08:28 – I’m still building and shipping science kits. I have a new batch of 30 biology kits binned and ready to finish boxing up, which’ll take an hour or so. Then I’ll get started on another batch of 60 chemistry kits.
Meanwhile, when I have a spare moment, I’m still working on the new Earth Science and AP Chemistry kits. The more I work with the 2013 revision of the AP Chemistry lab curriculum, the less I like it. The pre-2013 curriculum included 22 labs, which I thought was too few. The 2013 revision cuts that to 16 labs, but duplication among those labs reduces it to only 12 or 13. They’ve also narrowed the scope, skipping many major topics that should be covered in a second-year high-school chemistry lab course. And they’ve gone to all “guided-inquiry” labs, which basically means the teacher tells the students what the goal is and leaves it up to them to figure out what to do and how to do it. I don’t think that’s appropriate even in a public school setting with a qualified AP Chemistry teacher, let alone in a homeschool environment. Students should think about what they’re doing and why, certainly, but tossing them in at the deep end results in a lot of flailing around and wasted time. Finally, the official AP Chemistry labs assume a formal high-school chemistry lab is available, with analytical balances, spectrophotometers, pH meters, fume hoods, suction filtration setups, etc. etc. Few homeschool families will have access to that kind of setup. In fact a lot of public high schools don’t.
So we’re going to go our own way. We won’t call the new kit “AP Chemistry”. We’ll call it “Advanced Chemistry” and cover what we think needs to be covered. We’ll certainly cover the key topics in the AP Chemistry lab curriculum, but much else besides.
but tossing them in at the deep end results in a lot of flailing around and wasted time
But, but, it’s for the children. Have you not realized that the role of schools as created by the federal guidelines is to make students in high school functional idiots. Fully dependent on the government for everything with any productive output taxed fully by the government keeping as many as possible in poverty.
The role of the public school system is to provide a national daycare service (complete with meals) for children during the work week.
Sometimes I’m of the opinion that they should teach a kid to read, teach basic maths and scientific reasoning, and with those three things anyone can teach themselves anything they need to know. 13 years in a public school system is ridiculous considering what little they’re being taught. Like I said, it’s a daycare.
Yes, the difference between public-schooled students and homeschooled students is stunning. Of course, there’s considerable self-selection going on. Home-school parents tend to be a lot smarter than average, so their kids start with a genetic advantage. And homeschools don’t have to deal with the crap that holds bright kids back in public schools.
Homeschool students are maybe 3% to 5% of the total student population, depending on state laws and other factors, but they represent a huge percentage of the right side of the curve. Homeschool kids kick ass at local, state, and national level competitions, and are typically several grade levels ahead of their age cohort in public schools.
Homeschoolers are also getting better and better organized. Co-ops have become very common. These help a lot, particularly for advanced science and math topics at the high-school level. A lot of homeschool parents aren’t comfortable teaching, for example, AP-level science or math. In co-ops, parents who are comfortable with those topics teach their own kids and others’ kids in a classroom setting. In some cases, they even hire in a teacher. I just sold several chemistry kits to a co-op group who’s hiring a chemistry grad student to teach the class. Homeschooling really is achieving critical mass.
Are co-ops happening in NC? I seem to recall that you couldn’t do that: you could only teach your own kids.
Don’t forget the biggest advantage that home-schoolers have: they have parents who care about their education – care enough to invest masses of time in it.
But it’s got to be a huge amount of work, and requires a lot of discipline on the part of the entire family. Just to take an example I ran across recently: There’s a Swiss family (not named Robinson, as far as I know) that decided to spend several years sailing around the world. They would, of course, home-school their kids on the boat. When tossed a few softball questions by the reporters (who really were not looking for any kind of trouble) the kids turned out to be pig ignorant. The kids were tweens, and my impression was that they were years behind where they ought to be.
So I wonder: how many home-schoolers – perhaps with the best of intentions – screw up and fail to educate their kids? Are there any statistics out there?
And homeschools don’t have to deal with the crap that holds bright kids back in public schools.
However, when they get to college they will discover the fluff that is not really relevant to their education. Want an engineering degree? You need to take many worthless humanities classes that really teach you nothing. Those classes are merely to provide jobs at teaching for those with humanities degrees who would not be employable.
Additionally, the longer a university can keep you attending the more money they make. With mandatory student fees, such as Comcast, parking, activity fees, etc. being part of the tuition, there are lots of entities making money off students. Universities are not about education, they are about making money and employing the unemployable. Most just happen to be a football and basketball program with a university attached.
You need to take many worthless humanities classes that really teach you nothing.
Ain’t that the truth. Introduction to Sociology, Modern Fiction. Zero contribution to my education. The business courses were worse – I remember in one we had to learn to calculate compound interest. This as an Engineer taking advanced calculus, differential equations, etc. – I actually had some trouble, because I had trouble taking the course seriously, and the teacher seemed insulted that I could do the exercises without a calculator.
Yes, the last time I checked North Carolina required that homeschool students be taught only by their parents. I suspect that’s quite often ignored.
As to universities, I suspect we’re heading for a sea change. In the first universities, students hired and paid professors directly, and I suspect we’re heading that way again. Also, although certifications started out with Novell, Microsoft, Cisco, etc. they are now developing into something much broader. I think the day is not too far off when a college degree will become immaterial. Employers will want to see your list of certifications, what you scored on each, and who did the testing.
I think the biggest public relations hurdle that home schooling needs to overcome is the public perception that mostly bible thumpers home school their children so that they can both educate and indoctrinate (i.e. brainwash) them. It’s convenient for them because the wife in these scenarios is frequently a stay at home mom, like all God-fearing Christian women (lol), and thus available to home school. Now, that is all completely unfair, but that’s what pops into a lot of people’s heads when you say home school. Perhaps secular home schoolers need to be more vocal. 🙂
You need to take many worthless humanities classes that really teach you nothing.
lol My Twins already have History of Music 101 as an elective for their first semester in the College of Engineering at UNLV. When I got my BS in Maths back in the day, two semesters of music history, two semesters of psychology, and three credits of PE. Plus a bunch of other crap. 1970s. 2014, no better.
Well, the verdict is in on the kid in MO. Minor libturd MC Hammer says “teen was murdered.” That’s good enough for me. I say lead the mob to the cops house and do him in after proof positive he was murdered. By MC Hammer for God’s sake. It must be true.
Well, homeschooling really got started in the 70’s as a secular movement by lefties/progressives. In the 80’s, the fundie religious started doing it, and for a while homeschooling was majority religious. But for the last couple of decades, homeschooling has been majority secular. Today, less than 40% of homeschooling families do so for primarily religious reasons. Many of the 60% are religious, but they don’t homeschool primarily for that reason. They object to public schools not because they’re secular but because parents are concerned about the quality of the education, the safety of their children, exposure to drugs, etc.
Looks like Obama’s terrorists XXXXXX chickens may be coming home to roost:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/08/22/Fmr-Homeland-Security-Advisor-Very-Very-True-ISIS-May-Have-Crossed-Border
Either Obummer is the most naive person out there or he is actively trying to destroy this country. He really is beginning to look like the Manchurian XXXXXXX Kenyan candidate.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
RE: College
I think the original purpose of requiring x number of hours in humanities and whatnot was to provide a “well-rounded education.” I’m not opposed to that in general. I think they were trying to prevent college from becoming a vocational school. Also, they wanted to teach people to think about different things in different ways and to break them out of their comfy boxes. I’m cool with all of that. At some point along the way it got perverted into our current university and college system where you have physicists and engineers taking Intro to Film.
Long ago most everyone spent the first couple of years of college doing classical studies. You learned Latin and Greek so you could read the great philosophers and mathematicians in their original language.
RE: Homeschooling
I certainly recognize people’s right to raise their children as they see fit and so, while I don’t agree with it, I understand why people homeschool (spell checker really doesn’t like homeschool as one word) for religious reasons. Though, I could also argue that brainwashing a child to adhere to your doctrine before they’re of an age to make that choice themselves is a violation of that child’s rights.
Homeschooling for academic reasons makes perfect sense to me. Homeschooling to protect your children is a sword that cuts both ways. Sure, they’re not exposed to gang culture, drugs, etc. However, one of the things school also teaches is social skills. Interacting and dealing with people radically different than yourself. You’d have to make sure your homeschooled child was involved in several extramural activities to fill that gap.
Unfortunately, I think many families’ biggest hurdle to homeschooling is that no one has the time. In two-income families many don’t want to make the sacrifices that going to a single income would incur and with all there is to do in life, plus working full time, when would they fit it in?
I don’t buy the well-rounded part. It’d be one thing if it operated in both directions, but it doesn’t.
I know a whole lot of STEM-type people. Every one of them has expertise in at least one STEM discipline, and often more than one. And I’m not counting closely-related disciplines, either. But the kicker is that most of them also have outside interests, or, given that they’re mostly Asperger’s, usually AN outside interest in which they often approach or meet expert/professional standards. Several, for example, are musicians good enough to make a living at music. Quite a few are successful novelists. Several more are accomplished historians, with expert-level knowledge on, for example, Republican Rome or Renaissance England or medieval Italy. And specialty knowledge of literature is also commonplace.
Conversely, of the liberal-arts types I know, very few–I am tempted to say none–have even a high school level familiarity with STEM subjects. They fail basic tests of scientific knowledge with questions like, “What is the orbital period of Earth?” and “At what temperature does water freeze?”
In short, STEM types don’t need a “well-rounded” college education. They do just fine picking liberal arts stuff up on their own. It’s the liberal-arts types who need some rounding in STEM stuff, and they sure don’t get it in college.
Several states have charter schools which are completely online. One of my wife’s friends was talking about managing her husband’s office and having her daughter go to school in the next room. The online virtual school sounds like it might be a good middle ground between home schooling and a brick and mortar public school.
Yes, there are all kinds of alternatives like that. Homeschooling at the middle- and high-school level, does not require a parent to be present all day long. There are all kinds of on-line resources like Khan Academy, to mention one. For that matter, there’s a full range of first-year college courses available at MIT’s on-line center and similar efforts by other universities. Many of those courses are perfectly suitable for homeschool highschool students.
In fact, if I were homeschooling myself, my goal would be to cover a full four-year college undergrad curriculum by the time I was 14 or 15 and then go directly to grad school.
Either Obummer is the most naive person out there or he is actively trying to destroy this country.
Yes he is. And a weak leader. The *Pentagon*, geez, just announced “Russia needs to remove their tanks from Ukraine now.” When the President of the United States lets the *Pentagon* set foreign policy, it’s over. I guess the Joint Chiefs saw ObuttWad on the golf course and made their move.
The vast majority of home schooling around here (that I’m familiar with, at least) are Protestant religious nutbags who want to indoctrinate the offspring. And even those types can provide their kids with much of the grounding of a proper education. They demand that their kid learn to compose a coherent paragraph in English, and that the Treaty of Paris of 1783 ended the American Revolutionary war, and how to solve a quadratic equation. It’s when they leave the nest and clang into actual hard sciences that the kids are in trouble. And if they go to the local Bible college, or community college for a ‘degree’ in Social Work, the notion that the world really didn’t pop into existence in 4004 BC doesn’t hinder them too much. (My younger sister got a BA in Journalism, and a law degree, both from large well known state funded universities. I don’t think she ever took any sort of math class, and her only science was one semester of Freshman Chemistry.) Who knows, it’s even possible that a thorough enough grounding might get some of the whelps to question the dogma they’ve been spoon fed.
Sounds like the best way to handle it and still be able to look yourself in the mirror.
That’s my default approach, but at some point malice becomes the more likely explanation. Sheer incompetence should have some outcomes going in different directions, whereas malice would have almost all outcomes going the same way.
Also, from some perspectives it doesn’t matter whether someone is malicious or incompetent. Results are what matter.
Ref the AP chemistry lab curriculum, or any of the educational reforms and updates in the past decade. (Or longer: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” A Nation at Risk, 1983.) Does it really matter if these legions of educational experts are trying to destroy the US or are simply mind-numbingly incompetent?
Agreed. Though this is nothing more than another example of “what I think is interesting is very important but what you think is interesting is worthless”, occasionally discussed here. The loudest voices for “a rounded education” or even “a return to the classical liberal education” are from the liberal arts side of the chasm. People on the STEM side don’t yammer about it nearly as much (and, by and large, don’t yammer nearly as much overall) and essentially never get heard in the “important” publications or TV shows. The views of STEM people just aren’t as important, you see, as letting us know about the funny thing this woman’s dog did yesterday.
That’s a common claim. It’s bullshit. Children don’t grow up and learn to be responsible adults by associating with their age peers, they learn by associating with and emulating responsible adults.
The socialization I got after elementary school taught me that the law of the jungle is the only law there is. Authorities will not support or defend you even when that’s their responsibility. As a consequence, I developed a distrust of authority and a powerful sense of self reliance and self preservation and a berserk refusal to tolerate bullying. As a consequence, I had killed six men before I turned 21. So far as I know I’ve never killed an on-duty cop, but I’ve beaten the crap out of several when they stepped over the line to bullying under cover of law. Taken as a whole, I’d have to say that this public school socialization was a big, fat failure.
In short, STEM types don’t need a “well-rounded” college education. They do just fine picking liberal arts stuff up on their own. It’s the liberal-arts types who need some rounding in STEM stuff, and they sure don’t get it in college.
I suspect that I am a STEM type by your definition. Does being an avid reader of Speculative Fiction count as liberal arts stuff?
Speculative Fiction is Scifi, fantasy, alternate history, distopian, etc.
Sure it does. There are college courses about it.
Think about some of the ongoing discussions on this site over the last 15+ years, in which STEM types are usually active participants. We’ve ranged far afield from STEM topics into all sorts of liberal-arts topics, with lots of active participation. If I start writing about, say, Marian reforms to the Roman legionary structure or the influence of John Locke on the American Founding Fathers, I have no doubt that many frequent commenters will kick in with well-supported opinions. Or the influence of Renaissance music on Bach and other baroque composers. Or Richard III’s supposed murder of princes. Or Hitler’s purging of the SA during the Night of the Long Knives. Or whatever.
Mr. Ray is correct that that our current publik skool system is designed to create functional cretins who will be slavishly obedient to the regime’s objectives and policies, not much more than docile livestock; I really don’t see how this is much different from the systems in the old Soviet Union, Red China and North Korea.
But Mr. Chad is also correct, in that it’s also a gigantic daycare system, in place so both spouses can work their butts off at deadend prole-cube jobs or service industry gigs and provide more tax revenue to the regime; it’s now almost commonplace and mandatory for both parents to be gone at work all day, assuming either one of them even has a job anymore. But it was true in my historical reckoning from about the 1980s to the present.
Mr. SteveF is correct, too, as I have found malice to be the increasingly dominant factor in how bad things happen in modern life, more so than ignorance and stupidity, based on his distinction between the observed outcomes. It’s almost all bad now, amirite?
By the way, King Richard III, the last English king to die in battle, and by all accounts, valiantly so, and his remains found recently under a British parking lot, probably did have those two young princes whacked in the Tower.
The current education system (pre-college) in the US was modeled after Germany and was designed to turn out good factory workers and shopkeepers.
I don’t buy it. Josephine Tay convinced me completely in The Daughter of Time.
Or Hitler’s purging of the SA during the Night of the Long Knives.
I hate Nazis!
Not to worry, MrAtoz; they’re all dead.
That was mainly Nazis massacring other Nazis in the dead of night while they either partied or were sleeping off parties. And the top guy had been a longtime bosom buddy of ol’ Dolphie.
But we still have the twin threats of commies and hadjis; the former mostly already long-since inside our gates and the latter increasingly so. We need our own Night of the Long Knives and PDQ, too.
Let’s just make very sure it doesn’t turn into Krystallnacht.
Agreed; we have identified our most dangerous enemies.
Mrs. OFD and MIL off to pick up furniture and swan around central Vermont today while I do mundane organization and suchlike around the house. They’ll all be off, including Princess, tomorrow for central Maffachufetts until Friday and then on next Sunday wife will be off across the country again. I will have hopefully successfully completed my first week on the new job and made everybody happy and impressed. And won’t get paid until the following week, after which it will be weekly direct deposit. They have a 401k plan and profit-sharing stuff, too.
Just noticed a female friend of the neighbors’ across the street arrive there; grossly obese; is it just me, or is the current “obesity epidemic” mainly concentrated by far among North Murkan wimmenz? Like maybe 80%? How do they let themselves get like that; they can barely move? Princess had pics on FaceCrack of the wedding she went to out in Calgary last week and all but one or two of the females were like this, some monstrously so; maybe a couple of the guys likewise. Grocery bills must be fantastic. If I ate like a pig and drank a case of beer every day for a couple of years, I might be able to get up over 300 pounds but to reach the same levels of morbidity I’d have to weigh twice that. Yikes.
Since we’re already nattering on about Nazis:
Obama Stands Alone: Even the media are baffled by his deepening isolation
Didn’t der Fuehrer say “to Hell with the German people” and retreat to his bunker towards the end? Just sayin’.
I saw that story; the Obummer apologist cadres reply that it helps Dear Leader to focus. So how ’bout giving the poor guy a chance; let him get his golf game up to speed so he can play with champions like Vernon Jordan and our first black President, Larry Klinton; at the same time he can confer with these world-renowned global strategists and thinkers, with a nod to Herr Doktor Kissinger once in a while, and HOPEfully CHANGE our international situation for the better.
Let’s give a shout out to the shade of another dear leader, Esteemed Comrade Stalin, a.k.a. Koba the Dread, who instead of fleeing Moscow ahead of the advancing Panzer and Luftwaffe columns, stayed right there and held on.
But you’re right; Dolphie did eventually say ‘…Zur Hölle mit dem deutschen Volk, diese undankbare, schlampig und feige Schweine!’ It was a very sad day in Berlin.
I blame high fructose corn syrup. Distilled corn syrup is bad news, both ultra calorie and messes with your metabolism.
“I blame high fructose corn syrup.”
For what, the herds and swarms of grossly, morbidly, grotesquely obese peeps in North Murka these daze, mostly wimmenz? And they don’t seem the least bit bothered by this, either. And no trouble for most of the younger ones getting laid and dropping kids by the truckload. Standard uniform: greasy hair pulled back in a very tight bun; form-fitting leotards; multiple tattoos; maybe some face studs; and evidently they think they’re hot. Of course the menfolks in the country now all look like overgrown boyz, with baggy shorts to mid-calf, multiple tattoos, 4XLT tee shirts untucked, sneakers and oversized baseball hat.
As Mr. Chuck used to say, what a country!
When I was in the US in 2003 I was stunned by the number of really fat people, and how fat they were. Fatter, and more of them than in Australia by a country mile. There were slim, fit looking people too, but there were huge numbers of porkers around. And I didn’t notice that women predominated.
Obesity in the US has gotten tremendously worse since I left a bit more than 20 years ago. Coming back to visit, it really is a shocking change. I think the two biggest factors are:
– More and more people buy prepared food items, instead of cooking for themselves. Pre-prepped food is stuffed full of sugar, starch and flavor additives – calories that go straight into the fat cells, and flavor additives to make you eat more of it. Just one example that comes to mind: Pick up even “healthy” breakfast cereals: most of them are more than 20% sugar.
– Huge restaurant portions. I suppose restaurants don’t want anyone to go home hungry, but combined with the still prevalent impulse to “clean your plate”, and how often people eat out…
The final nail in the coffin: obesity has become acceptable; there is apparently no longer a social stigma to obesity. Instead, they expect accommodation: a disabled sticker from their doctor, so they can use the special parking space right next to the restaurant door. 20 years ago, a large restaurant might have had 1 or 2 disabled parking spaces – now they have half-a-dozen or more, used mainly by the morbidly obese.
Somehow, there has always been the tendency for women to be more overweight than men. Back in my military days, it was a running joke: You’d see a guy dating an attractive woman. As soon as they got married, she stopped taking care of herself. No more makeup, shabby clothes, and the weight gain was practically instantaneous. This was so common that we even had a name for it, which escapes me at the moment.
I found that the portion sizes in US takeaway restaurants was about the same size as in Australia. But in sit down restaurants the portions were massive.
When I stayed with friends in the northern Virginia suburbs of DC I took my hostess (a Brit) to dinner at a restaurant near Tysons Corner. She just ordered a main, I, with less experience of the US, also ordered soup, which was delicious.
My main (a slab of ribs) was so large it was literally falling over both sides of my very large plate.
Neither of us had any room at all for desert.
I like a good feed as much as anyone, but there’s no point in getting bloated and feeling nauseated afterwards.
Well keep in mind the actual food is not the biggest cost for most places. Overhead like labor, rent, insurance and utilities make up large portions of the cost. So for an owner to make the customer happy with large portions makes sense. Many people like to take food home and have a tasty lunch the next day (I for one).
Went to church and lunch with SIL and her family today. She is 5’2″ and 300 lbs. Her oldest son is 24, 5’11”, 400 lbs and unable to work due to “issues”. Her husband works like a dog in a warehouse for UPS. I am amazed. My BIL is walking wounded due to handling heavy packages for many years and thinking about retiring. This does not bode well.
“Gabriel Iglesias: I’m Not Fat… I’m Fluffy”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBtRc_LVSg
“there are six levels of fatness” (starts at 10:35):
1. big
2. healthy
3. husky
4. fluffy
5. damn!
6. oh hell no!
Don’t bode well at all; the SIL and son are on the edge of a precipice eventually that may include diabetes, heart problems and a host of other maladies and we know what impact that has on families and the “healthcare system.” And finances.
This doesn’t seem to bother many of them at all. I find that kinda amazing.
I am really bad about that. It’s very economical to do that. I saw a show once where they were counseling some family on its poor finances and the advisor told them, “Last night’s dinner should also be today’s lunch.”
Personally, I have very little desire to eat the same thing that close together. That is, unless it is something new and amazing that I just cannot get enough of. I’ve left many a half-eaten pizza laying on the table to the shock of my wait person. I just tell them, “Hey, I could take it home, but it’s just going to end up in the trash anyway. Might as well have you throw it away here. I just stuffed myself with it, so I’m not going to want to eat it or anything similar to it for at least the next few days.”
I will admit that sometimes the wait staff and my dining companions shame me (verbally or non-verbally) into taking the leftovers with me. In which case I take the leftover container with me and throw it in the nearest trashcan on my way to the car.
I hate wasting food so I almost always take leftovers home. They don’t have to be eaten the next day.
As Mr. Chuck used to say, what a country!
Guess I am just getting used to living back in the USSA again. I have reached the point where nothing more surprises me.
On the food front — the slim people I knew in Europe and here, do not eat a big meal in the evening. That alone is why (IMO) there are so many fatties in the US and so many very stocky ones south of the border.
Personally, I never frequent restaurants that serve stuff I can make at home. And unfortunately, that is the great bulk of fast food chains. I can make a better tasting burger than they can and warm french fries in the microwave. You can usually find me in the ethnic restaurants — of which there are not enough in the US: Thai, Chinese, Indian, Ethiopian, even Tex-Mex (you cannot even buy yellow chips in the grocery stores anymore, thanks to Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, the big flour mills, etc). Anyone who has been raised near farming, knows yellow corn tastes best, but all we get is the pure white stuff nowadays, just like ‘fat-free’ and ‘light’ predominates in the grocery stores. Fortunately, it was impossible to find either one of the latter in grocery stores in Berlin.
I also prefer restaurants where there are no leftovers; the ones that serve a reasonable portion and that is it. And that is usually those ethnic restaurants. Go to anyplace serving American fare, and you will get more than you can eat at one sitting. If restaurants got people into the habit of taking food home, that is their industry’s doing, no one else’s. Germans would never take leftovers home. For some reason that is super-embarrassing and humiliating to them. They just leave it. Consequently, packing up leftover food is not something most restaurants are prepared with containers for. Unless that establishment does take-away, they have nothing to put your leftovers in.
Regarding education, I am in 100% agreement with everything Chad said. Family members in education have backed up the contention that — over the last 4 decades — the school system is nothing more than daycare, even including the adding of meals in every school no matter what grade level.
Kids in Berlin go to school from 08:00 until 12:30 — no food served except in the private, tuition-based schools. All of them are finished by 13:00. Grade schoolers go to ‘after care’ that is part of the fabulous Kindergarten program the Germans have. High schoolers roam the streets, just like American kids do, until 16:00 when their transit passes for school become invalid for the adult rush hour (although I never saw the transit inspectors give kids more than a talking to). I have no idea what Middle School level kids do. Never saw them at either Kindergarten or roaming the streets.
My point is that education does not need to be more than about 3 or 4 hours a day, if that.
As far as college variety goes, I am with Chad again. Never saw a college grad who could not write far better than a high school grad. And it is not STEM courses teaching them that.
My SIL has been a diabetic for 20+ years. Maybe 25. She goes in and out of control using the glucose? pill.
I had to help a morbidly obese female at work this morning who didn’t know how to open pic attachments to her email to look at them, apparently. But that was the only one I saw today; met the wife of the husband-wife ownership also, and what a stone cougar! She and several other wimmenz there obviously use the company’s products (rowing machines, Nordic tracks, etc., maybe not the AK-47s…) and have legs to die for, that would break most guys in half.
I had to bury my nose in MySQL data for a while…that takes the edge off and right quick, too….