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“Bill Gates Tacitly Admits” ..

“It looks like this is as close to an apology or admission of failure as we're going to get, folks.
Sorry about that $4 trillion and mangled years of education for American K-12 kids and teachers.”

http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/25/bil ... t-failure/

Thoughts?

temporal1 wrote:“Bill Gates Tacitly Admits” ..

“It looks like this is as close to an apology or admission of failure as we're going to get, folks.
Sorry about that $4 trillion and mangled years of education for American K-12 kids and teachers.”

http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/25/bil ... t-failure/

Thoughts?

My own church group pulled out of public schools in the 1970s due to seeing the incompatibility of raising godly children there, and most other conservative Mennonites did around the same timeframe as well. Simultaneously, various Mennonite groups have begun publishing their own good quality curriculum, including Rod & Staff, Christian Light, and Pathway.

I'm not sure the rest of us should be too focused on what's going on with "Common Core" or the latest public educatoin ideas.

I have to say we homeschooled and our children homeschool. Universities and colleges accept homeschoolers but even there, care must be taken to choose a good college. I say this as a retired prof. Federal meddling has never been successful for upgrading education in individual states. It always ends up as a political trend machine when the Federal government gets involved.

One of our sons is a mechanic who owns his own shop. He has an associate's degree. Honest vehicle mechanics are difficult to find and he makes as much money as I did as a PhD. He and his wife are happy with their 6 children and have their needs met. Sometimes you have to find the life that makes your discipleship viable based on the talents God gave you rather than chasing after a status degree.

MaxPC wrote:Honest vehicle mechanics are difficult to find and he makes as much money as I did as a PhD. He and his wife are happy with their 6 children and have their needs met.

How does the mechanical business owners income compare with todays PhD income?

RZehr wrote:

MaxPC wrote:Honest vehicle mechanics are difficult to find and he makes as much money as I did as a PhD. He and his wife are happy with their 6 children and have their needs met.

How does the mechanical business owners income compare with todays PhD income?

I would have to say favorable if the business is in an area with a decent sized population. Professors have different pay scales based on the college, their rank on the faculty and other factors. Add into that the college tuition loans and the long hours that profs put in and I have to say that vehicle mechanic is a good living. Society has made a status symbol out of the PhD but frankly, there's a lot of PhDs who are out of work or who are not working in their field.

An honest mechanic on the other hand is a rarity and will always have work. He works on cars, trucks, buses, boats, houseboats as well as RVs. He also thoroughly enjoys his work which is a fringe benefit.

I'm not sure the rest of us should be too focused on what's going on with "Common Core" or the latest public educatoin ideas.

Unless it happens to be your profession.....

KingdomBuilder wrote:

I'm not sure the rest of us should be too focused on what's going on with "Common Core" or the latest public educatoin ideas.

Unless it happens to be your profession.....

to clarify, i brought this question here mainly because CC has been discussed at times, with at least one Anabaptist member in support of it. i’m not sure if i recall who that was.

i’m not suggesting CC should become a central focus for this forum.
over years, i’ve found education to be a general topic of interest here.

if the message is: “you’re not Anabaptist, so go away.” i hear that, too. i appreciate this view.
but, so far, it has not been the view of any admin or mod. so, here (we “others”) are.

RZehr wrote:How does the mechanical business owners income compare with todays PhD income?

PhD incomes depend a lot on the university and the subject. In English and the humanities they are generally paid a lot less. My father was an English professor at a small college in Kentucky, and at one point I found that I was earning more on a factory line in Michigan than he was as a professor with a PhD.

temporal1 wrote:

KingdomBuilder wrote:

I'm not sure the rest of us should be too focused on what's going on with "Common Core" or the latest public educatoin ideas.

Unless it happens to be your profession.....

to clarify, i brought this question here mainly because CC has been discussed at times, with at least one Anabaptist member in support of it. i’m not sure if i recall who that was.

i’m not suggesting CC should become a central focus for this forum.
over years, i’ve found education to be a general topic of interest here.

if the message is: “you’re not Anabaptist, so go away.” i hear that, too. i appreciate this view.
but, so far, it has not been the view of any admin or mod. so, here (we “others”) are.

Huh? That wasn’t my point at all. Christian education and curriculum has a wider scope than just Anabaptists.

I do grow weary of reporting on right wing talking points and flash points which talk about CC tends to be.

KingdomBuilder wrote:

I'm not sure the rest of us should be too focused on what's going on with "Common Core" or the latest public educatoin ideas.

Unless it happens to be your profession.....

Exactly. I'm very glad to see people like you educating our children.

Hmmm, since you are a professional in this field, I'd be interested in your thoughts on the Bill Gates blog entry that this article seems to be talking about:

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/Co ... ty-Schools

This caught my eye:

When disaggregated by race, we see two Americas. One where white students perform along the lines of the best in the world—with achievement comparable to countries like Finland and Korea. And another America, where Black and Latino students perform comparably to the students in the lowest performing OECD countries, such as Chile and Greece.

Do you agree? If so, what do you think Caesar should do about it? Or for all of us, is this something people in our own Kingdom should help solve?