Global warming and your garden

[Billy]

The one that worries me the most (along with the terminator gene) is the gene that would have corn grow plastic.

[Omelet]

Mother nature does not care about man...

She's a bitch that way.

[Omelet]

Or have the parents take the time to do some of it! I learned my survival stuff from mom and dad, and church camp.

Not in school...

[Omelet]

Yeah. Why is mileage getting WORSE instead of better? I'm loath to buy into conspiracy theory, but this one has me following it.

[Omelet]

Soylent Green anyone?

[Persephone]

JC, you're scattering your discontent among several subjects. If you don't like how your tax money is being spent in the education area, get after your local officials. Also protest to the Bush administration re: "No Child Left Behind", which has yielded the result you rightly protest -- teaching to the test. (Incidentally, Bush stole the slogan from Marion Wright Edelman's legitimate child advocacy group, the Children's Defense Fund.)

Below is a well-expressed counter-argument I found on another NG where a similar discussion was in progress. Since we're into an OT debate about education and taxes (I think that's what it's about?) maybe this POV would interest JC.

Persephone

-------

"You know, I see this all the time. You figure "my ox isn't being gored, so why should I pay taxes?" Hint: No man is an island. You are part of the greater society, unless you opt out and go to live on a desert island somewhere. (and don't expect to be rescued if in trouble).

You need good schools to turn out well-educated citizens whether or not you have kids in school. What they do as youth and as adults DIRECTLY affects you. You also need for all mothers to have good pre-natal care and good infant care, meaning proper nutrition and medical care so the children will grow up to be good citizens.

You also need clean streets, electricity maintenance, working traffic signals, disaster response, pure food & water, etc.etc. ***and people who know how to run these societal functions.***

Looking narrowly at a fictive bottom line misses the longer-term. As Ben Franklin famously said: "Either we all hang together or we will assuredly hang separately."

"Apres moi le deluge" is no longer operative."

[Billy]

Who said anything about humanity? I'm thinking about life and the many paths that nature has taken to express it and assure its' survival. It took a billion years for the first nutrient sea to develop. Hopefully, next time recovery will start sooner.

[Omelet]

Oh I doubt that ALL life will be wiped out?

At the very least, the cockroaches shall survive...

;-}

[enigma]

Billy wrote in news: [e-mail] ct.net.au:

and i was bored silly. i was reading before i was three, & reading my father's Master's textbooks by the time i was 4. my parents got the NY school system to accept me for Kindergarten when i was 4. in NY, i was pretty much allowed to read what i wanted when the other kids were learning, but when we moved to MA when i was in 2nd grade things went bad fast. that school allowed no variation from the norm. i was punished for writing cursive, for reading anything but the baby texts, for working ahead in the math book. when my teacher took my copy of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End away for being inappropriate & even refused to return it to my mother (mom bought me a new copy), i'd gave up on school. at age 6 i told that teacher i didn't need school & i didn't need her. i could learn & do anything i wanted and she couldn't stop me. that didn't go over well... :) i fought the school system from then on & i vowed i'd never subject a child of mine to that mind-numbing, stifling blandness. schools have only become worse since i attended. lee

[Bill]

Any chance anyone knows the teacher of the year from New York city that touched on similar themes. I'd guess 1975 +- 5. There is a wonderful paper about but I am at a loss to find it.

Bill

[Billy]

I thought the argument was that team sports generated cash flows that benefited everyone. They are money makers at colleges and universities. Kids do need P.E. but four times around the track isn't very interesting. Primary school is where kids should be exposed to P.E., music, and art in order to broaden their learning.

Multiple intelligences is an educational theory, first developed by Howard Gardner, that describes an array of different kinds of "intelligences" exhibited by human beings. Gardner suggests that each individual manifests varying levels of these different intelligences, and thus each person has a unique "cognitive profile."

original seven types of intelligences are Language, Spatial, Logic/Math, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal. To educate an individual, it is important that they be exposed to all forms of learning. As opposed to memorizing for a particular test, or as educators refer to it,"drill and kill". As in, kill any interest in learning.

[Charlie]

Good post, Tom. Thanks.

Viva la Revolución Jardín Charlie

[Billy]

Actually, education has followed the complexity of weaponry. The more complex the weapon, the smarter the soldier must be to use it. Come the day that soldiers need to be able to solve for "x", everybody will be taught algebra.

I'll put in a word for the Waldorf schools. A guy that I used to do tae-kwon-do with taught in a Waldorf school. He had a class of about 10 students. He would have them from 1st grade through 8th. Because he knew each student's abilities he didn't need to test. Unfortunately, Waldorf is expensive.

[enigma]

Bill wrote in news: [e-mail] news.net:

John Holt, maybe?

lee

[enigma]

Billy wrote in news: [e-mail] ct.net.au:

team sports are fine for colleges, but we're talking public school, k-12th grades. not much of my taxes go to the land grant university compared to what the grade schools suck up & i'm far more willing to fund music, art & non-competative PE than i am funding sports that use a lot of money & benefit so very few. lee

[Bill]

YES

Grateful Bill

[enigma]

Billy wrote in news: [e-mail] ct.net.au:

but weaonry is being made for use by lowest common denominator... so how does that work?

not any more than any other private school, really. Boo's in Montessori because the closest Waldorf school is halfway across the state. i also disagree with one facet of their philosophy, which is that children should not read until age

1. while some kids aren't ready to read until then, forbidding reading seems wrongheaded. OTOH, i'm all for the forbidding of TV, but not so much forbidding recorded music... i really like Waldorf's focus on nature & fantasy... but i don't think it would have suited Boo's analytical nature nearly as well as Montessori does. lee

[Bill]

Yet Holt may not be the guy I was remembering. It is those 35 years old insights that can occur and get me scratch my brow. One of those many themes that come to mind. Holt BTW is right on. He is buried about here somewhere.

Wet cold 50 F day.

Bill who thinks Charlie knows :))

[Charlie]

I've probably mentioned this before, but we had a '76 Datsun B210 that got 42 mpg. Billy's old Datsoon pickup likely does, or did, pretty well.

Funny thing, ain't it?

Along the same lines, in the last month the scooter population has greatly increased and there are now tons of bicycles on the streets. In the past hardly anyone rode either. Several of the local businesses, including WalFart, have put up bike parking racks.

Heh heh, lots of boats and suvs and trucks with "Fer Sale" signs also.

Personally, it's way past time that we give up, as Kunstler puts it, "Happy Motoring". Increasing fuel mileage is not the solution. Many fewer cars and many fewer miles driven, that is a good start. I think that is going to happen, no matter what.

The world is maybe getting larger again. I hope.

Charlie

[Charlie]

John Holt, writing in TMEN, in the mid seventies, was the catalyst that propelled us into home schooling our sons. One of the better things we ever did. They are aproaching thirty and IMO have their heads on properly.

Charlie