361–370 of 371 posts
I don't expect the public school system to teach my children anything. Hence why they won't be attending. Most of the schools I attended growing up were completely useless. Filthy, full of drugs and gangs. Sadly I even listened to some of my teachers more than I did my own parents (indoctrination) which I now see lead me down the wrong path. I don't expect the public school to teach my kids any kind of career skills…
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Really? Article V Section 8: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; The interpretation of "gerneral Welfare" varies of course, but providing SOME sort of standards and funding at the federal level…
> The interpretation of "gerneral Welfare" varies of course, but providing SOME sort of standards and funding at the federal level for education is well within accepted US federal authority. You are correct that it is generally accepted, but you are 100% incorrect that it is in any way a faithful reading of the text of the Constitution. The power granted to Congress in that clause is that of taxation; its powers conc…
This is what happens when no child is left behind. How can EVERYONE graduate from HS without lowering the bar?
Outcomes vary greatly by school, zip code, and socio-economic class. Are children in the wrong zip code just lazy? Why do the children in poor families perform so much worse than in rich families? It doesn't, by any measure, appear to be a consequence of the children's efforts.
Coping skills and resources. Reminds me of
Privilege and inequality in Silicon Valley https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/privilege-and-inequa...
> She offers a sample math problem from the test: You go to the store and there's a sale. Buy one, get the second half off. So if you buy two, how much do you pay?
It doesn't even seem answerable. The closest I can think of a way to answer that question is "75%".
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Why can't I help but feel the "our users must never be forced to learn" and "our children must never experience discomfort" mindsets are related, and contribute to the US coming in last place.
Well, I certainly wouldn't want to start the company that makes the only product that has it as part of its philosophy to make their users learn in order to be able to use it efficiently. That being said you are probably right and the dumbed down UIs we see more and more with low information density are annoying and underline what you are saying. Everything is catering to the lowest common denominator.
So you allow beginners to board, give them features they can use, and slowly show them more and more complex things till they feel confident using your product. That should be inherent in the design of the product. Then start adding features for experts that may screw things up if you don't know how to use them, but hide them a bit further in the tree.
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I'm glad that in my country there are laws that prohibit homeschooling to replace regular education. Also I see what problem they solve, to prevent people like you ruining a child's mental health. The public school system is more about socializing than gaining knowledge. But how could a person like you understand that, when you think that: " I think having them make $60 an hour while their friends make nothing will b…
> Also I see what problem they solve, to prevent people like you ruining a child's mental health. Strange comment. I'm thinking of all the girls I knew in public high school that would cut themselves. The boys did other kinds of self harm; severe drug use, and if they couldn't get drugs, they'd go huff gasoline. What I expect from my children is that they do a few hours of work in the morning, a few chores after lunc…
I only have in support anecdotes, but I've met several people who were homeschooled, and they had a really hard adjustment to high school / college. All of them ended up being loners because of how different they were from everyone and how hard it was for them to relate. In the opposite direction, the person with the most impressive social skills I know is someone that had to overcome a childhood of poor social skill development and consciously train for it as an adult.
Honestly, as someone who is mediocre at socializing, I really wish I had more of it growing up (I lived in a neighborhood without other kids). It's a pain to improve as an adult.
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The wonders of the US education system never cease to amaze me. Are tests not standardized that class rank matters? When I first entered university here, grade average was all that mattered. Certain grades even guarantee university acceptance...
I would suggest two things. First, you have seriously underestimated the variation among secondary educational institutions in USA, a mistake that no USA college admissions process would make. Second, even in the context of the fortunate realm in which you attend university, a "good grades guarantee acceptance" policy probably somewhat underestimates the variation among secondary educational institutions there.
The fact the US hasn't figured out how to offer a consistent level of K-12 education is, quite frankly, mind-boggling (along with the lack of health care, and many other things we take for granted in the rest of the 'western' world).
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I would suggest two things. First, you have seriously underestimated the variation among secondary educational institutions in USA, a mistake that no USA college admissions process would make. Second, even in the context of the fortunate realm in which you attend university, a "good grades guarantee acceptance" policy probably somewhat underestimates the variation among secondary educational institutions there.
Probably because the country I live in has much less variation in the quality of secondary education. The fact the US hasn't figured out how to offer a consistent level of K-12 education is, quite frankly, mind-boggling (along with the lack of health care, and many other things we take for granted in the rest of the 'western' world).
Don't believe everything you read.
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> The interpretation of "gerneral Welfare" varies of course, but providing SOME sort of standards and funding at the federal level for education is well within accepted US federal authority. You are correct that it is generally accepted, but you are 100% incorrect that it is in any way a faithful reading of the text of the Constitution. The power granted to Congress in that clause is that of taxation; its powers conc…
Dialogues like this make me feel like I'm in some surreal universe where all software evolved around one giant mainframe, and now, centuries later, everyone is still programming in COBOL, and it's illegal to not be backward compatible.
Being backward compatible is a feature in a legal system (e.g. forbidding ex post facto laws). Moreover, it's entirely possible to change the Constitution in any way one wishes, simply by passing an amendment. What you can't do is claim that it says what it doesn't, any more than one could run an amd64 Linux kernel directly on a 68000[1].
The Constitution's not perfect. It wasn't when it passed, which is why the Bill of Rights was required. It still wasn't, which is why further amendments were required (e.g., that banning slavery in most cases). Some of the changes were themselves suboptimal (e.g. the 17th Amendment, which has been a catastrophe, or the 18th, which banned alcohol). It's perfectly fine to amend the Constitution to fix it (e.g. the 21st Amendment, which repealed the fundamentally flawed 18th), but one can't just read whatever one wants into the document (c.f. drug prohibition: if an amendment were required to ban alcohol, then one must be required to ban drugs; and yet here we are).
[1] Yes, I'm sure that someone could in fact come up with a bitstream which is both valid amd64 opcodes and valid 68000 opcodes, and that someone could use that substrate to implement some sort of half-assed, tortured 'Linux' kernel. You know what I meant.