Not That Kind Of Diversity
Variations in human ability continue to frustrate those who would perfect us:
You see, if a problem can’t be solved, the next-best thing is to hide it:
The genius of the “equity-focussed” policies, also being advanced in California and elsewhere, is that they are likely to have negative consequences for both ends of the ability spectrum. The cognitively untalented will be spared the normal incentives to master at least the basics, even the basics of behaviour, while the gifted will be denied access to advanced material more suited to their abilities, resulting in boredom and demoralisation.
Again, hiding that bothersome unevenness in effort and ability.
Readers will note that the retreat from clear metrics into euphemism and pernicious fuzzwords – chief among which, “equity” – not only makes it difficult to determine pupils’ academic progress and actual competence, but also has a secondary effect of making it more difficult to identify the shortcomings of progressive educators and administrators. A coincidence, I’m sure.
The pernicious woo named “equity” – which roughly translates as equality of outcome regardless of inputs – has of course been mentioned here before.
If the examples linked above aren’t sufficiently striking, I do have more.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Harrison Bergeron was not a how-to guide.
Should further illustrations of “equity” be required, see the Problematic Competence tag. Where you’ll find things of this kind:
For instance.
If a grade can never go below 50%, then there is no point of having the lower 50% of grades, since they are assigned to nobody. If they are assigned to nobody, then you might as well delete them, resulting in the original situation that was derided with people failing to do any work getting a grade of zero. These equity activists are complete idiots.
Well, it’s unlikely that they’re the sharpest individuals. Valeria Silva, mentioned here, comes to mind, as does Alison Collins. They do tend to be beneficiaries of their own woo, and therefore promoted far beyond their abilities.
But it’s also the fact that their chosen piety, “equity,” is premised on faulty egalitarian assumptions – or outright dishonesties – resulting in a need for ever more fudging, contortion, and denial of the obvious.
Are we not being reminded, once again, that a certain demographic falls well short of the mark, which was probably not the intention of these ‘equity’ warriors. It’s a long way up for oppressed – too hard. Bring everyone else down instead.
I suppose it is not too far fetched within the woo of “equity” and current resistance to “fatphobia” that certain metrics in medicine will be redefined, such as one’s A1C levels. Sure, the diabeetus will kill you but at least you won’t die feeling scolded by your primary care physician. BMI has already been outed as a tool of White Supremacy.
On a happier note . . .
a secondary effect of making it more difficult to identify the shortcomings of progressive educators and administrators
It may be a secondary effect but I’d bet it’s a primary objective.
Should a student cheat or fail to submit an assignment on time, teachers should provide a grade of at least 50 percent, the district handout outlining the initiative says. The initiative also calls to replace the typical ‘0-100’ grading scale with a ‘0-4’ scale.
Hang on – for doing bupkis the minimum is 50%, but the new scale is “0-4” wouldn’t that mean the scale is really 2-4 which is now basically pass-fail, but because nobody fails, the score is just pass?
More of not that kind of diversity also from California, the Chabot School Equity and Inclusion Committee hosted a “Playdate Social”, but only “if your family identifies as black, brown, or API…”
“Equitable segregation now, equitable segregation tomorrow, equitable segregation forever”.
“The pernicious woo”
Track 3 (entire side) of our Prog Rock double album.
“the new scale is “0-4” wouldn’t that mean the scale is really 2-4”
Ah. You see, these go to “11”. Therefore muchbettergooder.
You see, these go to “11”.
Leo says 11 is rookie numbers…
Meh. When I tried to tell people, even conservative people, my doctor even, that this was where we were headed, that this was essentially what the circle/square/triangle grading system of 30+ years ago was about, I was told I was overreacting. Y’all must be really, really overreacting act this point. Seek professional help. Take some Prozac, some Xannies. Chill out.
Nah, bro. There have always been idiots. The people who failed to stand up to them, especially the people who criticized those who did stand up to them, especially the conservative…”conservative” people who criticized those who stood up to them, they are the real idiots.
The cognitively untalented will be spared the normal incentives to master at least the basics, even the basics of behaviour, while the gifted will be denied access to advanced material more suited to their abilities, resulting in boredom and demoralisation.
The educators are pretending that the former are a more vibrant version of the latter, and that only racial bias and white-centric norms prevent us from recognizing it. The inspiring ghetto teacher film where if teachers can put aside their prejudice about the slang and the minor misdemeanors, the classroom will turn out to be full of Wakanda rocket scientists.
“Valid evidence of students’ content knowledge”, “summative assessments instead of classwork etc”, “a mosaic of grading practices across schools and across the district that is confusing to students and families”. As if the F (or RMG = racially marginalized genius) students have structure or motivation for learning the content without their teacher being aware of it and having to bring them through every step. As if they’re getting penalized for trifling differences between the classroom textbook and the textbook they’ve been reading in the public library.
what the circle/square/triangle grading system of 30+ years ago was about,
I seem to have missed that. Do you have link handy to save me wasted hours on Bing?
“I’m a doctor who studied 5K near-death experiences — there is life after death”
Unfortunately the only thing he could possibly have “proven” is that there is life after near-death.
Which is not quite so uplifting.
Unfortunately the only thing he could possibly have “proven” is that there is life after near-death.
Minor point – life during near-death.
Wow, what a rabbit hole. I see your point. I will have to come back to this. Perhaps someone here remembers this. What I recall is reading, possibly in Scientific American, in the early 1990’s about primary school educators at the University of Alabama studying changing to this system because hierarchy is bad or something. It was one of the first absurdities that I mentioned to my doctor about what a f’d up direction things were heading in. He gave me that little head pat and pointed out to me that ridiculous things in academia happen a lot and that such things will obviously fail and while this was a pity for those poor schmuck kids near Tuscaloosa, we folks living in normal places like Central Florida really shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about it. Later that same week, in passing discussion over dinner, I mention to my wife that same silly article and how silly I felt for being concerned about it. After all, it was some academic experiment in Alabama and we lived in small, conservative, NASA bedroom community Titusville. Nobody, not the smart people in our area would fall for that. She looked at me somewhat irritated and said that a mutual friend/co-worker of ours had told her that she was told this was the kind of grades she was seeing for her kid. That she had repeated that to me months previously. Obviously I wasn’t listening.
[ Fondles amulet, fires up bong. ]
Triangle-circle-square – an assessment tool, not a grading tool, according to these guys.
Normal, in much the same way way as Jeffrey Dahmer was normal.
I’m bewildered by your gift for up-buggering links.
[ Puts away bong. ]
I mean, when you highlight the text that you want to hyperlink and then click the ‘link’ icon, and the ‘enter link’ box appears, what the hell are you pasting into it?
Yeah. Yeah, right. Idiot. There is no “normal”. If you take your head out of your ass and look around you will see plenty of stupidity in even conservative…”conservative” places. Up here in Appalachia there’s corruption, stupidity, drunkenness, sloth, damn near everything you hear in a George Jones song in addition to meth, fentanyl, etc. Fortunately we have acquired a tough sheriff but the locals of course must piss and moan about his actually enforcing the laws.
As for Jeffery Dahmer…per wiki…
David… Apologies. I tried to change ‘idiot’ to ‘doofus’ but I’m guessing it’s the number of carried over links from the wiki article that are the problem…or not.
As for Triangle-circle-square – an assessment tool
Of course buggered link doesn’t help but don’t see wtf your point is here. Just because they used it as an assessment where/whenever, is irrelevant to what I saw. Granted decades passed and my memory is not perfect but…well, buggered link so…
Many liberals have been driven mad by the failure of so many of their policies: They cannot accept that their “solutions” could have proved to wrong, as that would threaten their entire world view. Worse, it would threaten their sense of self worth and moral authority. Thus, they never reject their delusions but instead keep doubling down with increasingly deranged theories and policies and increasingly strident efforts to silence and punish their critics: Better the culture collapse and millions die than that they face their own errors.
Idiocy can’t explain this. Malevolence can.
Nah. Idiocy. Malevolence, like the poor (not saying there’s a connection) we will always have with us. The true idiocy is the tolerance, acceptance, and the self-induced inability to confront the malevolence. Because why take the risk? Someone else will do it. Cargo cult accountability. High trust societies take these things for granted and thus become low trust societies.
Can’t help but chuckle every time some ‘phobia’ or another is bandied about as indisputable fact. Then again, what with all the ‘equity’ in assessments, it shouldn’t be surprising that the meaning of words is lost.
“You see, if a problem can’t be solved, the next-best thing is to hide it…“
We’re running out of carpet, surely?
asiaseen: “It may be a secondary effect but I’d bet it’s a primary objective.“
Oh, THIS! Times a thousand!
Yeah. Yeah, right. Idiot. There is no “normal”.
My, somebody is touchy, but defending Jeffrey Dahmer is a weird flex, as the kids say.
Upbuggered links – interesting that this happens more frequently than The Before Times. Bear in mind the Link-O-Matic 9000™ is coded by the same people who can’t get the edit function right.
Regardless, Triangle-Circle-Square. Little Garbanzo isn’t being sent home with circles and squares on his report card, little Garbanzo and the teacher use the system to see what, if anything, he has learned during a lesson so that what, if anything, needs to be rehashed can be determined.
Granted decades passed and my memory is not perfect but…never let that stand in the way of the first hit on a search engine.
Heh. Getting frustrated AF trying to find a link to that 1990’s grading stuff. Finding similar, more modern idiocy but two things working against me I think are, it’s early 1990’s and thus too long before popularization of the web and, similar to stated by others here, something they probably want to hide/bury. Like the “open schools” concept of the 1970’s. This is of course the thing. All this searching around I’m hitting on farm more different and in some ways scarier concepts in “new” education because essentially, education sucks. It somewhat always did. People for the most part were better educated by being pointed in the proper direction of things that they were interested in. While I personally am a fan of the concept of the Renaissance Man, I realize it’s not for everyone. Not even most people. People do need to understand basics outside of their preferred focus but at some point you’re forcing a square peg into a round hole. Or as the other saying goes, trying to teach a cat to sing. The cat don’t wanna sing, it’s a waste of time, and it’s bloody annoying to anyone present.
So back to what I was about to say…I thought I’d try to unbugger the link but I now see that the basic problem wasn’t the link itself but an inability to verify what was pasted into the link. What had been pasted there was a copy of the line of my comment that he quoted.
Oh, look who’s back. Mr. Ican’tCopyAndPasteButLetMeTellYouHowDumbYouAre…ahem. So you unbuggered your link that was never buggered to begin with and provide something that looks rather recent. Certainly not from 30+ years ago. And this somehow proves I am…what? Wrong? Again, my reference was to what I read about, and what a parent co-worker told my wife back in the 1990’s. I’ll admit, I could very well be wrong. OK, not very well but I could be. You OTOH are wasting time.
Are you operating the keyboard with your feet?
Yeah…yeah…missed this part. FYC, ok? I’ve spent considerable time trying to research something that is not in recent/modern/internetty context. YOU on the other hand cannot COP”Y AND PASTE. Dude. You do know you’re not supposed to eat the paste, right?
Are you operating the keyboard with your feet?
In all seriousness, as I check the link before posting, sometimes the %20 nonsense gets inserted, as as happened to others who have posted otherwise normal links, and occasionally it appears to switch to the last thing pasted. Granted it may be a browser abnormality, but it really is a POS, not unlike the edit function, the auto list, and other oddities of the depraved machinations of millennial and Gen Z code monkeys.
Yet I am the one wasting time. OK, you go with that.
The %20 nonsense is why you should use underscores rather than spaces in file names, since three characters is more than one and by default there is a maximum file path number of characters in Windows.
Intellectual curiosity combined with someone having asked me to look it up since I would be more familiar with the various other parameters. You OTOH…I pity your patients.
That assessment depends on what you mean by educated.
An eighth-grade education was once considered quite sufficient for the majority because, well, it was. At the turn of the century (the last, not the current) an eighth-grade education was more comprehensive and rigorous than a high-school education 50 years later or a college education 100 years later.
Is that what’s required?
More white supremacy on display.
Let’s talk about Nounself pronouns.
Let’s not.
Yes. That is precisely what I mean. I have an aunt who dropped out of school in the 8th grade. I was shocked when she told me this. She had more sense than most of my teachers. I just presumed she had at least graduated high school. At 8th grade, per those days though of course there was not a broad consistency back then, one could expect a young person to perform basic tasks necessary to help a business.
So this happened yesterday…up here in God’s conservativey conservative country. We stopped at our favorite fruit/veg stand before hitting the grocery store and my wife thought we might try another jar of wild honey. We go to check out and the young lady is turning the jar around and around saying she can’t find the size. This is local stuff, no bar codes. I was about to say that it quite obviously looks to be about a pint but decided best to say nothing. We get in the car, wife looks at receipt and it reads $23 for a quart. I’m like…no way is that a quart. I see the label and it reads 16 oz. Girlfriend only had pints/quarts/etc. in her computer. Didn’t know what those words meant. Owner can’t figure it out either, calls Gen-X worker woman over. She futzes around forever and frustrated says, “I took $5 off for you”. $5 off. For half of a $23 item. I was so embarrassed for everyone there I just let it go.
When I view the source behind your bad link, I see h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash followed by ” normal places like Central Florida”. So, I think what happened was that you thought you had copied the link but in reality the clipboard still contained the previous item copied.
I have had that problem a few times, when I either failed to correctly type Ctrl-C or Windows decided that it hated me. 😉
[ Stares at Muldoon. ]
[ Everyone stares at Muldoon. ]
Yeah. What he said.
So, I think what happened was that you thought you had copied the link but in reality the clipboard still contained the previous item copied.
Never blame on a clipboard error that which can be blamed on demented millennial and Gen Z code monkeys.
Now you all know the serenity of gazing out over a Tahitian sunset while a gentle trade wind wafts the scent of hibiscus over you, you lucky SOBs.
Intellectual curiosity…
That you are.
[ Bus pulls up, passengers disembark. They stare at Muldoon. ]
[Stares briefly at Muldoon. Shades eyes from glare.]
[Topples backward, spills drink.]
[Stares briefly at Muldoon. Shades eyes from glare.]
Most people require welding goggles, if you can get by with blue blockers, you are lucky indeed.
[ Bus pulls up, passengers disembark. They stare at Muldoon. ]
The good news is that you are now eligible for one of those blue plaques. Might have to move the wheelie bins to make room for it, though.
First: I’m pretty sure everyone here agrees Harrison Bergeron was a prophecy.
Second: Education in the era of mass media is doomed.
The lure of somehow improving education means someone will always mess with the program. What to teach, how to teach it, etc. Something must be done. For the
grant moneychildren! Mass media means all of it is placed into a political framework so nobody who sets policy cares if anything is effective as long as it decenters whiteness, exposes children to degeneracy, or graduates more illiterate innumerate welfare sponges.And don’t forget education (and library science), as a degree field, is populated by the lower end of the university IQ pool.
So we’re stuck with mostly insignificant intellects teaching similarly gifted university students how to advance the goals of education by doing something — as long as its different than what was done in the past. Then layer on a large portion of genetically disadvantaged students and an oversized representation of women who, generally, cannot stand failing anyone.
We have graduates who learned more about speaking, reading, and writing from social media than they ever got from class. These people are somehow being admitted to universities where professors are regularly complaining that most of their students cannot write simple emails or even understand the papers they’ve turned in themselves. And, finally, we have government regulators crawling up the ass of every company they can find who is not hiring “equitably”. I am not optimistic about the future of western civilization.
the Chabot School Equity and Inclusion Committee hosted a “Playdate Social”, but only “if your family identifies as black, brown, or API…”
Application Programming Interface? I have to make an API token from the Cloud website where my weather station and sensor data is stored so my collaborator’s app can access it and use it to calculate water use. But what does all that have to do with DIE?
Application Programming Interface?
I think they meant AAPI for Asian American and Pacific Islander, but being progressives “American” was probably offensive.
The hostility towards precocious pupils – who, simply by existing, contradict progressive assumptions – has been noted here many times. And so, for instance, we see the educational Mao-lings in Vancouver and California shutting down advanced courses and honours programmes, in English, maths and science, because of what such programmes reveal.
And this is done gleefully, triumphantly, all in the name of “inclusion.” Our self-imagined betters, our bitter little Mao-lings, are somehow granting access – by taking it away.
It’s a world of Orwellian inversion and perversity, in which vindictive bedlamites, such as Ms Alison Collins, disdain pupils of Chinese or Korean ancestry as “white” or white-adjacent, and therefore suspect, and in which a parental preference for academic rigour is denounced as “racist.”
It’s a world in which “suspending proficiency requirements” is a good thing. And in which the way to fight for “high-quality schools” is to abandon even the most basic expectations of competence.
And when parents object, as well they might, they are smeared by the same educational Mao-lings as obstructions to progress. And of course as racist. As white supremacists.
Jesus wept. That was a hell of a rabbit hole…
The illogic is quite something. Ditto the dishonesty. You couldn’t make it up. It’s mirror-universe stuff. And it scarcely needs saying, given their influence, their power over children, these clowns are intellectually unfit. And morally unfit.
In which Theodore Dalrymple explains how our failing service economy requires foreign workers because the speak better English than the English.
Frédéric Bastiat: “The state is the means by which everyone tries to live at everyone else’s expense.”
Sounds about right.
“Theodore Dalrymple explains”
I suspect that Mr. Dalrymple knows the “endgame”, as he’s likely to have perused a book on history oncetuponatime. Or maybe more than one…
Hint: It doesn’t end well.
You couldn’t make it up.
Speaking of which, a couple three years ago this headline couldn’t have been, now, alas, it makes perfect sense.
I am absolutely certain that he knows. This is based on reading his books and essays and on the fact that he is an unusually avid reader of literature and history.
The juxtaposition of “Ukraine” and “Lesbian birth control” is damned fine clickbait.
…damned fine clickbait.
True enough, with the recent explosion of girldick the birth control was not surprising, but being the WTF lesbian bar in a Ukrainian village was a fine hook.
Apparently there’s something special about Ukrainian lesbians.
Apparently there’s something special about Ukrainian lesbians.
Forget it Jake, they’re Chicago lesbians.
The people who failed to stand up to them, especially the people who criticized those who did stand up to them
You get more of the behaviour you reward, and less of the behaviour you punish. The feminization of society has vilified the notions of consequences and accountability.
what the hell are you pasting into it?
Many browsers are now defaulting to copying the HTML code of any text you select instead of just the plain text. This is an absolute dumpster fire of bad UX driven by the kind of people who use Macbooks as their daily driver.
They cannot accept that their “solutions” could have proved to wrong, as that would threaten their entire world view. Worse, it would threaten their sense of self worth and moral authority.
Not to turn this into Daniel’s Gaming Blog again, but this is the exact dynamic I’ve seen in the gaming/nerd communities. The hobby – in this case progressive politics – is a way of hiding from a real world of scary adult responsibilities and consequences they can’t cope with, and the hobby is not experienced as it is but rather constructed by the hobbyist to assuage their anxieties. D&D teaches social skills and project management. Progressive policies never have any unintended side effects. The hobby becomes the identity and the ego, and so anything that threatens the hobby threatens the ego and identity.
by default there is a maximum file path number of characters in Windows.
Hasn’t been true since 2017, and is irrelevant to browser URLs anyway. URL-encoded strings have nothing to do with the Win32 API MAX_PATH constant.
advance the goals of education by doing something — as long as its different than what was done in the past
I’ve told this story here before: I once knew an elementary school teacher who bragged about her method for rocketing up the career track in public education. She noticed that fads in pedagogy cycled every ten years or so, and that career advancement depended on presenting papers at education conferences, so she’d dig up papers from ten years prior, lightly rewrite them, and present them as original material. So 1) plagiarism, 2) that no one noticed or cared about, 3) that indicates that either none of these pedagogies are better than any other, or that no one in the field cares which pedagogy is better, since they just keep rotating them every decade.
Never blame on a clipboard error that which can be blamed on demented millennial and Gen Z code monkeys
The only consistent factor in all your failed <del>relationships</del> links is you.
Interesting. I seem to avoid that problem in two ways:
First: Copy-paste by way of Notepad. Second: Separately get the text with select-copy and the links with right-click-copy-link.
But maybe some of my occasional failures have to do with what you describe.
Still relevant in some older apps, though, I’ll bet. In fact, I once had to work with an app in which the maximum was about 40 characters.
Tomorrow’s Ephemera has been compiled and will materialise just after midnight.
Excuse me while I slip into something a little more ostentatious.
…and we see why David’s laundry service now charges extra for starch.
Excuse me while I slip into something a little more ostentatious.
Perfect for a grand entrance into a Ukrainian Village lesbian bar for henchlesbian recruitment.
Ah. So that explains the need for condoms…
Excuse me while I slip into something a little more ostentatious.
On the one hand, making Strange into a low-rent magical Tony Stark was an utter waste of Cumberbatch’s talent and an example of why the WGA strike can’t destroy Hollywood fast enough.
On the other, I’m not sure there’s any place for the solemn Vincent Price-inspired theosophist Dr. Strange in the WhedonVerse MCU.
MCU? Joss Whedon has gone full retro-commie? 😉
This thread is getting far too arcane for me to follow so I’ll leave it to everyone else to bicker appropriately.
As Marvel seem determined to continue demolishing their own business, I suppose it’s academic. The odds of my being tempted into a cinema are, I think, rather slim. That ship has sailed. And is currently on fire.
That said, there were, I think, glimpses of them getting it right. The fight with Thanos, for instance, especially the butterflies. I rather think that’s how the sorcery should be depicted – as off-the-wall and boggling.
Felicity Ace or Viking lord funeral?
It’s not just the crap that Hollywood churns out; it’s also the crap people that may be found even in suburban cinemas. There are enough fine old movies on DVD to keep me entertained in the comfort of my home for the rest of my life.
FTFY
Oppenheimer was pretty good & Napoleon looks to be interesting.
The CGI extravaganzas are too formulaic to be interesting.
The subject matter intrigues, but I’m not a fan of Chris Nolan films. They often have set pieces that are technically impressive, but I can’t think of a Nolan film that I’ve wanted to watch a second time.
The first part of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning was entertaining, though not as satisfying as Fallout. But it’s hard to judge it properly as it’s only the first half of the story.
There’s nothing else on my cinema radar at the moment. Though, in fairness, I haven’t been paying much attention recently.
Not entirely unrelated.
“Forget it Jake, they’re Chicago lesbians”.
Lori Lightfoot?
Chicago lesbian fish?
It’s childish to make fun of somebody’s appearance, but I couldn’t resist. She is, after all, vile enough to deserve cruel mockery.
But what, then, should we conclude about the voters who elected her? /rhetorical question
I can’t put my finger directly on it but there’s always been something about geek stuff that, while being something of a geek myself as far as being math/logic/hard(ish) science oriented I am drawn to yet also being fairly active, fairly athletic, more competitive than most that repels me. I suspect it’s that ‘hiding from the real world aspect’ that you speak of. Probably why I am both drawn to and repulsed by being around smart…”smart” people. Once the hobby becomes the identity and the ego, one’s goose is cooked but one can go to their grave without ever having to acknowledge that reality. Personally, as competitive as I may be, I would rather fight and lose than fight and never know, or to pretend to have won.
I might add that rye whiskey passing through the nose is an unpleasant experience as well. And now comes the tears. Thx.
Getting rid of failing grades is like the Hawaiian commissar who kept the fire alarms from going off. It robs people of a useful signal.
There are students who need to see that they are failing at something, so they can change direction. Correct feedback can help us avoid catastrophes and inconveniences and embarrassment.
In fact, every student needs negative feedback, to know when they need to improve.
Lying to young students is an evil betrayal.
It’s not the guns, it’s the culture.
Everybody close your eyes to reality and sing along with me.
Educators follow fads. What they do not follow is methods that work. If anything they hate those methods. Examples: 1. Charter schools and private schools often have students with the same demographic as the nearby public school (e.g., poor black, or hispanic) but outperform the public school. Do teachers try to emulate it? No. They try to shut it down. 2. It has been known for a long time that boys will get engaged in reading if you give them books they enjoy (sports, war stories, adventures, spy novels). Instead kids get books that female english teachers enjoyed. Anne of green gables my ass. 3) discipline is fundamental to learning. and so on
I actually read Harrison Bergeron when it first came out. It was in an anthology. Horrifying then, horrifying now. What these educators are actually saying by their actions is that they do not believe POC can succeed at anything without white people giving them excuses.
I am an example of a kid that teachers ignored and who was bored to death as a result. Once I got to college–boom honor role and a Ph.D.
Grades: in college my first test in Chem I got a C-. It was a big wakeup call. These people seem determined to remove all the indicators that there are problems (fudging the employment numbers, hiding crime stats, denying about trans in female spaces and so on). My room-mate’s naive MD dad visited us and went to a bad part of town for dinner and took a shortcut down an alley. Yep. Mugged and relieved of his Rolex. Naive is not a survival skill.
Fads are fun and confer status. The old tried-and-true methods are boring and yield no status points–at least not from other “educators”.
4) Open Schools/classrooms, a problem baked into the very structure/design of the buildings such that it is still a problem 50 years later in many places. Think of that. Think how bloody f’n stupid that is. Not just ‘was’ but still is. And no one paid a price for it, nor is it mentioned much, not even by conservative…”conservative” loser school reformers. Half a century of bloody f’n stupid that everyone went along with. Except maybe my mother and a few others who drove private school enrollment up back then.
5) The year-round schooling that was an early 90’s(?) thing. Disrupted schedules, disrupted family time, disrupted summer jobs. And it echoes today as well. Summer break has been eaten up by week long Thanksgiving, week long other breaks in addition to traditional Christmas and Easter/spring breaks such that school in many places starts in early August, nearly a month after traditional Labor Day. All for nothing. Nothing has gotten any better in education. It does help with the indoctrination though. Fewer kids getting longer summer jobs where they might actually learn something useful about how real business is done.
These are not fads. These are deliberate decisions made to destroy our country. They may be sold to the mid-wits as fads but like wide lapels, fat ties and bellbottom jeans, fads eventually go away.
Nearly “a month before traditional Labor Day”. I see the edit function, one of my favorites in the new world, is still buggered. This is the way of technology now. Like everything else you’ve just supposed to accept it. I could tell an interesting story about how a large, very well know financial services company buggered up a trade of mine recently. Basic stuff is getting f’d up likely because middleware, or whatever the so-called cool kids call tech infrastructure these days, must always be “improved” regardless of the fact that there is no way to properly test it. At least that’s my not so humble explanation. For some of it anyway.
I just literature in a tiny private school. Because of this I have great freedom when I develop my curriculum. And so I have filled my classes with stories of monsters and murder, which I find the boys can get interested in–and also the girls, who don’t mind the monsters, either.
We do have the kids reading Middlemarch, however, which is written by George Eliot, a woman. And it’s a rough sell! Without Grendel getting his arm ripped off and bleeding out, or an invisible man going crazy, it’s difficult to keep the boys interested. But they do manage to survive.