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Too soon to tell of course, but if the stars are aligned correctly and things break right it just might be that he will be put up on the wall of Social Justice along with FDR, JFK and LBJ. Now before you blow a gasket recall that SS, Medicare, Medicaid and Civil Rights were all viewed as un- American, Socialistic, and unconstitutional forays by the Federal Government into the lives of Americans. My guess is that there will be lots of problems, but eventually we will come to accept his program (s) and they will become part of his legacy and our society. Health care will, in time, be seen as a right as it is in many of the other great democracies of the world. Will this cost a bit more--you betcha.
The "wall of Social Justice" - what is that, and where does it mention that in our Constitution? I think this is a key difference between conservatives and liberals - conservatives look to the Constitution for authority to act; liberals look to their own whims for authority to act.
Wall of Social Justice--Oh it is not mentioned in the Constitution at all. Also absent are the words Air Force, slavery and animal rights. However, it does have the phrase--general welfare--which I know is a bad phrase to cite, but it is all I have at the moment.
My $0.02... the Constitution is a laundry list of the things the government may do and cannot do... bottom line is nowhere does it give them the power to force people to buy things. As far as general welfare is concerned they could require the insurance companies to provide a pool to handle those unable to presently afford coverage... to share the risk, like drunk drivers but kind of hard to require health ins. like auto ins.; there isn't anything to regulate like the drivers' license, eh?
I agree willy, my best profs were that type. One would spend about an hour (before class) drawing detailed diagrams of the geologic formations and such that were the subject of the lesson… during class he referred to them in an offhand way and explained what they meant… fleshing out the things that had made us curious. A marvel… I spent years trying to be a weak approximation of that level that level.Most of the crits I got were that I didn't use cooperative learning techniques (good students work in groups with kids less able and help them to learn... teacher being facilitator) which was flavor of the month for a time. Flaw was the good kids did all the work and the others rode their wake. Not very productive but as such a good demo of how communism works.As far as keeping the students awake by not being boring: many have a short attention span and very little cultural literacy; I needed out because there were fewer each year that understood the jokes. 8)
It devolves into this:
Inspired by popular video games like World of Warcraft....
Ugh! Is this what we've come to?
Apparently. A friend of mine who still teachers tells me that over the past 35 years he has gone fromteacher to instructor to lecturer to professor to entertainer and not by choice!I concur having been present at the birth of the POWER POINT PRESENTATION.
My condolences; PP was a greand idea that got entirely out of hand. As spice it's nice as the main course the behind of a horse.
It used to be that the instructor stood at the front of the class imparting information through his voice and body language. Sometime in the 80's ( a wretched decade) we began to see the erosion of this method and the emergence of the power point presentation. Now the imparter of knowledge stood at the back of the class--a disembodied voice and the center of attention was the screen, splendid in its myriad colors,thrilling the audience with pie charts, graphs, witty epigrams and cartoons. The class was beinginformed and entertained. At first the novelty was amusing, but then the horrid realization set in--this was the future and perhaps a necessary future.
A computerised slide presentation... the intermediate step being the laser disk with a barcode scanner. ::)
We no longer had the patience to sit through a lecture or we no longer had lecturers of sufficient skill to do it without mechanical visual aides. In order to get through the thickening skull and into the shrinking brain matter all senses had to be assaulted--thus the term audio-visual where power point was the latest and best example. By the time I retired all managers and supervisors had been trained in the use of the power point process which many liked as it was all scripted and required no thought in presentation. My point is that we now have a generation that expects learning to be entertaining and perhaps even fun. How this is possible in organic chemistry, mastering a language or literary criticism has yet to be explained to me. If the biologists are correct, and I believe they are, we are descended from apes who love novelty, color and diversion .
We betray our origins, but seem to be declining rather than advancing. Would Darwin object if we said that evolution can descend as well as ascend? Perhaps the future fit who survive will find power pointskills to be of some advantage for survival although I am at a loss to suggest just what these might be.
I'd vote for devolution here... part of the history standards in my state are calling for the students to be able to create and present a PP. Our HS required it in several classes as it helps get the school accreditied. The down side isn't that knowing how to do this is bad on the face but that it reduces the material to bullet points; that is all the students want... the bullets that will be asked about on the exam and the standardized tests in the spring. No one cares about the whys that the lecture can flesh out to assure understanding rather than just recall of the factoids that were the bullet points.
History only:A final note. Why not just scrap the schools and the instructors and just show movies of historical periods. You would have a happier student body (most), save money as the same films could be run year after year and the History professors could be assigned useful work. The fact that the films are historically inaccurate is of little consequence--so were many of the lectures. Orwell said it best:IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
At least one of the teachers that replaced me at the HS (when I moved to the middle school was running in this mode... didn't seem to go over that well but he's till doing it. I had several films that I used with some degree of regularity, based on their historical value (and that I liked them didn't hurt either 😉 ).While Orwell did say it well; the bumper sticker one of the sharper students from my last group of 10th graders gifted me with after they went on a field trip to the big city with the English teachers said it best... "Ignorance is Pi$$." [note: it didn't have dollars signs :o]
Like much of history, one can only present both sides and the “evidence” and hope the reader will take the middle ground.
100% agreement and well supported in the MacMillan book. She btw is the great-granddaughter of Lloyd George. Also her maternal g'father was personal physician to Rufus Isaacs (named with Lloyd George in the Marconi Scandal). 😮
1756 ? Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated in New York City for the first time (at the Crown and Thistle Tavern). 1776 ? American Revolution: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery in positions overlooking the city. 1780 ? American Revolution: George Washington grants the Continental Army a holiday "as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence".
Wally:As I recall we had a chance to deal with Uncle Ho in 1919 and again in 1945. In both cases we chose the French--in the first case they were white and in the second less communist (sic) than uncle Ho. I agreethat we may well have backed the wrong horse as history has demonstrated that we have a good record of dealing with pseudo-communist or totalitarian leaders on many continents
While scout is correct that Ho was already a Marxist; I'll wage that had we helped the cause of self-dtermination by setting up some small independent countries is Asia (and not shorting Japan for their part in WWI) history may have been slightly different.Ignoring the Asian groups was surely (at least partly) racialist but mostly staus-quo oriented. After all they ignored the Germans too.
[digressive thoughts mode]What about the contention that we backed the wrong horse from the beginning? In her book, Paris 1919, MacMillen postulates that since Ho Chi Minh was primarily a nationalist, the west should have paid more attention to his requests back then; self-determination for SE Asia… similar to what the former A-H Empire was getting. We could go into all kinds of racialist diatribes but more likely just France and others trying to keep pre-war colonies… status-quo. Any comments?[/digressive thoughts mode]
Yes, he was a real person. I believe he was actually Roman by birth, though.
Yes. Dad was a minor functionary in Roman Britain, g'dad a Bishop in the Church. Paddy was kidnapped by the Irish and was a herder for several years... vision of escape by walking away... accomplished this, returning to Britain and then studied for the priesthood. Vision to Christianize his erstwhile captors and the rest is history (or conjecture ;)). That is the quick and dirty version.
Took about 3 minutes… that long because I kept looking for more to fill out. Pretty lame but I agree with Don. It wasn't very personal they could have saved money and just bought the DMV lists from each state. 8)
