybe some school districts are figuring out, is how to have students join in on a teleconference. I have no doubt this will be accomplish, necessity always precedes invention.

Nationally, we are seeing how a disease that was literally on the opposite side of the globe can quickly find its way to our shores and spread at an unnerving speed. The shortcoming of our health system have become painfully obvious. Most, if not all, hospitals are simply not prepared for a pandemic. But they are learning what they need to do. Worse, our country fell flat on its face in having enough test kits and test facilities for those who are possibly or probably infected. That too is changing and is likely to remain changed.

But in that realm of public health there is one aspect for which we do not, yet, have a response. When the health providers themselves become sick and shortages of personnel arises, what then? There simply are not enough trained technicians to handle a large influx of people requiring respirators and someone to monitor them. I suspect this shortfall will be covered by cross educating other technicians in this field.

The most important thing COVID-19 has done for us is to make visible all our shortcomings and is forcing us to address them. This virus will pass into history eventually, they always do, but when this particular one does we will have a host of new data that should forever improve our health system, our food distribution systems, our working situations, and many other areas. And that is always a good thing.

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American Education: Not For All Americans


After retiring from a nearly 40 year career in engineering and discovering how boring retirement can be, I decided to become a substitute teacher. From the very beginning I worked in an inner city school whose population is roughly 80% non-white. The kids were great and, even with a large number being declared “English Language Learners,” they were bright, conscientious and basically good kids.

From that school I went to an upper middle class town’s middle school, an education in contrasts for me. But earlier this year I returned to the school district where I started.

My wife is the bursar at one of Boston’s colleges and so we each have a lot of experience in education. This morning, a Sunday, while reading the newspapers, the Boston Globe and New York Times, the plight of the poor was brought to light in both newspapers. Simply put, too many of our schools are profiling schools to weed out the “undesirables,” or are pricing themselves out of a family’s ability to pay for education.

In the public sector of Massachusetts education there are three forces at work: 1) general public education, 2) charter schools and 3) vocational-technical high schools. The charter schools, according to the Massachusetts Department of Education, offer an alternative education for high performing student. The most notable problem with this system is that its funding comes from the same pool of money the city or town gets for its educational programs. Such schools can syphon off a disproportionate amount of money. That is, the per student cost of the charter school can be higher than then rest of the schools in the system.

Finally there are the vocational-technical high schools. At one time these schools were a haven for student who did not excel under the general educational model but who could do well in an atmosphere where they received training for a well-paying vocation. But because of their excellence the demand for seats in these schools has risen greatly allowing the schools to cherry pick who they would admit. In one case, highlighted in the March 8 Boston Globe, a girl was denied admission because of a single incident of fighting years before. Today she has a GED and no real hopes.

I have learned over many years that an entirely unique situation is rare. That said, it is reasonable to assume that most, if not all, Massachusetts Vocational Technical schools are cherry picking their students. That needs to change. The obvious answer, though an expensive one, is to increase the number of seats available. But there is another way which costs nothing: needs based. That is, children who come from the poorest families are admitted first.

Next is the higher educational schools. Recent trends from the Federal Government combined with rising costs of education, have priced out highly qualified candidates for college because they come from very poor families. It is rare that all college expenses are covered by scholarships. The only remaining “free” money is from the Pell Grant which amounts to about $6,000 based on needs. When you consider the average four year college education can cost $250 thousand or more, that a person carries more than $100 thousand in debt upon graduation is not unusual. That amount of debt can cost a person $800 a month in payments, which for those occupying entry level positions, can be overwhelming.

The United States trails many countries in its approach to financing education. One solution is to increase the Pell Grant maximum to the average cost of tuition and board on a prorated needs based metric.

We are the richest nation in the world so why do we trail so much of the world in our educational approach? We must re-evaluate our priority and come to terms with the long known fact that the solution to poverty is education.

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An Education Second to None


My birth family what is referred to as land poor. We had a big house surrounded by a number of acres of both open fields and wooded areas. My family ancestry shows we were the second family to settle Andover, Massachusetts, which today is call North Andover after an 1855 split. For the most part we were farmers, sometimes minutemen, then factory owner and by the 20th century men who commuted to Boston to work.

 

My mother and father met by an arrangement between friends and it was probably love at first sight for both of them. Unfortunately, I never asked that question, but I know my mother adored my father and my father deeply loved her. I thought I had the most perfect parents any kid could want. It never occurred to me that relative to everyone else who lived in our neighborhood, we were quite poor. Each of my parents worked hard and my sister, brother and I were well taken care of. That gave us the illusion that all was well. And in general, it was, but I now know that my parents struggled mightily to keep things together.
I found out when I asked my parents for my first bicycle that the ability to afford things was rather restrictive. The bike they found cost $10, a large sum in the later 1950s. It was well-used, but I managed to get many many miles out of it before it literally fell apart.
I believe I was about six years old when a neighbor kid asked me if I wanted to make 25 cents shoveling snow. Now in those days, in my mind, 25 cents translated into 5 candy bars. My parents could not afford to give any of us an allowance, so I was introduced to getting what I wanted via work. Much of this early work was what I was already doing around my house, taking out the trash, shoveling snow, mowing the lawn, and raking leaves. In those days we could burn a pile of leaves alongside the road. In the country-side one of the harbingers of fall was the smell of burning leaves in the air. It was everywhere and something I miss.
The lady for whom I shoveled snow I offered my services of mowing her lawn which she accepted along with taking care of her flowers. My business spread to other people in the neighborhood and I always had money in my pocket at lease briefly. My weakness for chocolate what as great then as it is now and I saw no reason to resist. But I bought other things with my money, a wallet, a pair of boots, a speedometer for my bike and other things.
When I turned 12 I was old enough to work a paper route for the Lawrence Eagle Tribune. My first route was rather lengthy, but I learned a lot. When it came time, each Thursday, to collect from each person the tidy sum of 42 cents for a week’s worth of newspapers. They were 7 cent a day, six days a week. The blue-collar and middle-class people would always give me 50 cents, an 8-cent tip, which I always appreciated. But the wealthy people always waited for their change with the exception of one man, Sam Rockwell, who was a wealthy Boston banker and as kind a person a you could know.
At age 14 and 15 I work on a vegetable farm about a mile from my house. For my 8 hours labor in the hot fields, I received the tidy sum of 3 dollars a day or 15 dollars a week that first summer. The next summer I got a raise to 5 dollars a day. Farms were then, and I expect now, exempt from paying minimum wage which at the time was $1.25 an hour. The farm was run by two Italian brothers and the fields were always filled with their parents and grandparents. I know at least one woman was in her 80s, and because she was widowed, she dressed completely in black every day regardless of how hot it got, and you never heard a single complaint. There were a number of these older women who were dressed in black. It was very hard labor, very demanding, and I got another lesson in work that I feel proud about.
When I turned 16 I knew I could find a job that paid better than the farm. As good fortune had it, there was a man who lived a very short distance from my house. This man I knew owned a mill in Lawrence. I had no idea what was made in the mill, but I went to his house and rang his bell. He answered the door and I introduced myself and told him what I was looking for. A 16-year-old does not recognize when he is properly impressing someone with his industry. Mr. Segal did not even give it a moment’s thought. He simply told me to show up at the mill office and there would be a job waiting for me. I had no idea that this job, though it lacked excitement, would give me a life lesson that I carry in my heart to this day. Mr. Segal’s mill was named Service Heel Company. His factor produced women’s shoe heels which when finished were shipped off to another company, actually several of them, who would use the heels we made to finish their shoes.
The mill was what used to be referred to as a sweat shop. That simply meant, people worked in a place that was hot and un-airconditioned in the summer and cold and poorly heated in the winter. The mill building itself, originally the George Kunhardt Mill, was built around 1890 and was part of the giant woolen industry in Lawrence. I would like to say that the people who I worked with ran the entire spectrum of a community but in truth it had one small sliver. Most of the people employed their had an 8th grade education, if that, and had worked the same job, in exactly the same location for 30 years or more. I know that for fact because I asked that question of several people there.
The thing with these people, almost without exception, is they were what was called “the salt of the earth.” If you worked there you were one of them and no one person was any better than another person.
I was a “floor boy” which meant I dragged boxes of unfinished heels to various stations where work was done on them. It being a union shop, I could work there for only 90 days without joining the union which was more than enough for me because it was only a summer job. Also, I was getting my $1.25 hourly wage which grossed me $50 a week, the most money I had ever earn. Those were the days that you had a time card which you had to punch in and out as you went. If you were one minute late you were docked 5 minutes of pay. That happened to me but a single time but that was enough for me to appreciate the idea of being somewhere on time.
The floor supervisor was a big man named Tony who had now problem rolling out his prejudices. Probably during my first week he took me to the rear of the shop and point out the window to the mill next to us. He said, “that’s where the spics work” and told me I had better not associate with them. In the early 1960s Lawrence already had a sizeable Puerto Rican community which some people like Tony could not tolerate for reason that make no sense. Ironically, I found none of that with the people who worked the stations in the shop. They were kind and very helpful. I got absolutely no training upon my arrival there and of course was quite lost with how to find what was needs and how to tell where I should be taking these boxes. It was the people who needed the boxes who train me of where to find things and how to get them to where they needed to be. They also made me aware that occasionally time sensitive heels would come through and I needed to be on the look out for them and drag the as soon as I saw them to the proper station. By the way, I actually had a metal rod with a hook on the end to drag these boxes around.
One of the stations was in a second building separated by a hallway and a large steel door. This was the paint shop where certain heels were spray painted. OSHA did not exist at that time and the man who worked the shop, alone, only had a face mask to protect him from the paint fumes. He did not have the oxygen mask that would be used today. I don’t know what, if anything, ever happened to him but considering the noxious fumes he inhaled, it is difficult to believe he was not damaged in some manner. But such were the mills back then.
I really do not remember the names of the people who worked there, some were but a few years older than me and others were easily old enough to be my grandparents. But to a person they were not but kind and considerate of me. I never heard them complain about anything. There was a level of respect between employees that was exemplary. I learned the life lesson of not judging people by their station in life. Rather look at the character of the person and you will know who you are dealing with. These people were of the best character.
The next summer I got a job at Raytheon Company in Shawsheen, MA, a part of Andover MA. I believe my basic title was clerk. I worked on the 9th floor of a 10-story building where there built radar systems to the US Army. I did not have a security clearance which occasionally got in the way of my job. The floor I worked on was concerned with completed radar components being properly finished and tested. It was the quality assurance section.
The job site, as opposed to the previous one, did employ a large spectrum of people. But there was something amiss with this group. There was lots of prejudice and angst between the various groups. People who worked in the metal shops and fabrication shops were looked down upon by those in the engineering department of which I was a part. Worse, this shop was also a union shop which had recently gone on strike. A number of men crossed the lines and of course became “scabs.” I had the bad manners to sit down and each lunch with one of the scabs and was told if I did that again I would be treated as he was, poorly. I hated that because I have never thought ostracizing anyone served any useful purpose.
I encounter one other type of prejudice quite unexpectedly. There was a young lady who I worked with, we both worked out of the same office but had different jobs but were otherwise equals. I found I that I was making 5-cents more than she because of my gender. I knew even than that that was wrong. I remember thinking that she had told me things about herself the left me believing that if anyone should be make more money it was her. It had to do with her background, but I do not remember exactly what.
I was glad to leave that job at the end of the summer. They offered me a full-time position with the added incentive of paying for my college education which I was starting that September. I turned down their offer, it was not a place I wanted to work.
And so there you have the first 18 years of my life and the informal, though extremely useful, education I received along the way. If you consider that I started work at the age of 6, I worked continuously for 52 years before I retired. I learned new things each of those 52 years but the best education I received were those years for age 6 to 18. They served me well and I am grateful for every person along the way who took a moment to show me something that was useful. God bless them all.

 

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Rating the Websites of the Nation’s Top Technology Universities


I started in computers in 1970, got a B.S. degree in computer science,  and a masters later, was a member of an IBM/DEC effort to computerize the college campus. That was in the mid-1980s. Afterwards, at another job where I was a project manager, my instructions to my web designers were simple: always make whatever you put on a web page “painfully obvious.” The user should never have to guess where to find something and going between a subpage and the home page should always be one click away.

Graphics are great where graphics are called for. But in the first 10 universities I reviewed, all of which either have the word technology in their name or pride themselves in the technology acumen, too many were overburdened with graphics. Worse, some of the graphics seemed like an inside joke, something a person working or attending the university would understand but which an outsider would be made to feel like an outsider.

My next review will be of the Ivy schools, except Cornell which I reviewed here, plus a few other top rated universities.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Home Page – “A”. A single frame page with links to every part of the university you are looking for.

Second level pages – “A” equally fine with a single frame, for the most part, but all the important highlights a potential or incoming student may desire.

Overall, the M.I.T. webpage is a model for all schools.

CARNAGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY

Home Page – “B+”. Scrolling required. Should have stopped at “the fold.” That is, everything below the first frame belongs on another page.

Second Level Pages – “A”. Well organized, no scrolling, and links off to areas potential student would want to see.

Overall, not a bad look. A few fixes here and there on the home page and the site would easily get an A overall.

UNIVERSITY OF MIGHIGAN

Home Page – “C+”. Multiple scrolls require on home page. Would have been perfect if they had stopped at the bottom of the first frame. Everything below the first frame belongs on a different page.

Second Level Pages – “C-“. Does not look like much thought was put into these pages. Way too much blank space. The “Prospective Students” section, for example, has many redundancies which easily leads to confusion.

Overall, is the Big Blue trying to show just how pretentious is can be or is it a lack of engineering oversight? Either way, it is not a good look for such a great university.

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Home Page – “C-”. The slide show banner has got to go! It is very unprofessional. This page is in desperate need of re-engineering. Funny I should have to say that about an engineering school. Kids today love the acronym TMI, too much information and that exactly describes this, the worst of the best technology schools in the nation.

Second Level Pages – A great improvement over the home page.

Overall, I recommend that Cal Tech take a look at the Cal Poly home page to see how it’s done right.

RENSELLEAR POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

Home Page “D+”. A slideshow at the top?   Why? The most valuable information appears all the way at the bottom of the page: Admissions, academics, schools, resources, etc. This page is easily the biggest waste of space of all the technical colleges.

Second level pages – “B-“. Some were good with all information contained within a single frame while others looked like the home page all over again. The Lally Business School page, for example, would be better served with much small fonts and elimination of the “Lally News & Events,” at least from that second level page.

Overall, this site desperately needs to be reworked. It is poorly laid out and is too concerned with past accomplishments rather than future students.

WENTWORTH INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Home Page “A-“. I would have given them an A” but a listing of current “events” simply does not belong on a home page.

Second level pages – “B+”. Not bad although a couple of pages were a bit long. Top in a prospective student’s mind, and his parents, is the cost of attendance. This showed up under admissions as a tertiary page. It should have been on the second level.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Home Page “C-“. A college/university president is not the most important person in education. His picture needs to go! Ongoing college events does not belong on a home page. The things most important to the prospective student look like an afterthought sitting at the very bottom of the page. Shame on you!

Second level Pages – These pages are well-organized and a vast improvement over the home page. Were it not for these pages I probably would have given Stanford a “D-“ overall.

I thought Stanford was better than this, guess I was wrong.

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Home Page “C+”. The graphic presentation which takes up the entire first frame needs to go, or at least be put into the background. Flashy is not always good and here it is just bad. The next screen down belongs on a separate page or pages. The third frame needs to be moved to the top in a place of prominence in which it belongs. And with it, most of what is in the second screen could be incorporated there.

Second level Pages – “C+” Same problem as with the home page, the information is spread out over many scrolled screens.   Most of these pages need to have the information which currently resides at the bottom of the page pushed to the top of the page where it belongs.

Those persons responsible for this site desperate need a heavy dose of logic and reasoning. The most important information an educational site offers consistently sits at the bottom of the page on Georgia Tech’s site.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Home Page “C-“. I counted five full frames from top to bottom. Here’s a thought, do it in one! Sadly, much of what presently exists on Cornell’s home page is pure eye wash. Everything the prospective student needs already exists in the first frame. The following four frames should have been placed elsewhere on the site or simply eliminated.

Secondary level Pages – “F”. Someone at Cornell is really proud of his graphics. Is that what Cornell is all about?   My first click at the top level was on academics which took me to a page that told me, nothing! Once again, lots of graphics about, who knows what, and I found myself in a position of having to descend yet another level to find anything about academics. And there, at the third level, was all the information I expected to find at the second level.

Overall, I hope Cornell teaches its students better engineers than that which they did on their site.

VIRGINIA TECH

Home Page “A”. Compact and complete. One of the best reviewed.

Second level Pages “A.” I am finishing as I started, a college with a good grasp on what a good website looks like. It is easy to maneuver and very complete with information offered.

Overall, VT site is right up there with M.I.T. as one of the best.

 

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Navigating Relationships in Your 20s


As human beings we are social creatures by design.  We are not meant to be alone and certainly not meant to live alone.  Somewhere around the age of 12 we all experience the desire to be with a special someone.  Unfortunately, schools do not teach us about friendships and relationships.  We learn by watching what other people do, what our parents do, and, unfortunately, what we see on television and the internet.  The last two, of course, are absolutely the worst places.  Still, we all seem to get into relationships that are doomed from the start.  Women, unfortunately, settle for “Mr. Right Now” instead of waiting for “Mr. Right.”  Men look for someone to take care of them, someone to replace mom.  We men will never admit to that but it is true.

Life is all about priorities and choices.  Young people, myself included when I was young, I am 66 now, seldom prioritize anything and are prone to bad choices.  Also, life is messy, just accept that truth and do not worry about it.  As much as you might think you do, you definitely do not know what someone else is thinking about you, never assume.

I recommend that all young people stay in school as long as possible.  Getting well-educated for young people must be priority number 2.  That assumes that priority number 1 is taking care of yourself and whatever that means.

It is not just young people who find the concept to self-care illusive, it is older adults as well.   I believe the most basic element to solving absolutely any problem we have or will have is that we keep a very sharp focus on taking care of ourselves.  Those basic things include eating healthy, annual visits to our primary care physician and dentist, regular exercise, and even something as basic as dressing ourselves.  The old cliché’ of dress for success is true.

That done we need to have a plan for our future.  This is also a self-care issue.  Until we finish the highest level of education possible or necessary, our education has to be priority number 2.  Few people at age 18 know what career they want to pursue.  Even some of those who think they do really do not.  What I recommend is that high school seniors who are undecided do one of three things: 1) take a year or two off from school and enter the work force while you discover yourself, 2) join the military, 3) when you enroll in the college of yourself do not decide upon a major, go as “undeclared.”  During the first one or two years in college there are more than enough courses all college students must take to qualify for a degree.  Those courses almost always are enough to fill a freshmen year and at least in part a sophomore year.  And during that first and second year discover what truly thrills you.  Discover what your dream career is and then ask questions of college advisors what it takes to achieve the highest level in that career.  With a few exceptions, physicians, lawyers, nurses, and some others, your course of action will probably not be obvious.  But regardless of what college you attend, there is someone there who can give you the advice you need going forward.

I have a B.S. in computer science and a masters in U.S. History.  The latter degree came from an extremely good university and I pursued that degree because I really like U.S. history.  But had I had my senses about me after I finished my time in the army, I was 21 at the time, I would have pursued a career in astro-physics.  At the time I would have complained that I sucked at math.  But the truth was simple, I did not know how to study and overcome obstacles.  Math would have been tough but manageable had I had a plan.  When I retired at age 58 I was sprinting away from a 30 year career because I simply could not stand going to work anymore.  I made a lot of bad choices and did not have the courage to pursue my dreams.

Between the ages of 18 and 25 young people are usually absolutely obsessed with being with that special person.  And unfortunately this obsessions becomes priority number 1 in their life.  In my priority list here it does not belong even in 3rd place, still too high.  But relationships in general do belong in place number 3.  One of the craziest ideas people have is that they should never date a friend for fear of ruining a friendship.  I believe people who think that way have only a tenuous hold on what makes a good relationship.

Our most important relationships necessarily are with our family of birth.  Our parents and siblings are our first relationships and given all the years such relationships exist, should be our best.  Too many times, however, that is not true.  Sometimes it is for good reason but I think that is the exception rather than the rule.  Young people, myself included at the time, think our parents do not understand us.  It is a ridiculous thought but prevalent.  What we all need to do is put forth whatever effort is required to understand our parents, where they came from and from that why they are who they are now.  There is no substitute for understanding.  Within the family unit one of the most common negative emotions felt is resentment.  Resentment, along with jealousy, is one of the most useless feelings we all have.  Resentments are founded in fear, doubt and insecurity and serve no good purpose.  When you feel a resentment ask yourself why and what happened to make you feel that way.  Then take good honest look at yourself to find the role you played in developing that resentment.  That done, let it go, get over it.  Resentment is the poison you drink while you wait for the other person to fall ill.

I have three daughters.  When she was in high school my eldest daughter came to me and complained that she did not have any friends, that no one liked her.  I knew that could not be true and asked her if she had one good friend.  She responded that she did.  I told her that she already had all the friends she needed and to not worry about anyone else.  She later told me how good that advice was when she suggested to her younger sister that she come to me about friendship advice.  It is my belief that people should practice being a friend and how to have friends prior to moving on to something more serious.  That is not to say you should not date, you should.  Just refuse to commit to anyone before you are ready and certainly not before you have the friendship concept down cold.

It is at this point people oft times find themselves interested in a good friend for a more serious and intimate relationship.  If you still feel you cannot be intimate with that person for fear of ruining a good friendship then I suggest you still do not have the friendship concept down.  Why would you want to be in an intimate relationship with anyone who would not also qualify as a best friend?

Try to avoid getting married before you are 25.  Considering 50% of all marriages fail, why not wait it out as long as possible?  I am not saying you cannot find that right person prior to 25 you can.  But when you think you have that right person in your life make sure you ask and answer the tough questions.  You want someone who is secure, devoted, monogamous, honest and who, when you are not engaged in sex or having a conversation with, you can sit quietly with and enjoy their company fully.  This is also the person who, when you are about to do something dumb, will lovingly suggest you consider your options.  This is the person who is not jealous, always courteous, thoughtful, and loves you when you are at your worst.  This is the non-judgmental person with whom you share your greatest fears and who knows all your shortcomings and loves you all the same.  But even my short list here suggests that you must be willing to invest a serious amount of time in the relationship prior to agreeing to marriage.

The long and short of all this is simple, make sure you can exist happily on your own before you make a commitment to be with anyone else.  Sometimes even with our best efforts relationships fail.  And when they do, do not be that person who has to scramble to find a place to live, to feed yourself and otherwise take care of yourself.  Do not be the person who will have difficulty in making ends meet.  Do not be the person who thinks because the relationship failed you are a failure too or that you are unlovable.  And definitely do not be the person who, on the heels of that failed relationship, quickly jumps into another because you feel desperate, lonely or anything else that puts you in a negative light.  Without being annoying or narcisstic about it, always consider yourself a catch and that whoever might want to be with you should be lucky to have you.

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Our Public Schools Are Not Failing Us: We are Failing Them


Today I figured out how long I worked in Information Technology before I retired out of a combination of frustration and burn out, over 30 years.  I took 6 month off before starting my second career, public education.  For the past 7-plus years I have worked in the Somerville (MA) Public School System at the k – 8 level.  As it turns out, and even though I am just a substitute teacher, it has become the most rewarding part of my work life.  Somerville is a working class city right outside Boston.  It also has a very large immigrant population primarily of immigrant from Central America but also Brazilians, Haitians, Africans, Indians, Nepalese and others.  By law, the city is required to educate all comers regardless of their background which for a city with as many low income inhabitants as it has, can be a very challenging task.

I work entirely at one elementary school in Somerville and have come to know the entire staff quite well.  In the process I have learn how to be an asset to both staff and students alike.  I have learned how to be a teacher at this level and this has made the experience extremely rewarding as-well-as allowing me to feel the experience as being tremendously rewarding, more so than at any time in my previous career.

I have had the opportunity to watch the regular teachers in action.  My take on them is that they are all not just well educated, but extremely professional, devoted, and effective in the jobs.  From experience I can say with absolute certainty that those who criticize the job these teachers do have never tried to do it themselves and have no appreciation of what it takes on a daily basis to be a good and effective teacher.  What does that mean?

Ideally, no teacher in any system should ever have to teach more than 16 – 18 students on a regular basis.  The logic for this is very simple but I suspect that few critics take the time to consider it.  That is, if you consider that a teacher may be able to devote one hour per day to each of the various subjects a student must learn.  Simple math tells us that means a teacher can only give fewer than 4 minutes per hour to an single student needing help, and they all need help to one degree or another.  The next consideration is the actual grade-level of each student in any particular subject.  That means, in any subject each student is below, at, or above the grade level they are enrolled in.  For example, each 2nd grader reads below, at, or above the second grade level.  While the distribution of such students should be relatively uniform, it is not a given.  And, it is more likely that more students will be below grade level than above.  That means each teacher must give more time and resources to such student to assist them in being successful.  But that leads to the ultimate problem, the individuals student’s desire to learn.

Intelligence aside, I do not believe there is any other single factor that is an indicator of a student’s likely level of success.  But the fact is, if a student is not willing to work to learn what they need to, no teacher, regardless of how talented they are, will change that.  Key to that desire to learn are the child’s parents.  The parents level of education and income are irrelevant if they are not fully involved in the child’s education.  And this is exactly where we are failing our children.  There is one other way and I will get to that shortly.

Every parent has an absolute responsibility to their children to be involved in their education.  That means they keep up with where their children are in school, that they are doing the in class work, their homework, and are behaving appropriately.  When any one of those things happens it is their responsibility to find out why.  This means they must consult with the teachers and counselors involved.  Teachers must teach, children must learn and parent must be responsible.  Sadly, it is my belief, that far too many parents feel absolutely no responsibility in their child’s education aside from seeing that they attend school.  But I have been witness to above intelligent students who are failing most, if not all, of their classes.  While some may argue that their may be a sub-standard teacher in a system, when the student fails regardless of which teacher he finds himself in front of, the argument fails all reasonableness.  But what is even more problematic with such students, is most of them are also discipline problems.  The tend to be disruptive influences in whatever class they attend.  This necessarily takes time away for a teacher’s ability to teach those who want to learn, in order to correct the bad behavior of those who do not want to learn.

Most people will say in response to knowledge of a failing students is that the school should not promote that child.  This happens in reality exactly once, if at all.  The reason is does not happen more often, if at all, is there exists political pressure to show that any particular school is not “failing.”  Unfortunately, the parameter exacted of what is failing, at least in Massachusetts, is two-fold.  First, how many students are held back, and second, their MCAS scores.  The MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) is a test students at various grade levels take once a year to determine their level of education.  School districts are judged by the percentage of students passing any of the tests given.  Of course, money is at stake.  Teachers necessarily tailor many hours of classroom time to assuring their students will do well on the MCAS.

One thing that is not allowable at the local, state, or federal level, is accepting the fact that in any population of individuals, a certain percentage is going to fail and there is little, if anything you can do about that.  What teachers and school administrators absolutely need is the ability to retain any student at any grade level until he shows he can perform at that grade level.  While this might mean schools systems have a group of 16-year-old 7th graders, it will also offer a fair amount of peer pressure to dissuade students from failing.  As things stand now, functional illiterates are passed along and enter high school unable to read and understand the their text books.  You can be certain that at the end of each school year, at least at the elementary level, every teacher has at least one, if not more, student who absolutely needs to be retained at that grade.  But they are not because directives coming from the schools system’s superintendent will not allow such actions.  The superintendent is pressured by the mayor, who is pressured by the state’s education czar, who is pressured by the governor who is pressured by the federal government, Washington DC politicians.

Anyone with a lick of common sense, and certainly all successful businessmen, know that before you can fix a problem who first have to properly identify what that problem is.  In this case, the fear of being perceived as a failing school system drives those in charge to promote the least well-educated while declaring them a success.

First we need to hold back any student at any grade he fails.  In calculating what defines a successful system is that system’s ability to show that on an annual basis maybe 2% of their student population is retained at grade level each year.  This would signal that the system takes seriously the actual level of education any particular student achieves rather that creating a perception that belies reality.

The ability to get parent’s to act more responsible towards their children is far more problematic.  Every good educator knows that children crave discipline.  And to a certain extent, so do their parents.  I believe that politicians fear public reprisals if they were to take a hard stand on education, holding children and parents responsible for learning that which is offered.  But my experience says that for every detractor of stricter methods, you will have 10 supporters.  And while the detractors may be for vocal, it is the supporters who guarantee your program’s success.

Every time we promote a student to a level he is not prepared for, we fail that student.  You hold a student back enough and sooner or later he will get the message and start working.  That will be difficult when you have that child’s parent in your office screaming that he should be promoted, but standing by certain principles will bring them around too, eventually.  But given time, even the most stubborn person will eventually realize that it is not profitable to do 60 MPH in a 30 MPH zone and not expect to get a speeding ticket.

Nearly 100% of all schools succeed 100% of the time using the parameters given them today.  But it is those parameters, composed by politicians and their public, that are failing our schools.

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Why Is Birth Control Still a Hot Topic?


Four of the hottest topics in the history of America have all involved individual rights, slavery, rights of blacks, right of women to vote, and birth control.  Three of those are no longer hot topics but all can find their roots in the early to mid-19th Century.  Why then have we been unable to make the basic tenants of birth control something that is widely accepted so that any discussion of it has a baseline of accepted principles?  The only reason is because there are those who want it to be a part of morality.

Our country realized when it repealed the 21st Amendment, alcohol prohibition, that it could not legislate morality as was done with this amendment.  We clearly recognized that at least where drinking was concerned, whatever morals were attached to it were an entirely personal thing that governments have no business legislating.

In the early 20th Century a woman named Margaret Sanger, of poor Irish Catholic parents from Corning New York, moved to the lower east side of New York City where she set up a woman’s clinic.  As a trained nurse, and one who had aspired to be a physician, she found that the health of poor women was poorly attended to, and worse, there was no forum for the woman to be educated relative to her own body.  Such discussions were considered taboo at the time.  She had found the urban poor to suffer from an extremely high infant mortality rate.  But it was at that time she also found that many of these women desired to find a way to forestall unwanted pregnancies.  And it was on this point in particular that Sanger lead the charge.  He efforts were both criticized and condemned by early 20th century society.  When she tried to inform a larger number of women by sending sex education materials through the mail, she was prosecuted and found guilty of distributing pornography.  That was in 1917 and at the time she received a large amount of her support from the suffragettes.  But when, in 1920, women got the vote, the suffrage movement ceased and with it Sanger’s best support.  And worse for her, she had earlier allied herself with the Socialist movement in the U.S. and alienated even more people because of that.

Sanger died in 1966 failing to see what would certainly have been her greatest victory, the 1973 US Supreme Court decision on Roe vs. Wade.  The SJC decided that it was an issue of privacy and that abortion was the moral decision of a woman in conjunction with her doctor.  That should have made the issue resolved and given the American public a starting place to move on from.  Unfortunately that has not been the case.

Sanger’s inspiration was the idea of giving women the information necessary about her body to make educated decisions with regard to it.  Key to the discussion was always the word “education.”  And it is on this point which America is failing.  Our high teen birth rate, high abortion rate, and high undesired birth rate.

I find abortion to be absolutely abhorrent.  But my solution is not to ban abortion, but to better educate those who have abortions and unwanted pregnancies, teens in particular.  My challenge to the anti-abortion crowd, who euphemistically call themselves “Pro-life,” is to come up with a solution that reduces a woman’s need and/or desire to get an abortion.  It is troubling that these anti-abortion people also seem to be anti-sex education where adolescents and teens are concerned.  Their magical thinking allows that all the sex education they need they can find at home.  Ideally that would be true, but the real world tells an entirely different story.  It is not coincidental that the highest teen birth rates happens to the poorest educated.  It is also not coincidental that unwanted pregnancies happen most frequently not just to teens, but to the poor who do not have access to good medical support.

I was astonished that within the US Congress there is a movement to cease public funding of Planned Parenthood.  While the organization certainly advises women with regard to abortion, its services do not stop there.  They also deal with all aspects of women’s health and education, such as cervical cancer screening, breast cancer screening, STDs and so forth.  How can anyone in their right mind think that public funding for such a group is a bad thing?

America first has to come to terms with the fact that it needs to educate their children with what is happening to their bodies as they enter puberty.  And that education needs to continue, in the public forum, for as long as they are in school.  It is far less expensive, in all respects, to educate our children with regard to sex than it is to have them pregnant when they have not yet stopped being children.  To do this Americans must stop thinking of sex, where education is concerned, as being private, taboo, or too embarrassing.  And also because sexually transmitted diseases, to include AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis, etc. put us all at risk.

To anti-abortionists I say, support those things that help women from getting pregnant in the first place.  Make it a given that all young girls and women will have equal and unobstructed access to birth control methods.  Make a part of that education the actual costs, both financial and psychological, of bringing a child into the world.  Make a world where abortion is only a last resort, not a convenience, or measure of desperation.  There is no substitute for a well-educated and well-informed public.