Socrates Don't Work Here

As I tried to settle in to Good Friday's solemn, sad, but hopeful afternoon, I made the mistake of checking my email and just glanced at a higher education news flash that appeared in the viewing window. A couple of groups, one a community college organization, are announcing a partnership with somebody in Africa to strengthen curriculum and improve job prep, blah blah blah. Having worked in community colleges for the past nine years, I can only laugh at the same old jargon. How about we just teach some concepts, allow the students to prepare themselves to be thinking adults, and then let them find their way in the work force? The idea of an apprenticeship or on the job training is anathema to higher ed now. Think of all that revenue out the window, or off the bottom line. Expectations at the college level have fallen to such a low that we might as well admit that thousands of the students at the Associate Degree level are only glorified high school graduates--finally--after two years of remedial work. They now might be able to understand a conversation with or decipher a note from their counterparts--the high school grads back in the middle of the previous century. I am guessing that an eighth grade graduate of the century before that may have had similar knowledge. When did we decide to relinquish opening minds and preparing critical thinkers to history and instead just train in technology, and not do that all so well? There are some amazing thinkers out there in their early adulthood, and they may have been exposed to some rigorous college courses, but the watered down pabulum available to so many college students today or else the desperate efforts to make up for wasted high school days does not make for an educated work force. Education is learning about how to learn and how to live life. Work is about training. Today's education system is confused and driven by the bottom line and teachers who fear for their jobs if they dare to think out loud. What a shame.
And don't get me started on the nationalization of education.

New Broom Sweeps Clean

I am not ok with all of the moves we have undertaken during our marriage. Saying that makes me feel like I am somehow betraying my husband. I could have stopped any one of the twenty minor and major changes of address if I had chosen to not allow it. Consequences would have ensued, and then I could have dealt with that. But much of my adult life has been my allowing life to happen to me. There were a couple of exceptions, like going back to graduate school. Use of those graduate degrees has been thwarted and I have allowed that to happen as well. That cannot have been good modeling for my children. I know choosing not to be proactive has not been healthy for me. I am also keenly aware that I am a product of every place I have been, of all the accumulated circumstances. By extension, not turning down one of those roads would have meant different results in me. I have been told that I should be grateful for all of my history because it has made me what I am today. That axiom only works if I am happy with what I am today.

I have been avoiding my blog. I have pretty much been avoiding my life the last couple of weeks. I would explain more except that 1) there is just too much, and 2) I really do not understand the funk myself.

A Tree in the Forest

So, if I post a blog and nobody reads it, does it still use up ink? How about space? Is there any limit to cyber space? What about gravitational pull?

Tell Me Why This Can't Work

I am not an economist, nor am I a financial wizard, but I wonder sometimes if the simplest solution might just be the best. Some of the people in trouble with their mortgages may have overextended themselves thinking their house value would go up or their income would increase. What then happened is an adjustable rate mortgage adjusted and the payments are too much. At the same time, they cannot sell since they would have to come up with money at closing. Maybe they even anticipated refinancing but could not since they owe more than what the house is now worth in this market. Why could they not re-amortize what is still owed over 35 or 40 years? Payments would go down at least a little, and if they stay in the house for ten years or more, they may be able to eventually sell at better than a loss. The lenders would continue to have income and the collateral, the homes, would have an opportunity to gain in value so that the loan to value ratio might actually improve over time. The only place I see in this scheme for any government bailing would be to bring some of the ridiculous A.R.M.s down a point or two.
Folks who invested in houses just to flip them in a year or so for a profit would not gain by this plan, but they are really in business rather than occupying a primary residence. They are not my concern.
People might have to stay in "starter" houses a decade instead of a couple of years, but wouldn't that be better than suffering foreclosure or spending my tax money to save them from bad decisions they may have made?
Then we look closely at when and how we got into this mess. Who thought that 100% financing was a good idea? And about this bundling of mortgages to spread risk. . . it got spread right into all of our living rooms. Let's look long and hard at the regulations over the past 10+ years and make sure the congresspeople and other decision makers who were in the lobbyists' pockets have to look for other work soon.

Time Marches

Almost March. . . I can't believe it. One of the Denver newspapers bit the dust this week, makes me sad. Will the internet really take up the slack? Slack, hmmmm. Slacking in their responsibility to report the news could have been what killed the newspaper business. Trying to be everything to everyone is not a successful business plan.

Sleepy

I am at about stage three of exhaustion. That's when I become what I refer to as "honest." Friends and relatives have pointed out that "cruel" or "nasty" might be more appropriate. I will be making some offhand comment like, "This bitch who sits in the last row in class had the audacity to say. . ." and I catch myself. Whomever I was addressing either has assumed an expression of horror or just stopped listening.
I really need sleep. Most other deprivations do not phase me, but lack of sleep drives me crazy, or should I say crazier? But here I am at 10:30 at night finding so many ways to occupy my time.