Responding to this article, listed as an update in message 1171.
http://selfsip.org/focus/gps_iridium.html

Government and the distorting effects on education:

I share my interaction with professor Rick Cups of ECE 103, a ground-
level engineering course here at the government-funded Phoenix
community College.

note: The professor relies primarily on speaking at or to the
students, a/k/a "lecture style".

[The problem with any teaching "style" is that all students in that class must
be served up with the same thing. If there is no text that fits the course then
a presentation of the course material in lecture format is quite valid and even
necessary for many students. If there are one or more good texts, then it would
be best for students to read the material *before* coming to the class, where it
would then be supplemented if necessary by the teacher with lots of time for
answering questions about the more difficult points.
Jack, if not lecturing, then how do you think these courses should be taught -
bearing in mind that the method must somehow fit all the students?

Perhaps the major problem of most teachers is the "lecturing at" approach, that
you mention above, or "enlightenment" approach, that you allude to below.
Teachers far too often take an attitude of superiority over their dumb/naive
students. --Paul]


On Tuesday Feb 7th 2006, Mr. Cups was enlightening my classmates and
me with information about depreciation. In the past, I had learned a
definition similar to the one I have recently viewed at www.m-w.com:
to fall in value or esteem. Mr. Cups validated my past experience by
giving an example of purchasing an automobile, which with time would
depreciate in value and that few if any would find the older vehicle
to be worth much. He then compared the vehicle example to an
industrial machine example, where equipment purchased for $25,000
would depreciate to $5,000 after 10 years. A few people in the world
would find that the equipment would be worth $5,000 after 10 years.

All of a sudden, he slipped up and said (from my memory), "Therefore,
businesses will attempt to depreciate their newly-purchased assets as
quickly as possible."

I thought, "Jack's Brain, why would I ever want something I just
purchased to drop in value 'as quickly as possible'?"

So I asked, pointing out the apparent contradiction. Mid-sentence of
my inquiry, he interrupted me (as he often does thinking he already
understands the question and has an answer forming) and stated that
the accountants would be advising the boss how quickly to depreciate
the machinery.

[I also have found that a major negative aspect of most teachers is to presume
that they know what you are about to asking or can tell from the first few
words. The result of this is that most of the time the teacher does not answer
the question that was asked at all. Often this illicits looks of disbelief and
sometimes even a groan from the student audience. When I was teaching I always
listened to the whole question and tried very hard to understand just what the
questioner meant before I formulated a response. I also often began by restating
the question in my own words as I understood it, prefaced with the remark: "I
think this is what you are asking, if not then please correct me." --Paul]

[My experience in the early 80s at the university level was that some
instructors, even professors, were teaching only because it was a requirement.
These individuals were primarily interested in their research. At the community
college level (in neighboring Pinal County), the instructors only taught; I did
not find those few I had at that time taking on superior attitudes. The
relatively small class sizes (7 to 12) in the pre-engineering classes resulted
in a more seminar-like atmosphere. However, the much larger classes whether at
the community college or at Univeristy of Arizona, were definitely more formal
and I periodically saw students in them fail to ask questions that they
obviously had. **Kitty]


I pointed out that in the attempt to learn and understand
depreciation, we were learning a distorted definition of what
depreciation was, based on the interference of the governments' forced
taxation scheme.

The one-sided "conversation" that followed was a jumbled mess of
justification from hir end - I can't quite recall the illogic and
mess of words that came from hir mouth to evacuate the conversation
and simply move on.

In America, and every other country I can find, groups of individuals
have joined forces to create one great force called godvernment which
sells "it"self as an objective judge and do-gooder. In order to
survive, it points a single-shot weapon at each person's hand and
makes a claim on a percent of the fruit of your labor. Pay, keep
your hand in tact. Refuse and the very method by which you create
will be impaired with a permanent impact (both physical and
financial), a warning for the future will be issued, and then you
will be liberated and monitored.

In order to create a sense of understanding or teamwork, the great
force of godvernment will create and manipulate the artificial laws,
ie statutes. Tax breaks, exemptions, etc., etc., appear to come to
our aide against the "necessary" force of taxation. Here is where
Mr. Cups runs to hir accountant with head bowing, falls to hir knees
and begs the liaison-to-godvernment to show hir how to please the
gods meanwhile taking home the leftover scraps. Ok, I'm exaggerating
a little. Godvernment takes 15-35% (approximately) of Americans'
fruits on April 17, and more throughout the day as we spend.

[Actually that is merely the federal and state personal income tax load. If you
count all the other sales taxes, gas taxes, property taxes, mandatory license
fees, mandatory car insurance, mandatory social security payments, mandatory
pension plan, unemployment insurance, mandatory medical insurance, import
duties, costs of record keeping purely for tax purposes, less salary because of
employer payments into these funds and hidden taxes for various kinds incurred
on all products before they even get to the stores, you will get to a total of
over 50% of the real value of an employee's productive effort about which s/he
never gets to make any decision with respect to its use. --Paul]

[Although the Tax Foundation calculated a "Tax Freedom Day" for the US last year
as April 17 or 107 days worked by the "average" USer to pay all taxes, it should
be kept in mind how that calculation is done.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/ It is "calculated by dividing the
official government tally of all taxes collected in each year by the official
government tally of all income earned in each year." It does not include many of
the items Paul mentioned. The organization even states that according to the
IRS, tax compliance costs amount to $0.20 for every $1.00 collected by the US
tax system. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/topic/96.html
And this would be just the obvious bookkeeping/accounting costs based on
information IRS uses. I suspect it's considerably understated, plus it doesn't
include all the many distortions of individual choices made every day because of
the very existence of taxes and the government itself. **Kitty]


Depreciation is taught at Phoenix College in ECE 103 to be a method
of artificially forcing the value of a product to become worthless in
order to use the artificially depreciated amount as an expense when
computing taxes. The equipment may or may not fall in value; this is
not important according to Mr. Cups in the context of our
*?civilized?* society.

[It is a sign of the times that the concept of depreciation is even considered
within an engineering course! When I took Engineering Physics 50 years ago it
was not on the curriculum. Depreciation was mentioned in a 3rd year Economics
course taught by the economics department, but no relevance to engineering
directly was given and no mention was made of equipment depreciation for the
purposes of gaining an expense against yearly income.

Not at all to defend the IRS depreciation rules, I can explain them somewhat
because I have done tax returns for US Corporations as one of my many types of
past experience. The IRS classifies all assets and allows different maximum
depreciation rates for each classification. Naturally it is very fast for
something like computers and very slow for something like buildings. Yes,
corporations always take the fastest allowable depreciation if they are making a
profit each year in order to decrease their taxable income. However, if they are
in a loss situation they may take the lowest posssible depreciation rate
(although carry loss forward accounting is also often possible - although only
for corporations). In any case, just because some asset is depreciated to a
certain value on the books does not mean that it does not actually have more
value that that amount. It merely means that if it is sold for more than its
book-value, then the difference is required to be declared as profit and, of
course, is then taxable. --Paul]

[I looked up ECE 103 at Phoenix College and found this as the description:
"Fundamentals of the design process: engineering modeling, communication and
problem-solving skills in a team environment. Emphasis on process-based
improvement to the design process. Introduction to engineering as a profession."

I don't see the place for depreciation of equipment as part of such a course at
all, unless this instructor thinks that introducing young impressionable
students to the web of taxes and minimizing measures is a value as early as
possible. I took a semester of Engineering Economics at Univ of Arizona back in
the summer of 1983 before I graduated that December. I have a faint recollection
that depreciation was included in that course which was taught out of the
business college. I already knew that depreciation was a way that business
owners used to lessen their tax burden, but I wasn't savvy enough at the time to
ask pointed questions to bring this overall nonsense to the attention of my
classmates. **Kitty]


Back to work,
David T Jackemeyer aka Jack

PS To balance my complaint with positives, I still love the
opportunities I take in class to help students and professor if
possible, to open the mind a little wider, a little deeper.

[Many times good pointed questions are the best way to bring contradictions or
vacuous ideas to light. You will have plenty more opportunities before you
finish your engineering education. And then there are all those examples outside
the classroom. **Kitty]