From the NYT:
Moving to Jersey City? Join the Club.
Jersey City is no longer just another gritty town on the wrong side of the Hudson River, dismissed by apartment hunters. As its population soars, new housing rises and buyers get wind of the quick train commute it offers to New York, Jersey City is shedding its dingy image and emerging as a destination of choice.
An influx of new arrivals priced out of Manhattan and Brooklyn is helping make it the fastest growing metropolitan area in New Jersey, with some 262,000 residents in 2014, up nearly 6 percent from 2010, according to United States census data. And with the inventory of available homes at a three-year low, bidding wars are driving up prices downtown, pushing newcomers farther inland. Even the city’s 38-year-old mayor, Steven M. Fulop, is leaving downtown — for a single-family house he bought last summer in Jersey City Heights, at the northern end of the city.
Developers are rushing to build, with some 7,000 units of housing under construction and another 19,000 approved — more than in any other city in the state, according to the mayor’s office.
Downtown, the new restaurants lining a pedestrian promenade near the Grove Street PATH station are furnished with rustic tables and hanging Edison bulbs, telltale signs that the hipsters have arrived. Around the corner, on Erie Street, a bank of strollers parked outside the Three Little Birds children’s center reminds passers-by that the neighborhood is now decidedly family friendly. Coffee shops, restaurants and art galleries are opening in areas like Journal Square, the Powerhouse Arts District and even Bergen-Lafayette, which has struggled with poverty and high crime for years.
“Three or four years ago, when you would mention Jersey City to people who didn’t know the area, you’d get a concerned look,” said Natalie Miniard, the owner of JCity Realty. “Now everybody wants to know more. It’s a much different conversation.”
That conversation usually begins with how quickly one can get from Jersey City to Manhattan by train. From the Grove Street PATH station downtown, it takes fewer than 10 minutes to get to the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and 20 minutes to get to West 33rd Street.
First.
RIP Scalia.
Hand grenade into the Presidential elections…….
Obama may nominate, but it won’t clear. Will be left to the incoming POTUS.
Trump was a good middle finger to the establishment, but would you really land a nomination in his lap right out of the gate? Does he lose support now?
Bush…..if the family name was a liability how does his now downplay Souter and Roberts (ACA vote)? Hard to understate the conservative angst over those two.
Advantage Cruz? At least verbally the most reliably conservative. Rubio?
Hey gullible doomer, nj and the education system is not falling apart. Either is America.
Alex says:
February 14, 2016 at 10:08 am
Hey gullible warmists, you’ve got some splaining to do.
So please provide evidence of how it was dumbed down compared to your education? I want solid evidence, not your opinion. Compare your work to your kids work and show me evidence of how it is dumbed down.
3b says:
February 13, 2016 at 3:24 pm
Pumps: you speak like you are an expert on how great NJ schools are and how much harder the curriculum is now vs. 20 or more years ago. Well I beg to differ. Clot/ splat and I are the only two on this blog; and i don’t really post any more who have put kids through prestigious blue ribbony school systems from k to 12. And if you think they are something to be all that impressed about you are mistaken. And they were all honors ap and supa. The curriculum even at that level is dumbed down.
I don’t get it, do they just hand out grades with no learning? How in the world do these kids pass the AP exam and how do they pass the test that is required to graduate?
Ben, and this is no offense, but I think you are coming from an elitist pt of view when it comes to education. You are taking the Harvard pt of view on education, meaning most schools do not meet your standards of learning, you are asking for everyone to be on a level that they are not capable of. I’m just trying to figure out exactly what you mean by dumbing down. Dumbed down in what ways?
Ben says:
February 13, 2016 at 6:36 pm
Pumps: you speak like you are an expert on how great NJ schools are and how much harder the curriculum is now vs. 20 or more years ago. Well I beg to differ. Clot/ splat and I are the only two on this blog; and i don’t really post any more who have put kids through prestigious blue ribbony school systems from k to 12. And if you think they are something to be all that impressed about you are mistaken. And they were all honors ap and supa. The curriculum even at that level is dumbed down.
I’m on the front lines of this battle. Honors is code for increased GPA weighting without any set standards. Parents are able to forcibly put pressure on the teachers of these classes to make sure they get higher grades. AP used to be great because we were shielded from dumbing down curriculum because we would hide behind the guidelines of the college board. But now, the people in academia that have hijacked the college board have made that a crapshoot as well. They destroyed AP Bio, AP Chem, and AP Physics. The best thing you can hope for is that your AP teacher still teaches a college course without trying to teach to the test. If they teach to the test, you are set up for a very bad class which will be of little use for you after the age of 18.
3-
Hey gullible gourd, we are close to 20 trillion dollars in debt, 55 million citizens on food stamps and 94 million out of the work place. How again are we not in decline?
Isn’t that where education is heading? No need to memorize info with google at your finger tips. Isn’t learning today about your ability to understand that there are two sides to every story? Isn’t learning today about the student’s ability to know how differentiate between sources. Doesn’t all this come down to learning critical thinking skills to think for yourself as opposed to memorizing right answers from wrong answers like our generations learned. Isn’t math about understanding the meaning and value of mathematics, which leads to the ability to critically think in mathematics, as opposed to memorizing multiplication results? You don’t need to memorize 10 times 30 because a machine can do that for you. It’s much more important to understand the value and meaning of 10 times 30, so you can later do higher order math that is currently not available in high school because the kids have not reached that level of understanding yet because they were taught to memorize as opposed to critically think.
Memorization is for suckers this day and age in learning. Based on the old way of learning, the smartest kids in the class were the ones who could memorize the most information. Now a days, why would you force memorization on students when they have the cloud and internet to memorize everything for them. It’s much more important what they can do with information as opposed to memorizing information.
Ben says:
February 13, 2016 at 6:33 pm
The rigor of the test and the scoring has increased dramatically. That’s what that testing fight was all about the past two years. The scores don’t necessarily mean the schools are failing, just that new expectations have been implemented that are way more challenging. Going to take some time to get them up into the higher percentiles.
The rigor hasn’t increased. I would know. My students typically take up to 3 end of the year tests. Two AP Physics exams and the SAT2 Physics. Testing rigor hasn’t gone up. The way in which they ask the questions has changed. The questions coming out of standardized testing centers are worded very poorly and also poorly designed. A lot of them fail to actually test for knowledge and application. Just because more people are getting them wrong doesn’t mean rigor has increased. It’s borderline a scenario in which someone asks you something so dumb that there is no right answer.
Alex, who is this debt owed to? Why are 55 million citizens on food stamps? Why are 94 million out of the work place? It’s the economic system that you celebrate. The system gives everything to a small population so that they can have whatever they want, at the expense of everyone else. So don’t bring up these issues and cry about the decline of living standards for the average american, when you ignore income inequality.
Alex says:
February 14, 2016 at 11:38 am
3-
Hey gullible gourd, we are close to 20 trillion dollars in debt, 55 million citizens on food stamps and 94 million out of the work place. How again are we not in decline?
Good post.
Not ChiFi 1 says:
February 13, 2016 at 2:26 pm
ChiFi, indulge me in this little theory.
Newark has a what comes first dilemma, egg or chicken.
We know all the social problems, NYC had it too exponentially. Difference is that NYC under Guliani had the money and political power to institute a soft police state at the street level. The criminal element not caught up in the “soft police state” machinery, fled to other more friendly areas.
It is well know within the criminal justice world, that many of these borderline thuggish, thug loving world ended up in greater metro NY/Philly’s smaller size cities. Paterson and Jersey City’s bad areas were always edgy, but since the mid 90′s they are worse. Same goes for Newburgh, Mount Vernon, the Poconos, and as far out as rural North Carolina. North Carolina like southern states have a big issues of warrant runners hiding out in small cities and rural areas and living the criminal life on the down low.
So, who is going to add 500 cops on duty around the clock? So, who is going to clean house and fire a lot of the corrupt element with a badge and prosecute Joey D? Where is the money to first, do the invasion and then secure and hold the positions, allowing the investment capital to come in? Who is going to be sure that that capital is legit and things are not a la Sharpe James Family & Lovers Investment Trust like it was with PruCenter development?
Capital and political will eventually will show up, but only when the Real Estate premium makes it worth it. Think Hoboken and Jersey City early 80′s.
The core of the economy is dissolving in a stew of regulation, welfare-statism, and debt, but the gourd’s focus is on enviously taking down the last few wealthy people that haven’t yet been brought to their knees. Much like the Chavistas in Venezuela who are in economic collapse brought about by their policies, while blaming it on the last handful of capitalists left in the country. A free market revolution is our only escape from doom and our time is running out to reinstate prosperity and growth.
Pumps: my job is not to prove to you or show you. I lived it period. As far as examples I will give you just a couple of examples. No mandatory summer reading program. Except we made it mandatory. I know liberal arts are not valued on this blog. They should be! But nevertheless as for history civics whatever you want to call it. They don’t teach the 3 branches of government any more. As for English no longer do they teach sentence construction grammar punctuation etc. All taught at home. No focus or appreciation on the renaissance the age of enlightenment the study of the great classics in English literature. And on and on it goes. But we do have a beautiful college like campus and state of the art athletic facilities.
Life will find a way, always has, always will…
For the hundredth time, stop associating Venezuela or any other state that has ever existed on this planet as commun!st/social!st. NOTHING HAS EVER BEEN ESTABLISHED ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THESE ECONOMIC THEORIES. NOTHING. They have all been used in name only. They have all succumbed to human nature and therefore corrupted beyond recognition. They are only social!st and commun!st in name, just like we are a “free market” in name only.
If Venezuela is based on the economic system you describe as it’s downfall, then how do you explain this. Chavez is a false representation of an economic model. He is nothing more than a con artist taking advantage of the people he claims to have helped.
“Diario las Americas claims that Maria Gabriela Chavez, 35, has $4.2billion in assets held in American and Andorran banks
Hugo Chavez famously declared ‘being rich is bad’ and during his lifetime railed against the wealthy for being lazy and gluttonous
Efforts to determine Chavez’s wealth have been made before, without much luck”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3192933/Hugo-Chavez-s-ambassador-daughter-Venezuela-s-richest-woman-according-new-report.html
Ragnar says:
February 14, 2016 at 12:04 pm
The core of the economy is dissolving in a stew of regulation, welfare-statism, and debt, but the gourd’s focus is on enviously taking down the last few wealthy people that haven’t yet been brought to their knees. Much like the Chavistas in Venezuela who are in economic collapse brought about by their policies, while blaming it on the last handful of capitalists left in the country. A free market revolution is our only escape from doom and our time is running out to reinstate prosperity and growth.
3b,
NJ schools barely teach history or civics. It all gets lumped into “social studies”, which should be called “soc1al1st studies”. Minimal time spent on founding principles of American government, maximum time devoted to leftist critiques of American history. At leaSt 50% of historical persons to study are African and native american, elevating minor historical figures and attacking the ones who fought for the American Revolution of ideas.
It’s no wonder the kids are all going for Bernie, it’s what their state-run propaganda machine controlling public schools have been preparing them for.
Pumpkin, you know nothing, not even how little you know. Were not idiots like yourself destroying the world, you would be pitiable. Your only use is to illustrate the existence of idiotic ideas in the world that you repeatedly parrot, as it’s better to be aware than unaware of their existence.
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
The focus is on developing the student’s critical thinking skills. Only so much time in a day. You have to pick and choose what you think is the most important thing for these kids; give them critical thinking skills, or have them memorize the duties and purpose of the three branches of govt which can be easily accessed via the web if you teach the kids how to differentiate between good sources and bad sources( which is a skill that requires the student to learn critical thinking skills).
Rags, you can think in terms of only one side, that is, you can think there is only one right way of doing things. Go down this path and you deal in absolutes, the world is not based on absolutes. Instead let them learn that one type of economic system is not the answer to all the world’s problems. Let them learn that too much emphasis should not be placed on the economic system, but instead on the participants. You consistently make this mistake of associating economic systems to the failure of some societies, never once blaming the real cause which is the “players”. Those systems failed due to players at the top cheating the economic system for their own gains.
Ragnar says:
February 14, 2016 at 1:08 pm
3b,
NJ schools barely teach history or civics. It all gets lumped into “social studies”, which should be called “soc1al1st studies”. Minimal time spent on founding principles of American government, maximum time devoted to leftist critiques of American history. At leaSt 50% of historical persons to study are African and native american, elevating minor historical figures and attacking the ones who fought for the American Revolution of ideas.
It’s no wonder the kids are all going for Bernie, it’s what their state-run propaganda machine controlling public schools have been preparing them for.
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
The country was never founded to be a democracy nor should it be.
Rags, 10,14
“A free market revolution is our only escape from doom and our time is running out to reinstate prosperity and growth.”
Follow your philosopher’s literary pathway and just leave. If the choice is between a country politically overrun by Pump’s nonsensical drivel or an avowed semi-soc1alist republ1c I’ll choose the latter.
I don’t think anyone uses democracy in its’ literal form when they speak of democracy. All that is meant by democracy is a govt that listen’s to the people’s needs.
True democracy is almost impossible to bring about, hence, why it has never even existed (even in athens, they did not give everyone the right to vote).
leftwing says:
February 14, 2016 at 1:55 pm
“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
The country was never founded to be a democracy nor should it be.
Rags, 10,14
“A free market revolution is our only escape from doom and our time is running out to reinstate prosperity and growth.”
Follow your philosopher’s literary pathway and just leave. If the choice is between a country politically overrun by Pump’s nonsensical drivel or an avowed semi-soc1alist republ1c I’ll choose the latter.
Remember this, looks like it was a smart move in the end. The price was covered through donation and now the university can make a little income renting it out.
“In response to a question from NJ Advance Media about the relatively small amount of rental income compared with the cost of the table, Kean spokeswoman Margaret McCorry said the conference center is also an active meeting space for internal university events and is more valuable than just its rental revenue.
“Since the conference center has opened, Kean has recouped more than 10 percent of its cost and has received a donation to cover the cost completely,” McCorry said in an email. “That is a successful fundraising strategy for the university.”
She added that Kean will continue to look for opportunities to rent the center to outside organizations.
The university’s purchase of the conference table in 2014 was greeted with widespread criticism from students, local officials and state authorities.
Kean defended its purchase at the time, telling students in an email that they benefited from the university’s “enhanced image” as a result of the conference center’s rentals.”
http://www.nj.com/union/index.ssf/2015/12/kean_recoups_22k_from_219k_conference_table_while.html
who do i rubber stamp now?!
a deviant, outside of the mainstream
Rags is as fundamentalist as a taliban cleric
Ragnar says:
February 14, 2016 at 1:08 pm
3b,
NJ schools barely teach history or civics. It all gets lumped into “social studies”, which should be called “soc1al1st studies”. Minimal time spent on founding principles of American government, maximum time devoted to leftist critiques of American history. At leaSt 50% of historical persons to study are African and native american, elevating minor historical figures and attacking the ones who fought for the American Revolution of ideas.
It’s no wonder the kids are all going for Bernie, it’s what their state-run propaganda machine controlling public schools have been preparing them for.
Rags demands that the rich excercises their right to rape the poor
even Clarence Thomas would disagree
Ben, and this is no offense, but I think you are coming from an elitist pt of view when it comes to education. You are taking the Harvard pt of view on education, meaning most schools do not meet your standards of learning, you are asking for everyone to be on a level that they are not capable of. I’m just trying to figure out exactly what you mean by dumbing down. Dumbed down in what ways?
You are full of it. I’ve taught at every single level in high school. I’ve also taught a college. The curriculum at the high school level is dumbed down compared to what it was 20 years ago.
Isn’t that where education is heading? No need to memorize info with google at your finger tips.
No. Memorization is a vital part of the education process. How are you supposed to have an intelligent conversation with someone if they need to google things? Having things stored in your memory increases the efficiency that you work at. It’s not ok to know nothing.
Doesn’t all this come down to learning critical thinking skills to think for yourself as opposed to memorizing right answers from wrong answers like our generations learned.
Complete false narrative. You’ve been watching way too many TED talks where they badmouth education of years path. Don’t ever take educational hipsters at their words.
Isn’t math about understanding the meaning and value of mathematics, which leads to the ability to critically think in mathematics, as opposed to memorizing multiplication results? You don’t need to memorize 10 times 30 because a machine can do that for you.
Bullsh1t. You can’t think critically if you couldn’t even get down the basics in the first place. Knowing your multiplication tables are vital to working your way through ADVANCED problems at a reasonable pace. We forced kids to learn their multiplication tables so they can calculate any number of things. How much interest you pay on a loan. How much tax will be. What tip you should leave. Again, knowing them in your head increases efficiency. There is a reason Mark Cuban and Kevin O’leary are able to know exactly what someone is valuing their company at on Shark Tank within 5 seconds. They did the math in their head. Very few kids these days can do it. Again, we are talking about basic skills that a middle schooler can possess. Working the brain makes it work better, just like any other body part.
It’s much more important to understand the value and meaning of 10 times 30, so you can later do higher order math that is currently not available in high school because the kids have not reached that level of understanding yet because they were taught to memorize as opposed to critically think.
It’s not one of the other. It’s both. You need to memorize and think. Don’t ever put the cart before the horse. You won’t ever teach kids calculus that don’t know 8×7.
Memorization is for suckers this day and age in learning. Based on the old way of learning, the smartest kids in the class were the ones who could memorize the most information. Now a days, why would you force memorization on students when they have the cloud and internet to memorize everything for them.
So they don’t have to cut and past outside sources when they are arguing on a blog.
It’s much more important what they can do with information as opposed to memorizing information.
Yeah. They typically just plagiarize. Because all they know how to do is cut and paste at this point.
#16 pumps: critical thinking skills!! Are you kidding me!! Its rare I ever resorted to name calling when I was a regular poster but you are an idiot!! Sorry grim.
That example of 10 times 30 made me laugh.
That has to be memorized?
#23 Ben: my 87 year old immigrant aunt. 6th grade of education can do complex fractions in her head. Sharp as a wip. Reads the WSJ everyday!
Show me specifically how it was dumbed down.
“You are full of it. I’ve taught at every single level in high school. I’ve also taught a college. The curriculum at the high school level is dumbed down compared to what it was 20 years ago.”
Come on, are you kidding me? So let’s go back to memorizing dates in history and spending years of a child’s development memorizing 5 times 5. Wouldn’t it be a better idea for the student to spend these years understand exactly what 5 times 5 means. Math is a language, better off teaching someone the meaning of this language at a early age as opposed to being quick at solving simple math problems/applications due to memorization. Let them understand the meaning at the developmental stage. We have absolutely no need for people that can compute simple math problems quickly in their head. Machines do it faster and more efficiently.
“No. Memorization is a vital part of the education process. How are you supposed to have an intelligent conversation with someone if they need to google things? Having things stored in your memory increases the efficiency that you work at. It’s not ok to know nothing.”
Complex? You probably mean basic.
3b says:
February 14, 2016 at 4:28 pm
#23 Ben: my 87 year old immigrant aunt. 6th grade of education can do complex fractions in her head. Sharp as a wip. Reads the WSJ everyday!
There is nothing wrong with using outside sources to support your position. Why would you think otherwise?
“So they don’t have to cut and past outside sources when they are arguing on a blog.”
I have seen only a few in my life and they weren’t on education. Now you are bad mouthing something positive like TED talks? Listen, I understand where they want to go with education, why are you getting mad at me for that?
It’s 2016, learning doesn’t work the way it used to. School used to serve the purpose of low skilled/avg skilled workers. It involved following directions, standing in line, and doing basic math at an efficient manner. Machines have taken over those jobs and there is no need to train children for those type of jobs. WE NEED THEM TO BE CREATORS. That means teaching them in a totally different way. Why should we continue to teach the old way if there is absolutely no need for it?
“Complete false narrative. You’ve been watching way too many TED talks where they badmouth education of years path. Don’t ever take educational hipsters at their words.”
With kids short attention spans today, do you think that they would even be able to sit there and memorize nonsense that can be calculated with a touch of the button. Simple basic mathematics like the mathematics that cuban uses on shark tank can be picked up rather quickly at a later age. There is no need to waste years at a time getting kids to memorize this nonsense. Focus instead on developing their minds for complex math problems(ability to be creative and think outside the box) so they don’t look at 10 as just a memorized number, but a symbol and a respresentation of a value in a language called mathematics. Yes, the language our universe was built on. Let’s train them to dig deeper and learn more about this language than any humans that have come before them.
#29 I know exactly what I said and what I mean.
#31 clueless.
Bull crap, that’s the whole point. You are teaching them how to critically think and to always read various sources with different biases. This way they can carry on sophisticated debate. As opposed to memorizing a position the teacher has taught them to memorize. Let them create their own thought processes and arguments, not just regurgitate what the teacher told them, which is what rags does. Anything rand tells him, he follows. He was never taught how there is two sides to every story, so he becomes a defender of absolutes. Exactly what we don’t want to happen to future generations.
“No. Memorization is a vital part of the education process. How are you supposed to have an intelligent conversation with someone if they need to google things? Having things stored in your memory increases the efficiency that you work at. It’s not ok to know nothing.”
Please explain why, instead of speaking in absolutes.
3b says:
February 14, 2016 at 5:31 pm
#31 clueless.
The real US debt,the ones that have maturity Date close to $7 T,1/3 of US GDP . The rest is Accounting gimmick.
1. Let us say the Fed want to pay down the debt. Who do you pay? SS the largest US debt? You can’t! The Law don’t allow SS Agency to hold money more than it needs day to day basis.
2 By Law, all surplus held by the Agency must be invested in Fed bonds known as Special Issues.
3.So, is it really debt when the Note don’t have a Maturity Date and you can not pay it even if you want to? The Feds only obligation is to cover the short fall of what is collected. Which is happening today. When Congress makes SS adjustments it will start receiving Surplus. Money coming in will be more to cover payments of retirees. Again,Surplus will be invested to Special Issues and the so called debt will keep on multiplying. $6T will accumulate interest plus surplus.Debt is designed to grow and be adjusted by Congress. But again it is only debt on paper. It will never be paid.
4 A Judge ruled that this debt is really a Tax because of what is stated above.
5 GWB was decent enough to admit that it is all just bunch of IOU’s.
So how much debt that the US really have?
“Alex says:
February 14, 2016 at 11:38 am
3-
Hey gullible gourd, we are close to 20 trillion dollars in debt, 55 million citizens on food stamps and 94 million out of the work place. How again are we not in decline?”
What we need to worry about is “Unfunded Liabilities” Not US debt
What we need to worry about is 30,000 conveniently deleted emails.
36 I already did in a previous post. Critical thinking?
Pumps…Maybe you should Google it?
#35 sophisticated debate? You mean like what you engage in?
37- Yome, agreed. Apply the same mindset to the pension system. It’s not that far off from the social security issue. You are only responsible for the money owed to current retirees in that given year. You are not responsible for the entire payout of all current and FUTURE RETIREES this year, only current. Someone figured this out in govt (whitman) and used it to rob the funds from workers by not contributing a single penny to the pension. They have been somehow allowed to raid a retirees fund to plug holes in other budgets. How is that legal? Can’t sit here and tell me the pension system wasn’t sustainable if the state hasn’t been contributing(stealing) for over 20 years and the system is still paying out current retirees. Plus, the police pension which wasn’t raided by the state govt, is in good shape. How is it that the police pension is fine(which wasn’t raided) and all the other government worker’s pension fund is in trouble (was raided). Now they paint the picture that the benefits are too rich, yet it was running for the past 20 years without a contribution from the state, how is that if it is too rich in compensation? How could it run that long? Plus, the police pension compensation is so much more than all the other workers. They retire with a high % of their salary as their pension payment, and yet, this fund is in good shape and the other pension fund that pays out a lot less is in trouble? Come on, the writing is on the wall.
You did? I’m going to give you the same response. Clueless.
3b says:
February 14, 2016 at 5:50 pm
36 I already did in a previous post. Critical thinking?
Oh lord. I took your advice on googling dumbing down of American education and can’t believe the crap that I’m reading. Ton of garbage being spewed and I hope this generation were given the skills to not believe this crap.
“Do we really need to send our children to school? I am not saying it is not important to educate our children, what I am talking about is the regimented routine of compulsory (uh, that means forced) education through a politically manipulated system that is more designed to keep society (which starts with the children) dumbed down, incapable of either creative or logical thinking, nor productive living, nor any real awareness of the realities of life. I don’t think you have to be a prophet to see that what we call education here in the United States (and many other places around the world that follow the same or a similar model) is really not intended to better the lives of the children, their families, and society in general. The purpose of education (based upon my observation and the observation of many others) is to enslave society, to create robotic clones that are merely “cogs in the wheel” and that only know how to do their little job that they have been given to do, to prevent people from having self determination, to “put down dissent and originality” (as mentioned above in the quote from Henry Louis Mencken).”
http://www.itsaboutthattime.net/art/publicschoolsdumb.html
Libturd says:
February 14, 2016 at 5:51 pm
Pumps…Maybe you should Google it?
Why is it that you get to make assertions and when someone disagrees, you demand evidence. Wtf don’t you include evidence when making your initial statement… And I want solid evidence not your opinion or the opinion of others. Are you so fcuking stupid to not realize you’re even doing this?
The Great Pumpkin says:
February 14, 2016 at 11:22 am
So please provide evidence of how it was dumbed down compared to your education? I want solid evidence, not your opinion. Compare your work to your kids work and show me evidence of how it is dumbed down.
3b says:
February 13, 2016 at 3:24 pm
Pumps: you speak like you are an expert on how great NJ schools are and how much harder the curriculum is now vs. 20 or more years ago. Well I beg to differ. Clot/ splat and I are the only two on this blog; and i don’t really post any more who have put kids through prestigious blue ribbony school systems from k to 12. And if you think they are something to be all that impressed about you are mistaken. And they were all honors ap and supa. The curriculum even at that level is dumbed down.
You have supported and still support the biggest causes of income inequality.
The Great Pumpkin says:
February 14, 2016 at 11:48 am
Alex, who is this debt owed to? Why are 55 million citizens on food stamps? Why are 94 million out of the work place? It’s the economic system that you celebrate. The system gives everything to a small population so that they can have whatever they want, at the expense of everyone else. So don’t bring up these issues and cry about the decline of living standards for the average american, when you ignore income inequality
This author claims that the education system has always been bad. Give me a break, look at the technological gains in the past 100 years.
“Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt’s new book, “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America,” is without doubt one of the most important publishing events in the annals of American education in the last one hundred years. John Dewey’s “School and Society,” published in 1899, set American education on its course to social!sm. Rudolf Flesch’s “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” published in 1955, informed American parents that there was something terribly wrong with the way the schools were teaching children to read, and my own book, “NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education,” published in 1984, explained in great detail how and why the decline in public education was taking place.”
http://www.newswithviews.com/education/education1.htm
Some more garbage by someone that doesn’t understand.
““The Common Core is supposed to be improving state standards in education, but its bigger effect has been a comprehensive dumbing down of American education at every level, from kindergarten through graduate school,” Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, said in an interview with CNSNews.com.
Wood is a co-author of Drilling Through the Core: Why Common Core is Bad for American Education, published in September by Pioneer Press. The book includes Wood’s history of the Common Core controversy and critical essays by more than a dozen mathematicians and English scholars.
“The major criticism coming from the scholars is that it’s lowered standards in both math and English language arts, the two parts of the K-12 curriculum that the Common Core covers,” Wood told CNSNews.com.
“When the Common Core was being put in place, there was a large promise that it would be ‘internationally benchmarked’, meaning the standards would be as high or higher than the highest standards found around the world. And if you go into Common Core materials, you will still find that phrase.
“But the math standards are set way below all of the Asian nations, and the U.S. language arts standards are not matched to international standards,” Wood pointed out.
“The section on math is written by mathematicians who look upon the changes as a comprehensive lowering of standards so that students at the end of high school know a lot less math than they used to and are not prepared for college-level math,” he said.
Scholars also panned the curriculum’s major de-emphasis of English literature.
“The teaching of literature is not abandoned, it’s downgraded, so you end up with a very fragmentary and impoverished view of what language can do,” he continued.
“The Common Core has this peculiar emphasis that language exists to convey information. One of the results of fetishizing information is that the texts get fragmented… and there’s no distinction made between work of imaginative power and work that’s purely utilitarian in order to treat everything as a kind of encyclopedia entry.
“So in your English language instruction, you can and do get things like EPA regulations and repair manuals read alongside excerpts of the works of Robert Frost and Jane Austen.””
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/common-core-comprehensive-dumbing-down-american-education-every
#44 pumps: what you asked me to respond to I had already responded to in a previous pos. It would appear obvious that even with your critical thinking abilities you missed it. Therefore I labeled you clueless. And you respond that I am clueless because you missed it. Seriously? What’s next? I know you are what am I?
Anything I disagree with = wrong
Let the games begin, and Scalia isn’t even in the ground yet.
Corey Booker for SCOTUS?
http://www.nytimes.com/live/supreme-court-justice-antonin-scalia-dies-at-79/cory-booker-doesnt-seem-to-rule-out-an-appointment-to-court/
52
Supposedly Scalia requested an immediate creation, but millions of women will meet tomorrow to decide if it’s best for his body. Stole it, but a great line.
If Obama isn’t supposed to nominate a replacement in the last year of his four year term, are the Republicans essentially saying he is 3/5 of a president?
53
Cremation. How much for an edit button?
Looks like this crap has been going on for a long time.
“The 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” exposed an alleged crisis in the United States educational system. This book argues that the American school system is not really in as bad a shape as reported by the media and other government and industry sources. The book admits the existence of problems in the educational system, but insists that many of the charges levied against the schools are not true, and that those charges fail to address the real dilemmas that American educators face. Following an introduction to the issues, chapter 2 counters myths about achievement and aptitude including the myth that achievement has declined. Chapter 3 considers other myths about education, including the myths that money spent on education has not been spent well and that private schools are inherently better than public schools. Chapter 4 examines the context of the myths, and chapter 5 explores the probable outcomes if the manufactured crisis and major reform proposals are adopted. Chapters 6 and 7 explore social problems, discussion of which may be masked by discussion of education. Chapter 8 takes up principles for real educational improvement. (Contains 68 exhibits and 542 references.) (LMI)”
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED393167
Funny, IQ going up, but today’s generations are stupid, right? I think this proves a lot of what I was saying. Read up, Joyce.
“Over the past 100 years, Americans’ mean IQ has been on a slow but steady climb. Between 1900 and 2012, it rose nearly 30 points, which means that the average person of 2012 had a higher IQ than 95 percent of the population had in 1900.
“Political scientist James Flynn, PhD, of the University of Otago in New Zealand, first discovered those astonishing IQ gains nearly 30 years ago. Since then, the steady rise in IQ scores in the United States and throughout the developed world has been dubbed the “Flynn effect.”
In his new book “Are We Getting Smarter?” Flynn discusses the origins of his eponymous effect and muses on its implications for the economic prospects of the developing world, how we nurture our children and even its impact on death-row inmates.”
“How did you first discover that IQs were rising?
I started investigating IQ scores in the 1980s. I was interested in the correlation between U.S. military intelligence tests and mainline IQ tests. But when I looked at the scoring manuals I noticed something striking. Often, to make sure that the correlation co-efficients were the same between, let’s say, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, published in 1949, and the revised version published in 1974, researchers would give the same group of subjects both tests. And it turned out that in every instance, the earlier tests gave the subjects higher IQs than the later tests.
That was the first tipoff that IQs were rising because you can’t get a higher score on the earlier test unless the IQ for the standardization sample was lower 20 years ago than it is today. It’s like qualifying for the Olympic high jump: You might be able to do it easily by the standards of 20 years ago, but not by the standards of today.
After I published an article on that finding in 1984, psychologist Arthur Jensen wrote me and said, “I bet you won’t find the same on culturally reduced tests” [tests that emphasize problem-solving abilities rather than culturally specific knowledge], like Raven’s Progressive Matrices [an intelligence test in which people complete abstract visual patterns]. He and others thought that the gains just showed that kids are responding to schooling.
So, then I sampled the world over and I found that in 14 nations, IQs had risen the most on the culturally reduced tests, which was quite a shock.
We now have data for about 30 countries, and it falls into the pattern that the gains are greatest — perhaps something like six points a decade — on the culturally reduced tests like Raven’s. Next in line are usually the Wechsler performance tests — they go up at about four points a decade — and then finally the verbal tests rise at about two or three points a decade.
What has caused these changes?
Well, everything about the modern world has changed since 1900, as you can imagine.
The three things that stand out are: first, formal schooling. That clearly has to be involved in the huge gains in vocabulary and general information we see in America since 1950 — vocabulary subtests of the IQ tests have risen by 17 points over those 50 years. If you project that back to 1900, a period for which we don’t have adequate data, that would be 34 points, or two standard deviations. So that’s a lot of vocabulary. It means that people today on average know enough vocabulary to mimic the speech of only the cultural elite of 1900.
The second factor is what Alexander Luria discovered when he tested rural Russian peasants in the 1930s. He discovered that pre-scientific people can’t take the hypothetical seriously. That is, if you pose to them questions like, “There is snow at the North Pole; where there is snow, bears are white; what color are bears at the North Pole?” they would say, “Well, I’ve only seen brown bears. And only if a person came from the North Pole with testimony would I believe that the bears there are white.”
They were addicted to the concrete world, not the world of hypotheticals. And that of course has a big impact on a whole range of tests. If you look at Raven’s, where the gains have been so huge, the test consists of all hypothetical questions about symbols that are well removed from concrete reality.
Luria also asked his subjects about classification, such as, “What do dogs and rabbits have in common?” In 1900, a person would say, “You use dogs to hunt rabbits.” Today you say, “They’re both mammals.” And that gets the question right.
In the past, people’s minds were utilitarian. They weren’t interested in hypotheticals or in classifying things together. But today people have “donned scientific spectacles,” they have scientific habits of mind.
Finally, there’s the wealth of visual images in the modern world. I think that is responsible for improvements in mapping skills and improvements in looking at three-dimensional figures and how they rotate.
Do these rising IQ scores actually mean that people are getting smarter?
That depends what you mean by smarter. It really breaks down into four questions:
Do we have better genetically engineered brains than we did in 1900? Of course not. Genes don’t select like that in four generations. So, if by “intelligence” you mean a brain engineered to accomplish greater things, then we’ve made no progress at all.
But if you mean: Is our ability to attack a wider range of conceptual problems improved? Then yes, we have gained in intelligence. The average person can do creative work today that they couldn’t do in 1900.
If you mean, on the other hand, something like: Were people just as adapted to their circumstances in 1900 as they are today? Well, of course they were. They were able to do factory work, to hunt. They could cope with the world as it existed then. They had an average IQ of 70, but they weren’t all mentally retarded. So in that respect there’s been no gain in intelligence.
But finally, if you mean: Are people today mentally adapted to a far more complicated world? Then yes, there has been a gain.”
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/03/smarter.aspx
re #50 – 3b better watch it, pumps is protected now, he greased the wheels with Grim and may soon be the new blog moderator.
Maybe this guy does a better job of explaining it than me. Ben, give it a read with an open mind as opposed to set bias.
“Math can’t catch a break. These days, people on both ends of the political spectrum are lining up to deride the Common Core standards, a set of guidelines for K-12 education in reading and mathematics. The Common Core standards outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade. States don’t have to adopt the standards, although many did in an effort to receive funds from President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative.
Conservatives oppose the guidelines because they generally dislike any suggestion that the federal government might have a role to play in public education at the state and local level; these standards, then, are perceived as a threat to local control.
Liberals, mostly via teachers’ unions, decry the use of the standards and the associated assessments to evaluate classroom instructors.
And parents of all persuasions are panicked by their sudden inability to help their children with their homework. Even comedian Louis CK got in on the discussion (via Twitter; he has since deactivated his account).
My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core!— Louis CK (@louisck) April 28 2014
In the middle are millions of American schoolchildren who are often confused and frustrated by these “new” ways of teaching mathematics.
Thing is, we’ve been down this path before.
The old New Math
When the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, the United States went into panic mode. Our schools needed to emphasize math and science so that we wouldn’t fall behind the Soviet Union and its allegedly superior scientists. In 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act, which poured money into the American education system at all levels.
One result of this was the so-called New Math, which focused more on conceptual understanding of mathematics over rote memorization of arithmetic. Set theory took a central role, forcing students to think of numbers as sets of objects rather than abstract symbols to be manipulated. This is actually how numbers are constructed logically in an advanced undergraduate mathematics course on real analysis, but it may not necessarily be the best way to communicate ideas like addition to schoolchildren. Arithmetic using number bases other than 10 also entered the scene. This was famously spoofed by Tom Lehrer in his song “New Math.”
I attended elementary school in the 1970s, so I missed New Math’s implementation, and it was largely gone by the time I got started. But the way Lehrer tries to explain how subtraction “used to be done” made no sense to me at first (I did figure it out after a minute). In fact, the New Math method he ridicules is how children of my generation – and many of the Common Core-protesting parents of today – learned to do it, even if some of us don’t really understand what the whole borrowing thing is conceptually. Clearly some of the New Math ideas took root, and math education is better for it. For example, given the ubiquity of computers in modern life, it’s useful for today’s students to learn to do binary arithmetic – adding and subtracting numbers in base 2 just as a computer does.
The New Math fell into disfavor mostly because of complaints from parents and teachers. Parents were unhappy because they couldn’t understand their children’s homework. Teachers objected because they were often unprepared to instruct their students in the new methods. In short, it was the implementation of these new concepts that led to the failure, more than the curriculum itself.
Those who ignore history…
In 1983, President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education released its report, A Nation at Risk, which asserted that American schools were “failing” and suggested various measures to right the ship. Since then, American schoolchildren and their teachers have been bombarded with various reform initiatives, privatization efforts have been launched and charter schools established.
Whether or not the nation’s public schools are actually failing is a matter of serious debate; indeed, many of the claims made in A Nation at Risk were debunked by statisticians at Sandia National Laboratories a few years after the report’s release. But the general notion that our public schools are “bad” persists, especially among politicians and business groups.
Enter Common Core. Launched in 2009 by a consortium of states, the idea sounds reasonable enough – public school learning objectives should be more uniform nationally. That is, what students learn in math or reading at each grade level should not vary state by state. That way, colleges and employers will know what high school graduates have been taught, and it will be easier to compare students from across the country.
The guidelines are just that. There is no set curriculum attached to them; they are merely a list of concepts that students should be expected to master at each grade level. For example, here are the standards in Grade 3 for Number and Operations in Base Ten:
Use place value understanding and properties of operations to perform multi-digit arithmetic.
CCSS.Math.Content.3.NBT.A.1 Use place value understanding to round whole numbers to the nearest 10 or 100.
CCSS.Math.Content.3.NBT.A.2 Fluently add and subtract within 1,000 using strategies and algorithms based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction.
CCSS.Math.Content.3.NBT.A.3 Multiply one-digit whole numbers by multiples of 10 in the range 10-90 (eg, 9 × 80, 5 × 60) using strategies based on place value and properties of operations.
There is a footnote that “a range of algorithms may be used” to help students complete these tasks. In other words, teachers can explain various methods to actually accomplish the mathematical task at hand. There is nothing controversial about these topics, and indeed it’s not controversial that they’re things that students should be able to do at that age.
However, some of the new methods being taught for doing arithmetic have caused confusion for parents, causing them to take to social media in frustration. Take the 32 – 12 problem, for example:
Once again, it’s the implementation that’s causing the problem. Most parents (people age 30-45, mostly), remembering the math books of our youth filled with pages of exercises like this, immediately jump to the “Old Fashion” (sic) algorithm shown. The stuff at the bottom looks like gibberish, and given many adults’ tendency toward math phobia/anxiety, they immediately throw up their hands and claim this is nonsense.
Except that it isn’t. In fact, we all do arithmetic like this in our heads all the time. Say you are buying a scone at a bakery for breakfast and the total price is US$2.60. You hand the cashier a $10 bill. How much change do you get? Now, you do not perform the standard algorithm in your head. You first note that you’d need another 40 cents to get to the next dollar, making $3, and then you’d need $7 to get up to $10, so your change is $7.40. That’s all that’s going on at the bottom of the page in the picture above. Your children can’t explain this to you because they don’t know that you weren’t taught this explicitly, and your child’s teacher can’t send home a primer for you either.
Better intuition about math, better problem-solving
As an instructor of college-level mathematics, I view this focus on conceptual understanding and multiple strategies for solving problems as a welcome change. Doing things this way can help build intuition about the size of answers and help with estimation. College students can compute answers to homework problems to 10 decimal places, but ask them to ballpark something without a calculator and I get blank stares. Ditto for conceptual understanding – for instance, students can evaluate integrals with relative ease, but building one as a limit of Riemann sums to solve an actual problem is often beyond their reach.
This is frustrating because I know that my colleagues and I focus on these notions when we introduce these topics, but they fade quickly from students’ knowledge base as they shift their attention to solving problems for exams. And, to be fair, since the K-12 math curriculum is chopped up into discrete chunks of individual topics for ease of standardized testing assessment, it’s often difficult for students to develop the problem-solving abilities they need for success in higher-level math, science and engineering work. Emphasizing more conceptual understanding at an early age will hopefully lead to better problem-solving skills later. At least that’s the rationale behind the standards.
Alas, Common Core is in danger of being abandoned. Some states have already dropped the standards (Indiana and South Carolina, for example), looking to replace them with something else. But these actions are largely a result of mistaken conflations: that the standards represent a federal imposition of curriculum on local schools, that the standardized tests used to evaluate students are the Common Core rather than a separate initiative.
As the 2016 presidential campaign heats up, support for the Common Core has become a political liability, possibly killing it before it really has a chance. That would be a shame. The standards themselves are fine, and before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, perhaps we should consider efforts to implement them properly. To give the Common Core a fair shot, we need appropriate professional development for teachers and a more phased introduction of new standardized testing attached to the standards.
But, if we do ultimately give in to panic and misinformation, let’s hope any replacement provides proper coherence and rigor. Above all, our children should develop solid mathematical skills that will help them see the beauty and utility of this wonderful subject.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-opinion-common-core-today-math.html#jCp
Pumpkin, I’m not going to show you the evidence. You can’t take the word of someone that established themselves as one of the top teachers in the state in 3 years of teaching. As patient as I am, one of the main things I’ve learned in teaching is, it’s best not to waste energy when you have consistently failed to make progress.
58- Just read it from the website, not easy to read with the way it is presented in the copy and past.
55
Anecdata, but my first and second graders math homework consists of 50% straight forward rote learning. Flash cards, timed problems, old school like I learned it.
The other 50% is bizarro. Multiple ways to learn the same facts that rote memorization accomplishes.
I learned numbers and their relationships, push it on my kids. I can do crazy gambler math in my head, used to be able to do three digit multiplication, but it takes practice.
Some jobs use it every day, without pulling out your phone and doing the math Pumps. I need to be able to compute gross margins, in my head, every day, at every call. Throw in multipliers across vast product lines, copper prices moving, etc, if you can’t do math in your head you look like an idiot.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The whole reason we teach timetables is so someone is able to multiply out 242 x 322 on paper. Memorization of times tables makes this an efficient process in which the student will break it down into several steps, all of which will be reduced down to a time table of single digit numbers. Without knowing your times tables, you cannot do this problem on paper. The memorization is essential and you use that knowledge to apply it.
You can’t apply knowledge without actually having the knowledge. That’s called…putting the cart before the horse. It doesn’t work.
An Ohio dad, annoyed that he couldn’t understand his kid’s math homework, demonstrated his frustration by writing a check to his child’s school using one of the methods his son was being taught, and posting a picture of it on Facebook. The dad called out “Common Core math” as the source of the problem.
The particular method this parent was unfamiliar with is actually really helpful when teaching younger kids to get a solid grasp on numbers and what addition and subtraction mean. This specific approach of drawing is one method to using base-ten to learn, and is used in addition to traditional memorization and standard techniques in classrooms across the country.
A former high school math teacher Hemant Mehta does a great job explaining to the frustrated Ohio dad what the math approach is actually doing.
“How many more dots do you need to get to ten?
You have 6. So you need 4! (And just like that, we’ve discussed addition and subtraction at the same time.)
Those are ten-frames. They’re really neat. And they’re a nice way to show little kids how to count in different ways.
“Common Core,” by the way, doesn’t even say you have to use ten-frames. For second graders, it says students should learn the base-ten system. There are all sorts of ways to teach that, whether it’s ten-frames or old-school addition. All are acceptable.”
Why does Common Core encourage multiple approaches in teaching math? As Mehta explains in his post:
“Over the past several years, what math teachers have realized is that kids who relied on memorization, algorithms, and calculators had a really hard time understanding math as they got older. Classes like algebra become scary for those kids because, all of a sudden, they couldn’t just plug things into their calculators. Variables got in the way, they had to start manipulating equations, and they just hit a wall….”
Indeed, math education today is designed to help all children, regardless of their background, develop a stronger understanding of math, so they are prepared for college-level coursework and, if they choose, advanced careers in science, technology, and engineering – all of which begin with a deep understanding of mathematics.
Different approaches resonate with different kids. For some students a visual approach to math concepts can be especially helpful.
It’s important for kids to learn multiple approaches to solving math problems so that they can choose the approach that works best for them and so that they develop a full understanding of the concepts before they move on to more challenging levels.
Want a more in depth explainer, check out this excellent video from a math teacher (and retweet to share it on twitter)!
http://forstudentsuccess.org/the-common-core-math-check-why-new-approaches-arent-always-bad/
Pumpkin,
I used to run a stand out in Colt’s Neck at Eastmont farms during the fall. We sold Jam. 1 jar for $6. 3 for 15. Black Raspberry was $7, 3 for 20. The line was long. I had to keep that line moving as fast as possible before people would get bored and just skip it. I would see what bill they reached for, make the change and have the change ready before they were able to hand the cash to me.
I guarantee you, if you were running a cash register waiting for it to compute, you lose $500 in business that day, at minimum. Maybe $700. No computer and no calculator is going to do that.
Memorizing what 10-6, 20-6, 20-12, 20-7, and 20-14 is what made that line move fast.
The same idea applies to all aspects of math. If you don’t know your times tables, square roots, or the unit circle you can’t follow a physics lecture and will be nothing but confused. These things must be etched into everyone’s memory to get through the class.
re # 55 – Pumps 3B is probably right about his journey with his kids however things have changed. Common Core has been used in NJ public schools for five years now, mostly because local control has failed many school districts. I can tell you from my experience so far I believe kids will fail without parental involvement or at least after school programs. It’s a good thing unless there is no help for the kids who have parents who feel they don’t want to be involved and it is a responsibility of the State, those kids may have an even higher drop out rate.
You can expect more stratification as the public school systems are rebuilt and redefined with Charter Schools and Common Core teaching.
It is a good thing in my opinion, that is teaching reason over memorization.
Trust me, that’s easy to pick up for someone later in life. The hard part is getting them to truly understand the meaning of math in preparation for high level math applications. If you provide this foundation at an early age, the mind looks at math in a different way. This is the whole purpose, to condition the mind to think in a different way and understand there is not one way of going about it. Why is this such a bad thing. If your job requires you to run math problems in your head, you will learn it quickly with this math foundation. It will be so easy. Teach someone memorization math instead of meaningful math (meaning what really is addition and subtraction) and they will most likely never be able to understand higher level math unless they were born with the gift to overcome the way their mind was taught to look at math.
Hughesrep says:
February 14, 2016 at 7:48 pm
55
Anecdata, but my first and second graders math homework consists of 50% straight forward rote learning. Flash cards, timed problems, old school like I learned it.
The other 50% is bizarro. Multiple ways to learn the same facts that rote memorization accomplishes.
I learned numbers and their relationships, push it on my kids. I can do crazy gambler math in my head, used to be able to do three digit multiplication, but it takes practice.
Some jobs use it every day, without pulling out your phone and doing the math Pumps. I need to be able to compute gross margins, in my head, every day, at every call. Throw in multipliers across vast product lines, copper prices moving, etc, if you can’t do math in your head you look like an idiot.
Indeed, math education today is designed to help all children, regardless of their background, develop a stronger understanding of math, so they are prepared for college-level coursework and, if they choose, advanced careers in science, technology, and engineering – all of which begin with a deep understanding of mathematics.
Pure nonsense typically spouted by the educational establishment. I’m sorry, I teach kids of all levels and try to get the best performance out of everyone. Not everyone is capable of learning precalc, calc…and not everyone can study science and engineering. Educational methods being pushed today are designed to sound special. Part of the reason I’m able to out perform nearly every other teacher in my area is I don’t employ really any methods that people that come from educational backgrounds push on everyone.
We can’t have Obama appointing anyone to the supreme court and if we have to, we can do like weekend with Bernie, and prop Scalia up and let him still serve on the court until a republican is president. If it takes 20 years to get one elected, then he stays on the court and no conservative is allowed to die until then. If a liberal dies, that’s fine.
Obama needs to be blocked at every turn. If he tries to leave the White House–block him. If he tries to eat a meal—block him. Want to use the bathroom Obama?? We’re blocking you.
Ben – many times memorization is used to teach to the test etc. Do the times tables matter, of-course. I’ll leave it at that you are the SME here.
65
It’s ALL about parental involvement. My wife teaches first grade, kids whose parents are involved from the get go thrive, regardless of natural ability. Absent parents have kids who either fall away or very rare that they excel. She has 17 years of anecdata to show me.
reinvestor lives! Lol
Ben,
Attempting to apply knowledge without actually having knowledge is the name of the game for punkinhead mike.
He’s the poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
66
If I didnt know how math worked I’d take the odds that you aren’t an idiot.
I’ll take the money line.
re # 67 – Not everyone is capable..
You might as well burn your card, you know the card carrying democrats have.
Bingo, Juice! It’s all about reason as opposed to memorization. Memorization is for robots. We don’t need robots in the workplace anymore, we have actual robots to do that job now.
Most of the older people in our population have developed their beliefs not from thinking/reason, they have developed it because a teacher, parent, or someone they looked up to told them to think this way. It is not developed from their own critical thinking skills, but from what’s been pushed on them. So if their history teacher or history book told them that Abe Lincoln was the greatest president ever, that’s what they think. They have no idea that another book might say George Washington was our greatest president. You need to teach kids that most of the time there is no right or wrong answer, all that matters is that you take a position and have the ability to defend it. Meaning, you look at the options and make your own choice on what’s best, not what someone told you is best. This kind of mindset will release the world’s population from thinking like sheeple. This is a good thing.
Juice Box says:
February 14, 2016 at 7:58 pm
re # 55 – Pumps 3B is probably right about his journey with his kids however things have changed. Common Core has been used in NJ public schools for five years now, mostly because local control has failed many school districts. I can tell you from my experience so far I believe kids will fail without parental involvement or at least after school programs. It’s a good thing unless there is no help for the kids who have parents who feel they don’t want to be involved and it is a responsibility of the State, those kids may have an even higher drop out rate.
You can expect more stratification as the public school systems are rebuilt and redefined with Charter Schools and Common Core teaching.
It is a good thing in my opinion, that is teaching reason over memorization.
re # 73 – Hughes – True Fact – Pumps spent his days chasing rich M*I*L*F*s around the tennis courts of Ridgewood NJ. He can count alright, especially all of those fat 20 dollar bills he used to get for his services and never paid taxes on.
He has yet to tell us any kind of FUN story about taking a serve in the nuts and the time Mrs. Ballinstein applied pressure to his tennis balls, all he wants to do with his spare time is spreadsheets and railing against the man.
Why did Scalia have to die in the first place? He knew good and damn well that we can’t have Obama appointing a third justice. No, he’s getting dug up and put right back on that court. He had no business dying with a liberal like Obama as a sitting president.
Man, don’t be like that. You are better than this.
Do you know how many trades people use the math you speak of and barely had an education in math? How do you explain that then? It’s like I stated, it’s not that hard to learn basic math applications when you are older, clearly a lot of these people did.
Hughesrep says:
February 14, 2016 at 8:12 pm
66
If I didnt know how math worked I’d take the odds that you aren’t an idiot.
I’ll take the money line.
78- But it’s almost impossible to teach a mind that has not been conditioned for high level math applications at a early age(once again, unless they were born with the gift which is what we have been relying on for most of history…..leaders in math weren’t taught, but were the teachers/creators of math theory) to learn advanced mathematics at a later stage.
Pumps it’s story time. Dig deep into your tennis shorts.
79- Their thinking process won’t allow it. It’s conditioned to think in a different way, they don’t have the ability to think outside the box, they can only think within the box because that’s all they were taught growing up. Whatever is in the box is the answer, they don’t know the world outside of the box, their mind is not capable of doing it.
Here’s an article for pumps–
NY Times Nov. 4 2011
Headline: “Why science majors change their minds (it’s just so darn hard).”
There would be no guest workers from crap holes in Asia if our schools focused on teaching. It is now impossible to find anyone born and raised here with Computer skillets that matter, cancel soccer folks..
Hell, come to think of it, we ought to dig up from the grave and reinstall a bunch of damn conservatives that left us way the hell too soon. That combined with suspending deaths for conservatives will change the stinking demographics that these damn liberals are trying to take advantage of.
Ben, you are obviously way smarter than me and have more experience on this subject. I don’t want to believe that our education system is falling apart, but I guess everyone carries the same sentiment on this board, so I guess I’m wrong in my position. I truly believed that education was improving, but I guess it’s not.
Based on the positions of people on this board, is it time to abandon the America I love and move to another country where my daughter will get the education she deserves?
If you don’t want to leave the country and you want to get America back, you should be voting for Donald Trump. My damn dream ticket is Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. I love those damn men because they’re real Americans. If either one of them asked me to strap on a damn five gallon container of gasoline and take a swan dive into hell, I’d do it a heartbeat right after blocking Obama one last damn time.
Juice, you are right. I need to lighten up. I’m taking life too serious. Worry about too much stuff that is out of my control. I used to be so much fun, what happened to me?
Thinking of my past on the tennis courts, one of the best nights of my life happened. One of the hottest girls I have ever seen in my life gave me a night I will never forget. Went to the tennis court at night. Was sitting on the bench talking some game and hooking up. She totally unzips my pants and goes to work (totally wasn’t expecting this). Next thing I know, she strips her pants down gets up on the bench. Knees on the bench, hands on the fence, and me telling her to stop screaming so loud because you are going to get us busted. Her knees started to hurt, so then she got down on all fours to finish her off. What a night. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect that on the tennis court. Just to give a description of her. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her. A true dime. She looked like a playboy spread naked. Her t!ts were perfect, they were actually bigger than I thought(def did not use push up bra). Literally, perfect set. Playboy spread is indeed the best way to explain it. She was Italian, so she had that beautiful olive skin color that looked so good tan. Beautiful a$$ and a face that could get anything it wanted from any man with a set of balls. Yes, life is good sometimes.
Thanks for getting me to be realize I have been taking life so serious. I def need to lighten up. I guess the pressures of life do this as you get older, you forget how to have fun.
Juice Box says:
February 14, 2016 at 8:20 pm
re # 73 – Hughes – True Fact – Pumps spent his days chasing rich M*I*L*F*s around the tennis courts of Ridgewood NJ. He can count alright, especially all of those fat 20 dollar bills he used to get for his services and never paid taxes on.
He has yet to tell us any kind of FUN story about taking a serve in the nuts and the time Mrs. Ballinstein applied pressure to his tennis balls, all he wants to do with his spare time is spreadsheets and railing against the man.
You are absolutely right, those guys truly love America in the same way that I do. Might be the last chance to bring back the America I love.
reinvestor101 says:
February 14, 2016 at 9:24 pm
If you don’t want to leave the country and you want to get America back, you should be voting for Donald Trump. My damn dream ticket is Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. I love those damn men because they’re real Americans. If either one of them asked me to strap on a damn five gallon container of gasoline and take a swan dive into hell, I’d do it a heartbeat right after blocking Obama one last damn time.
Not so damn fast Pumpkin head. We just don’t let anyone in the club just like that. You gotta prove yourself first. What the hell did you do today to block Obama?
What did you do today to block Obama?
Based on the positions of people on this board, is it time to abandon the America I love and move to another country where my daughter will get the education she deserves?
You haven’t read much of what I’ve written have you? If you are in the top echelon of students, you can get just as good of an education as everyone else. No need to abandon ship. Just make sure you instill good values into your children and hold them to a high standard.
JJ wherever you are – a Vidalia to you old chap
http://sweetsavant.com/2015/07/29/vidalia-onion-upside-down-broccoli-cornbread/
[25] grim – Do you want me to write some script for you that will automatically change Pump’s handle to The Great Doofus?
That example of 10 times 30 made me laugh.
That has to be memorized?
I was Pumps before Pumps. The only difference is that I eventually suffered a legitimate secondary education and it stuck. BTW, I was a ballboy at an exhibition match between Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver at South Mountain Arena in 1976, only because I was in the good graces of my private instructor who was the promoter of the match.
re # 73 – Hughes – True Fact – Pumps spent his days chasing rich M*I*L*F*s around the tennis courts of Ridgewood NJ. He can count alright, especially all of those fat 20 dollar bills he used to get for his services and never paid taxes on.
[94] Slightly off. February 9, 1977. About 2 months before I got my NJ driver’s license. Good times, good times.
I was a ballboy at an exhibition match between Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver at South Mountain Arena in 1976, only because I was in the good graces of my private instructor who was the promoter of the match.
Just want to thank you for taking the time to debate and help me see the light on this subject. Your time was not wasted, you have changed my position. I will do the best I can to challenge my daughter and raise her with high values., while ignoring the noise of people making excuses for why their child isn’t doing well in school. A sincere thank you.
Ben says:
February 14, 2016 at 10:45 pm
Based on the positions of people on this board, is it time to abandon the America I love and move to another country where my daughter will get the education she deserves?
You haven’t read much of what I’ve written have you? If you are in the top echelon of students, you can get just as good of an education as everyone else. No need to abandon ship. Just make sure you instill good values into your children and hold them to a high standard.
Sad part, I was being honest. Hey, at least you got a laugh out of it. At least I’m man enough to say I’m wrong and face the facts.
The Original NJ ExPat says:
February 15, 2016 at 12:35 am
[25] grim – Do you want me to write some script for you that will automatically change Pump’s handle to The Great Doofus?
That example of 10 times 30 made me laugh.
That has to be memorized?
Guess I’m the only person today that has work. Enjoy the day off gentlemen.
My friend sent me this. What a great time to grow up. Had so much fun.
http://theshrug.com/if-you-were-born-in-the-1950s-60s-or-70s-you-have-to-watch-this-it-sums-up-childhood-perfectly/
Man alive this is a great doc:
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/very-semi-serious-a-partially-thorough-portrait-of-new-yorker-cartoonists
“Gold, the pacesetter among commodities this year, is coming back to Earth.
The rally that’s made the precious metal the biggest gainer in 2016 on the Bloomberg Commodity Index faltered further on Monday, with spot prices set for the first back-to-back loss in a month as rising share markets and a firmer yuan sapped haven demand.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-15/gold-heads-for-back-to-back-drop-on-revival-in-appetite-for-risk
“Banks are taking a hatchet to their bond-trading businesses and the biggest casualties are proving to be the people with the most experience.
About 70 percent of credit traders cut in London last year at the 12 largest investment banks had worked in the financial industry for more than 10 years, according to data compiled by headhunters Michelangelo Search, which specializes in sales, trading and research roles. That’s increasingly leaving trading desks manned by more junior colleagues.
Experienced, better-compensated staff are falling victim to banks’ efforts to reduce costs as they try to generate profit within constraints imposed by regulators and central banks since the global financial crisis. There’s more to come as banks from Bank of America Corp. to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. consider cuts as soon as this quarter.
“I’ve been in the fixed income business for 35 years but most of my cohort is now missing in action,” said Tim Skeet, who has worked in bond-market roles since 1981, and is currently looking for a new position in the industry. “There’s a ‘juniorization’ of the workplace underway in London as banks focus more on costs than revenues.””
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-15/banks-cutting-most-experienced-bond-traders-in-fixed-income-cull
Updated list. WE ARE RANKED 8th highest taxed state. That’s not bad considering we are consistently in the top 3 for income. Cali and NY are 1 and 2. Funny that when those stupid articles claiming people are fleeing nj due to taxes state that they are fleeing to places like ny and cali. Yes, end the tax myth that people flee nj due to taxes. Only people that do that are retirees or people that lost their job and can no longer afford to live here.
“WalletHub recently analyzed how state and local tax rates compare to the national median in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia. The purpose was to determine which states pay the highest and lowest tax rates, and to see how each state stacks up against the national median. This comparison was based on nine different types of taxation: real estate taxes, state and local income taxes, vehicle property taxes, vehicle sales taxes, sales and use taxes, fuel taxes, alcohol taxes, food taxes, and telecom taxes.”
http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/top-10-states-with-the-highest-taxes.html/?a=viewall
All this talk about education. How about Elon Musk or someone from google just develops this (from Star Trek 2009 – Vulcan School). Each kid being taught individually by a computer constantly testing and adjusting to reach the highest performance/learning possibility based on what the kid can do in that particular moment.
In short, let’s take the human out of it. Like is happening slowly for driving.
https://youtu.be/KvMxLpce3Xw
re: # 102- Bloodbath in FICC. Just ask our former chief row boat operator JJ.
re # – 104- “Like is happening slowly for driving.”
If you believe in Musk he will be selling self driving cars in two years.
Drug Trafficing (jj Edition):
SYDNEY — Australian law enforcement agencies discovered 1.26 billion Australian dollars ($900 million) worth of methylamphetamine hidden in imported boxes of silicon bra inserts and art supplies in the country’s largest haul of the illicit drug in its liquid form, officials said Monday.
Four Hong Kong passport holders were arrested in Sydney last month over the import from China of 190 gallons of the drug, commonly known in Australia as ice, police said in a statement.
The liquid could have made about 1,100 pounds of high-grade crystal meth, Australian Federal Police Commander Chris Sheehan said.
Officials also seized 4.4 pounds of the crystalized form of the drug.
Justice Minister Michael Keenan said the operation used information gathered through new cooperation between Australian Federal Police and China’s National Narcotics Control Commission. The Australian and Chinese agencies established a joint task force in November to investigate criminal syndicates trafficking methamphetamine.
“This largest seizure of liquid methylamphetamine to date is the result of organized criminals targeting the lucrative Australian ice market from offshore,” Keenan told reporters.
The four will appear in a Sydney court next month charged with importing and manufacturing commercial quantities of illegal drugs. Each suspect faces a potential life sentence if convicted.
Keenan said the seizure was one the largest hauls of illicit drugs in Australian history.
Damn, so he really did lose his job?
Juice Box says:
February 15, 2016 at 10:38 am
re: # 102- Bloodbath in FICC. Just ask our former chief row boat operator JJ.
Comment from the article I thought was worth sharing. The article is def trying to suck in ad revenue with clicks by placing it in a slideshow, but it’s worth a look.
“For all the paltry salaries and people complaining, there are thousands and thousands of six figure salary jobs in NJ.
My sibling is a real estate broker and has told me time and time again of all the six figure/250 K household incomes buying homes in NJ. Surprisingly, there are many six figure jobs not even on this list applying for mortgages/RELO services with real estate firms and their affiliates.
True income disparity in NJ as one can go through many NJ towns that make a third-world sh@thole look charming.”
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/39_jobs_in_nj_that_pay_more_than_125k_a_year.html#0
http://lwd.state.nj.us/labor/lpa/employ/oeswageweb/PDFs/nj_all.pdf
re # 108- If he didn’t he will there are lots more coming next month.
Bjorn Borg – I still have a wooden racket at home that bares his name.
United’s customer service is almost reason enough to leave this state.
1970s and 1980s tennis was absolutely ridiculous. It was some kind of zoolander nonsense. 7 Days in Hell wasn’t a spoof, it was a documentary.
#103….. something’s wrong with their figures they have NJ average yearly tx burden at $8,880…pretty good trick since the avg property tax is $8756…..LOL
Dentss,
Anything I agree with = correct
115- Where did you get your number from? I took this from an article posted to this blog on Jan 20. I don’t see why cheetsheet.com would have anything to gain from giving false data? Why would they destroy their reputation? What do they gain besides a ruined reputation?
“The hike pushed the average local tax bill to $8,354 for homeowners, up $193 from the prior year, according to data compiled exclusively by the Asbury Park Press. That’s an increase of 2.4 percent, despite a supposed 2 percent cap enacted in 2010.”
Got a laugh out of this.
“OMAHA, NE—A report released Monday by the Omaha-based public-interest group Aurora indicates that increasing numbers of Americans are being defrauded by schemes that offer financial reward for a lifetime of hard work. “People don’t realize that long-term savings and loyalty to one company don’t pan out,” said Sylvia Girouard, the study’s author. Girouard added that steady employment which claims to offer long-term financial gain in the form of a pension plan is nothing more than an elaborate Ponzi scheme.”
http://www.theonion.com/article/more-americans-falling-for-get-rich-slowly-over-a–5101
#115..don’t folks live in apartments etc?
This guy is funny. He is def a part of the establishment that he is defending.
Trump has no idea how to be president: Stephen Hess
http://usat.ly/1XttGlG
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/02/neymar-messi-penalty-luis-suarez-barcelona
@nybooks
Garry Wills: Those who profess an absolute devotion to the Constitution should at least pay it some lip service:
No sooner was Antonin Scalia dead than Republicans said that his seat should not be filled before the election of a new president. Senator Mitch McConnell said this will let the American people “have a voice” in who the new justice will be. Senator Kelly Ayotte said “Americans deserve an opportunity to weigh in” on the matter. And Senator Ted Cruz, the presidential candidate, Senate Judiciary Committee member, and self-styled guardian of the Constitution, wrote on Twitter, “We owe it to him, [Scalia] & the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement.”
That is, we owe it to the archetypal originalist, where the Constitution is concerned, to ignore and defy the original Constitution.
One thing the framers of the Constitution set out to prevent was a popular say in who should be a Supreme Court justice. The aim of the document was to ensure there would be an independent judiciary—independent of Congress (by ensuring justices’ salaries), independent of changing administrations (by granting them life tenure), and not subject to popular election. This ideal could not be perfectly reached, and changes in the Constitution have made it even harder to attain. But those who profess an absolute devotion to the Constitution should at least pay it some lip service.
@chrislhayes
The idea that it’s out of bounds to say W was president on 9/11, is an example of the collective repression we have about his presidency.
@danielgjohnson
@chrislhayes And we spent 2weeks examining 9/11. Benghazi has had years of investigations.
anybody watching the Grammys?
what’s tidal?
@kanyewest
My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.
Anon:
“But those who profess an absolute devotion to the Constitution should at least pay it some lip service”
I was thinking the same thing. I’ve never seen more liberal strict constructionists in my life, lol!
@billmaher
Obama is president; a Supreme Court justice died; he gets to pick, period!
As usual, only way Republicans can win anything is by cheating.
Tidal is high fidelity streaming service
http://www.nj.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2016/02/nursing_homes_give_a_54b_boost_to_nj_economy_repor.html#incart_river_mobileshort_home
Illiterate [126];
After you and @billmaher figure out how to read ALL the big words in the constitution, then we can chat about it.
See, “…by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate…“
Sad how the goal of each party is to stack the supreme court with as many ideologues as possible instead of people that would defend the constitution.
God, reading the Twidiot’s posts has me wishing for a civil war so I can kill that POS in good conscience.
[130] Ben
Not a new thing, you know.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937
I really love your website.. Great colors & theme.
Did you build this website yourself? Please reply back as I’m looking to create my own personal website and would love to know where you
got this from or exactly what the theme is named. Kudos!