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I'm not sure it should be replaced. Certainly, the schools themselves have a high amount of value as physical property on valuable land. However, a rework of the school system to train students for the "jobs of tomorrow" is certainly in order. I believe that school should be more difficult, with meaningful assignments and homework, group exercises, lots of research assignments, and schools should offer a track for the trades, with perhaps (especially in urban settings) schools specializing in a trade. Marking should be become harder. Kids need to be smarter when they graduate.

Quote: boymimbo

I'm not sure it should be replaced. Certainly, the schools themselves have a high amount of value as physical property on valuable land. However, a rework of the school system to train students for the "jobs of tomorrow" is certainly in order. I believe that school should be more difficult, with meaningful assignments and homework, group exercises, lots of research assignments, and schools should offer a track for the trades, with perhaps (especially in urban settings) schools specializing in a trade. Marking should be become harder. Kids need to be smarter when they graduate.

A good start, I'd go further. Let schools be private/charter and specialize. One for trades; one might be great in math and science; one for the arts and music; of course some could generalize. But it would be up to demand. Then some might do more group work like you suggest but others are far more self-directed. And many could work on a model of as I said, netmeeting classes. But the common theme is the local market will drive things. The government would set fewer and fewer standards. Why have the government set up a welding class when the AWS has already figured out how to train welders? Repeat for everything else.

Reputation, not government, would determine what is best and what works. A school can try "common core" but when their grads can't do math as well then few people will sign up and it will die on the vine. OTOH if the new method works well people will flock to get their kids registered.

The common thread here is that the current system needs rebuilt. Our schools do not really prepare kids for much beyond how to be a cog in a system. How to show up and listen. Yes, you get "rounded." But day after HS and you look at the want ads, well unless you took a trade you really have no marketable skills. And then we wonder why so many kids go to 13th grade because, "they don't know what they want to do!"

Compare Casino building with Education Reform:

Well, if you want to build some big project, be it casino or condos or whatever, you plunk down your money and you get a bank to guarantee umpteen zillion beyond that. When the economy sours.... the banks are stuck to their contract and so more and more totally empty condominiums get built.

Schools. No matter how bad they perform, everybody fawns over the teachers and all appropriations result in teacher salaries and teach er incentives and teacher pensions plus free rides for paper shuffling administrators and the like, so that good or bad... the institution just keeps rolling along no matter what the economy or common sense dictates.

Quote: AZDuffman

A good start, I'd go further. Let schools be private/charter and specialize...The government would set fewer and fewer standards.

Reputation, not government, would determine what is best and what works.

Russia says the USA can not use the space station we conceived and largely built!

It has been 4 years since NASA and Washington decided the Shuttle would be no more. Russia says we can't use their rockets and thus effectively the station past 2020. How is it possible we have fallen this far? We built a rocket to the moon in 8 years, which meant abotu 10 years from nothing to the moon. From scratch. Now we know how to build rockets, and are not going to the moon. We can't get a working rocket in 4-5 years much less what will be 10+ by 2020?

The USA is no longer a nation that can do things.

Quote: AZDuffman

Russia says the USA can not use the space station we conceived and largely built!

It has been 4 years since NASA and Washington decided the Shuttle would be no more. Russia says we can't use their rockets and thus effectively the station past 2020. How is it possible we have fallen this far? We built a rocket to the moon in 8 years, which meant abotu 10 years from nothing to the moon. From scratch. Now we know how to build rockets, and are not going to the moon. We can't get a working rocket in 4-5 years much less what will be 10+ by 2020?

The USA is no longer a nation that can do things.

NASA well funded is a big government program. Who primarily looks for ways to cut big government programs?

Quote: AZDuffman

The USA is no longer a nation that can do things.

This country's priorities are becoming a joke. For example, I just saw this story:

Ohio College Considering Mandatory Transgender Sensitivity Training For Athletics Department

These are the types of issues that liberals feel are the most pressing in society.

Quote: rxwine

NASA well funded is a big government program. Who primarily looks for ways to cut big government programs?

NASA is part of the national defense, less than $20 Billion dollars, and has produced probably the best ROI of anything the governmnet has ever done.

Quote: AZDuffman

NASA is part of the national defense, less than $20 Billion dollars, and has produced probably the best ROI of anything the governmnet has ever done.

+1. Well said. Can't imagine what "we" were thinking allowing it to be defunded. Horrible collateral damage here (I live about 10 miles from KSC), but it pales in comparison to the lasting effects of the loss to the US as a whole.

Quote: beachbumbabs

+1. Well said. Can't imagine what "we" were thinking allowing it to be defunded. Horrible collateral damage here (I live about 10 miles from KSC), but it pales in comparison to the lasting effects of the loss to the US as a whole.

A portion of the electorate seems to think we "should take that money and give it to poor people." In the 60s, Walter Mondale tried to kill the Moon Shot. The Space Shuttle was supposed to have jet engines to allow it to fly in low altitude. NASA is always a target for cuts because the successes happen only a few times a year at most and even then it is "pure" and not "applied" research.

The tech of the Moon Shot lasted probably 30 years. We need something new to give another boom of spinoffs.