From our overstocked archives
Sam Smith, 2014 – For four days beginning last Friday, my Internet and TV system was a mess. Furthermore, I couldn’t connect my new Tivo device to my television. I had approximately four hours of discussions with Comcast people on the phone. What struck me as time went on was that a number of these folks were dealing with me just as I suspect many subjected to the Common Core approach to education will deal with life in the future. Their comments and answers seemed robotic and often non-responsive to the specific matters I had raised. By the third day, I realized – albeit with a few pleasant exceptions – that these agents of Comcast considered me a multiple choice test to be answered. Their responses were not good and often didn’t apply but they were – as our children are being taught in Common Cored schools – what the system considered correct. And on at least four occasions, they even interrupted the discourse to try to sell me additional new service, not the best idea when a customer’s current system is broken.
Then on Monday, the technician finally showed up and my Comcast experience totally changed. Within two hours he had corrected every problem, found a couple I didn’t know about, and got my Tivo going . He also has me scheduled for a new wire coming into the house once spring finally arrives.
This was actually the second time this had happened to me: endless useless talk on the phone eventually resolved by a pragmatically thinking guy on the scene.
The conflict was, in part, one between deductive and inductive reasoning. Like MBAs and philosophers and Common Core taught students, the Comcast phone people applied presumed overriding principles to specific cases with little attention to the anarchy of details. The technician, on the other hand – like detectives and good reporters – accumulated evidence which created the probability of a solution.
As far back as college, my bias was with the technicians rather than the PhDs, which didn’t help me much on campus but since as been highly useful as a journalist. I look first at the facts rather than what Marx, Freud or Henry Kissinger said about them.
It even helps in getting my Tivo working.
2 comments:
Perhaps it would also help if you looked at the functions served by various parts of the organization? The people at the help desk have two primary functions: to offer you more features in javascript:;return for money; and to make sure they don't have to hire more technicians. The function of the technician is to keep the company from losing your money.
Quit making excuses for poor performance and failure. Sam is right! I am at the point of absolute apathy regarding education. Until Arne Duncan and his gang are kicked the hell out of government, nothing is going to change. He is an arrogant, ignorant, failure....don't believe me. Look at the mess he left Chicago...I mean the entire, extended mess. Parents are more interested in being the apologist for their candidate than demanding solutions. So just left their little sperm droppings grow up dumb, and in a few years of Duncan's Common Crap we'll have no democracy left. Give John Dewey a good read. The man has been gone for about 65 years and his counsel is still the best. But never mind someone who actually understands educations...lets stick with ARNE!
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