My brand new, owned it for less than six months, only had 2000 miles on it, motorcycle was stolen Saturday night. What, you may ask, does that have to do with education policy? So glad you asked. Let me connect the dots for you. As most anybody would, after I talked with the police I called my insurance agent, whose company will remain unnamed to protect the guilty, to report the stolen bike. Now, an important word in this reporting process is stolen. Filched. Misappropriated. Pinched. Purloined. Gone. In the arms of another. This is important because a few days after making the report I was contacted by a claims adjuster that made the following request – “Please make an appointment for us to inspect your vehicle.” Um… You do understand that because it was stolen, it would be rather hard, you might even say impossible, to have my, again this an important word, stolen motorcycle inspected due to the nature of it being, you know, stolen, and therefore no longer in my possession. So, I contacted the adjuster and left them a message letting them know that I couldn’t have the bike inspected. What with the being stolen and all. I got another call apologizing for the confusion stating that it is a standardized form and please download this app to continue the process. On to the internet to download the app. Aaannndd it wants me to upload a picture of the damage done to my stolen vehicle. Sigh. The joy of standardized forms.
A major insurance business can’t be bothered to differentiate between a vehicle crash and a vehicle theft. You’d think that might be an important distinction to make as in the business of insurance it would be important to know what you are paying out for, because it could drastically change the size of the check your business needs to write. But no, it’s more important that the process have as little variation as possible to keep the costs down. Never mind that it might cause mistakes and cause you to look foolish. This is where the connection to education comes in. For the last thirty years or so, one of the constantly used and loudest refrains from the education reformers is that schools need to be run like a business. OK. Based on the above business model as demonstrated by a very large and successful business and going on the knowledge that we need to be running schools like a business, this is what I propose: No more Individual Education Plans for special education students. In fact, no more special education at all. No more extra tutoring for all the various college entrance exams. No more special low-cost lunch programs. I can hear some of you cheering and to this I say not so fast! This mandate includes ALL extra non-standardized education costs. No more Advance Placement classes for excelling students. (Fun Fact! Did you know that AP classes technically fall under the special education umbrella?) No more band. No more arts. No more football. No more baseball. No more basketball. No more track and field. No more soccer. No more sports of any kind. No more late pick up. No more early drop off. Basically, if it does not pertain to the standardized class worksheets it needs to go. Just like in business. There you have it: education running like a business as requested by the education reformers. I’m sure parents around the nation can’t wait for this system to get going and we all start seeing the results of this standardized business based school system.
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Get your Spam today! Great googly moogly I must have been discovered by a new web bot recently because I have been getting some interesting comments from some people with some very interesting names.
Names like "Free 5.0 White Mens For Women Bargain-priced With Complete Product Models", "the High Quality You Want Can Come Ture", "White Mens Clearance Sale Come To Have A Happy Time In Shoes Here", and "we Can Develop Each Other" Even better than the names are the incredibly insightful comments that are being left. I can truly believe that this guy is not very web smart - "I know this if off topic but I'm looking into starting my own blog and was wondering what all is needed to get set up? I'm assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny? I'm not very web smart so I'm not 100% positive. Any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers" Lots of people want to do link exchanges – “Howdy! I know this is kinda off topic nevertheless I’d figured I’d ask. Would you be interested in exchanging links or maybe guest authoring a blog article or vice-versa? My website covers a lot of the same subjects as yours and I think we could greatly benefit from each other. If you’re interested feel free to send me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you! Fantastic blog by the way!” Nice start by the way. “Howdy!” How very Gene Autry. "Please let me know if you're looking for a article author for your blog. You have some really good articles and I think I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I'd love to write some content for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine. Please blast me an e-mail if interested. Cheers!" Cheers is always a good ending and seems to be popular. Questions about what system I am using are also popular. "I am curious to find out what blog system you're working with? I'm experiencing some minor security issues with my latest website and I would like to find something more safe. Do you have any solutions?" It’s always good when things are “more safe”. Back to ESL classes for you! I think this rambling missive (and it takes skill to present a rambling missive in such a short space) is my favorite of the bunch. "I do like the way you have presented this difficulty and it does indeed provide me personally some fodder for consideration. Nevertheless, coming from what I have witnessed, I simply trust when the commentary pile on that men and women keep on issue and not embark on a soap box regarding some other news of the day. Yet, thank you for this excellent piece and while I do not necessarily go along with this in totality, I respect the perspective." I’m not even sure if a person actually wrote this or if it was just a random string of words but it’s OK because they “respect the perspective”. Oh, and I'm sorry "Free 3.0 CarbonGrey Grey Mens Has Lots Of Choices", I don't have any other suggestions for blogs on the same subject for you. But I do wish you the best of luck my friend. Cheers! This weekend as I was driving about town I saw a woman riding a motorcycle. She was dressed in flimsy shorts, light shoes, a spaghetti strap tank top, and the final touch: a pudding bowl helmet.
To which I ask, "What's the point?" This person obviously has very little brains to protect, so why bother? According to the CDC you have a 34.6% chance of hitting your chin in a motorcycle crash. That's just the chin people. Add in the face and it goes up to 44.3% chance of the impact zone being unprotected. Not to mention the fact that if she goes down her cutie patootie outfit will do nothing to prevent her from being one big road rash. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why should I care you may ask? Morons like her drive my insurance premiums up. Still, I guess she's better then the dipsticks that buy a helmet and then hang it on the bike... Over the last few days I have observed so many different examples of stupid it boggles the mind. From the woman that gave me a friendly wave after I almost T-boned her because she didn’t bother to look before pulling in to traffic to the McDonalds that had two parking spaces reserved for the drive through. Isn’t the point of a drive through to, ya know, drive through?
The topper however, the deepest, densest part of the fog of retardation has to be the email I received from tech support at a major educational publishing company. On top of the many grammar errors some of the directions this support person sent do not even work! My personal favorite is this particular offering – “***** is are GED program accessed thru *****” Is are!? And apparently that possessive apostrophe is a tough concept as well. This person actually works at a company that is writing and selling textbooks and classroom materials around the nation and they can’t even grasp basic grammar for cryin’ out loud. Not to mention the fact that they seem to think that all GED students are at the 12th grade level. If they were at the 12th grade level they wouldn’t be in GED classes would they? The offending email, names have been removed to protect the guilty - Hello David, Thank you for contacting ******** Education Technical Support. I would be happy to assist you with your GED program. First I would like to verify that you are using ********? ******** is are GED program accessed thru ********. There is no adult setting, due to the GED program being 12th grade content. You are not able to delete student's once they are added in the system. However, you are able to remove their content. The student will not be able to access the book and it also free's up the book for you to be able to assign it to another student. If you click on the manage content link, you are then able to remove content by student name. You Do Not have to create a spread sheet every time you add new students. First click on the ******** content inside your ********. Then click on Manage and Assign. At the bottom of the screen you will see add students. For the help videos, please use internet explorer. You may need to clear you browsing history and cache. If responding to this issue, please use the "Reply" button to ensure prompt processing of your question. If you need to call our team, please refer to case number ******. Please submit new issues to ******** Education Technical Support through our website at: . In order to ensure a prompt response to your issue, please submit the form fully completed. Kind Regards, |
Step inside the mind of me.Hi. Welcome to my little electron of the internet, where you will find random comments about whatever pops into my mind! Previous mumblings
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