Patriot Dreams
I've put off writing this entry for a long time, because it is fundamentally cynical — but seeing a car with patterns of yellow and red/white/blue ribbons on its hood pushed me over the edge.
There was an article in last Sunday's Chicago Tribune about the changes to the memorial and tower planned for the site of the World Trade Center. The original plans for the space have been changed and mauled beyond recognition. What was once an off-center, life-affirming tower has turned into a monolith suitable for an Arthur C. Clarke novel. Not only is it not particularly affirming of anything besides a steel-and-glass corporate future, but it has all the architectural interest and originality of a square rock: none. We've all seen square buildings. To make things worse, some pointy-headed fool came to the conclusion that the originally proposed glass ground floor could pose a danger if someone exploded a car bomb next to it, so the lowest 200 feet is now slated to be concrete.
They're calling this fortress "Freedom Tower." If this is a monument to freedom, book me on a one way trip to Moscow, circa 1950.
I was going to put the whole thing aside as an example of bureaucracy in action when I came to the following part near the conclusion of the article:
There have even been battles over the arrangement of the names of the victims (should they be randomly located or should they reflect such things as clusters of co-workers or what Trade Center tower, north or south, the victims worked in?).And I gave up. Why not have a grand lottery to determine the name placement? People's names can be drawn from one of those machines with all the little balls bouncing around inside them, the survivors and families can look on, hoping their loved ones will be next, and screaming and crying when their names are finally chosen. After a tight bidding war, the proceedings can be carried by ABC, and run against Survivor on Thursday nights. Finally, the proceeds from all of the above can contribute to the machine gun emplacements surrounding Freedom Tower in case somebody should attempt to drive a bomb-containing car too close.
Seriously, a big, square, fortress-like contribution to the "tallest building in the world" dick-measuring contest is not a monument to freedom and this kind of bureaucratic wrangling is no tribute to the people who were killed. I firmly believe that the terrorists won't win the war they started on September 11th, but I really wish a certain number of Americans would stop trying to win it for them.
13 diversions:
> To make things worse, some pointy-headed fool came to the conclusion that the originally proposed glass ground floor could pose a danger if someone exploded a car bomb next to it, so the lowest 200 feet is now slated to be concrete. <
So much for showing the terrorists that they can't scare us. Maybe we should encase the White House and the Capitol in concrete, too. Never know when one of them filibusters is going to go off. And maybe the government should start issuing gas masks to each citizen. And maybe we could do air raid drills again, like when I was a little kid. Wouldn't that be fun?
Because hiding under your desk in the event of a nuclear explosion is going to help.
That was my favorite part - the funny thing is that at the time, I might have felt that the desk might actually provide some security.
They probably could have told us all to run around like chickens with their heads cut off and it wouldn't matter in the event of a nuclear bomb.
In any event, I wouldn't put it past ABC or some other major network (FOX, probably) to do what you describe.
> That was my favorite part - the funny thing is that at the time, I might have felt that the desk might actually provide some security. <
Really, we're missing an opportunity here. If standard classroom desks were made with a protective layer of lead, then it WOULD be safer to hide under them in case of a nuclear attack! Furthermore, the resulting desks would be expensive as hell. Who wants to go into business with me?
(While we're at it, why not provide oxygen masks with each desk? That should help the kiddies should there be an anthrax attack.)
>(While we're at it, why not provide oxygen masks with each desk? That should help the kiddies should there be an anthrax attack.)<
Oxygen masks would also be helpful in the event of an asthma attack, which, let's face it, is a lot more likely in most public schools.
> Oxygen masks would also be helpful in the event of an asthma attack <
..or in the case of talking educrats!
(But that's just my opinion.)
You know, this all makes me wonder about technology, and if we're not just using all to provide us with shits and giggles instead of actual benefits.
For instance, toilets in Japan now come with all manner of bells and whistles. Cell phones too, and that's made more of an impact over here (more so than toilets).
Why not desks in elementary schools. I'm not saying they should all have built in computers. Obviously third graders with easy email access would never learn anything . . . but why not say, a pencil sharpener . . . box of kleenex . . . calculator . . . spellchecker . . . I dunno.
I'm all for making a better mousetrap. Especially if the mousetrap will discourage children from growing up to be tools.
> You know, this all makes me wonder about technology, and if we're not just using all to provide us with shits and giggles instead of actual benefits. <
That's absolutely what we're using technology for. Cell phones are a prime example: When new cell phones come out, do they have useful features like longer battery life, noise-cancelling earphones, durable cases, and better antennae? No. Try high-resolution LCD displays, built-in CCD video cameras, Bluetooth e-mail connectivity, and arcade games.
And while I'm on the subject of games, let's not forget that the availability of relatively inexpensive fast 3D graphics cards and crisp flat-aspect CRT displays is almost certainly the result of consumer demand for games. Cheap memory is probably influenced by that too. Not that I have anything against gaming, mind you.
> Why not desks in elementary schools. I'm not saying they should all have built in computers. Obviously third graders with easy email access would never learn anything . . . but why not say, a pencil sharpener . . . box of kleenex . . . calculator . . . spellchecker . . . I dunno. <
Well, if it were up to me, I'd start with desks having built-in inkwells and a spot for a blotter — maybe around third grade?
blotters and inkwells - you mean you want kids to come home from school looking like they've been working in a coal mine? I guess it's better than actually having kids working in a coal mine.
That's absolutely what we're using technology for. Cell phones are a prime example: When new cell phones come out, do they have useful features like longer battery life, noise-cancelling earphones, durable cases, and better antennae? No. Try high-resolution LCD displays, built-in CCD video cameras, Bluetooth e-mail connectivity, and arcade games.
Honestly, who needs their cell phone to play the latest single by J.Lo?
Don't answer that.
Oh, before I forget, there was an article yesterday about a school in Arizona that was getting rid of textbooks and going completely laptop/wireless/Blackboard what have you.
Good for them I say. Not that it's a viable solution to the fact that the products of our schools are on average dumber than a sack of potatoes.
Now if they had taken all that tech money and given all teachers a large raise . . .
> Now if they had taken all that tech money and given all teachers a large raise . . . <
ooh, it's controversy time.
Frankly, I think one of the reasons that a lot of the products of the education system are as dumb as a sack of potatoes is that their teachers are too. At least in my experience, while there were certainly a number of stunning exceptions, a lot of teachers didn't really seem to have much to offer.
I can't say that I think paying teachers more than a very small piece of the answer. The prep school I went to paid a lot less than the districts around it and was a better school in almost every way because (maybe half of) the teachers cared about their students and about what they were teaching, and were able to have an impact on their students. However, I think as long as education is treated as a (relatively easy) branch of study in and of itself and the schools are pervaded by a union mentality, while we may have plenty of thorougly competent fourth grade teachers, the schools will keep falling on their faces as soon as you get much above that.
> Frankly, I think one of the reasons that a lot of the products of the education system are as dumb as a sack of potatoes is that their teachers are too. <
That's basically true. Furthermore, while teacher pay is a significant issue, the problem cannot be solved simply by raising teacher salaries. The more fundamental problem is that public school teacher salaries have been substandard for long enough that the really good teachers find better jobs elsewhere (sometimes close by, in school administration, where being a good teacher is pretty much no use at all). We can't raise the educational requirements, because anybody who would meet them could find a better job elsewhere.
Another aspect of the problem is the teachers' union. Schoolteacher union contracts almost universally rule out the idea of remuneration based on merit. So, even if you have some good teachers in the system now, you can't reward them, nor can you easily burn out the dross short of cancelling whole programs and positions. That kind of slash-and-burn ecology is not conducive to improving an already weak system.
Michael said: "...while teacher pay is a significant issue..." Oh, come on. The teachers in our high school district struck several years ago - for higher pay & retention of the current benefits package. These folks, who work maybe 8 months out of the year, AVERAGED just less than $50,000 annual salaries & received fully-funded insurance & fully-funded pensions. Do let me know how many folks in the "real world" who work 11 months a year or more get that?? Including folks who are at least as well "educated" as those teachers. And yet they can't seem to manage to teach the kids to read or write their native language or to manage simple arithmetic "facts" or simple math reasoning or for that matter any variety of thinking or reasoning at all. Possibly if more of the teachers actually accomplished something their pay wouldn't be such an issue.
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