According to Cisco CEO John Chambers,
If you haven’t noticed from my last name, it is Iranian and although I was born in the
When I was 9 however I did enjoy the trip and I have vivid memories of the people and places. There were few paved roads when I was in Teheran but I hear that has changed now. The people were unbelievably nice to me as well.
The reason they were extra nice was that I spoke Farsi (the national language) with an American accent. This was fascinating to the kids my age. They had never heard an American accent before. There were some kids working in an ice cream shop that kept feeding me free ice cream in order to get me to talk. They were being entertained, not realizing that in the process I was developing a serious ice cream addiction (a problem I am still trying to shake 🙂 ).
I remember coming back home at night after a hard day of binging and seeing my cousins doing homework. My cousins were 6 and 7. I recall vividly that these kids had 4-5 hours of homework each night! This was staggering to me as at most I had one hour. This is also one of the reasons that Iranian kids partially educated in
Now that I think about it I wonder why
Getting back to education, there is an article in the USA Today that details how parents and children don’t think they really need much more math and science education.
I am not sure that the average American student or parent realizes how far behind we all are. If I didn’t go to
My view is that the
American education (not including college) is considered a joke by students from many other countries. This is a very sad fact.
We have been landlocked for so long that I think we have forgotten to get out our telescopes and to look in different directions for countries that do it much better than we do.
In my opinion there should be worldwide competition for education and all countries should have to compete. Why don’t we establish an education Olympics. Sure it is nice that a hundred million of us can watch Olympic figure skating or downhill skiing but what is more important is how our children are educated. A proper education is the only way we can ensure our children can compete for jobs in the future.
My kids are young. It will be a few years before they go to school but I know that just about wherever I send them, the education won’t be as rigorous as what I saw my cousins go through in
We need to invest in serious education overhaul and not just tweak our system… We need to provide a distraction-free and in-depth education for all to remain this great nation we are today.
Gene Retske
February 22, 2006 at 6:12 amRich –
Your comments about the sad state of affairs of the educational system in the US are very appropriate. There are reasons for this. Our system has become so bogged down in political correctness and sensitivity that all the competitiveness has been taken out of it. In many schools, grades are no longer given, or consideration is given for effort, not results. When I was a kid, we were encouraged to get good grades and to achieve.
But, the big wakeup call came when the Russians launched the first Sputnik satellite, and won the space race. President John F. Kennedy made science and math a major priority, and throughout the 60s and 70s, our education system was on a mission to regain our superiority. Today, we have lost that competitive edge, and education is soft and ineffective.
One possible solution is to use our greatest strength, competition, and open education to competition. This has been proposed, but the powerful teacher’s lobby, the NEA, has fought it tooth and nail, aided by ACLU lawsuits where ever vouchers and other competitive mechanisms have been introduced. The answer lies in you, and the millions of other parents who want your children to get a good solid education.
I could go on for hours about this, and may, on my personal blog – http://www.imsickofthecrap.com.
Gene Retske
Rich Tehrani
February 22, 2006 at 10:30 amThank you for the feedback. I hope that the will of the parents can steer the government in the direction of better education. I am concerned with the lack of apparent concern on this issue. I hope parents everywhere wake up.
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