Malek Harris suspended for the season

[Aughnanure]

This thread is stupid now.

yup.

[keefe]

Avid,
From the August 2013 edition of one of my favorite magazines, The Atlantic.

The Architect of School Reform Who Turned Against It
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-counterrevolutionary/309427/

Nutmeg

You have excellent taste in reading material. One of my favorites is a long time contributor to The Atlantic, James Fallows. His insights are always engaging and thought provoking. He offered me a very different perspective on Japan, for instance, that altered some of my views on a culture I thought I knew well. I always look forward to the arrival of The Atlantic.

[keefe]

What if you got paid not to fish?

This great Republic began doing that in 1933. The fishermen got raises in 1965.

[77ncaachamps]

I said nothing about teachers. Or "Union Thugs." But I share some of your thoughts, especially on the role and responsibility of parents. My wife and I had demanding jobs that required significant time and lots of travel. And even though we had Amahs we always ensured one of us was available for school oversight as that was something that could not be delegated. We were actively engaged in their education and they flourished.  My son is a professional educator, teaching university in Italy. I see his passion for his profession, his students, and the art of teaching. He could likely earn more pursuing other interests but he is doing what he loves and I respect that and take great comfort in his choice of career.

But I disagree with your assessment of our schools. I see the results in the business world daily and, frankly, I find it extremely discouraging. The American educational system is not delivering the results this great nation deserves. I don't know where you live but in the high tech nodes there is a critical shortage of skilled talent. Increasingly, we import the talent needed to deliver next generation technology. Someday, as capital shifts off shore, you will find less coming out of Seattle, San Jose, and Rte 128 and more originating in Shanghai, Hyderabad, and Beijing. Perhaps our schools should start teaching Mandarin and Hindi as American prowess is eclipsed and the call center jobs boomerang back to the less talented Americans.

You'll see more coming out of our schools if they didn't dump creative arts (woodshop, metalshop, home ec, etc.) for college preparedness coursework.

Not everyone is made for college. Yet the system is still ramming spheres into square pegs.

We need a nation of makers, producers of all levels. Creativity and ingenuity NOT just in tangible items but concepts and designs.

Plus, comparing India to the US isn't really fair. For one, it's a larger population but somehow you focus on the successful that make it. There is a much LARGER majority that don't and never are part of the same sentence.

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

Nutmeg

You have excellent taste in reading material. One of my favorites is a long time contributor to The Atlantic, James Fallows. His insights are always engaging and thought provoking. He offered me a very different perspective on Japan, for instance, that altered some of my views on a culture I thought I knew well. I always look forward to the arrival of The Atlantic.

His two or three years of living in Shanghai with the family and then reporting about life in China were fabulous.

[Lennys Tap]

And some people simply are incapable of fishing.

True, and in a society as wealthy as ours those people should be taken care of, but....I don't know if you (or anyone else here) saw 60 Minutes expose' on what's happened in the "disability industry" in the past 5-6 years. Twelve million new people, most of whom are not disabled, on the dole - aided and abetted in what amounts to  fraud by lawyers who "guarantee" to move people seamlessly from 104 weeks of unemployment to $23,000 a year of disability compensation. Add in a government uninterested in pursuing these perpetrators of fraud and sadly the "incapable" are lumped in with the cheaters.

[keefe]

I work in IT and part of my responsibility over the years has been to train end users around the world in SAP.  We know to build in extra time to train Americans in everything.  I can remember the first time I was training customer care in China, one of the students actually interrupted me and asked why I was going so slow and talking to them like they were "stupid".  I realized I trained that slowly because that is what I had to do in the US.  I hate to say it, but over time my company has moved a lot of stuff like customer care to Mexico, and the fact is that you pay a lot less for those people and they do a better job, partiularly with cognitive reasoning.  It seems to me that most Americans who work at that level try to memorize their job, while the in the rest of the world the people try to understand their job, so they can react when curves are thrown their way.  In my experience, I don't see that difference in the workforce in true professionals like accountants, programmers, sales and service engineers that keefe mentions, however, but I don't doubt him.  In my world, it is the entry level staff like shipping clerks and customer service where the differences are very pronounced.

Also, as those I work with in IT retire, it is impossible to find American replacements, and my boss goes out of his to try.  But our last three hires have been Indian transplants.

The critical thinking skills needed for innovation are becoming increasingly rare among American technical staff. Hence the need for H-1B visas. Young American coder, developers, electrochemical engineers who can not only execute technical delivery but also improvise 'what if' solutions are bloody difficult to find. There is a reason Bill Gates goes before Congress every year to demand more H-1B's.


WASHINGTON--For the second year in a row, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates ventured to Capitol Hill and urged Congress to let more foreign-born engineers work in the United States and to direct larger numbers of tax dollars to research and education.

Just as he did around the same time last year before a U.S. Senate committee, Gates on Wednesday contended America's competitiveness in the global economy is "at risk." He said Congress, the administration, and the next president must commit to overhauling immigration policy and encouraging both public and private research investment.

The hearing was convened, and Gates invited, to mark the committee's 50th anniversary. The occasion alone foreshadowed an exchange of pleasantries that consumed most of the event.

For example, Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) requested advice, from one father of a 7-year-old daughter to another, about what sort of hardware and software might help her adapt to the new world. (Gates, for the record, gave a whimsical endorsement of the Internet's power to answer all those questions that his parents would have had to leave unanswered back in the day.)

And Republican Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-Texas), who posed a number of questions about skills needed by engineers in the tech space, made Gates a practically unheard-of concession: "You can take any or all of those (questions) or none of them."

One notable exception to the friendly reception, however, came when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) used his five allotted minutes to grill Gates on the merits of visa cap increases. "Will it not hurt those countries and will it also not depress wages for people in our own country?" the congressman asked.

"No," the Microsoft chairman responded sharply. "These top people are going to be hired. It's just a question of where."

Rohrabacher said he's not talking about "top" students. He's concerned about the B and C American students who "fought for our country and kept it free." There's no excuse, he argued, for displacing those people with "A students from India."

An audibly irritated Gates replied that when companies like Microsoft hire top foreign engineers, they create jobs for B and C American students around them. If Microsoft weren't able to hire those top engineers in the United States, it'd be doing so in other countries and surrounding them with native B and C students, he said.
    
Rohrabacher argued that if companies like Microsoft simply raised wages, they'd find plenty of Americans lining up for those jobs.

"No, it's not an issue of raising wages," Gates retorted. "These jobs are very, very high paying jobs."

Earlier in his remarks, Gates said Microsoft was unable to hire one-third of the foreign-born candidates it wished to hire because of too few H-1B visas. In an attempt to show a shortage of qualified Americans to fill his company's posts, he pointed to a 2008 National Science Foundation study that found in 2005, 59 percent of all doctoral degrees and 43 percent of all higher-education degrees in engineering and science are awarded to temporary residents.

Gates also suggested the U.S. government's stance toward high-skilled foreigners is absurd in comparison with other countries. He pointed out Microsoft's decision last year to open an outpost just over the Canadian border from Washington as a sort of refuge for foreign-born employees for whom it couldn't obtain U.S. visas.

Rohrabacher's badgering isn't just talk: He has sponsored a bill that would require employers to prove they're not displacing American workers and fulfill other obligations before obtaining H-1Bs, as have two U.S. senators.

Such efforts enjoy support from groups representing American computer programmers, such as the Programmers Guild, which continue to argue that the worker shortages described by Gates and other high-tech executives in recent years are bogus.

Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of the book Outsourcing America, told CNET News.com on Wednesday that it's wrong for Gates to imply that most H-1Bs are going to the brightest foreigners with advanced degrees and earning them big bucks. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the typical H-1B holder holds a bachelor's degree and is making a median salary of $50,000. And the same NSF report referenced by Gates says less than 1 percent of H-1B recipients in computer-related professions even hold doctoral degrees, and about 44 percent hold master's degrees.

Still, politicians with a skeptical view of visa expansion appear to be largely the exception in Congress. Other members from both political parties at Wednesday's hearing suggested Gates' push for a more liberal immigration policy was right on.

Whether those long-sought changes will occur this year remains unclear. Attempts to overhaul the immigration system collapsed last year, and with them went efforts to hike the number of H-1B visas and green cards.
 
"These top people are going to be hired. It's just a question of where."
--Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates
  
To be fair, Gates emphasized that changes in immigration alone aren't enough. He repeatedly called for improvements in training American teachers and students in science and technology fields at all levels, from kindergartens to universities.

Few in Congress seem to disagree with Gates' push for greater investments in research and education. Last year, the president signed a measure called the America Competes Act into law, which calls for pouring some $33.6 billion into a bevy of federal science, technology and research programs. Members of the Science Committee said they would be pressuring appropriations committees to ensure the target funding amounts are fulfilled in the final budget.

Throughout the hearing, Gates repeatedly received praise for his work through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But at least one member, Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.), who represents what she called the "challenging communities" of Watts, Compton, and Long Beach, clearly wanted Gates to be even more generous. She pressed the billionaire philanthropist to commit to sponsoring more scholarships with guaranteed jobs at companies like his waiting after a university degree is obtained.

Gates said he agrees scholarships are important, but he wasn't willing to go as far as Richardson had wished.

"There's just no shortage of jobs being offered to those top students in computer science," he said. "They are highly sought after."

[keefe]

I was taught by nuns. No ruler hitting, but they were fond of back of the head slaps and throwing things. Usually erasers. Honestly, it made me pay attention better, I didn't mind it.

I went to Georgetown Prep which has "The Board of Education." This device was created in the 19th Century and was still in use in the latter half of the last century. I believe that "The Board" delivered more than a few lessons in its almost two hundred years of existence.

[keefe]

His two or three years of living in Shanghai with the family and then reporting about life in China were fabulous.

Looking Into the Sun is a compelling look at Capitalism from the Asian perspective. And his Blind Into Baghdad was a must read for every officer struggling with the complexities of our Iraq policy. Fallows is quite simply one of America's most gifted writers.

[keefe]

I know many people who flourish, demand excellence of themselves, and live lives rich in experience.

They just don't find the need to constantly tell everyone about it.

You and I have very different standards and expectations. And therein lies the difference.

One can tell everyone what they think they know. Or one can share actual experience. Playing on the field is very different than sitting in the stands.

[muwarrior69]

The critical thinking skills needed for innovation are becoming increasingly rare among American technical staff. Hence the need for H-1B visas. Young American coder, developers, electrochemical engineers who can not only execute technical delivery but also improvise 'what if' solutions are bloody difficult to find. There is a reason Bill Gates goes before Congress every year to demand more H-1B's.


WASHINGTON--For the second year in a row, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates ventured to Capitol Hill and urged Congress to let more foreign-born engineers work in the United States and to direct larger numbers of tax dollars to research and education.

Just as he did around the same time last year before a U.S. Senate committee, Gates on Wednesday contended America's competitiveness in the global economy is "at risk." He said Congress, the administration, and the next president must commit to overhauling immigration policy and encouraging both public and private research investment.

The hearing was convened, and Gates invited, to mark the committee's 50th anniversary. The occasion alone foreshadowed an exchange of pleasantries that consumed most of the event.

For example, Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) requested advice, from one father of a 7-year-old daughter to another, about what sort of hardware and software might help her adapt to the new world. (Gates, for the record, gave a whimsical endorsement of the Internet's power to answer all those questions that his parents would have had to leave unanswered back in the day.)

And Republican Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-Texas), who posed a number of questions about skills needed by engineers in the tech space, made Gates a practically unheard-of concession: "You can take any or all of those (questions) or none of them."

One notable exception to the friendly reception, however, came when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) used his five allotted minutes to grill Gates on the merits of visa cap increases. "Will it not hurt those countries and will it also not depress wages for people in our own country?" the congressman asked.

"No," the Microsoft chairman responded sharply. "These top people are going to be hired. It's just a question of where."

Rohrabacher said he's not talking about "top" students. He's concerned about the B and C American students who "fought for our country and kept it free." There's no excuse, he argued, for displacing those people with "A students from India."

An audibly irritated Gates replied that when companies like Microsoft hire top foreign engineers, they create jobs for B and C American students around them. If Microsoft weren't able to hire those top engineers in the United States, it'd be doing so in other countries and surrounding them with native B and C students, he said.
    
Rohrabacher argued that if companies like Microsoft simply raised wages, they'd find plenty of Americans lining up for those jobs.

"No, it's not an issue of raising wages," Gates retorted. "These jobs are very, very high paying jobs."

Earlier in his remarks, Gates said Microsoft was unable to hire one-third of the foreign-born candidates it wished to hire because of too few H-1B visas. In an attempt to show a shortage of qualified Americans to fill his company's posts, he pointed to a 2008 National Science Foundation study that found in 2005, 59 percent of all doctoral degrees and 43 percent of all higher-education degrees in engineering and science are awarded to temporary residents.

Gates also suggested the U.S. government's stance toward high-skilled foreigners is absurd in comparison with other countries. He pointed out Microsoft's decision last year to open an outpost just over the Canadian border from Washington as a sort of refuge for foreign-born employees for whom it couldn't obtain U.S. visas.

Rohrabacher's badgering isn't just talk: He has sponsored a bill that would require employers to prove they're not displacing American workers and fulfill other obligations before obtaining H-1Bs, as have two U.S. senators.

Such efforts enjoy support from groups representing American computer programmers, such as the Programmers Guild, which continue to argue that the worker shortages described by Gates and other high-tech executives in recent years are bogus.

Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of the book Outsourcing America, told CNET News.com on Wednesday that it's wrong for Gates to imply that most H-1Bs are going to the brightest foreigners with advanced degrees and earning them big bucks. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the typical H-1B holder holds a bachelor's degree and is making a median salary of $50,000. And the same NSF report referenced by Gates says less than 1 percent of H-1B recipients in computer-related professions even hold doctoral degrees, and about 44 percent hold master's degrees.

Still, politicians with a skeptical view of visa expansion appear to be largely the exception in Congress. Other members from both political parties at Wednesday's hearing suggested Gates' push for a more liberal immigration policy was right on.

Whether those long-sought changes will occur this year remains unclear. Attempts to overhaul the immigration system collapsed last year, and with them went efforts to hike the number of H-1B visas and green cards.
 
"These top people are going to be hired. It's just a question of where."
--Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates
  
To be fair, Gates emphasized that changes in immigration alone aren't enough. He repeatedly called for improvements in training American teachers and students in science and technology fields at all levels, from kindergartens to universities.

Few in Congress seem to disagree with Gates' push for greater investments in research and education. Last year, the president signed a measure called the America Competes Act into law, which calls for pouring some $33.6 billion into a bevy of federal science, technology and research programs. Members of the Science Committee said they would be pressuring appropriations committees to ensure the target funding amounts are fulfilled in the final budget.

Throughout the hearing, Gates repeatedly received praise for his work through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But at least one member, Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.), who represents what she called the "challenging communities" of Watts, Compton, and Long Beach, clearly wanted Gates to be even more generous. She pressed the billionaire philanthropist to commit to sponsoring more scholarships with guaranteed jobs at companies like his waiting after a university degree is obtained.

Gates said he agrees scholarships are important, but he wasn't willing to go as far as Richardson had wished.

"There's just no shortage of jobs being offered to those top students in computer science," he said. "They are highly sought after."

I'm not an IT guy and perhaps finding people trained here with "critical thinking" skills is difficult. I worked in Big Pharma on the R&D side for 40 years and have personally seen many highly skilled clinical scientists loose their jobs to out sourcing. Many of my close friends some with MDs were replaced by foreign physicians who can do research but cannot practice here simply because they can hire them at a much lower salary. I have witnessed an entire in-house pharmacovigilence department completey outsourced to India. Then we wonder why so many "wonder drugs" are being withdrawn from the market due to unforeseen safety concerns.

[brandx]

Why don't you visit a school instead of lipping off about them? When I say visit, stay for a day and see the ins and outs. Maybe you could volunteer and be there for many days. See what walks through the doors. The educators have to work with EVERYONE that comes in those doors! They don't get to pick and choose like businesses pick and choose their product. Unfortunately, most students come from broken families, others go home to an empty house because the parents are working odd shifts. A ridiculous amount of drug and alcohol problems, sexual abuse, poverty, students with cognitive problems, learning disabilities, physical impairments, lack of discipline, and disrespect for the profession itself because people like you spout off and you really don't have any idea what they are talking about. By the way, all of those things have to be taken into consideration before teachers can begin teaching their full school day. All lesson plans must meet the needs of all the varied abilities in the classroom. They teach the full day, but then teachers need to find the time to prepare their new innovative lessons, incorporate technology into their teaching, teach the common core, correct and revise homework, purchase additional educational materials with money out of their own pockets, runoff papers that they will need for the next day, respond to parent emails and phone calls once their school day is over. This is a short list of what they really do, believe me, there is way more! The really interesting part is that almost every parent has a different expectation for their child. Many parents have attitudes (like yourself) that are not realistic or true. That forms a disrespect for the profession. One last thing. Teachers work very long hours. In the current teaching profession, teachers must update their educational license every five years. They must go back to school and get six credits to maintain their license. They pay for these credits, and guess when they do this......in the summer. Yeah, the UNPAID summer vacations! It's funny. Construction workers get unemployment benefits when they can't work during the winter, but when teachers can't work in the summer people, like yourself, think it is great to be unemployed for them. "YOU GET YOUR SUMMERS OFF." Would you like your summers off if you were unpaid? For most teachers (you can always find exceptions which I'm sure you would try) summers are spent on district initiatives, getting trained on new curriculum, nonviolent crisis intervention, technology training and much, much more. Most of this is done without getting paid anything!

The bottom line is, the issue isn't our schools, but the lack of parenting in the home. Fifty years ago, we didn't have such a high divorce rate. We didn't have parents coming to the defense of their kids when they got in trouble. Society looked up to our educators and therefore students had a great deal of respect. It's so easy to blame the public schools.Go ahead! Unfortunately, you and so many others that haven't spent time in our schools love to point fingers. I dare you to spend time in our schools and see what these teachers do on a day to day basis. If you would, you wouldn't slam their profession. Most are still what is right in our society.

By the way, who are the "union thugs"? The kindergarten teacher? The art teacher? The fifth grade teacher? Try to step out of yourself and worry about something that you actually understand.

+1000

[brandx]

I know many people who flourish, demand excellence of themselves, and live lives rich in experience.

They just don't find the need to constantly tell everyone about it.

But.... I thought narcissism was a positive character attribute. Seems to be #1 on Keefe's list - just read his posts and you too will know how great he is.

[brandx]

My wife also a teacher (well, a speech pathologist) in the Bridgeport school system.  She is on the Bridgeport Teacher's contract and she gets paid throughout the summer (26 payments/year), except the checks are a little higher because the union dues are not taken out during the summer, but no balloon payment.

We are very familiar with the public schools.  I sent my kid to a Catholic High School, where the kids all do much better than the public high schools, despite the fact that the facilities are not as good and the teachers are less well paid, etc.  I have always said that what you are paying for mostly in a Catholic High School in CT is not religious training, though you get that, not better teachers, not better facilities, not better class sizes, etc.  You are paying for better classmates and thus a better learning environment.

You hit the nail on the head!! The problem with public education is that it is public. They have to take everyone - learning disabilities, handicapped, gang members, etc., etc. All of that affects what can be taught and the speed at which it can be taught.

[brandx]

Hmmm....A thread on a suspension of an MU recruit evolves (devolves) into a commentary of 80's and 90's music, our educational system (and the politics associated with it) and union power.

Time for the Superbar?

Maybe we should add that Buzz can't recruit a "big" 

[keefe]

I'm not an IT guy and perhaps finding people trained here with "critical thinking" skills is difficult. I worked in Big Pharma on the R&D side for 40 years and have personally seen many highly skilled clinical scientists loose their jobs to out sourcing. Many of my close friends some with MDs were replaced by foreign physicians who can do research but cannot practice here simply because they can hire them at a much lower salary. I have witnessed an entire in-house pharmacovigilence department completey outsourced to India. Then we wonder why so many "wonder drugs" are being withdrawn from the market due to unforeseen safety concerns.

The key driver in running trials offshore had nothing to do with economics. We did a JV between GE Capital, Quintiles, Sun Microsystems, Harvard University/Harvard Care Group, and Singtel/Temasek Holdings to bring ethical Clinical Trial infrastructure to Asia. The issue was that regulatory jurisdictions were no longer accepting USFDA approvals as relevant to the demographics of their statistical samples/patient populations. The opportunity was not to run trials on the cheap but to establish ethically-based discovery and development in other parts of the world.

Our Chief Ethicist was A. G. Breitenstein, who authored the federal Hipaa legislation for Kennedy. A.G.'s contributions were essential for the very reasons you mention - the validity issue with trials run in India and China. Too many trials run in those countries secured data lock in less than a year. We brought world-class clinical trial infrastructure to Asia so that Trials could be run for Big Pharma with the integrity and confidence that investigation on human subjects demands. But the point of running trials off-shore had nothing to do with USFDA regulatory approvals. The creation of parallel investigations in Asia was for the simple fact that those jurisdictions were demanding that Trials be run on statistical samples more representative of their patient populations.

I think that a lot of the down sizing within Big Pharma in-house research has far more to do with industry consolidation and litigation-related issues than outsourcing primary and secondary level research to India. And as you know, the best investigations run parallel studies to expand sample diversity and all study requires peer review before any molecule goes into a human subject.  

[Pakuni]

You hit the nail on the head!! The problem with public education is that it is public. They have to take everyone - learning disabilities, handicapped, gang members, etc., etc. All of that affects what can be taught and the speed at which it can be taught.

Not to mention recent immigrants who arrive in this country not knowing the language and being poorly prepared for school. Then we give those kids standardized tests and punish their schools when they fare poorly on them.

[Spotcheck Billy]

and I thought this thread was bad when we wereactually still discussing Malek Harris 

[keefe]

+1000

It figures you would endorse that unintelligible rant...

[willie warrior]

Maybe we should add that Buzz can't recruit a "big" 

At least that would be more on topic, and would also generate numerous name calling posts toward anybody that might agree with that. That should please those posters.

[robertoc]

It figures you would endorse that unintelligible rant...

And you have officially become the first on my "ignore" list...

[robertoc]

+1000

agreed. well said.  Its easy to dump on the public school teachers, the NEA, those who design the curriculum, etc and to ignore the often difficult social realities that really shape our public schools today...

[Aughnanure]

agreed. well said.  Its easy to dump on the public school teachers, the NEA, those who design the curriculum, etc and to ignore the often difficult social realities that really shape our public schools today...

Yup, you want to ignore the inequalities they face their whole life and then expect it to be made up in the 7 hours they spend with a teacher.

[KenoshaWarrior]

How did this morph from Malek Harris to education?

[tower912]

When the conversation slid from what he did to the Code of conduct at the school he attends.    Predictable hilarity ensued.