evolution creations

It's a sad truth in this wonderful country that we live in, and that is we are one of the most technologically advanced, economic center, politically involved, last super power in the world–and yet we have not figured out that the future that we live in today is hinging by a thin piece of hair because we have not come to realize and mature our education system to keep pace with the world that we live in.

If we look at other nations around the world, we can see nations rising and falling, but the one thing that is constant is that those who make education a priority tend to be those who will in the end prosper greatly. What's interesting about this is that coming into a presidential election year, one would think that this would be just the time to get some ideas on the table and to put into effect a plan that will ensure the long term survivability of our future–our children and generations after.

Just by a review of their individual websites:

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/education/
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/19ce50b5-daa8-4795-b92d-92bd0d985bca.htm

The first thing that stands out is that the Democratic candidates seem to have a clear picture as to compartmentalizing the issue–don't tackle the entire elephant, just go for each leg and eventually the out of control beast will fall down and become manageable. Looking at the Republican side, it's a lot of opinion without much structure and to me leaves me wondering about whether or not the root issues are clear enough for public policy to be made.

Starting with McCain, let's look at his quote he has:

American education must be worthy of the promise we make to our children and ourselves–the freedom and opportunity to chase our dreams.

Now while this is a great sentimental hallmark type of message, what it doesn't say is "what freedoms are we talking about" and "who's opportunity"? If we are talking about those who would be typically McCain's constituents, then sure, these folks do have the freedom and opportunity to chase after their dreams, no matter how out of reach, lofty, ill thought out that they are. But when we look at our country as a whole what was just described is only a small slice of that pie. There are those who come from backgrounds where all they have to look forward to is what's comfortable or straightforward, such as generations of people in family businesses or trades because their parents or parents parents have always done it, and that's what they are good at. Or folks who come from environments that tell them that if they aren't good at something then they are good for nothing, and because they are not good at math and science, but can dribble a ball or throw a touchdown or hit a home run, that those are the only things going for them and they push and push for the sports dream. Or folks who idolize their favorite entertainers and believe in their hearts heart that this is what they are meant to do and sure enough perhaps is the only thing that they can do.

What's sad about this is that the later is the majority of American's and not the former. We need to look at this from the perspective of not chasing our dreams, but making dreams a reality. I've seen what happens when you chase a dream–like the coyote chasing after the roadrunning, no matter how fast, clever or smart he things he is, the roadrunning is always just a tad ahead of him and in the end just ends up getting hurt or burned. How often have we heard this story coming to be? I'd say more often than not. What about this statement here:

John McCain believes our schools can and should compete to be the most innovative, flexible and student-centered – not safe havens for the uninspired and unaccountable. He believes we should let them compete for the most effective, character-building teachers, hire them, and reward them.

Now this goes into the meat and potatoes of this discussion. Now we are focused on the schools and the environment that we expect them to live in for 12+ years. But before we go any further, let's look at what Hillary and Obama have to say on this topic.

Both of them agree that:

Early Years

• Parent education in the early years pays off and that we should do more to help parents learn to become better parents.
• Hook em while they are young–early start or head start programs get kids on the right track early enough and takes every opportunity to influence them from day 1.
• Child care is a major issue as with parents having to rely on 2 parent incomes, raising children can no longer be standardized to 1 member works and the other raises the family.

K-12

• The no child left behind really isn't working and does not achieve the goals that it was intended to achieve. It either needs to be left to the side or reformed, but either way, in it's current form is probably doing more harm than good.
• Address the drop out rate
• Youth programs that allow them to do other things outside of the classroom that are aimed at keeping kids out of trouble and providing structure during the hours between school and when their parents are out of work.
• Outreach and learning opportunity programs
• The need for either specialized teachers (math and science) or recruit administration and teachers and fill the gaps that exist in rural and urban settings.

Higher Education

• Both would agree that reforms need to be made from a funding perspective to make it easier to get scholarships, loans, and coverage of the costs of school

So what's wrong in all of this? Well to start with, let's go back to the beginning, where are the idea's that will ensure that parents are parents who have gone into the idea of raising a child with open eyes and better understanding of things? There should be a nationally funded and potentially required program for people who are interested in having children. This program would provide education in various areas, such as health care (everyone needs to be able to provide basic child care to children, heck we probably know more legal-eeze than we do about addressing medical problems), nutrition and diet, exercise, responsibility, patience, time management, etc. Similar to a bar, while your child is under the age of 18, you would be required to renew this license if you will each year, at which point new information or different information will be available based on the changing needs of your family situation, your individual situation, and your child's situation, such as drug and sex education and awareness and communication in the 21st century with your developing child. What would be the benefits out of this? For those who complete the program successfully, they will be registered in a national database and be allowed access to further government benefits, such as child care reductions/subsidizations, school credits, tax credits, etc. We can use our imagination here, but the idea is to make it very appealing for parents to want to A) go through this, and B) continue learning about this as time goes on and as their child matures.

Moving into K-12 the biggest gap that we have is that we are not doing anything to:

• Restructure the administration of the educational system as a whole
• Address funding issues to give those in less tax affluent area's more ability to conduct themselves at a competitive level
• Provide ONE federal program that is plain and straight forward–IF you signup to go through a undergraduate program in a particular discipline that is predetermined by this program (such as math, science, sociology, psychology, business) and go through a graduate program to learn to become an educator, while meeting these criteria (see below), will be provided with FULL funding for their education (undergraduate and graduate), a monthly allowance that covers BASIC needs based on national averages and area cost of living for strictly food related items, transportation credit or waivers, housing credit or waivers. Obviously you could provide other incentives afterwards such as a home buyer program, relocation packages, continual education credit, etc and make these all based on some new formula for understanding if the educator is actually educating their students and their students are taking that information and being able to apply this on some standardized way (without a standardized test persay). Perhaps a new way to look at standardizing ciriculum, more from a perspective of what needs to be taught and leave it up to the individual districts to measure that or to go out and find out what makes private schools so competitive and adopt some of those standards.
• Maintain a drug free (all legal drugs as well, such as smoking, drinking, prescription drugs, designer drugs) record
• No convictions
• GPA of 3 or higher
• Volunteer at least 20 hours each calendar month of attendance (proof is required) in a program that is federally acceptable
• Continual enrollment with no larger than a 2 month break in enrollment.

At any rate, we need to start with not only the teachers, but also the students. And what better way than to make the parents responsible for their children. I know from my own experiences, part of what made school such a drag, specially during K-12 was that there were those in class that you knew just were there because they had to be. If they did something wrong, you couldn't discipline the child like you could in the old days and the parents would most likely try and reason or strong arm their way out of the situation–end game is that the student would get away scott free. So what's the solution, make the parents responsible for their actions, punishable by fines and/or jail time. If a student skips class, automatically that's a $X fine. A student assaults another student, the parents are jailed for assault and battery. I tell you if the parents start taking on the consequences for their children, right quick we'll see a movement where parents are taking the matter into their own hands and doing what is necessary to communicate with their children and not have the expectation that they will take care of the problems of the child and responsibility will begin to foster. This is perhaps the largest gap that we have in today's society that we don't have any way of instilling responsibility into our children in a consistent manner. Each parent will be different and have different ideas of what's right and wrong, but if all of the parents are getting penalized by actions of their children, we should see a more normalized curve emerge whereby parents will have a more consistent way of dealing with these issues and standing behind certain ones.

So after watching yesterday’s episode of Medium, which by the way RULES, I flipped on the local news and wouldn’t you know to my dismay there was a segment on how waiters and waitresses are putting together websites that disseminate customer information to the public regarding:

• What Restaurant
• Name of Person
• Summary of Events
• Date
• Amount of Check
• Amount of Tip

all for the public to view and to critique. Actually I’d assume that this is more so for those within the industry to critique and to know whether or not that person is a bad tipper.

But what questions come up with this type of behavior? First off, let’s think about the actual economics of this. Take one example off their website (which by the way appears to be going through some technical difficulties, probably because of a poorly written script to host the page, and a poor host of the site):

• Dennis Gallagher
• Number in Party:4
• Date: 02/16/08
• Location: Upscale, Downtown Cleveland, OH
• Amount of Bill: $213
• Amount of Tip: $25

Now let’s break this down. So your telling me that for a period of 1 hour, you have to get drinks, appetizers, main course and desert for 4 people, and of that you make $25 straight up? Doing the math, I would say you would make close to $1000 per week (assuming 40 hours a week and 1 party per hour). Now you might say to yourself, well that sounds pretty good. So I ask myself, in a typical restaurant is your server only waiting on you? The answer to that would be no–typically due to the economies of scale, the server has many tables, so they could be serving more than 1 party at a time. And since they are for the most part always busy, it is a revolving door. Brace yourself, if you continued this math lesson, that person would be banking $52k per year. Now some reality checks.

First off, do they declare all $52k per year as taxes? Or would the temptation of an all cash system deter someone from giving Uncle Sam his fair share? I tell you what, those who are in corporate environments, don’t have that luxury and are pigeon holed into following the letter of the law. The income is tracked, the W-2′s are mailed, Uncle Sam wants his cut. Now is $52k unreasonable? I think not! Just doing a quick search, I’d say that the average wage in America is about half that per week.

Now you may say that I’m being unfair to the people who do these types of jobs–ABSOLUTELY NOT! I think what they do is a necessary job, one that comes at a high rate of demands, and requires someone to be quick on their feet and good with recalling a lot of information from their short term memory. But you know what, considering the other jobs out there, it’s a lot of rinse and repeat wouldn’t you think? The soup lists don’t change during the course of a shift (generally), the menu typically doesn’t change, the eating behaviors of people doing really change. I mean it’s not like you work for a software development company where you have 2 million lines of code that continually change from person to person, new code checked in, old code checked out, things are moving around, and you have to keep yourself up2date on everything that is going on around you as well as changes to the base code from version to version! WOW!

Here comes the kicker. I ask you gentle people, cause I am assuming that servers are mild mannered and reasonable people–what is fair these days? I find myself looking at the service provided and what is being asked, and wonder to myself are we just becoming greedy or believe that self worth is measured in the eyes of the beholder and not by the market? 10% isn’t good enough these days, now it’s 15%, soon to be 20%, when does it stop? Are we going to continue being nickeled all the way to 50%!!! If it gets this high will people stop and thing to themselves, OMG, why do I have to pay so much?!?!?

Let’s be reasonable people, if I got to charge a tip for all the extra services that I provided, my customer’s would be BROKE! Our economic system currently strives on the believe that quality services deserve quality and FAIR compensation. But let’s look at all those people in so called ‘white collar’ jobs. Are there times when you think that your bonus each year isn’t all that fair? But do you always go in and tell your boss ‘you know what, I don’t think that 3k bonus was fair’. Or when you get that 3% raise, you tell them again ‘you know what, I don’t think I deserved 3%, I want more’. More, more, more, more. That’s the same old tune that American’s are whining about. Job’s aren’t necessarily out there to make you rich–sometimes you work to get the job done and take satisfaction in knowing that even though you didn’t get a monitary reward you know inside that what you did had value.

All jobs are like this, so let’s not single out the service industry. We are ALL in a service industry these days. We all have customers, we all have to work long hours, and do things that we don’t necessarily want to do, but know that in order to keep employed in these changing times and with George W Bush at the helm of this sinking ship, we have to do these things to get by and make it through another day.

Tips are just one way of making an income, let me ask all of you this question, if you walked into Best Buy and you have a pushy sales person who is trying to sell you a 50″ Plasma are you going to buy it from them? If that person works on tip, that’s their livelihood, shouldn’t you pay patronage to the time he spent talking you through this complex system and all the things you need? What kind of tip should he get when you DON’T purchase a TV from them but took up 30 minutes of their time that they could be selling an item to someone who is more serious or more able to understand what it is that they want? I know you all know what I’m talking about here.

We have to approach this from a fair vantage point. In this case, using the example that I gave, 10% sounds more than fair–15% if you got someone who really cares about what they did and is more selfless about it. Tips are just a way to say “Thank you”, and sometimes we forget, sometimes we don’t feel that it was entirely up to OUR own individual and highly bias standards, sometimes we can’t afford it and 10% is actually at the top of our budget, sometimes we just plain feel that standards are standards and 10% is 10% across the board–whether its you or the next, principles hold true and 10% is held all the way down the line. Why are these a bad thing?

I have some customer’s who are reasonable and others who are not so reasonable, and others who I think are just plain out of their minds sometimes when they ask for things that it would seem so plainly obvious what the answer would be–but is my reaction to treat them any different, or say that I’m not paid enough to take their petty issues? I think the answer to that is plainly no. Regardless of what the customer brings to the table, in a service industry one where we are concerned about service delivery and where we/I care about what I do irregardless of how the person on the other side feels or expresses their happy/not so happy experiences, I do the best that I can each and every time. This is the price we pay folks, so either get use to it, or move to a place where tipping is not required/expected, or move to a place where the cost of living is so high you forget about tips and move to a job where you have stable income each and every week.