People are Profit. Money is Paper.
Take away my people and leave the factories, and soon there will be grass growing on the factory floors, but take away my factories and leave my people, and soon we will have bigger and better factories.
– Andrew Carnegie
Dear administrations, CEO’s, and those in charge of the education and livelihoods of America in all categories and aspects of our lives, please pay more attention to your people than to your cost-cutting, money-saving antics. Such antics might make your bookkeepers and wallets smile now, but in the long run, I believe that you will eventually – and it can’t come soon enough – realize that in treating your people like pesky unnecessary detriments to your financial gains, you are actually cutting a hole in your own pocket, letting the gold fall through and leaving the lint. That pocket lint might still be dusted with gold flecks, but even though the shine is all you can focus on right now, eventually even you will discover that the flecks are just making the lint look good.
If you want gold, you need your people.
Enjoy your lint.
My Take on Group Work and Lazy Grasshoppers
Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam. — Alfred Whitney Griswold
I never liked group work as a child. The same few people always did all the work, and the same few people always sat around, goofed off, “forgot,” turned in nothing, and got the same grade as the rest of us. Everyone in the group got the same grade, regardless of contribution. Whenever the teacher started to divide us into groups, half the class would groan and the other half would grin.
It was unfair then and it’s unfair now. I can still remember the feeling of outrage when this would happen. I still feel outraged.
Why should good, hardworking students have to support lazy, non-contributing students? Why should lazy, non-contributing students get the same grade as the students who actually did the work?
One group grade indeed. Hong Kong Phooey.*
Unfair. Unfair to the max.
And I may have just described our economic system. Sigh.
Oh, and as far as the grasshopper and the ant are concerned: why in the world should we pity the grasshopper? He chose his way of life. Let him reap the consequences.
*Bonus points if you know what that means.
P.S. I wanted to insert a cool picture of Hamlet telling the skull he knew it well, but my blog will not let me upload pictures any more. Are you an expert? I need help here.
P.P.S. My blog won’t show tags now, either. Is it haunted?
Facades Are Fake.
Mamacita says: All this talk about how it’s the teacher’s fault whenever a student does badly at school. . . . I can’t help but think that these people must blame the photographer if their kid is homely. Isn’t it – sometimes – the same thing?
Photoshop faces or abilities or personalities all you want: if you throw glitter on a dungheap, it’s still going to stink.
Before some of you arm yourselves and advance upon my home with lit torches, please be aware that I am in NO WAY discussing SPED.
I am, however, talking about students who refuse to work and parents who still expect them to be promoted, play sports, go to the prom, and wander the halls if they so desire because after all, Billy knows best about what he wants when he goes to school, and that hateful Ms. SkullDroppings has had it in for him ever since he accessed all that porn on her computer during lunch that time. She didn’t even appreciate his expertise in picking her lock, or in his mad computer skillz. I mean, reallllllly. (Bitch) (It’s all right, Billy, Mommy understands you.)
Ahem.
A photoshopped picture isn’t really a picture of someone. It’s only a picture of what that someone wished he/she looked like. It’s a facade, with all the reality removed.
And any grade, privilege, promotion, award, etc, is. . . well, it’s a facade, too. It’s fake. It’s a facade, with all the reality removed.
Ooooh, shiny! Pretty!
What stinks?
