Daily Connotations

Daily Connotations

Entropy Happens.
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You don't have to push the boundaries when you set the standards.

Connotation. 1. a. The configuration of suggestive or associative implications consitiuting the general sense of an abstract espression beyond its literal, explicit sense. b. A secondary meaning suggested by a word in addition to its literal meaning. 3. Logic The total of the attributes constituting the meaning of a term.

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Disclaimer: Any opinions contained on this page are those of, well, we don't really know who. Any offense taken to anything present should be directed to Sven, who will file and ignore your comments. Praise or compliments can be directed to either Dr. N, Dr. What, or Dr. Olga. All plagarized material has been tested and deemed satisfactory according to the esteemed code of Lehrer, version 2.3.
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Sven Bjorn Borg: Sven has been with d-con since its humble beginnings, and is responsible for punctuating, finances, guarding the office from rabid dogs and loud noises, and acting as mediator amongst the other members. Dr. Borge is well-known as the world's foremost (and perhaps only) underwater-basket-weaving expert. Sven has recently published no less than 3 books, Klingon Grammar and Vocabulary for humans, Life among the Grapes, and Escher, Bach, Gödel: A gigantic elastic bungalow. In it's copious spare time, the Sven enjoys playing the harpsichord and diagramming sentences. Sven is Chief of Staff and Director of Intelligence in the UPICN,LLC.
Dr. Bob William "The Orange" Lavoisier a.k.a. Dr. Henry Parsons: Dr. N, as we like to call him, is officially the initiator of the Daily Connotations Company, and also holds important Offices in the VVIIPP society of America and The Department of Redundancy Department, which is a place where he holds an important office in the department of redundancy. Henry also spent a good deal of his life studying the behavior of Walruses (Walri?) in the wild, inspired by a long-running correspondence with Mr. J. Lennon, who, in fact, convinced "The Orange" that he was, in fact, a walrus. Dr. Parsons' curriculum vitae is rounded out by his extensive family history (including a brother, Alan), and double Ph.D. honors in Botany and the Study of Scandinavian Languages. Recently, Dr. Henry Parsons was elected president of the UPICN,LLC
The Doctor a.k.a. Dr. What??: Dr. What joins us now as a member of d-Con in very good standing. It is important that the doctor not be confused with his slightly-more-popular brother, Doctor Who, who has carved a niche for himself in the field of time travel. Dr. What never developed the talent for time travel, and has the ability to visit only two distinct temporal locations: The beheading of John the Baptist and that one time when Stanley met Livingstone (or was it Livingstone met Stanley?) Consequently, he spends much of his time knitting (the scarves, natch) on the planet Gallifrey whilst (and at the same time) contemplating Nietzschean philosophies and memorizing much of Immanuel Kant's work, both in the original German.
Dr. Phelealabean: Dr. Phelealabean also uses the alias Dr. Olga Olathe Parsons-Uhlmer. Dr. Parsons-Uhlmer is a sister to Henry and Alan. She has a dual honorary doctorate in Arabian Literature and Language. She also has teaching experience at the University of Rekjavik which was held in a small grass-covered hut. She iswidowed after an incident involving her husband and abandonment which she is not allowed to discuss pending criminal charges. Now that she is alone, she enjoys spending summers with her brother, Henry, in his summer home, The Parsonon.

9.02.2003

Allow me to assume a rather odd position now. Understand that these are merely questions, and do not necessarily reflect our personal views.
{
Why is it necessary to educate EVERYONE? Sure, people talk about the old days when the world was run by a select few who were educated. Why was that so bad? How is our current system better?

I realize that is an extreme view to take. Allow me to reword, again.
Why is it necessary that every child be given the same education? The fact is our society needs people with many varieties of skills to be successful, so why do we wait until college (late college, usually, to specialize)? If you want to be an underwater basket weaver, shouldn't you probably start learning about underwater basket weaving before you graduate? And is it really necessary for you to use time and brainpower learning, say, Differential Calculus when it does not imply to the job you are supposed to do for the greater good?

And don't you think I'm kind of sounding socialistic, if not communistic? Or is that merely an illusion created by the media and the government? That any kind of gov't (that's an abbreviation, there) that's different than ours is critically flawed?

It's an easily proven fact that smaller groups of people are easier to regulate. So wouldn't it be easier and probably more effective to have a separate, but loosely connected, group of teachers for several specific subject areas? They would be self-regulatory, and impostors posing as teachers would be evicted naturally. This could work because the standard would be that of the teachers as a whole, and I do believe that it is safe to assume that the majority of (say) Underwater Basket Weaving teachers could be considered well-versed in the theory and applications of Underwater Basket Weaving, and thus the group as a whole would be able to deal with under- or un- qualified teachers.

This system would replace what we know as high school, perhaps even including the middle school/junior high. There would be required curricula, but not required classes. This curricula would be covered, even if it were not covered by the same classes. An example: The required Math, (arithmetic, economics (merely handling money, not the grand scope of Economics-with-a-capital-"E") and some basic algebra) could conceivably be covered in a Science class, a Music Theory Class, or even (gasp) an Underwater basket-weaving class. Teaching cross-curricular material like this would require the teachers to think, which is a talent that will drip on to the students. It also leads to the ideal "science" (I use the quotes to distinguish Science as in Biology or Chemistry to "science" as a manner of looking at the world) which is that point where a realization comes that everything is somehow wonderously connected, and what's really worth studying is the connections. Somehow English and Math and Physics and Biology and Grammar and Government and Music and Art are all different facets of the same jewel, but the differences and the similarities make life what it is. That idea is something our current system overall sadly ignores. A few teachers realize it and try to present it, but the system goes, roughly, "Here I am conjugating verbs." "Here I am balancing chemical equations." "Here I am reading Dante." "Here I am categorizing genes." No connections between classes at all.

Schools aren't bad at giving out useless trivial information. It's the big picture they mess up at.
}

Well, there you have it. It did come out of my mind. I'm not entirely sure if I agree with myself or not. But it's out.

Also let me draw your attention to this article on the subject. I specially like the the second-to-last paragraph.

--Posted by s. on Tuesday, September 02, 2003.