NEW "What is bothering you right now?" Thread. Bonus: Now with 20% more bother!

She is cute. But then again, she is 20. And at my age any girl 20 years old is cute to me, lol. And you know you're old when you think of a 20 year old as a "kid".

 

I really need to win the ****ing lottery. I can't do this for another 20+ years. If I ever retire. Only reason I'll retire is because I'm too fat to work.

 

I'm right there with you, and I need a lot less than 20 years...

What is bothering me *right now* is not so much the actual closing of a particular thread here in the OT section but the mentality behind such a move.

The time to sail on from here may be coming very, very soon. It was fun while it lasted. Sort of.

 

Damn.. I just now noticed that as well.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

 

I can completely appreciate a site wanting to maintain neutrality and peace for business. What's laughable however is the crying, whining, and hurt feelings. Adult much?

 

You don't fool us! You need to win the lottery so you can impress that 20 year old lady, and unfortunately the only way 40 year old can do that is with money.

 

If there were consistency to such an effort I'd be right there with you. There isn't, in my opinion.

I'm not quite certain that I'm following your train of thoughts here...

 

Now now. No need to throw a tantrum. That's the same behavior which forced the powers-that-be to close said thread in the 1st place. As I explained to Dragnoak, getting angry and stomping away is just as bad as the crying, whining, and butt soreness that causes such closures.

10 students graduated? Out of how many (I dare to ask...)?

School counselors at my high school weren't always as dedicated at their job. My middle sister had a rough junior and senior year. She dropped out with 3 months to go. Had her counselor (who was our neighbor and good family friend) been on top of things, the drunkard could have muddled thru to graduation.

My senior year I was given "special permission" to take both Work Study and Office TA as I had taken both in my junior year and technically we were only allowed to have 2 semesters of non-instructional courses. I got special consideration cause I...wait for it...could use a typewriter. Yes, you heard it right. None of the office staff knew how to use a 10 year old typewriter to type out forms and other documents.

My other 4 classes were Calculus (not AP), Biology AP, US Government & Economics, English 4 (12th grade). I consider myself lucky as I was almost forced to go to an all-boys Catholic high school. And at the same time, my middle sister started her downward spiral while attending the same high school. So my parents were ill-inclined to allow me to attend a high school that could "set me up for failure".

 

Sigh, education. Always a problematic issue. Everyone says the US considers education important, but the problems and the fragmentation I see doesn't agree with what I hear. Why not standardise across the nation? Everyone takes AP/IB, no matter what. Is that so hard?

Speaking of which - @radji, have you taken a peek at the papers which I attached a few posts back?

 

Refer back to the "My Special Angel isn't passing! Why are you failing him?!?!?" issue from earlier.

Also note that the US is more like 50 countries glued sorta-tightly-sorta-loosely together, rather than one monolithic government and society (If you visited my SC and radji's CA, you'd find it hard to believe both states share any common ground or nationality). This is *especially* true in education, since K-12 public education is almost entirely organized by a state-by-state basis, though many decisions are made at the local level as well. That, and most of the Department of Education's focus is on university-related matters, apparently. Common Core is trying to change that, but people are freaking out over it due to a combination of "ERMYGAWD more standardized testing??" and "You're saying my Special Angel isn't as smart as I believe he/she is?!?!". Calm the helicopter parents down and beat the philosophers over the head with a stick and we might see real progress towards nationalized testing standards.

Personally though, I wouldn't go so far as to say that AP/IB/etc. should be made mandatory for all students. Ignoring that there will always be a segment of the population that is Just Plain Stupid, this sort of quality of education isn't cheap. So you'd need to either implement wealth distribution (most public schools are funded by property taxes, or some other factor tied to a community's wealth) or draw up new plans for funding this sort of thing that's socioeconomically-agnostic (probably some sort of national-level tax?). You'd also have to get rid of the NCLB Act, since average grades will plunge as a result of mandatory G&T education for all (at least for the first few years, if not longer).

I was thinking more along the lines of introducing more subjects as being mandatory rather than optional (Calculus, advanced literature, and more history subjects for example). Some pragmatic, street-smarts (rather than book-smarts) classes which are mandatory would be great, too (I still can't believe how many people I know who don't know how to write a check or balance a personal budget). And perhaps increase and ease access to afterschool academic help for those having issues with the classwork. It'll still be a spending increase, and I'm not sure if it'd be cheaper or more expensive than simply making G&T mandatory. Thankfully, I'm not stuck working in the primary education sector and thus don't have to wade through that sort of bureaucratic madness.

Oh, speaking of which, I completely forgot: K-12 teachers in the US are generally not paid very well (at least in a fair number of states). So there's not that much motivation for an exceptional person in a given subject area to work in education rather than in industry. And there's also a whole lot of unpaid work that's is mandatory-but-not-really-but-really sort of way (class planning, grading work, and even buying your own classroom supplies).