Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Dismal Nation's Report Card

Dismal "Nation's report Card" inspired by an article from Townhall.com

As a conservative Libertarian congressional candidate in Texas district 10, one of my signature issues will be to defund 100% the Dept. of Education. It was started by Pres. Carter in 1976. It is a complete failure, unless you consider it's main purpose to support unions and dues for Demoncratic (accurate spelling intended) campaign contributions.

Take a look at this article and the report card itself. Then tell me where I am wrong. One of my favorite sayings is the definition of insanity - "doing the same things over again and expecting different results." Here's the link, then I will finish with a true story about my education.

https://townhall.com/columnists/myraadams/2018/05/08/a-dismal-economic-future-revealed-in-the-nations-report-card-n2478468

just a sample:

Here is the percentage of Grade 12 public and non-public school students at or above proficiency by subject and race in math and reading:

Math: 25 percent student average. By race: Asian 47 percent, white 32 percent, Hispanic 12 percent, African American, 7 percent.

Reading: 37 percent student average. By race: Asian 49 percent, white 46 percent, Hispanic 25 percent, African American 17 percent.

Writing: 27 percent all students.

Science: 22 percent all students.

U.S. History:12 percent all students.

The full report is here:

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/

Now for my personal story. I was in college and taking very difficult engineering courses. One of my Professors was trying his best to educate us in the hard sciences, emphasis on the "hard". We had a mechanics class, technically "Statics and Mechanics" which deals with various loads, forces and stress levels in different materials. This is a critically important skill to have if you ever want to design any parts to work in any type of machinery, from planes, trains and automobiles to dishwashers, etc.

During the 80's many engineering universities began to admit more women. Many of them had a different idea about how they should be graded. This was news to the traditional male students who were mostly clueless about this social concept. Our test scoring was extremely rigorous and totally unforgiving. Ten test questions were worth ten points each. Either you got them right or wrong. You got either ZERO points for an answer or ten points.


As you can imagine this was a new concept to many of us. The women (yes, only the women would do this - so much for equality) would approach the professor after the class and say something like, 'I got the right answer but I just missed a decimal point. What about partial credit?"

My professor looked at them cold-heartedly and said in broken English, "You build bridge, bridge fall down, NO partial credit!" That was the end of that. He would not budge. It was at that time that I learned the most valuable lesson of my engineering career. He was 100% right. Throughout the years, I never , ever forgot that principle. Sometimes there really is no partial credit in life. You have to get it right 100% or not at all. Sometimes being merciless has great value.


Afterwards I went on in my career to design automotive fuel systems, cruise control systems and missile systems for the military among many other designs. About 10 years ago there was a terrible tragedy in Minnesota where a bridge fell down across a river and killed several people. It was then that the professor's words came back to the front of my mind.



Think about this for a moment. Who do you want as your design engineer for your car's brake systems? How about your airline pilot, or the wing designer? Do you think the military wants smart bombs that work most of the time or all the time? Being from the Houston area, I have had the pleasure to meet many astronauts and NASA personnel. A relative of mine was one of the engineers that designed the plumbing on the International Space Station. What that really means is that he designed the toilet flushing system. Have you ever seen the tv show The Big Bang Theory? They did an episode about a faulty toilet. Without getting graphic, if that system doesn't work, the you know what literally hits the fan.



Think about how many bridges you and your family drive over every day without a care in the world. Do you want an engineer who was trained unmercifully as I was or would you prefer someone who got partial credit?

The government is not capable of providing any educational experience close to what I have and they have proven to be an abysmal failure at social engineering. It's time to end the charade and say to the Dept. of Education, "NO partial credit!"

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