Book List and School Failures

Currently reading three books:

1. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (in French)

2. From Zero to One (in Italian)

3. Fessler's 5 Proofs of God (in English but have been lazy with this one)


It is incredible to see how translations and other languages force different thoughts. It is very placebo to say "learn a language to get different perspectives!" as if that means Europe, Asia, and Africa are all so different than the US. There is great variability among each country but that does not mean that everyplace is a hut and the US is a royal palace. 

Other languages mean different words and interpretations that force your brain to think different and construct concepts in weird ways to adapt to the language. Three of the greatest failures of the US Education system is these things:

1. Inability to teach a second or third language to kids. Could be Spanish, French, Mandarin, or Arabic, at this point who cares. It is the lack of ability during 12 years of school (not including college) to teach something that can be learned in 1-2 years quite easily with 1-2 hours per day and guided resources that are free. 

2. Lack of ability to teach an instrument or computer coding. More "languages" that force different levels of creativity and interpretability. Both of these should be standards over your 12 years of school but again, nothing. Maybe keep this to high school only and get 4 years of structured learning, anything to foster creativity.

3. No curriculum based business skills (not talking write a check, who does that these days?) but rather things such as entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and the need for American ingenuity. Imagine if we spent all this time focused on creating a future focused on problem solving climate change, income inequality, low education levels, and crime rate along with poverty.


Schools do not address any of this and it is a crime to ignore it. This would truly make America #1 again.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pendulum Always Sways... or Does It?

The belief in the United States is the balance of political power will always be present. Throughout our history, the opposing party has never been "wiped out" so bad in an election that their party's future is destroyed. Just take a look at my lifetime: 1. Republicans won solid majorities in the early 2000's and the White House in 2004 2. Democrats won supermajorities in both chambers and the White House in 2008 3. Republicans won majorities in the House in 2010, Senate in 2014, and held all 3 in 2016 4. Democrats won back the House in 2018 and hold a narrow majority in 2020 5. Early indicators on the 2022 midterms seem to have Republicans roaring back to power in 2 of the 3 chambers This trend is not unusual. Despite the most popular Presidents in the US's history helping their party for sometimes 10-12 years (think FDR, Kennedy, Reagan), the opposing party comes back strong.  I heard the phrase "don't worry, the pendulum always sways back." But wi...
Read more

We Are the Product

There were two interesting topics I wanted to talk about but one will wait for Monday. I settled for us being the product in a new AI world. This concept has been a sci-fi thriller for decades but always seen as "in the distant future with flying cars and alien travel." That reality is now here, or scratching the surface of it. And it has been here for a decade, if you realized it or not. The mid to late 2000's saw two products change the way we interacted with the world: social media and the touchscreen smartphone. Both of these concepts used us, the user, as the product. Social media had no product except the user posting information to other users. The touchscreen allowed us to use our fingers to control the product with apps tailored for us with information about us (photos, contacts, texts). At the time, these two remained separate from each other due to limited capabilities of the mobile phone (first iPhone had no app store, limited web functions, no 3G, etc.) Socia...
Read more

There's a Crash Coming...

The market dropped yesterday and that trend will not change. Stocks and Cryptos are both down due to one decision: the Fed raising rates. Why? Well, when the Government spends trillions without adjusting for debt you get rampant inflation. Combine this with the Fed injecting trillions through quantitative easing and you get the worst inflation in 50 years. By raising the rate and buying back some of their debt they injected, inflation will crash. The issue is so will 401k's and investments. If they do not raise rates, inflation continues to increase but your 401k is saved. What is more frustrating is this was predicted to happen by anyone who has take a high school economics class. Our economy is hanging on by a thread for some and others are ready to scoop it all up. Just make sure you're buying.
Read more