I never realized how hard it would be to find those little metal buckets (you know the ones I mean; about 3 1/2 inches high, you see them stuffed with candy as a teacher present or whatever) or even just little plastic flowerpots! I mean, jeez! Dollar General - no. Ace Hardware - no. Target - no. Walmart - had some smallish plastic flowerpots, and some miniature washtubs, but none of those little buckets.
Washtubs it is.
So while I'm looking for little metal buckets, or little plastic flowerpots, we run into an old - I guess she's a friend; or used to be a friend. Gah. She's okay, just carries baggage with her from the past that I'd just as soon skip.
J sent me this AWESOME link - said he figured it was right up my alley, and that it reminded him of me, too. I went and read it.
WOW WOW WOW WOW
It's like - the me that could have been. I *wistful sigh* used to be a perfect size 6. Before I got happily married, mothered and domesticated, I had considered becoming a Geisha... and the brain on this chick! Here, go read her: Elle Wakefield
One of the links on her blog led me here: Nationmaster. She was talking about how the US spends more on defense than all the other countries of the world COMBINED, which was bad enough... I started poking around, looking at other statistics. I took a look at percentage of GDP spent on education by different countries, and just about swallowed my tongue.
WE COME AFTER LIBERIA? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
We come FORTY SEVENTH:
#1 Moldova 10.3%
#2 Namibia 8.5%
#3 Denmark 7.7%
#4 South Africa 7.5%
#5 Uzbekistan 7.4%
#6 Barbados 7.3%
#7 Saudi Arabia 7.2%
#8 Sweden 7.1%
#9 Finland 7%
#10 New Zealand 6.9%
#11 Botswana 6.9%
#12 Norway 6.9%
#13 Israel 6.9%
#14 Jamaica 6.8%
#15 Cuba 6.7%
#16 Tunisia 6.6%
#17 Saint Lucia 6.5%
#18 Ukraine 6.4%
#19 Lesotho 6.4%
#20 Estonia 6.4%
#21 Jordan 6.4%
#22 Seychelles 6.3%
#23 Latvia 6.1%
#24 Congo, Democratic Republic of the 5.9%
#25 Ireland 5.7%
#26 Libya 5.7%
#27 France 5.6%
#28 Slovenia 5.4%
#29 Belarus 5.4%
#30 Australia 5.2%
#31 Fiji 5.2%
#32 Lithuania 5.2%
#33 Swaziland 5.1%
#34 Dominica 5%
#35 Austria 5%
#36 Venezuela 5%
#37 Netherlands 4.9%
#38 Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of 4.9%
#39 Liberia 4.9%
#40 Hungary 4.9%
#41 Morocco 4.9%
#42 Bolivia 4.8%
#43 Panama 4.8%
#44 Belize 4.8%
#45 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 4.7%
#46 United Kingdom 4.7%
#47 United States 4.7%
(Caveat: this data is from 1990-99.)
mostly pointless meanderings
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
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3 comments:
Yup. We're real bad at math as well. Judging by the way the world is, it's cheaper to teach kids calculus than it is to buythem shoes or give them a malaria net.
That being said, while it sad that the U.S. regularly gets ranked by places where no one has shoes or running water as far as basic education goes, to a certain extent it is to be expected that since the cost of education is relatively static a country with a ridiculously larger GDP will spend a much smaller proportion of GDP on education. That's not to say that we're doing well as far as education is concerned. Personally I would like to forgo a couple billion in military spending and make the universal class size in the U.S. 10 students per teacher.
Yeah, I thought about the scale differences... but I totally agree that it'd be nice to get rid of some of that obscene defense budget.
How about 2 teachers per student? I always wanted a private tutor, like in the old days... maybe lots of tutors; a specialist in each subject... could rotate them out...
Hey, are you guys coming into town for Christmas?
I think that dedicating 2/3s of our population to being teachers is probably a bit excessive personally.
We will not be in town for Christmas. I will be working, Mar will be in LA with her family (for just a few days). Next year we'll probably be at least in Florida, but more likely than not we'll be in Orlando the majority of the time.
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