Sunday, January 24, 2010

GIGO

The light may be dawning for some of our leaders.

In the recent Congressional hearings with the financial industry, it became quite clear that their evangelical belief in the unregulated free market had blinded them to the simple fact that money is only a medium of exchange, and that wealth cannot be created by the push of a button.

These wizards have cousins in industry, the pointy-haired boss of the Dilbert cartoons, who have been trained by Management specialists to believe that process matters more than productivity, and meetings more than manufacturing.

Their relatives in Education are just as deluded and dangerous. Since it became a university discipline, Education graduates have taken most of the administrative jobs in universities and schools and related ones in government. As each new Education 'paradigm' is introduced, we in the US and UK fall farther behind the Far East, where they teach the 'old way'.

My opinion is that every one of these ideas is doomed to failure, since they rely on two false assumptions:

1. We can magically train our mediocre students to become the teachers of the best and brightest.

2. The 'secret' to improving results is to change the way that teachers do their jobs, rather than changing the way that students behave.

4 comments:

Sackerson said...

10/10.

James Higham said...

money is only a medium of exchange, and that wealth cannot be created by the push of a button.

It can under fractional reserve banking and the fiat currency, which is the root of the trouble and why JPM, GS and chums continue to screw people, e.g. on Christmas Eve.

Paddington said...

Thanks, Sackerson. Your opinion means a lot.

OldSouth said...

'Their relatives in Education are just as deluded and dangerous.'

And, consequently, the public's trust in the local school systems has eroded significantly over the years. Thus, when the crunch has come, the local school authorities are faced with skeptical and angry citizens, unwilling to give an inch.

A friend is the local school board president. He is a high-minded public-service kind of guy, and now walks around with arrows sticking out of his back...not a happy time for him.