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read this book
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
an excellent view on why we will all be selling hamburgers to each other in the future. Excellent research in India, China, Russia etc those who our kids will compete with in the new ''flat'' world, flat because of broadband internet and cheap labor....we are behind.
By please
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World is flat?
Daily Telegraph Noel Malcolm
Those who like colourful anecdotes and wisdom served in bite-sized pieces will enjoy this book. Those who want to read something written as if by a grown-up for other grown-ups should turn to the outstanding recent book by Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works, instead.
So you're trying to tell me that in these 2 countries that have each over a billion people that their high schools are better than Pickeringtons? I bet the oldest trailer in Pickerington is better than some of the schools the kids in India and China are accustomed to attending school in. They aren't bitching about overcrowded schools - they're happy to be going to school and see it as an opportunity to make something of themselves.
What is killing America is our sense of entitlement and lack of work ethic. Maybe we should close the parking lots to kids who drive $50K sports cars and only let those drive who go to work directly after school and they have to bring a pay-stub into the adminstration office to prove it!
I suggest you look long and hard in the mirror about what it is that you're teaching your children instead of blaming their failure on ''overcrowded schools''. ''If only you would have had another 10sq ft of space in your classroom you could have been a world-leading scientist''.
Let us know how your trip to India to observe their high-school setup rates in relation to Pickerington. I'm really curious. Maybe, just maybe they spend their money on education and not marble floors and football fields!
By Flat head
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My rantings in response 2 Nester
Dear Nester,
Can I interject just a little fact into you highly opinionated posting? First let me say the I have voted against every levy this pathetic Board and Administration of PLSD has offered in the last 10 years. I haven?’t voted against them because I didn?’t think they needed them but because I have no confidence in the fact that they will ever ask us for what they need versus what they want. That being said, let me offer some rebuttal to your posting.
I live in the city and my taxes have not gone up 150% in the last 5 years nor has my property value went up 15%. But I offer my congratulations to you that yours did. Where else could you get a 15% return on your investment in just 5 years? You should cash in on your gains and reinvest elsewhere and try again. You are building quite a retirement fund there. My taxes have gone up ands down some over the time period you define. An investigation with the county auditor shows that my property was significantly under appraised before the triennial review before last. An apples-to-apples comparison with other areas similar to ours proved that. My property value has increased too, but not at the rate the tax value has. My resale value has increased due to the hard work put into my investment through improvements to it. In other words, unlike you seem to depict where you sit back and let fate dictate your financial growth, I have taken an active role in nurturing my single biggest investment.
Both my kids are in PLSD. Both work and both volunteer. Both are being raised the same as me and my wife were with good sound values. I, like you am shocked at what I see happening in my kid?’s friends?’ families. I see no values. I see no work ethics being developed in them by the parents. I see the attitude you describe that will result in them becoming bums being fostered by the parents. The parents give them everything and ask nothing in return. Cell phones, cars, expensive vacations, clothes galore, jewelry, dinner our 5-6 nights a week and on and on. It disgusts me being raised poor and rural as I was. Maybe I am jealous. But maybe I am right. Maybe I am doing the right thing and only time will tell. Maybe in this day and age, giving the kids everything while asking them to earn nothing is the right thing to do. Maybe it isn?’t ?– only time will tell.
As to the Columbus Dispatch, a friend of mine is a distributor for them. The decision to employ adults was theirs. They do not hire kids to go door to door any more. Why you ask? Simple. News is delivered in real time to anyone who wants to consume it via the internet. I myself subscribe to the Dispatch online. Why you ask? I get it when I want it. It is dry. I don?’t have to deal with 80% of the paper being advertisements, 10% news and 10% garbage that is just pandering to a niche audience to attempt to boost sales. For the dinosaurs (no insult intended) who insist on paper and ink, you are being provided the best service the Dispatch can offer by having adults deliver in their cars where the papers are kept dry and you get it near the same time and in the same place every day. Can a teenager do that? Sure, but not at 5:30 in the morning and not with the same coverage area that an adult in a car can. Sorry, you lose that argument. That was a business decision and not abandonment of teenagers.
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Still ranting
Do you even realize that Kroger is one of the single largest employers of teenagers in this community and single largest supporters of teenage events in the community? Obviously not. But do you also realize that the teenage employment at Kroger is one of the single most competitive environments in the community. Probably not. Do you realize that Kroger is faced with extinction just like Big Bear in the face of Giant Eagle, Super Wal-Mart, Super Meijer, Super Target ad Super everything else? Obviously not. Kroger is cutting costs to stay alive. They have more and more self-serve checkout lines with one human per 6 lanes. That?’s 5 people not employed as cashiers and 3-5 teenagers not employed as baggers. Don?’t blame your having to carry out your own groceries on the teenagers. Blame it on capitalism and the ?“Super Everything?”.
Your ?“carnival barkers?” are just doing what our society has taught them works the best. Sex sells. Don?’t you watch TV? What are the Victoria?’s Secret models selling? Lingerie or sex? There?’s petite, big-boobed women selling windows for goodness sakes. Do I want to pay to have my big old pickup washed in a parking lot in the baking sun by a bunch of kids who will probably use towels dropped on the ground and thus dirty and scratching my paint? Do I want the left over soap baked into my paint and my windows left so greasy that the sun makes them blind me? Nope. But would I like to watch some over-developed 16 year old in a bikini two sizes too small do it? Sure. I?’d get me a six-pack and a can of Skoal and pay them to do it twice! Sorry to stereotype all you ?“Bubbas?” out there. Sex sells Nester. You can?’t change the fact that either society or the almighty media has made that as much of a fact of life as the sun coming up tomorrow. You can?’t change the fact that sex sells to a younger and younger audience each and every day. Stop blaming us and move to Amish country.
Teens not working at McJobs??? Who is working there? I see your Kroger old white-haired lady there. I see developmentally disabled people working there and I see immigrants, illegal or otherwise working there. I see people working there who want to work there. I see people working there who because of whatever hand life or society or their own choices they made dealt them playing their hand with as much dignity and self respect they can muster. Stay out of McDonalds and go home and have a peanut butter sandwich if you?’re offended.
As to driving late model cars and having cell pones glued to their ears, I agree. Look around though. I haven?’t lived in this area all my life. I have lived elsewhere. Elsewhere I remember older cars being available. I remember 60s, 70s and 80s cars being on the roads. I also remember gas stations with service bays. I also remember points, plugs and condensers. Cars, like most of what we have today are disposable items. Use them and throw them away. Why pay for maintenance of an older vehicle when newer ones are so easy to get? Why hunt for a service garage and pay through the nose for service when you can trade in your car? Know why you have to pay through the nose? Because you can?’t service a car without a degree in computer technology. The automakers have made our kids driving newer cars happen, not you or me.
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