Lean Production: Inside the war on public education

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68. Again, I'm not purporting to educate anyone...

I try to take pride in the precision of my writing and I re-read every post and edit extensively before posting.

I expect it's a little different writing style than you are used to because I work in a different field. I may come across as ... I don't know ... Snooty or something; I guess, but I'm trying to be friendly. I certainly haven't used any profanity.

I acknowledged that it's different teaching in a classroom every day than it is just popping in for a 'show and tell' (although I thought the phrasing was condescending). I acknowledged that the inner city classrooms were tougher. I acknowledged that some teachers set up their classrooms better than others. Essentially, everything that you launched into me about; I acknowledged in the previous post or some other post on this thread.

I'm not here to tear educators down; I've talked about specific experiences that I have had and how it has shaped my perception of the profession.

If you have some negative interaction or experience with engineers, or engineering in general; I'd be glad to discuss them with you; in the interest of improving the service that I provide to the public.

I designed the grading and drainage for the high school that my daughter goes to and I'm always interested in what kind of problems exist that the users might be aware of, but word never gets back to the designers. I thrive on that kind of criticism because I believe it gives me a competitive edge. I try to spend time visiting with contractors during construction so they can tell me how something might have worked better from their perspective. Sometimes it's good feedback; sometimes not so much.

As an example: The architects designed my daughters high school special education classroom with an infant diaper changing station. If there were proper feedback loops; that kind of inappropriate design wouldn't happen. They just copied the room from an elementary school and nobody involved in the review process caught it. The classroom staff are mystified at how someone could be so stupid. So it's perfectly reasonable for anyone from any profession to be critical of anyone from any other profession if the proper safeguards aren't in place.

A contractor told me that one of the drainage inlets that I had located; should have been a curb inlet instead of back of curb. I didn't tell him that his suggestion was idiotic, or comical, or humorous. I told him "I had considered that but sometimes when you kick water off of the grass and into the street; you will get silt settlement in the street around the inlet. I didn't want to risk that on the bus route." There's no reason to be hostile toward people who have ideas different from your own just because they don't perform the same function in society.

I would have thought you'd be interested in some of my perceptions for the same reason that I'm interested in criticisms of the kind of work that I perform. There's always room for improvement. It is the nature of our society to try and find faster more efficient methods of performing any given service. Those who refuse to try and improve will be pushed aside and someone else will be allowed by society to attempt to improve that service or function.

But you know that. Because that's the topic of this thread.