Mammon category archive
The Pee Hand of the Market 0
The Labor Department nails a Pennsylvania company for penalizing employees for being human beings.
(snip)
On Nov. 1, 2012, the Labor Department filed a lawsuit, saying the company violated the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act because employees weren’t earning the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour due to the company’s policy of requiring workers to clock out while they were going to the bathroom or grabbing coffee or a smoke.
The Fair Labor Standards Act does not require companies to give workers short personal breaks – under 20 minutes. But if employers offer those breaks, they have to pay workers for them.
One wonders whether the executives ever have to go.
Probably not, as they are obviously full of it.
If You Are What You Eat . . . 0
. . . you got problems.
Testing the Fail 0
In a longer article at Psychology Today Blogs–indeed, almost as an aside–Alfie Cohn indicts the reliance on standardized testing and its inimical effects on our school systems. A snippet:
(snip)
But the outrageous and incalculably damaging reality of testing students every single year — extraordinary from a worldwide perspective, in fact virtually unheard of for students below high school age — continues in ESSA (“Elementary and Secondary Education Act”–ed.). Annual testing is something we’ve been conditioned to accept and even to view as tolerable compared to the reality of multiple tests a year, what with benchmark exams in between the other exams, districts piling on with their own assessments, new Common Core tests, and so on.
Remember “cramming” for tests? Two weeks after the test, all the stuff you crammed was gone, whereas, had you studied through the semester/quarter/period, you did not have to cram because you had actually learned stuff.
The regime of standardized tests has institutionalized cramming as a pedagogical technique. The test is all; there is nothing else. Learning is irrelevant to the cram.
Qui bono?
The testing companies. Everyone else is losing.
Chartering a Course for Disaster 0
Where does the money go?
N. C. charters don’t want you to know.
North Carolina’s charter school advocates are fond of noting that their schools are public schools.
That is, until they’re asked to disclose the salaries they pay with public money.
According to the story, the charters are claiming that accounting is hard.
Details at the link.
The Farce Awakens . . . 0
. . . and, to quote the immortal Yogurt, it’s all about the merchandising.
“It’s All about Me” 0
Scientific Blogging looks at how narcissism is driving marketing is driving narcissism is driving marketing . . . .
The Snaring Economy 0
A lock-out is a time honored tactic of employers who mistreat employees. Now comes the digital lock-out.
Uber, natch, says it was all a big mistake.
Drug Crimes 0
This caught my eye because we’ve recently been seeing commercials for this drug promising that it does everything but clean the carpets.
The Man Who Would Be King 0
Michael D’Antonio tries to understand Donald Trump’s megalomania.
Smitten and Bitten 0
Anyone who has looked into it has figured out that bitcoins are a mug’s game. Meet some mugs.
More at the link.
The Privatization Scam Charters a Course for Disaster 0
A confluence of cons runs out of steam.
As much as my day-to-life is steeped in tech and as much I love making computers do stuff, I have, from the beginning, considered the idea of cyber-schools to be too stupid for words, a pipe dream of those enamored by electrons and exploited by those enamored of new sources of vigorish. They might have some use in areas where the population is too dispersed for regular schools, but the idea that they are some sort of magickal mystickal tool to remake education is hooey of the highest order.
If you want to school people, you need people in a school.
Kids (and adults) have a hard enough time learning in real schools with real teachers doing real things. The idea that turning real schools into “cyber-schools,” further removing students from teachers by interposing a layer of electrons, would somehow make learning easier and more effective while making teaching cheaper was mug’s dream from the start, embraced by those deluded by the cool graphics on their screens and promoted by con artists rapacious for new marks.
(Ask me nicely; I’ll tell you what I really think.)