The Children Are Our Future

16 Replies to “The Children Are Our Future”

1. A social justice warrioress in full cry! More to come betch-ya!

2. How much should it really cost for a committee to be struck every 5 or 10 years to hash out what should be covered in school curriculum? If anything is seriously in doubt leave it where it is presently being taught. The kid hater also brought up the suggestion that Donald trump has never read the Constitution. If he had he would discover that education is a state matter and the feds should simply bail out of it.
   Note to Rick Perry – The Departments of Education is the first one to go. Now what are the other two?

3. Project Veritas usually does great work. But, I’m sorry: this is a major fail (at least this video).
   The people aren’t educators or the people who set the curriculum. They’re book sales-people. So what if she doesn’t care about the kids? I’ve worked for plenty of companies where I don’t really think much or care about the end clients. Who hasn’t had such a job? Of course a business is in business to make money and that’s all they care about at the end of the day. And of course they’ll say whatever sounds good to please their customers and the customers’ clients in order to get more money.
   Sure, it’s annoying that there are rent-seekers who lobby for some government mandated product or service and then seek to secure a monopolistic contract to supply that product or service. But, that’s hardly news.
   You can and have done better Mr. O’Keefe.

4. scar. Just 2?
   I volunteer 2 days a week at a middle school (eighth grade.) I certainly don’t need an “educator” or a presidential candidate to tell me that common core is a disaster. Go to your schools and visit or volunteer. Then go to the school board meeting and raise hell. Do you know what that gets you? Nothing. It’s like sending another set of virgins to dc every 2 years. A hell of a lot of noise, signifying nothing. I’m 67 and my ass is just plain tired.

5. That was good work by Project Veritas. Yes, the reality of business is as you rightly say is “hardly news” but do you also think the electorate doesn’t need constant reminding of these facts? Democracy is not an easy way to get good government. The only way democracy gets good government is if enough of the electorate is informed and interested enough to be constantly engaged.

6. No, I don’t think anyone in the electorate needs reminding that…
   a) Companies are in business to make as much money as they can
   b) People work for companies hoping to get a chunk of that money
   c) Companies and workers alike will put forth less-than-genuine expressions about how much they care about their clients…all in an attempt to hock their products and/or services to the max
   …which is all this video proves.
   Oh yes, that and the fact that there is someone out there who works for a book publisher and doesn’t think highly of people who home-school.

7. Reminds me of University – the textbook for the course was often written by the professor or the department head. He managed to get a new edition published every year, and the old one was declared obsolete. So you had to buy a new one – at a scarey price. And it was worthless at the end of the year, heck, it was worthless at the beginning of the year. Photocopiers and electronic versions have made that particular scam a little less viable, but I guess there are still ways.

8. I must have a hearing defect because I hear her say repeatedly,”I don’t hate kids”.
   And her company “is in it for the money”? Isn’t that what capitalism is all about? Profit?
   Should the textbooks be printed by government employees?
   Don’t see this video as much of a “gotcha”.

9. Home. Schooling. Is. The. Answer.
   I’m not talking about religious instruction either. No, I’m talking about the very basics here.
   When government does anything, this fiasco here is what you inevitably get. If you want your kid to be able to read, write and count, you had better get busy and attend to it yourself. The school isn’t going to do it. Your kid is a budget asset, as far as the school is concerned. They get money for that kid’s ass in a seat. Whatever keeps the seat filled, that’s what they do. Teach the kid to read? Maybe as a side issue, if convenient.
   Private schools are the same, with the added bonus of the profit motive guiding their hands. Fill the seat, keep the parent fat happy and stupid, keep the money rolling in. Teach the kid whatever makes the PARENT keep paying the bills.
   Tell you something else, if your kid is gifted with any subject, you need to home school that child just to protect them from the oozing stupid. If your kid has a gift in mathematics or computers, there is no alternative to home schooling. Art, same thing. Music, same thing.
   For a parting shot, I’d like to add that the best thing that could happen to the public school system in Canada would be a tax cut. If their budgets were slashed to less than half what they are now, learning and schooling would -improve- in this country.
   All the same arguments apply to education that apply to medicare. Government = doom.

10. It is a mix of greed, malice and stupidity
    common core exists also to help certain non-white demographics who have lower IQ, you know like Obama’s sons…if you know what I mean…
    I am not making this up, I have read about this in the past, they dumbed down things for those certain demographics
    of course no one is allowed to say it in this crazy PC era we live in.

11. We used to call the kind of company who didn’t care about the happiness of the customer, fly-by-night companies. They better have flown during the night, or they’d have been lynched.
    In this case, they’re selling to the terminally stupid, gov’t. They should be charged with taking advantage of the disabled. Along with musk…
    The ethics of whatever works, no matter the harm…the sequel to ‘if it feels good, do it’.

12. I used to teach at a post-secondary institution. Once in a while, the publishers’ representatives would come around and peddle their wares.
    Most people have no idea what sort of rubbish is being offered as textbooks, let alone how expensive it is. Like the video stated, it’s all about money. A few small changes in a book and a publisher proclaims a “brand new” edition. We were expected to scrap what we were using and use that instead which, inevitably, would be more expensive.
    Most of the newer editions were dreadful. Many were in full colour and used the type of paper onto which that could be printed. Worked examples were often a joke. Calculations didn’t just show the numbers but–get this–pictures for the *individual* keys on one’s calculator so that the reader knew which of them had to be pressed.
    When I was an undergrad some 40 years ago, any worked examples simply showed the necessary equations and the associated numbers. How the actual calculations were performed–slide rule, log table, calculator–was left up to the reader. What mattered was doing the calculation properly and understanding how it was done.
    I sometimes refer to my old textbooks. I prefer using them than what’s being offered nowadays. No glossiness, no frippery, just the facts.

13. When I took math in Grade 13 we had texts for calculus, functions and relations, and algebra which were 1/2 letter size, and maybe one inch thick, easy to carry around (and all the problems were solvable without calculators) – and they were the same ones from year to year for decades. Now textbooks seem to require 4 inches of whitespace on each page, and end up being letter size and two inches thick, and don’t teach anything that wasn’t in the old textbooks. I guess the publishing companies weren’t making enough money, and their lobbying pressure is too powerful for school boards to use public domain textbooks.

14. RonG:
    A long time ago, I discussed why textbooks nowadays are so dreadful either with a publisher’s rep or, possibly, on a website for discontented educators.
    Textbooks publishing isn’t a very lucrative business because the market is quite small compared to what’s produced for the general public. I guess their sales departments are supposed to convince educational institutions to frequently change their books. That way, those companies can keep getting income from them.
    Colleges and universities aren’t necessarily pleased by that, though. Placing orders for textbooks involves a lot of running around, as I found out myself one year when I compiled the list for my department. The bookstores have to keep changing their inventory and then there’s the matter of having some old stock left over.
    Students don’t like it, either. Often, they sell books from past courses and, if their editions are no longer used, they can find themselves stuck with them.
    In the courses I used to teach, there wasn’t much change between editions. (In one case, I remember errors I found in one re-appearing in subsequent versions, even though I pointed them out to the publisher’s rep.) I taught from the edition I was using, but I usually permitted students with older editions to use them. However, they had to make sure that they found in their version what I was referring to in mine (e. g., page 291 in my book could have been 287 in theirs).
    I am so glad I’m no longer in that business….

15. I inherited some old textbooks from the 1930s. The Alberta Schoolbook Branch used to publish a lot of their own books.

16. She does seem to say “I don’t hate kids”
    The transcription says “I hate kids”
    What a great way to make your point.