EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 3490
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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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ZerOCoolSC2
8986 Posts
So what about those Trump documents being found and rescued to the national archives? | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On February 08 2022 17:59 Zambrah wrote: Im curious, given the horrible housing price situation, as well as the horrible inflation on food and such, I see two core aspects of like, living, being degraded heavily (at least in the public eye) when it comes to affordability. Im wondering where you all think the breaking point is for Americans? When do you think the material impact to people's lives gets bad enough that people start to go all French Revolution, is it even possible in this day and age? I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast recently and Im noticing some interesting similarities between the French Revolution and whats happening now and Im very interested to see how it develops given we have a non-functional government thats not likely going to get any more functional in the foreseeable future. How is society going to adjust to the state of things in the US, violently, or systematically, or will it adjust at all? We’re one of the first generations that has a fighting chance of actually seeing this all play out. Twice in a generation we got the “if we don’t do a government bailout it’ll be the next Great Depression” line, and it’s probably not an exaggeration - but the core problem of 2008 was never fixed and below the surface the economy is terminally ill with every significant shock guaranteed to make for another Great Depression level crisis. Three ways this ends - we actually get that depression, we ignore the problem too hard for too long and get hyperinflation eventually, or we skirt the boundaries of the two for several decades and get stuck in a Japan trap for a long, long time. The third option is the only one that avoids revolution (since revolution necessitates rapid decline and this one is merely gradual) and is also the most likely to actually happen. I’ve heard the theory more than once that “the age of heroism” is over and we wouldn’t see anyone actually go for violent revolution. I bet they would have said the same thing in the era of European revolution. We did have disgruntled people storming Congress just about a year ago, after all; economic instability isn’t their stated goal but would have undeniably been one of the factors that made such an event even possible. If economic decline takes a downward sharper turn, there will be a next storming of Congress, with lessons learned from the first one. Probably won’t get there, but things are bad enough that with several major missteps it certainly could. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18004 Posts
On February 08 2022 20:51 gobbledydook wrote: The corresponding argument is that education is a way to increase productivity in society because people with more knowledge are more productive. Since some people naturally are better suited to learning knowledge, while others have other gifts, it would be most effective if those who were good learners received the best education. Standardized testing, college admissions criteria etc are all ways to try to do this, since we don't have infinite education resources. In addition to the more philosophical point ender raised, there is the problem that overuse of standardized tests to segregate education have been shown over and over to be counterproductive. I'd say that standardized tests for toddlers is almost the epitome of this type of overuse. I'm not going to get into the development process of toddlers here, but there is very little that is "standard" about it. | ||
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mierin
United States4943 Posts
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Acrofales
Spain18004 Posts
On February 09 2022 02:19 mierin wrote: How can we get around standardized tests? Every school is different in terms of grading. Firstly, you don't have to get rid of standardized tests entirely. But most European countries rely on 1, maybe 2 standardized tests throughout all of school. Mostly just right at the end of high school. And even then the test is only part of your graduation grade, with "non-standardized" grades throughout the curriculum forming another important part. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11519 Posts
On February 09 2022 02:24 Acrofales wrote: Firstly, you don't have to get rid of standardized tests entirely. But most European countries rely on 1, maybe 2 standardized tests throughout all of school. Mostly just right at the end of high school. And even then the test is only part of your graduation grade, with "non-standardized" grades throughout the curriculum forming another important part. Exactly. This absurd focus on standardized tests is a very american thing, and it makes the US education worse. If you only reward standardized tests, and reward the schools where pupils do best in standardized tests, you create schools which teach primarily how to pass standardized tests, and students who learn primarily how to pass standardized tests. I do not think "getting good grades in standardized tests" should be the primary goal of education. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44368 Posts
On February 09 2022 02:53 Simberto wrote: Exactly. This absurd focus on standardized tests is a very american thing, and it makes the US education worse. If you only reward standardized tests, and reward the schools where pupils do best in standardized tests, you create schools which teach primarily how to pass standardized tests, and students who learn primarily how to pass standardized tests. I do not think "getting good grades in standardized tests" should be the primary goal of education. Completely agree, and it's additionally frustrating when we lose weeks of instructional time just so students can take those standardized tests every year. | ||
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mierin
United States4943 Posts
On February 09 2022 02:24 Acrofales wrote: Firstly, you don't have to get rid of standardized tests entirely. But most European countries rely on 1, maybe 2 standardized tests throughout all of school. Mostly just right at the end of high school. And even then the test is only part of your graduation grade, with "non-standardized" grades throughout the curriculum forming another important part. I mean, that's almost exactly how it is in the US...the SAT is the only major standardized test I remember getting that ever mattered. You might need a more specific one like the LSAT or MCAT and such but those are for specialized fields. There were "end of grade" scantron tests every year but those don't count toward college admissions or anything. "Teaching to the test" is a big problem but that's not the fault of standardized tests...that's a matter of administrators wanting easy to gauge metrics. I guess I'm just surprised when I see people going on about how the US is some sort of standardized testing hell...I mean I went to public school here and it really wasn't a big deal. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On February 09 2022 02:19 mierin wrote: How can we get around standardized tests? Every school is different in terms of grading. Honestly you can fix the first problem by fixing the second: standardize schooling and much of the need for standardized tests goes away. No illusions that that would be easy though. I don't think standardized tests are the worst, to be fair; better than a lot of the other explicitly discriminating strategies we have for barring admissions. The downside is that too much emphasis on it, to the level that it creates the kind of multi-billion "how to beat the test" industries that the US has built, leads to ugly results. The difference between a 90% and 99% score on these tests doesn't represent a meaningfully different understanding of the material, but it makes sense to work 10x as hard and learn the game-the-system strategies when being ranked higher matters more than the learning. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44368 Posts
On February 09 2022 03:14 mierin wrote: I mean, that's almost exactly how it is in the US...the SAT is the only major standardized test I remember getting that ever mattered. You might need a more specific one like the LSAT or MCAT and such but those are for specialized fields. There were "end of grade" scantron tests every year but those don't count toward college admissions or anything. "Teaching to the test" is a big problem but that's not the fault of standardized tests...that's a matter of administrators wanting easy to gauge metrics. I guess I'm just surprised when I see people going on about how the US is some sort of standardized testing hell...I mean I went to public school here and it really wasn't a big deal. Besides the SAT, there's the PSAT, as well as annual standardized tests given by individual states (or additional national tests) for most grades. For example, the PARCC was one such additional test, and unfortunately when one of these tests is removed, it's almost always replaced with a "better" standardized test, rather than simply not having one. In my high school, each grade loses at least 2-3 weeks of instructional time to take tests. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44368 Posts
On February 09 2022 03:15 LegalLord wrote: Honestly you can fix the first problem by fixing the second: standardize schooling and much of the need for standardized tests goes away. No illusions that that would be easy though. I don't think standardized tests are the worst, to be fair; better than a lot of the other explicitly discriminating strategies we have for barring admissions. The downside is that too much emphasis on it, to the level that it creates the kind of multi-billion "how to beat the test" industries that the US has built, leads to ugly results. The difference between a 90% and 99% score on these tests doesn't represent a meaningfully different understanding of the material, but it makes sense to work 10x as hard and learn the game-the-system strategies when being ranked higher matters more than the learning. Can you please elaborate on what you mean by "standardizing schooling"? Do you mean having a common set of skills, standards, and goals for a specific subject/course, regardless of what district or state you're in (e.g., "in geometry class, this is the standard curriculum and content, period, whether you're in rural Mississippi or suburban New Jersey")? If that's what you're referring to, that was already put into effect - it's called Common Core - and some states ended up opting out of it due to the additional standardized testing that was required to check/compare between districts or between states. It's actually not too hard to implement, and it's a pretty solid idea in theory, but then we see things start to fall apart when the attached standardized tests become high-stakes assessments where funding and rankings are predicated on good test scores. I think standardized schooling can be implemented and it can be effective, as long as we can accept either removing those attached standardized tests altogether, or using the test data as merely descriptive information, rather than prescriptive information (i.e., not demonizing/punishing schools or students or teachers with low test scores). | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
I've definitely seen standardized schooling done better elsewhere. For at least a US example - I think ABET for engineering bachelor's degrees is pretty good in establishing "standard baseline of competence for graduates." Grade school is undeniably a different beast than college, though. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44368 Posts
On February 09 2022 03:38 LegalLord wrote: Common Core is about the right idea; the execution is just horrendous from everything I've heard. I very much sympathize with the concept of a standardized curriculum and structure that provides a strong baseline of what students who pass the program are expected to know. From what I've heard from the many teachers I know, all of whom like to complain about Common Core - standardization isn't the problem with that program in particular. I've definitely seen standardized schooling done better elsewhere. For at least a US example - I think ABET for engineering bachelor's degrees is pretty good in establishing "standard baseline of competence for graduates." Grade school is undeniably a different beast than college, though. Yeah, the implementation ended up getting out of hand, both within districts and from businesses trying to capitalize on making CC-specific guides. Content-wise, the original website for CC is pretty straightforward, innocuous, and inoffensive ( http://www.corestandards.org/Math/ ), but the execution and the testing became monsters. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23246 Posts
On February 08 2022 17:59 Zambrah wrote: Im curious, given the horrible housing price situation, as well as the horrible inflation on food and such, I see two core aspects of like, living, being degraded heavily (at least in the public eye) when it comes to affordability. Im wondering where you all think the breaking point is for Americans? When do you think the material impact to people's lives gets bad enough that people start to go all French Revolution, is it even possible in this day and age? I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast recently and Im noticing some interesting similarities between the French Revolution and whats happening now and Im very interested to see how it develops given we have a non-functional government thats not likely going to get any more functional in the foreseeable future. How is society going to adjust to the state of things in the US, violently, or systematically, or will it adjust at all? I think it will be sparked by students/young people that recognize they are inheriting an irreversible global ecological catastrophe and both parties were complicit in dooming them to such a horrific fate. Ideally some sense of responsibility to future generations motivates people to abandon Democrats and Republicans at minimum before that, but it seems to me far too many people in the US are just far too indoctrinated with the dogma of capitalism to get their act together. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10568 Posts
On February 08 2022 14:42 Starlightsun wrote: Do most people view education as a zero sum, competitive event? I seem to see a lot of analogies to competitive sports. Maybe I am being too naive, but I thought the goal of education is to have an informed, humane and productive citizenry more than it is to weed out the weak from the strong. Later on, when people are specializing into challenging fields then a sports analogy is more appropriate, but it seems unfitting for general education. The point of the analogy is not to say that education should be set up in a manner similar to professional sports. The point is to demonstrate the flaw in the argument that if there is an inequity in the outcome for different subsets of people then there must be inherent unfairness in the system itself. So if you use that argument then you should be prepared to explain the paradox of black people being overrepresented in the NBA when we can safely assume that black people are not holding white people down from participating. The argument that those elite athletes are just the most gifted by talent and genes might receive a permanban if it was offered to explain the overrepresentation of whites in any field. Now I've posted here long enough to know that people are going to immediately misconstrue what I just said by saying things like "BlackJack thinks discrimination doesn't exist against black people because they have success in the NBA." To reiterate, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you can't work backwards from the results to draw conclusions about the inputs. People that struggle with the logic of this might have their head explode when they take it one step further and consider the logic of the following: Just because the NBA is 80% Black also doesn't allow you to conclude that black people don't face discrimination in this field. In fact, it could still be the case that the NBA discriminates against blacks and it would be 90-95% black if they didn't. Kaboom. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3188 Posts
Edit: fixed some autocorrect issues | ||
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EnDeR_
Spain2696 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25458 Posts
Discriminatory systems, or indeed non-discriminatory intersections don’t necessarily apply equally to all areas of life equally. As an outside observer the African-American community is a much, much more visible part of wider American cultural exports than Asian-Americans, be it in sporting heroes or the arts. | ||
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Doc.Rivers
United States404 Posts
On February 08 2022 23:32 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: So what about those Trump documents being found and rescued to the national archives? The partisan hypocrisy (on both sides) when comparing Hillary's email server to Trump's boxes is something to behold. | ||
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