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I am not laughing any more
Here's another hilarious video from the Onion. Hilarious that is, until you read the extension.
'Students First In Line' Program To Offer Job Training At Needy Schools
In late August, Maryland's Joppatowne High School became the first school in the country dedicated to churning out would-be Jack Bauers. The 75 students in the Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness magnet program will study cybersecurity and geospatial intelligence, respond to mock terror attacks, and receive limited security clearances at the nearby Army chemical warfare lab.
The new school is funded and guided by a slew of federal, state, and local agencies, not to mention several defense firms. Officials say it will teach kids to understand the "new reality," though they hasten to add that the school isn't focused just on terrorism. School administrators, channeling Cheneyesque secrecy, refused to be interviewed for this story. But it's no secret that the program is seen as a model for the rest of the country, with the Pentagon and other agencies watching closely.
More here. And do remember that vouchers are a bad ideas because we need public education to teach civic values.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on September 22, 2007 at 01:32 PM in Economics, Education | Permalink
Comments
Things wrong with this video.
1. Too few black people.
2. The military is not an underclass affair. The underclass disproportionally fail the strict military IQ tests. The military do not accept people below IQ 92, which would include most of the underclass.
The Onion has made this mistake before.
Posted by: adrian at Sep 22, 2007 3:16:00 PM
Sweet.
Posted by: aaron at Sep 22, 2007 3:40:31 PM
The big difference between the Onion parody, and the real life program is that the real program is not targeted at an underachieving poor population and offers advanced science programs (and as a launch point for bright students who want to go to West Point). It is a trial program at a high school in Maryland presumably because of its vicinity to the Pentagon and to Washington, not because the government is training a ghetto school for extra expendable soldiers.
Posted by: liberty at Sep 22, 2007 4:59:04 PM
Uber-sweet.
Posted by: M.D. Fatwa at Sep 22, 2007 5:18:57 PM
Did someone notice in the news crawl that their was one about a Fairfax, VA charity shit-a-thon. Terrible in theory, execution.
Do you think that was a sneaky and vague smear at GMU? I may be just stretching things here.
Posted by: John at Sep 22, 2007 5:58:27 PM
When I was in the Army those many years ago, the wire guided TOW anti tank missile system was just coming into general use. Pretty sophisticated stuff.
The view was that you needed a soldier with an IQ of 100 to master its operation. At the time, we had infantry soldiers with IQ of 90.
Since then the weapons systems have become a lot smarter and so have our soldiers as the all volunteer transformation has rebuilt nearly everything from the inside out. I know some of those soldiers and their families. I have great respect for them.
Posted by: Fred at Sep 22, 2007 6:13:17 PM
But schools don't teach civic values any more, so what's the problem?
Sorry, but I'm not offended. Just another vo-tech school. Whatever. The chances of a real curriculum are practically zero. If it does have a real curriculum, the kids will have options. If not, it's no worse than the peace studies they are taught in Orinda.
Posted by: anonymous at Sep 22, 2007 9:31:12 PM
That's the problem with making relevance the big issue in education. It's all okay when it's your version of relevant, but the sword always cuts both ways.
Posted by: audrey at Sep 23, 2007 12:25:45 PM
That's the problem with making relevance the big issue in education. It's all okay when it's your version of relevant, but the sword always cuts both ways.
Posted by: audrey at Sep 23, 2007 12:26:10 PM
I'm from the UK - it took me a few minutes to figure out this was a 'spoof' news, and I do come regularly to the US, so I know that (most) of you guys are not entirely un-hinged.
But I do wonder, how many from outside the US would figure that this is not (yet) reality...
As per school vouchers - how exactly does the inability to do anything about inefficient, lazy and unionised teachers correlate with teaching civic values?
Enlighten me, please...
Posted by: marco at Sep 23, 2007 2:56:35 PM
Marco, I think he was being ironic. Sorta like the Onion clip.
(However, I wasn't. That really would be uber-sweet.)
Posted by: M.D. Fatwa at Sep 23, 2007 7:05:56 PM
Marco, here we go again. I used to hate the union. Because of barriers to entry and lazy government works I now work at a non-union charter school. Huge mistake taking the contract. I teach seven classes per day for 20k per year and am expected to lose my break periods whenever someone is absent without extra compensation. I now think the union tends to lead to laziness but I also think w/o the protections there is a strong chance admin will take advantage of their teachers.
Posted by: Mike Russell at Sep 23, 2007 9:01:15 PM
The sad part is that I think a genuine Emergency Preparedness charter school could be valuable and interesting. But the class descriptions don't mention the likely emergencies, like flood, power outages, blizzards. Shame to waste what could be a neat program.
Posted by: Megan at Sep 23, 2007 10:49:48 PM
I too work at a non-union charter school, and while compensation is not at par with the unionized county, it's almost 40k per year and I do get compensated for losing my prep and subbing for other teachers (which you have to volunteer for, anyway). The level of freedom and quality of students is very high and I wouldn't trade my job for most county teaching jobs.
Posted by: anne at Sep 24, 2007 7:36:24 AM
@Mike:
Perhaps you should look at your job offers more carefully? I mean, there are always good jobs in a specific market segment, and bad ones. However, the market isn't there to protect stupid decision, which is to stay in a job that you don't like for an amount of money you don't like...
Perhaps, you should change your field of work?
Posted by: Max at Sep 24, 2007 2:36:31 PM
I think the comments here are being way too easy on this topic. I think it is a travesty that these kids, sophomores now, have lost any pretext that education is for their benefit, they now get educated to serve the state. These are kids who are going to spend very formative years thinking of terrorists around every corner and natural disasters just over the horizon. These will be kids who will have a vested interest in keeping people scared, their careers dependent on a population willing to turn ever more money over to people who will grant them the empty comfort of security theater. I am sure the parents of these students think they are doing something that will benefit the kids, but I think some parents will be pulling their kids out of the program when they see that some of the kids have become overly militaristic, ready to fight every preemptive battle they can imagine, or overly terrified,thinking every threat is aimed squarely at them and their loved ones. They have been working on this program since 2003 but I think they all have some screws loose to put this into action.
Posted by: scott clark at Sep 25, 2007 12:34:57 AM
Nazi Youth? Seems like the creation of the thug class to me...
Posted by: Adam B at Sep 26, 2007 9:58:21 AM
I don't see what the problem is here. I really don't, unless Alex is somehow using this as a platform to express an anti-military attitude that I have never seen from him before. Is he going to start ranting about those horrific JROTC programs next? *rolls eyes*
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