On 4/9/07, Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Where can we buy a bridge or a road?
Infrastructure: A Road to Riches?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/19/AR2006031900913_pf.html
It will be interesting to see how public ordinances mandating "private
tolls .INC" to spend a gazillion dollars fixing pot-holes is received.
This will lead to articles titled, "The best government money can buy"
BTW - you guys are making me nervous with all these messages with the
subject line pointing so close to my neck of the woods, about 20 miles
down the road.
FWIW, I tried to voice in a recent thread some of the issues brought
out again here. It is a shame education is necessarily under so much
scrutiny and not working for so many.
Gee, we should have thought of this before we made easier for aliens
to attend our schools than our own kids, huh.(re: in-state tuition,
grade school teachers having to buy chalk, etc.)
Are they being prepared?
(besides the fact that Bush is nauseating when he talks about
preparing America's work force of the future)
From my view, today's students have more years of history and more
pointed subject matter to learn than I did, yet in the same amount of
time. I doubt MS Windows is helping them finish the material much
faster.....please.... So, something always gives, year to year.
Otherwise, the class of 2014 will:
A) die trying,
B) fail
C) leave the task unfinished - take your pick.
It is true that core subjects could be the exact same books any of us
used, but there was no computer to speak of - Should they even bother
learning a slide rule? I would hope that studying the oil crisis of
the 70's is a short & sweet topic. This all sounds routine maybe, but
I think this line of questioning is at the core of the whole system's
inability to look at reality - it is what it is.
Money: The costs are unnecessarily staggering. Perhaps OBVIOUS,
diminishing public support (higher taxes) will never work better than
today, using the past as a trend line, and the only choices might be
among this list:
A) limit who gets the goodies (rip-off the poor / re: see subject line)
B) continue raising taxes and fighting tooth-n-nail where the only
major outcome is waste (a jaded road)
C) continue picking this endless money-tree we refer to as the
national debt. (false sense of success )
D) adopt a radically new approach like serialized education where
students are compelled to study a particular curriculum (AKA
communism)
E) private education where book prices are questioned and building
costs are actually checked. Parents ask; Where was that $700 dollars
spent? And the spender is held accountable.
There may be others. Which are palatable choices?.
The teachers union resistance to change? Yeah, it's a problem, but it
can go away in a hurry. IIRC, elected officials run the show -or so we
thought. Why would any district in their right mind cut teachers
short? Perhaps it is one of the very few things they CAN control to
some degree? Is the union not evidence that public salary judgement
mistakes are bound to occur? We might be more effective saying to the
district -"been there -done that-did not work", this is not a workable
model anymore, why re-live it? Solutions? Privatization? any others?
We are on borrowed time, your choice MUST work.
I know NOTHING about these unions other than what the x-education
secretary said about them stifling progress /change for the better,
but it sounds like a battle that can not be won without our kids being
impacted or government strong-arming. Sec. Education has that view - I
do not, why doubt it? Sounds like reality to me.
Again, fixing is not easy to digest, but going private might be.
Can we see how we MIGHT start to agree privatization is a possible
path? Hillary? Obama? who will do this? My state is Republican (or so
they say) I am for what is right, I don't care what the title reads at
the ballot box any more (within reason) and yes, I stand for
something, it is -they- who have lost their way.
Finally, I think there were some great points made earlier, we could
loose organizational benefits if we allow it, knowledge, lessons
learned , etc (re: outsourcing). Off shoring (not outsourcing) can
leave a sour taste.
Outsourcing will work well if we let it. My doctor outsources x-rays,
I don't like it, but his charges would be prohibitive without doing
that. We work with them for the win-win.
