EDUCATION EXPERIMENTS: I often disagree with Thomas Friedman but today I'm fully supportive of his article on higher education. He looks at some of the
new approaches to delivering top-notch lectures to the students of the world at nominal cost. Most education today is like the early days of car manufacturing: One at a time, hand crafted. Education hasn't changed in 600 years.
Friedman touts a lecture company by the name of Coursera that was formed by Stanford professors. In it, the lectures can be delivered anywhere in the world. The other facets of the education, like asking questions, can be solved in ways that don't involve the super-star lecturer. This is much like car manufacturing of today where expertise is allotted to where it is needed, less expensive talent is used to do the menial tasks. The car designer is not the builder of the car. The modern world has progressed because of the division of labor where people are expert at their specific job. If it is a really hard job, then talent will be found to accomplish the task. If it is a menial job, there are plenty who either because of talent or motivation will be perfectly happy with that task.
We are at a threshold of education that will greatly benefit the world. Education has been in a bubble mode, like housing, and it is about to burst. The traditional approach is simply unaffordable.
The Senate on Wednesday rejected every single budget being offered this year, leaving the chamber — and therefore the federal government — without a plan to address Medicare, Social Security and the other major entitlement programs that are driving deficits and debt.
All the articles about how the Republicans are obstreperous really look pretty foolish on the subject of the budget. The Democrats haven't even offered a budget for 3 years but they won't even discuss a variety of Republican ones.
Washington's envoy to Israel says the U.S. has plans in place to attack Tehran if necessary to prevent it from becoming an atomic military power.
Obama needs something dramatic to reverse the election trends, so this must be it. Ahh, another courageous decision, at least to the left wing media.
By the time these new babies are adults, hopefully we won't count them as minorities. At the beginning of the 20th century, we had all kinds of minorities, there were Irish, Italians, Greeks, etc. A generation or so later, they were all Americans. We need to stop worrying about minorities. No more affirmative action. No more special housing arrangements. No special training in schools. Let liberty be the watchword and the minorities will want to come to the U.S. and go through the struggle of becoming a citizen without ever thinking about their fore bearers.
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