tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post1863561376901987853..comments2024-03-22T18:01:20.065-05:00Comments on Geezer with a Grudge: The Price of ComplexityT.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-22554247125309480662009-11-27T15:52:56.442-06:002009-11-27T15:52:56.442-06:00My sis and here first husband moved heaven and ear...My sis and here first husband moved heaven and earth to get their daughter into the more desirable of the two top nursery schools (!) in the DC area. They failed. The little girl was always hitting the workbooks in the child safety seat, on her way to Suzuki piano, pottery, dancing. FInally she was in grad school, moving forward toward desirable lifelong prestige, but began to crack up - two different psychiatrist appointments every week, more than one kind of anti-psychotic or anti-depressant - a little medical research institute on two legs.<br /> <br />Then she quit eternal school and got a job. Much improvement.<br /> <br />No one loves these children - they are just further items on the yuppie checklist, to be perfected. Think of the dentists who have to rush out and buy new tires for their 911-whatsits every time Car & Drivel reach a new conclusion in their latest tire shootout.<br /> <br />Imagine anxiety, substituted for haemoglobin.<br /> <br />KCAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-35992445679988126892009-11-11T07:09:28.502-06:002009-11-11T07:09:28.502-06:00Our parents ridiculed those same shop classes in t...Our parents ridiculed those same shop classes in the 1960s. There was a "college path" and a "trades path" in my high school. Supposedly, the smart kids took the college path and the dumb kids went into the trades. My father, a high school math teacher, would not have allowed me to take automechanics, TV repair (electronics), or shop. I wonder why all parental sins seem to have begun with Boomers? Must be the folks who make the rules are the generation before and the generations after the Boomers?T.W. Dayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-79264786597435486772009-11-11T07:02:40.270-06:002009-11-11T07:02:40.270-06:00In Uruguay, kids who go the technical-vocational s...In Uruguay, kids who go the technical-vocational school route also get a good basic all-rounded education - which I think should be required for the entire population. I think the goal should be a populace that knows how to read, write/express themselves properly, think critically, do math - basically, an educated populace - on top of whatever technical skills may be needed. Like what they have in Scandinavia. The more educated people are, the less bigoted/extremist/ignorant they are, and the healthier and longer-lived they are, while the overall standard of living goes up. I don't agree with a lot of the points this guy makes.<br /> <br />Even more to the point, K-12 school classes that include tool building and use would be equally valuable. Those shop or auto mechanics classes that we Boomers often ridiculed as being "trade school" education values are exactly the kinds of skills that modern kids lack.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-40589032260265978082009-11-06T15:48:28.884-06:002009-11-06T15:48:28.884-06:00Anyone who has a column titled "Geezer with a...Anyone who has a column titled "Geezer with a Grudge" can't get upset when someone acuses his opinions as being part of "sign of age." And I don't. <br /><br />However, I teach these kids 5 days a week and I'm unimpressed with their knowledge of any technology outside of playing games and thumbing illiterate notes to each other on the cell phones their parents pay for. They barely qualify as computer users and few of them even approach programming skills. Not only do they not know "all about that stuff," they rarely know anything useful about that or any other stuff. <br /><br />The world, of course, changes in the way entropy changes everything. People also evolve, but not as quickly as technolgy has evolved, particularly in the last 50 years. Our coddled, entitled, math-and-science-disabled kids are almost completely unprepared for their own futures and they are unlikely to be the bulders of any "new technologies" unless they realize that they have to know how things work to create anything useful.T.W. Dayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5950664143576637249.post-16518230728669674562009-11-06T09:02:08.528-06:002009-11-06T09:02:08.528-06:00It's a sign of age when you begin to look down...It's a sign of age when you begin to look down on the youth coming up and complain about how they aren't living life the way you lived life at their ages--the world changes, move on! Young kids today can do stuff we only read about in science fiction when we were young. The future is computers, the Internet, solar power, and new technologies we haven't dreamed of yet. Our kids know all about that stuff--us old farts can't hold a candle to the stuff they can do with the stuff that really matters. I'm 53.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com