Illegal aliens: are they the problem, or are our federally-mandated "free" (not free) socialistic services the problem?

I have a great deal of sympathy for illegal immigrants who are here in the US to work hard and provide a better life for themselves and their families, due in no small part to the absolutely stupid legal process/obstacle set in place for those who try to immigrate according to the letter of the law.

That's about the only thing I can't agree with in regards to Karl's excellent writing for today.

Yeah, the point is that if you don't work, you WALK!

Oh, and STARVE.

THANK YOU!!

I'm kind of at the other end of the spectrum with a kid that has legitimate special needs. (As in an actual medical condition and not some ADHD only crap because the kid eats junk and watches TV all day long.)

I sent her to private school for three years (a school that specializes in educating kids with her type of condition) and am going to put her in public school this fall. When I gave the new school her records (including some of the work she had done so they could gauge where she was at), they said, "well, she should be just fine because her peers haven't seen some of these concepts yet."

Did I mention that my daughter was 'special needs'? Yet she's accomplishing more academically than her peers. (She still would have qualified for a summer reading program, but the only spots open were for ESL students only. And that's another bloody rant that I could share a ton of information about.)

So, I'm giving the public school a couple of months of high-intense scrutiny. I have a feeling that I'm going to end up homeschooling and getting a de-facto special education license.

The Part About Teaching for the Test vs. Teaching the Knowledge and Skills that are Required ... So ****ing True.

This totally drives me crazy as a Parent. I've take to having to Teach them at Home evenings, etc in a very structured fashion. As you can expect, they are tremendously resistant to this ... in their minds they are smart - they are at the top of their class, etc. But, I know that measured against an absolute standard of what they should know and what they should be being taught they are behind. I'm afraid I'm gonna loose this battle and am getting no help from the "school" at all. Particularly, as KD says, the message is full-bore ... "It's All Good, You're All Great, You're All Genious'", etc. When 1/2 the damn school gets straight A's you know something's amiss.

But, as you also point out ... the damn teachers and parents at this point don't even know there is a problem ... they are 2nd generation "Reduced Standards."

I've got two 6th Graders ... had my kids pretty late. I like to think I'm "Last Generation Meaningful Standards."

Not to be picky, but in that Kansas 1895 exam, how old were the 8th graders? (Hint: a lot of kids might have entered school later or didn't go full-time, because they were needed on the farms.) How many of the kids made it to 8th grade? (Same reasons.) How many of those 8th graders were going to be running their family farm or small business in a few years, and NEEDED TO KNOW EXACTLY THAT SORT OF FARM-ECONOMICS INFORMATION in order to survive?

Having been through enough idiosyncratic classes, I wonder how many of those "hard" questions were simply connected to the idosyncratic discussions they happened to have about Orinoco, Juan Fernandez, etc. In other words, you'd know the answers if you'd simply been there with your ears open.

Finally, how many of those kids were able to answer all the questions well? I've seen plenty of professors write exams where the questions were made unreasonably hard because the professor was clueless, and where the median score was around 30% not because the students were dumb but because the test wasn't connected to what was actually covered in the class.

I suspect that class taught the survival skills that were needed by the future leaders of an agrarian economy. The rank-and-file members of that economy didn't need 8th grade and went off to be farm hands and menial labor at age 10-12. Nowadays we have a cognitive surplus (labor is too productive with all the machines and tools we have now, so we need less of it) and we have to keep ALL the kids in school to keep them out of trouble.

Today's schools teach a different set of survival skills, to a different set of kids, because today's world requires a different education be made to a different population. That's not saying that the recipe's right now, just that it HAS to be a different recipe.

After a civil war, two world wars, a cold war, and the civil-rights movement, and living in a world now filled with nuclear weapons, having a population full of people who are willing to make some personal sacrifices in order to get along together might not be altogether a bad idea. I'm not endorsing socialism or communism or having the rich kids buy the school supplies for the whole class, though.
I'm not saying it hasn't gone way overboard. I'm just saying that there might have been a good idea in there at one point. Somehow we have to produce team players who can also lead, instead of sheeple!

Personally I'm trying to teach my own kids how to get along in the get-along world -- and how to be responsible, lead and excel because that's how you get a better life in that get-along world.

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After a civil war, two world wars, a cold war, and the civil-rights movement, and living in a world now filled with nuclear weapons, having a population full of people who are willing to make some personal sacrifices in order to get along together might not be altogether a bad idea. I'm not endorsing socialism or communism or having the rich kids buy the school supplies for the whole class, though.

Yes you are.

Educating for self-esteem became a big deal in the last 20 years. The concept is simple: the story you tell yourself about yourself is very likely to come true. For example if you tell yourself you'll never amount to anything, bingo. I believe this concept is completely valid.

Where it has all gone horribly wrong is with the idea that you can teach self-esteem by pretending that all students are great masters. This approach is sadly and totally counterproductive. Students who are fed this propaganda learn a kind of self-esteem all right-- a fragile, brittle, inflated idea of themselves that can't survive failure. When these kids finally confront a real test of their ability and fail, they don't learn and try again, they just give up.

The real goal must be to teach that failure is a lesson for your future, not a judgement about your intrinsic worth. The problem is, many of us adults believe that failure IS a judgement about our intrinsic worth -- so how can we teach kids to overcome failure with energy and confidence when we can't do it ourselves?

Educating for self-esteem is horse****.

There are two responses to failure - get angry (with yourself) that you ****ed up and redouble your efforts, redirecting them if necessary, or pussy out.

"Educating for self-esteem" reinforces pussying out.

You just summed up my entire schooling experience in life thus far I thought college was going to be different, it is turning out to be the same bull****

My macro-economics class starts in a few weeks, and little of what is discussed in the ticker can be found in the book. I really don't think they could dumb it down anymore.

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"Educating for self-esteem" reinforces pussying out.

That's a more concise way to put it, yes

Karl, these last two days of Tickers are why I am so addicted to your blog and forum. Man, you have got it going on all over the place.

Did you know that once an illegal alien is granted citizenship they get to benefit from practices that discriminate against white males such as Affirmative Action? Great ticker

I write on what interests me - or*****es me off - from day to day.

I faxed that screed to the local schools. I'm sure they love me.

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Educating for self-esteem became a big deal in the last 20 years. The concept is simple: the story you tell yourself about yourself is very likely to come true. For example if you tell yourself you'll never amount to anything, bingo. I believe this concept is completely valid.

But our schools have gone from having a positive atmosphere ("Keep on working, practice hard, you can do it but you have to work for it.") to an accommodating one ("If you try, then that's all that matters.").

Schools are actually considering cutting out gifted programs because they've embraced that 'everyone is gifted.'

Every kid has different strengths and weaknesses. Fine. But what I've found most interesting is that our society doesn't recognize this self-esteem fun fest destroys and minimizes the efforts of our best and brightest.

A little off-topic:

After lunch, I can't find the "Un****ing believable Friday" thread?? Though I am happy today, I didn't take any beer....

Go look in the Gold Daytrading forum.

My bad. A new sub-forum....

Appreciate your yelling last evening. If every rant brings a similar selloff, I would like to set up a VoIP phone system for free, so all can hear you LIVELY!

Bill Buckley once said: "It's a socialist institution and it teaches socialism."

I said that over lunch with some public school teachers and one of them almost choked on her soup. All, but one, finished the lunch in stoney silence and that one giggled and we chatted happily for the rest of the luncheon.

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Every kid has different strengths and weaknesses. Fine. But what I've found most interesting is that our society doesn't recognize this self-esteem fun fest destroys and minimizes the efforts of our best and brightest.

To the extent that keeps the "best and brightest" from expecting and depending on recognition I view it as a good thing. Teaching kids that recognition is more important than loving what you do gives them a lifelong sentence of misery, even if they end up with walls covered with degrees and awards.

The way to encourage the best and brightest is not to give them awards but to get out of their way, and when you recognize that they may be go on to greater things than you ever did, don't try to cut them down to size because you're afraid of how small you will feel when they do.

I've been paying too much attention to LC's opinions.

I saw this: "we lie by omission and over time little Johnny becomes bigger Johnny"

but read it as this: "we lie by omission and over time little Johnny becomes ****** Johnny"

I bet LC will agree with my interpretation!

I gota tell ya. 23yrs ago when my kids started school, there was no way I saw this coming. I thought my kids were doing good, after all they were in the best school district in the State – maybe second best. They always brought home awards, good report cards etc. Now since moving back to Michigan our middle son has moved in with us. He does tree trimming for a small company. Our oldest son is working for a landscaper cutting grass; living with his fiancée & her parents. Our 23yr old daughter is waiting tables, living with two roommates. I never thought they would have it so rough. I had a good job (plumber) my wife was a homemaker and life was good. The media back then led me to believe they were getting the schooling they needed. New buildings, computers, buses – just name it. Your ticker today makes it clear WHAT HAPPENED. I just hope that this ticker gets out to some young folks starting a family so they can make decisions about what to really teach their kids. I hate to be a pessimist but it seems like the establishment has got a firm hold on the future of education.


The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government and I’m here to help…..Ronald Regan


Thanks Karl for having balls that clank and reminding Americans of who we were…..and can be.

Spot on rants the past two days

Nice work. Thanks for putting it out there

Thank you Karl, Excellent!

When I left my home town in Santa Barbara County for Thousand Oaks 13 years ago, it was because my youngest daughter was going to be enrolling in kindergarten soon, and S.B. county school scores were 35-40% lower (because of the number of illegal immigrants).

Well 13 years later, it's ****ed up here too. Big increase in illegal immigrants and all the associated problems.

My 4 kids attend public schools, but their real education is administered at home. My oldest daughter is now a junior in high school and she just got the results of her first SAT test. She scored a 2240 out of a possible 2400 and it wasn't because the public school education. All of our kids have "home" assignments that challenge them, they don't get that at school.

The kids who predictably do well are the home schooled kids, so what does the 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles do? They try to make parents of 166,000 home schooled kids criminals for teaching without credentials. The case is going to the California Supreme Court and if it's not over turned, it's going to get very interesting. Link to story: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?f....

The failing public school system can't be shown up by a bunch of mostly conservative "non-credentialed" parents now can they?

Gen I tried to explain in my college level Marco economics class that the fed follows i even brought in a chart that clearly showed it but that just got dismissed by my economics professor. Business cycles were not really covered they were mentioned briefly in passing but thats about it. Instead were were basically taught that the fed had complete control over interest rates and the distinction between long and short term rates was only briefly mentioned. From what i see there is no possibility they could properly teach this **** in high school if they cant even get it right at the college level by a economics professor with a ****ing PHD

heh what college do you go to