Civic Duty

[dmccarty]

To be fair to the US Education system, it is hard to teach many subjects to any depth. There is only so much time in 12 years. And a good portion of the 12 years is just learn'n to read, rite, and cipher'n.

In college I was waiting to see a History Prof and I noticed another Prof had a bulletin board. Not one of those fancy computer BBS but a real cork bulletin board. So I went over to read what was on the board...

The Prof was a Greek/Roman Humanities teacher and he had a list of test questions from the 20 or 30s. The purpose was to show how little we learn about the Greek/Roman Classic's anymore. Now I took this to mean we were just a bunch of dumb slackers.

In the 20th Century the amount of human knowledge has increased at an gigantic rate. My grand parents were born when people still had to ride horses for daily transportation but they lived to see faster the sound airplanes, planes that could file around the world in a day, and the man on the moon. Prior to this there was not much difference in human knowledge and lifestyle between my great grandparents and their great grandparents. What has happened in the last 100 years is mind bending.

Back in the day one could focus on the Classics because there was not that much else to learn. Look at how much science as advanced. In Franklin's day he was known as Natural Philosopher which was a person who today would specialize in physics, biology, zoology, etc. In Ben's day there just was not enough knowledge for specilization. And a wee bit of time has passed to add more to what we have to learn in history. While I might not know Latin, Greek or French I am fluent in at least a half dozen computer languages. For that old Humanities Prof that would not count for much.

I think in High school I had one or maybe two semesters in US History. Another one or two semesters in "World History." How can you teach at any depth the History of the World?

And honestly what is a tenth grader more interested? US History or the cute girl sitting next to him?

Also as a teenager much of what is said in history classes is very subtle. One just does not have the life experience to know that signing the Declaration of Independence could me the loss of your land, house, family and/or life. Ben Franklin did not loose much wealth from the war but he lost his son. Not to death in battle but because Ben's son stayed loyal to the King. I think they talked once after the colonies split with the UK. This was very painful for Franklin since his first born son and his namesake died of Smallpox. And Franklin blamed himself for the death since he knew that he should inoculate his son with Cowpox to build up immunity to Smallpox. But Franklin was too busy with his business and politics to have the inoculation done and his son caught the pox and died.

Then Franklin lost his other son to Politics....

Later,
Dan

 

[dave1949]

Our education system is a reflection of our society. Pep rallies for a sports team are common, constitutional, voting, court system, or the like assemblies are unheard of. Lots of rah rah for school spirit, what exactly 'school spirit', is or what it is good for, I have never known. I think we are selling our kids short by sending the wrong messages about what is actually important.

Think about the VFW/Elks/Lion's Club type essay contests. The winner gets a nice notice in the paper, then they disappear. If you can catch a football, you can have your mug in the paper every week, plus a nice awards banquet where more praise will be heaped upon you.

This isn't a rant against sports per se, I am using our glorification of sports to illustrate a point. If you visit something like the Football Hall Of Fame, you will come away thinking those guys took Iwo Jima, not just moved a ball 100 yards.

There are model United Nations, here in Maine a few kids visit the state supreme court one day a year. There are the odd mock elections. So, it isn't like these topics are totally ignored, but they generally involve only the more academically able students. I think we are selling our kids short in the way we use those 12 short years.

The exponential growth of knowledge has been widely recognized for over 40 years. In those 40 years, the US education system hasn't made any changes that are fundamental to addressing this. We have charter schools that do help, but what else? We do spend a lot more time with social issues. I still find it hard to believe that practically every school of any size has a resident police officer. Every possible ailment receives special attention. School boards roll over on any substancial court challenge. At the same time, they try to defend the most assinine policies.

When we are willing to allow our public schools to segment and specialize to the degree necessary to actually benefit education, we will be better off. There also needs to be a real benefit attached to earning a high school diploma.

That's my rant, and I am sticking to it
Dave.

 

[2manyrocks]

One of these days maybe I will remember, but I think one of our early Presidents-maybe Adams was described as fluent in both Greek and Hebrew and had attended a school with the mindset that a person was uneducated unless he could both write and argue a position in either language at will.

 

[two_bit_score]

Hey, sometimes there is a price for real patriotism. I say that only half joking. If you consider what separates us from places you would never want to be thrown in jail - it is our mostly uncorrupted justice system. If honest people don't participate - you know who will.
Dave.

A loud Amen!

 

[Bird]

I had forgotten about a scam that was first reported to snopes.com about 4 years ago, until a friend reminded me today with the following in an e-mail (and yes, you can really find it veified by both snopes and the FBI):

Pass this on to your grown children. This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below). Please pass this on to everyone in your email address book. It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take those summonses for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced.

The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and bingo, your identity was just stolen.

The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma , Illinois , and Colorado . This (swindle) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they are with the court system.

The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites , warning consumers about the fraud.
Check it out here: http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm

And here: http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp
Yep! It's true

 

[wroughtn_harv]

I get hit every couple of years for county and city juries. Just a couple of months ago I checked online the night before like it was suggested and confirmed I was needed the next day. I showed up and there was a nice lady with a hand out for my summons. She took it and told me goodbye and that I was good for two more years. That was the county. I'm expecting a summons for city duty soon based upon past experiences.

I've been called many times but never chosen. Must be the beard, or the cold cold eyes, maybe the scar above one eye, must be something.

 

[Bird]

Must be the beard, or the cold cold eyes, maybe the scar above one eye, must be something.