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School or Prison

schoolprison.com

151–160 of 497 posts

Re: School or Prison

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same college experience. I nearly raised my hand to request permission but saw other kids just leaving class (sophomores I think)

I'm an assistant professor and every year some student will indeed ask if they can go to the bathroom...

I've been an adjunct professor and received that question too. My response is generally "You're the customer here. In my class, you can literally do anything you want if it doesn't interfere with other students learning or me teaching."

Re: School or Prison

#152

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges. In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of tim…

Yeah I got kicked out of class once in high school (affecting my attendance) because I couldn't hold it until the end of the class, the teacher said no, and my choice was between disobeying or whipping my dick out and peeing on the floor. I of course chose disobeying, but I'm pretty sure that the teacher would be far less strict in the future if I went the other route.

The latter could have gotten you in some serious trouble. Better and more effective to just go in your pants.

Re: School or Prison

#153
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the the nonsense you're conjuring up, with no argument or research, more valid than that of the renowned philosophers you are trivially dismissing? Doubt is good, but strong, unjustified claims are not.

Renowned philosophers tend to be good in philosophy. They are not necessary great in history, sociology or how various organizations work. They have own biases and it is also pretty easy to take their claims out of context to sound like something much stronger.

Foucault in particular is known for his genealogical approach, though. I agree that it's very easy to misuse their claims.

Re: School or Prison

#154
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ex-primary teacher here. At any one time a certain percentage of kids in the class would be off sick, it was a given. So the curriculum doesn't proceed linearly but more like a helix: it circles around and around the same topics year by year with each child being supported to learn at the level they are - always a broad range in any one class. So it's in my experience totally untrue to suggest that any child would ha…

> So it's in my experience totally untrue to suggest that any child would have to "catch up" any learning missed due to sickness (and also reveals that schools are talking bollocks when they suggest that taking a few days off to go on holiday during termtime will have any noticeable adverse effect, but shhhh) But it does seem true, from the point of view of parents and children. It doesn't matter that the curriculum…

Of course grades are fairly meaningless in elementary school, unless they are so bad you're needing to repeat a year. Being sick for a few days won't cause that. At that level grades are mostly just feedback to the parents.

As a parent, if my 4th or 6th grader got a lower grade due to missing homework as a result of being sick, it wouldn't concern me.

In high school it starts to matter more due to grades being a component of college admissions, but unless you're targeting really elite schools a couple of days of missed work isn't going to move the needle much. And if you are targeting elite schools, you're already working very hard and including a lot of AP courses and extracuricular activities and you will just buckle down and make up the work.

Re: School or Prison

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prisons have to be resistant to the attempts of their occupants to escape, or to cause damage or destruction. This doesn't really seem compatible with warm and inviting.

Most prisoners don't want to escape, or cause harm, they just want to finish the term and go home and move on. I'd say you could have the honor system (unlocked doors) for 95 percent of prisoners, by letting them know if they escape they'll go to a more secure and less free prison. Then you make prison a place to learn new skills and get treatment for addictions and therapy, and you'll actually see some improvement i…

We already have prisons like that for low-risk, nonviolent offenders. They are called minimum security or "country club" prisons. We also have home detention.

Re: School or Prison

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I got kicked out of class once in high school (affecting my attendance) because I couldn't hold it until the end of the class, the teacher said no, and my choice was between disobeying or whipping my dick out and peeing on the floor. I of course chose disobeying, but I'm pretty sure that the teacher would be far less strict in the future if I went the other route.

The latter could have gotten you in some serious trouble. Better and more effective to just go in your pants.

Yeah, because students won't turn that into your permanent nickname mr. peepeepants.

Re: School or Prison

#157

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges. In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of tim…

> meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of time. In grade school, every time someone asks permission to use the bathroom they stop the flow of the lesson and valuable time is lost. In college the idea is that most of the students are responsible enough to handle the bathroom and food.

That's not a strong argument for strict bathroom rules. That's an argument for guidelines that don't require explicit permission: let kids go any time they want, and they silently signal it by holding up 2 fingers as they get up & go.

And how much valuable time is lost here, weighed against the extreme distraction a student has if they can't go? Besides, once the student has raised their hand and been called on, the flow is already disrupted. Answering "yes" or "no" is irrelevant at that point.

Do you have a proposal that both meets biological needs and doesn't run the minor risk of disruption? Disruptions occur constantly anyway every time a student asks a questions when they don't understand, even when most others do.

I simply fail to see how "stop the flow of the lesson" is either very relevant to unpreventable biological needs, or an unsolvable problem in its own right.

Re: School or Prison

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. If our prisons end up looking open, warm and inviting, then that would be a very positive outcome indeed. That's not my takeaway, after looking at these photos though.

Prisons have to be resistant to the attempts of their occupants to escape, or to cause damage or destruction. This doesn't really seem compatible with warm and inviting.

They can be. If you're curious, check out "worlds toughest prisons" on Netflix, an episode that shows a Norwegian rehabilitation-focused prison. You can see how the place is both secure and warm.

Re: School or Prison

#159
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foucault advocated for pedophilia, and that knowledge has tainted him for me. Can he still be a moral authority?

1960's-1970s celebrity culture was full of young groupies sleeping with older men. Bowie, Jagger, Ozzy, etc were all doing it, and often brazen about it, so its not overly surprising that European intellectuals just wanted it formalized as they were doing it too. They felt it harmless enough for their own selfish reasons and wrapped it up into a 'autonomy of self' argument that, of course, was very self-serving. I th…

Really? Groupies below 15 were common?

Re: School or Prison

#160
Just the idea of a school is worse than a prison: - it’s mandatory - closed confinement - not allowed to do what you want in that closed area - you’re being told what to do for at least 8-14 years - you’re being told when to pee - during the years there is no choice in what you want to learn And at the end of your school/studies you’re asked to be creative and responsible
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