KGO 810's Dr. Bill Watenburg:"American students are too lazy"

[juliana24]

This just uttered by this man at 22:30 PST on KGO 810 AM San Francisco:

I can believe this "college educated idiot" buys into the same "education solves job finding problems/outsourcing in the USA" nonsense, just like * parrots in India.

Where are you, Bernie Ward, when we need you to take this fellow talk radio show host of yours on?

http://www.kgoam810.com/

[rooboy]

1. If you've ever heard a KGO debate...

Bill Wattenburg has nothing to say. He can't debate. All he does is play tape recordings of peoples' statements - he's a demagogue who actually knows very little about which he speaks.

[juliana24]

13. I couldnt have put it better. Bill W thinks he walks on water, IMO...

What a narcissist this man is!!! >:(

[dsc]

2. I admit education isn't always the answer

but frankly many students are lazy. I have my doubts they are worse than other's but since so many countries don't educate the lazy ours end up appearing worse.

[sandnsea]

5. Glad you said that

I would have had to double up on my flame retardent suit. :)

[Check12]

3. Watenburg thinks he knows it all!

[juliana24]

12. Wattenburg is often wrong but never admits to making a mistake..

the poor baby would never make it on daytime radio.

Not one word about how uneducated * is either.

I can rememeber well that * had no clue where many countries were located, nor the names their capital cities, and had never visited a European country unlike most wealthy folks, but you wont hear right-wing nutballs like B.W. talking about those pre-9/11 FACTS.

[wickerwoman]

4. They are though...

I don't think we should blame outsourcing on the superiority of foreign students, but they certainly work a hell of a lot harder (albeit in a much inferior school system.)

I used to teach in American universities. You wouldn't believe the rolled eyes I got for asking students to read *10 pages* a week. Three quarters of the class wouldn't even do that much let alone think about or digest what they had read. Maybe they were putting the real elbow grease into their economics and biology classes but I doubt it.

Now I teach in China. Chinese university students study 10 hours a day + 5 or 6 hours of classes. A lot of that is totally ineffectual but the spirit is willing. I have to ask students to stop talking so everyone will have a chance to participate. I have students inviting me out to dinner every other night so they can ask my advice about things.

You can say I'm a crank, but they fact is I was bone idle in university and managed a 3.7 GPA.

It's not even entirely the students fault. We live in such a pervasively anti-intellectual society that it's no wonder kids don't appreciate learning for learning's sake. They see their teachers driving Hondas and sports stars and CEOs driving Jaguars and whom do they respect more?

[sandnsea]

8. My professors gave the answers

and we STILL had kids that flunked. I had classes that if you attended the study session, the professor would literally give you the answers you needed for the test, in an outline study fashion. All you had to do was make sure you knew that stuff and there's no way you could get less than a B. But kids managed it. I could not believe it.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

17. Yes, we had students from People's Republic of China (PRC) when I was in

college. They may not have been the most creative free spirits around but their work ethic was second to none. The ones we had, I'd agree with 10 or more hours of study a day.

This was at what would be considered one of the top few leading universities in the nation by most, with a student body having a high proportion of high school valedictorians etc., and I'd put the sheer effort in study by the PRC students at easily the top 5th percentile if not better among the student body.

Now, I'll grant that the PRC government probably selected the very best students to be allowed to go there, but still.

The Repubs want to have it both ways with shrub. On the one hand, they're PROUD he's such an inarticulate dork espousing John Wayne redneckisms. On the other hand, if you call attention to the dorkism, they'll point out that he went to Yale and Harvard B-school, mostly not recognizing the huge role of family connections in this.

Most people don't understand that education is held sacred in Asian countries. Admission to the best universities in most of these countries is STRICTLY based on merit. It doesn't matter if you are the son of the president there, if you are a bad student without the test scores to get into Beijing U., you will not get in.

It's very different in the U.S. Here, family connections, "legacy" etc. play a huge role. In most Ivy League schools (Yale, Harvard, Princeton etc.) if you have a parent who is a "legacy", who is an alumnus of that school, especially if they are giving the school money, you have twice the odds of getting in compared to someone with similar grades and scores who is not a legacy. I'm sure that you are a virtual lock if your parent was not only an alumnus but a rich and politically powerful one like Bush senior, as long as you graduated with reasonable grades.

[BuyingThyme]

6. Wattenberg used to be relatively liberal.

But when the Chimp decided to run, Wattenberg apparently received a phone call from somebody. Somebody cashed in a favor.

I suspect this favor had to do with Wattenberg's role in creating nuclear weapons for the U.S. military or intelligence community.

Now Billy is a hateful, hard-core neocon killer, with a total disregard for reality.

I suspect that the guy who called him back in 1999 was Donald Rumsfeld.

[Selatius]

7. I'M A FUCKING COLLEGE STUDENT. Let me tell everybody something.

Let me tell everybody here what I learned so far in my short life. When you cut funding to education, lower the quality of education, you are sending the message to people like me that you don't give a flying shit what the hell happens to me whether I drown in New Orleans or drown in student debt or die on some stupid battlefield 10,000 miles away from home.

When you tell me I am not worth it, how the fuck do you expect people like me to get up each damn morning and try to believe in myself when you think I am not worth believing? How the fuck do you not expect students to become discouraged, demoralized, self-hating, alienated, and wounded for the rest of their lives??????????????

Go ahead and make me bleed for your damn oil, your damn profit margins, your mansions, your jets, and your way of life so blinded by materialism you'd mortgage your own soul to support your way of life if you could. I'm just a damn piece of machinery made of flesh to you. I'm willing to whore myself out to the corporate world in hopes they will use me and exploit me for their ways just so I can be comforted by the fact that I can put food on my table each night and have a bed to sleep in.

It's this kind of destruction that we wrought upon each other that cause people to come to school, to work, or to the damn post office with guns and homemade bombs for a pointless shooting spree.

[ugarte]

10. You're absolutely right

A sizeable number of Americans, maybe even a majority, mistrust higher education unless you can justify it as a means to make money. Otherwise, they believe that everything you need to know is in the Bible.

[napi21]

14. Well damn, I'll give you a crying towel!

When I went to school, there were some scholarships, and you had to be almost destitute to get Fed aid. College costs were around $5,000 a year, but the average wage was $5.00/hr and min wage was $1.55.

Most parents didn't have the money to pay for their kids education so most students vied for summer jobs to help pay for the next semester.

If you're going to come crying at my door, the best you'll get here is a towel to dry your tears.

[Selatius]

15. Oh, so you want to give me the "tough shit" message? Fine, I'll deal

How about we repay that kind of attitude you have by refusing to pay Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security tax? If I shoveled the same shit you're shoveling here, then my best advice to you is to not get sick because you're not gonna get any sympathy or help for your medical bills besides a towel to dry your tears.

You can't afford skyrocketing health care costs because HMOs and big pharmaceutical giants are buying off politicians? "Tough shit." If everybody had that Republican attitude you're shoveling tonight, that's the answer you'd get. You want folks to pull themselves up by the bootstraps? Fine. I can spout that message out with the best of the corporatist bunch in power today.

For your information, I HAVE BEEN WORKING JOBS throughout my college career, but it won't stop me from coming out of college with a 20,000 debt load with 6.45% APR, and this is going to school in dirt poor Mississippi. Yeah, nothing says, "I love you," like a car note's worth of debt. If you think I'm bitching now, talk to the students who have 100,000 in student debt because they made the fatal mistake of going to a high quality school that charges 20, 25, or 30 thousand a year.

Talk about eroding the working class.

Regardless of whatever issue you have, the point still stands that eroding the public education system isn't going to get you anywhere but a workforce that is less competitive than generations before such as yourself, and it's not going to get better if you keep cutting taxes because that translates into poorer services to the public.

No, you didn't even address that stupid point I made even though it was the central theme of my post. You just had to go and give me your "cry me a river" bullshit instead.

[ugarte]

9. It isn't just students...Americans as a whole are too complacent...

Lazy might not be the word, but as a people we don't question very much. Among a large portion of the populace, ignorance is glorified and intellectuals viewed with suspicion.

[madrchsod]

11. my daughter has an indian instructor

for a community college political science class. the lady said that in india students in her "class" have to be perfect in everything they do-they actually had to walk in a straight line every where they walked in school. she hinted that it was basically abuse. i don`t think we should do this to our children and i don`t think we need to

[tkmorris]

16. I would tend to agree with you there but.......

Perhaps there is a relationship between this lack of discipline and the utter apathy shown by the vast majority of American students? I honestly don't know but there is certainly a problem getting American kids motivated. Do you have any thoughts on that?