RICH PEOPLE

[Onnes]

What have you done, Brass?! Rassah is still bumping his own call-out thread, after 11 pages.

 

12 hours ago, Rassah said:

That's Darwinism?

I got the feeling that @FlynnCoyote was referencing some of your posts in other threads involving children. Possibly the gun thread.

 

12 hours ago, Rassah said:

Oh... I guess since people are different, I prefer people to explore and develop their differences, even if it means some people get way ahead of others simply for being more intelligent or talented, instead of forcefully keeping everyone at about the same level...

There's another issue that has nothing to do with that, which is the kid's family's social and financial status determining whether the school they go to is good or crap, with well off kids gettimg the best education while the worst off kids get schools so bad majority of them never even graduate, which is the system we have now, and seems to be that way no matter what we do with public schools, but I want to improve that by making it so that everyone can get access to equal education and information, regardless of their background.

I guess the difference between my preference and those of some others is that I want a fair and equal playing field, where kids can succeed and advance entirely on their own merit, which would allow smarter and more creative kids to get ahead, and others prever a playing field that advantages some kids and disadvantages others, in order to keep their level of success about even regardless of how smart they are or how much effort they put in, with them considering the equal outcome to be fair in this case.

But all you've done is say you'd take away resources that society currently provides for that majority of parents that cannot afford the full cost of a first-world education. Your suggestions as to what will replace this loss of support have boiled down to either self-directed learning or magic markets with no specifics. Somewhere in there is this tangent about letting kids choose their own curriculum and pace, which is just a complete non-starter with adolescents. You've said before that you dislike children, but you certainly have very strong and very idiosyncratic views about their general psychology.

This brings me to the recurring statement in some your posts here, that you want a fair and equal playing field. The playing field is unequal before the child is even born; the parents' genetics and health will play a huge role in the child's future health even if that child never meets them. And that's just the nature side, once the child is actually born you've got to consider the influence of parents' resources and education.

What do most rich people do for their kids' education? They send them to expensive private schools or exclusive school districts. There's nothing fundamentally different from these exclusive schools and your everyday public school, they just have a shitton more resources and quality control through exclusion. An aside: Taking away free public education won't help this situation at all -- it would just move the education that the majority receive even further from that of the elite.

The logic around how much of these public and social programs work is one of counteracting those disadvantages one begins life with. Born to poor, uneducated mountain folk? You still get an expensive-as-fuck schooling from professional teachers. Leaving everything up to the parents obviously wouldn't work, and leaving it up to kid is laughable unless you like rolling the dice on literacy. Without a robust public system children from poorer backgrounds would be far less likely to even know what opportunities are available to them, let alone be able to achieve them.

[AshleyAshes]

27 minutes ago, Rassah said:

In the first case a monopoly is hiring others to build stuff only for itself, and restricts others from building this stuff for themselves or anyone else.

In the second case, a competing business is building stuff for anyone, including the organization that used to be a monopoly, and is not restricting others from trying to do the same.

Fairly straightforward, no?

No.  Because now Boeing, Lockheed and others have built on these technologies and now sell private market space lift services to all sectors.  How else do you think that private telecommunications satellites get into orbit?  You think NASA does that as if it were Amtrak or something?

So yeah, still not seeing anything new here, just someone wearing rose colored glasses.

[evan]

1 hour ago, Onnes said:

What have you done, Brass?! Rassah is still bumping his own call-out thread, after 11 pages.

my fault, bothered to act like there was a still point in arguing

 

will have a reply ready to his response in an hour, may as well

[evan]

i don't expect this to go well, but whatever. might as well practice constructing arguments if i'm gonna try to be a teacher.

EDIT: FUCK this thread was dying off and i didn't notice until i realized this was a double post after a good hour of not posting. if this thread keeps living because of me i owe everyone an apology and a buttcoin

6 hours ago, Rassah said:

I have been, and much of the why it's happening doesn't make much sense to me. Especially with the way things are run there. If I look at any component of how schools are run and kids are disciplined, objectively it doesn't make sense.

there are circumstances where i agree and also disagree. you're going to need to be much more specific than a blanket statement.

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I don't understand how simply being undecided about something is force. The force I'm talking about is being forced to go to school, forced to take subjects, forced to sit at a desk for an hour, forced to be quiet and pay attention, forced to recite and memorize things, forced to not challenge the teacher on anything, forced to behave and dress a certain way, forced not to say certain things the school may find objectionable, forced to only be in certain places, and sometimes forced to get from place to place walking single file. We basically spend 12 years beating into our kids to be submissive little servants.-

first off, your first sentence wasn't what i was referring to so i have to deem that irrelevant, unless you can show me where that was mentioned

you do realize that adhering to everything a child wants without forcing them to do anything is actually a negative aspect of teaching a kid, right? a small example; the development of musical capacity requires abnormal muscle groups for us to think about and manipulate. music is often unintuitive, and some philosophers (see Keith Swanwick) argue that music is fundamentally a way of knowing, something that does not make sense without guidance. in light of this, there are students who try to do things the way they think is right, and often develop very harmful fundamentals because they don't choose to establish a trust with their instructor. often times this is a two part fault in that the teacher and the student are inherently incompatible individuals, but unfortunately that can't matter if the point is to improve. students, in order to develop musical ability, must be forced, on some level, to do things a certain way as the way we intuitively try to play music as untrained individuals is generally a way that will lead to failure, stress, disappointment, etc. 

the entire principle of schooling also falls under this theory. we are trying to provide students with information that will make the world make sense in some potential way, and to not let them feel at choice of the knowledge they can take in, but rather empower themselves with the knowledge that they need in order to be critical and proceed to make their own conclusions. keep in mind that before a student enters any form of instructive learning, they can only make conclusions based on what they know, and learn from conclusions. those conclusions have no way of being theoretically correct unless introduced to a system that accomodates for error correction. in fact the whole principle of learning, by some, is considered to simply be enacting change upon a student. what if the student doesn't want to change, or only wants to change in a way that makes them right? that results in denial of information, and often dissociation with reality on some plane.

your examples are somewhat problematic because some of them are also principles of certain lifestyles as a whole and it's difficult to actually fault education when the reality is that certain crowded societies ask for this (not something i agree with, more of an observation). it's not wrong to think that curriculum needs a facelift, which is what a lot of teachers are trying to do (changing the approach to information, the current pinnacle of learning theories centered around praxis, which defies the role of being submissive in a one-way format) and to therefore abolish some of the over-disciplined methods of the past and focus on engagement, which can lead to more information being provided. However, what you're listing isn't even a standardized hallmark at that; where kids are not "forced" to behave, they also tend to fail to absorb the knowledge. Challenging the teacher where they are at fault is one thing; choosing to believe that the student knows as much or more than the teacher leads to just as many problems. There are semantics to every single one of these "forced interactions" and I don't think you're considering that at all.  it isn't the same as wanting critical thinking; it's more akin to being offended by the idea of methods used to help the widest majority of students retain the information, and where it fails, supplemental education is offered. (and in saying this I do not think it is even close to perfect, but your problems with the educational system are at a different point of priority than mine)

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I don't think "for the greater good" is a valid moral or objective defense (have you seen Hot Fuz?)

i'm not arguing greater good. i'm arguing the fact that there are principles of psychology, how things affect invidivuals, and sociology, how environments affect groups. individuals can persuade groups, AND groups can persuade individuals. failing to acknowledge the latter is essentially ignoring a more fundamental purpose of our role as members of a society.

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Why do you claim that?

because they're social principles. that doesn't help a teacher build curriculum. "what should these students learn about engineering to prepare them for the real world?" the idea that we shouldn't force, defraud, or kill them is...important on some level, but then the principle isn't relevant. it isn't in relation to the information, the critical thinking skills, or any sort of focus on the way we perceive the world outside of humanist borders. it's more of an expectation than a topical assessment of the system. you can have engaging, "real world" classroom settings that are actually poor forms of education, i've been in such before. the point of the problem stems from how you use the knowledge and intend to communicate it.

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I have mentioned competition numerous times already. I don't advocate that we change the entire system uniformly, I said I would like to allow some institutions to change if they want to to try new things, or even better, have new private institutions pop up to challenge the established ones. In the worst case scenario, they will fail, and the established ones will be proven right. In the best case scenario, a better system will emerge, and everyone will benefit.

be specific. competition is an idea; it can manifest in almost anything, regardless of the builder's intention. the grading system you complain about assigns a notion of stupidity to lower performers because it is directly tangential to the quality of school you will be considered for and the level of ability to have compared to your peers, therefore making it a competitive market as potential collegiate students. thus competition exists, but it can be widely unhealthy and not actually competition based on knowledge or critical assessment, but label specific competition. so how do you suggest we avoid label-specific competition? i would say competition exists in multiple parts of the current flawed school structure, but not very much of it is healthy or based on fair assessments of students or schools.

also not choosing to change the system would put more students at a disadvantage, would it not? that's the whole problem. i don't understand how you can promote the idea that you think education is unequal but then also say this is an effective way to help students. the whole point of uniform learning expectations is not to say "this is the only thing/way/idea a student can learn" but rather "we want to create equal opportunity within our learning centers, and here's what these learning centers need to do". there would still be inequalities as a result of this, but what you're suggesting just confuses societal growth with capitalistic opportunity.

 

i'm unhappy with your arguments because they're so non-specific that even if i wanted to adopt your ideas and employ reform, i have no idea what your endgoal is, even with your stated philosophy in mind. but you expect me to take them as either revelations or truths of the education system. it's kinda disappointing actually, i want reform in US education badly and have even considered leaving this country to just find better benefits as a teacher, but your problems with it wouldn't, in my mind, help, or even make sense from an educator's standpoint. you've acknowledged problems that i agree are problems, but i also don't understand how you think your solutions are realistic or conducive to preventing those problems. 

i just think you're outright unrealistic.

Edited December 23, 2015 by evan

[Zeke]

On December 21, 2015 at 1:43 AM, Rassah said:

Nah, just wasting time on entertaining myself, and if *some* people get bitchy or frustrated, that's their issue. I usually don't try to piss people off on purpose. It's not nice

Except that I have seen you post taking the piss out of people less "fortunate" than you are on purpose on FAF. I don't think that people hate on you for having more money, but you can be downright condescending about it and obtuse, if not rubbing it in in order to create said vitriol against you.

 

[Zeke]

By OP's request