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On June 18 2019 10:26 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2019 09:33 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) at all but what really confuses me is GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system That makes absolutely no sense to me? Can anyone explain this "grand conspiracy" as they imagine/interpreted it? If no one can articulate it, can we retract it? On June 17 2019 11:09 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 15:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 14:13 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
Aristotle pondered these questions thousands of years ago and yet here we are.
I think the idea that we can have public debates/discussions where people change their minds based on reason and fact presupposes a population that doesn't exist.
That's to say our democracy isn't very good at settling matters of fact in which people maintain false beliefs. Climate change is a pretty good example of that. I wouldn't call it a false belief. In fact, climate change is a good example of facts that are not falsifiable. Based on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, we already know that there will be certain things that math or science can never prove conclusively to be true or false. Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy. There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing. The most reasonable argument I have read about climate change is the one Taleb makes in his book Antifragile. If there is uncertainty about the impact of our actions, but if there is a small chance it could be catastrophic, we should not do it at all. If I want to release a gas that might harm people, the burden of proof should be on me to proof that the gas is safe, not on other people to prove the gas is dangerous. This is an argument based on decision making under uncertainty, and not based on confidence in the correctness of models from "experts" that consume taxpayer money and produce poor predictions. Been so long since I've seen such a good critique that I just want to acquiesce in entirety to it. I think I will, and just agree. EDIT: Just add that I think we also agree that sort of critical decision making presupposes a population/system we don't currently have (but could)? Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time). Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'. The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely. The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course. Just curious what you're referencing with "the quality varied immensely"? The Greeks - as far as we know - had no real concept of a curriculum, so it mostly came down to whatever your teacher thought you needed to know. I'm sure you can imagine the difference in quality of education (and content) that Therestones down the road and, say, Plato or Socrates would provide. Not saying either of them were employed as teachers per se but it wouldn't surprise me if they were (little details like that are mostly long lost to history). I don't think it's a completely unreasonable assumption, I just thought you might be referencing something specific. Feels weird to respond to just part of that post so I'll try the rest too: No, no specific reference, just a general area of knowledge of mine. I've studied Greek history extensively for years to help with creative projects, and one of my exes is a legitimate archaeologist who specialises in Greek and Roman history, so I've learned a lot about the real and assumed bits of history and culture about the Greeks/Romans and read a load of books on the subject. The Greeks get a good rap for the high points but people really only think about Athens (a legitimate centre of culture and learning) when they think about Greece, especially when it comes to philosophers. It's kind of like people saying 'The Western World' and thinking America. It's not an accident that those great thinkers were pointing out the problems with Democracy the day after they invented it, nor that some of the same group considered Democracy to be a dreadful idea. As to the point about parental blame for education; I agree with you. Socio-economic factors play a larger part. Parents don't encourage their kids to learn at school when they know deep down their kids have no future because of the environment they grow up in. But parents are ultimately responsible for the person they raise until a certain age. You hear all the time of kids that come from really bad neighborhoods making it out and becoming wildly successful. If you give a damn about your child, you won't let the environment ruin their future. As much as you can control anyway.
A lot of those parents would call you a starry-eyed idiot with no idea what you're talking about. Sure, a lot of people still embrace the whole American Dream bit, but a lot of others are realists. If you grow up in an environment where you, your friends, your parents, their parents, their friends and their families all followed more or less the same track that circles the drain, you're often going to develop a worldview that reflects this. Not necessarily bitter or defeatist, but realistic and practical.
Is it good parenting to fill your child's head with dreams they can't accomplish, setting them up for crushing realisation when they're older? Because that does lead to bitterness.
The world isn't full of Slumdog Millionaires. It's full of people living in slums.
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On June 18 2019 07:46 Pangpootata wrote:
You misread my stance on GHG caused AGW. Right from the start i have been agreeable that we can prove GHG does warm the earth. What i find unfalsifiable is how much of today's climate change is due to GHG and not some other known or unknown factor.
I've explained to you twice why it is falsifiable, you have no excuse at this point. It would be unfalsifiable if there were no possible observation or outcome of an experiment that could deem it false. An invisible undetectable leprechaun that only I can see follows me around is an unfalsifiable assertion. The possibility of a hidden variable in quantum physics does not make the Copenhagen interpretation unfalsifiable. On the contrary, that the possibility of finding another factor that accounts for more of the trend in temperature exists is what makes GHG's aport falsifiable and not tautological.
The arrogance of your initial post using a term you have no grasp on to more than imply that ""science"" is unscientific and the left and right are dum dums is astounding.
On June 18 2019 07:46 Pangpootata wrote:
Your hard-nosed approach on relying on scientific experts is part of the reason why there is this polarized left and right wing situation in the US today. To a religious conservative, he doesn't believe in your expert. His expert is God and it is easier to tell him not to disturb or destroy God's creations. We need climate arguments that do not rely on experts to make decisions.
The basic mechanisms behind man made climate change do not require any expertise to understand, only the specifics do. This has been clearly my position rather than telling religious conservatives to blindly trust in experts. The same way the basic mechanisms behind vaccinations do not require any expertise to understand, I see no value in people overstating the unknown in case it might be more convincing to the hold-outs. If you're convinced that the safety of vaccinations is a conspiracy 'do it just in case you're wrong' is not in any way a stronger argument.
And just like how the overwhelming majority of religious conservatives do not argue that vaccines are sacrilege and toying with god's creation, we can move conventionally past that point on climate. Though I doubt the current popularity of that particular take.
I've reduced the climate argument to a basic statement for you a couple of posts ago, which was this: we've been moving gases that are good at trapping energy from underground, and precisely because they are good at trapping energy, into the atmosphere where they trap energy from leaving the Earth.
No part of that requires you to believe in "my expert". Climate science posses no more difficulty to a layman than apolitical scientific theories for which there is no outcry and overstated pseudo epistemological concern.
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On June 18 2019 20:26 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2019 10:26 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On June 18 2019 09:33 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) at all but what really confuses me is GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system That makes absolutely no sense to me? Can anyone explain this "grand conspiracy" as they imagine/interpreted it? If no one can articulate it, can we retract it? On June 17 2019 11:09 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 15:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:
[quote]
I wouldn't call it a false belief. In fact, climate change is a good example of facts that are not falsifiable. Based on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, we already know that there will be certain things that math or science can never prove conclusively to be true or false.
Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy.
There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing.
The most reasonable argument I have read about climate change is the one Taleb makes in his book Antifragile. If there is uncertainty about the impact of our actions, but if there is a small chance it could be catastrophic, we should not do it at all. If I want to release a gas that might harm people, the burden of proof should be on me to proof that the gas is safe, not on other people to prove the gas is dangerous.
This is an argument based on decision making under uncertainty, and not based on confidence in the correctness of models from "experts" that consume taxpayer money and produce poor predictions. Been so long since I've seen such a good critique that I just want to acquiesce in entirety to it. I think I will, and just agree. EDIT: Just add that I think we also agree that sort of critical decision making presupposes a population/system we don't currently have (but could)? Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time). Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'. The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely. The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course. Just curious what you're referencing with "the quality varied immensely"? The Greeks - as far as we know - had no real concept of a curriculum, so it mostly came down to whatever your teacher thought you needed to know. I'm sure you can imagine the difference in quality of education (and content) that Therestones down the road and, say, Plato or Socrates would provide. Not saying either of them were employed as teachers per se but it wouldn't surprise me if they were (little details like that are mostly long lost to history). I don't think it's a completely unreasonable assumption, I just thought you might be referencing something specific. Feels weird to respond to just part of that post so I'll try the rest too: No, no specific reference, just a general area of knowledge of mine. I've studied Greek history extensively for years to help with creative projects, and one of my exes is a legitimate archaeologist who specialises in Greek and Roman history, so I've learned a lot about the real and assumed bits of history and culture about the Greeks/Romans and read a load of books on the subject. The Greeks get a good rap for the high points but people really only think about Athens (a legitimate centre of culture and learning) when they think about Greece, especially when it comes to philosophers. It's kind of like people saying 'The Western World' and thinking America. It's not an accident that those great thinkers were pointing out the problems with Democracy the day after they invented it, nor that some of the same group considered Democracy to be a dreadful idea. As to the point about parental blame for education; I agree with you. Socio-economic factors play a larger part. Parents don't encourage their kids to learn at school when they know deep down their kids have no future because of the environment they grow up in. But parents are ultimately responsible for the person they raise until a certain age. You hear all the time of kids that come from really bad neighborhoods making it out and becoming wildly successful. If you give a damn about your child, you won't let the environment ruin their future. As much as you can control anyway. A lot of those parents would call you a starry-eyed idiot with no idea what you're talking about. Sure, a lot of people still embrace the whole American Dream bit, but a lot of others are realists. If you grow up in an environment where you, your friends, your parents, their parents, their friends and their families all followed more or less the same track that circles the drain, you're often going to develop a worldview that reflects this. Not necessarily bitter or defeatist, but realistic and practical. Is it good parenting to fill your child's head with dreams they can't accomplish, setting them up for crushing realisation when they're older? Because that does lead to bitterness. The world isn't full of Slumdog Millionaires. It's full of people living in slums.
If I hadn't lived in the environment you describe, then I wouldn't be talking about this, in this way. I made it out. Others have as well. Because my family wouldn't allow it. Some family members wasn't as lucky as I, I suppose. But I speak from experience.
I can be realistic and at the same time advocate for better socioeconomic outcomes for people. Call it what you will, but it remains the same: do not steal a child's innocence and hope of the future because you're bitter. Encourage them to strive for the best they can be, no matter what.
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On June 18 2019 20:26 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2019 10:26 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On June 18 2019 09:33 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) at all but what really confuses me is GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system That makes absolutely no sense to me? Can anyone explain this "grand conspiracy" as they imagine/interpreted it? If no one can articulate it, can we retract it? On June 17 2019 11:09 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 15:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:
[quote]
I wouldn't call it a false belief. In fact, climate change is a good example of facts that are not falsifiable. Based on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, we already know that there will be certain things that math or science can never prove conclusively to be true or false.
Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy.
There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing.
The most reasonable argument I have read about climate change is the one Taleb makes in his book Antifragile. If there is uncertainty about the impact of our actions, but if there is a small chance it could be catastrophic, we should not do it at all. If I want to release a gas that might harm people, the burden of proof should be on me to proof that the gas is safe, not on other people to prove the gas is dangerous.
This is an argument based on decision making under uncertainty, and not based on confidence in the correctness of models from "experts" that consume taxpayer money and produce poor predictions. Been so long since I've seen such a good critique that I just want to acquiesce in entirety to it. I think I will, and just agree. EDIT: Just add that I think we also agree that sort of critical decision making presupposes a population/system we don't currently have (but could)? Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time). Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'. The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely. The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course. Just curious what you're referencing with "the quality varied immensely"? The Greeks - as far as we know - had no real concept of a curriculum, so it mostly came down to whatever your teacher thought you needed to know. I'm sure you can imagine the difference in quality of education (and content) that Therestones down the road and, say, Plato or Socrates would provide. Not saying either of them were employed as teachers per se but it wouldn't surprise me if they were (little details like that are mostly long lost to history). I don't think it's a completely unreasonable assumption, I just thought you might be referencing something specific. Feels weird to respond to just part of that post so I'll try the rest too: No, no specific reference, just a general area of knowledge of mine. I've studied Greek history extensively for years to help with creative projects, and one of my exes is a legitimate archaeologist who specialises in Greek and Roman history, so I've learned a lot about the real and assumed bits of history and culture about the Greeks/Romans and read a load of books on the subject. The Greeks get a good rap for the high points but people really only think about Athens (a legitimate centre of culture and learning) when they think about Greece, especially when it comes to philosophers. It's kind of like people saying 'The Western World' and thinking America. It's not an accident that those great thinkers were pointing out the problems with Democracy the day after they invented it, nor that some of the same group considered Democracy to be a dreadful idea. As to the point about parental blame for education; I agree with you. Socio-economic factors play a larger part. Parents don't encourage their kids to learn at school when they know deep down their kids have no future because of the environment they grow up in. But parents are ultimately responsible for the person they raise until a certain age. You hear all the time of kids that come from really bad neighborhoods making it out and becoming wildly successful. If you give a damn about your child, you won't let the environment ruin their future. As much as you can control anyway. A lot of those parents would call you a starry-eyed idiot with no idea what you're talking about. Sure, a lot of people still embrace the whole American Dream bit, but a lot of others are realists. If you grow up in an environment where you, your friends, your parents, their parents, their friends and their families all followed more or less the same track that circles the drain, you're often going to develop a worldview that reflects this. Not necessarily bitter or defeatist, but realistic and practical. Is it good parenting to fill your child's head with dreams they can't accomplish, setting them up for crushing realisation when they're older? Because that does lead to bitterness. The world isn't full of Slumdog Millionaires. It's full of people living in slums.
That's all marginally true, but that folks are reflections of their worldview and place in the world is more a truism than anything else. Further, splitting the bitter defeatist/realism divide is literally the stuff of a good education, which is why there's such an emphasis on following your dreams and all those hallmark-y goals of education. Many of those families that represent generations of narrow, low-minded goals are full of conflicts among themselves, and that's why the trope of the hard working parents who want for nothing more than their children to go to college is the figurative representation of the goals of public education just as much as the closed-minded "school of hard knocks" folks who shit talk teachers and refuse to make their children do their homework represent a failure in public education. The backwards view and resistance is evidence that public education hasn't worked, not that it can't or won't with the proper updating.
Sure, some are gonna poo-poo on everything based on both their own experiences and the imagined experiences of their forebears, but many do the exact opposite when they want more for their children than they had, and providing for the latter in a public and reliable way is the kernel of truth that needs to be emphasized in order for progress to take hold.
On June 18 2019 20:52 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2019 20:26 iamthedave wrote:On June 18 2019 10:26 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On June 18 2019 09:33 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) at all but what really confuses me is GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system That makes absolutely no sense to me? Can anyone explain this "grand conspiracy" as they imagine/interpreted it? If no one can articulate it, can we retract it? On June 17 2019 11:09 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 15:32 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
Been so long since I've seen such a good critique that I just want to acquiesce in entirety to it. I think I will, and just agree.
EDIT: Just add that I think we also agree that sort of critical decision making presupposes a population/system we don't currently have (but could)? Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time). Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'. The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely. The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course. Just curious what you're referencing with "the quality varied immensely"? The Greeks - as far as we know - had no real concept of a curriculum, so it mostly came down to whatever your teacher thought you needed to know. I'm sure you can imagine the difference in quality of education (and content) that Therestones down the road and, say, Plato or Socrates would provide. Not saying either of them were employed as teachers per se but it wouldn't surprise me if they were (little details like that are mostly long lost to history). I don't think it's a completely unreasonable assumption, I just thought you might be referencing something specific. Feels weird to respond to just part of that post so I'll try the rest too: No, no specific reference, just a general area of knowledge of mine. I've studied Greek history extensively for years to help with creative projects, and one of my exes is a legitimate archaeologist who specialises in Greek and Roman history, so I've learned a lot about the real and assumed bits of history and culture about the Greeks/Romans and read a load of books on the subject. The Greeks get a good rap for the high points but people really only think about Athens (a legitimate centre of culture and learning) when they think about Greece, especially when it comes to philosophers. It's kind of like people saying 'The Western World' and thinking America. It's not an accident that those great thinkers were pointing out the problems with Democracy the day after they invented it, nor that some of the same group considered Democracy to be a dreadful idea. As to the point about parental blame for education; I agree with you. Socio-economic factors play a larger part. Parents don't encourage their kids to learn at school when they know deep down their kids have no future because of the environment they grow up in. But parents are ultimately responsible for the person they raise until a certain age. You hear all the time of kids that come from really bad neighborhoods making it out and becoming wildly successful. If you give a damn about your child, you won't let the environment ruin their future. As much as you can control anyway. A lot of those parents would call you a starry-eyed idiot with no idea what you're talking about. Sure, a lot of people still embrace the whole American Dream bit, but a lot of others are realists. If you grow up in an environment where you, your friends, your parents, their parents, their friends and their families all followed more or less the same track that circles the drain, you're often going to develop a worldview that reflects this. Not necessarily bitter or defeatist, but realistic and practical. Is it good parenting to fill your child's head with dreams they can't accomplish, setting them up for crushing realisation when they're older? Because that does lead to bitterness. The world isn't full of Slumdog Millionaires. It's full of people living in slums. If I hadn't lived in the environment you describe, then I wouldn't be talking about this, in this way. I made it out. Others have as well. Because my family wouldn't allow it. Some family members wasn't as lucky as I, I suppose. But I speak from experience. I can be realistic and at the same time advocate for better socioeconomic outcomes for people. Call it what you will, but it remains the same: do not steal a child's innocence and hope of the future because you're bitter. Encourage them to strive for the best they can be, no matter what.
I had the unique vantage of being the child of a foreign born doctor and an east coast nursing professor mother in a solidly middle class white suburb of a Rust Belt city. I saw plenty of both sides of the coin enough to personally believe that encouragement most definitely makes a profound difference when it gets through, so much so that it should not be abandoned.
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This ties back into my statement a while back about getting out and traveling. Sure, the internet can show you all of these places. But the experience of it is different. It changes your views on what is possible. I try to encourage my little sisters to travel abroad someday. Once you truly see how big the world is, you won't be satisfied living in Compton, Detroit, or podunk small town your entire life. (Not shitting on Compton or Detroit, just an example).
I feel this ultimately helps one see the shortcomings of america and the world at large more clear and you begin to want change or a better QOL.
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On June 18 2019 22:01 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
This ties back into my statement a while back about getting out and traveling. Sure, the internet can show you all of these places. But the experience of it is different. It changes your views on what is possible. I try to encourage my little sisters to travel abroad someday. Once you truly see how big the world is, you won't be satisfied living in Compton, Detroit, or podunk small town your entire life. (Not shitting on Compton or Detroit, just an example).
I feel this ultimately helps one see the shortcomings of america and the world at large more clear and you begin to want change or a better QOL.
Yeah I completely agree. I lived in a lot of not so great places growing up. I eventually ended up in a nice suburb and it was a total dream. No worrying about gangs, people breaking into your house, violence...just a normal, good place. And the worst part is that the people raised in that environment don't appreciate it. Drives me insane.
People in nice areas bash on nice areas, saying they have no culture or that they aren't "like the real world", but "the real world" fucking sucks. I don't care what "culture xD" a city has when there are gangs and widespread crime. I used to want to raise kids in a big city, but after living in a suburb, I realized how much less opportunity children have when they are raised in a place with so much more aggression/fear/uncertainty.
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On June 18 2019 18:50 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2019 11:09 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 18 2019 10:26 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On June 18 2019 09:33 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) at all but what really confuses me is GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system That makes absolutely no sense to me? Can anyone explain this "grand conspiracy" as they imagine/interpreted it? If no one can articulate it, can we retract it? On June 17 2019 11:09 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 15:32 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
Been so long since I've seen such a good critique that I just want to acquiesce in entirety to it. I think I will, and just agree.
EDIT: Just add that I think we also agree that sort of critical decision making presupposes a population/system we don't currently have (but could)? Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time). Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'. The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely. The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course. Just curious what you're referencing with "the quality varied immensely"? The Greeks - as far as we know - had no real concept of a curriculum, so it mostly came down to whatever your teacher thought you needed to know. I'm sure you can imagine the difference in quality of education (and content) that Therestones down the road and, say, Plato or Socrates would provide. Not saying either of them were employed as teachers per se but it wouldn't surprise me if they were (little details like that are mostly long lost to history). I don't think it's a completely unreasonable assumption, I just thought you might be referencing something specific. Feels weird to respond to just part of that post so I'll try the rest too: No, no specific reference, just a general area of knowledge of mine. I've studied Greek history extensively for years to help with creative projects, and one of my exes is a legitimate archaeologist who specialises in Greek and Roman history, so I've learned a lot about the real and assumed bits of history and culture about the Greeks/Romans and read a load of books on the subject. The Greeks get a good rap for the high points but people really only think about Athens (a legitimate centre of culture and learning) when they think about Greece, especially when it comes to philosophers. It's kind of like people saying 'The Western World' and thinking America. It's not an accident that those great thinkers were pointing out the problems with Democracy the day after they invented it, nor that some of the same group considered Democracy to be a dreadful idea. As to the point about parental blame for education; I agree with you. Socio-economic factors play a larger part. Parents don't encourage their kids to learn at school when they know deep down their kids have no future because of the environment they grow up in. But parents are ultimately responsible for the person they raise until a certain age. You hear all the time of kids that come from really bad neighborhoods making it out and becoming wildly successful. If you give a damn about your child, you won't let the environment ruin their future. As much as you can control anyway. I'd be careful mistaking the frequency you hear about it, for the frequency with which it happens. And I'd be careful dismissing the vital role parenting plays a part in the development of a child, just because it goes against your position of a failed educational system. You don't want to place blame with the parents for not educating their children at home, but wish to condemn educators who have their hands tied by the system. There are teachers who give a damn but at the end of the day, if the parent isn't willing to put in the same amount of effort some teachers do, then the child is failed on two fronts. EDIT: I should add that the terms "wildly successful" is relative. They don't have to be ball players or anything, just that they got out of a bad situation and made something of themselves. Whether that be a small business or what have you.
I literally did the opposite of dismissing the role parenting plays and condemning educators?
Your edit/commentary on "making it out" is run of the mill bootstrap stuff and I'm not entirely sure why ostensibly left people aren't pointing that out?
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On June 19 2019 00:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2019 18:50 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On June 18 2019 11:09 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 18 2019 10:26 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On June 18 2019 09:33 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) at all but what really confuses me is GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system That makes absolutely no sense to me? Can anyone explain this "grand conspiracy" as they imagine/interpreted it? If no one can articulate it, can we retract it? On June 17 2019 11:09 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:
[quote]
Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time). Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'. The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely. The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course. Just curious what you're referencing with "the quality varied immensely"? The Greeks - as far as we know - had no real concept of a curriculum, so it mostly came down to whatever your teacher thought you needed to know. I'm sure you can imagine the difference in quality of education (and content) that Therestones down the road and, say, Plato or Socrates would provide. Not saying either of them were employed as teachers per se but it wouldn't surprise me if they were (little details like that are mostly long lost to history). I don't think it's a completely unreasonable assumption, I just thought you might be referencing something specific. Feels weird to respond to just part of that post so I'll try the rest too: No, no specific reference, just a general area of knowledge of mine. I've studied Greek history extensively for years to help with creative projects, and one of my exes is a legitimate archaeologist who specialises in Greek and Roman history, so I've learned a lot about the real and assumed bits of history and culture about the Greeks/Romans and read a load of books on the subject. The Greeks get a good rap for the high points but people really only think about Athens (a legitimate centre of culture and learning) when they think about Greece, especially when it comes to philosophers. It's kind of like people saying 'The Western World' and thinking America. It's not an accident that those great thinkers were pointing out the problems with Democracy the day after they invented it, nor that some of the same group considered Democracy to be a dreadful idea. As to the point about parental blame for education; I agree with you. Socio-economic factors play a larger part. Parents don't encourage their kids to learn at school when they know deep down their kids have no future because of the environment they grow up in. But parents are ultimately responsible for the person they raise until a certain age. You hear all the time of kids that come from really bad neighborhoods making it out and becoming wildly successful. If you give a damn about your child, you won't let the environment ruin their future. As much as you can control anyway. I'd be careful mistaking the frequency you hear about it, for the frequency with which it happens. And I'd be careful dismissing the vital role parenting plays a part in the development of a child, just because it goes against your position of a failed educational system. You don't want to place blame with the parents for not educating their children at home, but wish to condemn educators who have their hands tied by the system. There are teachers who give a damn but at the end of the day, if the parent isn't willing to put in the same amount of effort some teachers do, then the child is failed on two fronts. EDIT: I should add that the terms "wildly successful" is relative. They don't have to be ball players or anything, just that they got out of a bad situation and made something of themselves. Whether that be a small business or what have you. I literally did the opposite of dismissing the role parenting plays and condemning educators? Your edit/commentary on "making it out" is run of the mill bootstrap stuff and I'm not entirely sure why ostensibly left people aren't pointing that out?
It could be that what you're referring to is most commonly said by wealthy elitists who never had to bootstrap? Why bash and anecdote that says that parenting and giving children hope for the future is a good thing and that education doesn't stop when you leave school but should be continued by the parents?
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On June 19 2019 00:15 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 19 2019 00:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 18 2019 18:50 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On June 18 2019 11:09 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 18 2019 10:26 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On June 18 2019 09:33 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) at all but what really confuses me is GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system That makes absolutely no sense to me? Can anyone explain this "grand conspiracy" as they imagine/interpreted it? If no one can articulate it, can we retract it? On June 17 2019 11:09 iamthedave wrote:On June 17 2019 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:
[quote]
Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'.
The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely.
The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course. Just curious what you're referencing with "the quality varied immensely"? The Greeks - as far as we know - had no real concept of a curriculum, so it mostly came down to whatever your teacher thought you needed to know. I'm sure you can imagine the difference in quality of education (and content) that Therestones down the road and, say, Plato or Socrates would provide. Not saying either of them were employed as teachers per se but it wouldn't surprise me if they were (little details like that are mostly long lost to history). I don't think it's a completely unreasonable assumption, I just thought you might be referencing something specific. Feels weird to respond to just part of that post so I'll try the rest too: No, no specific reference, just a general area of knowledge of mine. I've studied Greek history extensively for years to help with creative projects, and one of my exes is a legitimate archaeologist who specialises in Greek and Roman history, so I've learned a lot about the real and assumed bits of history and culture about the Greeks/Romans and read a load of books on the subject. The Greeks get a good rap for the high points but people really only think about Athens (a legitimate centre of culture and learning) when they think about Greece, especially when it comes to philosophers. It's kind of like people saying 'The Western World' and thinking America. It's not an accident that those great thinkers were pointing out the problems with Democracy the day after they invented it, nor that some of the same group considered Democracy to be a dreadful idea. As to the point about parental blame for education; I agree with you. Socio-economic factors play a larger part. Parents don't encourage their kids to learn at school when they know deep down their kids have no future because of the environment they grow up in. But parents are ultimately responsible for the person they raise until a certain age. You hear all the time of kids that come from really bad neighborhoods making it out and becoming wildly successful. If you give a damn about your child, you won't let the environment ruin their future. As much as you can control anyway. I'd be careful mistaking the frequency you hear about it, for the frequency with which it happens. And I'd be careful dismissing the vital role parenting plays a part in the development of a child, just because it goes against your position of a failed educational system. You don't want to place blame with the parents for not educating their children at home, but wish to condemn educators who have their hands tied by the system. There are teachers who give a damn but at the end of the day, if the parent isn't willing to put in the same amount of effort some teachers do, then the child is failed on two fronts. EDIT: I should add that the terms "wildly successful" is relative. They don't have to be ball players or anything, just that they got out of a bad situation and made something of themselves. Whether that be a small business or what have you. I literally did the opposite of dismissing the role parenting plays and condemning educators? Your edit/commentary on "making it out" is run of the mill bootstrap stuff and I'm not entirely sure why ostensibly left people aren't pointing that out? It could be that what you're referring to is most commonly said by wealthy elitists who never had to bootstrap? Why bash and anecdote that says that parenting and giving children hope for the future is a good thing and that education doesn't stop when you leave school but should be continued by the parents?
Yes the wealthy elitists, and the exemplary people that reinforce the exploitative system those elitists want to keep and creates the story in the first place (by way of perpetuating the circumstances the marginalized person overcame).
It's basically how corporate news turns child labor and a failed healthcare system into a feel-good story about how a 8 y.o. kid saved their family member by getting a second job or whatever.
As for positive reinforcement, yes encouragement is a good thing, it's just not addressing the actual source for the bad parenting in the first place. Telling poor parents to be better parents isn't a very useful critique in my view as well.
As I mentioned it's the same sort of individualistic analysis from whence the ideas that addiction, sexual orientation, etc... are character flaws is drawn when they don't fit accepted hegemonic positions of the society they are in.
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Last response in regards to your need to argue. If you change the children for the better with quality education (which starts by fixing the shit that is wrong and encouraging them to strive to be the best they can), that socioeconomic issue is taken care of in 1-2 generations. But you have to have parents willing to be part of the solution anf not bury their heads in the ground because "ermahgerd, life is terf. Dont dream!"
Your failed education system doesn't get better by poking undereducated parents, but by lifting the children. However that is accomplished.
And what does being poor have to do with being a bad parent?!?! You think many of us who post here grew up with silver spoons? We had parents that encouraged us and stressed education and to be whatever made us happy in life. Stop conflating the two.
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On June 19 2019 00:32 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Last response in regards to your need to argue.
It's a political forum where we have different political positions. I'd prefer we have dialogue but it's hard with people accusing me of "grand conspiracies" and suggesting I'm arguing parenting isn't important or other fictional positions.
If you change the children for the better with quality education (which starts by fixing the shit that is wrong and encouraging them to strive to be the best they can), that socioeconomic issue is taken care of in 1-2 generations. But you have to have parents willing to be part of the solution anf not bury their heads in the ground because "ermahgerd, life is terf. Dont dream!"
I'm not saying that kids shouldn't be encouraged or that parents should not be part of the solution?
Your failed education system doesn't get better by poking undereducated parents, but by lifting the children. However that is accomplished.
Which is why I try to move the dialogue to how we accomplish that, rather than simply agree with the analysis that points out some parents are bad at being parents.
And what does being poor have to do with being a bad parent?!?! You think many of us who post here grew up with silver spoons? We had parents that encouraged us and stressed education and to be whatever made us happy in life. Stop conflating the two.
I meant poor as in of poor quality, but there's certainly a correlation between the two
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AG Barr's review of the Russia investigation will presumably have a lot to do with the agencies' interaction with George Papadopoulos in London, because it was there that the predicate for the investigation occurred. Funnily enough, Trumps CIA director, Gina Haspel, was the CIA station chief in London at the time. The CIA has apparently now said that it will resist revealing communications from allies (one such communication was the predicate for the Russia investigation). Haspel was previously involved with destroying the CIA's interrogation tapes during the Bush era. She's a career undercover CIA agent. In other words, she is very much on the side of the CIA, probably no matter what they did.
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Shanahan is out of the running for permanent Secretary of Defense, probably because the FBI is ramping up a look into a domestic violence problem he had back in 2010.
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On June 19 2019 02:37 Doodsmack wrote:
AG Barr's review of the Russia investigation will presumably have a lot to do with the agencies' interaction with George Papadopoulos in London, because it was there that the predicate for the investigation occurred. Funnily enough, Trumps CIA director, Gina Haspel, was the CIA station chief in London at the time. The CIA has apparently now said that it will resist revealing communications from allies (one such communication was the predicate for the Russia investigation). Haspel was previously involved with destroying the CIA's interrogation tapes during the Bush era. She's a career undercover CIA agent. In other words, she is very much on the side of the CIA, probably no matter what they did.
Another example of Trump and his people plain and simply doing a bad job at planning for all scenarios. They wanted someone who gets off on torture, check, but they also ended up with someone who will resist any attempts to extract damaging information from the CIA.
My understanding is that the CIA is DESIGNED to not be accountable and that in order to remain competitive with Russia and China, must be an entirely amoral organization that strives for nothing other than dealing damage while taking as little as possible. There is too much at stake and it doesn't make sense to have the CIA actually be accountable to any branch of government.
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If the CIA wants to continue to enjoy some of its historical secrecy privilege, it better be ready to discuss at length with Barr what sources are too sensitive to disclose, even with anonymous non-identifying information. Barr's first job was at the CIA. He doesn't even think the term "spying" is pejorative. This will probably go along just fine from the head-honcho perspective, and who knows what kind of delays and hurdles with various deputies and counsels.
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If it needs saying, I don't think the many Barr haters will suddenly learn to like him from his investigation. It goes a little too deep, and it's sincerely believed despite having been founded very poorly. I know it's a little attractive to adopt the "who cares" standpoint when you perceive corruption. I also think the "who cares which 2020 Democratic imbecile wins, the country's fucked anyways should any gain power" doesn't go too far either.
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Yes yes, it's all rather droll. Even in this small forum, we had the opposite case made over several pages: He has been truthful, his summaries and testimony were accurate, he has shown to be one of the most trustworthy of the key players involved, the people griping about him prove to have no understanding of history, hardly a conception of the role of prosecutors in the Justice department, and a kind of tribal decided hatred of competent people doing their jobs.
I gather this isn't ... persuasive ... to a lot of you. And you get a little huffy at people believing otherwise. Not an indictment, just an observation. You'd rather shelter in argumentum ab auctoritate and ad populum until you're back in power (or people give up talking to y'all about it). Have at it! You're certainly entitled to your opinion on this business. The rote repetition of forms of "but Trump's a crook" and "but Barr's a hack" reminds me of some MAGA-hat cheering supporter at a rally that got his queue cards mixed up.
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EPT
