Wednesday, May 30, 2012

It’s time to drop the college-for-all crusade

Original Article

Summary goes here!

Personally, I would attribute some of these kind of  bad American policies to the generosity of American and some to the idea of 'Political Correctness'.

As a foreign born American, I am totally impressed by the generosity of American and, at times, puzzled and resisted. Growing up, I took nothing for granted even though I have supporting parents. I was educated, taught and self-studied, that begging is of no dignity and god only help people that help themselves. Personally, I have been summon all these under the 'responsibility'.

As to the 'Political Correctness', for one thing, I would like to remind the reader that OPPORTUNITIES is all it should be considered. Given the opportunity, in the sense of promote responsibility, it is up to the people to work hard to get what they want.

More practically, we should realized that not all people were born equal, intellectually. The best a society can hopeful is to have everyone do their best. To have people reach their best is to teach them being responsible. To teach responsibility, the operation of the system and the society must, by itself, promote responsibility. For example, to entitle to education as a right, students must demonstrate their wiliness to put in efforts in studying. For a normal people, this can simply be a requirement to reach certain testing scores. This is nothing new, what is new is the infusion of the idea of responsibility.

In theory, I am willing to support the idea of free education for all those who did their best. On the other hand, since resources are limited, we should support those who will benefit the society the most. With the full support of the society, I am visioning the building of a system where the freely educated scholars recognizing the support from and the responsibility to the society. Formula may need be sought to build a practical system, the idea is to promote responsibility as the core value of education.

For people reaching their best but were not able to be the best, this is where the society come in to benefit the constituent of the whole society.

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Can Financial Aid Improve Student Success at Louisiana’s Community Colleges?

Original Article

Summary goes here!
An old saying: "Help people who helped themselves."

Financial Aid can help if students were matured enough to realize the value of the extra time they got and put it into study. If not, I don't see how the extra money can improve students' success. It may even distract them from the study to enjoy other things in life.

This is a good demonstration of why building the sense responsibility is the number one task in education. Any attempt to improve the education outcome without promoting students' sense of responsibility is a wrong approach. You can hire personal coaches that following student around to improve his/her education. But does the society have the responsibility to support people this way? Will this ever been sustainable?

The histories of a lot of Federal Aid programs have shown that a lot of people will take advantages of these systems in undesirable ways and a lot of these programs were later re-tweaked or added responsibility strings to it.