I can haz test toob
While Prince Jared is wondering if he’s really in deep doo-doo over those falsified building permits, Princess Ivanka is off pretending to be A Scientist.
Talking #WorkforceDevelopment and Infrastructure in Iowa today! @realDonaldTrump’s #Infrastructure initiative includes a robust plan to expand skills-focused learning to prepare the next generation of American workers for 21st century job opportunities. pic.twitter.com/10md8d5tnz
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) March 19, 2018
She’s a fashion marketer, so what she has to offer anyone on subjects like infrastructure or wtf is in this tube-thing, god only knows. #Nepotism baby!
Hey, is it Infrastructure Week again? Those are my favorite weeks — all the juiciest Trump debacles seem to happen then.
“… a robust plan to expand skills-focused learning to prepare the next generation of American workers for 21st century job opportunities.”
Maybe as part of this she can robustly suggest Daddy hire (and properly pay) American workers for his resorts, clubs etc, or have his cheap-ass shit made by Americans. Wait: she has to start having her own cheap-ass shit made by Americans, first. Americans First?
Obligatory montage of stock footage
From text by Kendra Eash (February 2014), set to stock footage by Dissolve (March 2014)
I first saw the pictures on the right as one photo – a life-sized Barbie and a real woman sitting at a table held up by toy scientists.
You’re missing the point. She’s modelling the blue gloves.
The former research chemist in me is shuddering.
What that means, to unpack that, is get rid of liberal arts, humanities, and anything else not related to STEM or business administration, so we don’t waste our time teaching people how to broaden their horizons through literature or art or music or theatre…oh, and consequently, also maybe open their minds.
Like what is happening to U of W?
I do agree that schools should offer vocational education, but alongside rather than in place of the non-STEM subjects. It really doesn’t need to be an either/or situation, as if a bricklayer can’t also enjoy Brahms.
AoS, my thoughts exactly. But I’m not sure universities need to offer vocational education; we’ve got a lot of very fine community colleges that do that extremely well, and in fact, probably better than the universities could, and certainly cheaper.
STEM fields are important (I’m in a STEM field myself, so I would think so, wouldn’t I), but I can’t imagine a world where everything is either STEM or business. Where would the world be without art, music, philosophy, humanities? A dull place, much like envisioned in all those 1950s black and white sci/fi films. I am living proof that STEM and liberal arts can live side by side, because they live side by side in my one self, with degrees in political science, biology, and playwriting. Of course, I could be considered a bit mixed up and strange by some standards….
What iknklast said.
AoS: Universities are not job training schools. That’s not to denigrate vocational training, just that it’s a different kind of teaching and a different kind of learning.
You don’t come into my classroom to learn how to do a statistical analysis. You’ll pick that up on the way, but it’s not the point. What I’m really teaching you is how to think and then use statistics as a tool to explore your ideas.
Like iknklast, I’m in a STEM field and I hate the idea that we’re missing the value of the arts and humanities. A well-rounded education should include both.
“…as if a bricklayer can’t also enjoy Brahms.”
Yes, but Trump’s “plain speaking” is supposed to appeal to the blue collar vote, innit?
In a recent op-ed on Ontario (Canada) provincial politics, the writer opined that in the race to replace the currently ruling Liberal party, the nominally socialist-y NDP could lose working class support to the Progressive Conservatives, who just made the bombastic, blowhard, know-nothing Doug Ford (older brother and probable power-behind the throne of Rob Ford, the out of control late, former mayor of Toronto). Are working class people somehow automatically drawn to ignorant, boorish, “populist” demagogues as a matter of course? I’m not a pollster or demographer, so I don’t know how true or justified this is, but this knee-jerk assumption of some analysts does smack stick in my craw.
Don’t know about Canada, but I do know that here in the American midwest, it depends a lot on the color of your skin.
iknklast #9, Claire, #10, I agree with you both entirely. My own comment was regarding schools. I wasn’t suggesting that universities should be focussing on vocational training, rather that schools could better prepare those students who won’t be going on to further education with the skills necessary to get a foothold in the jobs market.
YNnB, #11, this working class person certainly isn’t attracted to the boorish demagogues, but I suspect that people like me, working class with liberal views, aren’t exactly their target audience.
Bricklayers who listen to Brahms might not vote for Huey Long/Mussolini/Trump. So the universities shall be remade into vocational schools.