Should We Retreat? Should We Lower The Bar? The Answer Is No.

Think Archimedes Takes Initiative As South Carolina’s Education Department Proves Incompetent In Providing Real Solutions To Real Problems

Think Archimedes - The Student Development Company

I am 27 years old – it’s not my job to be political. I can’t even run for the presidency until I am at least 35 years old. At my age, it’s supposed to be my job to continue educating myself, to give to my fellow man in any way that I am able, and to continue growing my business so that I can afford to have a wife, so that I can start a family, so that we can, as a team, add to and benefit society. My job is not supposed to be to think for the government and do their jobs for them. Nevertheless, I have already written one short proposal for how to intelligently modify the current broken school system, and have provided some additional solutions in this piece.

**It is important to note that I don’t really care if you agree with all of my ideas or not. If you have better, more cost effective, or more practical approaches we can talk about then bring them to the table – otherwise just sit in the bushes and watch. People who only know how to complain take away from any conversation because complaining simply recognizes that there is a problem which is not yet taken care of. If you recognize yourself as this kind of person, really just stop reading now and move on to something else (you might feel insulted and probably won’t like our company mission, or vision anyway). This article is not politically correct – it is real life right now. People seem to have forgotten that Americans are butt kickers, whose butts we primarily kick are our own. Whenever the government takes actions, or makes plans to take actions that threaten the general good of its people we must take matters into our own hands and STOP relying on Big Ben to take care of our problems.**

So What Is South Carolina’s Education System Planning To Do Anyway?

If we have learned anything today it is this: Government is NOT going to actually help us solve the education crisis in South Carolina. In today’s (October 15th) edition of The Post & Courier we find a very confounding recommendation by our state’s education superintendent – one that will, “save money and provide the least amount of harm to students’ learning,” as if we are to assume that it is necessary, in the first place, to cause any amount of harm to our children. Here are the five proposals that are supposed to be in the best interest for South Carolina families:

1. Lowering the state’s minimum required number of days from 180 per year by requiring that students be in class 4 days a week instead of 5. (Ever heard the phrase, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop”? It doesn’t really matter that students will be in class a little bit longer each day, the point is that they will have THREE full days off from school now instead of two. In the real world, I work longer, harder days than I ever have before – and I have to fight and demand to get one day off.)
2. Reduce testing to the minimum of that which is required by federal law. (Violating one of the most obvious success principles of sports, academics, business, and life: You cannot get maximum results out of minimum efforts … brilliant!)
3. “Eliminating 2009 ratings for schools and districts on the state report card.” (ie, we are not going to hold schools accountable for results anymore. Why are they doing this? Reportedly, “With this degree of cuts, test results may not reflect what schools are capable of doing, [Jim Rex] said. So while eliminating report card ratings wouldn’t save money, it would address the issue of fairness and accuracy.”)
4. Giving each school district the ability to use government funds as they see fit. (ie, we are not going to hold schools accountable for their discretionary use of tax-payer’s money either.)
5. Allowing each school district to pick and choose which of the mandated government programs they will implement. (ie, you had BETTER get involved in your school’s Parent-Teacher-Student Organizations (PTSOs) if you want to have any say in what your children will be taught and have available to them.)

Not only are these officials not asking the people they are supposed to be protecting and serving for input, suggestions, or ideas (thereby sheltering themselves from great thinkers within the community) – they are demonstrating their reactive nature to problems, thus focusing on the problem rather than the solution. What’s worse, they are setting a poor example to our citizenry of what it means to think outside the box for clever, intelligent, and innovative ways of solving problems.

So If The Government Won’t (Or Can’t) Help, What Can We Really Do? One Word: Leverage.

Leverage Allows Us To Create Incredible Power With The Same Amount of Force

How about leveraging the internet by creating interactive web-based video tutorials by the best teachers in the state? The lessons and work only need to be done one time and then we don’t have to continue paying 10,000 teachers to teach each lesson, because it has already been taught the best way, by the best teacher once, and is available to every student in the state with internet access. It could even be a collaborative project among many teachers, taking extreme care to craft each lesson from multiple angles. I know it sucks that all of these “education majors” who are functioning in our schools as teachers will become obsolete to some degree, but the truth of the matter is that we will still need them more than ever – we just won’t be paying them to teach the bulk of the lessons.

We still need a lot of effective tutors and teachers to mentor and develop character in our students, we still need role models who can push us and drive us to achieve more than we ever thought possible, we still need coaches to kick our butts in sports, clubs, and organizations. We need mentors who can help us find internships and discover our talents and abilities so that we can find and do what we love as we enter the working world. Why do we feel so strongly that we must hold on to the old, broken way that school has always been in an age where technology and information has given us more opportunity to solve our problems than ever before in the history of mankind?

What About Students Without Internet Access?

No Computer? No Problem.

“Toughen up butter cup” – go to the library and use one within the free public domain, or find a friend who does have access, or spend a few hundred bucks on a laptop and go to a coffee shop with internet access. Where there is a will there is a way. It is said that you can make excuses, and you can make money – but you can’t make both. By allowing students to make excuses for why they can’t find a solution to a simple problem like finding internet access is to continue encouraging them to be victimized and remain powerless. After all, if you can’t solve a problem as simple as getting internet access in today’s wired world, then maybe you should consider learning how to think for yourself and be resourceful as part of your balanced education?

I know it is a lot to ask that a poor family save up drug and alcohol money, discontinue the cable bill for a few months, sell the television set, or take any other sacrificial measure to provide themselves with a proper laptop. Especially (God forbid) getting a second job – that would definitely be out of the question. So in the case that a family would not be able to get a computer for themselves, I am sure that a generous politician will naturally rise up to take your cause (if you would but vote for him or her) and use our tax money to buy your student one for you. The “I don’t have a computer or internet” excuse is just stupid. Really, society will make sure little Jimmy has a laptop.

What About Providing Tax Benefits To Families With Students Making The Cut?

Tax Cuts Motivate Us To Take Action

We could even encourage and motivate more parents to care about and be involved with their own childrens’ educations by rewarding families with tax credits of parents who have students on the honor roll, or who score well on standardized tests. Who can be sure exactly how much this might be or how it might be enforced (perhaps schools reporting which students qualify to the IRS directly) but in just a few hours each week, parents could hold their kids accountable for school work and be compensated for it – perhaps thousands of dollars – since better students take less work in the classroom. And doesn’t this just make sense because accountable parenting is really one of the biggest parts to the solution anyway? Few would argue that successful students start at home.

For those more motivated by pain, we could also impose a tax penalty to parents of students who are failing out of school or not making the cut. Doesn’t it also make sense to penalize negligent parents who are disinterested in their own child’s education – creating MORE time and energy on behalf of the school’s staff in tutoring, mentoring, and behavioral problems? It sure is at least something to think about. That way, every parent is affected in some way, either positively or negatively, and they won’t have anyone to blame or praise but themselves.

Isn’t that what tax credits and penalties are supposed to be used for anyway: To either encourage or discourage certain actions and behaviors made by a citizenry? That is, of course, why we allow home owners to deduct their mortgage interest on Schedule A of their tax return – because home ownership increases the net worth of any community’s citizenry. Likewise, we also impose fines for pulling money out of retirement accounts before age 65 and a half to discourage this behavior.

We need to start holding ourselves and neighbors as accountable as we wish to hold the government. After all, ultimately it isn’t really the government’s responsibility to see to it that your kids are educated – it’s yours. And anyway, now more than ever you should be taking an active interest in what your children are learning and how well they are mastering their studies, because the school system sure isn’t. And the last thing you or anyone else needs to do is continually place blind faith into the government as an effective system for educating our youth – because it isn’t. As with most things, privatized companies will always produce greater value and results than government run organizations.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

We Dont Have To Wait For The Government To Take Action To Do The Right Thing. "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You."

Since our governing body will do nothing about the problems we are faced with – other than retreat – we have decided that we will take a proactive stance in taking responsibility for this task. Our company is now dedicated to maintaining this high standard of excellence, and our vision is to see South Carolina students rise from 49th in the nation into the top 10.

Education is no accident. The problem with the system is more a matter of the environment in which students are placed and the standards to which they are held than it is a problem with the kids themselves. Children are brilliant – they will rise to whatever standard you set for them. They need guidance, direction, coaching, and butt kicking. They need to know that laziness is unacceptable, that slackards starve to death and have loser friends. And they also need to know that there is a champion within all of us if we will but dig deep and give life all that we’ve got.

Performing well in high school, college, or on standardized tests requires three primary strengths: Reading, Logic, and an elementary blend of mathematics (Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry). Most seniors have had eleven school years to be exceptional at these, only to still be poor at adding and multiplying numbers in their heads, inefficiently slow readers, and illogical in many arguments used in writing essays. The reason for this is, quite simply, three fold:

1.) Our schools have never taught students that there is any other way to perform mathematical calculations other than some of the longest, boring, inefficient, uncreative, step-by-step, archaic ways imaginable.

2.) Schools have failed to offer speed reading courses to teach students the science of the brain’s processing abilities, good reading habits, and advanced comprehension techniques.

3.) Not once have government schools even offered elementary logic courses discussing how to look for fallacious arguments, how to counter them, and how to construct logical, intelligent, irrefutable arguments.

Is it any wonder that we have students who still feel so insecure about their own ability to make calculations that they have to rely on something outside of themselves (a calculator) for even simple operations? That isn’t confidence. Should we be surprised that we have students who don’t even finish reading comprehension and verbal sections of tests because they don’t read fast enough AND fail to discern what the passage is even talking about? That is border-lined “illiterate”. Can we now begin to recognize how it is that we graduate students in droves who fall prey to simple fallacious arguments, are easily fooled into picking wrong answer choices, and who cannot build strong, supported cases in their own essays and arguments?

Enough is enough. We recognize that we cannot make students learn what they need to know in order to achieve this goal, but what we, as a company, can do is kick their butts by getting rid of every excuse they can give for not knowing something so that they are forced to admit they are just lazy if they do not make the cut. Think Archimedes has officially made the decision to provide high-quality, cost effective math and logic lessons to grade school students so they can own, crush, and dominate standardized tests. Students – if you want it, come and get it. We will do everything we can to help you become the scholars of today and leaders of tomorrow.

In a time when there is more at stake than ever, it is time to kick some butt – our own butts. The world needs demonstration more than it needs teaching, and we will demonstrate how mathematics is more relevant and applicable than ever.