Originally Posted by
sturg33
I didn't suggest taking education to the private sector. I said that the private sector would not put up with the incompetence that the dept of education has produced.
sturg, this isn't about or against you, you just made the last comment of a conversation that was going on between multiple people, in other words you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. ;)
OK cool, but what would you say if I told you that in the past 6 months I have been told by the Vice President/Academic Dean of one university that I teach online courses for that I could only deduct 10% for outright plagiarism from assignments turned in (because they were complaining because I was being too mean by awarding them a zero for that assignment UNTIL they went back and fixed it and resubmitted it) and by some high and might asshole at another university that I teach online courses for that I could not require my students to provide a turnitin/plagiarism report with their assignment because that was not fair to their students. By the way I've had students tell me that my course was their 7th or 8 course with that university and I was the first instructor that made them in text cite their sources. In fact half of them didn't even know what the hell that meant until they got into my course, and I"m not even an English teacher. Here's the fun part, one of those schools was a "for profit university" and the other was supposedly a "non profit university". Can you tell the difference by what I just told you? Neither can I. Both are driven by kissing ass and not offending students, many of whom desperately need offending because they get to college horribly fooking ignorant about damn near everything, and both of the highly placed assholes who told me I was too harsh and demanding were simply scared students would get their feelings hurt and drop out of their POS school and transfer to another school and they would lose their highly placed highly paid job. This is why it's so dangerous to let people who don't know anything about the education process make important decisions about reforming it. Oh there's no doubt it needs reforming, but by people who actually want to make it better, not just pump some sunshine up the backsides of the public, the parents, and the accrediting agencies so that they think a sow's ear really is a silk purse.
I'm in favor of all methods of education. Which ever the local governments prefer, I would support. I know you're an idealist sturg that isn't a bad thing, but if you've met as many dumbass people on school boards and in superintendent's offices you might think better of "whatever the locals decide". Didn't the locals do enough to convince you in the last election that many of them didn't have sense enough to pour piss out of a boot with the directions written on the heel? Didn't they stand up and cheer and push with all their might that we should all vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton without ever even stopping to realize they were really demanding that people vote for either sucky or suckier (in no particular order)?