Sat Musings

Well, time to talk to myself again.

A guy on Facebook (Yes, even I have a page on Facebook!) sent around a bunch of question for theoretical answers. One was pet peeves or annoyances. I was thinking about this and have come up with two of them. One is people who don't care. Oh, they bitch like everyone else, but that's all that they do. They don't take the time to contact their elected reps, to write to the newspapers, to cancel subscriptions, to vote for new people, etc. Oh, they say they "care," but their inaction belies their words. The second is students who whine at low grades. In a sense, I don't blame them. Their entire academic lives have been with people who have little or no sense of academic rigor, of scholastic excellence. The teachers of today are more concerned with self-image, feelings, diversity, etc. Of course, engage them in discussions of these things and see how little they know about anything, let alone self-image, feelings, diversity, etc. Students want good grades, but don't want to work at it. I'm sure most of us want that, too, but if we didn't work and got the bad grades, we didn't complain. We realized it was our fault. Let me resort to "back when I was a kid." I can't imagine 90+% of my students lasting at all in the academic atmosphere I had. Hey, I almost didn't make it--one of my professors suggested I transfer to another school.

See "one" above...I can't believe people are just taking this crap called the "stimulus package." I guess we just call it the "stimulus package" and that's what people will believe--rather than the boondoggle, spending, stupid thing that it is. C'mon, why is ACORN getting millions of dollars? We could go on. And where are the Bush bashers (and, remember, I'm not Bush supporter, hardly) with BO??? Oh, they ripped Bush for the $600 per person tax rebate last year. "Oh, big deal," they said. Well, BO's big tax savings is $13 a week, not per person, but for a family!!!! Gee, that's about $600 a year, again, per family, not person. Where are all those who laughed, criticized? I'm not the brightest person in the world, but to quote myself when I was working, "I work with idiots."

I guess one way to save on the highways is not to plow or salt the heavy snow on weekends (to save on OT for the workers), just have force people to stay home. Businesses probably love that and the taxes from lost business sales????? I suppose that's one way, but I don't see our genius governor talking about withholding monies from school districts, local and intermediate, that pay their superintendents $200K and more. From 38 years of experience and perspective, I've never met one who was worth half that. I know teachers are not very good any more, but I still maintain the biggest drawback to quality education is administrators, which include principals, board admins, and supers. They have no idea of quality education, since they haven't experienced it. They don't have the courage to stand up for rigor, which is needed for quality.

Oh, I'm tired of talking to myself. Out.