I taught several generations of EMTs

[nadinbrzezinski]

(Posted in another thread but deserves it's own OP)

with a broken down board, and chalk I bought myself. We used and reused and reused equipment to teach them how to spike a bag. Yep, those bags that they did not throw away at the ER, we used and reused and reused.

They were fine EMTs... but if we had the resources we would not have had to do some things that a few here might find questionable. Such as... teach them how to start an IV on each other, because I did not have a training arm. Or the ever so favorite and gagglingly fabulous, insertion of a nasogastric tube. When they had to do that to dad, well been there, done that, in training. Again they were fine EMTs, but there is a limit on how far you can do when you don't have the resources.

And there were a few things we could not teach without a training manikin, see CPR. I am sure in a class room teaching jenny and bob how to read there is the equivalent of the CPR manikin. By the way back then I had somebody donate a resuci baby to us... and I manage to scrounge a ten year old adult resusci ani... if I had to buy both of them new it would have been close to 4K we did not have.

I will ask this. Have those of you applauding what is going on ever been in education at any level? I am sure there are equivalents to what I have described. And yes I used sand to teach as well, effectively... but again there is a limit. Now the way it looks to me, some people will be fine if we just go back to teaching kids how to do math at the beach with shells... (Yes we did that, to help with a few kids at risk)... or for that matter, teach them their letters on chalk boards that you can use and reuse. Granted, they could be effective... I mean they once were considered state of the art. Hell, for all I care, perhaps go down and find some of the real old readers... (wait, a few public schools are doing that anyway).

Is that what Americans want? Suffice it to say that we are near the bottom or the middle best case, on OECD education indicators, yes I have them handy if you want me to cite them... there is quite a bit to go... down that is. Perhaps then people will buy a clue. But one of the problems is the absolute lack of respect for anybody in this country with book learnin' just sayin'.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. kick

[Angry Dragon]

2. If I want to take over a country

isn't the general rule to get rid of "anybody in this country with book learnin'"
Do I not start off near the beginning to get rid of teachers, professors, anyone that is trained to think for themselves??
In some countries these are considered radicals, the ones that are going to give me grief as I dismantle a country.

Perhaps that is just part of the plan of the top 1%
Need lots of drones at the bottom

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Well the US has a long tradition of anti intellectualism

going through these periods is almost predictable... but we had several of them during the 19th century and over the 20th. IMO this is the worst, but predictable. I wonder what kind of a rally event will be required to wake them up? Realize the last one was the Sputnik...

[Angry Dragon]

4. Knowledge, Power, Control

The ones with control feel that they have to suppress knowledge to stay in control .....

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. It goes beyond that

the anti intellectual feeling don't start at the top. It is always simmering under the surface.

There are actual books on this... such as the Classic, Anti Intellectualism in the United States... or a more recent one that right now is escaping me.

This is being used by those at the top, but it is bubbling up from the bottom.

[Angry Dragon]

8. I have not read books on this topic

Do they say why the bottom bubbles and simmers??

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. It is part of the culture

to simplify the argument and a lot by the way, the salt of the earth people don't trust any who have any claim to authority. And I am simplifying it by a lot.

Jacoby's the Age of Unreason is very approachable and recently published. So is Hofstadder's. I highly recommend Jacoby though. She speaks of developments until oh last year, and she goes over the middle brow culture, the middle class that loved encyclopedias and all that, and how much that has changed over the last twenty or so years. But this is an echo going back into the seventeenth century. So blaming one political party for it is not quite on target either. But in my opinion this is the worst we've ever had it.

[calimary]

15. Remember what kkkarl rove said - that "too much education is not necessarily a good thing."

Mainly because people who are better educated tend to be more broadminded and discerning, less likely to swallow bullshit whole without asking any questions.

[cowman]

5. As a retired 35 year

veteran Firefighter/Paramedic with the Las Vegas Fire and Rescue, I thank you for the generations of kids you taught under very difficult conditions, I was pretty fortunate that I got to get my Paramedic training at UCLA and we used top of the line equipment. I will never forget my first IV stick on an actual patient, got it in the Right AC, nor my first EJ or my first tube, of course I will always regret the ones I couldn't save. Again thanks for your service.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. You welcome, and I thank you

EMS is one of those things you do as a calling... and so is teaching.

And I know just how hard it is to pull that damn hose too!

:hi:

[cowman]

10. Well

I'm retired now as of 3 weeks ago but I do volunteer once a week at our local FD in the little town of Pahrump,NV to keep my Para license active, no firefighting, just medical, I've had enough of Firefighting to last me the rest of my life.
Peace

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. Trust me I get it

I did it for ten years only... and damn it wore a Scott Air Pack... still the asthma is either family related, or smoke eating, in spite of the Air Pack, or both....

Be safe out there, we both know how interesting a medical call can get.

[Ignis]

9. K&R

I've seen a few claims from DUers that increasing funding for public education won't help the current situation.

:wow:

How the hell would we know that until we try it? :banghead:

[cowman]

11. I am all for more funding

for the public schools and for Govt. scholarships if the recipient commits to, oh say, 2 years of Govt service in their field of profession.

[Ignis]

12. I don't think that's a fair trade for funding public education.

For individual scholarships? Well, that's one option, I guess. :shrug:

But why not simply fund them as an investment in the future? There's plenty of money available to completely fund all of our schools and all of our students. We just need to claw some of it back from "defense" spending.

[cowman]

13. Thats what I meant

for individual scholarships, but you are correct, there is plenty of money for education.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

14. A lot of educated people won't put up with the admin bullshit.

They freaked out after the russians sent up Sputnik, told us we all needed to study science and engineering so we could beat the Russians into space.

OK, my DH majored in engineering/math/physics -- wanted to go into black holes/nuclear physics -- couldn't get any jobs except in the damned oil bidness. No jobs in R&D -- he wanted to develop the first flat screen TV 40 years ago -- no money for R&D for that. He told me exactly how he would have done it. But no, American business is a bunch of cheap tightwad bastards.

I got a biology degree thirty years ago (1979). Went to the finest pre-med school in the state -- got some pre-med courses as well as just biology. Applied to the local city school districts, when they were screaming about needing math and science teachers who majored in it.

Couldn't get a job teaching high school biology. Couldn't get a job teaching junior high biology.

I decided their advice for us to major in science was bullshit and they didn't really mean it when they said they wanted math and science majors teaching.

Oh and I was a court reporter and watched a million trials - saw the finest silver tongued devils in a major city ply their trade.

Then I got a law degree at night school, and couldn't get a paralegal job - got ONE interview in TWO YEARS of looking with the help of my law school's placement office.

It's criminal the way this country throws away educated, talented people who could be teaching. If our country was using my talents, I would be training trial lawyers, but I couldn't get but one fucking interview with all my education -- to hell with 'em. To hell with the legal profession too for all their ignoring of my talents.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. And that is part of the problem

but it also comes down to not liking at a deep cultural level, those with book learnin'

And I get your frustration, trust me.

[calimary]

19. Sadly what seems to be the underlying philosophy that governs everything in our country

anymore is one of short-sightedness, resentment, selfishness, rudeness, small-mindedness, and greed.

You are subtly encouraged to hate people who are smarter than you mainly because it diminishes you - your own lesser intelligence or intellect becomes obvious and glaring and more out in the open - so it makes you look bad. But instead of being encouraged to lift yourself up by seeking more learning or wisdom or guidance from those with greater minds, it's just ever so much easier to tear them down, criticize them, point fingers at them, diminish them, make them objects of ridicule. The politics of resentment - in which the ONLY way these simpletons can find a way to happiness and satisfaction comes from knocking somebody else down so you can feel taller or bigger or smarter or cooler. Sad to see that this seems to be the only way to get ahead - the idea that you can only gain through someone else's loss.

I wish we could evolve beyond that. It's so sad and sordid and infantile, and really kind of damning. There's certainly no future in it. You don't get ahead when you're dumbed down.

Many modern CONservatives recognize that the better-educated tend to be, and to vote, liberal. Is it any reason why they resist education that's really educational - like teaching SCIENCE in science class rather than religious superstition and Biblical interpretations of the way the world works. Why higher education, academia, the so-called "Eastern Elites" that somehow are blended with the whole idea of the (Eastern) Ivy League. Why these assholes encourage home-schooling, rewriting textbooks, and hell - even set up their own "universities" like Regent U and Liberty U and other ridiculous institutions where they teach EVERYTHING, including LAW, through a strict Biblical filter. Why you'll come upon person after person after person from the teabaggers onward into the bowels of any republi-CON convention who, when presented with facts that put the kibosh on something they've heard from limbaugh or glenn beck, the answer will be - "well... I don't know" or "well, I know what I know."

And they CLING to this shit for dear life!!! Even when presented with irrefutable evidence, verifying second opinions, and confirmation from people they trust, they STILL do. I saw it with my own eyes.

I remember when a presumably sensible mom from the neighborhood got into a big argument with me, back during the run-up to the Iraq War, who INSISTED, with ROCK-SOLID CERTAINTY, that cheney had served his country in the military. I said no, he hadn't. That he'd NEVER seen combat, NEVER worn his country's uniform, and weaseled out with not one, or two, or three, but FIVE military deferments during Vietnam when everybody else with less going for them got shipped off to the front. This woman insisted this was not so, that I was completely wrong. Her brother-in-law told her and he knew everything. A moment later, another mom from the neighborhood strolled over, evidently curious about why we were arguing. She knew us both, but she hung out more in social settings with the other mom than with me, and in ritzier situations like country clubs and fancy ladies lunches and stuff that I don't frequent. The third woman listened to what we were arguing about and then jumped in, saying that I was correct, that cheney hadn't done jack shit for his country in the military and never served and weaseled out of Vietnam just as I'd said. The first mom stopped with kind of a jolt, looked at her friend, then at me, then back at her friend, and then regrouped and burbled something nervously about "well, I'm getting wrong information. I'm getting wrong information." It just DID NOT fit with what she'd been hearing and she was physically jarred by this.

DID IT TURN HER THINKING AROUND AT ALL ABOUT cheney OR THE WAR OR ANY OF IT??????
Did it change her mind? Did it make her start thinking differently? Did it open her eyes about bush/cheney and all their crimes and lies and deceits? Did it start waking her up about the shallow, myopic, limbaugh-esque world-view she embraced? Did it motivate her to ask me, or her other friend - well, if this information I'm getting is wrong, what else are they telling me that's wrong? Did it inspire her to seek information from an opposing view, and thus enlarge and clarify and rehabilitate her own?


HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not a frickin' chance!!!!!! The next time I saw her it was clear she hadn't changed her thinking about anything and still was a bush-bot and still supported the war and still thought everything was just hunky-dory with the republi-CONS in power. She would rather cling to her falsehoods and preconceptions and Pox Noise-infused CRAP.

It is uncomfortable to be disabused of a mindset you've held for so long - indeed in this woman's case, all her life. 'Cause that involves admitting to yourself in all honesty that you've been had, you were taken in, you were fooled - ie: not smart enough to recognize pure bullshit steaming on your plate when you're served it. And that's just plain embarrassing. And we just can't have that, can we?

It's SO FRICKIN' SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Disgusting and disgraceful and SAD!!!

Because for far, far, far too many of our fellow citizens, this is where they're stuck and from which they WILL NOT move. One after all cannot be wrong! It's bad for the national superiority complex we've all been fed for years as Americans. American exceptionalism and all that. USA! USA! We're Number One! We HAVE to be Number One because we HAVE TO be able to look down on everybody else and assert how much supremacy we have over all those miserable pathetic peasants in the non-American club. It's just unthinkable that we could be wrong - about ANYTHING!!!!

God forbid!

What would people think?

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. The end of empire will take care of some of that

and it is coming. This egghead sees the damn writing on the damn wall. Which reminds me, the egghead supposed to be an insult, not to me.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Kick for the night crew

and yes I don't expect many to see this... not with TONIGHT's news.

:-)

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. DU burp