Tennessee

Just out of curiosity, any other people here from Tennessee? If you find this a stupid post, sorry, it's late, and I'm bored. If you find this a stupid post and are a moderator, I apolegize, please delete

 

Please tell me you are joking

 

I will bet that the average European can name more states in the USA than any american can name provencies of Canada.

States of mind do not count.

 

Hrumph. Here's one person from the US who can name provinces of Canada, and doesn't appreciate having her intelligence insulted at every turn just because she's an American.

 

Yes, the Stupid Uneducated American schtick is a bit tired.

That said, funny story. Several years ago I was on a bus in Los Angeles and there were two Canadian tourists sitting up front. Another passenger struck up a conversation and asked where they were from. British Columbia, they said. Oh! said the passenger. You're from the UK! How wonderful! Nooooo, that's in Canada, they told her, slightly embarrassed.

Loved it.

 

I would never insult the inteligence of my fellow Countrymen or women, but our education, on the other hand is an insult.

Boy George's "No child left behind" campagin looks more like no child left funded.

We have the poorest primary & secondary education of the industrial nations, but the best colleges. The Democrats keep diverting education dollars into building schools, & the Republicans just cut school budgets again & again. Here in the other Washington, our voters passed an initiative to give teachers raises & reduce class sizes. Our legistature, in a broad bipartisan effort, gutted it, illegaly IMHO. So much for the power of direct parcipitory democaracy.

But if you study history, you will find that child labor laws & compulsory education laws are totaly contemporaneous. The schools were NEVER supposed to educate the children of the lower classes, they were meant to keep them off the streets & out of the job market. That any of us get an education at all is due to dedicated people who believe in the power of education & try, against all odds & with little pay or funding, to make the system work.

 

Amen. I second that. However, Snowmane, one must always "consider the source", especially when being called or assumed stupid. So don't let mudslinging get to you. That's it's design.


HOWEVER, back to the topic of this thread, I think Feldon Kane was from Tennessee. It's a place that I would love to live, if that counts any at all.

 

Lol, we sure seem to get off topic. Anyway, my mother is a teacher and I know just how little pay and respect they get. I personally wouldn't be a teacher even if they DID get good pay. Havin to put up with with pain in the ass students all day; I'd hurt someone. I have a good deal of respect for anyone who is a teacher (with a few exceptions, of course).

 

Sort of on topic, I once spent about two hours in Tennessee, at the airport in Memphis. The moment I stepped off the plane I felt like I had wandered onto the set of the Dukes of Hazzard, and I very much wanted to get back on the plane. They've got great ribs there, though, I'll give them that.

Oh, and it was much better than the day I spent in Nebraska. I couldn't understand a word anyone in that state said to me. The whole state is on my Never Visit Again list, along with that kitschy tourist trap of a salt mine outside of Kraków. Ooo look, it's another garden gnome carved out of salt, god-knows-how-far beneath the surface of the Earth! Ugh.

 

That whole concept just boggles the mind. There are few things on this planet that leave me speechless, but the concept of a salt mine as kitschy tourist trap does seem to be one of them.

This means I am on your shitlist, I presume? Who did I call stupid? There is a BIG difference between education & inteligence. And in Europe they are not afariad to educate thier populace. While I was at the University of Maryland, a group of students took extra classes in a dog's name, & got the dog a BA. I believe a chimpanzee was enrolled at Harvard for a while. So, while these animals could be educated, they had not the inteligence to appreaciate it. On the other hand, many inteligent people are poorly or wrongly educated. This does not make them stupid. It doesn't even make them wrong. The only way a smart person becomes stupid is by opening his mouth & doing it to himself.

Retard, check your private mailbox sometime. In another thread I offered to send you a book, "How to Lie with Statistics". A non political book that is a fun read. It is a statistics textbook that has been in print for at least 40 years. I have a copy, & I offered to send to you in an as yet unanswered letter.

Or you afriad of getting educated?

There is a joker in that statment. A hole big enough to drive an Edsel through. A prize to the first person (or Harvard educated chimp) who spots it.

 

There are way less provinces in Canada than there are states in the US. (I saw this before, but was too incensed about being called stupid to care. Or maybe you didn't call me stupid, but I'm tired of being called stupid.)

 

*looks around Whhhaaaat? If you didn't call anyone stupid, how do you assume you're on my "shitlist"? I don't like your political leanings, but you're not on my "shitlist". I was just agreeing with Snowmane. I'm pretty sick of the "blame America first" crowd, ... dammit, I'm starting to veer..

Now that pisses me off. You assume I am uneducated? Or at least that I fear education? I'll have you know that I graduated top of my class, realized how FUCKED UP the school system is, how so many kids just "fall through the cracks". Hell, I think that they should change that cliche to "got trapped above the cracks." That seems to happen less than the former. The average teenager's knowledge, especially of history, makes me wanna fucking puke. To use an example, my sister in law, (my wife's sis) is 15. She doesn't know where Kuwait and Iraq are, couldn't point to them on a map, couldn't name any founders of the Constitution, didn't know when, where, and why the World Wars took place. I could go on and on.

What upsets me the MOST, Shadygrove, is not the poor education system. It's the don't care attitude of people. Not just teens, because to be honest, when I was that age, I couldn't be fucked to remember dates in history or trigonometry.. Not when there were so many fine pieces of ass in the same class as me.

But, to get back to my first sentence, I consider myself WELL educated. Mostly self-educated. That and experience are what "learned" me. Like you said, the schools are fuxored. But, the most important things you learn in life can't be taught. They are learned through experience, mistakes, paying attention to those who've gone the way before you (studying history)

Anyway, I've just rambled on and on and on, and I probably have contradicted myself, and missed points, and gone completely 180 degrees...

Whatever.

 

Whoa, why is it my topics off of Arcanum always seem to end up with people mad. Sheesh, maybe I should stop creating my own posts and just respond to others lol.

 

Sorry, FeeNicks. I tried to resist the dark forces of Shadygrove, but alas, I was overcome. Oh well.


Back to Tennessee, I still think it's God's Country. Along with Georgia, North Alabama, Kentucky, Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado.

 

I love Tennessee. A bunch of the people around here TRY not to like it because they don't want to get stuck in a redneck stereotype. I'm not a redneck, I'm southern and proud of it, but I'm not a redneck. Also, people sometimes think we are very racist, but we're not. Sure, some are, but some are everywhere.

 

Part of the problem: say something snarky & people react instead of read. Standard atack method, misread what someone said, then repeatedly beat him over the head with it.

No I asked "Or you afriad of getting educated?" I made no aspersions or asumptions on your current state.

Are you seeing a lot of the bright ones drop out from boredom there too?

But that was the fun stuff.... Seroiusly, where do they learn not to give a shit? Mostly in school.

But those are all things I like about you.

Seriously, now that I have your atention, you want the book?

 

Sure. Always try something once, my afore-mentioned father always said.

 

Heh, that sounds like me. I just completed the 10th grade. In the past I have always had straight A's or at least high B's, but I think this year I just got rather bored with it and didn't care. Like you, I did just enough to get by. I actually failed a class one six weeks.