Why Vulcan School Reunions are So Awkward

A Vulcan school is just like every other school.

Star Trek (2009)

Credentials for Sale

This is little strange ad is from We Take Your Class.

Why One Must Learn to Serve Before One Can Lead

Once you've taken your share of stupid orders, you think REAL hard before giving an order that could be considered stupid.

Otis R. Needleman in the thread 

United American Flight 817 2.0 

discussing the training of junior officers, at AH.com

Education (institutions) and its Discontents

High school, a small world unto itself combining all the warmest elements of a federal work camp with those of a third world poultry farm.

Dexter, Dexter S06E01

Parody University Ad

Mediocre But Arrogant - The MBA

ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has a new documentary about the uselessness of the MBA, MBA: Mostly Bloody Awful.

The MBA / Preppie Indictment

Andrew Lahde is a retired hedge fund manager who in last year earned 1000%. For his success he thanked:

"The low-hanging fruit, ie idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking," he wrote. "These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government," he said.

"All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."

This list also describes the credentials of the last 4 US presidents. At this point one should be leery of any "leader" from Harvard or Yale.

Student Loan Scams

Student loans are often the one type of loan that can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Here is an angry discussion on this issue from On Point, The Dark Side of Student Loans. The cartoon above is Fighting Words by Abell Smith. This cartoonist is part of Cartoonists with Attitude the same group that Ted Rall belongs to.

Education Surveys And Stupid Historical Errors

I read an alarming story in Slate magazine, What High Schoolers Don't Know, about how today's students are morons who know nothing about literature and history. Then I looked at the questions and realized the people who created the survey are also idiots.

The question that riled me was this:

The first permanent English Colony in North America was

1. Salem, Massachusetts
2. Jamestown, Virgina
3. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
4. Providence, Rhode Island

The answer given is Jamestown. The real answer is St John's Newfoundland. The comments for the article are bitter and pedantic in the good sense obsessing over small points of error, (like I am doing now). However the point is that school history is not meant to teach anything but the prevailing civic ideology. Later the same survey shows that students who had more educated parents were more likely answer the questions correctly.