don’t panic

The San Diego Union-Tribune had an article about how 47,000 high school students were unable to pass the new California exit exams required for graduation.

My first response was, “wow, that’s a lot of kids…”. But then again, I had no idea what percentage of potential graduates that represented. A quick Goggle check showed that to be about 1 in 10 students. Okay, wow.

And the article goes on to present disparaging viewpoints with people blaming the education system, the underfunded poor, and minority groups, pretty much as you would expect. So I’m asking myself, is the test really that hard?

The Union article said that the exam tests students for 10th grade English and eighth grade math and algebra. Mind you, that’s eighth grade math, not twelfth. Yikes! I might understand some minorities having a problem with the English, but even most of those kids are not speaking English as a second language… they grew up here!

So what’s going on?

Is the exam too hard? Are our schools that bad? All of the above?

Personally, I don’t buy the whole “poor neighborhood” argument. If the school has enough of a budget to afford textbooks, then the problem isn’t funding. We’re not talking about computer science here. It’s math and English.

I suppose that the exam could be too difficult, but nine out of ten passed. Do you lower the level of the test so that more pass and we feel good about our failing education system? It seems to me that the point of the exit exam is to make sure that the people we are handing diploma’s to are actually prepared for life, and have not simply “done their time.” If we lower the bar just to make people happy about themselves, then why test at all? Hell, why educate at all? What’s the point? If you graduate a kid who can’t read or speak well enough to get an average job, and can’t do the simple math that they’re going to encounter when they need to do something as complicated as balancing a checkbook, then what’s the damn point of wasting years of their lives and billions in taxpayer money?

It seems to me that we are willing to blame these numbers on anything except the students actually taking the test. Sure, “of the 46,700 seniors who have failed the test, 20,600 are designated as limited English learners and 28,300 are poor.” But what is it about these kids that sets them apart physically? There is no correlation between a lack of intelligence and low income save for a higher incidence of drug use by parents. And what the hell does “limited English learner” mean? They don’t get exposed to it? Are their teachers speaking in a language other than English? Unless they started high school having never uttered a word in our language, why should we give these kids a break? Yeah, it might be harder for them in school… But is it going to suddenly get easier when we hand them a piece of paper and tell them to go get a job?

I taught high school kids as a teacher’s assistant for three years while in college. About a quarter of those kids couldn’t put together a decent paragraph to save their lives. I knew that part of the problem was the system. We simply weren’t teaching what those kids needed to learn. We failed in that instead of teaching them to write and speak, we were boring the hell out of them with “classics”. You won’t learn what you don’t have any interest in. Even then, and this was decades ago, we failed to correct their speech. We gave them no incentives to use proper pronunciation even among their peers, let alone in the real world, and if you can’t talk, you can’t write. Add to that twenty years of slang and gang influences and it’s a wonder these seniors can even communicate with the rest of us. Have you seen how the average teen dresses? I digress…

The point is this: The system sucks, but the system has always sucked. Yet something has changed. Less kids are graduating, and those that do are far less prepared for what life throws at them. We can blame it on politics all we want, but sooner or later the students who are failing are actually going to have to stop blaming someone else and take matters into their own hands. You want an education? Get one. No one is stopping you. Right now, you have access to materials and help and it doesn’t cost you a penny. You want reality? How this – The second you take that diploma, you’re on your own. If you want to learn then it will be on your own nickel.

I read some statistics regarding the NSA’s desire to “create a database of every call ever made” within the U.S. and how most American’s think about it.

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, they found that “63 percent of those who were asked said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to fight terrorism, and 44 percent said they strongly approved of it.”

But what the Post and ABC fail to realize is that far more than 63 percent of our population are idiots.

Are they serious?! Do these people have any idea what they are saying?

“It’s just a list of people you called. If you’re not hiding anything then you have nothing to worry about.”

Yeah? That’s fine for Joe Blow Average who works at the local Denny’s and isn’t even involved in the PTA.

But this “simple list” would also include government officials (regardless of political affiliation), doctors, heads of corporations, supreme court justice’s, future supreme court justice’s, stock traders, your daughter, your pharmacist, your lawyer, your bank, and your ISP.

I have to wonder if that same 63 percent of those who took the poll would be okay with the NSA having them watched 24/7? Because that’s basically what they’re doing. Most people have no idea how much information can be inferred about you from simply watching who you call.

“But they don’t have the contents of those calls,” you say.

They don’t need to.

Follow this:

A call to a doctor.
A call from the doctor’s office.
A call to planned parenthood.

By looking at calls to your ISP, they can know exactly when you were online… or when you’re home. They can know when you’re at work and who you called from there when you were supposed to be working. But you’re small potatoes. We just blindly trust that our government isn’t going to abuse having that data… That every individual that has access to those records is completely trustworthy and unbiased in their use of it.

Imagine the President, or rather the President asking someone else, to have the NSA give them a list of calls from every opposing member of congress, or the committee heading an investigation into improper conduct by the current administration, or the environmental opponents of a current issue the President is pushing.

Or imagine the NSA intern who decides to see who all the top stock analysts are calling and when. Then, just for the hell of it does a check on his girlfriend and discovers she’s been making numerous calls to her doctor and a clinic that treats HIV.

Sure, we might be able to find and track possible terrorists, but at what cost? Would you be willing to give up every semblance of freedom to maybe find terrorists? It won’t eliminate it. Not a chance. We are basically giving the keys to our lives over to a government that is already under investigation for improper use of it’s power and is crumbling under a storm of criminal actions by very influential people who are only interested in personal gain.

Are we really that stupid??

Our President thinks so. He doesn’t see anything wrong with it at all.

I was reading an article on CNN today about how 7 in 10 Americans are feeling the pinch at the pump according to a new AP-Ipsos poll.

And yet, they go on to say:

“Yet the price spikes have not influenced people’s views about fuel-efficient cars.”

Yet, it obviously hurts enough to complain about it. And these figures were for people making between $50,000 and $75,000 a year. Wish we made that much. I wonder how much of a pinch it is for the lower class, who are really on a budget. An extra fifty bucks a month is no big deal when you make 75 grand, but for someone who has $100 a month left over for food after bills are paid… Yeah, that hurts. My family isn’t there yet, but things are tight. Yet I seriously hope that gas continues to rise… if that’s the only way people will wake up and stop buying huge vehicles that get crappy milage. It should hurt. Most of the world pays well above 4 dollars a gallon for gas. We Americans have had it easy. It’s time to feel the pain.