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Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

plymouth.ac.uk

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Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#51
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rule? I didn't watch the movie nor do I know much about James Bond beyond watching a few of the films over the past few decades.

an event happens that terminates the series for good. though I bet in 4 years the producers will change their mind and retcon the series back to life.

The movie ended with "James Bond will return". There's not even an implied end of the series. They pretty proudly showed off that it was continuing.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#52
I don't recall exactly right now, but I remember an article that had a 2x2 description of people who are vocal vs. internalized and rule-abiding vs. rulebreaker-tolerating.. or something like that.

It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad".

I never really understood that kind of mentality, for 2 reasons.

1) When someone breaks the rules, and goes unchecked, it just encourages them to do it more and reinforces their belief that the bad behavior is acceptable. And there is something to the notion that seeing people break the rules degrades respect for the rules in general.

2) Every time someone breaks the rules, it's a tax on those who follow the rules. Why am I inconveniencing myself by following rules when others just go ahead and break them? Or in another way of saying it, especially when rules are only partially enforced, the people who follow the rules are made suckers. Better to not have the rule at all.

I guess this became a bit more frustrating to me over time (or maybe because of age) as I understand rules better and have an opinion on their validity (especially the history of them), to see people giving up on the idea of enforcing rules or standards at the request of people who break the rules, or people who just have sympathy for them.

Well then, why did we create the rules in the first place? Just toss the rules out, and let everyone go free-for-all, so that the rule-abiding people aren't paying a tax while others go "scot-free". So easy, isn't it, for people coming later to forget all the work that it took to experience and solve for these problems that we can just toss them out now.

There was the example of the MIT admissions director who had faked her PhD the whole time (or say, how some people get meaningless paper PhDs from no-name schools to increase their government job pay), and one of my grad school colleagues (toiling away for his PhD!) said, "You would go out of your way to report that? What harm has it done you?". I was incredulous.

Maybe I'm getting more conservative in my old age.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#53

I don't recall exactly right now, but I remember an article that had a 2x2 description of people who are vocal vs. internalized and rule-abiding vs. rulebreaker-tolerating.. or something like that. It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad". I never really understood th…

I believe it was pg's, The Four Quadrants of Conformism: http://www.paulgraham.com/conformism.html

I still think about it quite a bit.

I think some rules are valid for a point in time and become invalid over time (e.g. some of the old Jewish rules around food probably made more sense before modern food mgmt standards).

And pg's point is people / kids follow rules without understanding them for the most part. Or they don't follow the rules for the most part. And a lot of progress comes from the scofflaws who aren't wedded to the current rule set and reject the nonsensical ones.

At some point democracy and not having a blood line king/queen was against the rules. I'm glad some people decided to look past those rules.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#54

I don't recall exactly right now, but I remember an article that had a 2x2 description of people who are vocal vs. internalized and rule-abiding vs. rulebreaker-tolerating.. or something like that. It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad". I never really understood th…

I believe it was pg's, The Four Quadrants of Conformism: http://www.paulgraham.com/conformism.html I still think about it quite a bit. I think some rules are valid for a point in time and become invalid over time (e.g. some of the old Jewish rules around food probably made more sense before modern food mgmt standards). And pg's point is people / kids follow rules without understanding them for the most part. Or they…

Ah yes, that was it, thanks!

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#55
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about US modern schools, right? (Genuine question)

Not my school in the US. Cynical me thinks there is no actual underlying experience driving the observation.

this was my entire experience in "computer" classes K–12 in the 90s–00s. never once were we encouraged to play around or try new things. we were taught to follow instructions to the letter to use computers to complete arbitrary tasks exactly as prescribed. the closest thing to letting us "color outside the lines" was letting us literally pick the color and bgcolor attributes for the HTML4 web pages we made for some assignments in "Web Development" class... in 2008. (of course about half of our graduating class had all already taught themselves rudimentary CSS to style their MySpace profiles a few years prior!) around 2004(!!) we spent a couple weeks learning HyperCard (in the Classic Mac emulator OSX used to ship with), and while I immediately recognized the possibilities for making games and interactive stories and all kinds of neat stuff using this then-ancient software, nope, just shut up and make this slide presentation about snakes or whatever like the assignment tells you to. I've posted about this here in the past but looking back I have this vague feeling that, at least in these computer classes, the teachers like barely had a grasp on how to do anything with computer outside of specifically prescribed tasks of the assignments they had us do, and were sort of scared of anyone like me who wanted to eff around and see what all we could do with the technology. part of me has always wanted to be a public school computer class teacher just so I can instill some of the sense of discovery and creativity that access to these powerful machines grant us, that I was never given in school growing up.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#56

I don't recall exactly right now, but I remember an article that had a 2x2 description of people who are vocal vs. internalized and rule-abiding vs. rulebreaker-tolerating.. or something like that. It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad". I never really understood th…

I think I'm like that, and it feels very related to the "robustness principle" in programming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle). "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept."

And to the idea that I can change what's in my power - my actions. I have to accept the things I can't change, like the actions of strangers.

And I'm not a judge, I don't like judging people. Who knows, they may have a good reason. Walk a mile in their shoes, and so on.

If there are enough people who think like me, the rules will still mostly hold. And if not, perhaps it wasn't a good rule.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my school in the US. Cynical me thinks there is no actual underlying experience driving the observation.

this was my entire experience in "computer" classes K–12 in the 90s–00s. never once were we encouraged to play around or try new things. we were taught to follow instructions to the letter to use computers to complete arbitrary tasks exactly as prescribed. the closest thing to letting us "color outside the lines" was letting us literally pick the color and bgcolor attributes for the HTML4 web pages we made for some a…

In a computer class in the 90s, it would actually have made some sense. Schools have never had good IT staff, and it was easy to screw things up accidentally. Hell, in '94 I was in USAF tech school and watched a guy answer yes to the "WARNING: This will remove all data on non-removable disk drive C:" prompt not 30 seconds after the teacher explicitly said that getting that message meant you had mistyped. Allegedly an adult, and actually a pretty smart guy, but still managed to render that particular workstation unusable for a while.

Today, the school uses disposable VMs which are built on demand and nothing the student does can render them inoperable. And Chromebooks that are similarly unkillable. Different world now than 25 years ago, for sure. My kids' school gives the students wide latitude to screw up.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#58

I don't recall exactly right now, but I remember an article that had a 2x2 description of people who are vocal vs. internalized and rule-abiding vs. rulebreaker-tolerating.. or something like that. It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad". I never really understood th…

I guess, not really? But this results in justifying any existing rule and that conclusion is incompatible with my existing world view so I end up viewing it as an artifact of rhetoric rather than a result of logic.

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#59

Eh, the study calls "rule breakers" the children who seemingly make mistakes applying a set of rules to a puzzle. These aren't kids acting out in class and being put back in line by their peers, it's two kids doing some pair programming. Am I "confronting" my coworker when I suggest a different way to loop than the one they implemented? Nothing wrong with the study, just saying the word "challenging" is not used here…

In modern schools, most any deviation from prescribed behavior is considered "rule breaking". A kid playing a game they way they want to play it, rather than the way they were taught to play it, is a disruptive kid that needs correction by peers or authority figures.

When Flight Simulator came out, my first thought was to see what would happen when you crashed the airplane. People would actually get upset as I would try to crash it. These were adults! They'd get so into the game they were afraid of crashing the imaginary airplane.

(It was a bit disappointing, it would only freeze the screen and draw a crack across it!)

Re: Challenging ‘rule breakers’ – children will confront their peers

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my school in the US. Cynical me thinks there is no actual underlying experience driving the observation.

this was my entire experience in "computer" classes K–12 in the 90s–00s. never once were we encouraged to play around or try new things. we were taught to follow instructions to the letter to use computers to complete arbitrary tasks exactly as prescribed. the closest thing to letting us "color outside the lines" was letting us literally pick the color and bgcolor attributes for the HTML4 web pages we made for some a…

In my last year of high school in the 70s, the school acquired a Business Basic 4 computer to do some of the administration work. They also created a computer class for the students, where we punched out programs on punch cards, and the teacher would batch run them overnight.

The teacher did not allow any students near that computer, as he was sure we were going to hack it and wreck everything.

(Yes, hacking was a thing even in the 70s!)

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