Originally Posted by
Flaflyer
I know you will find this hard to understand. There are a few left like me who dream of someday living in a USA where the average high school graduate and TSA screener will be educated in science up to the level of a typical Japanese fifth grade student.
Yet you expect your "We Got Stinkin Badges but We Don't Got No Stinkin Science" workforce to operate x-ray machines, WTMDs, and ETDs plus Puffers and sniffers and strippers, Oh My. Some of the latest high tech science gizmos around. I'm beginning to see why the average TSO might have a problem operating them correctly.
Of course, when a one striper knows no science, it is much easier for a three striper to convince him that water is a contraband high explosive.
FF, think about it. If the TSA were to require that all TSO’s had a 4 year degree how many would there be? If we were required to all have the education necessary to understand all the background information on the technology we use daily, on the new technology that is up and coming, and then still offer what they do for screeners, how many screeners would there be? How many people do you know who
want to take a job that pays them half of what their education should be able to get them?
Additionally, when I was in the military, I knew people who worked on/maintained nuclear weapons and had no more formal education than I had. They had the training that the military provides, but that’s not any more of a formal education than the standard TSO training is.
Fact is guy, that a detailed understanding of the supporting science of the equipment that we use is not necessary. Not in the TSA, not anywhere. We are user level workers, not technicians or engineers, not designers or research scientists. Nor do we need to be.