One of the things I see is the Department of Education

which doesn't do anything but hand out federal money to schools to force them to follow their agenda.

We'd be a lot better off as a people if we'd abolish the department of education and put education back where it belongs. It belongs on a state or county level.

I think an example of local education fitting local needs took place at a local community college in the south a while back. A large company was considering relocating there and as a result the local community college offered to open a program to train machinists for the company. Sounds kind of like win/win to me.

Generally when the feds do something with their one size fits all attitude they are likely to step in and notice the shortage of air conditioning repair people in Nome, Alaska and insist the local community colleges start popping them out. Or insist that the Florida Keys need heating repair people, things of that nature.

Let's face it, the Department of Education is politically driven. It serves no real purpose but to bully the states by threatening to withdraw federal funding if the states don't kowtow to their little agenda.

There is a lot of education out there that is pretty localized when you think about it. Nobody in Maine needs to learn how to grow oranges. Nobody in Florida needs to learn how to catch lobsters.

I suppose it would be handy, as an example, for a farmer to learn how to weld steel. If he knows how he can probably do equipment repairs. A basic welding course might do him good.

On the other hand, he really doesn't need to learn the fine points of inert gas welding and that sort of thing just to keep the corn binder up and running. The finer points would likely be needed by shipyard workers or other manufacturing types.

A community college course in Iowa would likely be different than one run in Norfolk, Virginia.

Education is supposed to full a need for knowledge. It is supposed to teach people how to do things. If you can't use it it's, by definition, useless. There are not a whole lot of PhDs running around that could last a week in the Australian outback, yet the indigenous people there have lived there for centuries.

It's because the Australian bush man educational system covers local needs. The universities don't. Of course the bushmen in the Australian outback are not likely to do too well on an SAT.

Still, I suppose knowing how to find water in the outback isn't going to do a university grad a whole lot of good when you think about it.

Another thing about the Department of Education is that it is just too damned political. A lot of the money winds up in someone's pocket. Some of it is used to pay teachers. That should be done locally based on what the market will bear. 

Incidentally I don't want to listen to the glorification of school teachers and how great they are. That grows old fast. 

Anyone that has served in the military has likely been trained in one or more of the various MOS schools. The teachers for the most part are simply NCOs with experience in their field. Some of these are high school grads and I'd bet there are a few GEDs and maybe even a dropout or two among them. Few have degrees.

Yet these NCOs do a wonderful job of teaching a soldier a skill.

Public schoolteachers are not really all they are cracked up to be.

It's time for the states and counties to take education back and localize it to make it more useful. One thing that has to happen is to get rid of federal level educational funds.








To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY