Basic Education

As I watch the march of time go by and think back to when I was in school, I remember the conversations I had with my grandparents. It occurs to me that one thing is missing in today’s basic education system. Today we place a great emphasis on how poorly our education system is in regards to the rest of the world. The point of fact is that our priorities in education have become so skewed towards meeting that worldly goal that we don’t educate our kids to become productive citizens. I am introducing this topic tonight as I have several ideas on it; however, I am trying to keep this blog to shorter entries and if I was to go on with all the ideas I have it would fill the chapter of a book rather than a one page blog entry.

Somehow, we have lost the real reason to have a free public education in this country. Today we focus on letting the schools prepare the kids for college while we prepare them for athletics. Seriously, how many parents out there have spent as much time with your kids working on their math as you have throwing them the ball. Hey, we’re all guilty in this. Even if your child is doing well in school and has book smarts, how prepared are they to handle their future and be a productive participant. Whether they go to college, attend a tech or trade school, or enter the work force; K-12 school should be the place for the kids to get this education. There needs to be a better representation across the board on the subjects taught. The courses taught must fit the students whether academic, technical, or practical.

Another area of thought is the teachers and there qualifications. Why is it that every teacher needs a four year college degree and a one year teachers qualification. My grandfather worked his way through his first two years of college by teaching primary school. These kids turned out fine, one even became the governor of his home state and a pretty significant senator. So if he taught as an undergrad in his first two years of college, why can’t a college graduate with an associates degree and a teacher’s certification teach sixth grade and below - more on that in another blog.

Why do we pay so much for high school athletics and under-fund other areas of the school. Currently, in our local high school, we fund our athletics program (granted not like other schools in the area) and have no budget for our agriculture program or our theatre arts program. I know this may sound petty, but we have had just about as many theatre scholarships as athletic scholarships given to our high school graduates. What is really sad is that while very few if anyone from the local high school has had a significant career in sports or theatre, we have and do produce professional farmers and ranchers each and every year. I don’t know, does this sound like a fair use of the tax-payer’s money?

To sum up this first blog on education, the basic problem is that we don’t allow the local entities in charge to forge the education path of their local school while meeting a basic standard. Instead, we have a nosy state government that delves into all aspects of the education arena and a massively huge federal bureaucracy in the form of the Department of Education that has failed to make any positive advances overall in 30 years of existence.

Thanks,
Bill

Government Action

I promised that this blog would not be partisan and I intend to continue with that policy. With that thought in mind, I am writing this second political blog entry with the understanding that the problems talked about in this entry are the responsibility of both the major political parties and us, as Americans. As the voting public, we have allowed our country to travel down the road it is currently on for far too long. We have allowed this by not keeping ourselves informed of the issues as talked about in the previous blog about being an informed voter. This entry is simply a device to help begin the thought path that will hopefully motivate some to seek out more information.

What is it that makes people think that the federal government can solve any of the social problems we face. I often find it incredible that anyone could even think that the government could handle anything better than they could on their own. I would love to hear of one single item that the United States government can tout as an example of their success on the social agenda. Is it Social Security…NO! Is it Medicaid or Medicare…NO! Is it control of the borders…NO! Betterment of the education system in America…NO! Actually, there is nothing. Not one time in the history of this country has the federal government conducted any action in the realm of social policy that can be judged as a long-term success.

Following the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression that followed, the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations enacted policy after policy that kept the U.S. languishing in a depression far longer than any other industrialized country on Earth, except for Germany which was still trying to recover from the Treaty of Versailles. Only World War II pulled the United States out of the Great Depression. Hoover and Roosevelt’s maneuvers only secured the beginning of the countries slow travel from a solid capitalistic society to a country that has moved down the road to more and more socialistic tendencies.

I am not writing this as a rail to travel towards the now popular, “Obama is a Socialist,” battle cry; in contrast, I am in full belief that since the Great Depression of the 20s and 30s, this country’s politicians have slowly grown an ever increasing Socialist agenda. An agenda that has continued to swell at the hands of decisions made by career politicians, trying to repair the ill-guided decisions made by earlier career politicians. A fact that is further aggravated by politicians who make their choices in government many times guided by greed and partisan politics rather than what was truly best for the country.

This is not to say that there haven’t been well-intentioned elected officials who have served in Washington; however, their numbers tend to be so small that their deeds are often overlooked when compared to the failed policies and scandals of the many self-serving elected individuals, including the leaders of the Democrats and Republicans in Washington. To actually do a search of the biographies of the current legislature would show a majority of those serving in congress, especially those in leadership positions, have no real world work experience, have spent most of their adult life in elected office, and are of the legal profession. Any one of those attributes should be enough to make the common citizen wince in fear.

The fact is, our government is so large and indecisive that it tends to form policy and pass laws based on current popular sentiment (lately in as little as a few hours) or in reaction to some incident that has already occurred and is in the process of correcting itself. This causes the federal government to be an overactive, grossly-overreaching institution instead of the limited, proactive government the framers had envisioned.

Regardless of party affiliation, it is a government that generally misses everything initially, then tries to make up for it by passing regulative legislation enacted so late that it is of little help and/or so strong that it counteracts any positive, corrective advances already made by the private sector. Of course, congress also feels it necessary to interject its presence and drift off on tangents of such amazing importance as steroid use in professional baseball or college football’s BCS controversy.

An issue of recent concern has been the earmarks that congressmen assign to various spending bills. The real subject should not be the inclusion of the earmarks, but that regardless of the earmarks, the earmarked money is still going to be included in the bill. The earmarks simply give the money a destination rather than allow it to be assigned to some undesignated purpose by some anonymous government official. So the real outrage should not be that there are earmarks, but that the money will still be appropriated and spent regardless of whether it is actually required or not.

But I digress so back to the initial topic of this blog. Sure the government can provide temporary aid; however, in the end, the problem will return and usually with greater calamity. In the history of this country, the federal government has never been the catalyst of economic growth. Growth has always been spurred by national or world events and technologic improvements. Government can not replace American ingenuity, personal responsibility, human compassion or pubic integrity. When the federal government tries to solve the problems, it doesn’t matter who is in the seat of power, it will not work and only exacerbates the problem. Unfortunately, this sort of problem solving is what the federal government has been trying to do, and what many of our fellow citizens have become reliant on, for far to long.

So when you hear someone make the statement that they need the government’s help, ask them what it is that makes them expect the government to provide a long-term solution. I doubt they will ever be able to give a practical answer.

Sincerely,
Bill

Contests vs. Sports

Okay, I had this discussion again for about the hundredth time last week. So for those who have heard my argument, this will sound familiar, but for those of you who are uneducated in my ways, well this will surely be new and enlightening (just as all my blogs are).

In our society, we will make a competition out of anything. Those competitions come in two forms; contests and sports. Yes, I know we use them interchangeably; however, the truth is, when defined correctly (as I always do and or makeup) they are very different animals. A contest is a competition where points are awarded based on subjective grading. A sport is a competition where the winner is based on the points scored or the timing involved in the event.

Many people generally consider figure skating to be a sport , yet they are seriously mistaken. Figure skating along with gymnastics, beauty pageants, synchronized swimming, sand-castle building, decorating your yard at Christmas, and anything else that requires winners to win a subjective grading competition are not sports, they are contests. This does not mean that a gymnasts, figure skaters, or synchronized swimmers are not athletes, only that their chosen competition is not a sport, but a contest. There are many great athletes who have competed in contests.

With that in mind, what is a sport? A sport is any competition that is scored using a system based on points scored by the competitor or based on a time kept. Sports include football, baseball, track and field, tennis, horseshoes, basketball, car-racing, ping pong, bowling and many others. Now just as with the above stated contests, sports can, and do, contain athletes as well those of the non-athletic variety. I mean seriously, what athletic man would wear some of the goofy clothes they wear on the PGA tour (that’s pro golf for those who participate in contests).

Why would I be so worried about this sort of subject, well I will tell you. Because I am sick and tired of seeing figure skating on ESPN or other sports oriented programming. Yes I know these people spend years and years preparing for the Olympics, but lets face it, most people only pay attention to these during the Olympics and then it’s like, “WHO?”

Other than these contests invading my sacred sports programming, I really have no other point for this blog. I just wanted to make the point that bull riding and cheerleader contests should not be on my sports networks. I would seriously watch curling or the international darts association rather than one of these contests. Now I don’t want to offend the serious rodeo fan (many of which are touched enough to want to whip my rear), but really, how many of you go to see the actual riders ride and how many of you are sadistically waiting for the chance to see a bull get a hold of one of the riders.

I like to watch bull riding, but that has more to do with the fact that I think those guys are crazy and watching crazy people do absurd things is something of a pastime for me. Thus the reason I like to watch those in government try and fix the country.

Well that’s about all. I hope I haven’t offended any one. That truly was not my intention. I only wanted to inform those who had not been given the chance to experience some of my enlightening knowledge of the competitive world. Oh yeah, and I wanted to make sure that my mother knows that figure skating is NOT a sport.

Aloha,
Bill