I just wanna be a housepet
Not a housewife, a housepet. Completely devoted to someone who will feed me, pet me, amuse me, and clean me for the rest of my days, until I die of old age or get hit by a car.
Why? Because graduate school is scary. Look, I've been teaching for three years in an inner-city school and I have no idea how to approach this question:
Using any one of the following paragraphs, please prepare a brief essay. Assume that you work within an organization to which this suggestions has been made. The person for whom you work has asked for advice on two questions: (1) What are the most important considerations in approaching this issue? and (2) If you had two or three uninterrupted days to explore this issue in greater depth, what would you do? You are not expected to have more than general knowledge of the policy area on which you comment, nor to utilize the tools (or jargon) of any particular academic discipline. The questions contain no “tricks.” You are simply asked to bring good sense to bear and to get a fairly quick response back to the person who has asked for the advice. Your essay should be clear and concise and should not exceed 750 words.
"Giving families vouchers that would allow them to send their children to any elementary or secondary school, including private religious schools, is an experiment that clearly ought to be tried. We might discover that marketplace competition could indeed stimulate improved performance by participating schools and that parents are no worse at making educational decisions for their children than they are at all the other, even more consequential, decisions they make. We might also discover that segregation by race, religion, and ideology increased to an unacceptable degree."
Have I gone completely brain-dead since college that I cannot think of an appropriate response to this question, other than "vouchers are bad"? Have I regressed to a seventh grade intelligence? Is there any hope at all for me?
Last night I met a very nice boy who is a chef. He travels around the world and survives by charm and wit alone. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't pack up and head to culinary school right now...
Hi fruitcake.
ReplyDeleteJust browsing sites, and happened to cross yours. It's funny.
god. i mean hypothetically there's all kinds of problems school vouchers can present. i'm sure there's a lot of problems that would arise that no one could really fathom because it is a new idea that hasn't been done before. but the biggest problem i see happening is there's a lot of schools right? there's a few rich schools and a lot of poor schools. there's no way to predict what decisions parents will make and where they will choose to send their kids. more than likely poor schools will lose their students without ever given the chance to compete and that automatically hurts that school, tying their hands so they can't compete. and then that school will be even worse off than before. then on the other hands you'll have maybe nicer schools that will suddenly that will get a larger influx of enrollment. i'm willing to bet that there's even a mathematical formula that would illustrate the point where too many kids in a school would bring down the level of education no matter how much extra money they're receiving. i'm not sure if it would actually contribute that much more to segregation because that is already attained because of socioeconomic conditions. in other words, how worse can it get? anyway, vouchers will also fuck up the balance of teacher student ratios unless there's a strict enforcement of a standard which from i understand, i don' think there's really much of a limit in texas? i think california might have started a stricter one? i dunno i am speaking out of my ass. vouchers are bad and rather than it being a solution it's more like "alternative" medicine. everyone goes crazy over it, but it doesn't really work.
ReplyDeleteSince this is an educational test/measuring sort of situation, the best thing to do is read the question you were asked to answer. No one asked you if school vouchers were good or bad.
ReplyDeleteYou were asked to briefly identify the important considerations in approaching this issue. You work within an organization to which this scheme has been proposed. Let's see, could the considerations be (a) practical, (b) logistical, (c) legal, (d) organizational, (d) political, (e) financial, ... you get the point.
But, yeah, housepet has a lot going for it. Also, culinary school is maybe a great idea. :-)
Also this is a very good movie: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mostly_martha/
good luck
Thanks stranger, thanks Shoo, thanks Dad.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I understand they aren't looking for a "stance" but more of an "how would you approach this issue" analysis. So maybe I'd actually be better off choosing one of the topics (I didn't list them all, only school vouchers) where I *don't* already have an opinion, so I'd be forced to look at it objectively.
It's an interesting question, no? I like this stuff...
Sometimes, I kind of want to be a housepet, too.
ReplyDelete-lobster
I wanna be a housepet... I've had a few offers, actually, some of which were California-based... I think he used the word "concubine," though. Nevertheless, it's an attractive idea...
ReplyDelete--Lana