The Good Old Days?

Are there good old days?  Depends on how you look at it.  It never seems so good at the time.  Don't forget. Someday THIS will be the good old days.  Here's my perspective.

• TV.  I remember when you had to turn on the TV well before the time you wanted to watch what was on so the TV could warm up.  The kids were the remote.  Hour long shows were much closer to actually being an hour long. If you missed a show, you missed it; no going back, no recording to see it later.  There were only 3 channels.  The picture was black and white and you just had to imagine the color.

• Cars. The AC was an open window.  You actually had some hope that you could fix your own car.  Cars got about 25 mpg - that hasn't changed much - but, a fill up was less than $5! Someone put gas in the car for you and washed your windshield and checked your oil and would check your tire air pressure if you wanted - all for FREE! If your tires needed air THAT was free.

• Microwaves didn't exist. Dinner will be ready in two hours.

• You drank the water from the kitchen faucet - it was FREE!

• Nobody recycled.  Look where that got us.

• When you left the house, you couldn't answer your phone, and we survived!  You couldn't call whenever you  wanted and just expect someone to answer.  You were out of touch most of the time.

• You were younger back then, but now you know more - or do you?

• Movies didn't come to you, you went to the movies.  It was only a couple of bucks and you got cartoons, not advertisement.  The popcorn didn't cost $15!

• Kids spent a lot of time out doors, doing stuff, exploring.  Your parents probably didn't know where you were for most of the day. 

• When you wanted to look something up you had to go to the library.  Finding what you wanted could be a long frustrating process.  Now, you can quickly find anything about anything and you can't trust any of it.

• Can you imagine what things will be like in 20, 30, 50 years?  No, you can't.  We didn't imagine this time very well 50 years ago.  We have things no one ever thought of then and we don't have things we imagined that we would.  Where's my flying car anyway?  My early retirement?  My 4 day work week?  We were wrong.

Good old days?  Some of it.

River the Lion

Living on the flood plain of a river is like sleeping with a lion.

 You might think he’s your pet, but he’s still unpredictable nature.  Some education in geology, meteorology, … - basically natural sciences – should be mandatory.  A little knowledge in these things and maybe people would be smart enough to not build in places where they are sure to be wiped out by nature.  There was a lot of flooding in this area over the last few days, worse than the flooding that happened in 2006 to the same area.  I’ve heard people say that we are only supposed to get floods like this about every 100 years.  Really?   I didn’t know nature worked on a time table like that.  Guess what – it doesn’t! Anyone looking to build a home should be able to investigate their building place and figure out whether building there is wise.  Someone trying to sell you the land, the builder, even local “experts” won’t tell you a straight story.  You have to figure it out yourself.  You need to be educated enough you figure out what is right.

 So, there’s the problem again.  Education.  I’m out of touch with primary level education these days.  My kids are way beyond that age.  So, I don’t know exactly what is taught in elementary and high school.  If these students are being taught the basics of math, science, history, English, etc., then they are not learning it.   I teach at a community college; the twilight zone between primary education and university level.  The students I see don’t have the very basic of knowledge in any subject area as far as I can see.  To be fair, I do find a few, very few, who do seem to have learned some things in their previous education.  But the majority are clueless.

 So, what’s wrong?  Is it that these things are not being taught or is it that the way it is being taught?  I’m guessing it’s the latter.   We are lazy in our delivery of education, but worse, the students are lazy in learning.   They just don’t care, or think that learning is the job of the teacher, not the student.  You can’t force someone to learn, they have to decide to do it.  Teachers who can excite and motivate students should be sought out, paid well, supported and teach the rest of us who are mediocre teachers how to do it better.  Yes, I think I’m a mediocre teacher.  I've never had a great teacher to model after or any training.  But, I work at it to the point where that is all I have time to do.   We may need more teachers so that the class size is smaller, but I think a big focus should be on teaching teachers how to be the most effective.  That’s where the money needs to go.

Wait! - What?

Just had to buy a new refrigerator. The prices of these things are outrageous. Most of them are in the $2000 to $3000 range! When talking to the sales person he also wanted (and highly recommend) buying an extra service warranty for 3 or 5 years. He said that in the past refrigerators were expected to last for 20 years or more. In fact, our last 2 did survive that long. Now 8 years is the expected lifetime of a refrigerator. EIGHT YEARS! Really?

Is that the best we can do as we go forward into the future? Things should last longer not less. How wasteful. How disrespectful of the consumer and the environment. This way of thinking and doing business has to stop.