TERRE HAUTE —
‘Training’ is not the sameas ‘education’
It is disgusting seeing the viewpoint that there is “something” wrong with the educational system in America. Ever since 1983’s “A Nation at Risk” during the Reagan era, education has been made the whipping boy for every two-bit political candidate and every sensationalized rumor mill that has the nerve to call itself “News”.
Mr. David Roberts bemoans the availability of calculators. That is laughable. When I started college I could not afford a calculator. I had to use a slide rule. A calculator and a slide rule are just tools. It’s like claiming that we have ruined our work ethic by using computers. It’s nonsense.
Speaking of “tools”, it is instructive that we cannot seem to understand that the real enemy of education is not the U.S. Department of Education, the teacher’s union, the public school system or even the colleges or universities in America. The tool that is being used to destroy education is the ideologies that have a common thread of disrespect for education, educators and educational systems in America because of the freedom that education provides to humanity.
We think nothing of bumper stickers that say, “… my kid beat up your honor student” or “… my Pit Bull Dog is smarter than your honor student”. We just laugh about it. However, it is not funny that the rich 1 percent bums of America foster disrespect of the institutions of education and prominent educators through propaganda. Then, at the grass-roots level, the public expects education to improve. This is like poisoning the well and expecting medicine to save us when we are dying from the poison.
As far as the “comparison” of America to foreign countries, that is no comparison. Remember that in foreign countries not everybody has to go to school. Some children start working at “jobs” that pay wages lower than anything you can imagine and then work all of their lives living in poverty making money for the wealthy. If they can manage to live into adulthood they die before they are middle aged. It is just like having slaves, except the chains are financial and are forged in ignorance. Only the elite in those countries even take a mathematics test. If those lucky enough to go to school do not perform, they join the “workforce” with no hope of ever returning to school to better themselves through education.
For education to be cost effective do we have to reduce it to only “training the workforce”? Education and educators do have a primary goal of improving everyone’s life through education, but training the workforce is just a byproduct of the primary goal, not the primary goal. The partial goal of the propaganda of the 1 percent pertaining to education is to force the taxpayer to train “their workforce” because it is cost efficient and they can make more money that way.
When technology changes and the workforce does not have the foundational elements of a fine education, they cannot learn new technologies alone, so they need to be trained again. Once you have an education, it cannot be taken away. You “train” chimpanzees, but you “educate” people unless, you believe that there is no difference.
— John Garner
Terre Haute
Cheers to ISU’s blunt assessment
Here’s a pointed comment currently banging through sport journalism’s echo chamber:
“Indiana State [as reported by the Associated Press] offered a more blunt assessment [of the NCAA Rules Reform Package], suggesting the change could “create some real nightmares.”
“The problem is, many coaches, especially at the (Football Championship Subdivision) level, in all sports, are usually not around for five years and when the coach leaves, the new coach and institution may be “stuck” with a student-athlete they no longer want (conduct issues, grades, etc.) or the new coach may have a completely different style of offense/defense that the student-athlete no longer fits into. Yet, the institution is ‘locked in’ to a five-year contract potentially with someone that is of no athletic usefulness to the program.”
ISU’s “blunt assessment” speaks directly to a portion of proposed NCAA reforms: “Individual schools,” it reads, “can choose to award multiyear scholarships. Scholarships may not be revoked based on athletic performance.”
When you’re against reform it usually means that you think things in their present state are just hunky-dory. You be the judge.
The blunt truth is athletic scholarships now work within a business model that dominates Big Buck College Athletics. There’s nothing personal, let alone educational, about this. In practice, the withdrawal of an athletic scholarships is a four step retooling process.
1. Coach $$$$ comes to the conclusion that a student-athlete recruited last year, or two or three years ago (and now a full-fledged athlete-student), is not producing on game days.
2. Worse yet, this athlete-student is not responding in a positive or acceptable level to The Program’s system. (Those long, long hours in the weight room, reviewing film, and on the practice field or court.)
3. And/or, Coach $$$$ may be one of those “many coaches” who (as stated in ISU’s candid, hammer-style argument) “are usually not around for five years” and s/he didn’t recruit this loser. Management asks: Why, oh why, should Coach $$$$ pay for this egregious recruiting error?
4. And so it’s the end of a scholarship for this athlete-student. A shiny replacement part is inserted. The Program rolls on. As for the athlete-student who failed to read the fine print or ask the right questions during their much ballyhooed signing ceremony, s/he has been introduced to the dark downside of signing up with The Program. For the point guard without quickness, the nose guard without a nose for the ball, the student without a degree, it’s off to play security guard back home.
None of this is to say that the “blunt assessment” put forward by an anonymous source at ISU is something to be denied or disowned. Their assessment was not a twitter-truth, something thumbed today, regretted tomorrow. Their assessment was simply and bluntly a business-as-usual truth. And in reality, ISU was speaking for schools from Boston to Boise. In fact, 75 institutions of higher learning have joined ISU in dissent against the tepid NCAA reform proposal on multiyear athletic scholarships.
So I propose cheers to those who manage ISU’s Program — the coaches and the athletic director, President Bradley and the Indiana State University Board of Trustees. It is a good thing to be blunt in word and deed when it comes to college athletics. Hypocrisy and emotional fog have hidden College Sports, Inc. from view far too long.
— Gary W. Daily
Terre Haute
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