Sorry I haven’t posted this earlier; I haven’t been at a computer all day — and I need to run now, too. But I couldn’t let the day go by without thanking Reggie Lloyd for being a voice of sanity on the stimulus issue:
State Law Enforcement Division director Reggie Lloyd on Thursday openly disagreed with his boss — Gov. Mark Sanford — over Sanford’s plan to use federal stimulus money.
Not spending the $700 million as intended by the White House would have “devastating” consequences for state and local law enforcement agencies in South Carolina, the state’s top cop said.
An agitated Lloyd, 42, told The State newspaper in an interview before an afternoon news conference he “didn’t care” if his views get him in trouble with Sanford, who nominated him in January 2008 to lead the state’s premier investigative agency.
“I’ve thought long and hard about it; it’s not personal,” said Lloyd, a former state circuit judge and U.S. attorney for South Carolina. “My professional career has been devoted to … public safety, and I’m not going to sacrifice that for anybody. This means more to me than this job does.”
Mind you, this was Sanford’s “new broom” who went to SLED to run the agency the governor’s way. But obviously he cares more about doing the job and serving the people of South Carolina than about any sense of duty to follow the governor as he tries to lead our state over a cliff.
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YOu castigate the man who disagreed with his boss.I applaude him. Sanford has disagreed with his bosses,the people.I hope this is his last run for anything concerning our country.They want less Government unless they control Government,then they have no problem telling us what we need or what we can have.They talk about socialists,well socialists are lot better that dictatorship.That is what SC has been under the Republicans.They pass the blame on to others and they are the cause.While the Democrats are bailing out the water in the boat,the Republicans sit in the back and make holes.
What a novel idea, putting public service into the concept of…public service.
Linda, I look forward to a republican primary between Sarah abstinence for all teens but my daughter Palin, Mark I learned nothing from the Great Depression Sanford, Newt, and Bobby Jindal aka Mr. Rogers.
If the economy rebounds in the next 3 years, the GOP has as much hope as a much chance of surviving as a bottle of pills in the Limbaugh compound.
And if it doesn’t rebound, Randy, you can close your faulty history book and start reading an economics book.
It’s funny how you as a math teacher can extrapolate what this economy needs based on a single data point.
But I do agree with you on one point – if the Republican party puts Jindal, Palin, or Newt on the ballot, then Obama can start writing his second inauguration speech right now.
Palin is done before she starts. Her family issues will not go away. Her daughter has become a Fox News media darling now but her ex-son-in-law-to-be, Levi Johnston, is going on HIS media tour starting Monday to talk about how Bristol won’t let him take his son out of her house. Too bad Big Momma Palin’s ambition was greater than her parenting skills.
The new revenues projections for SC for 2009 today caused Leatherman to adjust his “crisis budget” up to $21 billion, more than last year.
So why does any angency not have enough money?
Did Leatherman take it from them to fund some new pork projects?
It’s too bad there isn’t a real newspaper in this state, to ask these straight questions of our politicians.
This is the same Reggie Lewis who just bought a fleet of new Suburbans and motorhomes for “regional command centers”, in case he has to take control of the entire state. Too bad it cost 35 SLED employees their jobs…
Faulty? Doug you have YET to shore up your tax cuts are the road to recovery position. I have stated facts.
The GOP ran the financial system into the ground in the 1920s with deregulation. History repeated itself over the past 10 years.
The GOP pushed for tax cuts and spending freezes in the early 30s (Hoover proposed “rugged individualism”). That made everything worse. The GOP and people like you want more of the same (tax cuts for the millions who are unemployed means they get a break from the $0 they will pay in income taxes – brilliant).
FDR initiated big time spending. GDP shot up and unemployment dropped by 40%. He did hit a bump in the road around ’37 when he tried to balance the budget. He then took the foot off the brakes and gdp returned to rapid growth.
The conservative ECONOMIST Feldstein, along with most of his peers, scoff at tax cuts and are pushing for spending.
I’m still waiting for you to cite an iota of evidence to support your tax cut plan.
By the way, Doug, here a headling from The State today: 150 Richland 1 teachers put in limbo Add that to the 2nd highest unemployment rate in the country. That’s less money spent in Richland County now.
I guess tax cuts would clear up that problem immediately. Perhaps Sanford paying down the debt will solve that problem.
The GOP pushed for tax cuts and spending freezes in the early 30s (Hoover proposed “rugged individualism”). That made everything worse. The GOP and people like you want more of the same (tax cuts for the millions who are unemployed means they get a break from the $0 they will pay in income taxes – brilliant).
Yeah, Randy, because the Democrats are so much better at not cutting taxes during a recession.
The TRUTH is that FDR merely continued the deficit spending of Herbert Hoover, with the same disastrous results.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/budget.php
Look at the fourth column, which is the deficits
Federal Budget Receipts and Outlays: T. Roosevelt – G.W. Bush
President
Fiscal Year1 Total Budget2 G.D.P. % of G.D.P.
Receipts Outlays Surplus
or Deficit in billions of dollars
Calvin Coolidge
1930 4.1 3.3 0.7 97.4 4.2 3.4 0.8
Herbert Hoover
1931 3.1 3.6 -0.5 83.8 3.7 4.3 -0.6
1932 1.9 4.7 -2.7 67.6 2.8 6.9 -4.0
1933 2.0 4.6 -2.6 57.6 3.5 8.0 -4.5
1934 3.0 6.5 -3.6 61.2 4.8 10.7 -5.9
Franklin D. Roosevelt
1935 3.6 6.4 -2.8 69.6 5.2 9.2 -4.0
1936 3.9 8.2 -4.3 78.5 5.0 10.5 -5.5
1937 5.4 7.6 -2.2 87.8 6.1 8.6 -2.5
1938 6.8 6.8 0 89.0 7.6 7.7 -0.1
1939 6.3 9.1 -2.8 89.1 7.1 10.3 -3.2
1940 6.5 9.5 -2.9 96.8 6.8 9.8 -3.0
1941 8.7 13.7 -4.9 114.1 7.6 12.0 -4.3
1942 14.6 35.1 -20.5 144.3 10.1 24.3 -14.2
1943 24.0 78.6 -54.6 180.3 13.3 43.6 -30.3
1944 43.7 91.3 -47.6 209.2 20.9 43.6 -22.7
1945 45.2 92.7 -47.6 221.4 20.4 41.9 -21.5
1946 39.3 55.2 -15.9 222.7 17.6 24.8 -7.2
Randy,
So you oppose the tax cuts that Obama put into effect starting this month?
I don’t care about tax cuts. I care about wasted tax dollars.
There is enough money in Richland 1 to cover all those teachers. Are you saying you have looked at the Richland 1 budget and can find no other areas where cuts could be made?
You did read the article, I hope, instead of just looking at the headline. 100 of the teachers are post-retirement TERI positions – a program that NEVER should have been put into place and has wasted millions of dollars. Do you believe the TERI program has been an effective use of tax dollars?
How many administrators are being cut? How many guidance counselors? How much of the technology budget (a mostly wasted expense at any level below high school) is being cut? What construction projects are being put on hold? Are they building any new state-of-the-art football stadiums?
All the money needed to provide an effective teaching environment is there. The teachers who are in limbo should look around their schools and talk to their bosses about areas where cuts could be made instead of simply assuming that there is a never ending pot of dollars that can be added to.
Thanks Lee!
In 1934, the year before FDR stepped in, gdp was at 61B. By 1941, it was at 114B. Hmmm.
In 1934, unemployment was at 22%. By 1941 it was under 10%. Hmmm.
http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-29.pdf
All the money needed to provide an effective teaching environment is there. Doug
You’ve read their budget, eh? Share exactly what projects they should put on hold in lieu of your Reaganesque generalities about “stadiums.” BTW, which stadium are they building that is taking funds from salaries?
TERI shouldn’t have been started? Normally, when school starts in the fall, even with TERI teachers, there are great shortages of teachers (given the economic crisis, that may be different this fall). Omitting TERI as you propose would make that worse. Doug, it’s supply and demand.
(I did read the article so your snarky little comment was unfounded.)
Doug wrote:
“…technology budget (a mostly wasted expense at any level below high school)…”
That is probably one of the silliest comments I’ve read on any blog.
Thank you, Doug, for the laugh. Wow. I would say you’re out of touch, but that doesn’t even come close. How about get down off the soapbox for a few minutes and spend some time actually researching the interactive technology landscape as it stands right now.
I could draw you a clear, bright line that starts with technology use at a very young age and leads to elevated skills in language, literacy, communication, math, science, music….you name it. Granted, it’s a holistic equation that requires technology-savvy teachers using the right tools effectively in the classroom.
But to say budgeting for such at the primary level is mostly a waste…ugh.
Damn. You’ve got it exactly backwards. The most formative learning years are the YOUNG years. In the high-velocity Information Age, if the first serious exposure to interactive technology in an educational environment happens at the secondary level…it’s too late. Your young people are permanently behind the curve.
This is actually the current, chronic situation in most of SC’s school districts. Too little technology, too late in the educational cycle. Outside of the more forward-thinking districts like Richland 2, we’ve got a statewide educational system that, with respect to technological competence, is triumphantly churning out legions of McDonald’s fry cooks.
By 1939, the economy had not measurably improved from 1932.
By 1940, the US was already in war production. Hmmmm.
That is why FDR’s own Secretary of the Treasury announced that all the spending and public works programs were a complete failure. He was correct, and honest.
jfx,
Computers are useless to students who cannot read and do arithmetic.
None of the school facilities to any good for the huge numbers of black children who choose drop out, get pregnant, or stand on street corners.
Lee,
In modern schools, computers are often used to assist in teaching young students how to read and do arithmetic.
I’m sure that you if you think about it, you’ll realize that the places that have highest numbers of dropouts, unplanned pregnancies, and unemployment do not have modern school facilities.
But I do not expect you to think about it. You seem quite comfortable living mentally in 1959, and demonizing “blacks” for not adequately using facilities that many of them don’t actually have yet.
Guys,
There is such as federal supremacy, regardless of the tenth amendment. The constitution must not be interpreted in such a way that its different parts are in conflict with one another. Amendment Ten is important, but purposely vague. It is the source of our right to privacy–a right the Bush administration had no problem violating in the supposed interest of national security. (I am glad, by the way, that the “War on Terror” has been downgraded to a contingency plan; we are in no danger of being invaded from the Middle East!)
Art. 6, Sec. 1 provides for the absolute supremacy of the federal government and all of its enactments over the states. State sovereignty is derivative, not of the people of a given state, but of the federal government which, in turn, derives its sovereignty from the WHOLE people of the Union, not its constituent parts. The Civil War settled that question.
As for Sanford, he may be the darling of the 25% of Americans who would like to establish a conservative Christian republic and return public education to subservience to the church while teaching confederate history and creationism, but the other 75% of Americans will not have it, and he, like Goldwater before him, will lose.
Isn’t it interesting that S.C. has one of the stiffest performance testing regimes in the schools while consistently underfunding them? And now we are poised to deal public education a body blow financially while standards climb ever higher? It seems to me that the 25% of religious and political nutters in this state WANT public education to fail so that they can balkanize our crazy little southern republic even further and retreat to an age of KKK hegemony, religious fundamentalism, and general ignorance.
Jfx,
I make my living in technology. I’ve done it for 30+ years. I know exactly where technology works and where it doesn’t. And for all the millions of dollars invested in technology for education, the impact has been zero. Or worse – kids today can’t read, can’t write, and can’t do anything that takes any concentration. Book reports? Forget it. Instead, they come up with crappy Powerpoints with stuff plagiarized from Wikipedia. Give us some real examples of technology that has improved educational outcomes. Not just “information age” mumbo jumbo.
With 30% of the students in a supposed good district like Richland 2 not being able to read at a basic level by eighth grade, I’d say the expenditure on technology has been an utter failure. All the technology is like putting a bow on a pig. Looks nice but doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a pig.
I will concede that technology has made cheating easier. It also has opened the door to all sorts of time wasters like Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter.
C’mon, jfx, stop hiding. Come out in the open and put your opinion with your name. Prove that you aren’t just another educrat who thinks the taxpayers are an open pocketbook for you to exploit with the latest educational think tank theory.
Doug, knowledge of technology doesn’t necessarily transfer to pedagogy and learning theory. I am versed in statistical software and graphing calculators (how I make my living) so that automatically transfers to all technology and I can do your job?
An utter failure? That’s amazingly simplistic. Equating the performance of 1/3 of a student population with the effectiveness of technology is, outside of Lee’s posts, the biggest non sequitur I’ve read. In that same district I used graphing calculators and computers extensively to teach low level freshmen in algebra. 17 of 18 passed the state algebra 1 exam that college prep algebra students take. That’s evidence that undermines your broad generalization.
Dougie-
Many of us make our livings in technology. Same here. Sorry, a career in technology (even a 30+ year career) doesn’t make any of us ultimate arbiters of where it actually works, especially in education. There’s many a technology livelihood made out of sales and marketing, with little knowledge or concern about what actually works in a school classroom.
As I mentioned, with respect to education it’s a holistic equation. It doesn’t do any good to simply mount a SMART Board in a classroom. The teacher has to know how to use it, and take the time to construct interesting lesson materials around it. Even more importantly, the students have to respond to it.
So, the conundrum WITH the technology is the same as without it. The students still have to be engaged and inspired. Bottom line.
The advantage WITH the right technology, is that you can do many things much more efficiently, AND in a way that is more interactive and provocative, if it’s used intelligently. You can create a participatory positive feedback loop by opening up a bunch of different ways that students can be involved in a topic of study.
The problems we have with people getting to the level of high school and still not being where they need to be, not just in reading, but also in scientific and mathematical literacy, are because we still are not getting the holistic equation right at an early enough level.
Richland 2 is doing better than most at that, but there’s still a lot of work to do. You act like it’s an all or nothing proposition. That’s a silly distortion.
Yep, dumping computers into third grade won’t do anything on its own.
But with competent teachers and very basic software applications, you can get even very young students supplementing reading and cursive handwriting lessons with typing lessons and Flash-based internet lessons. Been there, done that. In the old days, you wouldn’t even encounter a typing course until high school, much less be able to integrate it with the other courses in your school day, or cross it over to a global information network…AT THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LEVEL. You think that’s not significant?
In elementary science classes, it used to be that if you were studying something conceptual, like the “food chain”, you’d learn it through a very basic presentation that depended entirely on the charisma and personality of the teacher ( of course, that’s still very important). If you were lucky, your teacher would supplement the lecture and the chalkboard markups with a slide or overhead projector. If you were REALLY lucky, your class might get to check out a TV on a cart from the media center, and watch a tape about the food chain.
In a properly-outfitted modern elementary science class, all of the above moves much, much faster. The teacher can supplement the lecture, on the fly, with a streaming internet video feed, or an interactive software application, or both, or more. Not only can you cover the food chain faster, but you can show it to your students, and they can interact with it, in a virtual environment. The lesson becomes a dynamic conversation about sharks and wolves and plankton and people, like being inside of a movie. You don’t actually have to leave the classroom to experience the things you hear about in a lecture or see a tiny picture of in your textbook.
You can bring the real world into the classroom in a way that is interesting, challenging, and impossible to ignore. In the old days, if your science teacher was prattling on about the human heart, and what it does, and how it’s built, a bored kid might just tune it out, and doodle in his notebook. However, it’s very hard to tune out a 77″ full motion video, with sound, of a beating human heart, in all its slimy, pulsing glory. And most kids don’t want to. In fact, when you ask them to step up and identify the parts of the beating heart by touching them on the interactive board, at which point the different parts LIGHT UP AND MAKE FUNNY NOISES, most kids WANT to do that.
That’s your tax dollars at work, Doug. That’s your “utter failure”.
How about this? How about, instead of me giving you my real name, so you can chase me around with a pitchfork, how about you start commenting under an alias. That way you can tell us all those things you said you “can’t say on a blog”, with no repercussions. C’mon, let’s have that conversation.
There is such as federal supremacy, regardless of the tenth amendment. The constitution must not be interpreted in such a way that its different parts are in conflict with one another. Amendment Ten is important, but purposely vague. It is the source of our right to privacy–a right the Bush administration had no problem violating in the supposed interest of national security. (I am glad, by the way, that the “War on Terror” has been downgraded to a contingency plan; we are in no danger of being invaded from the Middle East!)
Rich,
I am no constitutional scholar. I do not pretend to know how the intricacies of that particular document work. So let’s assume that you are correct.
I think we should turn our attention to the question “should the federal government have supremacy over all other laws in the land?” My answer would be absolutely not. Why would we want to concentrate the power over our lives in as few people as possible? If power corrupts, then we should spread out that power as best we can to as many as possible.
Why would we want to diminish one’s influence over the people making the laws that directly affect him? Move that power from a local level to a state level to a federal level and that’s exactly what you do. Why should the people in, say Vermont or anywhere else, have to live under the rules that rest of us impose on them? Rich, don’t you think your life would be better off if George W. Bush had less influence over you? Do really want George W. Bush telling you who you can marry, whether or not you could have an abortion, which drugs you can put in your body with his blessing, who you can and cannot trade with, and so on so forth? I don’t.
There’s no reason why a law can’t be on the books in a state where the people want it and not on the books in a state where they don’t want it.
On a side note, unfortunately the “War on Terror” is not being downgraded. Barack W. Obama is ramping it up. Or did you not notice that we’re increasing troops in Afghanistan and increasing our military spending?
jfx,
All you talk about is the theory. Show me examples of actual incremental advancement in outcomes that have come about as a direct result of the significant technology expenditures at the elementary school level. There are none. The PACT test scores didn’t move over ten years. The dropout rate is largely unchanged. The SAT scores are about the same. The money spent on technology didn’t make a difference.
The only “technology” we need in elementary schools today are excellent teachers who are supported by an administration that will enforce discipline in the classroom. Technology isn’t magic. It doesn’t make kids any smarter.
You realize “streaming video” is like a DVD — just 100 times more expensive to bring into a classroom? And your beating heart example? Gee, how did Dr. DeBakey EVER make the leap from books to heart surgery without a 77 inch plasma screen? Your examples are all pie-in-the-sky fantasies where every child becomes a scientist or engineer because they can watch videos.
Unlike the real world where investments in technology have to show a positive rate of return, the expenditure on technology in elementary education has no proof of benefit downstream. And as I said, it has actually created an environment that is less helpful in getting kids to think and create and analyze.
High school age is perfectly fine for the education system to expose kids to using technology effectively. But then only for those who actually demonstrate a proficiency with basic skills.
And the things I can’t talk about are due to my kids still being in Richland 2. When there is no possibility of repercussion, I will be more open. Unfortunately I learned firsthand when I ran for school board in Richland 2 that there are plenty of people who are willing to do anything to make sure the status quo remains as it is. There’s a reason the school board doesn’t have any dissenting opinions.
Doug, you miss the point, completely.
In order for kids to become scientists and engineers, they actually have to be interested in science and engineering.
The reason we are a science- and math-deficient country is because very few children are interested in science and math by the time they get to high school. And by then, it’s usually too late.
Do you think scientists and engineers are magically predisposed to be such? It starts early, when young people have an experience that makes a deep, positive impression. But there’s a civilization out there that has a relative level of technological progression, and it’s part of any sane school district’s mission to KEEP UP. If you think we’ll keep up with the Asians and Northern Europeans in science and math by withholding technology exposure ’til high school…you’re crazy.
“In the 1960s, DeBakey and his team of surgeons were among the first to record surgeries on film. A camera operator would lie prone atop a surgical film stand made to Dr. DeBakey’s specifications and record a surgeon’s eye view of the operating area. The camera and lights were positioned within three to four feet of the operative field, yet did not interfere with the surgical team.” [Wikipedia bio]
Now Doug, do you think Dr. DeBakey might see any benefit in young people being able to interact with a “beating heart” software application in the classroom? Or would he side with you, and say “screw the technology, all they need is books and teachers!” Evidently the good doctor saw an intrinsic value in filming that which in the real world was previously consigned only to books. Do you think that idea could hold educational merit all the way down the chain?
I’ll concede, it’s quite difficult to measure enthusiasm, or potential. And I think I went out of my way to make the point that the technology doesn’t teach by itself. But when you say “it has actually created an environment that is less helpful in getting kids to think and create and analyze”, that’s certainly not an empirically-based observation. You’re applying a one-size-fits-all, distorted cynical template to educational technology. It’s no wonder you weren’t voted onto the board. “Stick In The Mud, For Your Children” is hardly an inspiring campaign slogan.
Doug, the complexity of the education system is whittled down to a some test scores and technology? That’s all?
Technology has no use until high school? So our younger kids should rely on some photos in a text rather than see the world? Perhaps I should take away any toys that use batteries my young boys have and we’ll simply have them look at books.
I explained in my previous post how technology made a direct impact on lower achieving students. I cited evidence to justify my position. I’ll give you an example of how I work with middle school kids using technology. I have them shop for a car on Carmax.com. They collect prices and mileage for the cars. Then the use computer software and graphing calculators to create a scatter plot of price and mileage. We then discuss the relationship between the two variables. Voila, not only do ordere pairs now have meaning, they are exposed to a math concept used throughout the entire structure, functions.
To use your limited exposure in Richland 2 to paint a broad and prejudicial picture of schools as a whole is reckless.
BTW Doug, as a person immersed in technology, you certainly would be aware that technology skills take time to develop. Kids who are exposed to technology at an earlier age will develop “automaticity” in using it – similar to how riding a bike becomes second nature.
I’d also be interested in how much experience you have in using technology in the classroom. When you incorporated technology into your instruction, what was limiting the kids academic achievement? I know you refer to what you’ve heard from BHS and maybe a middle school.
“Automaticity”
Good word.
That was my point about kids learning to type early. It might not be immediately obvious, but keyboarding skills are the royal road to information and communication on the internet. It’s basically another way of learning to “write”, and should be taught as such. That is to say, it should be taught early, so it becomes instinctive in the most formative years.
Then, in middle and high school years, students can simply “ride the bike” at any computer terminal, moving with communicative ease across various applications.
It’s also an absolutely huge literacy augmentation, for obvious reasons.
Students are interested in science and engineering, but they can see how politicians take bribes from large corporations to suppress the salaries of technical talent by bringing in cheap foreign workers.
These foreign temp workers are inferior, but their work is throwaway for firms like Microsoft, who use just enough of them to suppress salaries for the rest of their work force.
PhD scientists have had unemployment rates twice that of the overall average, ever since Clinton opened the H1-B floodgates. The GOP is guilty too, assuming that whatever big business tells them is Gospel.
The scientists and engineers who gave us rockets, jet planes, plastics and electronics did not have computers in college, much less in high school or grammar school. They learned the multiplication tables, and how to do things by hand, and with their hands.
My dear Lee Muller, you are a delight.
And you are indeed correct. The scientists and engineers who gave us rockets, jet planes, plastics, and electronics did not have computers, back in the day.
They invented computers. And the idea was that people would use computers, in all walks of life, to exponentially accelerate what is possible in reality.
And lo and behold, here we are, in the digital age. You can’t put the technology genie back in the bottle. Probably best to teach young human children how to use the tools of modern civilization, as soon as feasible, instead of pretending they don’t need to know any of it ’til after their voice drops.
Lee, I don’t know if you realize this, but the human genome was not sequenced by hand.
jfx,
Typing skills are important? Are you joking? For what high tech, high paying jobs are typing skills important?
I’ve spent 30+ years as a computer programmer, software engineer, software development manager, etc. without touch-typing skills. My friend who is one of the top surgeons in the country rarely sends anything more than a one line email yet he somehow is able to invent
new medical devices.
Typing skills are great if you want Richland 2 to churn out the next generation of secretaries.
I’ve got my third kid going through Richland 2 high schools. I’ve seen the work they do. I’ve heard what goes on in the classrooms. There’s no great use of technology that is adding to the educational experience for 95% of the students. They create Powerpoints and write papers in Word (which does the spell check for them). They look stuff up on the Internet and don’t have to do real research any more. They go to classes where a teacher (in high school) shows Finding Nemo as a way to demonstrate the concept of “separation anxiety”. The use of technology in education is just a different form of the film strips we used in the 60’s. It doesn’t produce students who are any smarter.
It all comes down to the parent-student-teacher triangle when it comes to education. A motivated student with supportive parents and a good teacher will learn more with nothing more than a notebook, a pencil, and a set of books than an unmotivated student with disinterested parents and a bad teacher will with all the technology in the world.
Doug.
How is it you keep mangling my point, and constantly rebuilding this people-vs.-technology dichotomous strawman?
You missed…totally missed…the point about the keyboarding.
“Typing” on a keyboard is the way that you “write” on a computer screen. It is a process that involves thinking, and reading.
Typing at a computer is the same as writing in a notebook. It is the means to an end…access to, and conveyance of, information. That isn’t theoretical mumbo jumbo. It’s common sense.
I don’t propose that young people learn typing so they can get jobs in typing. I propose that young people learn to type, in the same way that they learn to write, as part of formative literacy training in elementary education.
You’re framing typing as this rote mechanical activity, of little value, with no relationship to one’s brain. And this comes back around to this flawed idea you have that because Doug Ross managed to scrap by all these years without formal keyboarding skills, it must not be worth much.
It is true that there are many people in all areas of IT, who came up in the last generation, who have important, high-profile careers, and cannot communicate on a computer, or over a network, worth crap. I see this every day. You make it out to be some kind of admirable notch in one’s belt. It’s not. How many times have I had to telephone an executive or administrative office, get a particular individual on the phone, and interrogate them directly about their needs, simply because the two-line email they sent was incoherent?
The needs of the current and future generations are not the same as the needs of the Doug Ross generation. If you cannot communicate quickly and effectively, across ALL media, doors will shut, and avenues will close. This is why it’s so tough to get a coding or documentation position at Google or Cisco, or, hell, even SCANA. There are literally hundreds of jobs I could list that, in modern times, demand keyboard competency, across all areas of specialization, whether it be scientific, legal, political, journalistic, or artistic. Many of these jobs didn’t even exist 30 years ago. Hey, I’d think any responsible parent would want their child to have EVERY advantage in order to be a competitive job-seeker. How is it meritorious to NOT teach a life skill?
Doug, I’m sure you know that “real research” was being done on the internet long before most people had even heard of the internet. The information available in the library at your child’s school is finite, limited to the books on the shelf, and in many cases obsolete. That broadband pipe in your child’s classroom opens onto a library the size of an entire planet, with new books added every second. If we want to do “real research”, don’t we want to go to the best library, with the best books, and the most current information? It just so happens that the best library is a virtual one, and it’s always getting better.
Doug, how about instead of a parent-teacher-student triangle, we build something a bit more stable? How about a parent-teacher-student pyramid, with reality as a base? How about instead of the parent and teacher preparing the student for the work world of 30 years ago, we give them significant exposure to and competence with the actual tools of modern research and communication?
jfx,
I look forward to seeing “Creating Tomorrow’s Touch Typists” on the Richland 2 web page.
Typing doesn’t equal communicating. It’s not a life skill. It’s something anyone can pick up in a couple weeks of an hour a day. Then what?
You haven’t got a clue about Cisco, Google, or SCANA jobs. Have you ever written computer code? It’s not COBOL from 1975. It’s all point and click or else a few lines of JAVA code. I’ve got a dozen programmers working on my team now. If I told them I was going to evaluate them based on their typing skill, they’d have a great laugh.
Have you ever seen the interview process Google uses to hire employees? Trust me, they don’t care how fast you type. I work for one of the largest software companies in the world and there are plenty of $100K+ jobs for people who can’t type.
Here’s another real life situation for you to be Richland 2’s chief apologist for: my daughter volunteered to help the high school literacy coach enter survey results from the summer reading program. There were several hundred of them. You wouldn’t believe (because you wouldn’t want to) how many of them had comments like “I don’t read” or “This program is stupid” or “Summer is for fun”. I’m not talking a small percentage either – a third or more. Many of the comments were written using grammar that would cause me concern for an elementary school student, nevermind a high school kid. These kids have been passed along and will either graduate as illiterates or drop out. What does a 77 inch video of a beating heart do for those kids? And this is in a supposedly good district where if 1 in 5 dropout, it’s considered Excellent.
Technology isn’t the solution. It’s a smokescreen.
Here’s the complete answer to an actual Google interview question:
You think it matters to them if the answer is typed in 30 seconds versus two minutes?
bool test(A,B,C)
{
i=j=k=0;
while(k < C.size())
{
if(i < A.size() && C[k]==A[i])
{i++,k++;
}
else if(j < B.size() && C[k]==B[j])
{
j++,k++;
}
else
return false
}
return (i == A.size() && j == B.size());
}
And here’s some actual questions that are asked in Google interviews — we’d have a far better educational system if we taught kids to think about how to answer these.
Google wants thinkers, not typists.
You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?
What method would you use to look up a word in a dictionary?
You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you fine the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?
How do you cut a rectangular cake into two equal pieces when someone has already taken a rectangular piece from it? The removed piece an be any size or at any place in the cake. You are only allowed one straight cut.
How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
What gives you joy?
Mike has $20 more than Todd. How much does each have given that combined they have $21 between them. You can’t use fractions in the answer. Hint: This is a trick question, pay close attention to the condition)
How many times a day a clock’s hands overlap?
More here: http://www.techinterviews.com/google-interview-questions
Amen Lee! H-1B visas have to go! We need to encourage the youth to work in SMET (Science, Math, Engineering, & Technology)
Hah!
You are tripping me out, Doug. Lay off the “either/or” extreme generalization.
I assure you, Google wants thinkers, who can also type.
In the scenario of the code you provided, if you go in for your interview, and take two minutes to type that….and then I come in for the next interview, and take thirty seconds to type that….and that’s the only criterion…I get the job. You don’t. Time is money.
You’re right about the 77″ beating heart not helping with reading and grammar. Wrong class. I’d recommend they use that for science class. Language Arts has its own modules available.
Hey, watch out now, “apologist”….ouch. You’re killin’ me. I don’t pretend that Richland 2 has all the answers. I think that district has put up a pretty good fight, in the face of ridiculous growth, over the last two decades. Richland 2 still has plenty of problems, and SC in general is woefully behind the national curve. But I think your educational “vision” is fundamentally wrong, and dangerously underestimates the speed at which life is moving. You seem to want to slow things down in a civilization that is accelerating, and you’re only seeing things in stark negatives. You harp on the bottom 30%, and pay no heed to such considerations as whether the top 70% is learning more, and faster, than the top 70% of your generation.
In the school district I grew up in, we didn’t take typing or foreign languages until high school, and even then, our foreign language options were….Spanish or French. That’s rather crap. I’m heartened that we’ve gotten to the point where middle schoolers can take Latin or several other languages, and children have the chance to learn the fundamentals of computing and internet use before adolescence complicates everything.
Birch,
Back to the Supremacy Clause. Art. 6, Sec. 1 of the Constitution makes all federal enactments supreme throughout the country. They cannot be contradicted by state legislatures, courts, or idiot governors like Sanford. That’s why he will ultimately lose this fight.
The money will come to the schools and the police as it was intended. That intention was enacted into law by a constitutional process of Congress, and then signed off on by the executive. How is that a dictatorial process to be feared??
These are the people’s representatives, not just the representatives of our yahoo fundamentalist christian right loonytoons who make me sick. Their day is past. The Republicans’ day has past for at least a generation.
Time for Obama to fire more white people at the top of corporate America. They are in sore need of an ass-whoopin’ for bringing this economy to the state in which it now finds itself while pocketing BILLIONS!!
And to think that Lee worries about bureaucrats whose salaries might approach $100K!! Think how many teachers we could employ in S.C. with the bonuses Wall St. gave itself–for FAILURE!!
Obama has no authority to fire anyone in business. As the post above shows, it plays to the mob mentality, and the envy or losers, and those who want “race reparations”. None of this is healthy. It is the politics of hate and division.
The head of GM could have stayed on – assuming he was capable of keeping GM in business without more bailout money. Which he wasn’t.
That’s why he’s gone.
GM has a market cap of 1.2 billion. How many billions have Bush and Obama given GM? A: more than 18. That’s why GM can’t call its own shots.
Here’s a graphic showing some of the MANY reasons GM got into trouble.
http://www.mint.com/blog/finance-core/the-fall-of-gm-a-visual-guide/
Go see my earlier posts about GM on Brad’s old blog at The State.
I predicted exactly when GM would run out of money again and they did.
GM, Ford and Chrysler will only recover when the UAW accepts large reductions in pay and benefits, and the retirees do, too.
Obama wants GM broke for three pieces of his agenda:
1. Obama wants millions of people begging him to make the taxpayers pick up the bills for their medical insurance.
2. Obama wants a crisis event for an excuse to seize control of everyone’s retirement accounts, and rob the rich to enrich those who have not saved.
3. Obama wants to destroy SUVs and luxury cars, which are the best sellers and most profitable for GM and Ford. So he will bankrupt GM, then dictate new models people don’t want. The second part of his attack on freedom of mobility will be a $2.00 per gallon hike on gasoline.
The federal government hasn’t GIVEN any money to GM and Chrysler.
It has LOANED money to them, and forced them to sell warrants to the government. Obama, Geithner and the other feds have no votes, and no authority to fire anyone, nor to dictate any changes to product lines, models, color, or miles per gallon.