McCain Dreaming
Uncategorized - - Posted on May, 19 at 8:55 pm by Ken L
Are you troubled by contemporary social ills? Disgusted by poor customer service? Sick to death of inefficient public services? Had it up to here with professional incompetence?
You are not alone my friends but take comfort, help is at hand. Just take one spoonful daily of this powerful All-Purpose Performance Pay mixture and everything will come right in no time!
Wannabe US president John McCain has gotten a lot of publicity over his public channelling of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Had a Dream’ speech. When he said ‘By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom’, many people thought he was promising to withdraw most of the troops from Iraq by 2013, whereas it turns out he was just doing a bit of wishful thinking. As we all do I guess, but not when we are making a major speech while running for president.
This apparent promise to bring the troops home by 2013 when he actually meant they might come home next week or next year or 2127 has not unnaturally tended to grab the headlines. However there was other good stuff in McCain’s Dreaming. Yes folks, he has the answer to problems in education and health care. Wow!! I bet Rudd’s got people working 24/7 to work up an Australian version.
Here’s how public education in the USA will be fixed, at least in McCain Dreaming:
Public education in the United States is much improved thanks to the competition provided by charter and private schools; the increase of quality teachers through incentives like merit pay and terrific programs that attract to the classroom enthusiastic and innovative teachers from many disciplines, like Teach for America and Troops to Teachers. Educational software and online teaching programs endorsed by qualified non profits are much more widely in use, bringing to the smallest classrooms in America some of the greatest math, English, and science teachers in the country. This revolution in teaching methods has especially benefited rural America. Test scores and graduation rates are rising everywhere in the country.
You see? Education is just about getting the right product to the kids. Forget that 20th century crap about interaction with a real live teacher, the key to success lies in finding the right software that brings the greatest teachers to the most disadvantaged classrooms. We could never do that before. Well yes the greatest teachers could write books and study guides but it’s not the same, is it. There’s something magical about having it on a screen. Well at least in McCain Dreaming there is.
But even if you are sceptical about the virtues of software that brings great teachers to humble schools, you can’t knock the rest of the package. Merit pay for teachers!!! Now why didn’t anybody else think of that? But this other idea has really got me intrigued - ‘Troops to Teachers’. I haven’t had a chance to look into it but it suggests that Iraqi war veterans whose backgrounds and training obviously make them ideally suited to teach impressionable youngsters will get some sort of crash teaching course and get allocated to teaching duties.
Well I guess if they’re allowed to keep their body armour and weapons to do their new jobs it should at least do wonders for classroom discipline.
But if you’re struck dumb with admiration at this fantastic agenda to reform public education, just wait to read what happens to the public health system in McCain Dreaming:
Health care has become more accessible to more Americans than at any other time in history. Reforms of the insurance market; putting the choice of health care into the hands of American families rather than exclusively with the government or employers; walk in clinics as alternatives to emergency room care; paying for outcome in the treatment of disease rather than individual procedures; and competition in the prescription drug market have begun to wring out the runaway inflation once endemic in our health care system.
There you have it, let’s give the free market a go at fixing the problems! Yes I know others have tried but obviously not hard enough. The stroke of staggering genius I love is the bit about ‘paying for outcome in the treatment of disease rather than individual procedures’. I reckon that’s brilliant. From now on I intend to call tenders for all my medical needs and damned if they get a cent until I’m fully cured.
Yes there is literally nothing that can’t be fixed by a good dose of performance pay, aka transferring risk from the employer to the worker.
We can only hope that whoever is Liberal leader next week follows in Howard’s footsteps and slavishly adopts every policy initiative of the loonier Republicans. If s/he picks up on McCain Dreaming, Rudd can relax about any serious threat from the opposition for at least another five years.
Posted in Uncategorized |
May 19th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Whilst I can generally agree with what you are getting at,I had a returned soldier who wasn’t really fully qualified as a teacher at a Technical school I went to.And he was a fine and liked man,who the kids like ribbing a bit,but he treated us like young Australians yet to see the brutality,and had a tolerance borne of suffering and seeing war.The Second World War at that,and I think it is magical that if a man and or woman can re-devote themselves to this orientation,they could be good teachers.From McCain though it is both a con,and deceptive,because soldiers could of been encouraged to think about that stream whilst still enlisted before the crazy Iraqi and Afghani wars.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Unfortunately, Julie Bishop’s already one step ahead of you.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Its interesting that no one ever seems to enquire just how the states ended up with a system where most people get their health insurance as part of their employment. And no, the free market had nothing to do with it.
I also personally believe the school ’system’ is basically beyond repair and will eventually become quite irrelevant. They don’t call it the 12 year sentence for no reason.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:25 am
Now you’re full of crap Peter…:)
Plenty of good things happening in education. A good friend just took a bunch of younguns to see an Aussie astronaut & a bunch of innovative scientists. The kids were inspired.
I reckon using modules & computer based projects works well in classrooms Ken…provided the teacher gets clued up on the stuff & helps put together some of the units…& spends quality time motivating & guiding the students. I came up w/ a unit based on themes related to the Middle Ages & Ancient Egypt w/ the help of a computer addicted social science teacher…& the kids learnt heaps & had a ball. That was almost a decade ago.
Provided the contact w/ teacher isn’t lost, the modules/projects are carefully integrated w/in a work unit, there’s a maintenance dude close by, & corporate swines who don’t give a stuff about anything other than brainwashing students and making big bucks are kept at bay, then i reckon using programs is just fine.
But we don’t want no educator lookin’ like ROBOCOP hangin’ about.
I doubt McCain tho has the slightest idea of who will be providing these programs…& how they work.
As for Performance Pay…that’s a journey travelled by solo artists & loved by private profiteers, cheapskates & gung-hoers in HIGH CHAIRS who take the same high stakes competition approach into war and leave the dispensable & innocent writhing on the side of the road.
I brought an ole fella from the Navy into the classroom once…he’d been stuck in a retirement home & was feelin’ pretty low w/ few to talk to…so i convinced him to bring a few of his memories and keepsakes & talk to the kids about his recollections. Did some Prep & chat w/ him beforehand. He told us about the PROS & CONS…including the sad losses….the strategies used by both sides in battle…the quirky stuff…was all very human & interesting. Did heaps for him & the students. And there was no offer of a free apple & mango if any joined up.
John McCain is snoring….
May 20th, 2008 at 8:58 am
The Empire….A Basket case. The only way this war mongerer will get the troops home by 2013, is if they win the unwinnable war. That ain’t gunna happen nor is anything this idiot deciple of George Dubbya says. The Republican party will say and do anything to get themselves re elected, then more of the same…the powerful keeping their fat snouts in the trough, and the party heads line up for their kick backs. If the children of the empire let them get away with it this time, they deserve what they get. More economic pain, further ailienation of the rest of the World, a deep seated hatred from the middle east, and slipping from thier mantle of the most powerful country in the world. Whilst they are trying to show everybody they are the biggest and best,fighting wars in every country they don’t agree with, they will go broke, exhaust their armed forces and leave room for China, India and Maybe the Soviets to establish themselves.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:56 am
‘Troops to Teachers’? Starship Troopers, anyone?
May 20th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
And presumably you’ll want a five year warranty?
I think ‘performance pay’ for teachers is a fantastic idea if it is implemented along the lines applicable to football coaches.
First, you get to pick the students based on past performance. Second, you get to sack those who won’t perform or misbehave. Third, you get to select from your squad those who will compete in a particular test on a particular day. Fourth, you get to interchange competitors during the test.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
If you can read this blog, thank a teacher! If you can read it in English, thank a soldier! etc etc.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Why am I reminded of Sam Kinison’s role in “Back to School”?
May 20th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Ken I guess you are ideologically opposed to the Walmart health clinics also? They seem to provide a useful and convenient service but what would I know?
In fact I think we will soon witness an absolutely huge increase in ‘free market’ ( ie based on the wishes of millions of individuals) solutions to seemingly intractable problems in healthcare and ’schooling’.
I had to have my gall bladder removed late last year and while I have no complaints (at all - it went great) about the actual operation (apart from the orderly changing my wound casually informing me that she often worked in the MRSA ward) the fact that I had to wait 9 months for the op meant that I was quite sick at the end. Friends and relatives from both the US and Germany were shocked (as in really shocked) that I had to wait so long - normally done within 4 to 6 weeks in both countries. Because it was left so long I ended up in emergency for 2 days and had to stay an extra day at the end. Probably cost at least $3000 more than it should have.
These sorts of delays are only going to get worse as people like you and I start getting old and I honestly don’t think money alone is the problem.
One way that the market is going to get around problems like this is medical tourism and Walmart style clinics. In fact, as a result of my (first ever) hospital ‘experience’ (again, no fault of any staff) is that on our next trip to Thailand I will be checking out one of the excellent hospitals in the area.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Cool…well, once we shatter the school hours we’ll be able to watch them students push for the longest yard under friday night lights or on any given sunday…semi-tough little buggers competing by way of booster drugs to become everybody’s all-Australian.
They’ll learn the game plan quick enuff, if not we can bring in replacements, ’cause they have to get w/ the program. They need that necessary roughness in facing the giants in life…then as we tear it up to brian’s song emanating from the radio & stadium speakers we can cheer for our hometown legends & remember these new titans for the last boy scouts they are…
our wee leatherheads & weapons of mass distraction will become invincible…then we can send them to WAR trained as the hard drinking, hard playing, gridiron gang with all the RIGHT moves…it’ll be the best of times.
Bring it on!!! Hup, hup!!!
May 20th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Has Wal-Mart,CVS etc. looked into the possibility that sick people would spread the flu and other illness around the store while they shop, while waiting to be seen.
There is a reason why hospitals and doctors’ offices are semi secluded…..
Comment by Neal Kluge - January 29, 2008 at 12:45 pm
(WSJ)
Backers of the clinics argue that they provide convenient care for simple ailments at a reasonable cost. Skeptics have argued that they lead to further fragmentation of care, and that the staff — largely nurse practitioners and physician assistants — don’t have sufficient M.D. supervision.
(Health Blog, WSJ, January 29, 2008, 9:05 am
Wal-Mart Clinics Close in 23 Stores
Posted by Jacob Goldstein)
————–
sniffle…g’day…can you give me a gall bladder op & antacid with that micro-wave dinner, frozen pizza, massive bottle of soft drink, chocolate caramel chewy ice cream, kilo of offal, squeezy cheese, dried salty carcass snack & instant breakfast powder please…cough, cough…this is the one-stop shop RIGHT?
ehhh…you don’t happen to sell cardboard coffins do you?…i feel a bit gray under the gills & these CCTV cameras…bleeehhhh…SPLAT!!!
Sawwy…blurpppp…here’s my plastic…please…get me to the clinic on time…
May 21st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Yeah, but in the US, even with McCain dreamin’ he is a real contender for the crown… sigh