Price of Knowledge

I came across a quote from Richard Buckminster Fuller, and by came across I mean people put the quote as a caption which is called a "meme" by people who have no idea about memetics and put it up on their social media whatever to be shared and make them seem insightful

We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

Wow.  This is advocating flat out mooching.  Let's take his "fact" that one in ten thousand of us could make a breakthrough that could support everyone else.  Why should they?  If a system is in place that people are taken care of then what is the point to doing something or really anything?  Fuller had this notion that we'd all be better off if we were left to ponder things without all the hassle of actually having to do things.  Of course he was a philosopher of sorts so his idea of a solution to the problems of the world will be what his specialty is.

What does his idea of a solution lead to?

Life doesn't work the way Fuller seems to think it does.  Necessity is the mother of invention, but desparation is the father.  You have to have drive to make things happen.  Just look at the homeless guy who when given a choice between $100 and lessons on how to write code made the smart choice.   This guy showed dedication because he knew that $100 goes fast but learning a valuable skill can keep you fed much longer.  People in general love accomplishing goals having experiences along the journeys of our lives.  Thinking is important, but we can't let it stop us from doing and living.

We do have to think, and we do need a proper education.  You have to know and understand the world around you so that you can make good decisions.  Unfortunately, we've run into a bit of a problem with our education system.  High school level and below seem to be struggling to find its feet in the best ways to educate our young people and there's a nearly fanatical push to go to college.  College isn't a bad thing but it isn't for everyone, especially at today's rates.

I like Henry Rollins, and while I don't totally agree with everything he said in this video he makes some excellent points.  First and foremost that the debt young people incur from going to college is way too high.  It is ridicuous.  Rollins goes on to say that if we want to succeed as a nation that we need to make college either free or really cheap.

Let's go with cheap, because knowledge is a valuable commodity and anything valuable has price.

Education does not just come from schools.  We can receive it from many different sources if we keep our eyes open.  College is not a must have anymore, and the myth that it is preparing to evaporate.  We've got great stuff like Mike Rowe Works which is really worth everyone's time to go in and check out.

We need a balance between Rollins and Rowe, and if we get that, look out world.  Affordable college and plenty of alternatives to close the skills gap?  That's a hell of a combo.

But then some people may ask, "Why no just make these things free?"

I teach Karate.  I don't make a lot of money at it.  In fact, most of the time I'm probably doing it a financial loss.  I still charge my students a nominal fee.  My time and the knowledge I'm imparting are worth something.  I worked hard to gain the knowledge and experience that I'm passing on.  Just like any teacher in any school.  I'd love to have more students, and I was once asked "why don't you just make the lessons free?" since I really am in it for the love of the art and if it was free there's a notion I'd probably get more students.

The reality is I'd likely get less students and the one's I have may not be that great.  Same with college.  If we made college free, sure there would be young people who really benefited, but there'd also be young people when faced with the choice getting a job and goofing off in a classroom for free will take the latter.  Those kids in those college classes work hard.  Why?  Because that class cost a whole lot of money so they better get something out of it.  Charging puts that blockade up that weeds out slackers and admits serious students.

There's also the sweat and pain that comes into a Karate class in which students must learn a technique, put the work in to do it well, so they can learn the next technique.  Same with any type of learning.  You learn your basics.  Put in that work.  Do your homework.  Then move on to learn more.  You put in that sweat equity.  I spent a couple of weeks limping just from one workout in which I learned a very good and very brutal technique.  People asked what happened.

"Its the price of knowledge."

You don't start off knowing everything.  You don't even know everything after going to school.  That's one of the reasons I get irked by fast food workers demanding $15 an hour.  That's a starter job.  That's where you learn how to run a register, and make sure your drawer comes out right.  That's where you learn how to make quick things on demand.  You get a big order from a hungry family and you have to quickly assemble what they want.  That's a skill.  That's a useful skill that you are being paid to develope.  Not mention the customer service skills you gain.

You can take those skills and work you way up the fast food chain to manager and eventually franchise owner, or you can take those skills, put them on your resumé and hunt for another job that pays better.

And people complain that its not a living wage.  Its not supposed to be.  They are entry level.  That's where you start.  Once you start you're supposed to go somewhere.

Hopefully we'll get Governemnt out of throwing money around and suckering kids into debt and hopefully our society will wake up and realize that there's more to learning then just sitting in a classroom.  Thinking is important.  Learning is important.  But without working and doing you're going nowhere.

Random Acts of Education

Last go around I wrote about how the Gifted and Talented programs I had been involved in did absolutely nothing for me, and pretty much put me off wanting to be involved in any of them.  I do wonder if those things served more as some weird networking type tool that if I persued would give me good contacts that would allow for social and professional advancement later.  I'm also pretty sure that the programs now have a lot more to offer kids.  That said, while I think those programs did nothing for me, that's not to say that my time in school was all a waste.

I mentioned Coach Donovan in my last post.  He was the phys ed teacher when I was in the Philippines.  He always gave off the vibe that use kids were the reason his hair was turning grey.  "Kid, I swear you're going to send me back to the oil fields."  I don't know if he ever really worked in any oil fields, but him saying that and shaking his head at me as my latest stupidity utterly exasperated him gave me a chuckle.  He did delight in getting one up on us little punks too.  Like in a game of Simon Says when we were ordered to jump up, but he called everyone who came back down 'out'.  That's right, to beat the old man we had to break the laws of physics.  A few of us even managed to pull it off.  Here's the thing: Coach loved us.  This guy honestly gave a crap about each one of the little twerps that came through that school no matter how long or short a time we were there.  He'd take time to actually teach us and encourage us when he knew we needed it.  I model much of the way I teach after the way I watched him teach.

With all my many interests, some of them I did not discover without the aid of a teacher.  One of those teachers was one I couldn't stand: Ms. Warren.  Her class was miserable.  She was an English teacher who could not pronouce the letter "R".  She'd just stand there in front of us like the ultimate know-it-all, and it was insufferable.  One of the most easy-going mellow guys I knew in high school finally got up and stormed out of her class never to return.  But, one of the short stories that we studied was "The Red-Headed League".  Yes, the classic Sherlock Holmes story.  This wasn't the first Holmes story I had read for a class, but Ms. Warren did a group exercise to teach about detective work.  Each student was given a fact about a case.  We all have to work together to get the clues in order to solve the crime.  We did two of these, one was a murder, and the other was a theft.  I solved them both, easily.  This sparked my love of a good mystery and love of detective work.  I've been watching that "Whodunnit?" show on ABC this summer and absolutely salivating, collecting the clues and lining up that cases.  That's something I'd love to be in the thick of.  I'd have it won in a walk.

My big interest came from another English teacher: Mr. Babb.  This was not some advanced placement class.  This was the standard M1A1 English composition class.  Mr. Babb was a younger guy who joked around with us and his class was pretty easy going.  He gave me an assignment that probably changed my life. "Write something."  The stuff I turned in ended up being twice as long as what he asked for.  He said we were going to spend about two weeks writing a short story, going through all the steps, and learning the process.  It only had to be about four pages long.  I came back the next day with eight pages.  I became obcessed with writing that story.  I could not stop that night until it was done.  Looking back, it was crap.  That's not some weird modesty or me being self-depricating.  The story was really horrible.  But Mr. Babb liked it.  My classmates liked it.  The girl who did not like me at all, liked that story.  I've written much better ones since then, but that class and that teacher put me course to write all the stories I had in my mind. I'm still working on that.

I then got to college, and for a while was not sure why I was there.  Grades weren't good at all.  Lot of stress.  I wanted to quit, but my folks would have had my ass if I did.  Then I learned some very important stuff.

1: I'm a moron who doesn't know everything, but I can pick it up if necessary.

2: Stress will kill your ass sure as cyanide.

3: When faced with overwhelming anything, don't panic, pick the most pressing target, and just start slogging it out.  Hesitation is not an option when there's a deadline.

4: You can get through damn near anything as long as you've got your buddies with you.

I've had a lot of teachers during my time in education.  I remember many of them very fondly.  But it wasn't some special schooling or gifted program that did it.  It was teachers putting out ideas that I could latch onto.  It wasn't he tests or memorizing stuff.  Those are important, but that's not what changes a student.

Its inspiring the students.  They don't have that in study guides or teacher's edition text books.

Pass the Dunce Cap

When I was a kid, someone got the notion in their head that I was smart.  I don't know where this came from.  My coloring skills were miserable.  I showed no leadership ability at all, nor any interest in leading much of anything except a lunch line.  My grades were alright, but not top of the class.  I liked reading comic books so maybe they figured me nerding out early was some sort of sign as to a superior intellect lurking within me.

In fourth grade I was placed in the elementary school's "Gifted and Talented" program, or GAT, due to what must have been a clerical error.  This entailed me and a few other fourth graders being sent to the library once a week to engage in activies to feed our young gifted and talented minds.  One the first day we were asked what we wanted to be when we grow up.  Of course the answers of scientist, and doctor, and astronaut and such were written down.  I do indeed remember what I wrote down.  

"I want to be a Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestler."

Of course my parents were mortified, but as Lewis Grizzard wrote, "Wrestling is like eating collard greens.  When you're hooked, you're hooked."  My hero was Jimmy "The Boogie Woogie Man" Valiant.  I was on the edge on my seat when he was feuding with "Exotic" Adrian Street.  Unfotunately, I never filled out and suck at wrestling.  Another young dream dashed.

So I sat in GAT class with my dreams of the squared circle, and I don't remember anything about the class aside from being shown those pictures that are really two images depending on how you look at it.  There's that picture which is an old woman, but also a young woman looking away.  Never did see the old woman.  Drove me nuts for a long time.

Fourth grade gave way to fifth grade, and it was on to middle school.  The GAT program continued by this time it was once a week being loaded onto a bus and taken to a whole other school.  It was a bit more memorable in that we had a computer class.  We knew computers were the way of the future, but I really didn't care.  The teacher did his best to teach us a bit about computers, and I sat as patiently as I could waiting for the end of class when he'd let the class play a few games on the old comps.

This only last a few months as midway through my fifth grade year my family moved to the Philippines.  They did not have a GAT program at the Oliver Hazard Perry Elementary school.  They had a TAG program.  Same old soup, just re-heated.  I also somehow formed an intellectual rival, Gladney Asada.  Gladney was smarter than me.  Looking back, my desk was smarter than me.  There we were in the TAG program, which met one afternoon every other week.  I hated it.  The only thing I remember from that was the question getting posed "That would be a more sensible color for a road to be other than black?"  That's what we were supposed to ponder with of talented and gifted minds?  

This began the my first practices in skipping class.  We all went home at lunchtime, and I'd fake sick and stay home to watch cartoons featuring giant robots doing giant robot type things.  My grades started taking.  I didn't care about the classes.  Didn't care much for my teachers aside from Coach Donovan who was great guy.  This got me out of any giftend and/talented programs for the time being.  I never got anything out of them.  But then, I was a lousy student.

Upon returning from the Philippines I started to get myset back in order.  My folks said that my transcripts got lost in the move.  Yeah, right.  The TV did, but those transcripts with all my lousy grades got buried somewhere.  I started fresh, and worked a bit at school.  My grades were good, but not great.  Some people still labored unted the notion that I was smart, which was crap, but I didn't dispute it.  Things were moving along smoothly enough.  I managed to make the honor roll on a regular basis.  If you made honor roll, you got the skip out on a class for a pizza party.  I usually skipped those.  Went one time my senior year.  Quickly realized why I skipped all the previous ones.  There was nothing there for me.

Junior year I was offered to join the National Honor Society.  What was weird about that was if you did not want to be a part of it you had to sign a form and turn it in to the school's NHS director who was my old biology teacher.  There were meetings to go to and some sort of club fees.  I had no car and wanted no part of it.  My folks both worked and would have had to take off to pick me up from school after the meetings.  They'd have done it, but I didn't want to ask them to do it.  So I signed the form opting out and placed it on Mr. Regan's desk at lunchtime, when he was out of the room.  That part wasn't intentional, but I was just dropping off a form.  Later that day in Chemistry class, Mr. Regan slipped into the room, spotted me, and quietly moved to where I sat in the back of the room.  He held the paper in front of me wanting to know why on earth I would opt out.  He did this as discretely as possible, which I respected.  I told him the truth.

"I can't get a ride, and don't really want to."

Academic achievements are important.  Working hard in school is important.  Grades are important.  But to me, I just wanted to get by.  Not the best attitude.  If I had a better one then maybe I wouldn't be a laborer for a living.  Ah well.