Traps set by the machine

[Epimetheus]

The popularity contest.  All the good cogs in the machine are expected to act in a certain way so everybody will like them.  Caring what other people think, simply for the sake of being liked, seems a fast track to giving up your will to the machine.

For me it's caring what other think for the sake of being liked, for the sake of getting laid.

[Verbal Mike]

That's kind of unfair. Of course in a society where over 90% of the population tries to get a HS diploma you'll see that most successful people managed to do so.

On the other hand, I can quote nearly-hard statistics from Israel (they may be stale by now, but they definitely applied a couple of years ago.) Namely, under 50% of high school graduates in Israel (or was it just in Jerusalem?) get the Bagrut, which is very clearly seen as the goal of highschools in Israel. Bagrut is a diploma awarded by the state, based on a series of state-adminitrated exams. There is no highschool diploma in Israel, or at least nobody cares about it, because only Bagrut matters for the military, college and employment. In both Sudbury schools in Israel, all students who try for a Bagrut during their highschool years (it's not mandatory) get one.
But that's about as far as my memory for statistics can go. The point I'm trying to get across, is that the school system, with its grading and testing, may be the dominant form of education, but it's not necessarily the best and pretty clearly not the most effective or humane.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So you wouldn't prefer a doctor who got A's in high school over a doctor who got C's? Only where they went to med school matters?

You'll never have to make that choice - nobody who got C's high school went to a good med school. All those bullshit high school requirements are directly relevant to your choice of a doctor.

I was curious about this statement, and conveniently having a friend who's a senior financial analyst at OSHU, I had her ask some doctors. Turns out it's not true, in fact med schools don't even look at your high school transcripts, they only care about your college transcripts, and there are plenty of ways to recover from poor high school grades and get into a good college, or perform outstandingly at a state school and go on to a good med school. Fuck, my sister dropped out of high school after blowing off and failing most of her classes, eventually got her GED, did community college and went the whole transfer-student route, and ended up graduating with honors from Lewis and Clark. I know a lot of people who were mediocre high school students who pulled it out of the hat for college, you just have to be creative once you get there.

The doctor poll is still ongoing. So far two of the four polled claim to have had mediocre high school grades. Of course, when I did go to school I cried if I got a B, so "mediocre" is perhaps open to interpretation.

[AFK]

That's kind of unfair. Of course in a society where over 90% of the population tries to get a HS diploma you'll see that most successful people managed to do so.

It's not unfair, you opened the door.  In previous posts you talked about how many people in society can't say they are happy with life and their jobs, the insinuation you make is that the education system set them up for this.  I am pointing out to you the fallacy of that line of thinking because there are many who have gone through the public school systems who are happy AND successful.  Me being one of them. 

The point I'm trying to get across, is that the school system, with its grading and testing, may be the dominant form of education, but it's not necessarily the best and pretty clearly not the most effective or humane.

Please to demonstrate how it is "clear" that the public school system isn't the most effective.  Then, please lay out for me, specifically, how it is inhumane.  Have they started waterboarding kids in school or something? 

Y'know this is one of the traps of Discordianism.  There can be a tendency to want to see teh suck in everything in society.  To tear it down because it's some monstrous behemoth of fail.  But of course it's all mired in generalization and rhetoric.  There certainly are problems in society that need to be addressed, but razing it all to the ground isn't the solution.  Change is going to be most effective on a micro level, not a macro level.  So instead of deeming the whole of the public education system doomed and inadequate, the better tact to take is to work for change, and to work with the system.  We've talked about this before, you can't ever take down the Machine, but you can work on the cogs and effect change on that level, and as these cogs move they effect the other gears and cogs that are adjacent.  The change can seep into the various mechanisms. 

[LMNO]

The world is imperfect.

They systems and societies in the world are imperfect.

The people in the systems and societies in the world are imperfect.

There is no perfect solution for the people in the systems and societies in the world.







Wear a helmet.

[Triple Zero]

may i just say to RWHN and some of the other ppl on the prev page that i'm happy that this thread turned this way. because i was having the really weird feeling i was standing alone in making the arguments i did, and getting a bit tired of the discussion too.
there's a lot of stuff in verbatim's posts that i want to contradict and argue against (like, every second sentence or so), which is exactly the reason why i already get tired thinking of it.

so eh thanks rwhn

[AFK]

St. V isn't the first person I've heard tear down the public school system.  The Republicans here in Maine do it regularly.  (which is ironic considering it was their President who put NCLB into place.)  Meanwhile I know many teachers, who I know are giving their students a good education that goes beyond tests.  I have a friend who has students she taught like 10 years ago who still write her and will stop to talk to her if they run into her.  And I know there are many teachers like her in the school systems.  Teachers are disgustingly underpaid in this country, so you've gotta think that most of them are doing it because they want to.  And that means they will find ways around obstacles like bureaucracy shit like NCLB.  Sure, there are going to be those who are just going to do status quo and teach to the test, and not go above and beyond.  But, my sense is that they are in the minority. 

I also think that if the schools were really that bad and, "inhumane", that they wouldn't exist anymore.  Unless of course we also think that 99.9% of parents don't have their childrens' best interests at heart. 

[LMNO]

I think there are a few things running parallel here:

1.  Underfunding of public education.
2.  Overcrowding (see #1).
3.  Strict standardization in the name of Metrics and Regulation.

And, add to all of this

4.  Children resent being told what to do, and eventually go through radical hormonal changes, affecting emotion and mood.


See, at some point or other, every kid hates school.*  I would even venture to say this happens in Sudbury schools.  But it isn't that school is necessarily a hellish place, it's that the kids are going through a particularly hellish time in their lives.








*Ok, that wasn't in E-Prime.  Sue me.

[LHX]

there seems to be no good alternative on this planet at this time

[Verbal Mike]

I gotta run (my father and brother are coming here to stay with me for a few days, gotta pick them up) but I'll answer briefly to a few points:
-I consider pedagogy and the education system less effective than Sudbury schools. Pedagogy is a whole science about how to do the right things to get the right results out of children, and the education system invests tremendous amounts of energy into getting it right. Sudbury schools do not go to these efforts, and still get results just as good or sometimes better.
-I consider schooling somewhat inhumane because it limits or wholly revokes a (young) person's right to determine what to do with his or her time. The situation in the United States is far less serious on this point because educational choice is a right that all enjoy. In Germany this right does not exist. And there are many countries in the grey area (such as Israel).
-I'm not trying to attack the education system because of Discordianism. I co-founded the school I went to three years before I first saw or heard the word "Discordianism".
-Teenagers at Sudbury schools who started there at a young age rarely if ever hate their school. Teenage angst can sometimes be directed at the school, but it's very hard to hate an organization that you actually have a completely equal share in. Sudbury schools tend to also be very supportive environments where you can talk to people about what you're going through. This is a tremendous help for teenagers and many of them only start to actually *love* the school when they start going through that.

That's all the time I've got. I probably won't have time to visit this thread (or PDCOM in general) for about six days now, but I'll try and jump back in when I can.

[Cain]

Could you elaborate on the educational choice issue.  I'd like to know more about this.  I'm presuming you mean the choice of where or if to go to school? 

Also, what are the socioeconomic demographics for a Sundbury school?  How large was the mix there between different groups in society?  Obviously they are successful at some level, but I have to wonder if thats not due to the sort of parents who are drawn to such a school rather than the teaching methods alone.  I may be wrong, its just a suspicion I have, but you know how statistics can be...

[Verbal Mike]

Turns out I have more time to myself than I had expected, so here I am.

About the educational choice matter, yes, I mean the right for a child to choose her own education, or as most states put it, the parents' right to choose their child's education. In the United States it is every family's right to unschool, homeschool or to go to whatever school they choose. In Germany, homeschooling is illegal and all schools must conform to relatively strict standards which dictate how the school should work. And if you don't send your kids to a state-approved school, the police can (and actually might) come to take the kid to school themselves, or revoke your custody. I think without a trial, in both cases. In Israel the legal situation is similar to that in Germany, save three very important caveats: the criteria for the state to recognize a school are much less limiting, the police cannot take your kid to school by force,  or take her away from you without a trial (and even in trial, not going to school is not an acceptable reason alone) and lastly that the people in charge of checking on kids who aren't in a recognized school will leave you alone if the kid is doing well - their job is just to make sure the kids aren't being forced to work, aren't on the streets, and aren't being abused.
If I'm not mistaken, Germany is now the only state in the EU where you have to send your child to a state-approved school. The UK is considered a difficult country for democratic education, but homeschooling is legal and I know a family that fled Germany to England to enjoy this right.

As for the socioeconomic demographics, these are naturally very different from one school to another. In Sudbury Jerusalem I know the demographics are more or less directly equivalent to the general demographics in the city. The only groups not at all represented are the utterly destitute (though a family or two do get close), the Israeli Arabs of East Jerusalem (none, or as good as none, have ever so much as inquired about admission) and the Haredi Jews (which have their own robust education system anyhow, and have never showed any interest.) The school is not, as many have suggested (elsewhere), dominated by high-income families. The only thing I can say to tipify the families at Sudbury Jerusalem is that in each family at least one parent considers their child's happiness valuable and important.
I know of at least one other Sudbury school with many low-income families - Blue Mountain School in Oregon, US, which I mentioned earlier in this thread. In none of the Sudbury schools that I've visited did I get the impression that everybody is rich.
I'm not saying you implied that everyone would be rich and comfortable, but this is very often what people imply. Another thing people often say is that these schools attract parents who are interested and engaged in their kids' school life and are involved in "pushing" the kid to succeed. Not really true, but I can elaborate if that's what you meant.
Or did you have something else in mind?

[Cain]

Well, I didn't wonder if they were rich and comfortable per se, but that was part of it.  Families who both value education, had the means to be able to send their child to such a school and had the knowledge and reasoning ability to decide it was the best for their child.  That might be harder to pick up via demographics than how I framed it, almost certainly, but that was what I had in mind.  I believe usually, according to the sociologists, its middle class families who value education most, but I'd have to check on that.  Either way, the greater the mix of backgrounds and social groups, the greater the chances are it is a successful model and not just a fluke anyway, so the point is redered fairly useless.

[Cain]

Also, this blogger manages to show quite well what I mean by atomistic individualism.  Calling himself a contextual libertarian, he makes the point quite well about social and cultural influences http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2003/11/in-praise-of-contextual-libertarianism.html

[Verbal Mike]

Well, I'd venture to say that a part of Jewish culture (as a value scheme) is the emphasis on education, rendering that particular point rather irrelevant in Israel. The means are definitely a difficulty, but in Sudbury Jerusalem the school goes to great efforts to give families stipends if they need them. As for reasoning, I'd say many families go for it based on instinct or emotion. I've heard from more than one parent statements amounting to "my kid was so happy during his trial week I had to let him keep going there".
At the end of the day, most families in Sudbury Jerusalem got there because they were miserable elsewhere and were looking for an alternative.