41–50 of 59 posts
The US stopped caring about truth, justice, and basic humanity. Caring about people is not in the cards at all.
I was blessedly slow to learn this, but a significant chunk of the population is motivated by hate.
motivated by the love of money, the root of all evil.
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So why educate poor kids? The exceptional will rise to the top regardless or emigrate to the US as long as we make it attractive to anyway. If all that matters is GDP and relative geopolitical strength of course.
So that they can become contributors to society. Economically, they still won’t be net contributors, only the top few percent are, but you still want them to contribute to the best of their ability.
Developing talent is necessary, and many don't have the circumstances for their talent to be visible.
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So that they can become contributors to society. Economically, they still won’t be net contributors, only the top few percent are, but you still want them to contribute to the best of their ability.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould Developing talent is necessary, and many don't have the circumstances for their talent to be visible.
In America there's such an abundance of opportunity that talented people generally aren't going to be constrained by anything other than ambition. Certainly not by education.
Many of histories famous scholars had no formal education whatsoever, they were autodidactics.
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So that they can become contributors to society. Economically, they still won’t be net contributors, only the top few percent are, but you still want them to contribute to the best of their ability.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould Developing talent is necessary, and many don't have the circumstances for their talent to be visible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould Developing talent is necessary, and many don't have the circumstances for their talent to be visible.
That's an illustration of the worldview where you only care about the exceptional in action. There has to be an interest in having a healthy and enjoyable society among all ranks, and care about more than just cutting edge science and engineering.
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No Child Left Behind incentivised teaching to the level of the lowest denominator. That's a not just a problem in education. Lowest denominator thinking is endemic throughout America. Don’t be surprised if countries that seek excellence, like China, eventually have economic growth that outpaces America for this reason alone.
Seeking excellence and demanding ideological conformity at the risk of prison don't seem compatible to me.
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Seeking excellence and demanding ideological conformity at the risk of prison don't seem compatible to me.
Are you talking about china or the US?
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[flagged]
> Progressivism is really a form of religion, disguised as a political system. No more than all political (and otherwise ideological or values-based) systems are; there's no “disguise” in involved.
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Do you think the amount a parent can care and show interest in their children's education could be correlated to financial freedom?
Maybe depends on how poor? My experience was even poor parents were able to care. But I think more extreme cases could be different - like if they’re both rarely at home and they don’t have others to help raise the kids, then I think the family culture doesn’t really exist.
I hope one day we can solve the problems for both cases.
> I don’t want to blame everything bad that’s happened in American education on the little-noted 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Before that was No Child Left Behind, which due to perverse incentives resulted in us being taught at the speed of the slowest student. Wouldn't surprise me if this is their theory here too but most of the article is behind a paywall.