Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Sir Ken Robinson on Education

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A while back I started writing an opinion piece regarding education… I never quite finished it. My overall point in the piece was that our current education system is so ineffective that it literally makes our children less intelligent when it comes to their ability to learn and retain useful information. Moreover, it creates an environment in which it becomes practically impossible for a child to discover their passion in a manner that is healthy or conducive for expansion of that passion.

Please watch this video, as Sir Ken Robinson does an exceptionally great job of making a similar point… albeit in a way far superior to my stream of conscious rantings.

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Politics

Can someone please clean up the Gulf already?

I realize that it’s difficult to accept responsibility sometimes, but its an achievement we all have to face at some point in our lives.  Until this mess is stopped and cleaned up, it doesn’t matter who’s fault it is… really.  Just fix it, pay the bills, the fines, the PR, etc…  and if it was the fault of Haliburton, or Joe Plumber, or whomever, you can take them to civil court and try to get your money back.   In the meantime, clean up the mess..  Oh, and thanks for not paying in money in US taxes last year, that was awesome… Oh, and thanks for raising gas prices right now even though the price for a barrel of oil is dropping.. Oh, and stop being so lame.

Here are a couple of interesting notes from the web:

10 Things You Don’t Want To, but should, Know about the BP Oil Spill – Very informative article!

courtesy of 9gag.com

Here is a great video by Rachel Maddow of MSNBC talking about the unfortunate coincidences between this oil spill and oil spills in history:

Politics

Thoughts on the Current Education Problems

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Update 10/27/2010 – WATCH THIS VIDEO – https://jakebohall.com/sir-ken-robinson-on-education/10/2010

Read a cool article at the NY Times – The Case for Working With Your Hands – about education and the important role of a child’s/youth’s direct interaction with the things they are interested in pursuing.   Loved it…

I started writing this post end of May, but never finished.  I read another article today about a Professor losing his job over grades, and his lack of desire to acknowledge their value.

“Grades poison the educational environment,” he insists. “We’re training students to be obedient, and to try to read our minds, rather than being a catalyst for learning.” – University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt

I don’t necessarily agree with his opinions in all of the conflicts that Prof. Rancourt has had, I must say that I agree with him on this one.  It is extremely important that the education systems not discourage struggling students by giving them poor grades.  Encourage the students to find their own paths, question everything, be imaginative, and not be weighed down by years of psychological self-confidence issues because we have a societal judgement that we pass in the form of letter grades..

I started writing the following on 12/14/2007… in an effort to express my distaste for our education system.  I went to a private school, received great grades, learned many things.   But I saw others who did not. I discovered how much of my delusioned “superiority” was biased based upon my years of perception deprivation and lack of exposure to those who could/did challenge/beat me.  I discovered how several years of early life experience with “hands-on” training proved to have taught the most valuable lessons.  Please enjoy, crtique, add to, duplicate, share, proselytize, etc as long as you give me a link/reference  🙂 Continue reading Thoughts on the Current Education Problems →