Education: the cause of childhood obesity.

I am not happy at all right now. I am falling victim to my arch nemesis...The Education System. Also, after typing that I think I realized where the ellipsis came from. You know when there is a dramatic pause, such as the one I made right before the ellipsis, and the music goes "bum bum bum"? I am pretty sure the ellipsis is the written form of that. Anyway, back to education and its plague on mankind since the beginning of the information age. I am certain that the way education is done was somewhat productive back before the invention of the internet and smart phones. Unfortunately, it is now becoming something that prevents students from actually learning and retaining information. Actually, there are a lot of things about the way education is approached that are completely stupid and pointless. Such as busy work, grading, testing, lecturing, tenure, and these are just things off the top of my head. If I took some time and wrote out a list I am pretty sure almost every aspect of the education system would be on it.

I would like to explain a few or all of the things I listed. I will start with busy work just because that is what I started the list with (If I were a teacher I would probably switch everything up to confuse people, because that's what teachers do...freaking jerks!). Busy work is actually most of the reason that I am blogging right now instead of watching Friends (the tv series), which is probably the best show ever in the history of television (I write television instead of tv because it says that I am spelling tv wrong and there are no suggestions on how to spell it...Biggest overlooked thing in the history of autocorrection if you ask me). So back to busy work. I am in a class currently that is ultimately suppose to build you up to the point of writing your senior thesis. I have some pretty angry thoughts about senior theses, but I will keep them to myself because I can actually see some good reasons for them to be written. There aren't many good reasons, but there are a few. Anyway, in this class we are reading a book called The Metaphysical Club. This book is basically about guys around the 18th and 19th century that were different kinds of ologists. To give some background I am in the Interdisciplinary Program. This means that you basically choose 2 majors, do some classes from those majors, and then graduate with some knowledge in both fields in order to mix the information together. So back to this book, it kind of talks about different issues in those times that were solved with interdisciplinary thinking to show what kind of things can be done with this degree. Well that is all fine and everything, but the book is 445 pages long and can basically can be summed up by saying exactly what I said to describe it. If the teacher wanted to she could go into a little more detail about the ideas in the book, and save the students a lot of time. So the teacher of this class gave us a bogus assignment to do about one of the chapters in the book, and I can guarantee that there is no purpose for this assignment. Thus, it is busy work. I feel like I took a really long time to get to that conclusion...oh well. I feel like if a teacher assigns something they should be required to have a purpose for the assignment, and they should make it known so that the students understand the purpose and validity of the assignment. It is like teachers feel the need to just have work work work all the time for the students. News Flash, it is typically a lot easier to retain information when you aren't having a bunch of useless information shoved down your throat by a professor that feels like they need to always assign pointless work. In my almost 6 years of college the class that I retained the most information and learned pertinent information from was the easiest class I have ever taken. All of the information I got from that class was completely relevant, and there was no unnecessary work. So what I am saying is that busy work just wastes space and time, but I am sure you already knew that.

Testing is definitely something that angers me about education. I don't think that there is anyway that testing actually shows how knowledgable someone is on a subject. There are terrible test takers out there, that doesn't mean that they are stupid it just means that tests are both a bad way to prove ones knowledge, and that some of them are just way too hard. I think that tests should not be graded. I believe that testing is more a reflection on that effectiveness of the teacher, than the retention of knowledge of the student. Unfortunately, some students study incredibly hard for tests and get good grades on them, and I don't believe that this would provide an accurate statistic to the teacher of their ability to convey information to the class. I was in a class once and the information that we studied for the tests was 14 pages long single spaced, more or less, and then the test was 3 pages long. Students studied night and day for that test the entire week before it was administered, and right after we took the test we talked about how we pretty much forgot all the information we studied right after the test was over. Another problem with testing is that you aren't even tested on all of the information that you learn in class, so how is that showing a statistic on how well the class is learning when you aren't even being tested on most of the stuff covered in class. If anything testing should be used to show you how you are doing something wrong so that you can learn from it. The final problem with testing that I will talk about is that test questions are generally just left up to the professor. I think if tests are allowed they should all be the same and written by a professional in the field that you are studying. That professional would not be a teacher, and they would only write the questions based on information you would need to know for that job. Obviously that would never happen, but I feel that would be the only way to accurately test people. There would be no horrible questions from teachers that are jerks, and it would provide accurate statistics.

Grading is basically a consequence of the problems I have mentioned. Grading isn't accurate. It is a very bad way of measuring a persons progress in a class. If I refuse to do busy work, which I usually do, I get a worse grade for the class. This doesn't mean that I know less about what the core information was for the class, it just means that I didn't conform to doing the work that I saw was pointless. Another problem with grading is that it is subjective. The teacher can grade according to their will. I have heard of students that have passed every class they were in just because they would suck up to the teacher, and the teacher would give them passing grades for barely doing anything. That is flawed education if I have ever seen it.

Lecturing is another horrible aspect of education. I am pretty certain that lecturing is the worst way to provide information that is suppose to be retained by its receivers. Some people are really good at being information sponges, but I would guess that most people don't learn their best in that situation. I am a hands on and visual learner. This makes it nearly impossible for me to concentrate in a lecture environment. I can't even take notes on lecture information because I get so distracted. I am actually incredibly surprised I have been able to keep such decent grades in college. I never take notes on lectures, and I lose my concentration consistently during class. That shows how much seemingly useless information is intertwined into the "important" information in lectures and classes overall. I feel that teachers really need to focus on important information, and make sure that they are effectively teaching that information.

Tenure is quite possibly the most angering thing in the world. It allows teachers to teach well for a couple of years, and then get lazy and be horrible teachers for the rest of their career. My feelings are that teachers should always be afraid of losing their job, and maybe that would make them teach more effectively. I understand that teachers get paid horribly, but that doesn't mean that they have to teach like they are getting paid. In a perfect world teachers would get paid incredibly well, and they would be constantly having to earn their job as a teacher. Honestly, that is how it should be. Learning would increase, and people would be way more prepared for the future.

Anyway, I have many more feelings about the education system, but unfortunately I haven't organized my thoughts about it. So I am certain you will hear more about my thoughts as time goes by, but until then I will say goodbye.

So long, farewell
Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight.

LeFou, I'm afraid I've been thinking...

So I have some things I have been thinking about lately. Mostly just things I have observed, and I would like to put my thoughts out there. As of late I have become a convert into the religion of cleanliness. Those of you who know me know that I am not the cleanest person in the world, but I do like the idea of cleanliness and I look forward to becoming a more tidy and clean person in the future. Today I am going to focus on not wearing shoes in the house. This concept is not exactly new to me, but the importance of it has begun to make itself aware in my mind. As a child there was never any rules about not wearing shoes in the house, and because I was a child I never really thought about it. Unfortunately, now I am thinking about it, and I plan on introducing your mind to the horror that I now face. I would like to ask a question first. What kind of stuff do you walk through while you are wearing shoes? I am going to answer this question for you. You walk through all kinds of crap. From public restrooms, to mud, dog doodie, food, bugs, and the occasional puke. Here is where the problem begins. If you allow shoes in your home, you are allowing all that nastiness to be rubbed and smashed into your carpet and all over your floors. Who likes to lay out on their carpet at home? Personally, that was my favorite place to sprawl out as a child. What was I laying in?! Does this make anyone else sick a little bit? I can't even fathom the amounts of excrement and filth that the carpet contained. Extend that to people that put their shoes all over the furniture. You are basically living in your own personal 3rd world country. Anyway, that is just something for you to think about.

I don't really think that people understand how to properly walk on the sidewalk. Today I got out of class and started walking to my car. While traveling down the sidewalk there was a woman who almost ran into me. I was walking on the right side of the sidewalk, where you are suppose to be, and she couldn't decide which side she was suppose to be walking on. Who knows, maybe she was from Europe. The thing I don't understand is how often this happens. Isn't the rule go right? It is just like driving, stay on the right side of the road, or sidewalk. It kind of makes sense though, there are so many bad drivers. It must stem from the fact that they don't know how to walk either. It really surprises me how often I nearly walk into someone because they don't understand the walk right concept. There is another possibility of why this happens. A lot of people, I have noticed, are pretty much just concerned about themselves. This means that when they are walking they expect that everyone will move out of their way. They hog the entire sidewalk, and make you walk on the grass to avoid collision. These are the people that become truck drivers. Am I wrong? There are so many times I have almost died because of a truck driver that assumes that it can just switch lanes going up a hill at 35 mph on the freeway. It is like the driver just waits until I am about to pass, and then switches lanes right at the last second. It must be a game to them. They report back the number of cars run off the road to their superior, and the one with the highest number gets a paid vacation to Kentucky, a coupon for all you can eat "meat and potaters", and a hair cut at Melvin's Mullets. At least that is my theory.

The final thing that I would like to talk about today is work. I am not a fan of working. I wear a shirt that says "Hard Work Is For People Without Talent" and I am a firm believer of that shirt. It is for this reason that my goal is to land a job where I do nothing, or next to nothing. My favorite thing in the world is making money for doing nothing, and I am dang good at it. This is why I don't understand people that have to keep busy while they are at work. If they have nothing to do, they will create projects. For example I worked at a gas station once, and we had a list of stuff that we had to do before we closed each day. So I would get my list done as fast as I could, and then pray that there wouldn't be very many customers that day. That way I could just sit around and do nothing then get paid $9/hour for it. There were a couple of crazy people there that when they were done doing the stuff on the list they would go around and do random stuff that didn't necessarily need to be done. On good days these people would start doing my jobs, which I was fine with. I didn't understand their need to do more than their share, but there was no way I was gonna say no to someone making money for me. I guess the main point I am getting at here is why do some people not like to get paid to do nothing? Is it a moral dilemma for them to get money for nothing? Do they lack the ability to sit still and relax? Do they hate themselves? It makes no sense to me. I guess it is like people who run for fun. I don't think I will ever understand that. I can understand playing some kind of sport that you have to run to accomplish the tasks in the game, but just running? While I am on the subject of sports I personally believe that the fact that people get paid millions of dollars to throw around some kind of ball is ridiculous. How can we live in a world where a brainless monkey that throws a ball around and cheats on his wife makes more than an educator? I have an idea. Let's take the excess money that all the sports bring in, that the players use to buy hookers and cars, and do something useful with it. Maybe use it to improve public education, give it to college students that need help with their tuition, or even clothe and feed the homeless. Just out of curiosity I went and found the total of the 2011 Green Bay Packers salary it is $63,723,500. The lowest paid person on their team, the person that probably sits on the side lines every game, made $375,000 this year, the top paid player made nearly 8 million. How does that even work? Does that make any sense? There are people doing actual important things, and they are getting paid hardly anything to do it. Do you know why immigration is so bad, and why it is immigrants taking the hard labor jobs that pay horribly? It is because the americans that would normally be doing those jobs are getting paid millions of dollars to throw around a freaking ball! Sure athletes are entertaining, but so is a dog chasing it's tail, or a cat trying to catch a laser that is pointed at the wall. I hope I have made my point.