The value of education in our country is sickening. I recently had a couple debates with friends and family members about this topic and thought I'd share my thoughts.
Our country was based on the fact that you can reach your dreams by being an American citizen. A free, unsuppressed, educated person that can do anything you put your mind to. Well our government has let us down on a number of things in my life time.... education being at the top of the list. Why are we one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet one of the only to have to pay for education? Money, land, health and businesses are all things that can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye...... But no one can ever take away your education. Yet when we look at the priorities of our government, spending and implementation, how are they listed?...
1.Health care
2.Economy
3.War
We bailed out thousands of businesses with billions of dollars, we spend millions of dollars a DAY on a war, and we spend countless hours trying to put the pieces of our crumbling economy back together..... Whats missing on that list? Has anyone heard one word about the education crisis in our country? Because don't get it twisted, we have an education crisis.
Our kids are being dumbed down in an attempt to teach them things to past a standardized tests (i.e. FCAT) so that the schools don't miss out on federal funding. What about practical skills? Life skills? Why is teaching kids Algebra or Chemistry more important than teaching how to balance a check book or why eating fruits and vegetables are better than eating a BigMac? A lot of the problems in our country are a direct cause of this very issue..... If people were educated on credit, compound interest and how money works, then they would have known they can't afford a $250k house with an ARM at 5 1/2% with $0 down when they make $35k a year. If young people were educated on synthetic food, calorie intake and what sugar does to your body, then we wouldn't have an obesity epidemic on our hands that kills over 400,000 people a year... second only to smoking!
Why does every country in the world have free education except America? Why doesn't our country mandate more vocational schools along with public schools? All people aren't meant to go to college, I get that...the world needs ditch diggers. But I firmly believe that if a person has the drive and dedication to better their life, the last thing that should stop them is money. If you don't want to go to college and you want to be a mechanic or carpenter, great... we need plumbers too. You should have the option to go to vocational school and learn that trade instead of cramming chemistry down your throat..... But again, if you want to be a Doctor or Lawyer or own your own business.... you should be able to attain your goals and not have to worry about learning how to pass a test in the 4th, 7th and 10th grade so your school can receive money. You should be learning Anatomy, History and Economics.... things that will prepare you for college. Why do other countries make it mandatory to learn a second, third or fourth language, but not America? Did the people in the education system not believe the many, MANY studies on learning secondary languages in early education forces you to use other parts in your brain and actually make you smarter? I guess so, because I took my 2 years of spanglish and got a diploma like everyone else I know.
If we don't make a drastic change in our education system our kids will end up fat, broke drones that work in factories building other countries products because our labor is cheaper than labor in their own country.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Bet you can' just have one.....But you'll only get a few
There are some great marketing minds in the world today, but I can’t think of one Marketing firm better than the people at Frito-Lays. They are partly responsible for the obesity outbreak in the country today, and they are making money hand over fist while the people of America get fat. They designed big, colorful bags with seemingly healthy looking “baked” potato chips. They created new flavors like southwest ranch, parmesan and Tuscan herb, along with the old favorites of sour cream and cheddar, and barbeque.
But that’s not why they are the greatest minds in marketing, no, they are so ridiculously smart because they get us to pay almost $4 for an oversized bag of “baked” chips and when we open the bag, it’s only 1/3rd full. I haven’t seen this type of false advertisement since I reached into my first girlfriend’s shirt to feel those “c-cups” and came away with nothing but tissue and padding. It really is the only product in the world where we pay for more thin air then we do product. The owners at these chip companies have brilliantly thought of a way to have a huge advertising space anywhere a bag of chips lay, and make the consumer pay for the space. Think about the profit the company could rake in if they cut the cost of the bags…. those bags are so big I once saw a small homeless person cut open the bag and use it as a blanket! Ok, so I’m exaggerating a little bit, but nothing pisses me off more than when I open a new bag of chips and I have to reach all the way to the bottom of the bag to grab a few chips.
Think about this, you don’t see Coca-Cola only filling half of a coke bottle, no… you get a full coke and Coca-Cola pays for their advertising space themselves! So I say we all boycott the Frito-Lay company, and you can start by sending all of your un-opened chips to my house…. So I can do some more testing and research….. They’re just so good!!!!
But that’s not why they are the greatest minds in marketing, no, they are so ridiculously smart because they get us to pay almost $4 for an oversized bag of “baked” chips and when we open the bag, it’s only 1/3rd full. I haven’t seen this type of false advertisement since I reached into my first girlfriend’s shirt to feel those “c-cups” and came away with nothing but tissue and padding. It really is the only product in the world where we pay for more thin air then we do product. The owners at these chip companies have brilliantly thought of a way to have a huge advertising space anywhere a bag of chips lay, and make the consumer pay for the space. Think about the profit the company could rake in if they cut the cost of the bags…. those bags are so big I once saw a small homeless person cut open the bag and use it as a blanket! Ok, so I’m exaggerating a little bit, but nothing pisses me off more than when I open a new bag of chips and I have to reach all the way to the bottom of the bag to grab a few chips.
Think about this, you don’t see Coca-Cola only filling half of a coke bottle, no… you get a full coke and Coca-Cola pays for their advertising space themselves! So I say we all boycott the Frito-Lay company, and you can start by sending all of your un-opened chips to my house…. So I can do some more testing and research….. They’re just so good!!!!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Explaining No Internet
There have been many changes in technology during our lifetime, especially during my generation. Being a generation Y-er, we had the majority of the tech boom; Digital everything, C.D.’s, Cell phones, LCD T.V.’s, portable computers just to name a few. But the one thing that changed everything has to be the internet. Isn’t it crazy that we will have to one day, explain to our children, that there was a time in our life when we didn’t have the internet!
Everyone old enough remembers the time of no internet. Internet? We barely had computers when I was growing up! Looking around now, kids have computers with open access to everything and some schools give kids a laptop or personal desktops to work with all school year ‘round. When I was in elementary school we had maybe 20 apple CPU’s with monitors the size of Buick’s for the entire school. When we had “computer lab time”, which was about once every three months, we didn’t surf the net or listen to podcasts, no, we played Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail was great, watching our 1-D, black and white wagon move across a non-animated background like a puppet show with paper cut outs on sticks. Shoving that giant floppy disk in and typing in the MS-DOS code was the best part of the school year for me, even though the computer took half the class period to load the game up. They came out with an upgrade for Oregon Trail a couple years later, in all color with a bad-ass scene where you forged a river and hunted for buffalo and rabbits (I’m still waiting for a newer version where instead of people getting typhoid and bitten by a snake, they would get AIDS, Cancer from cell phone use and gunshot wounds….. and they would be driving in a wood panel station wagon instead of a horse drawn wagon)… Some will also remember other games like Number Munchers (the prime number game) and that math game where you had to figure out at what price to charge for your apples to make the most profit. Much cooler then getting to check your Facebook account all day.
Everyone old enough remembers the time of no internet. Internet? We barely had computers when I was growing up! Looking around now, kids have computers with open access to everything and some schools give kids a laptop or personal desktops to work with all school year ‘round. When I was in elementary school we had maybe 20 apple CPU’s with monitors the size of Buick’s for the entire school. When we had “computer lab time”, which was about once every three months, we didn’t surf the net or listen to podcasts, no, we played Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail was great, watching our 1-D, black and white wagon move across a non-animated background like a puppet show with paper cut outs on sticks. Shoving that giant floppy disk in and typing in the MS-DOS code was the best part of the school year for me, even though the computer took half the class period to load the game up. They came out with an upgrade for Oregon Trail a couple years later, in all color with a bad-ass scene where you forged a river and hunted for buffalo and rabbits (I’m still waiting for a newer version where instead of people getting typhoid and bitten by a snake, they would get AIDS, Cancer from cell phone use and gunshot wounds….. and they would be driving in a wood panel station wagon instead of a horse drawn wagon)… Some will also remember other games like Number Munchers (the prime number game) and that math game where you had to figure out at what price to charge for your apples to make the most profit. Much cooler then getting to check your Facebook account all day.
My kids won’t even get to go through the awkward phase of dial up internet connection. Imagine not only trying to explain what a dial up connection is, but the noise they put with it…. Well first, you heard a dial tone, and then it sounds like someone is dialing one of 6 local internet numbers you chose based on your location. After that it sounds like your computer was connected to a heart monitor, flat-lines, and then has a pinball tournament while a slinky walks down a long stair case. Following the heart attack and pinball tournament you hear static for about 3 minutes, ranging from mildly annoying to the most annoying sound in the world. 12 and ½ minutes later and after what sounded like a space shuttle just left your computer, you heard those glorious words…… “Welcome, you have mail”. Why couldn’t they create a less annoying tune to go along with this process…Maybe some elevator music, Michael Bolton, Asia, or perhaps a recording of Rosanne singing the national anthem.
When my kids grow up I will have to explain that we had to call in our pizza order, record shows on a VCR, buy CD’S at the store, and find out what people are doing by actually asking them instead of reading it on Facebook, Myspace or Twitter. Get the popcorn and Capri sun, it should be an interesting bedtime story!!
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