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POWER-CO.NET

The Unraveling of society and the eclipse of America as a super power.

This page is just some things I find alarming going on in modern society. As we revel in tearing down old factories and steel mills and building houses on our farmland. Yes, with the many face lifts America looks good but American industry draws a ragged breath as we fall further behind in the industrial race. We are well in to the age of American decline.

(WE MUST CHANGE DIRECTIONS )

or lose to the competition in the world market

A News Paper Article

Students suffer from too much self-regard.

“Is this one right?” The student points to a line on a test paper and peers anxiously at me. The exam is two days away, and I have given the class aversion from a previous year so that the students can see what kinds of questions to expect.
“No,” I say gently, “that’s not right,” and proceed to explain what is wrong with the answer she wrote. Questions 2, 3, 4 and S suffer the same fate, but No. 6is, in fact, correct, and I tell her so. She beams. “Oh, great, I feel better. I’m really getting itl”
That the course — animal behavior — is one in which quantitative reasoning is important only makes her unfounded optimism more alarming.
Her reaction is not unusual. In the face of all evidence to the contrary, my students exhibit an unswerving confidence in their own abilities. They earnestly assure me that despite test scores in the single digits and an inability to answer questions
i posed by their teaching assistant, they really know the material: “It just doesn’t show in my grades.” The implied fault, no doubt, is mine, for giving such unfair and inappropriate exams.
They readily confess to me that they have not consulted the text and do not remember my lecture. They have nothing to say about the concepts we’ve covered. Yet somehow, a kernel of faith stays resolutely sheltered in each undergraduate bosom they believe honestly and with conviction that they get it, and therefore deserve a high grade.
Don’t get me wrong. I hardly expert all students to understand the material immediately, or even ever, and I also realize that my teaching could be confusing or badly organized. Wrong answers are part of the game. What I find troubling is the lack of concern about their ignorance or poor performance, the epidemic of what a colleague of mine
calls unwarranted self-regard.

On that same practice test, another student came to me with a problem she had tried to solve; it required comparing two lines on a graph, each of which represented the number of eggs laid by a different group of individuals (female blackbirds nesting in male territories either with or without additional females).
The question asked where a point on one of the lines satisfied a particular condition, and only one answer was correct. The student for some reason had redrawn the lines, as if rewriting the birds’ reproductive history, with the two lines suddenly veering off into a fantasy of communal egg-laying. It was as if she had taken a graph of the exports of China and France and merged them into a new country with a single product.
Once again, I explained how to answer the question, and once again the student was pleased. The error was just a trivial difference of opinion. “Yeah, I get it,” she said. “I was just thinking of it differently.” You say tomato, I say tomahto.
No, I wanted to say, you weren’t thinking of it differently, you had it completely wrong; you didn’t understand it at all. But like her many compatriots, she was unlikely to acknowledge that, or admit to a mistake even when she created a version of reality never seen on a map, or in the actions of a blackbird.
Students have always deluded themselves, of course, and hope has always sprung eternal, or at least until final grades appear. And at least some in my classes really do eventually master the material. But confident placidity in the face of error seems to be on the rise.
Maybe it’s all that self-esteem this generation of students was inculcated with as youngsters, or maybe it’s the emphasis on respecting everyone else’s opinion, to the point where no answer, even a mathematical one, can be truly wrong because that might offend the one who gave it. Maybe they think they should never let me see them sweat.
These explanations all seem too facile as I gaze into their smiling faces and feel like an academic Cassandra, predicting doom and disaster where they see only cheer. As graduation draws near I wonder whether - they will become surgeons happily removing the wrong organs or just sales clerks unconcernedly giving incorrect change. Be worried, I want to tell them. Then I realize they don’t know the meaning of the word.

BY Marlene Zuk Spechil to the Los Angles Time Taken form the Albany Democrat Herald 2005 June 3^rd

Marlene Zuk Is a biology professor at the University of California , Riverside .

An article sent to my email that rings the warning bell

Declining by Degrees

By John Merrow, Carnegie Visiting Scholar

Of all the students I met during nearly two years of working on our PBS documentary about higher education, I continue to be intrigued by a sophomore named Nate. After proudly proclaiming that he was maintaining a 3.4 GPA despite studying less than an hour a night, he wondered aloud, "It's not supposed to be this easy, is it? Shouldn't college be challenging?" Nate was one of the more enlightened students that we interviewed.

He talked about his "boring" classes, including an English class he described as "a brain dump." We sat in on that class. The teacher had assigned students to write parodies of The Road Not Taken, knowing that to do the assignment well, they would have to read and understand Frost's poem. She was meeting students at their level ... and trying to push them to go beyond it, attempting to move them out of their "intellectual comfort zone" and lead them in new directions. Tough job, because Nate—and undoubtedly most of his classmates—had obviously NOT read the assignment. Nate had succeeded in high school by figuring out what was going to be on his tests and doing as little as possible. And since that approach also got him into college and was now earning him a solid B average, he saw no reason to change. Ask Nate the purpose of college, and he would probably say something about "getting a good job." The learning part wasn't necessarily what he was paying good money for.

Although we found this English class stimulating, we could see how frustrating it became for the teacher because of the lack of student-directed engagement and motivation. In this case, the students' expectations didn't match the professor's. Teaching becomes a difficult transaction when students expect to get the diploma that they pay for without caring whether they learn anything in the process. The situation is made more difficult because professors begin classroom teaching at a disadvantage. Few have any training in how to teach. We were very impressed by Tom Fleming, a senior lecturer at the University of Arizona, who took advantage of a faculty development course offered by his institution on teaching theory and effective practices. Using technology in a huge lecture hall, he deftly engaged students, allowing very few to merely get by.

College used to be a "sink or swim" environment, but today, either colleges are giving much-needed "swimming lessons"—investing in student success—or they're allowing students to "tread water"— giving decent grades for very little work. In the first case, students actually receive an education; in the second, they merely get a degree. It's all too easy for some students and faculty members to settle into a pattern of behavior that looks like an unspoken "non-aggression treaty," in which professors don't ask much of students and the students don't expect much from their professors (as long as they get A's and B's).

The good news is that many faculty members—those giving swimming lessons—work with energy and imagination to move their students beyond that simplistic "diploma=$$" formula. The relationship between Tom Fleming and his students falls into this category. Even more heartening is the fact that many students intuitively know that they're being denied an education and seek out campus experiences that give them what they need. But that 20 or so percent out there treading water are shortchanging themselves and future employers who think that a college degree indicates achievement as well as persistence. And those professors who find it more comfortable to demand little of their students are denied the satisfaction that good teaching affords.

The shift in the expectations of students and faculty members began around the time that America learned that college graduates made more money than high school graduates—as much as a million dollars more over their working lives. The mantra became, "If you want an education, then you pay for it." The old social contract—the idea that education of individuals is a public good and therefore should in part be publicly financed—is on life support and barely breathing. Instead, "Education Pays" is proclaimed on billboards around Kentucky, encouraging kids to go to college just to nail down that good job.

Kids arrive on campus determined to major in "business" and often remain impervious to the efforts of their professors to expose them to new ideas and new information. Our student financial aid system supports the "investment in me" approach by making less money available in the form of grants to needy students, and more in the form of loans to be paid back as a return on the individual's investment in themselves. The message our kids get is that they're not students; they're consumers. And if they're willing to settle for "purchasing" a degree that means nothing in terms of educational achievement, it's their right. It's their investment. In this environment, professors, colleges, and universities are forced into giving the customers what they want, not necessarily what they should want.

I admire students who squeeze as much as they can from the college experience, and I salute the teachers who dedicate their energies to seeing students succeed. Too much is left to chance, however, and too many lives are blighted by our national indifference to what is actually happening on our campuses during the years between admission and graduation. What we found is not the equivalent of a few potholes on an otherwise passable highway. Serious attention must be paid at a national level. Other countries are not standing still. Those that have not surpassed us already in educational attainment levels are clearly visible in the rear-view mirror.

....................................................................................................

John Merrow, president of Learning Matters Inc. and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation, produced the documentary “Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk,” which will air on PBS stations Thursday, June 23. Check your local listings for exact times. To learn more, go to http://www.decliningbydegrees.org/.

an opinion by john alvin

The decline of initial operational knowledge and morality in today’s vocational student.

In my seven years of teaching I have noticed that in-coming students have less and less basic operational knowledge and common sense than even in my first years of teaching. It is my observation that students are lacking basic skills and experience sets that employers have taken for granted for years.

A list of declining skill sets in today’s youth:

1: Punctuality (work ethic) 2: Dependability (work ethic)

3: Honesty 3: Dress

5: Rudimentary mechanical orientation

One of these “life skills” or “soft skills” is ordinary manners. This to the employer equates as “customer service” and a professional image.

The “customer service” and professionalism issue plays out in the area of dress, hygiene, written and verbal communication. Problems with dress and hygiene are not new problems, but as dress becomes more and more outrageous it can enter in. In my opinion after talking to several employers, if I were an employer, and was interviewing two candidates of equal skill and one had multiple facial piercing or prominent tattoos I would hire the candidate without the facial piercings or tattoos. Large tattoos and multiple piercings do not reflect the professional image that a business owner is trying to put forward. Multiple piercings make a statement of instability and discontentment in one’s self image.

Another area is Rudimentary mechanical orientation or the knowledge of rudimentary mechanical principles and devices. This comes from a childhood of playing with toys like blocks, Erector sets, building things out of scraps of wood and taking things apart. Devices today are “throw away” and teach little. I took apart mechanical adding machines and alarm clocks. I also had a father that took time to explain things to me. Much of this lack of knowledge I attribute to a sociological shift to single or working parents. This is the product of twenty five years and two generations of men that have ventured as far away from mechanical vocations and hobbies as possible.

As society has moved further from the rural lifestyle to one of metropolitan or suburban, much of the “hands on mechanical learning” that starts at and early age in a rural up bringing is no longer there.

In addressing the rural lifestyle a bit further the “work ethic” or self discipline has leached from young people as well. When I was growing up I had to work every day. From the earliest age I had chores to do. As I got older the chores were increased in complexity and quantity according to my age. Students today want great pay and prestige on the job but few want to do much to obtain it. In my classes there are certain students who feel they deserve an “A” but want to do as little as possible to pass the class. These students usually gripe loudly when they don’t receive rewards that are not deserved. As a nation we will never be competitive in a global market as long as this philosophy exists in our young people. I would theorize that the majority of young people today have not had to work to get things unless they grew up on a ranch, farm, or in a logging family. We live in a land of bounty. Advertising companies target market kids as young as 4^th or 5^th grade because they have deposable cash. If kids this young have money and don’t have to earn it this is going to produce a problem in these kids with work ethic and appreciation for what they have. This is not a negative judgment on my part but only an observation. My students I observe have much more money now than students did when I was a student. They have better tool boxes and tools, nicer pickups and it seems more cash to throw around. This may also be attributed to the ready acceptance of credit in today’s life. When I was a kid my parents did not have a lot of money and I worked on the farm to get extra money to buy clothes and extras. It taught me the value of a dollar and how hard it was to earn it. I think another influence is television shows that do not show a character being rewarded for hard work and perseverance, but in contrast celebrates the individual that makes a dishonest deal to make quick cash.. Getting up and being on time for school or a job was hard lessons that I learned growing up, but I learned them at an early age. My father was not the most tactful person nor was my grandfather. I heard statements like “Are you ever going to amount to anything?” from my grandfather, or “If you pulled that crap on a job you would be down the road.” My grandparents lived through the depression and told us children stories about how bad it was and how poor they were. My grandfather told of working in the woods at Black Rock Logging Camp and how if a man was killed in the woods they would nail his clothes to the last car load of logs on the last out going log train of the day. The body would then be taken off by the undertaker in Fall City station before they went to the mill At Dallas. These were different times. Today’s students do not have grandparents who lived through “hard times”. The majorities truly do not appreciate what they have in their pockets and in the country they live in. As a result of this apathy and lack of motivation in our young people, society is “Dumbing down” I cite several articles that Gerry Rupert has sent around campus. 01 Is America going through a social revolution? History tells us that China had the ability to cast tons of bronze hundreds of years before the west and then went through a social revolution and the technology was lost and, the west eclipsed them. Up till the mid to late 1200s the secret to making Roman concrete was well known. It was lost in the Middle ages (another social revolution) and not rediscovered till well into the Renaissance.

Honesty is sorely lacking in society and not just in young people in today. Words like morality, integrity, virtue honor, duty and character are not popular as they require responsibility for actions. Lying and deceit has become a core disvirtue in this world. It is not just an American problem it is a virtue in China ’s business practices as they show no respect for contract or agreement. They are a people without formal religious teaching. Under the power of communism the Bible was suppressed and there was nothing to benchmark society’s morality or honesty on. America through complacency has lost it attachment to the Bible as well. America ’s laws were based on Biblical laws.

The Ten Commandments, The Golden rule. These Base-line statements of morality from what ever origin are the fabric that has held this country together for two hundred plus years. We are now attempting to remove all trace of this fabric from our American society. We blatantly take down monuments to “religious documents in public buildings “to not offend. These “Religious documents were the guide to those that laid down the Magna Carta, The Mayflower compact, Declaration of independence and most importantly the US Constitution. We are rewriting history to make heroes from the past look like the same low caliper people of today because we can not live up to them. If in the future we are to have a society that can define it’s self as in World War Two. (“The Greatest Generation”) we need to celebrate our past for what it was, not rewrite it to make us feel good. If our greatness in the past as a nation came from Biblical religious teaching, then let us start teaching the Bible we have nothing to fear form it any more than any other literary work. The rise of Nazi Germany should be a foretaste of what a society will look like with no room for Biblical principles. If there is no baseline for morality then all the atrocities that we fought so hard to put down were not wrong in the first place and if anything we were just being intolerant to the Germans. It sounds ludicrous but it is what our society is saying it wants.

If we want to bring about change in our nation let us train our young people from the Bible. The stories of good and evil, right and wrong that taught the generations before so much. From the Bible comes the fabric, values and morality, the sociological glue that made our country great not so many years ago. If we teach our children to not lie, cheat, steal and respect authority and property, the majority will do these things when they are older. Sub points of biblical text will speak to laziness, appearances and conduct. No, we have nothing to fear from teaching the Bible, even if it is thought of as only a piece of literature. Ignoring it is like assembling a propane barbeque without the instructions. It may happen but it’s going to take a long time before it looks right without guidance. If we can resolve the social issues in our families in America the basic soft skills in our young people will also right themselves. The lack of basic skills at this time can only be solved through better education on the part of technical educators. Classes must be started at a lower level and basic assumptions can not be made as they were in the past. One possibility might be to give an entrance exam in the first class a student takes to identify the student’s basic knowledge strengths and weaknesses. Some tailoring of existing course work as well as some specially developed curriculum could help today’s student be successful in spite of less prior mechanical exposure.

Appendix 1

The text of The Ten Commandments

1: I AM THE LORD THY GOD, THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME.

2: THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN.

3: REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY AND KEEP IT HOLY.

4: HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER.

5: THOU SHALT NOT KILL.

6: THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.

7: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.

8: THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOR.

9: THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE.

10: THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S GOODS.

The Golden Rule

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself" matt 7:12Slothfulness is laziness

Judges 18:9	And they said, Arise, and let us go up against them; for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good: and are ye still? be not slothful to go and to enter in to possess the land.
Proverbs 12:24	The hand of the diligent shall bear rule; But the slothful shall be put under task work.
Romans 12:11	in diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;

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