Recently in School Category

I was watching the local news last night and saw a story that got my blood boiling.  It was a report about high school dropout rates.  In the report a Birmingham area resident complains that her son did not finish high school and thus can not go to college.  As you might expect, this is the same kind of person you might expect to see on the news talking about how she heard a freight train coming right before her house got blown away.  You can see the report and some of the video I saw over at Fox 6.  The video link is down to the right.

What made me so angry was not that the news station found an uneducated mother or that the station continues to reinforce inaccurate stereotypes of people in the south but that this mother did not take any personal responsibility for her son's failure to graduate high school.  She blames the schools for such failure.  That pissed me off to no end.  I recognize that our schools could be MUCH, MUCH better but to blame the education system for a child not graduating high school is ridiculous.  If I could meet this mother I would love to ask her a few questions.  I would also like to know if the genius reports at Fox 6 ever thought to ask any of these questions.

1.  Throughout your son's life were you involved in his education?  Did you monitor his progress?  Did you consistently work with him to get his school work completed?  Did you encourage learning in the home?  Did you read to him and encourage him to read?  Did you take advantage of learning opportunities outside the home?  What exactly did YOU do to be sure that your son grew up with a respect for learning?  What exactly did YOU do to see that your son took advantage of the education opportunities offered to him?

2.  Were you involved at the school?  Did you participate in any parental organizations?  Did you go to parent/teacher meetings?  Did you volunteer to help out at the school in any way?  What actions did YOU take to ensure that the school was giving your son the basic education that we supposedly guarantee every citizen of this country? 

3.   What did you do as a parent for the first 16 or so years of your son's life that would have helped him graduate high school?  Other than feeding, clothing, and housing him did you make any effort to see that your child could think critically, understand logic, or or understand the consequences of decisions?  Did you make your son responsible for the choices he made in life?  Was there any level of discipline in your house? 

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. 

Academic success begins and ends in the home.  You, the parent, are responsible for ensuring that your child has the basic skills to support themselves in life.  So, when your kid drops out of high school then you had best look at yourself and figure out where you screwed up.  What choices did you make that resulted in your failure as a parent?  Once you can answer that question only THEN can you turn the critical eye to the schools, the government, the teachers.  I personally believe that if parents would be more involved in the lives of their children and take the time to instill a love and respect for learning in their kids the dropout problem would disappear and we would enter a new era of academic achievement.  What is happening, however, is that there is an increased vilification of education.  Ask a child what is more important, going to college to become a scientist or getting an NBA contract and I bet (and I have not empirical research to prove this) that the NBA comes out on top.  Learning is not valued any more and this attitude starts with us, the adults and parents. 

Take education seriously.  Do it for yourself but more importantly, do it for your kids.

This weekend was a time of endings. 

First was graduation.  I didn't do the official graduation thing when I finished my undergraduate work.   Considering how I ended that process it would have been a little anticlimactic anyway so I just skipped the the whole thing.  Getting that undergrad degree didn't signal any major life change, any new career, or really anything at all.  It just was.  Even though it was a great experience, the end was underwhelming to say the least.  Completing the MBA program, however, feels like more of an accomplishment.  I don't really know why, but it just seems to have more meaning. Maybe it is because of the sacrifices my family and I made to get there or maybe it is because the degree appears a little more useful than a history degree.  Whatever the reason, it was important for me to walk across the stage Saturday in a way that wasn't important nearly 10 years ago when I earned a B.A.  My wife and daughter were there as well as my parents and I know it was just as important to them as it was to me as they each had given up something in their lives to help me get to that point Saturday.  For my parents it was probably a much longer journey than they expected but I was as happy to be able to give them the experience that they didn't have some many years ago.  The best part, however, was to finally be able to look at my wife and daughter and tell them that it was over and that yes, daddy will be home tonight.

The other endings weren't so monumental, but no less anticipated.

I finished Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series less than 12 hours ago.  I have been reading these books since before I met my wife.  I received the first book, Wizard's First Rule, back in 1994 while I was working for a local bookseller.  My boss at the time brought back a stack of free books from a trade show, company retreat, or something and I just happen to get Goodkind's novel.  I was well into The Wheel of Time by then and couldn't imagine how another fantasy book could capture my attention.  Boy was I wrong.  Where Jordan's series get bogged down in minutia, Goodkind sticks to the action and moves the plot forward.  I have found the Sword of Truth series to be more engaging and have longed for each entry in the series while I have left new Wheel books to languish on the shelf.  While this is not the proper place to review the final book, I will say that it is a fitting end to the series.  Some things I saw coming, others caught me completely by surprise.  The best thing, however, is how Goodkind brought back loose threads from earlier works and weaved them together in the epic finally.  The books are great reads that also leave you with a message.  If you have ever considered reading this series, now is the time as the story is complete and you won't have to wait like the rest of us have done all these years.

I also finished Fight Club.  I still like the movie better but the book is roughly the same thing.  There are some changes, but the overall theme of the work is there.  Palahniuk is very tight with his words and I think he may be too tight in this book.  Once Tyler moves on to the Project Mayhem the book moves a little too fast.  It felt like there was a rush to get to the end.  Otherwise I enjoyed the quick read. 

The only other thing of note from this weekend was UAB's victory over Kentucky.  Go Blazers!

I completed the last assignment of my graduate school program last night.  Let me say that again.  I completed the LAST assignment of graduate school last night.  While I am not OFFICIALLY done yet, I am done.  I don't think I can express in words how euphoric I am feeling this morning.  Even though I really slept like hell last night, I got up this morning excited about the day.  Not so much excited to go to work, but excited that now I can get on with my life.  Excited that after 3+ years I can go back to enjoying the things that make life worth living.  I woke up without that sense of pressure to get something done that has been so much a part of my world for so long. It really feels great.

As it stands now I don't know what's next.  Honestly, I don't feel like thinking about it right now.  I just want to take the rest of the month and spend time with my family.  I want to come home in the afternoon and dance with my daughter.  I want to take my wife out to dinner.  I want to spend time with friends.  I want to be home.

I finished slogging through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night.  I took me most of the semester to get through it because I had precious little time for personal reading and the story just didn't engage me as I had hoped.  As those books get longer it seems like there is a lot of filler.  Not a bad tactic business wise though.  Get kids hooked on short, easy to read books then ramp up the page count and the price and reap greater margins.  The story could have been much tighter if it had been shortened by about 200 pages.  I also felt the battle at the end of the book was handled much better in the movie.  There was a real sense of danger in the film that I didn't get from the book.  Maybe my opinion of the novel is clouded by seeing the film first.  Overall, however, I felt the book was mediocre at best.  I had to get it done though because I really want to get into Confessor by Terry Goodkind.  I picked up the recently released, finally book of the series last weekend and I am itching to get to the end of that story.  More on that as I finish the book.

I attended a discussion last night on business ethics.  A former CFO of Healthsouth was in attendance and he said something that I think is very telling regarding the entire accounting scandal at the company.  He stated that while he knew he was doing wrong he continued to misreport earnings right up until the federal government passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002.  This act put severe criminal penalties on perpetrators of corporate fraud.  What I thought was interesting was that it took the threat of prison time to get this person to approach the feds about his wrongdoing.  He tried to portray himself as someone whose strong ethical background forced him to confess to the feds.  Funny thing though...it took the threat of FEDERAL prison time to get him to act on his ethics?   I wonder if SOX had not based if this person would have still gone public with his knowledge?

Sorry buddy, but you don't get a pass for your actions.  It wasn't your moral and ethical concerns that made you go public, it was the fear of pound-me-in-the-ass prison that caused you to go running.  I know you are disappointed that the feds turned around and prosecuted you even after you blew the whistle, but you got what you deserved.  How many thousands of people lost their jobs, their retirements, their savings, and their lives because you didn't tell someone about the fraud the moment you first saw it?  Personally, I was offended that you acted as though you were somehow wronged by the feds.

I want to go to the movies for like a whole week.  Right now I am missing out on Beowulf, The Mist, 30 Days of Night, and No Country for Old Men.  I will probably also miss the first weekend of The Golden Compass.  If there is one single thing I miss since becoming a father and student it is the weekly trips to the movie theater. 

I am still considering that tattoo thing.  Maybe it will be a graduation present to myself. 

My fucking XBOX 360 is still gone.  I am loosing patience with Microsoft.  I am certainly no longer an XBOX apologist.  There is no reason why my unit should be gone for two months.  I can understand a failure, but ship me a new one already!  Microsoft, you have already lost money on me and will continue to do so because now I am seriously trying to get a WII for Christmas instead of spending cash on 360 games like Halo 3, Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, and The Orange Box.  The quality of service from Microsoft has been atrocious and I expect it will continue to be awful. 

That will be all.

Graduation is 29 days away and Senioritis has kicked in.  I am not going to say I am phoning in the rest of my work, but I'm not "staying late at the office" either. To use another tired metaphor, I am in line to cash in my chips.  This has been a long semester and I don't know if I have ever written so much in my life.  Some of it has been decent, most of it has been average at best and a couple of things turned out much better than I had expected.  Overall, however, it has been a lot of busy work that contributed little to my learning experience.  I guess maybe the lesson is that sometimes in life you just gotta get stuff done.

Here are some of the things I can't wait to get back to once I graduate

Backpacking
Reading
Video games
Going to movies
Going to the theater
Learning new technology
Going to sporting events.
Taking my family on vacation
Having social time with friends
Seeing relatives on holidays
Developing this website
Propping up puppet nations only to see them destroyed by insurgents
Paying to be flailed with bundles of reeds
Organizing my finger collection
Learning to play the guitar
Trolling flea markets for low self esteem women
Recording my memoirs
Undermining the religious majority
Learning to cook
Needlepoint
Getting back on the Furry circuit
Reading to my daughter

2008 is going to be a fun year!

With the end of my university experience on the horizon, my mind is turning to what may be next on the agenda. I turn 32 in November which by some standards is old but by others is still young. Either way I am closing in on the halfway point of my life...assuming I have not already passed it. Mr. massive coronary has me on the "to be evaluated list" I suspect. Nevertheless, I still have trouble answering the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

First, I don't feel any need to "grow up". I don't really know what that means. If it means I have to wake up in the morning and read the Wall Street Journal with a cup of coffee then I am not interested. I'm still going to have Fruity Pebbles for breakfast and I am still going to watch cartoons on the weekends. If it means being responsible and taking care of my family and meeting my commitments then yes, I have grown up but I am never going to release that part of me that enjoys a good fart joke. Sorry, but that's me and I will not compromise myself in order to fit some kind of accepted standard for being an adult.

Second, I have yet to find that one thing that makes me excited about getting up in the morning. You hear all of this talk about "finding your passion" and "if you would do your job without getting paid because you enjoy the work then you have found your career" but I find that a minority of people have been able to work this out. Is it because so many people aren't motivated enough to find a way to make their hobbies into a profession or is it just the simple reality that there aren't a wealth of jobs that require you to spend hours dissecting the underlying metaphors of TV shows? Beats me. I do know that I have yet to find anyone willing to pay me anything much less what I need to maintain my standard of living to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender with my 4 year old. If there is one thing I am passionate about it is being a father. While the return on that investment is immeasurable, it doesn't generate the type of income that I can take to Publix and exchange for bread.

Finally, and this concerns me the most, I think I am about burned out on technology. I think I have said this before, I have found that I love technology as a hobby or pastime, but not as a career. I am tired of dealing with failed servers, buggy software, and Microsoft F*cking Windows. I want something else, but I have ten years invested in becoming a technology professional and it scares the hell out of me to think that time might have been for naught.

December 15th is a major goal in my life. That Saturday will mark the end of my university experience once and for all. There is no Phd. in my future. I don't think I ever really planned on getting a Master's in anything and certainly not in business. When I put on that cap and gown and take a walk across the stage, the clarity of my future will dissolve. Everything after that date is obscured by a dark cloud. I can honestly say I have no idea what is coming. December 16th will be the first day in about 4 years when I will wake up and have no plans for the future.

I wonder if there is a lottery drawing that day....

One of the many problems I have with government education today is that it is organized around the least bright students. A wealth of resources are used in remedial education and a much smaller proportion of funds are spent on giving more advanced students a higher level of instruction. Today most schools are forced or chose to teach to the lowest common denominator. Can't let the average or less than average student fall behind you know. If you show any level of intelligence, however, you are stuck mindlessly completing workbook after workbook while your classmates get attention from the instructor. If you don't believe what I am saying, look back at your own education or that of your children and critically analyze what you see. I think you will find that struggling students got much more attention that the "smart kids". Now ask yourself why the US is falling behind the rest of the world in education year after year. See a correlation?

I found the following quote today that predicted such an outcome.

"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence -- moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods? The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's [of the same age] attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers -- or should I say nurses? -- will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men." C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis has been dead for almost 50 years but he was able to foresee the disaster that public education has become. Are today's teachers little more than "nurses"? I would at least say they are often more akin to babysitters than instructors. Why does there seem the be an attitude in this country that high achievement is something t be ashamed of? Why are high achievers punished (taxation)? At some point we will have to realize that it is of critical importance to educate children according to their ability. This means we have to advance the best students and not force them to sit with their peers and wallow in an inadequate, age based education environment. Is it a better use of limited resources to remediate slow learners instead of developing the great minds of our time? To me it looks like we have tried the "give everyone the same education" strategy and it has failed. There is nothing wrong with saying to some students that they are better than others. In fact, we should champion those students just as much as we champion our greatest athletes. The future of this nation depends on it.

There are 100 days until graduation. 100 days and this whole crazy idea of mine finally comes to a close. I have put a lot of money and time into the program and it has paid off already in a few minor ways. I have made some great contacts and met some really exciting and interesting people. I think meeting new people is what I am going to miss most of all. I was never really interested in business, but I wanted to get back into the university atmosphere. What I forgot was all the damn work they expect you to do in the process. Not exactly a small detail.

Although I am EXTREMELY excited about graduation, I feel a bit tense about "what comes next" because I don't know. I did not have that career defining moment I hoped find during this adventure. Everything is basically the same as it ever was. I am not concerned about that yet, but I am getting restless. Restless for something different but afraid of the consequences. It again goes back to me getting bored with things very fast. The fact that I have been employed at one place for ten years is an anomaly in my life. I never thought I would be where I am for as long as I have been here, but sometimes things work out that way. However, I have had a pretty strong itch over the last few years to get into something different. I just don't know what that might be. I have been waiting to graduate before I really gave it serious consideration but now that time is upon me. Today, however, everything after December 15th is up in the air.

The end game is approaching but I still have 100 days of work ahead of me. September has been "Hell Month" the past few years and I don't expect anything different this year. Expect copious posts on how I am tired, stressed, sick, and a multitude of other things over the next 30-100 days. Stick with me though as you never know when I might say something worth reading or at least something that pisses you off. And, quite frankly, pissing people off is often what I do best.

I registered for my final semester of graduate business school Monday. This came as a bit of a surprise to me as I thought I had an extra class left to take which would have pushed me into next year. I am exited about the prospect of finishing up in a few months while being very scarred that the workload is going to push my stress level over the edge. I have two VERY work intensive classes coming up and one that I am unsure about. There is every indication that this will be my most difficult semester to date. I suppose things should be difficult during the final push toward graduation and, since I had a relatively easy semester in the spring, it is only fitting that I am looking at something that requires a little effort to finish out.

In many ways my life has been put on hold since I started graduate education in 2004. It is amazing to think that it has been over 3 years since this little journey began. I haven't decided yet if the trip has been worth all of the effort and I am concerned that the value of the degree is not what I had hoped. However, no matter what comes from all of the work I can at least feel good about completing the program. That is assuming that I finish. Check with me again around December 15th.