“No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future,” (2013 president’s inaugural address).
What is it that President Obama is inferring every time he mentions math and science teachers? The United States already has plenty of technology instructors. Is he wanting to create an emotionless society, by having the children focus only on mathematical axioms, physical evidence and scientific “fact”?
Well, I disagree with that assumption. I am more concerned with the lack of moral instruction for our future citizens, and also the missing inculcation of our societal mores.
John F. Kennedy stated that we should “ask what we can do for our country,” and I believe that applies to what we can do for our society as well. It doesn’t matter if we are in the welfare line or are management, we each need to be encouraged to consider the general welfare as well as our own needs. In addition we must accept the consequences of our actions, whether or not the outcome is what we wanted to happen.
When the majority of our citizens and inhabitants integrate the standards of our society into their lives (instead of trying get away with extreme behaviors), we can then approach “Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, [which will become] constants in our character” (2013 president’s inaugural address).
That refers to our personal character as well as our society’s character.
Patrick Shepherd
Mesa
onerebel posted at 8:01 pm on Sun, Mar 10, 2013.
So Cerulean, your trying to sell us the idea Hitler, a self proclaimed Pagan, who hated all religions, was taught to hate Jews by religious groups that he also hated and persecuted? Until you can show me some facts to back that one up, there is no sale here on that one!
Cerulean posted at 6:50 pm on Sun, Mar 10, 2013.
I am not applauding the burning of homes, Christian or not. I do not despise religion. It was, however, religion that taught Hitler to hate Jews as immigrants and homosexuals.
Thank you sockratties, you understood my comment well.
onerebel posted at 3:36 pm on Sun, Mar 10, 2013.
Sockratties, Hitler was truly a master at leading those looking to be lead. If you do believe that the Rumsfeld/Cheney regime was trying to push us in that direction, you must sincerely ask yourself. Is the current administration doing anything different, except accelerating the process? The President, with the help of the media, is always placing the blame on the other side. He told the Republican's they had to sit in the back of the bus remember? So that means HE is the one driving!
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
Adolf Hitler
sockratties posted at 11:03 am on Sun, Mar 10, 2013.
Cerulean… I interpret your comment as saying that transferring antidotal characteristics from one analogy to another is logically invalid. I agree.
1Reb… You have pointed out something that is often overlooked when we only judge Hitler by his heinous crimes and insanity. He was a darn good politician, romancing when he could, threatening and frightening when necessary and willing to say whatever would achieve his goals with no sense of honor or trust. Truly a gifted madman.
We endure many of the same disrespects from our own politicians. Fortunately they are less successful and we, hopefully, are less naive. However, if we, like Germany, were in a depression, had recently lost a war, lost national prestige and were forced to pay restitution to neighboring countries, would we be more vulnerable? I think the Rumsfeld/Cheney regime was trying to push us that direction.
onerebel posted at 9:41 am on Sun, Mar 10, 2013.
Cerulean, shouldn't you be applauding the burning of Christan's homes that is currently going on in Pakistan right now, along with others that love to bash Christian's?
Adolf Hitler was a confirmed Catholic as a child. However, Hitler rejected the religion of his mother, calling it "the Jewish Christ-creed with its effeminate, pity-ethics". In public, Hitler occasionally used Christian references, to appeal to the Protestants and Catholics who made up the vast majority of German voters. In private, he hated Christianity, telling his fellow Nazis "I am a complete pagan", and "the best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death...Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity". His actions spoke even louder. He closed religious schools, shut down Christian organizations, confiscated church property, and ordered the murder of priests and the German leader of Catholic Action. So Cerulean, it appears you and Hitler had more in common then Bush did. You both appear to despise religion!
[wink]
Cerulean posted at 7:16 pm on Sat, Mar 9, 2013.
“Adolf Hitler was a talented painter, endplayed and blocked, so he just painted on your world, instead of a canvas?”
Adolf could paint, yes, he was also “fixated on war” (wiki) at an early age. Adolf was a narcissist and a Catholic who hated Jews (immigrants from the East) and homosexuals.
I understand that George Bush 43 is a fairly good draftsman too. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57573432/george-w-bush-a-great-artist-painting-teacher-says/
rabbitguy1964 posted at 5:31 pm on Sat, Mar 9, 2013.
Voice of reason, thats right. Well said.
sockratties posted at 2:37 pm on Sat, Mar 9, 2013.
Rich… While we wait for our inevitable demise perhaps we should still consider encouraging scientists, technicians, engineers and mathematicians to work on efficiently providing for our basic needs. We don’t house ourselves with stacks of prose, we don’t clothe ourselves with poetry, paintings won’t feed the hungry and cures for pestilence and disease are not imaginary. Until someone actually puts a plow in the ground, an axe to wood or rivets in steel, artists and dreamers are a burden. Someone has to pay for luxury and discretionary pleasures. Those who use resources either help create them or are a drain on those who do. When the load of dreamers, imaginers, thinkers, readers and creators of esoteria becomes greater than producers of necessities can carry, the system collapses.
Bureaucrats, military, economists, artists, philosophers and writers are all burdens you have indicated are in surplus. One hope is that STEM graduates can contribute enough to production efficiency that this predatory relationship can be supported as though it were symbiotic. If we are lucky enough to survive until the sun goes nova we should at least exploit the meager resources we have been given with whatever efficiency we can.
You said that Hitler was a talented painter. Remember that Nazis plundered European art, drank fine wines and created a pseudo social structure that imitated that they were destroying. Such pantomime only corrupted them. We, too, could fall victim of pretension. A sound, economically stable society will grow its own cultural assets once the basic needs of the citizens have been met.
Rich posted at 10:16 pm on Fri, Mar 8, 2013.
Cerulean,
Education is first to understand yourself. I was born about 6,000 years behind in my reading and I get further behind every year I live. More paintings are painted every year than I can possibly see. Math, science, some people see the world that way, and temporarily it pays off for them. You don't force artists and philosophers into them. The object to give everyone a chance to be them. That is why education exists. When it is twisted to profit and power it betrays itself. Adolf Hitler was a talented painter, endplayed and blocked, so he just painted on your world, instead of a canvas? Maybe he should have learned a bit more science and math? Then you'd be speaking German. Can you conceive of a world where we are encouraged to be ourselves and those who want us to march in lock step are our criminals? The greatest antagonist I have ever faced is the American government, as it enslaves more and more of us, the 'middle class?" Wage slaves looking for jobs. They don't enjoy the journey. As Americans we have various ways to go, are we Steinbeck's 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires' or are we living Thoreau's 'lives of quiet desperation?' Unfortunately we no longer teach the choice to our children.
Cerulean posted at 4:43 pm on Fri, Mar 8, 2013.
The comments for this letter, have been interesting. Rich, the practice of something that one does, can be a journey enjoyed.
Rich posted at 7:50 pm on Thu, Mar 7, 2013.
sock, our choices are infinite, as infinite as our imagination can create. The magical thinker, the drunk, they create and that is important, Steve Jobs and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Drug addicts create, William F. Burroughs. The digital idiot doesn't. he is a slave to his devices, he is only marginally human. I don't believe in evolution, I do believe in the big bang and a devolving universe. And, like Einstein, I think mankind is devolving. One day, everyone now alive will be dead, and eventually the universe will contain no human beings. The object isn't to reach any destination, but rather to enjoy the journey.
sockratties posted at 5:10 am on Thu, Mar 7, 2013.
Rich… Do you really think our only choices are being a drunk, a digital idiot or living in make-believe? They’re all the same, simply induced by different processes. Evolution of our species includes technology just as discarded shells are the environment of the hermit crab. Where ever that leads us, that’s where we’ll be. All the wistful aspirations in the universe won’t change the inevitable. Evolution is not a guarantee of a desirable path, only of change, which may even include extinction. Thinking we control our destiny is whimsical folly. At the corners of Southern and Gilbert, you were part of the mix just as were the others. If you graze away from the flock the wolves will get you even though the grass may be sweeter for a time. Denying membership in the flock does not make one immune to wolves. These wolves are that which makes us human and being human is both our biggest threat and greatest hope.
Rich posted at 10:53 pm on Wed, Mar 6, 2013.
What you are missing Sock is the magic. Steve Jobs was a magical thinker, in the end he killed himself by believing the magic rather than the science. Einstein was lousy at arithmetic, he was great at Mathematics, a discipline that embraces the irrational. Both were drop-outs. Look at the world around you, we are approaching Einstein's prediction, “I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots.”
This morning, returning from AJ at about eleven I was stopped at the intersection of Southern and Gilbert, and looked around me. I was the only driver I saw who wasn't talking on a cell phone or texting. A drunk is at least trying not to have an accident, none of the people around me were even thinking about it. Yet every one of them was worse than a drunk on the road. Are we (rapidly) approaching Einstein's 'generation of fools'?
sockratties posted at 4:18 pm on Wed, Mar 6, 2013.
VoR… Are you saying that man was better off in the stone age? We can assume that someone found a way to attach a handle to a rock and had a better killing machine. Maybe a drum was the first communication technology. Technology is what human society is about and is one of the things that make us faster evolving than other animals. If you only choose those things you personally approve of, you’re ignoring the essence of society. Human history is a sequence of technological advances followed by social efforts to catch up. Of course amusement, entertainment and weaponizing have also been involved but that’s people.
VofReason posted at 2:26 pm on Wed, Mar 6, 2013.
This may surprise some, but people didn't have internet or goofy little calculators with flashing lights to entertain their every waken moment not too long ago. Some how they survived.
VofReason posted at 2:25 pm on Wed, Mar 6, 2013.
Yes, we are in the information age. Unfortunatly, the information age means that people squander their time looking at iphones, talking past eachother in text messages and watching Utube videos of cats playing pianos. Lots of information, how is it advancing society?
Cerulean posted at 9:34 am on Wed, Mar 6, 2013.
I believe that 50% of what we, as individuals, do in life is inherent and 50% is cultivated through environment. So, artist, philosophers, mathematicians, etcetera are born of nature and it is up to our institutions to cultivate the genius.
We are in an amazing age of information, therefore, to compete we need to seek those special skills; even in the ghetto.
sockratties posted at 7:51 am on Wed, Mar 6, 2013.
I'll play....We know when we aren’t competing because we become consumers with decreasing ability to acquire. Without creating new wealth we can’t afford to pay philosophers to hypothesize about how our way of life isn’t compatible with nature or to pay artists to create images expressing our distress. Until we have an ability to create wealth in the real world all the pontification in the universe means nothing. When our college graduates can actually do something to trade for our piece of the pie, our ability to support artists and philosophers, who are actually consumers, will increase. Hunters and gatherers have come and gone, agriculture has come and gone, industry has come and is going. This is the information age and we either compete or live in the street to philosophize about our plight and express our problem with graffiti on slum walls.
Rich posted at 10:01 pm on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
OKay let's play. We 'know' when we sense (science), when we reason (philosophy) and when we feel (art). Does it profit us to build a civilization focusing on one of them? Or is that a tyranny that is just failure on a stick? It's a balancing game now, for almost a century, since 1915 we've produced enough for everyone. We overproduce and can't distribute, without cutting production, then it is a depression or recession or whatever name you dream up for it. No system we have works, and the only real answer can only come from art, sensation and reason are endplayed. Yet the first thing 'cut' is art. As I said, light years beyond stupid,
Cerulean posted at 8:11 pm on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
The letter writer, Patrick Shepherd said, “Is he [Obama] wanting to create an emotionless society, by having the children focus only on mathematical axioms, physical evidence and scientific “fact”?”
No I do not believe that we should assume that mathematicians are emotionless nerds with a lack of morals. I quoted Einstein as an example.
[smile]
Rich posted at 6:23 pm on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
Cerulean, when we quote we inevitably take things out of context and invest them with more importance than the person we are quoting meant. Both Buddhists and Taoists accept pretty much what Einstein is saying here. The Taoists would call it Wu Wei. The natural and spiritual worlds work together in a certain pattern, one lives a successful life if one recognizes the pattern and acts with it. Rather like swimming with, and not against the tide.
sockratties posted at 4:19 pm on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
Cerulean... Einstein was an atheist who was afraid to say so. The religion he describes is a religion with the essence of religion removed. Religion is dogma and theology. Using the words of a great physicist doesn't lend authority to mythology or extract mythology from religion. Albert Einstein did better when he stuck with those things in which he had expertise.
Cerulean posted at 8:43 am on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity.” Albert Einstein
RubidouxFalcon posted at 7:20 am on Tue, Mar 5, 2013.
Pretty insightful DonMey. I would also add that the entire structure of the classroom only prepares you for the classroom. We don't hang out with 25 people of our exact age for 7 hours a day in real life. The social environment created by this strange arrangement leaves most kids totally unprepared to deal with younger and older people in real life. There is no single disciplinarian (the teacher) that organizes our daily lives in real life. Rarely is our work day COMPLETELY repetitive, requiring no skills to prioritize our day and becoming easily mastered from the first week and leading to boredom from the lack of change. (Some jobs are completely repetitive, but most aren't).
It is for these and other reasons that we homeschool. We find small group settings like soccer, music class, and church to ensure our child and cooperate in a group. But the bulk of his learning occurs in the home, on outings and other events that mimic real life. Change, diverse interaction, independent organization and so forth.
It's working so far. He's far beyond his peers who attend school. He has lots of friends and is a social leader. He's kind to young kids, fits it well with older kids. I just can't imagine ever sending him to school, unless he asked me to.
DonMey posted at 3:06 pm on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
Zero tolerance policies teach kids the world is black and white, when in reality, it is shades of gray. Character comes from interpreting those shades, and we're not letting kids see it.
VofReason posted at 1:31 pm on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
The root of the schooling problem is the same as it always has been. Students who want to learn and have support from their parents to learn, will learn.
VofReason posted at 1:28 pm on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
Let me try this "Truth" free association stuff. Why are liberals delusional you ask? That is becuase they hold to a fact that the Government is the solution to all of our problems. That it is only a matter of figuring out how to pry more money out of productive hands and put in the hands that skim a fair share off the top and then employ the most ineffective methods to get something done. Why do they belive this in the face of the facts that it fails year after year? Good question.
Cerulean posted at 1:13 pm on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
Rich, artist are now describing the future in bold and sustainable ways. It is up to those with no vision to try and grasp the ideas and follow along
I agree with the above authors who reject the notion to use public school as an arena for religious indoctrination. However, I do believe there is a place in elementary education for teaching manners, respect for one another and, more importantly, citizenship.
valleynative posted at 12:03 pm on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
Every year, the U.S. graduates more people with advanced degrees than there are jobs for them to fill. Corporations hire less qualified foreigners because they are cheaper, not because they're better.
What people call "Judeo-Christian" morality is almost always simply the universal morality of healthy human minds. There are moral people, and immoral people, religious people and non-religious people. Neither causes the other.
Bluepoet posted at 11:53 am on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
Obama accentuates Math and Science, in his speeches about education, because, as a country, we are falling behind, in those areas. This is the future of our economy, within the context of the Information Wars.
While I would hope that a Liberal education doesn't disappear, within our society, I do see the urgency of having a workforce that can implement technology, and develop it. There is no mutually exclusivity to this, or, there doesn't have to be, per se...
I also disagree that schools are the place for "inculcation" of societal mores. Our society is much too diverse, for that. However, I assert that learning the why of something is just as important as learning how...it's called critical thinking, and it's sorely lacking, these days--educationally speaking.
chatmandu002 posted at 11:07 am on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
Too many parents have abdicated their moral authority to the TV, video games, internet, drugs, schools and government.
sockratties posted at 6:44 am on Mon, Mar 4, 2013.
There is something to the proverb “it takes a village to raise a child.” As a taxpayer I’m only willing to pay for the “readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic” part. The extended family, role models and religion of the child should do the rest. Schools have a place in rearing children but it does not include babysitting or infusing some universal moral ethos.
Rich posted at 7:54 pm on Sun, Mar 3, 2013.
To get back to the subject, the Constitution was written within Judeo-Christian morality. For over three thousand years China was ruled by the "mandate of Heaven." For two thousand, Europe by "divine right." Google them if this confuses you. "Reason" has only held sway in "Communism" in Russia and France between the execution of Louis XVI and Napoleon.
Science and math are abstractions with only a possible connection to reality, math is openly irrational, science only a guess with insufficient data, given our observation of the universe. Different things work at different times. Theology ruled the world much longer than science has, and it is on the cusp of it's own dark age.
The ones who fail us are our artists, because their disciple is simply to create gratuitous images, and not stop, giving us answers that were never there before. And Obama wants to short them, or force them into science and math because of their genius. That is several light years beyond exceedingly stupid.
onerebel posted at 3:12 pm on Sun, Mar 3, 2013.
Truth-"You ask where did Bush fail in Afghanistan?" WHAT? Who asked? You remind me of an old Japanese movie where the lips and the words don't match up! What's wrong with our country? Some on the left will use the excuse that is because the right is not progressive like they are. They will say the life of a killer is worth saving, yet the life of the innocent unborn is not. we should punish success and rewarding laziness. Being gay, or sexually promiscuous is cool but being faithfully married is not. What's wrong with our country is that our Constitution was written for a citizenry that had morals. Interestingly it's the Liberals that say the Constitution needs to be be changed because it's out dated and regressive! Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
truth posted at 2:30 pm on Sun, Mar 3, 2013.
When it comes to job creation, George W. Bush produced the worst results—less than a one percent increase over eight years—of any president since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) started keeping records in 1939. Contrast that with President Bush. Under his leadership, more than 7,077 Americans (military and/or civilian) were killed and 40,030 wounded by foreign terrorists or fighters either on U.S. soil or “in theater” during military operations. These 47,107 casualties don’t include non-hostile deaths of deployed troops (another 1,050), nor do they include the thousands of cases of PTSD and other long-term after-effects of multiple deployments.There is plenty to fault with the Bush administration's approach to Afghanistan - especially the decision to shift intelligence assets out of the country in 2002 to focus on Iraq.Moreover, he did that while simultaneously drawing U.S. intelligence assets and high-level military, political and diplomatic attention away from Afghanistan.The over-arching problem, it seems to me, is that Washington cannot really publicly reconcile itself to the fact that it is going to leave Afghanistan much the way it found it: at war with itself
truth posted at 2:26 pm on Sun, Mar 3, 2013.
You ask where did Bush fail in Afghanistan?
It didn't have to be this way. After the Taliban was toppled in December 2001, much of the world was prepared to help the Afghan people rebuild their country, which had been devastated by a quarter century of unrelenting warfare. But the Bush administration would have none of it. It opposed the deployment of large numbers of peacekeeping forces, believing, wrongly, that great powers shouldn't do nation building. Moreover, even while Bush called for a Marshall Plan-like effort to rebuild Afghanistan, his administration failed to include a request for reconstruction funding in its 2002 budget request to Congress.
But worse was to come. Rather than finishing the job in Afghanistan, Bush of course decided to invade Iraq. Thousands of intelligence operatives, hundreds of thousands of troops, and billions of dollars were then diverted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the terrorists to pursuing an ill-fated occupation that, the NIE concludes, has become "the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
Ironically, and tragically, it is the people of Afghanistan who are now suffering the consequences of this gross strategic blunder. The upsurge of violence there — of suicide bombings and other terrorist acts — is reminiscent of what has been happening in Iraq. Indeed, NATO soldiers have concluded that there has been an "Iraqization" of the Afghan insurgency. The similarity in tactics — the way IEDs are hidden, suicide bombers are used, etc. — is just too great.
Efforts to kill or capture al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden failed as he escaped a battle in December 2001 in the mountainous region of Tora Bora, which the Bush Administration later acknowledged to have resulted from a failure to commit enough U.S. ground troops
Leon Ceniceros posted at 2:07 pm on Sun, Mar 3, 2013.
This Letter Writer has inadvertently hit the nail on the head.
Teachers don't want to ..."TEACH".....they want to ....."MENTOR".
They want to be another .."Welcome back, Mr. Kotter"....or the ..."Prime of Miss Jean Broadie" and don't forget the "Dead Poet's Society" and the "Mona Lisa Smile".
All of these movies had the main character....going against the School and attempting to instill.................."MORAL VALUES"
Folks, that is not what the job requirement of a teacher requires.
"Moral Values" are taught at ..."HOME"....by......"PARENTS"..............period.
Math, science, and all the other subjects are taught by.........'TEACHERS"....period.
PEOPLE IN EDUCATION HAVE GONE THROUGH FOUR OR MORE YEARS OF COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY. ......WHY DO THEY HAVE A HARD TIME UNDERSTANDING THAT THEY WERE HIRED TO BE......"TEACHERS"....NOT...."PARENTS".