-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <3.0.32.19961205212336.006a520c@netcom14.netcom.com>, on 12/05/96 at 09:24 PM, Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> said: ::At 07:08 PM 12/5/96 -0800, Steve Schear wrote: ::>This has all vanished is our zeal ::>to protect youth and society from any activity which might lead ::>injury or misuse. I can't even find a place to buy a niece a real ::>chemistry set as tort laws have forced them from the market. When ::>considering the plummeting >interest and achievement of our youth in ::> math and science we look no further for a reason. ::When Wernher von Braun (if the reader doesn't know who von Braun was, ::shame on your teachers. Hint: first human on the Moon.) first became ::interested in rocketry, he was a student of music. Classical piano, to ::be exact. He got his hands on a book about using rockets for space ::exploration. To his dismay, the book was full of mathematical ::equations. He went to his math teacher, asking him for help with the ::equations. The teacher must have been of help, since von Braun went on ::to become the single most knowledgable person in his field. And no, it ::wasn't piano playing. ::There is nothing like some real life challenges to spark a young ::person's mind. Today, conducting the experiments that fueled von ::Braun's imagination would be a felony. The mere possession of the ::chemicals he used in his early twenties is illegal. ::This country has set out on a project to dumb the minds of its young. ::With great success. bingo! and, how. they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams! I had a roommate at Harvard (late fifties) who had incredibly deep pockets. his mother died his freshman year, leaving him her estate on the tip of Fisher's Island, including the costal defense battery positions and bunkers. he had an Apache twin for which I managed to get a license including instrument very quickly --we then went to FI for weekends and built and fired everything you can imagine. only a few curious paid us any mind as the closest estate to hers was at least 1/2 mile. can you imagine that today? --the tip guards the entrance to the New London pig boat pens and the LI sound! there were still plenty of professors with both knowledge on the early rockets, and open enough to "private" teach. My advisor was a Nobel prize winner, very accessible, and provided both help and introductions to men most never knew even existed in the vast science complex north of the yard. most were in the same old building (Pierce) with the RF screens on the outside walls to shield against the primitive radar --long dark and narrow halls. It is a whole different ball game in academia. men whom I have recently met are nothing like their predecessors who were open and warm --everyone is so "professional" and they are _cold_. sad story in general. some bright spots though, I guess. I was rather surprised by experiments and their depths in AP Chemistry offered my third son by St George's Dixie High School --impressive and not the usual restrictions on "oh, poor Johnny might hurt himself while clowning ...err learning." a) we have better discipline which works; and b) we don't put up with those silly whiners (so far). but the future does not speak well with declining tests scores which, for instance, require the SATs to be watered 20-30% so the median would still be 500! to think that the pair of 800s I received in the 50s can be acquired by someone scoring less than 650s --what value has the US placed on education? enough so our students now rank well down in the second 10 on international tests! what makes that worse is the _majority_ of Korean students can perform --the lower 1/3 of our students have already dropped out of school, and the second third are too uneducated to participate. junior colleges are graduating students who would not have passed out of tenth grade 20-30 years ago. and, the government wants more mind control --even Bitch's "It Takes a Global Village." at least it's fat chance out here in the high desert. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: Encrypted with 2.6.3i. Requires 2.6 or later. iQCVAwUBMqfRNr04kQrCC2kFAQHfxAP+NbZ4JZIjraKsVBAKLx60AAKYyFDeT8Ly o8DAnYdfkuEtN04orz+fqFIKUeNjonglMYeIp/xGqTtQeqVRS6uURpD/K8EAxDR/ jv1EQanC2SrV6yc0TtiNwV9WTFlRrOZjt0gH3uwfv+yDPtgpDVaBL0b6sNH+6BDg Sh7UaRbkeYo= =Ssdu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----