Motivational Posters: Teacher Edition

With South Dakota passing a bill to allow teachers to be armed, my supermodel wife was willing to pose for another round of photos.

We home school our kids, and they are surrounded by a wide array of armament at all times of the day.  Most of it intellectual, but there is some metallurgical stuff too!

Trust, that is what allowing people to be armed is about.  Why would you trust a police officer any more than you would a teacher?  More than likely, your child will have very few interactions with a police officer in his/her life.

There are all sorts of subjects that can be taught with a firearms theme.

Educate the children.  There is nothing better you can do.

And just to whet your appetite, I got Russian Origami shirt (from Linoge) for my wife and she has consented to photos of that as well.  I just need to think of some clever phrases (I'm willing to take suggestions).

Computers Were Invented to Play Pong

History looks back on itself and subdivides into neat categories based on common attributes of the time. The Bronze Age, The Dark Ages, The Industrial Revolution. Some have proposed the name of the current age we are in as the Computer Era or the Information Age. However, I take a more simplistic approach. We live in the Period of Pong. To explain this, let me go over what Pong is, how Pong has influenced the development of computers, and how all real computer games are merely a variation of Pong.

Pong was invented in 1972, not by Atari, but by Magnavox. Atari ripped off the idea and mass marketed it as one of the first arcade games. It is sometimes described as a tennis game, but looking at the antiquated graphics of the early 70s, it merely has two bars that alternate hitting a square ball. At the time it was a technological breakthrough and the arcade games were making more money than anything previous. A home version came out in 1975 and the world has not looked back. Pong is such a simple game that any programmer could make their own version in about a day and my Mom swears that she is certain the keepers of the Mainframe at the university were just playing Pong most of the day. In its simplest terms, Pong is a game where each player uses a limited motion object (the paddle) to project a faster, more tactile object (the ball) at an opposing player.

But we know that computers were invented before Pong. Long before Pong in some cases. Herman Hollerith had a mechanical computer that was employed for the mundane task of counting the census. Alan Turing postulated the framework for a programmable computer and his concepts were used to crack the Axis codes in World War II. Unfortunately, after the war, they found no use for the computer and destroyed them. ENIAC was born shortly thereafter. Over the next 25 years, computers progressed at a snails pace. Transistors were introduced and then microchips, but by 1970 there wasn’t any real talk of computers being ubiquitous. And why would they? The average person didn’t need to count the census or break German codes. We put a man on the moon with the sliderule. The scientific calculator hadn’t been invented.

Then Pong came. All of the sudden there was a need for computers in every arcade, convenience store, school, and home. This was something people could relate to. This was a task that people needed a computer for. A tennis court is too big to have in your bedroom, and besides, it is really tiring to play tennis all day long. But Pong demanded that the computer equipment become available to the masses. Both the personal computer and the game console were born. The late 70s and 80s saw an explosion of games: Space Invaders, Pac Man, Galaga, Centipede. When properly analyzed, they all come back to the tried and true concept of Pong: one object makes another object go towards an opponent.

As people whetted their appetite with Pong, they wanted more. Computing power increased to meet the demand. The Atari 2600 was a 1 MHz machine. Nintendo a 2 MHz machine. The Sega Genesis an 8 MHz machine. The Nintendo 64 a 96 MHz machine, and the Playstation 3 a 3.2 GHz machine. Home computers followed the same exponential growth. From the lowly 8086 to the Pentium 4, computing power increased and the chance to play ever better versions of Pong increased. It is to the point now, where the best computers are specifically designed for gamers, in other words Pong Players.

In recent years, computers have become ubiquitous. Laptops, GPS, smartphones are all computers. So does the idea that Computers were Invented to Play Pong still hold true? Isn’t there some other higher purpose? The quick answer is OF COURSE! This can be seen from the most popular game of all time. Angry Birds. In two years it has been downloaded more than 500 million times. To give you an idea of how much that is, the computer operating system that is installed on the most computers is Windows XP. It is on 500 million. And every computer needs an operating system. And is Angry Birds some revolutionary game? No, simply an object (the slingshot) projecting another object (the bird) at an opponent (the pigs and their buildings). The exact same formula that started the computer revolution in 1972.

Now some may say that there are other types of games. Shoot-em-up. Same outline as Pong. Mario Bros. Same outline as Pong. Driving/Flight simulators. Same outline as Pong. All of these computer games can trace their lineage back to Pong. Sure they may substitute a gun, turtle or car for the paddle or ball. Even the most advanced game system, the Xbox Kinect which has a full motion camera so that you don’t even have a controller comes packaged with Pong (its called Rally Ball). Of course, if you want to buy the Sports pack, you get Table Tennis (Pong), Soccer (Pong with Feet), and Beach Volleyball (Pong with all parts of your body).

There is one genre of games that do not fit the Pong category. These are puzzle games. Solitaire, Sudoku, Mahjong, Chess. But lets be honest with ourselves, the only reason you are playing these on the computer is because your too lazy to deal a deck of cards.

In conclusion, computers would never have reached their full potential without Pong. It was the game that started the computer revolution. The dawn of the Information Age.

Oh, what’s that? ... No, that can’t be right. Are you telling me the first computer game was SpaceWar! It came out in 1961. Forget everything I just wrote, we are living in the World of SpaceWar.

Let's Pay Teachers What They are Worth (exactly what we are paying them now)

The most popular post that I have by far is about mothers not being worth $100,000.  It probably made some people mad, but my wife and mother still talk to me.  So today, I am going to tackle another shibboleth. Teachers, specifically public school teachers.  I attended school in 4 different districts growing up.  If there was one universal theme that I remember from all of them, it is that teachers weren't paid enough.  They even went on strike one day, for the children.

I have several friends who are teachers.  If there is one universal theme that can be had from them it is that teachers aren't paid enough.  So, I feel safe in saying that for the last 30-50 years, teachers don't think they are paid enough.  I say that is a big fat pile of steaming cow dung. Before you tar and feather me, hear me out first.  One piece of glurge you may have received in you inbox is this diatribe:

Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year. It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do – babysit.  We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan– that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year. I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE…That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on. My calculator needs new batteries.)

What about those special education teachers and the ones with master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here. There sure is.

The average teacher’s salary (nationwide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student– a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)

WHAT A DEAL!

Someone was having a little fun and tried their hand at sarcasm.  Of course in their zeal to make teaching look like a simple business where they are getting shafted by averaging $50K a year while giving services worth $105K made me laugh.  Whoever wrote this failed any business classes they took.  If you are going to do a teacher=business comparison, you have to go the whole way.  So to start with I put the above numbers into a spreadsheet:

	Email
Students	30
1st Student (per hour rate)	$3.00
Additional Students (per hour rate)	$3.00
Hourly Rate	$90.00
Hours worked per day	6.5
Billed amount per day	$585.00
Days per year	180
Total Classroom Revenue	$105,300.00

No, funny math, I agree that their calculations are correct.  For the total revenue.  Except that I thought I would adjust it a bit. First off, I am not a scrooge, so I'll pay them for a full 8 hours (there are lots of full time jobs that don't pay for the casual overtime you put in so I'm not shorting teachers any more than society is shorting other non-hourly workers).  I am also going to pay them for 20 extra days in the year, so 200 days total work days.

Now the per kid charge I have to disagree with.  Since the author uses babysitting as the yardstick, I'll do the same.  Most babysitters (and day cares) have a first child charge, and then it is discounted for each additional child.  Now normally they do this by family, but in this case, people are not individually choosing the teacher, the state is.  So I'll assume that the state gets billed $5 for the first child and $2 for each additional child.

So, my analysis looks a little different, but close enough for a starting point:

	Email	Reputo
Students	30	30
1st Student (per hour rate)	3	$5.00
Additional Students (per hour rate)	3	$2.00
Hourly Rate	$90.00	$63.00
Hours worked per day	6.5	8
Billed amount per day	$585.00	$504.00
Days per year	180	200
Total Classroom Revenue	$105,300.00	$100,800.00

If you are satisfied with that, then pat yourself on the back and keep believing that the average public school teacher is worth $100,000.  Except remember, we are comparing this to a business, so the teacher is a revenue source, none of the expenses have been added in.  The building space can be looked at similar to office building prices (especially since you have use of the library, cafeteria, and playground). School supplies are needed for each student including textbooks, computers, library books, etc. There are support staff that handle all of the office stuff and janitors who clean up. Administrators are needed (because everyone needs a boss). Teachers do get a sweet deal in benefits, thanks to the unions negotiations.  So, here is what I think is reasonable (if you disagree, give me some information of why you do, and I'll change the numbers around):

	Email	Reputo
Building Rental per month (includes heating, cooling, plumbing, maintenance, grounds keeping, use of library, cafeteria, and gym facilities)	$0.00	$2,000.00
School Supplies per student per month (paper, pencils, computers, curriculum, testing, library books, PE equipment, etc.)	$0.00	$200.00
Support Staff (1@ $40,000 per 4 teachers)	$0.00	$10,000.00
Administrator (1 @ $100,000 per 20 teachers)	$0.00	$5,000.00
Benefits (Pension, health insurance, employer portion SS/Medicare, etc.)	$0.00	$25,000.00
Total Expenses	$0.00	$66,400.00
Salary of Teacher	$105,300.00	$34,400.00

Uh-oh.  $34,400 is a lot less than the $50,000 average.  But even then, these numbers aren't realistic.  According to the Census Bureau, there are roughly 55 million K-12 students and only 3 million K-8 teachers.  To be conservative, lets ignore the high school teachers.  That is only 19 students per teacher, not 30.  If we assumed another 1 million high school teachers than we drop down to 14 students per teacher (coincidentally, I had several classes that had this few students and a couple with even less).  So, to be realistic, I'll cut the number of students to 20.

Teachers that I know also put in more than 8 hours a day, so I'll assume an average of 9.  Plus I'll assume they work an average of 220 days a year. I'll keep the $5/$2 split for kids, except that we have one more expense to add in if we are going to stay with the babysitting motif. Day cares have a minimum number of staff required for the number of kids - somewhere around 1:7.  So, in each classroom, a fine needs to be assessed, per student, per day for the overage.

	Email	Reputo	Realistic
Students	30	30	20
1st Student (per hour rate)	3	$5.00	$5.00
Additional Students (per hour rate)	3	$2.00	$2.00
Hourly Rate	$90.00	$63.00	$43.00
Hours worked per day	6.5	8	9
Billed amount per day	$585.00	$504.00	$387.00
Days per year	180	200	220
Total Classroom Revenue	$105,300.00	$100,800.00	$85,140.00
Building Rental per month (includes heating, cooling, plumbing, maintenance, grounds keeping, use of library, cafeteria, and gym facilities)	$0.00	$2,000.00	$2,000.00
School Supplies per student per month (paper, pencils, computers, curriculum, testing, library books, PE equipment, etc.)	$0.00	$200.00	$200.00
Support Staff (1@ $40,000 per 4 teachers)	$0.00	$10,000.00	$10,000.00
Administrator (1 @ $100,000 per 20 teachers)	$0.00	$5,000.00	$5,000.00
Benefits (Pension, health insurance, employer portion SS/Medicare, etc.)	$0.00	$25,000.00	$25,000.00
Total Expenses	$0.00	$66,400.00	$66,400.00
Salary of Teacher	$105,300.00	$34,400.00	$18,740.00
Fine for violating 1 adult per 7 children ($25/person/day)			$58,500.00
Actual Salary of Teacher			-$39,760.00

So, just from a babysitting perspective, each teacher should be paying $40K for the privilege to babysit. But as the author pointed out, your kids get an education too! Well, hopefully, in too many cases you don't.  So look at it as a teacher has to be providing at least $90K worth of information/training/mentoring in their job in order to be paid an average of $50K.  If not you are a drag on society.  $90K is a lot of information (particularly in this digital age).

But don't get on your high horse just yet.  Check out some publicly traded companies revenue and divide that by the number of employees and you will find that many of them average $150-300K of revenue per employee (and their employees are not making more than teachers on average).  That's a lot more than the above hypothetical teacher is bringing in.

So, teachers get paid what they are worth, sort of.  Most of them operating under union contracts get paid by seniority regardless of how well they teach.  Private school teachers, on average, get paid less and have less benefits than public school teachers, but you don't hear them complaining.  My wife and I home school our kids.  As part of it, the school district has the come for half a day once a week to meet state progress requirements.  The kids don't get assignments or tests from this half a day, it is just fun learning art, music, PE, and science.  Talking with the teachers, they love the job.  It has all the positives of being a teacher - seeing kids grow and develop, teaching what they like, involved parents; with none of the negatives - grading papers, teaching to a test, parents that don't care.

If you are a teacher and are not getting paid what you think you are worth, did you not realize this before getting into teaching? Like I said, this complaint has been going on for more than 30 years.  The US has put a value on teaching our kids at $50K per year average.  If you want to make more than that, practice putting a ball through a net or hitting it with a stick.  Society values those people who do it best at around $750K per year (just be aware that if you are only almost the best at those skills, society only values it at around $6K per year, so maybe teaching isn't so bad after all).  You're all adults now.  Live with your decision, or change your circumstances.  Just stop the whining about how unfair it is.

2 Shillings and 6 Pence

I have been collecting coins since I was a child. A previous job had me travel to England regularly and while filling up my passport with stamps of her Majesty, I began my collection of British coins. Since that time, British coins are one of my favorites to collect. Understanding British coinage is important to making sense of the great English literature. Unfortunately, they don’t tell you this in high school. Today I am going to use the novel A Christmas Carol to explain the monetary amounts.

First we need to understand a little about British coinage. Let’s begin with the pound sterling, the official name of the British monetary system. This has its roots all the way back to Charlemagne who minted small silver pennys that had 240 to a pound, which has its basis in old Roman coinage. In later centuries in England, these were called sterlings. The fineness of silver was 92.5% which didn’t wear as much as pure silver, so 92.5% silver came to be known as sterling silver and that usage extends to today. The symbol, a fancy L with a line through it, comes from the zodiac sign of Libra, the balance or scales.

The major subdivisions of the pound prior to 1971 are the shilling, of which there are 20 in one pound; and the penny or pence of which there are 12 in one shilling, for a total of 240 pence in one pound. The symbols for these two coins, s and d, come from the Roman coins solidus and denarius. So, we can see that this system of coinage has its origins long before the English language.

If we wanted to stop here, we would be missing out on a number of important coins in the British history. For instance, two farthings equaled a halfpenny and were minted from the 1300s all the way up to 1960. This was probably one of the most common coins for everyday life in the middle ages.

The crown first appeared in the 16^th century and was a coin worth 5 shillings, or a quarter pound. There was also a half crown which was worth 2 shillings and six pence. But to confuse things, in 1990, the crown was remonetized at 5 pounds. So, if you want to know how much a crown is worth, you better be sure what year of coin you are talking about.

The guinea was a gold coin first minted in the 17^th century that originally was worth one pound or 20 shillings. However gold price fluctuations made its value as high as 30 shillings. In 1816 its value was fixed at 21 shillings. While no coin currently bears this name, it is used colloquially for one pound, although the exact amount 21 shillings is still used in horse racing and livestock trade.

There’s more.

The florin was equal to two shillings.

The tanner was equal to six pence.

The groat was equal to four pence.

In 1971, all of this changed. The major denomination, the pound sterling was retained and now divided into 100 new pence. The government was hoping that people would use the term "new pence" to distinguish it from the old pence, but people don’t always do what the government wants, and called the new denomination by its symbol, "p". So pence is an old penny, and p is a new penny, although some people still call the new penny, pence.

On to A Christmas Carol. This story was written in 1843 so I have used online calculators and historical British inflation rates to determine what these values would be in 2013 US dollars.

Bob Crachet is poor, how poor? He makes 15 shillings a week - $135 or $7020/yr, less than a minimum wage job today.

How punitive were the laws in England? A Tailor was fined 5 shillings for being drunk - $45, less than the $300 you’ll pay today for a public intoxication charge.

Fezziwig spent a few pounds on the Christmas Party - $900. Since the party was in his shop, there was no need to rent a hall, the band was probably employees or friends, so the $900 was spent on food for the 50 or so guests. Pretty comparable to today.

Scrooge’s nephew hoped that his good will towards his uncle would inspire Scrooge to leave Bob 50 pounds - $9000. This gives us an idea of Scrooge's wealth. His nephew talks about this amount as if it is a paltry sum of Scrooges wealth. Assuming it is just 0.1%, he and Marley amassed a fortune of $9 million dollars, in a two person shop. Impressive.

Mrs Crachet's ribbons cost sixpence - $4.50 This is also comparable to going down to the mall to buy a hairbow today.

Peter Crachet was going to make 5 shillings and six pence each week - $49.50 Far below minimum wage, although coincidentally, my first job was as a lifeguard at Boy Scout Camp, and I got paid, $49.50 per week. Of course they also provided room and board, but maybe Peter was getting that as part of the deal too!

Did the ghosts really change Scrooge’s generosity? Scrooge offers a boy half a crown for coming back in 5 minutes - $22.50. Have you ever tipped the pizza man $20. This isn’t even comparable. This is tipping the guy who took your phone order $20, because the boy was just a messenger. In the movie adaptations, he gives the actual delivery man a nice tip as well. Scrooge was definitely a changed man.

As you can see, knowing a little about foreign currency can help you bring out details in a story that millions in our country read every year, unawares. I have enjoyed coin collecting over the years, and even more so, I have enjoyed the tidbits of trivia it has given me.

What's in a Date?

One of the complaints from many people about history is that there are so many dates to remember. Unfortunately, to help ourselves we use a cookie cutter approach of picking the important ones and maybe laying them out on a timeline, while forgetting all the rest.

So lets look in detail at an important event in history. The birth of America. Independence Day. July 4^th, 1776 America declared its independence from Great Britain and a new country was formed. Right?  Well...maybe. July 4^th is the day that the Continental Congress approved the text of the declaration. On July 2^nd, they had actually voted for a resolution to declare independence. But the vote wasn’t quite unanimous. New York’s delegation didn’t get permission to vote until a week later, July 9^th.

Jefferson’s original text of the declaration was presented to Congress on June 28^th. This of course was proceeded by Congress appointing a committee to draft such a declaration on June 11^th. The resolution for independence was proposed by Richard Henry Lee on June 7^th. Even this was proceeded by a preamble passed on May 15^th which clarified a resolution passed on May 10^th, calling for the suppression of authority put in place by the crown of England. Doesn't that sort of sound like independence?

Rhode Island had already declared its independence on May 4^th, South Carolina on April 23^rd, and North Carolina had authorized it’s delegates to vote for independence on April 12^th. Any one of these dates could legitimately be claimed as the “birth of America.”

We know the text of the declaration was passed on July 4^th, but what about all of the signatures? Undoubtedly they all were not put on that sheet on July 4^th. Several of the signers weren’t even members of the Congress that had passed the resolution. Some historians have the “original” parchment Declaration of Independence not being produced until July 19^th (although printed copies already existed by then). August 2^nd is a day that is usually put forth as when the majority of signers penned their name, although at least one signatory is known not to have signed it until Nov 4^th. While there is no record of a copy specifically being sent to King George, the declaration had been printed in England and Europe by the middle of August. Perhaps this notification to our wayward parent should be America’s birthday.

That’s not too bad is it? Fifteen possible days for America’s Independence Day, with July 4^th about in the middle. Except if we gained our freedom through the Revolutionary War, then perhaps the beginning of the Revolution, at Lexington on April 19^th, 1775 is our birth. Before the Declaration of Independence, Americans had already fought in the famous battles of Bunker Hill and Ft. Ticonderoga.

Sometimes the American Revolution is painted with an even broader brush and includes the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773 or even the Boston Massacre in March of 1770. The Sons of Liberty were organized in several of the colonies in 1765 as a result of the Stamp Act. In 1761, James Otis argued that the open-ended search warrants Britain used to enforce the Navigation Acts violated the constitutional rights of the colonists. But this idea wouldn’t have been possible without John Locke’s “Two Treatises of Government” which was published in 1689.

On the flip side, the fighting in the Revolutionary War ended on October 19^th, 1781 with the surrender at Yorktown. The Treaty of Paris officially ended the war, and Britain recognized the United States as an independent country on September 3^rd, 1783, although this wasn’t ratified by Congress until January 14^th, 1784.

Examining an actual government structure also gives us some potential dates. The First Continental Congress convened on September 5, 1774 and members were labeled by the King to be traitors. The Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775 and was the national government for most of the Revolutionary War. The Articles of Confederation were adopted on March 1^st, 1781.

The Annapolis Convention tried to improve the Articles in September of 1786 but did not have enough states represented. The Philadelphia Convention began on May 14^th, 1787 and ended on September 17^th, 1787 with the adoption of the Constitution. This was ratified by the minimum 9 states. Delaware the first on December 7^th, 1787 and New Hampshire the ninth on June 21^st, 1788. The last of the thirteen original colonies ratified the Constitution on May 29^th, 1790.

The 1^st US Congress convened and the 1^st President was inaugurated on March 4^th, 1789. But it should also be remembered that ratification of the US Constitution was gained with the promise of a Bill of Rights. On September 25^th, 1789 Congress passed 12 amendments to the new Constitution. Ten of these amendments were ratified by the necessary 3/4 of states by Dec 15^th, 1791. One more was ratified on May 18^th, 1992, more than 200 years after it was passed by Congress. The last of the twelve remains un-ratified in Constitutional limbo. So perhaps, America hasn’t yet been born.

There you have it. Thirty-seven possible dates for the “birth of America.” Sure some may have more legitimacy, but it goes to show that history isn’t just isolated dates and places, but more of a pot of stew, simmering as we continue to add vegetables and spices.

Detroit Schools

This story is two years old, but it is still applicable to lots of other things.  To begin look at what the population of Detroit has been doing for the last 100 years:

Detroit has been a classic bubble which peaked in 1950 and then busted (and is still in the bust stage).  For the first few decades of the bust, the flight appeared to be just to the suburbs, but in the last couple of decades, the population of the region has been declining as well.

The demographics of Detroit have switched dramatically as well. At its peak in the 1950s, Detroit was a white town (84%).  While the bust has been fueled primarily by "white flight" (Detroit has lost 1.5 million white people since 1950), between 2000 and 2010 the population of almost every group declined, so everyone realized that Detroit is not a place to live.  The only group that saw an increase in population, Hispanics, only had a very minor increase.

So, imagine for yourself what the change of losing 55% of your population.  Think of half of the homes in your neighborhood, half of the apartments in your complex being empty.  Always.  Its pretty easy to see why a home in Detroit can be bought for $5000.

With the decline of population of this magnitude, the number of school children will decline as well. Hence the need to close lots of schools.  In our city, there was a big debate about closing 3 elementary schools last year.  You would have thought that the government was shooting the dogs of random families with the rancor that was going on.  Face it, there are less kids, so there is less need for schools.  Massive population changes like Detroit has had compound the problem because you can't close schools gradually.  And since they are funded through the property taxes of the homes that are vacant and abandoned, there is less money each year.  But every school still needs to have some minimum level of funding for maintenance.

Overall, school age children have declined as a percentage of the overall population.  Since 1981, we have about 15% less students as a percentage of the population.  So, this should mean that we are spending 15% less as a percentage of GDP on education, right?  Well, if logic prevailed, yes.  But education spending is driven by the government and lobbied for by the Teacher's Unions.  In 1981, 3.3% of the GDP was spent on K-12 education.  In 2010, 3.6% was spent.  That is 9% MORE!  This is a recipe for bankruptcy.

This same logic has gotten the US Post Office in the mess we are in today.  They are (hopefully) going to eliminate Saturday service.  What they really need to do is eliminate Saturday, Tuesday, and Thursday service. The world has changed.  People don't rely on the mail anymore.

Cursive Writing

Yeah, I didn't like it much when I learned it in elementary school. I do remember my elementary teachers hammering it into my head that in high school and college all of my papers would need to be written in cursive. They were wrong (no fault of their own - they just didn't see the computer revolution that was imminent).

So is it worth it to still be teaching cursive? Look at it from a foreign language standpoint. My teachers also beat it into me that learning a foreign language was the doorway to the rest of the world. Really? As I have grown up, I found out no, it isn't - not being afraid to go to a foreign country and ask for help is.

I have been to Canada, England, Germany, India, Japan, and Taiwan. I learned German in high school but never used it. I speak Mandarin which was useful in Taiwan, but I was with native friends so would have survived without knowing any (my wife did fine and she doesn't speak it). Japan, everyone speaks English. India, most people you interact with speak English and the chauffeur I had didn't speak it but we got along fine with sign language and pointing at things.

Had I "listened" to my teachers I would have had to spend years learning German, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Hindi, and Tamil to enjoy the places I have been. I'm glad I didn't. I found English speakers and enjoyed those places anyway. We are fortunate to live in a country where the primary language is English. The rest of the world has adopted English as the de facto language of the world. Which means we don't necessarily have to learn theirs.

Does that mean we shouldn't learn another language? No, but it also means we shouldn't force it on people. One of the great conundrums of the modern world is there is so much knowledge it is impossible to try and gain it all. Leonardo Da Vinci would be flabbergasted by how much a sixth grader has learned. Which means it is more important than ever to prioritize what you are going to learn with your time.

For me, things like 19th century bonnet literature (i.e. Jane Austen) have ZERO value. I am not interested. I think the stories are dull. Unfortunately, my English teachers had different ideas. Good for them. I'm a grown up now and I don't need to waste my time reading "Pride and Prejudice." Would understanding that stuff add value to my life? Probably. My guess is that there are plenty of allusions to "great" 19th century literature throughout life that I miss.

So what? I am not interested. I have chosen to dump that crap from my mind and replace it with scientific knowledge that I like. So, when I read an article on the Higgs-Boson, I see all sorts of nuances that are satisfying and enjoyable to understand. I once spent a two hour meal talking with a stranger about the nuclear fuel process. She seemed genuinely interested and I was happy to impart the knowledge that I had. Do some people do the same with F. Scott Fitzgerald? Absolutely, just not me.

What does this have to do with cursive? Well, it is no longer a necessary skill for the vast majority of written communication. We have computers and Ipads for that. It will always be around in historical documents, but like foreign languages, learning American cursive has its limits. There are plenty of people who have learned the cursive writing styles of 18th century Germans.

Learning to read cursive nowadays is akin to learning juggling. It is a neat skill to have, but very limited practical applications. If you are going to be a clown in the circus, by all means juggling becomes a necessary skill. For someone like me, it is just a trick I do to entertain my kids. Likewise, reading and writing cursive is a must for historians and genealogists. For the rest of us it is a parlor trick to decipher hidden codes. Juggling and cursive writing are rather easy skills to acquire. It probably takes less than a month of a little practice each day to become proficient (I learned juggling over the course of a month in New Jersey, maybe a half hour of practice a day). My wife taught my daughter cursive in about the same amount of time.

So, no, we shouldn't force everyone to learn cursive anymore than we should force them all to learn juggling. Even though it takes minimal time to learn, our schools shouldn't fill up their time with "useless" skills that take minimal time. Let's all recognize that cursive's time has come and gone. But if your kids want to learn cursive, or you want to teach them this curiosity on your time, by all means do it!

Education in America: The Farce

When I read an article like this one, I am not the least bit surprised. Being a trained engineer (we actually take science classes in college), a devote Mormon, and a firm believer in evolution (and not just the micro-evolution schtick that creationists make up; I am talking the full blown macro-evolution cat gives birth to a dog spiel that they try and dance around), I am usually appalled by the treatment of science in schools. Mostly thought I am appalled at the whole "qualifying teachers" aspect to education.

Study after study has shown that colleges of education have the lowest performing students of any of the colleges at universities. Go to any university campus and I guarantee you that there will be plenty of jokes among the student body about the education students. At Texas A&M, the joke was you went to college as an education major in order to find a husband. Does this mean that every one with an education degree is a blithering moron? No, there are quite a few smart ones that I have met (coincidentally, none off of the top of my head are actually teaching school).

To compare to the college of Engineering at Texas A&M, when I started as a freshman, probably 80% of the freshman in my dorm were engineering majors. By sophomore year that had dropped to less than 50% and by junior year it was down to 25% where it remained fairly stable through graduation. I never heard of anyone (not saying it didn't happen) who transferred into engineering from the business college or the education college. I did know one person who got a degree in psychology and then came back and got a degree in engineering after realizing that she didn't like her job options. Of course, if she had have started in engineering she would have been successful and saved herself $20K and 4 years.

So why the drop in numbers? Because some people can't hack it. It may be they aren't smart enough, it may be that they don't have the work ethic, it may be that they don't like dealing with fractions. That's OK. Unfortunately, we have turned education (at least on the public side) into a game of the lowest common denominator. If we know that the majority of our biology teachers are waffling (for whatever reason) on a scientific theory that is widely accepted and has been thoroughly debated to the point that those who dismiss it are seen as crackpots by the scientific community, then what hope do we have for English, math, and history.

Lest anyone try to say that Einstein was considered a crackpot with his theories, let us remember that he proposed something new that the scientific community had not had time to investigate. After years of investigation, we have come to realize he was right in many things and wrong in a very few (and those things he was wrong on were usually due to oversimplification of the issue).

Evolution is not some new theory, although based on the training the colleges of education give, it may very well be.

And if you think that evolution entails cats giving births to dogs, you are either dishonest or need your head examined.

Homeschool Help

My Oldest Son is doing a graph for school and needs your input. Please answer the following question in the comments so he can gather some data:

What is your favorite movie?
A. Star Wars
B. Indiana Jones
C. Shrek
D. High School Musical

(Please choose your favorite from the four options given. Remember, this is from the mind of an early elementary kid, so please keep it clean. Thanks!)