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14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

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Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#661

Post by baldfat »

msandford wrote: post #501
baldfat wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charter Schools = They take 100% of the money from the public school and the money follows the student. > why does the state really care which one the child attends? Well I as a tax payer cares. If those school fare even worst and the administration and CEO/President of the foundations makes millions at the expense of children there is a concern. Public Schools work and have worked for decades. We have a problem with…

You're not making very coherent arguments. What's wrong with a voucher system whereby the PARENTS of the children being educated are the ones who determine which child the school goes to? Doesn't that make it very easy for the parents to shut bad schools down very quickly? It seems like that solves all the problems you're worried about, while also providing more choices to parents and students. What's the downside?

Voucher and Charter School are two different things. Charter Schools are taking over Public School System. Vochers are evil for many social reasons. I'll just focus on one.

So Vouchers really will be the new segregation tool for the 21st Century. Your money will be used to send kids to religious schools you don't like teaching Islam, Christianity in all its forms, or who knows what and if they want to teach the children ignorance and hate and you as a tax payer just flipped the bill for this and can't stop it. I can't see a good voucher system that would answer my fears of miss used funds spent on poor education back by people groups that will not teach based on various world views that are not politically correct and just wrong. Our Brain Drain in America will go into Nuclear Meltdown.

To quote the 2002 Supreme Court Voucher Dissent: Justice Breyer on Descent “... all religious institutions cannot be given equal opportunities to the government funding and trying to do so not only turns back the clock on the Constitution, but creates a powder keg in our society.” http://www.pewforum.org/2002/06/28/judgment-day-for-school-v...

Back ground: I went to private school and graduated with a Theology Degree and worked as a Pastor for years. I absolutely know that many in the voucher movement see the Government footing the bill for their Christian Education. You have no idea how deep Crazy Christianity can get (Westborogh is just the tip of the ice berge). They will spew their version of crazy that they got with no academic or logically training to children with your tax dollars paying for it.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#662

Post by maratd »

pfooti wrote: post #642
msandford wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public schools also do plenty of dumb things. It's not as though charter schools have a lock on this. A lot of people want "vouchers" so that private schools are more affordable. And plenty of private schools have a good track record, while having similar per-pupil costs as public schools. If it costs $1000/student/month irrespective of if a child goes to a public school or a private school, why does the state really…

In addition to the per-student cost-to-educate not being constant, but charters only admitting the cheap students (as mentioned in sibling posts), charters also tend to have much lower salary costs, because in most states charter school teachers aren't part of the teachers' union. They have lower pay, worse benefits, and trend quite young. The charters, for the most part, are only making use of the cheapest, least ex…

I find it funny how you completely ignored the most important aspect of the equation.

The student.

The students are choosing to attend those charter schools. People choose things that are better for themselves. Not always, but often enough that you can safely assume it's true for the majority.

Why are they doing that?

Could it be, that in spite of everything you mentioned ... charters are a better option for the student? Isn't that's what's important?

What's broken with the public education system isn't the funding, not the teachers, not the unions, not the administrators, or the facilities. It's none of those things.

It's demented notion that the system exists for the sake of the teachers/unions/administrators/etc. It doesn't. It exists for the students. Do what's best for them. Let them choose where they spend 12+ years of their life.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#663

Post by logfromblammo »

tmsam wrote: post #462
zaphar wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my day we called unschooling homeschooling. And it's a lot of work. It's a fix for those families that can afford to do it. However the families most harmed by public school policies are precisely the people who can't afford to unschool or homeschool which is perhaps the saddest part of all of this. [edit]: spelling

I would like to point out that homeschooling and unschooling are not the same thing. From: http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/homeschooling/unschooli... "Unschooling is a branch of homeschooling that promotes nonstructured, child-led learning. There’s no set curriculum or schedule."

Unschooling is a subset of homeschooling. In ordinary homeschooling, the parents set a curriculum, and direct the learning. In unschooling, the student decides what to learn, and the parent provides resources to support that.

If the kid gets into dinosaurs, a regular homeschooling parent might add a dinosaur module to the science/biology part of the curriculum. The unschooling parent might ask, "How would you like it if we took a trip to Utah, to visit an actual dig site?"

If the kid gets into robots, a regular homeschooling parent might add mechanical engineering and electronics to the curriculum. An unschooling parent might bring home a LEGO Mindstorms set and sign the kid up for the robot soccer league run by an adjunct from the local community college.

As I understand it, successful unschoolers rely rather heavily on a whole-family lifestyle commitment, to subtly discourage the kid from choosing to become the world's foremost expert on Minecraft, and learn nothing else. I would, at the least, be compelled to suggest that perhaps my kid should play all the computer games in my personal collection, in chronological order, starting with the Infocom library, progressing through the Sierra/Dynamix era, running through Black Isle and LucasArts titles, and ending with access to my Steam and GOG accounts. I could also hook up my old console systems.

Then I might, ever so subtly, suggest that an encyclopedic knowledge of video gaming, past and present, might be useful to a heavily-followed and well-monetized text or video blogger. Because I am certainly not going to unschool if it won't eventually get the kid out of my basement (and pantry).

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#664

Post by trafnar »

kmfrk wrote: post #407
jameshart wrote: post #371

A story. So, this thirteen year old kid with a Syrian father once got flagged up by Hewlett Packard because he was ordering electronic components. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next... Yeah, Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job, he got hooked on making stuff, wound up founding a company out of his garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak, and created the biggest electronics company in the world. Thank goodness h…

Of course, people would rather that part of his heritage weren't brought up, leaving us with Michael Fassbender portraying him on the big screen.

Well, Steve was half white. A Syrian actor would have been just as innacurate.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#665

Post by codingdave »

jameshart wrote: post #371

A story. So, this thirteen year old kid with a Syrian father once got flagged up by Hewlett Packard because he was ordering electronic components. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next... Yeah, Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job, he got hooked on making stuff, wound up founding a company out of his garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak, and created the biggest electronics company in the world. Thank goodness h…

"biggest electronics company in the world"

Those guys founded Samsung, too? I had no idea. I thought they just founded Apple.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#666

Post by kbenson »

Karunamon wrote: post #373
marnett wrote: post #262

This whole situation screams a breach of the poor boy's liberties. According to TEX. FAM. CODE §51.095 [1]: In order for a custodial written statement to be admissible, the following sequence of events must occur: 1) the officer must take the child to a magistrate; 2) the magistrate must then inform the child of his rights to remain silent, to have an attorney appointed and present during questioning and to terminate…

How in the unholy bleeding fuck is a child supposed to understand the ramifications of the right to remain silent?!

By having them explained by someone who is supposed to be impartial (a magistrate), and has a vested interest in making sure that the child understands the rights, because it's mandated by law that they do, and being known as the judge that takes advantage of small children is not a reputation you want to have.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#667

Post by panzagl »

Silfen wrote: post #611
genghisjahn wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't a teacher with 25 years experience not make six figures, or close to it?

Because it's a function of tenure, and not job performance?

So they never performed well? Very few jobs have pay that directly correlates to current performance.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#668

Post by jameshart »

codingdave wrote: post #665
jameshart wrote: post #371

A story. So, this thirteen year old kid with a Syrian father once got flagged up by Hewlett Packard because he was ordering electronic components. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next... Yeah, Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job, he got hooked on making stuff, wound up founding a company out of his garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak, and created the biggest electronics company in the world. Thank goodness h…

"biggest electronics company in the world" Those guys founded Samsung, too? I had no idea. I thought they just founded Apple.

By market cap? Do I need to specify whether I'm measuring using GAAP or non GAAP numbers in order to make a rhetorical point?

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#669

Post by [deleted] »

garrettgrimsley wrote: post #637
samstave wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the machines always on regardless? Wouldnt they have consumed some portion of the said electricity no matter what? Or was he preventing the machines from being shutdown or sleeping?

Running Folding@Home, SETI@Home, Prime95, and other CPU intensive applications requires much more power than simply running idle. For example, I have a processor that when running Prime95 will use more than double the idle load wattage. [0] [0] http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/04/27/amd-phenom-...

[deleted]

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#670

Post by tomswartz07 »

nadams wrote: post #308
DanBC wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running seti / etc on the school computers does result in thousands of dollars spend on extra electricity. He was number one on SETI for years, running the client without approval on 5,000 machines. It's not surprising that people get fired for increasing costs by that much without getting approval first. See also http://www.securityfocus.com/news/300

> does result in thousands of dollars spend on extra electricity Thousands maybe - definitely not millions as they are claiming. From what I read it was setup to calculate through the screensaver. For most of the day - the computer will be in use and I would imagine/hope that they turn them off when they leave.

All of that extra power really only amounts to tens of dollars per year.

Running a processor at an extra (grossly exaggerating here) few watts + an extra 5-10 watts for fans, LEDs, etc don't amount to much. Especially when you consider that all electricity is paid for by the Thousand-Watts/Hour.

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