Our money is boring

In comparison to the world monies, our currency is fairly drab. It’s all one color, all one size, and have no women (except for that Sacagawea dollar) on it. Further, it is difficult for those who are visually impaired to tell each note apart. A $20 and a $50 feel exactly alike to the blind.

New paper money has been tossed back and forth over the years, but nothing seems to really push us in the right direction towards a change. Designers Dowling and Duncan recently showed their concepts for new money, and we think they are pretty fantastic. Check them out!

Waiting for Superman

There’s a new movie coming out called Waiting for Superman and it makes me terribly nervous. It’s a documentary centered around our failing education system brought to us by the director of An Inconvenient Truth. I have quite a few friends who became educators and I have a parent who is a teacher, so I feel fairly knowledgeable about the inner workings of the system. Now, the movie doesn’t come out until September 24th, so I hate to pre-judge, but I can’t see it treating teachers fairly. Media produced about our education system tends to do one thing: demonize teachers. No parent, no government, and certainly no student is to blame when it comes to falling test scores or discipline problems. The phrase “education is failing our students” becomes a war cry for those looking for change.

But, we need to consider the system as a whole, and not just a part. Certainly there are dysfunctional teachers out there. And in our continuous cutbacks towards funding these careers, we’ve devalued the position more than ever. Teachers no longer go to four year colleges where they learn techniques to become teachers. They fall into it after leaving a banking career or when their communications degree doesn’t get them the advertising position they were hoping for. We don’t train our teachers like we used to.

However, we have to look at the countries we are comparing ourselves to. The comparison is always made, first, to China. In China, only the top students even go to college. You’re told what you’re good at and are trained accordingly. We can be just as good as the Chinese. We just have to give up some of our free will to do it. We also have to deny college educations to the majority of our population. The way the Chinese view it, college isn’t for everyone. They educate those who show the most promise and find alternative life options for those who aren’t educationally inclined. We, on the other hand, create Phoenix University for those who can’t handle a real university setting.

So, maybe we don’t want to be China. Maybe we want to be the Netherlands! In the Netherlands, the culture is very insular and values are more consistent. Their schools don’t have classrooms where half of the students speak a different language. Their parents value education, and help their children from an early age. Learning is a value there.

Here, we value education like we do everything else; in word only. We say that education is the key, but we don’t help our college graduates find work. We stress the importance of children getting the best education possible, but we pay the providers of that education less and less, while expecting greater results. We threaten job security and pay stability based on the performance of children who come home to YouTube and Playstations instead of books and homework. We’ve stripped the innovation out of the education system and tied the hands of educators to provide insight and teach the skills children actually need to succeed.

I’ll be interested to see if Waiting for Superman provides solutions for our problems beyond increased testing and better training for teachers. I’m proud to say that I had an incredible public education where I learned about thematic elements and foreshadowing. If the trailer is any indication, I don’t think I’ll hold my breath.

Stuck in rotation

I watch most of my media via the internet. I still have rabbit ears on my 40in tv and instead plunk my money into a faster internet connection. With Hulu, Comedy Central, MSNBC, and Netflix I stay up on most pop culture. Downside? There are far more repeated commercials. For a period of time I was getting ready to drive to Cisco Systems and do something terrible to their advertising department to make the commercials on Rachel Maddow stop. I love Ellen Page as much as the next person, but I could only take so much.

For a commercial to stand out, it has to be particularly excellent. There are plenty of Geico commercials in my Hulu rotation and most of them I could live without. However, the newest commercial completely got me.

I love it. Its so simple but evert time I see it I fall over laughing. Its like Narcoleptic Kitty or Sneezing Panda. Every time! Props to the (no doubt quarterlife) minds that thought this up.

Now a brief message to Friskies. No Friskies! Your commercial freaks me out! This kitten runs around an adventureland of animals it would like to eat. I love bacon, despite the adorable weee piggy. But I don’t want to go to Universal Studios and visit Bacon Land.

One day our media will be devoid of advertising. Fewer online streams play them and with DVR you can just skip them. I don’t think I’ll miss commercials, but in the mean time, I’m happy there are still some that make me laugh.

Thanks Mrs. A.

How much did your $10/hr education cost?

The Seattle based Crosscut.com recently discussed the myth of the for-profit culinary school. It got me thinking, if these trained chefs are out $50,000 and making $9 an hour, I wonder what my educational proportion is.

As quarterlifers, we graduated college at the most unfortunate time. Having difficulties finding work after graduation, many of us went straight to graduate school, hoping to make ourselves more marketable. But much like those culinary school grads who spend two years chopping at an expensive school, we also came out to find jobs below our expectations.

Culturally, we value education above experience from a philosophical standpoint. However, the real world values experience over knowledge. Quarterlifers with MBAs and MFAs and PhDs are finding that, despite their years of learning and the high price tag that went with it, they still have to start at an entry level or junior position.

There has to be a change in the way we value and talk about education. Not only for collegiate levels, but for elementary and secondary levels too. College is no longer the bastion of success and ends up frustrating our graduates when employment is no easier than before. We need to take a page out of the book of the Bauhaus where knowledge and apprenticeship were combined to give students skills and intelligence about their prospective fields.

If I devoted every dollar of my paycheck to my student loans, it would take me close to 4 years to pay them off. I’m not sure how much more marketable my degrees have made me, but they’ve certainly taught me plenty about finance.

And then they came for me.

Keith Olbermann always does us proud

watch?v=QZpT2Muxoo0&feature=player_embedded

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