I was going to stay out of this. I'm probably going to look back at this and regret ever writing it.
There's a lot wrong with the U.S. The biggest wrong is that the average person in the U.S. is a fucking imbecile. Above average is just merely stupid. Some days it amuses the fuck out of me to watch the middle and lower class bicker and bash each other over stuff they really don't understand. I just watched a guy on television bitch about Obama and how much he's had to pay out of pocket in child care because of the strike. Really? I wanted to bash that fucker upside the head with a tire iron. Not so much about not having a fucking clue about Article II or the lack of federal preemption, but rather his bitching about public babysitting. Somedays it amuses me to tears. Other days it depresses the hell out of me.
My quick .02 on the strike. It's always a bad idea to strike while there is a line forming to the left filled unemployed workers willing to take your job. I get why the union is pissed, but this might be a bad time if it was avoidable. I won't pretend to care enough to know whether or not their hand was forced.
There's few things that should probably be fixed and can be fixed.
1) Education in the U.S. is in shambles.
Not all students are equal and the sooner we start acting like the better. To evaluate a teacher based on standardized test scores of student isn't really fair to anybody. You put all your low projected scorers in one class and that teacher then quits and you have a long term sub or subs finish out the year. Some kids, it doesn't matter if you have the most gifted teacher in the world. If those kids suck ass, they suck ass. Other teachers might suck ass, but they have good student who do well regardless of who the teacher might be. An analogy would be that Phil Jackson couldn't coach the Charlotte Bobcats to winning record last year. Nobody could. I could have coached the Miami Heat to a winning record last year (yes, I do believe this. I would have got out of the way).
What to do? Not all students are equal. Not everybody can do great things academically. The world needs ditch diggers too as the saying goes. But, if we are going to have compulsory education, maybe we should train the best fucking ditch diggers out there? At some point we're wasting advanced math on some kids. Maybe they should be in metal shop. or some other vocation. You can teach skills that are useful so when they graduate, they may not be able to read or write better, but maybe the fucker can work on a diesel engine very competently or be able to help in IT or some shit. I kind of think that getting away from the vocational aspect in the last 40-50 years was a mistake. Now we have illiterates who have absolutely no skills. Hell, make them bad-ass world class ditch diggers and farmers.
A big side bar: I've yet to meet a parent whose kid was not an absolute genius. Everybody's kid has an IQ over 250 and is advanced at his or her age and were doing this because it helps in development. Oh she's ranked 6th in her class and is in honors classes and going to be a doctor. . . . . . . . . .some of you are probably already seeing it already. I can't believe the shit that sells. Yeah, after 25 years of seeing my friends and acquaintances have nothing but genius kids, I'm still waiting to see the first one who wasn't a complete fuck up by age 19. The 16 year old who was certain to be a doctor flunked out of junior college three years later. Sometimes stupid is genetic.
I guess I'm saying quit wasting academic shit on kids who don't have a chance. Give them what they need and don't drag down the kids who fucking do understand calculus and chemistry. Put them in areas where they will excel at whatever it is. Tuba players don't necessarily need advanced Russian Literature.
2) Compulsory government service.
Everybody should have to serve a year or two or whatever. Not necessarily military service but something. Why in the fuck are there so goddamn many government contractors? A lot of bitching I've heard about how inefficient government is usually is a complain against contractors. For public works, why not try doing it without contractors? Those construction folks we just trained in high school, well now get to fucking work. Pay them similar to the military, work them similar to the military. Wanna opt out to go to college? Great, you're a military officer or in charge of managing the ditch diggers, or the engineer, or whatever. If the kid really isn't good for much, then goddamit put him to work doing picking onions or something and keep the mexicans out. Think of it as a nice trade off for welfare. There's no reason that a tank mechanic cant be started in high school and carried over to government service.
Maybe some college should be free. Say a person completes his two year service as a regular old clerk for the government. And this was a kid good enough to get into regular old college anyway. Why not allow him to go for an equal amount of time he put in? I'm not saying the government pays for him to go just anywhere. But rather create a university system for such things.
Or we can just have fucking stupid, illiterate kids, who bitch and bicker with each other over whether Obama or Romney is worse when it just doesn't fucking matter.
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