To H**l with SATs, ACTs, Give Me Thinkers!!

There is a lot of fluff flying about as to redoing the SATs and possibly the ACTs in reaction to that. The SAT's decision to do away with the essay portion of the tests is possibly the most colossally stupid move that they could have made. 

I swear...I would like to take all of these "universal test" organizations into a waterproof room and then fill it with water!.   They are SO out of touch with the real world.

I have been involved in hiring on and off for the last decade either as an advisor to a hiring manager or a hiring manager myself.  And I can tell you plainly, I have never been so disappointed with the candidates presented to me.   I mean, most recruiters are absolutely, completely worthless, lets face facts - it is an easy field to get into and you don't even have to really understand who you are recruiting.

But the candidates they do send are even worse.  We live in a flat world which is a world of ideas which people much smarter than me have written about. 

We live in a world where ideas are really the only marketable item for the future...and  our college graduates cannot express their ideas in any intelligible format (believe me I have tried to extract/read them).  

If you have the greatest idea in the world you have to be able to intelligently express it, support it, and define it in terms the world will understand and accept.  

Facebook/Twitter ain't going to make it folks....

Income Inequality - Part I

You will be hearing a lot about this as the 2016 campaign prematurely warms up, and President Obama is expected to make it a central theme of his upcoming State of the Union drone (err. I mean speech...yawn).

Unfortunately most of the noise is going to come from brainless politicians who have no relationship with rational thinking or logic.  Fortunately, there are some bright people who are digging into it in a methodical and fact based way:



I will be trying to point out the intelligent resources for thinkers amid all of the political chaff as we move on.  Look for the Economic Inequality tag.

No Way to Dress This Up Folks!

The US continues its race to the bottom in terms of knowledge/achievement levels for its high school students. 

Not only are we plummeting to the bottom and contesting countries such as Lithuania and Croatia for position, we have the "states rights" folks who seem determined to drive us even further down this road, each with their own narrow-minded ideals, like the folks in Tennessee who tried to declare that 'slavery never really happened'.

We have got to get our act together people -- the countries who are 'cleaning our clock' in education (like China, Japan, Canada, Australia....heck everyone) are all beneficiaries of a strong centrally administered education standards process that applies to everyone in the country (kinda like Common Core?).

Math is Fun Too!

My last post talked about the "War on Math and Physics" in the US according to a book I am reading.  These (and their close siblings) just happen to be some of my favorite subjects.  I am fascinated by physics, astrophysics and particle physics and try to keep up on the latest developments as well as I can considering I don't have a degree in any of them - just a rabid interest.  

Math on the other hand I use, mostly in indirect ways in my work with computer software, but a good understanding of mathematical principles and techniques is behind a lot of what I do and think about every day, and leads directly to the related fields of logic and reasoning (another of my favorite areas of endeavor).

Here is a TED Talk concentrating on just one aspect of math - the Fibonacci numbers.  This is a good reintroduction to the magic of math if you have been away for awhile, and it is just plain .. fun!

Think Corporate America Is Out of Touch?

This gem should remove ANY doubt, courtesy of the McDonald's Corporation. According to this I guess you are supposed to get a second job (many restaurant workers I know are college grads and are juggling three minimum-wage jobs).  Oh yes, and don't eat anything (no food budget) and as one of the commenters pointed out...live in your car since there is no budget for gas or repairs (or heat either which I guess makes sense -- without gas you can't run the car to make heat).

If you are of the high-school graduate age or thereabouts...get thee to  a college, technical school or higher education of some kind if you can.  And DON'T assume that money from even three service jobs is going to be enough or that you will have any money for emergencies, getting sick, etc.  Think about your future -- the Internet is NOT a life!


 

You Are Hired Kid!

I don't know what field you might wind up in, but put this on your resume for any of them -- in my book I would hire you immediately! 

Nikola Tesla -- Could There be Another One of Him Today?

Nikola Tesla is one of the more fascinating characters of science, but sadly not all that well known or respected by the general public (who also does not know or respect science but worships the like of Bieber and Lohan and anyone on American Idol or Dancing With the Stars).

Anyway, here are some interesting facts about Tesla's life from PBS that you might not have known.  If you want to know more about his work, here is a page (also from PBS) with some information about the many areas of his work.

Finally, here is the Mythbuster's Adam Savage talking about the promise of getting today's youth away from their electronic toys and interested in actually creating, inventing, and making things that will continue to allow science, technology, and humankind to continue moving forward.

Watch Mythbuster's Savage on Finding the Fun, and the 'Danger,'... on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The Real Path to Educational Excellence

Sir Ken Robinson is the individual whose first talk I used in my introduction for readers to TED Talks, a vital resource for all thinkers. Here is his second talk from 2010:  



He recently presented a third talk on his area of expertise.  It is full of his usual wit and wry observations, but this one hit particularly close to home. 

First, because I think "No Child Left Behind" is one of the stupidest, illogical, non-thinking, doomed-to-fail and just plain useless mandates to come out of Washington DC in some time.  It was a green light for educational bureaucrats and a red light for educational excellence and showed just how out of touch with the real world DC is.     

Also, it struck very close to home when in the middle of the talk he mentions some schools that do work --- and wondered aloud why we call them 'alternative schools'.......





This, like many TED talks is well worth watching -- please do if you care about the fact that the US schools have been in serious trouble since before the turn of the 21st century...and most are no more interested in doing something about it now than they were then, except for expensive little "feel good" tweaks like charter schools.  

What is needed is nothing short of a complete upheaval - tear down and rebuild the American public school system, and don't be so arrogant as to assume that we cannot learn anything from other countries whose graduates are whipping ours on the world market - particularly the STEM subjects that drive economies.

US Education - Wake Up!

If your school board or the state school administration is still murmuring into its collective navel about how much to expose our kids to sex ed or which 'version' of the Civil War to teach or which books need banned....better walk right up to them and slap them....HARD!

While Michelle Rhea and other US reformers of education have part of the equation right, it is not the whole story.  If you don't know who Michelle Rhea is, here is a well-done PBS Frontline piece on her and her reform efforts:

The first thing about Tom Friedman that got my interest and attention is his early (before almost everyone else) realization that the world is flat after all in some very important ways. This recent column talks about how progressive school districts and teachers can make a difference by acknowledging this fact and comparing themselves to the world education systems at large.  It is no credit to US education (or to those who blame environment for everything) that middle class US students are pretty resoundingly whipped in all categories by the Shanghai, China lower income students. 

It is possible to do better -- but US educators and the public in general have to give up this inane, outdated idea of local control of everything.  The countries that are whipping our _ss educationally all share one common trait -- they have a centralized set of educational standards and criteria that must be met everywhere, partly for world competitive reasons, but also to insure that you don't have a bunch of little fiefdoms running off in different directions creating their own little islands of incompetence.