packsaddle

BadenP, Then eliminate welfare. We know for a fact that we're not willing to pay the price to educate them. If you read my posts, you'll see that I do understand how poorly our students rank with some of the rest of the world. Take a look at the link: http://www.air.org/files/phillips.chance.favors.the.prepared.mind.pdf starting with 'results' on page 14. The national proficiency is ranked there and then later individual states are compared to other countries. It is an interesting comparison. Not a single state ranks greater than 5th (Massachusetts) and Mississippi barely edges out Moldova or Serbia. One note regarding textbooks: for K-12 there is no such thing as an out-of-date math book. This is true for much of science as well until you get to college prep or AP courses.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

"Instead the public school system we have today hasn't got a clue how to do or live within a budget, and we have teachers who are burnt out, really hate teaching, giving minimal effort, and are just lousy teachers being protected by tenure and unions instead of being culled out as what happens in charter and private schools." This is a particularly and uniformly negative outlook. Is it true? "Average 2009 NAEP Score By State Teacher Contract Laws States with binding teacher contracts 4th grade: Math 240.0 Reading 220.7 8th grade: Math 282.1 Reading 263.7 States without binding teacher contracts 4th grade: Math 237.7 Reading 217.5 8th grade: Math 281.2 Reading 259.5 As the table shows, the states in which there are no teachers covered under binding agreements score lower than the states that have them. Moreover, even though they appear small, all but one of these (8th grade math) are rather large differences." The above comes from: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ as summarized in a Washington Post article. Here are some rankings: "Average Rank Across 4 NAEP Tests Next to each state is its average rank Virginia....... 16.6 Texas......... 27.3 N. Carolina.. 27.5 Georgia.......36.8 Arkansas.....38.9 S. Carolina...38.9 Arizona........43.3 Alabama......45.5 Louisiana.....47.8 Mississippi...48.6 Out of these 10 states, only one (Virginia) has an average rank above the median, while four are in the bottom 10, and seven are in the bottom 15. These data make it very clear that states without binding teacher contracts are not doing better, and the majority are actually among the lowest performers in the nation. In contrast, nine of the 10 states with the highest average ranks are high coverage states, including Massachusetts, which has the highest average score on all four tests." Does anyone see evidence in this that public schools dominated by lousy, tenured, unionized teachers are underperforming their non-unionized peers? I sure don't. Actually, we had our children in private school and switched to public school BECAUSE of the lousy teachers in the private school. Yes, some of the public school teachers needed to retire but others were outstanding. I just don't see that you can apply a blanket condemnation to all teachers that work in public school systems and claim it is a fair statement.

For peaks (I'm assuming modest ones but nevertheless treeless ones), unless you have a good supply of snow to melt, water is the primary consideration. It is your enemy for pack weight and at the same time your best friend for survival. There is nothing so disappointing as to run out of it if you have to hike a mile from camp to find more. If you have sufficient water, I tend to take the attitude that hunger makes anything taste good. So I take anything that can be completely dehydrated and yet contain plenty of energy. I don't worry so much about how it tastes, just make sure I get enough nutrition to keep going. If I'm out for only a couple of nights I'll probably go the first day without even cooking anything. The second day I'll cook whatever circumstances allow. I usually have more food than I really need. I've been known to take the freeze dried stuff but also regular rice, grits, oatmeal, tuna or chicken in pouches, noodles, spices, and depending on the terrain, maybe a frozen steak and some roasting potatoes (I do cook the steak and potatoes the first night, especially if the scouts brought gruel to eat, heh, heh). For lunches, I've seen people eat ramen noodles (dry or soggy), cup-o-soup, etc. But I don't like the packaging waste. I do sometimes take little cans of spread with crackers (Fancy Feast cat food is just delicious). I'll pour dried tea mix into zip locks and mix it on the trail to drink, or Gator Aid mix, or Tang. It keeps the electrolytes in balance. I was just kidding about the Fancy Feast. But if I have some new boys along, I kid them by swapping cat food can labels for deviled ham or some similar sized canned meat for spread. I did once, ahem, make a tragic mistake...never do THAT again! But for me the best part of backpacking is not the food. It is the trail, seemingly endless, and coupled with the ability to keep putting one foot ahead of the other.... Edit: the cat didn't much care for smoked salmon pate either...(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Oak Tree, to address part of your post, today we have political avenues to address educational needs. If enough families see a sufficient need we can force school boards, through replacement if necessary, to make needed changes. This is a very local process. We also have legal requirements that individual families can bring to bear (IEP's for example) if they are willing to take the time and make the investment. In some sense the market IS working right now. It just has a huge public presence in addition to the private educational opportunities. The risk I see is that many persons might view the political call for privatization as a means to pay lower taxes, with the speculative possibility of improving education at the same time. If these individuals are not already investing the time and other resources to support the education of their children, I think it is unlikely that they will be willing to pay the price for the private option. Most of them, as I noted long ago in my opposition to vouchers, merely want something for nothing (although some, I admit, have even less-honorable motivations as well). THIS, to me, is the largest risk factor for going to a greater free-market approach. Yes, those of us who work hard for education for our families will get it. I can tell you from personal experience that we CAN get it right now if we're really willing to pay that price.

Comparison of states to countries. Found it. This is from 2007 and was reported in the NYTimes. http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/11/14/education/20071114_STUDENTS_CHART.html here is the source report: http://www.air.org/files/phillips.chance.favors.the.prepared.mind.pdf The source report was from American Institutes for Research. Interesting comparisons, state by state but in 118 pages it will take a while to digest. Mississippi...as we say elsewhere in the South, 'thank God for Mississippi'. Edit: This comment caught my eye: "The bad news is that even our best-performing states are significantly below the highest performing countries. This report shows that the American public has very low levels of mathematical and scientific literacy. Instead of relying on science we rely on pseudoscience." Indeed!(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Those mandates don't carry much weight unless there's other funding at risk. So if the federal component of the funding for education goes away, for practical purposes so does the mandate. In the old days, before the mandates, in NC at least (and I suspect elsewhere) special ed was left entirely to the state and the severely handicapped children were basically stacked into hell holes like the Western Carolina Center for Mentally Retarded Children. Children who were merely learning disabled were just passed through the system and then discarded by society. I suspect we'll return to some approximation of the old way if the states take over again without any external incentives to the contrary. Scoutfish, either embrace the market and its consequences or not. You can't have it both ways. Yes, selective forces ARE going to be very mean to some children. That is unavoidable. Those who aren't poor enough to receive indigent education but not rich enough for the best private schools are going to struggle. Tough. If a child is gifted, the system will recognize this and they will do fine. Others will find their place according to their abilities. It is the ONLY truly fair system.

Yes, outstanding story! There's still a boy inside me saying, "ME! ME! I wanna go too!" Thanks, Kudu

Oak Tree, if indeed no one does what the text literally says, there is unlikely to be much incentive to change the text or even clarify it. It would essentially be an acceptance by BSA of one more aspect of 'closet' local option in practice. As far as Godwin's Law goes, I did catch that comment and soon thereafter the fickle finger of fate was hovering over the delete button...only superhuman restraint managed to call it back. Was I wrong?

I will also followup on something Skeptic wrote regarding the absence of need for every child to go to college. I agree. However, it is, in fact, the current status if our dropout rates are what were just quoted. Less than 10% of my graduating class went to college. I think am nearly the only one of them to complete a terminal academic degree although I believe there is one veterinarian and there may be a dentist - we don't know what happened to a few of them. While I admit that my school was probably near one of the extremes in this particular metric, the 'elite' schools had far from a majority in college attendance. In public meetings, I still hear statements similar to Skeptic's - but expressed to support a contention that not every child needs to complete high school. It is a simple matter to extend the argument to school attendance at all and I believe I have read statements essentially to that effect in these threads from one member who advocated denying education to 'uneducables'. He has yet to explain who those 'uneducables' are. So I also ask, in addition to Beavah's questions, how would we decide who 'should' go to college? I am ok with making opportunities available to all persons and then letting individual merit and fair standards in the marketplace of higher education determine the outcome. It mostly works that way now with a few exceptions here and there. Skeptic, how would you change/improve over what we have now? Some details would be nice. I ask this because I do see the need, in this new world with the need of high-tech understanding even in the trades. I really CAN see the utility of math literacy and science literacy, even verbal skills (writing skills) for every citizen - IF they are to fully understand and participate in today's society. Or is the intent to prevent that? At one time the mill villages in the South (and, I suspect, the North) had a tradition of providing the absolute minimum of education needed to maintain a stable workforce. This often also translated into other descriptions that had to do with the ability of the mill owners to control 'their' people. I would be surprised if any industry in which the entire local society was organized around that industry didn't have similarities to what I just described, it was certainly true for coal miners. Is this the model of society that we want? It evidently didn't work given where we are today.

BadenP, I wouldn't paint all of public education with that failure. Some, yes. The schools my children went to were, by most measures, very good, both the private and the public ones. To address some of what Oak Tree noted, we also confronted those limitations on 'choice' and we moved our residence in order to make sure we were in the best school district. I do understand what you say. Thing is, if you think a 'free market' approach is going to make it all easy, or somehow bring some magical improvement to what most of us agree is an essential system that is not working well, you are mistaken. The free market approach that I advocate is going to cost more and access to the best schools is going to be even more competitive for many of us. There is no way around this. To expect, or even wish for anything else is either fantasy, self-deception, or some kind of expression of an attitude in which we really don't care but want some kind of free ride at Disneyworld. All the free market approach will do is allow greater latitude in rearranging the problems, it won't make them go away because the problems in education, nearly all of them, begin with the families involved. And the marketplace won't address that. At least not directly.

Oak Tree, I'm thinking you already have those little steps in NC. Charter schools for sure. Ability to put your children in private schools, absolutely. Ability to go to another school, not in your neighborhood, that one depends on them having space for you and some other factors, but in this area, if you're willing to pay the price you can get that too. The price is usually something along the lines of fees equivalent to some level of property tax support that they didn't collect from you, something like that. What else did you have in mind? Beavah, I'm working on it. The data exist but it might require a little mining. Edit: Found this: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_us_states_countries Beavah, I know you can see this online, maybe not non-subscribers, though. I think this is what we're interested in except for educational effectiveness. It might take some work.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

I guess I have to defend my approach since Beavah used it in his setup. A more careful read of what I have written will show that I advocate keeping a much smaller public school option to cover the indigent. If the population density in rural areas is less than needed to provide the market forces, one argument would be the same as regards a monopoly on, say, tires. Absent the competition, they'd be expensive. So the public option in those cases would tend to provide the opportunity in which even the non-indigent could get a 'better deal' if an alternative existed - or else they could pay the going price for 'premium'. The means-tested indigent, of course, would receive the entitlement. I don't see that the needs necessarily would outstrip an urban economy's ability to support the market unless the economy was crashing or there simply were not enough students to support the market anyway. In that case the public option would be there again. I guess Beavah has forgotten but I advocated this approach in another thread in which he had championed vouchers. In that thread I rejected vouchers in favor of an even more free-market approach (go to that thread if you want the details). As with scouting, I think that customers who pay a fair price (and the entire amount of it) tend to better appreciate a good product and reject an inferior product. Purely public and even voucher-based systems (or subsidized like summer camp) do not allow this. For this reason I think, depending on their means, every family should pay the full costs of educating their children as if they are in private school. [summer camp too, same principle] I do agree with teacher/scout's comment about statistics. I note that the original Department of Education which lasted for about one year back in 1867, was created largely to collect such information. In 1868 it was reduced to an Office of Education for political reasons not unlike those I hear these days. Sure, take the department designation away. Fine. I suppose the states could make individual comparisons to nations in the world. We can do that already if you take the time to dig those statistics out of the database. I'd say that some states probably compare favorably with Sudan, others might compare well to Peru or perhaps Cuba. A few might be right there with Germany or Austria. It would be an interesting exercise. So I'd say go ahead, might as well make the deed complete, what the heck. Abolish that department. I'm sure that the corporate minds who created those resounding successes at GM, Chrysler, BOA, Lehman Bros, etc. will lend their genius to the task of managing education for our children. They'll be in good hands for sure.

Brent, genius? I'd say that a truly smart person would find a better line of work - regardless of political direction.

Brent, I've read both the 2010 and the 2009 reports and they are both highly speculative. Moreover, keep in mind that our speculation about our own resouces is far better than similar speculation about resources in other countries. The majority of that estimate is 'undiscovered technically recoverable resources (UTRR)' categories. Moreover, it includes the oil energy equivalent (BOE) for coal, all sources of natural gas, shale oil, and the heavy stuff. A large portion of the proven sources such as shale oil is noted as not economically recoverable, as is a lot of the conventional oil, so until the price goes way up, it isn't feasible. In addition, the problem with some of the sources (such as shale oil or coal) is that to convert it into a usable form (liquid fuel for example) not only is expensive in terms of dollars, it might even require more energy for the conversion than is contained in the product (a negative EROI or energy return on investment). Yes, some of this stuff is going to be recovered and used. And if the price of energy and the associated demand are great enough, then we'll be willing to pay the price of running those processes even in an energy-negative manner. Some people argue that we're doing that already with the ethanol and biofuel programs. But the conditions that bring us to that status are far different from our current lifestyle. When oil brings $200-300 per barrel and gasoline costs closer to $10-20 per gallon, circumstances will be dictating our choices whereas we could have 'thought' ahead and prepared for that future. At those prices, we may well be removing mountain ranges to extract a few barrels of oil from the rock. But we will be paying a dear price for having woefully ignored the Scout Motto. Edited to add: BS-87, make sure your children are strongly influenced by the internet. The marketplace will eventually make the needed correction. If you read my posts long ago, you would see that I strongly advocate a purely private education system with a public system for the indigent, also available at cost to the non-indigent. It would allow the marketplace to more quickly select against poor decisions by families in their educational choices.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Around here we don't do those pitches at school. If we're lucky we might be allowed to hand out an announcement at the end of a school day. Then the pitch is given at the announced place and time. Those are not captive because the participants are there voluntarily. Around here FOS had traditionally been pitched at the Blue and Gold or some similar venue for the troop, often a COH. Those attending families were NOT there for the FOS pitch and making them sit through that pitch in order to enjoy what they thought they were there for made them a captive audience. To expand on the higher-tech option, the mere fact that BSA had sent out a 'tweet' or something along those lines would be so novel that that fact alone would curry interest and notoriety around here. To have some interesting content would be an even greater pleasant surprise.

All any of the councils need to do is to put it all online. There are so many ways to do this it pains me to know how little BSA seems to know how to do it. Make a really good, effective pitch. Post it on youtube or even the main websites. Then let the people decide on their own instead of using them as a captive audience. They might even pick up some $$$ from non-scout-family sources...now THERE'S an idea! There IS that problem of the really good, effective pitch. Might need to work on that a bit. Probably don't want to see the CSE waddling up to the microphone, for example. This is where that Mike guy would really shine. Hello, hello, any neurons still firing in Irving???

I'm still grappling with all the images, not to mention the irony, of someone with a name like Scoutfish...having a mullet. Mindboggling! I understand inference of racism. I grew up in and have lived most of my life in the South. What I also recognize is that for that inference to work, the idea of racism and a sensitivity to the nature of the concept is required by both those who infer and those who 'read' and accept the inference. Both parties share the interaction and if that's a dance you want to dance, all I can say is that while one party might falsely think they're making points by clever name calling, the other party is equally incorrect in thinking their indignance can substitute for a well-reasoned argument. Both sides lose. I agree with Beavah's notes on empires. I present this to my students at the beginning of every semester, connecting social and economic and political systems to material and energy resources. The historical patterns are troubling to them. Every empire up to very recent times has waxed and waned and for many of them the story is reasonably well-known. But up until the 19th century almost all of them required massive human labor (energy) resources to sustain the empires. I think it is no coincidence that the dependence on forced servitude in whatever form declined rapidly with the industrial revolution. It certainly doomed slavery in this country (although we fought a war to end it anyway). As Beavah indicated, our failure to use our ingenuity and creativity to develop and pursue alternatives to oil, combined with our anti-intellectual acceptance of superficial things over education...these things may well have started our decline already. And I don't see ANY member of the current political crop as having a solution to this. BS-87, long-term sustainability requires long-term sustainable intellectual, technological, and energy resources in addition to the materials we have always needed. We might be able to continue to dominate through military means for a while. But that, by itself, is unsustainable in the long-term.

I think that babysitting stint is an opportunity to get called, 'poopy face'. Ooops, wrong thread, that's over in the youth protection thing.

Anyone know why the project became a requirement in the first place?

Vol, BS-87 is the first response that actually used the term 'racism'.

Sherm, It sounds a lot like nationalism as well. I am reminded of a quote from Einstein, who credited nationalism with a lot of the problems of that time, "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." Orwell called it something like hunger for power combined with self-deception. BS-87, would that it WERE garbage. Do you actually know the history of Bangladesh? The answer to your question is 'no' but this country doesn't have the conditions needed to produce a Bangladesh and can't, no matter what happens. What we can do is to let our economy implode from unbridled debt, thus forcing us to cut public access to services like good infrastructure, education, etc. That really IS possible. And without things like good education, I would agree that the future is dim. By some measures we're already there.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

I think you need to take a closer look at the heap you think you're on. Have you noticed a bad smell?

We could give up 50% of our military and remain unmatched in military might. Our status as a reserve currency is being threatened by our having spent beyond our means for a long time. The debt commission supplied a very modest bipartisan approach to addressing that problem and both parties have ignored it. This does not fall at the feet of Obama alone, but rather at all involved. As Beavah noted a long time ago in another thread, there's no need to come up with partisan budgets like we're fighting over now, budgets that really don't address the problems, if we were serious about addressing the problem, take a bold move, adopt the advice of the debt commission. Ain't going to happen. We're not serious about it at all. Almost none of us. "If we...make a habit of being the aggressors in wars against sovereign nations and their leaders, like Iraq and Libya, we lose that special role." We squandered that during the last administration. Everyone seemed happy with it back then. "Truthfully, the only advantage we have over the rest of the world now is not that we're smarter, but that we're perfectly suited for managing the rest of them." Evidence the masterful ways we're handling our own affairs, right? This is a joke, right? This kind of statement is such nonsense. If a majority of us really believed that we'd deserve to get slapped down the way those who hold that view usually eventually get slapped down. Your idea of 'sustainability' is a sad illusion that some get when they think their at the top of the pile. Usually a view held by the likes of the Castros and Gaddafis of the world.

If SeattlePioneer is making the claim that his decision not to marry was (is) the best rational decision for him (which, I think, IS what he claims), I salute his approach and I see no evidence to dispute him.

I'm not sure it always comes back to racism rather than a fairly recent acceptance of an 'end justifying the means' approach to politics. And I think that might have started with Lee Atwater or perhaps goes back to Nixon or Johnson. In this case the 'race card' is convenient because it gives both sides something to 'use' as a misdirection instead of addressing real problems in realistic ways. As far as America's special place, I would like to learn what, specifically, that is? Going back to the previous administrations, it seems to be 'Nationbuilder' or something along those lines. Is that what you mean? What?