D.o.S. wrote:I'm going to ignore the easy joke about how if they had new textbooks they'd have to tear out all the pages about evolution (again) and no one has the time for that.
My last science teacher (who was my favourite) was/is a devout Christian and a strong believer in/proponent of evolution.
well you don't have to believe in evolution. That's the whole point: it doesn't give a shit what you think about it.
D.o.S. wrote:And instead I am going to ask you if you think schools should be allowed to spend money on what the communities see fit to be the most important aspects of their shared existence.
Yeah, I suppose.
But shouldn't that mean a more democratic approach to school spending, too?
Voting on every little thing, right?
The school board approves the budget, the people in the community vote for the school board, right? Representational democracy at it's finest. At least, I presume this is how it works in Texas, which may not be the case.
Also textbooks (generally) contain the same information year after year -- no one is going to fact check fucking Pythagoras and come up with a new theorem for teaching kids how to solve for the longest side of a triangle for whatever, much to the chagrin of the folks who get paid to write the textbooks.
My point is that most people don't care about the quality of an education and (particularly in Texas, the high school football capital of the planet) most of them would be more than happy to divert money away from, say, art supplies and towards a bigger and better sports stadium. Thinking is hard. Rooting for laundry is easy. This is why we are where we are, for the most part.
the gift of wonder and stillness has been in mad hurt since now kids can look up anything in half a millisecond on google from their phones, google thinks for us now. ahah
I mean another way to look at it is that the internet has allowed for an unprecedented democratization of information and we're seeing all the good and bad things that that entails, right?
What I don't like about DeVos is that her platform not-even-subtly harkens back to the era of human history where your education determined your expertise in a way that brings to mind masses conducted in Latin, slaves not being taught how to read or write, and things like that. There's a strain of people that believe qualifications are what make for experts, rather than the ability to draw new connections from preexisting contexts, and that way of thinking is very much in favor of the DeVossian "natural order", if you follow me.
I am, of course, using her as necessary shorthand here.
All I know is soon as I post somthin about google my Internet become inactive and I had to go unplug re plug shit....fuckin hologram...anyways yep d.o.s. bad side I saw at the post office other day was a mother asking boy to go get a pen 5 feet away for her and he would not look up from his watch phone thing until she asked me to hold her place so she could get it.
Invisible Man wrote:Shit is real. Just moved from Flint (predictably terrible schools) to Dexter, which is an affluent, almost entirely white hamlet a few miles west of Ann Arbor. Thought long and hard about what it meant almost entirely in terms of personal politics and public schools...looked at sending the babies to the remarkably diverse but failing schools my wife and I went to. Read studies indicating that the educational level of parents is a more accurate and consistent indicator of academic success than school rankings...still moved to the rich white town.
My experience is that academic success and perception of academic success are very different. For reasons still not clear, my parents pulled my brother and I from a top-10 school in the state to a lower third-school. Not hard to understand how friends from the old area got into better schools, have easier career paths, &c.
Long and obvious story short: we thought (and still think) being a parent is about sublimating your personal politics and giving kids every opportunity. It's one reason why we tend to get more conservative as we age (in the classical sense if not the contemporary one).
So now we just have periodic crises of conscience.
--a personal narrative of political ambiguity
Thanks for this, seriously. It's a real struggle, wanting the best for your kids and junk and having your ideals and morals and stuff. I really appreciate your insights as I glean them across this site.
Last edited by PeteeBee on Tue Feb 07, 2017 11:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Iommic Pope wrote:This is the best you've been.
Suffering suits you.
BitchPudding wrote:Let this be written in our history as proof that ILoveFuzz is one tight knit internet family.
Invisible Man wrote:Shit is real. Just moved from Flint (predictably terrible schools) to Dexter, which is an affluent, almost entirely white hamlet a few miles west of Ann Arbor. Thought long and hard about what it meant almost entirely in terms of personal politics and public schools...looked at sending the babies to the remarkably diverse but failing schools my wife and I went to. Read studies indicating that the educational level of parents is a more accurate and consistent indicator of academic success than school rankings...still moved to the rich white town.
My experience is that academic success and perception of academic success are very different. For reasons still not clear, my parents pulled my brother and I from a top-10 school in the state to a lower third-school. Not hard to understand how friends from the old area got into better schools, have easier career paths, &c.
Long and obvious story short: we thought (and still think) being a parent is about sublimating your personal politics and giving kids every opportunity. It's one reason why we tend to get more conservative as we age (in the classical sense if not the contemporary one).
So now we just have periodic crises of conscience.
--a personal narrative of political ambiguity
Thanks for this, seriously. It's a real struggle, wanting the best for your kids and junk and having your ideals and morals and stuff. I really appreciate your insights and stuff as I glean them across this site.
The more and more the missus and I talk about it the more we're seriously considering home schooling. Fortunately we're a few years off so we don't have to make any immediate plans.
I mean I have no idea, and I'm certainly not going to act like I've got any/all of the answers or anything, but I feel like dealing with the fact that people suck is the primary function of pre-collegiate schooling? It's important to be exposed and learn to deal with them when you're a kid so you don't have to go through that crisis as an adult?
D.o.S. wrote:I mean I have no idea, and I'm certainly not going to act like I've got any/all of the answers or anything, but I feel like dealing with the fact that people suck is the primary function of pre-collegiate schooling? It's important to be exposed and learn to deal with them when you're a kid so you don't have to go through that crisis as an adult?
yeah -- i get that. work with a guy who was home schooled. dude is definitely an odd duck. it's strange. sometimes there's got to be some onus on the parents to shore up some of that shit.. fuck if i know.
also know plenty of people that are totally normal and well-adjusted.
There are so many potential social opportunities it is ridiculous. Most of them allow a lot more parental oversight than school, so that's a factor, actually spreading the young one's wings vs a guided tour around the tree, so to speak. We will definitely be doing normal school in two years (my oldest is just turning three), only question is which one, hence the public private charter garbage.
Edit: not trying to knock whichever school of schooling anyone chooses. I'm the lame-o that sees benefits and cons all around, which leaves you at value judgements. I just default to class struggle as my biggest concern in this instance.
Last edited by PeteeBee on Wed Feb 08, 2017 12:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Iommic Pope wrote:This is the best you've been.
Suffering suits you.
BitchPudding wrote:Let this be written in our history as proof that ILoveFuzz is one tight knit internet family.
D.o.S. wrote:I mean I have no idea, and I'm certainly not going to act like I've got any/all of the answers or anything, but I feel like dealing with the fact that people suck is the primary function of pre-collegiate schooling? It's important to be exposed and learn to deal with them when you're a kid so you don't have to go through that crisis as an adult?
As someone that did not have a very large amount of conventional school, all I can say is I was very shocked when I went collage by how sheltered and gullible people were that came from public schools.. no one knew how the world actually worked..
