groups

Yeah, Baxtor!

The 52 year old bookkeeper's problem could be (please note the use of the conditional) that there are no bookkeepers any more.

I had a joust with the right-winger on another forum a few years back. In 1968, I shared an apartment with two other girls. One had not gone to college but worked in a bank and then for an accountant. She began taking the CPA exam in sections as it was administered in the '60s. At the time I knew her, she was preparing for the second of three sections and she was 21.

Today, an accountant is either a person with a legal degree or an MBA.

In light of the accounting scandal a few years back, do we need people with legal degrees working as accountants or should accountants be people like the girl I knew 40 years ago?

BTW, does anyone here remember when the only people who majored in business were those who either flunked out of pre-med or engineering or else were C students whose only path to a four-year school was community college?

@Plainoldme---couldn't disagree with you more. Not sure how old you are but I can tell you that there is a world of difference in children today than when I grew up. I have spent the last few years subbing in a local school and I can tell you class size makes a difference today. Not sure what names of reading groups have to do with teaching children to read. You may have been lucky enough to have parents that helped teach you to read by listening to you after school hours but today there are to many children who parents do not. Not sure if they just do not want to or just do not have the time. These are the children that are being left behind.

I do not remember the time when people who majored in business were C students. I am almost sure that was not the case in our area even through it may have been in your area.

Wow Plainoldme. Anybody who doesn"t agree with you can't read or comprehend. Yikes, we may have to widen the groups doors for you to squeeze your head in, and you will probably still have to grease it up pretty well.

Here's just a small sample of your logic (? not sure I would really call it that)

1.) What would you do? Tell kids they are too stupid to take math and science? That is what you are proposing, whether you realize it or not.
Uh...no... That's what you like to do to other adults in this group, not something I would do to a kid. I would encourage them to excel in the things that they can master, and not continually see them beaten down because they don't have the intellect to master science and math. Yikes...you're a teacher? Geeeeze; seems like any teacher would want students to be successful...maybe not.

2.) Unless all kids are challenged, all kids will be left behind.
Challenging and forcing them into situations where they will fail and not the same things. Yikes; do all teachers think like this?? Yikes again.

3.) I gave you a reference to an NPR story about kids -- the actual students spoke on the radio -- who were from the inner city and who were studying Chaucer and were so grateful not to have the dumbed down material usually given to inner city kids that they were jubilant!
So, you're saying that teachers just assume that inner-city students are stupid and don't challenge them. Yikes...doesn't say much for teachers does it?

4.) I also said that the those advanced courses could be prepared for by moving all the science courses down one grade. If kids are raised as my kids were, ninth grade science (Earth Science) is a total waste of time.
Really? A kid with an IQ of 80 will do just as well as a kid with an IQ of 140, if he gets the science classes a grade earlier? Really?

5.) I also said the courses could be taken pass/fail. The pass/fail system has been around for years. I took a theology class pass/fail because I had no intention of attending class and it was required and I couldn't get out it. The college did let me out of another one by substituting an independent study for the required course.
Good plan; make all the hard classes pass/fail and just fail the ones who can't do the work; that will really help them in so many ways.

Good lord; I'm so glad that I didn't run into teachers with these kinds of attitudes. Sad...just sad.

Oh, and POM (aka Plainoldme), I don't want to let this one go by either....

"Reply to Michibilly's comment of 2 November 2009: We have discussed your faulty logic and poor reading skills in the past. "

We have also discussed your inability to comprehend the ideas of others without attacking them, as well as your poor reading skills, and dubious background.

Oh, yea...POM, and also people will respond to a reply instead of responding to the post. For those who don't read, or understand, all the replies, it may seem like the person replying has not read the post, but that generally is not the case. It's about participating in the group, and some people get so bored with others views and ideas that they don't get that. Hope that helps.

I had several management folks tell me that the reason so many companies require a degree is NOT because of what the degree is in, but rather that you have the determination to stick with something long enough to see it through -- in other words, that you were able to stick with college long enough to get that degree. I have a friend who had a degree in music but she was a Workmans Compensation claims representative for a large insurance company. Where does that music degree come in when you are working on someone's work comp claim?

I wonder why companies/employers don't consider the determination of workers who stick with a job for 10, 15 or 20 years -- learning all the ins and outs of your job, attending mandatory training classes, learning computer programs required of your job, for instance -- as proof of the same determination of a college student who has no experience in your field.

Gracie, I have heard the 'stick to it' reason for not hiring non-college people, and it's not a valid reason. And actually, it's sort of funny, since some, maybe many, students are attending school while their parents pay, and they don't work. I think I would have no problem sticking with a four-year free ride.

Before I finally finished college, I had been passed over by a gal with a Geography degree, who didn't even bother getting a teaching certificate to make that degree useful. We were both in a computer support group. She had NO computer support experience, and I had over five years already. They paid her about 10% more than they paid me for........?

I'm also not buying the 'no degree' excuse for not hiring people over 50. I remember when I worked for K-mart years ago. They didn't hire blacks for a variety of 'reasons', including education (you need a really, really, good education to work at K-Mart). When applications no longer had an entry for 'race', the interviewers would put a mark on the application that indicated that the candidate was black so that the personnel department didn't waste time interviewing them.

When people in the position to hire come upon a prospective employee who is older, and far more experienced than current younger employees, they believe that the older employee will not be a good addition to the younger team, and the older, and more experienced person is not hired. Age discrimination is not uncommon, and anybody over 50 looking for a job is likely to experience it first-hand.

pinkroses -- I never said that class size doesn't matter. I said that the right constantly argues that class size is unimportant. Now, there were 60 kids in my first grade class and when I think back on it, we were not allowed to be kids.

I think the insult behind calling our reading groups the Jesus, Mary and Joseph group is obvious: good students were in Jesus while the struggling kids were in Joseph.

And the only student to major in business from my high school class of 150 was someone who could barely finish school. I worked as a temp at a business school. Many of the students were not ready for college, let alone graduate school. Business majors were always the butt of jokes.

Today, a store manager is likely to be a person with a degree. Why? There is nothing difficult about managing a retail store, particularly if it is part of chain where all the methods are prescribed and the merchandise is selected by headquarters. Hiring college grads simply prevents determined high school grads -- many of whom enjoy retail-- from exercising leadership skills.