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"For the U.S. to reach the upper echelons of educational attainment in an increasingly competitive global environment..."
"Upper echelons of educational attainment in an increasingly competitive global environment" is an anxiety producing phrase that doesn't mean much of anything.
In politics, which unfortunately is the ground to be played on if an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is what is being proposed, lies and truths mixed in generously with endless overstatements and occasional understatements are the sifted ingredients in the bowl before water is added and the muck of it all takes shape.
It is interesting to note how the word "muck" is defined by Webster's Dictionary: "1 : soft moist farmyard manure 2 : slimy dirt or filth 3 : defamatory remarks or writings 4 a (1) : dark highly organic soil (2) : MIRE, MUD b : something resembling muck 5 : material removed in the process of excavating or mining."
I say: let us hope for "4 a (1)" and look past its sources. If you want your garden to grow to the sky and be abundant in its harvest, plant your seeds in "dark highly organic soil."
JonLaw, if you are unwilling to create "anxiety" in the minds of others, you will never succeed in politics. The problem here is that the general population does not care about the educational needs of any one particular child, especially if the needy child happens to be very smart and from a middle class or upper class family. Consequently, the issue of gifted education has to be blown up to a global scale at least, and probably to a cosmic scale, too.
The so-called "Mothers From Hell" were responsible for achieving "Special Education" funding in U.S. public schools, that is: double funding per student for those students designated in need of "Special Education" interventions. The creation of "Special Education" in U.S. public schools was done through the political process; it did not come as manna from heaven — as a grace from God. The "Mothers From Hell" earned their name.
Any parent of an extraordinarily brilliant child — a true genius — knows full well the curse that can sometimes be found at the heart of a blessing. Someone who has never known a genius (and that is most people) cannot even imagine that curse, and will vehemently deny that such a curse could even exist. To them, a blessing can only be a blessing, and so the parents of such a child should be content to count their blessings without complaint.
The battle cannot be fought where the gifted children are made to be whipping boys and whipping girls by those who do not know their plight. The battle must be fought at a national level, and it must be fought as if the very future of the United States of America were at stake, because in all actuality that is the true fact of the matter.
I have found two articles that comment on the USPTO report. The first article: http://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner/foreign-patents-and-united-states-innovation.html?cid=sy01304 QUOTE: In 2013, 51 percent of the 303,000 patents filed in the U.S. were of foreign origin, according to the USPTO. That's a decrease of one percentage point compared to 2012, but about equal to the percentage of foreign patents granted every year for the past decade. To get some perspective, in 1963, only 18 percent of patents originated from foreign sources. The second article: http://www.iam-magazine.com/blog/detail.aspx?g=e074e470-6b9a-44ee-bbc5-ce38f2edf078 QUOTE: In fact, the USPTO’s grant statistics from last year show that while a greater share of issued US patents went to foreign entities than in 2012, overall, US entities were granted 133,593 patents – over 12,000 more than the previous year, and the most ever issued to US applicants in a single 12-month period. Moreover, the high number of US patents being issued to non-US entities is an endorsement of the country’s patent system and the value of the assets it creates, despite the many criticisms it has received of late. The bottom line is that inventors, companies and research institutes from around the world continue to consider US patent assets as a crucial component of their IP portfolios.
PROPOSED AMENDMENT: Re: Article I Section 8. [8] The United States shall have one percent (1%) ownership of each and every copyright and patent issued and registered by the United States government. The ownership shall be limited to the pre-tax gross revenues generated by any and all uses of that which is protected by U.S. copyright and patent law, and all such ownership shall be without exception. All revenues earned from such ownership shall be used to fund the free public education guaranteed to citizens by law, with all revenues from patents supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education exclusively and all revenues from copyrights supporting either Arts and Humanities education or Physical Education and Health education exclusively according to the general categories that create the revenues (i.e. computer-related patents support computer science education, music copyrights support music arts education, sporting event copyrights support physical education, and so forth).
QUOTE from COMMENTARY: It is important to know that there are no exceptions, even U.S. copyrights and U.S. patents held by foreigners, including foreign corporations, are subject to the requirement of granting 1% ownership to the United States. If an issued and registered U.S. copyright or U.S. patent is sold from one person/corporation to another in part or in whole, the United States still maintains its 1% ownership without change. In fact, the United States cannot sell, forfeit, or cancel its 1% ownership under any circumstance, because the United States is We The People.
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How can you not like that?
If foreign corporations want to get rich selling their patented products in the United States, it is reasonable to require them to help fund U.S. public schools.
The following QUOTE is from "The first article" linked above: A number of obvious factors contribute to the overflow of foreign ideas in U.S. patents: The country has a vast consumer population, and its staggering $17 trillion gross domestic product is the biggest market in the world, so it makes sense that entrepreneurs want to file patents here.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/04/11/intellectual-property-and-us-economy QUOTE:"As the study shows, intellectual property is a key driver of our economy. The report found that IP-intensive industries create 27.1 million jobs and indirectly support another 12.9 million jobs. All told, nearly 30 percent of all U.S. jobs are directly or indirectly attributable to the IP-intensive industries.
These are jobs that pay well. The average weekly wage in the IP-intensive industries overall is 42% higher by 2010 and its 73% for patent industry jobs and 77% for copyright industry jobs.
Intellectual property is also critical to our balance of trade: goods from the IP-intensive industries account for 60% of all US exports. And in 2010 alone, IP-intensive industries accounted for about $5.06 trillion in value added, or 34.8 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.
It doesn’t stop there: the entire U.S. economy relies on some form of intellectual property, because virtually every industry either produces intellectual property or uses it."
* * * Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus
* * * ROUGH MATH: My last post (#188694) reported that: "In 2013, 51 percent of the 303,000 patents filed in the U.S. were of foreign origin, according to the USPTO." Therefore, I will approximate that 50% of the total government-protected Intellectual Property (IP) revenues within the U.S. marketplace are generated by foreign sources and 50% are generated by domestic sources. From above regarding U.S. industries: "in 2010 alone, IP-intensive industries accounted for about $5.06 trillion in value added." Therefore, the "foreign sources" plus the "domestic sources" of IP revenues approximately equals $10 trillion on a yearly basis.
$10 trillion/year x 1% = $100 billion/year
Now consider: http://www.gdi-solutions.com/analysis/us_states.htm "Percentage of Total US Population - 2001" Find a state's percentage, then do the math. For example: California (12.11%): $100 billion x 12.11% = $12.11 billion That's right! If California's public schools student population has approximately the same percentage of the total U.S. public schools student population as California's total population has of the total U.S. population, then California's public schools would receive approximately $12.11 billion in annual funding from the proceeds that would result if my proposed "1% of copyrights and patents" amendment were ratified into law.
http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/eb/ QUOTE: "Public school funding is the largest program in the state budget, receiving more than 40 percent of the state's General Fund resources. The 2013–14 state budget includes $40 billion in General Fund resources for kindergarten through grade twelve (K–12) education. Overall spending for California public schools is about $70 billion when federal funds and other funding sources are added."
The good people of California should like my idea.
Anyone who has a problem with this (from my proposed "Public Education" amendment):
3) Students whose academic skills competency and knowledge proficiency are measured in the aggregate minimally either two years below or two years above age-appropriate-grade-level shall be designated as Special Education students and shall receive educational funding at twice the normal rate (competency and proficiency testing shall be done when requested by a teacher, parent, or student).
QUOTE: "In the substitution of a mosaic of talents for giftedness, we have lost the entire moral dimension of giftedness. Gifted individuals, because of their greater facility with abstract reasoning, have complex inner lives, early ethical concerns, and heightened awareness of the world. As we split our understanding of the interrelated intellectual/moral/emotional structure of giftedness into many fragmented talents, we risk creating more one-sided children. And as we place too much value on performance — with competitions, media attention, external recognition and rewards — we may be inadvertently teaching gifted children that they are valued only for what they do, instead of who they are in their totality. Annemarie Roeper (1990) would say that we have forgotten the Self of the child. Yes, we have lost something precious in the bargain: our ability to perceive the morally sensitive inner world of the gifted."
I was born without a left hand in June 1954 — almost 60 years ago. I often say: "Life is hard, and then you die." My saying that bothers a lot of people. Evidently, either they disagree or they want to disagree, or perhaps they want to avoid the truth of my comment in some way, to pretend or to imagine or to hope that life can be cheerful, even joyful — something so wonderful that it could rightly be called easy and fun.
Maybe having two hands throughout a lifetime makes someone describe life as something that is easy and fun, but that advantage has never been part of my experience; I have only known the disadvantage of having to do everything with just one hand, which means having to find peace in admitting that I cannot do some things that people with two hands can do very easily. Believe me: finding such peace as that is something that is only ever done in part and then very slowly over years and years of time. Maybe I will find total peace when I am 90 years old, but I have not found it yet; life is still hard often enough that I cannot forget it.
And so I am especially proud of one thing above all other things in my proposed "Public Education" amendment (see post #176327), and that one thing is found in the details of "Section. 1." and "Section. 5."
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Section. 1. The Congress shall fund, oversee the administration of, and nominate students to the six tuition-free United States military academies located at: West Point, New York, for the Army; Annapolis, Maryland, for the Navy and the Marine Corps; Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the Air Force; New London, Connecticut, for the Coast Guard; Kings Point, New York, for the Merchant Marine; and Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, for the Cyber/Biologic Defense.
Section. 5. The United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy shall have no physical fitness requirements whatsoever. It shall at all times maintain a Stephen Hawking Rule which declares that the mind alone shall determine eligibility and no physical defect of any sort shall be disqualifying. The Cyber/Biologic Defense shall be disciplined and uniformed, but shall not undergo any traditional basic training that includes strenuous whole-body strength-related activities of any sort, including marching. A brilliant wheelchair-bound person is eligible to enroll in the United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy and to serve in the Cyber/Biologic Defense at any rank of command, including Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The term “cyber/biologic” refers to all things related either to transmissions of any sort in cyberspace known and unknown, including any hostile activity on the Internet, any manifestation of computer hacking, and any potentially harmful computer data manipulation, or to hostile biological actions that could be property-damaging, disease-causing, and/or life-threatening in any way, or to both simultaneously in any evil pairing. The term “defense” must naturally have an offensive component to be whole.
The United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy shall have access to all national public high school student transcripts and shall be welcome to freely recruit national public high school students.
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There it is in "Section. 5." and it bears repeating: "The United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy shall have no physical fitness requirements whatsoever. It shall at all times maintain a Stephen Hawking Rule which declares that the mind alone shall determine eligibility and no physical defect of any sort shall be disqualifying. The Cyber/Biologic Defense shall be disciplined and uniformed, but shall not undergo any traditional basic training that includes strenuous whole-body strength-related activities of any sort, including marching. A brilliant wheelchair-bound person is eligible to enroll in the United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy and to serve in the Cyber/Biologic Defense at any rank of command, including Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
Yes. Yes! YES! I am proud of that idea — very proud! Make that: VERY PROUD! I hope it happens, and I hope in its happening that it gives some very worthy young people their lives — the lives that they deserve to have and to enjoy.
The U.S. military needs strong bodies AND great minds, and some great minds are living in bodies that are deformed, paralyzed, and/or diseased in some way. Even so, the great minds are intact and keen and strong, and some are mighty. What I have proposed is not unreasonable. In fact, my proposal is prudent and wise in every respect.
