.

[D_W]

Not really. The majority are second rate and many pupils have to go into state schools for some subjects. Yes the better public schools should be emulated in terms of investment, which can be absolutely massive.

Underfunding the state. Overfunding the private. Not difficult to understand!

The problem with schools is they use the money/funding grab as an excuse and avoid discussing what improves outcomes for students per unit of measure.

Clearer rules, better organization and minimizing nonsense. But that kind of thing is the antithesis of the ultra liberal - measuring success by outcome...or actual success rather than whether or not you followed an ideal.

And also dancing around what creates a household for a good student - the same thing, basic rules, a reasonable family. There is far too much excuse making for the effect of that - two parents at home, whether two men, a man and a woman or two women - two parents, and someone checking in and encouraging students.

The idea that "society can take up that role and the family isn't important" is sheer stupidity. And its' a difficult thing for people to talk about because the kids of unsuitable households or just incomplete aren't at fault - so it's danced around. And who will pay for it in the future? Some percentage of the next generation of kids.

 

[Marcusthehat]

Thank you DW.

 

[Jameshow]

The problem with schools is they use the money/funding grab as an excuse and avoid discussing what improves outcomes for students per unit of measure.

Clearer rules, better organization and minimizing nonsense. But that kind of thing is the antithesis of the ultra liberal - measuring success by outcome...or actual success rather than whether or not you followed an ideal.

And also dancing around what creates a household for a good student - the same thing, basic rules, a reasonable family. There is far too much excuse making for the effect of that - two parents at home, whether two men, a man and a woman or two women - two parents, and someone checking in and encouraging students.

The idea that "society can take up that role and the family isn't important" is sheer stupidity. And its' a difficult thing for people to talk about because the kids of unsuitable households or just incomplete aren't at fault - so it's danced around. And who will pay for it in the future? Some percentage of the next generation of kids.

Obvs not been in a UK school where performance is drilled down to pupil and examined!

Of course funding isn't performance related otherwise the best schools get even more and the worst get less.

 

[D_W]

Obvs not been in a UK school where performance is drilled down to pupil and examined!

Of course funding isn't performance related otherwise the best schools get even more and the worst get less.

Everything is also measured here with standardized tests. But examining what actually causes improvement is highly censored.

Both of my parents were teachers. The teachers unions don't like testing - they want to measure their performance based on how they wish things would work and like to criticize anything that actually compares students as not properly measuring "their gift", which is described as not covered by any tests.

Unfortunately, improvement in cognitive ability is the single biggest factor predicting how well someone will do in life. It isn't the only factor, just the biggest one. And ignoring things that could substantially impact that performance and substituting ideals sounds good on TV and maybe in writing books, but we are generally all measured at work in a whole magnitude of ways.

But, no, it's not a lack of testing and seeing the metrics here, it's a lack of being willing to address what provides good results if it buts up against ideals.

Now, does this mean my parents were on board? At least one of them wasn't - one of them wanted to see the factors that cause kids to perform well at school addressed with parents. But that was way out of bounds by the end of their careers.

 

[Spectric]

You cannot blame the education system for everything, they cannot perform miracles like so many others. A housebrick will always be a housebrick no mater where you send it to be educated. The system today is aimed too much at academic's and skill should not just be measured in exams and academic ability because we are all different, we need to stop the degree is a must production line and accept that some people will be better suited to hands on skills and bring back technical and skills colleges. You really do not need a degree to become a master craftsman, but having a degree will not make you a master craftsman.

 

[D_W]

This kind of reminds me of an interview with a homeless person that I saw the other day.

I thought he was kind of complaining about not having things handed to him (like "just give me free space in an unoccupied office building, a car, free food and I won't be homeless"). He was saying that, but then he said "what does NYC spend on homelessness every year - a billion dollars? they don't care about the homeless people - you have empty office space that would house all of the homeless several times over, spend the money on that. Instead, what you get is money given to a foundation, the foundation pays employees, has "program expenses", rents office space, buys a whole bunch of brand new vans, and at the end of all of it, they drive around handing out a few cheese sandwiches.

The only thing the homeless get out of all of it is the cheese sandwiches, but the rest of it is a business - it's a public dollar funded business that does almost nothing to change outcomes because little of the money actually reaches homeless people, but there's so much money that it's easy to apply and follow the rules and set up a not for profit business that helps the homeless.

The public schools where I live are good. I haven't got any real complaints, but I live in an area where the schools are maybe in the top 20% of the US. They're not overly top tier like the top 1% or anything, but they meet my standards and their teachers are pragmatic for the most part. Some of that is because of the nature of the area (kind of middle class, very slightly conservative combination moderate working class and white collar).

Where I grew up in a rural area, the schools weren't as good, the teachers far more detached from the community (very liberal vs. a community who just wanted "stick to the facts and make the kids smarter" kind of stuff), and the school had every excuse for why student performance on the average wasn't very good. It wasn't good because the teachers weren't very good and the teachers weren't very good not for lack of talent, but because they fought tooth and nail to try to keep from doing anything from measuring the students and improving measurements because "that got in the way of the gift".

My mother was a good teacher, but she was a good teacher because she did the basics in a workmanlike way and always showed up. She had her mind kind of tainted by this idea that as someone with average SAT scores, the gift made her superior to most other people in town. This whole gift idea is just something pounded into the teachers by the union. Luckily for her students, she showed up and did what she was to do because she was raised on a farm where you at least do your job, period, and then everything else comes after that. The gift was sort of a mental sideshow, a pat on the back. It just resulted in nonsense at home "you know who is ruining the world? It's businesses and rich doctors!!".

I sense someone on here also thinks they have the gift....but the gift doesn't give anything else to anyone. Only action and improving outcomes does, and that means you have to measure them and be willing to improve them, not dismiss them in favor of ideals if they don't work out.

 

[Marcusthehat]

Boils down to "ya caint fix stupid".
Nor sack them, not dare to mention the results of their unfixed stupidity.
Btw. Some politicians are also stupid, or certainly appear to be as they continually make the "right" soundbite excuses for their equally cognitively challenged constitutants.

 

[Marcusthehat]

P.S.
As an entirely non religious person, but "reared" Presbyterian, I bytimes mull some of the wisdom in the King James bible.
Like, "the poor will always be with us"
How very, very presceint!
Marcus

 

[D_W]

You cannot blame the education system for everything, they cannot perform miracles like so many others. A housebrick will always be a housebrick no mater where you send it to be educated. The system today is aimed too much at academic's and skill should not just be measured in exams and academic ability because we are all different, we need to stop the degree is a must production line and accept that some people will be better suited to hands on skills and bring back technical and skills colleges. You really do not need a degree to become a master craftsman, but having a degree will not make you a master craftsman.

This is part of measuring outcomes. postsecondary education is a huge industry and someone who is organized, conscientious and maybe not super bright would make a super trade worker - they will show up and do the job, and perhaps a very successful business person.

But if they are funneled to a fourth tier college (the lowest type in the US) and funneled into a business management degree, where do they go?

Part of the refusal to recognize outcomes here is the inability to reconcile with the fact that 95% of the time, the metrics will be a good predictor and kids and their parents should be informed of where their children may make their biggest mark for themselves or the world.

I'm not the smartest guy in the world - I understand outcomes and working to improve them rather than avoiding them. But I could not cut it as a surgeon or physicist, etc, and it doesn't bother me. A step down from me may have been "I couldn't cut it without struggling to get through college", and I would've accepted that, and so would have my parents.

A friend of mine has a brilliant mother. He is average intelligence by all measures, and not the greatest motor in the world if you know what I mean. His mother has basically disowned him because he is the chief pilot for the state government and she wanted him to be something she could boast to her friends about. He is happy being a chief pilot despite being pushed in the wrong direction all of his life and being told how lazy and dumb he is. Lucky for him (this isn't normally the case), his parents divorced, so on the weekend, he had two days of his dad telling him he's proud of him for being average, doing what he can do and being a genuinely good person.

Since he was average intelligence, the schools disagreed with his choice to go to a trade school to learn to be a commercial pilot - they wanted him to go to a third tier school and try to "make something of himself".

Chief pilot is a job that will give him a full pension that's guaranteed by the state constitution code, it pays him like a late tenure teacher in the rust belt (this is nothing to sniff at, figure $45 -$50 an hour equivalent salary) and it keeps him out of struggling in some job where other people are better cut out for it.

 

[Spectric]

Some politicians are also stupid

You don't need to be intelligent or too clever to be a politician, you just need to be able to keep a straight face whilst not telling the truth or answering an honest question, try and say what your constituents want to hear and be self motivated, ie believe you know better than any expert and put your needs first.

 

[D_W]

Boils down to "ya caint fix stupid".
Nor sack them, not dare to mention the results of their unfixed stupidity.
Btw. Some politicians are also stupid, or certainly appear to be as they continually make the "right" soundbite excuses for their equally cognitively challenged constitutants.

beyond that, "you may be below average intelligence, but that doesn't mean there aren't things you can't do well, so how can you find those without letting yourself off the hook and avoiding reality".

mother's brother wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he learned to repair TVs and eventually sold appliances and added furniture later and lived a pretty good life and I'm pretty sure he was proud of what he accomplished. My mother thinks he was functionally illiterate because she had never seen him write after school - his wife did that side of the business. He got up every day and made sure the business was tended to and customers were tended to. Guess what people don't care about when they buy appliances and furniture - whether or not the salesperson can do a derivative, translate french and debate Dostoyevsky interpretations. School would be a rough place for him now.

 

[D_W]

You don't need to be intelligent or too clever to be a politician, you just need to be able to keep a straight face whilst not telling the truth or answering a honest question, try and say what your constituents want to hear and be self motivated, ie believe you know better than any expert and put your needs first.

Bingo - you need to pretend to stick to ideals in public and never break character. It doesn't hurt to be intelligent, but intelligent and brutally honest or principled won't work so well.

 

[Fergie 307]

Genuine question, how much do you consider per annum is the proper pay for a nurse?

Based on the fact that a newly qualified nurse gets £27k, only rising to the low 30s after five years, and the Matrons and other highly qualified nurses are still well below 50k. I would say that an immediate 10% increase would be reasonable. Not sure what the arrangements are currently pre qualification. This might help keep those we have, and attract more to the profession. Of course, given the training time, this will not alleviate the problems in the short term. To do that it seems to me we have to try and get many of those who have recently left to return, better pay might help, and to recruit overseas, the commonwealth countries being an obvious starting point. Anecdotally I am told that many nurses from the EU left as a result of Brexit, largely because the government didn't do enough to reassure them that their future would be secure here, and encourage them to remain. This is also something that could be worked on in the hope of getting at least some to return. The situation in the care sector is even worse, a friend of my wife has two daughters, both of whom are carers. The hours they put in are brutal, but they have little choice as the pay is so poor that without overtime they would not be able to make ends meet. I know that both are contemplating leaving because, although they love the work, they are just burning out and see no prospect of any improvement.

 

[Fergie 307]

In the hopes of gaining an unfair advantage over those who can't afford it. If they can afford private education and health care then obviously they could afford higher taxes and to rejoin the human race

So Jacob, the rich are not part of the human race?? What about one of my friends. He borrowed £50 from his dad to buy a rusty Escort van to start his business in his late teens. As far as I am aware he has no formal school qualifications to his name. He is now a multi millionaire with a Ferrari and an Aston Martin in the garage. His businesses employ several hundred people, and he runs an apprenticeship scheme to ensure the right skills are available for the business to continue to thrive. At what point did he become the sort of parasite you seem to consider the rich to invariably be. The simple fact is that yours are the politics of envy, nothing more. I would certainly like his lifestyle, but I am realistic enough to know that I am not talented, or brave enough to do what he has done, or take the risks he has in the course of getting to where he is today. And yes he sends his kids to private school, because he would like them to have a better education than he did, and why the heck shouldn't he. The taxes he pays personally, and through his businesses contribute massively more to the economy than he will ever take out.

 

[D_W]

The median salary in the US for a registered nurse is $75k at this point. There are a lot of opportunities to work OT here or to work as a traveling nurse for more.

What does nurse mean in the UK - we've got at least three levels "CNA" (nurse assistant), "LPN" (licensed practical nurse) and "RN" (registered nurse).

That figure is for RN. There is also CRNP (nurse practitioner, someone who works like a physician's assistant) that has median earnings in the low 100s.

 

[Dibs-h]

I have read through a substantial number of these posts, so will now expresss some views formed during my 63 years of life.
I did not grow up poor, but wore hand me down clothes, slept between sheets sewn from Mortons flour bags, no central heating, ice on the inside of the windows, zero forign holidays, porrige as a meal bytimes, zero carry out food, got to the seaside a couple of times a year, and overall learned the values of thrift.
Got a credit card at 17, and still run the same one, bought my own 2nd hand car post Uni, maintained it myself, only owned 6 cars over 44 years(and intend to take another 10 years out of the current one), started in a scale 3 council job(and finally rose to the dizzy heights of SO2) married a lassie who became a humble "underpaid" teacher.
So we were never anywhere near big earners.
We are now more than "well off" property wise, and "comfortable" income wise, but I prefer not to go into details.
Sounds like fantasy, no simply sensible spending, with no particular hardship ensuing.
I remain amazed at how much money is spent in/on pubs, bookies, hairdressers, ciggies/vaping, chip shops, disposable clothing and flash cars, latte coffees, short breaks, etc etc.
Simply staggering unaccountable sums, mostly "frittered" away.
But everyone bleats about "poverty".
Marcus

Reading your post brought back some memories for me, many not really pleasant tho.

My upbringing could be more described as a "Cinderella" one (literally in many respects) - except no Prince - and with all the issues and brutality that came with it.

The enduring lesson from that and other things was to learn skills that whilst they may not directly translate to employment (although they could if push came to shove) - they would save large sums of money over a lifetime & mostly as you need those things done in life.

I've only ever paid for my car\s over the years to be MOT'd and tyres to be fitted. I do all the work on our cars - from oil changes all the way up to timing chains\belts.

Even the house - re-roofed it completely. I've learnt to plaster, tile, etc.

Don't take the above as bragging - in almost all cases, I knew nothing about these sorts of things, but read up, asked questions and cracked on.

What started out as doing things out of necessity and being broke - I now enjoy. Although when working on a car on the drive, all the folk walking their dogs down to the woods (of all ages) look at me like I'm an alien. LOL i.e. it's not a thing seen very often.

Poverty can be climbed out of (not always admittedly), but when preparation meets opportunity - at least you've got a chance of success. Sadly in some cases today, there just is no preparation (or the willingness for it) and without that there is no chance of success.

I do like my lattes tho. But we have a bean to cup machine at home.

 

[Marcusthehat]

Well iffen we are going to pay nurses better, how about addressing the issues with underperforming nursing and medical staff, plus those lying off on the sick, this at all levels, they are as bad as the Police in covering up neglect and malpractise.
This from first hand observations by myself and my wife, while my wife had 4 replacement joint operations and I was in with pancreatitis.
Generally gaggles of nurses all "gassing" away, round the nurses station, but "too busy" to attend to patient needs.

 

[Jacob]

Well iffen we are going to pay nurses better, how about addressing the issues with underperforming nursing and medical staff, plus those lying off on the sick, this at all levels, they are as bad as the Police in covering up neglect and malpractise.
This from first hand observations by myself and my wife, while my wife had 4 replacement joint operations and I was in with pancreatitis.
Generally gaggles of nurses all "gassing" away, round the nurses station, but "too busy" to attend to patient needs.

You do seem to have a big chip on your shoulder!

 

[naughtymoose]

Trussonomics has one aim.

Defund the State, so that Big Money can then run it.

 

[Jacob]

.....At what point did he become the sort of parasite you seem to consider the rich to invariably be.

I didn't say that at all. What I do say is that if they have the money they should pay the taxes.

The simple fact is that yours are the politics of envy, nothing more.

Dear oh dear, another right-wing media cliche! Are you going to accuse me of being "woke" too? Are yours the politics of cliches? Thick Lizzy's certainly are!

....The taxes he pays personally, and through his businesses contribute massively more to the economy than he will ever take out.

Glad to hear it!