Quote"There is no way of teaching or training another person for self-sufficiency. There is no technic for obtaining or transmitting these traits. The only way a person becomes responsible for himself is for him to be responsible for himself, with no reservation or qualifications."
-Daniel Greenberg, The Crisis in American Education: An Analysis and a Proposal
Parents have gotten lazy, and we're all eating shit for it.
Mothers give birth, drop the little baby on a nanny, and go back to work. Fathers buy the tots gadgets and games so they don't have to spend time with them. And then eventually, when the kid is 5 or 6, they start sending it to school, never questioning for a moment the appropriateness of such an environment to a young person.
Think about it – what kind of capacity did you have for critical thinking at the age of 6? Heck, how critical were you at 8? And at 10? And yet at these very young, gullible ages, children are subjected to a constant bombardment of educational data. Knowing that children at these ages haven't much of a grasp on critical thinking, teachers just present the curriculum as fact. Grade-school teachers do not give the matter much of a thought – the high-school teachers will sort it out later down the road, make the kids think.
Wait a second, these people are going to
make the children
think for themselves?
Yeah, right. Like that has ever worked. No, the diet of single-minded groupthink meme-soup starts when the kids first enter the first-grade classroom and though new ingredients are added every year, the consistency remains the same. You can't follow an order with "but do whatever you want" and expect someone to actually do what
they want. After that order, they can't ignore what
you want them to do. No matter what you try, even their attempts to figure out what they want will be driven by their need to do what you say.
How fucked up is all that?
Is it really reasonable to send soft, gullible children into an environment specifically designed to tell them what to think? Is this what we want the next generations to look like? Like the currently up-and-coming generations of mass consumers who might as well choose their personality out of a catalog for all their originality?
I went to school, and I've turned out okay.*
*so far.**
**Unless you count the dropping out of 6th grade bit.
Verb.
You hate school.
We get it.
http://africa.reuters.com/odd/news/usnN01267962.html
Don't worry, the kids fight back. Eventually.
HAR! THINKING FOR OURSELVES ITT!!!!
I always saw school as more of a tool of socialization... Getting kids to learn how to interact with others and deal with authority. In school kids get a bigger picture of society than in the household. Also those who don't adapt well (problems with authority) are picked out and get the shaft by their peers and teachers until they fall in line, or they lose their opportunity for state education.
Kinda shitty, those who may be a threat to the system end up getting worked the hardest.
I wonder what the teacher did to make the kids hate her that much?
There's only one teacher in my kids' school who might inspire that much hate, and she's so fucking evil that *parents* are planning to duct tape her to her chair and cut her throat. Luckily, she's just a substitute.
Quote from: Pope Lecherous on April 02, 2008, 05:47:19 AM
I always saw school as more of a tool of socialization... Getting kids to learn how to interact with others and deal with authority. In school kids get a bigger picture of society than in the household. Also those who don't adapt well (problems with authority) are picked out and get the shaft by their peers and teachers until they fall in line, or they lose their opportunity for state education.
Kinda shitty, those who may be a threat to the system end up getting worked the hardest.
It depends on the teachers. The lesson I took from school was that teachers and other authority figures were more likely to be morons than not, just like everybody else, and therefore one must choose which (if any) authority figures to pay attention too. This can happen at quite an early age - I ran across one of my old third grade notebooks the other day and found that I had scribbled "School = a place to hear adults talk nonsense" in the margin.
Wow, your schools sucked. From the first grade to the sixth, i had this one freethinker hippie rocker as a teacher. He said that god maybe dead already, so think carefull what to believe, on religion-lesson. :)
I was 8 then.
What the hell are you talking about - school fucking rocked! Admittedly I didn't go every day like some of the kids but when I did go there was dope to sell, smaller kids to shakedown, bigger kids to fight with, plenty to steal and pussy to boot.
What's not to like?
Quote from: SillyCybin on April 02, 2008, 08:36:46 AM
What the hell are you talking about - school fucking rocked! Admittedly I didn't go every day like some of the kids but when I did go there was dope to sell, smaller kids to shakedown, bigger kids to fight with, plenty to steal and pussy to boot.
What's not to like?
Well, if you put it like that.... :)
I was just a Tobacco King. I was the only one who sold tobacco when i was at upper level of comprehensive school. (or, how do you say it?)
school for me was mostly just a grey blur, which i woke up out of when i moved out and started going to college
heh, and that's when things started to go downhill ;-)
Quote from: triple zero on April 02, 2008, 12:34:53 PM
school for me was mostly just a grey blur, which i woke up out of when i moved out and started going to college
heh, and that's when things started to go downhill ;-)
Kinda the same as me. Except for all the spiky bullying my deep rooted pacifism seemed to draw.
School didn't really bother me. School kids did.
The inability of authority figures to even apply their own stated ideals was probably the best lesson I ever learned there.
Ugh, Same church, different pew.
I learned exactly 3 things at school:
1) crime actually does pay, quite well in fact
2) osmosis is the passage of water, through a semi permeable membrane, from an area of high concentration of water to an area of low concentration of water
3) the square of the hypotenuse is in some way calculable (something something sides something)
Quote from: SillyCybin on April 02, 2008, 03:09:27 PM
I learned exactly 4 things at school:
1) crime actually does pay, quite well in fact
2) osmosis is the passage of water, through a semi permeable membrane, from an area of high concentration of water to an area of low concentration of water
3) the square of the hypotenuse is in some way calculable (something something sides something)
4) if you cut a hole in your trouser pocket, it makes it harder to concentrate on the class, but easier to concentrate on the girl across the room. Teenage boobs defy gravity!
fixed
In high school I learned:
--When you make a model rocket, if you put in an engine that is meant for a bigger rocket, your rocket goes much higher and farther, which means you get to spend the rest of class scouring the neighborhood to locate the rocket
--How to make a cool Rube Goldberg machine that dropped an ice-cube into water and how to break a bunch of other stuff in the process
--That I lived in a town with a bunch or rednecks
Could we get some parents to comment on the OP?
I'd like to hear what someone who has actually tried to teach children thinks about it.
In my experience, children want "THE ANSWER". It's only later that they can grasp the concept of ambiguity and uncertainty.
My oldest kid totally gets ambiguity. But then he was the one that at 4 asked why he was on earth. He also understood at an early stage that the only person you can ever trust really is yourself, and even that can be shaky.
My youngest doesn't get ambiguity until you give him a concrete example. :lulz:
In high school I learned:
1) bunsen burner + anything = lulz
2) how to get adults to buy booze from shops for me
3) how to pick on fat kids
Quote from: LMNO on April 02, 2008, 04:12:10 PM
Could we get some parents to comment on the OP?
I'd like to hear what someone who has actually tried to teach children thinks about it.
In my experience, children want "THE ANSWER". It's only later that they can grasp the concept of ambiguity and uncertainty.
I find the OP mind-numbingly tiresome, but I'll try.
Yes, in some ways public schools in my area seem to be structured to train a generation of good little employees. That makes sense because that's what this society considers "successful", and the goal is to raise our children to be successful.
I don't think it has anything to do with the laziness of parents. There are lazy parents, for sure, but there always have been; it's nothing new. Parents now seem more vigilant, involved, and skeptical of authority than previous generations.
An economy where a single-earner household is rare for logistical reasons is not something you can blame on the laziness of parents.
Schools should teach children facts and skills. Parents should teach children ethics and critical thinking. I don't think parents are doing a worse job of that than they have in the past; talk to a random selection of middle-aged people if you want proof of that.
That's all I can respond to right now without having the OP immediately in front of me.
Oh, a PS: I hated grade school. So much, in fact, that I dropped out in 3rd grade and only went back for a brief stint in 6th before abandoning it altogether. I was prepared to home-school if necessary (and if possible), if it turned out that my kids hated it too, but they don't. They love it. Both my older children are high-performing, nerdy, and very social.
No, little kids don't tend to do a lot of critical thinking. That's an acquired skill, and furthermore you have to have enough of a foundation of knowledge in order to start using critical thinking. So teachers teach facts. I'm not actually seeing the problem with that?
It's up to parents, not teachers, to teach kids to question authority, as well as to respect authority. Some parents do a better job than others.
Also, regarding your "nanny" comment... WTF demographic did you grow up in? How many people do you think actually can afford nannies?
How does an 8-year old drop out of school?
Quote from: st.verbatim on April 01, 2008, 09:22:23 PM
Parents have gotten lazy, and we're all eating shit for it.
Mothers give birth, drop the little baby on a nanny, and go back to work.
BAD! BAD! They should keep the kids at home and starve to death.
Wait. What? WHO THE FUCK CAN AFFORD A NANNY?
"If you want to be a different kind of fish, you've got to jump out of the school."
-St. Beefheart
Quote from: LMNO on April 02, 2008, 06:47:32 PM
How does an 8-year old drop out of school?
My mom didn't care. Ostensibly I was "home schooled" but in reality what that meant was my mom got me a bus pass and a library card and went and did whatever it was she was doing.
Quote from: Nigel on April 02, 2008, 06:43:38 PM
Also, regarding your "nanny" comment... WTF demographic did you grow up in? How many people do you think actually can afford nannies?
Oh, I was just carefully avoiding reality to make a point...
I admit this rant is extremely uninspired, by the way. I don't even agree with about half of it. I thought I had a good point to make, but when it came to actually fleshing it out, it didn't work out like I wanted it to.
The discussion is rather interesting though. :)
Quote from: LMNO on April 02, 2008, 04:12:10 PM
Could we get some parents to comment on the OP?
I'd like to hear what someone who has actually tried to teach children thinks about it.
In my experience, children want "THE ANSWER". It's only later that they can grasp the concept of ambiguity and uncertainty.
Having raised two little tax credits, I can state with certainty that:
1. Children from ages 0-1 cannot understand anything on a cognitive level. They're still figuring out how to best shit their diapers.
2. Children from ages 1-5 are little savages who must have civilization drummed into their heads and backsides, unless you have a convenient basement to lock them in.
3. Children from ages 6-12 want to learn everything, they just don't want to do it in school. Well, too fucking bad. In this lesson, we learn that life isn't fair.
4. Children from ages 13-18 want to get laid. That's pretty much it. Your job as a parent is to prevent them from becoming parents.
5. After 18, they can fucking well figure it out on their own.
The end.
every word Roger said.
it's true.
Damn, Rog. *yoink* I'm also giving cred, of course.
Well fucking said.
:spewmonitor:
:mittens:
Roger, that was truly inspired! :lulz:
The bitch of it is I have 2 from line 3 and 1 from line 4.....
holy shit, Roger has kids?
How old are they? No matter - I bet they could kick my ass.
Quote from: LMNO on April 02, 2008, 04:12:10 PM
Could we get some parents to comment on the OP?
I'd like to hear what someone who has actually tried to teach children thinks about it.
In my experience, children want "THE ANSWER". It's only later that they can grasp the concept of ambiguity and uncertainty.
I think my daughter understands ambiguity and uncertainty on some level. For example, one day I was taking her to preschool, I totally blanked, and started to drive down the wrong road. I was able to find a couple side streets and we ended up getting to where we were going. My daughter, of course immediately recognized we were driving on the "wrong" road. I explained to her how sometimes you can take different roads and still get to the same place. She seemed okay with that idea. Of course, little kids crave routine and predictability, so she insisted that next time we take the regular road.
Quote from: Professor Cramulus on April 03, 2008, 03:13:57 PM
holy shit, Roger has kids?
How old are they? No matter - I bet they could kick my ass.
My son is 14. 6'2-1/2" tall. I fed the silly bastard too much meat.
My daughter is 12. Red head. It's her way or her way.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 04, 2008, 02:05:47 AM
Quote from: Professor Cramulus on April 03, 2008, 03:13:57 PM
holy shit, Roger has kids?
How old are they? No matter - I bet they could kick my ass.
My son is 14. 6'2-1/2" tall. I fed the silly bastard too much meat.
My daughter is 12. Red head. It's her way or her way.
:lol: I'm raising one of those now except she's a brunette and about to be 4 years old.
I live with THREE other people who are like this and all male. And it doesn't help I'm the same way.
3 Alpha Males and 1 Alpha Female. Never a dull moment in this house.
Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on April 04, 2008, 02:37:37 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 04, 2008, 02:05:47 AM
Quote from: Professor Cramulus on April 03, 2008, 03:13:57 PM
holy shit, Roger has kids?
How old are they? No matter - I bet they could kick my ass.
My son is 14. 6'2-1/2" tall. I fed the silly bastard too much meat.
My daughter is 12. Red head. It's her way or her way.
:lol: I'm raising one of those now except she's a brunette and about to be 4 years old.
Sweet jesus, I have one too but blond and almost 5. Some of our friends are preparing a religion around her now just in case she turns out to really be the Antichrist. By the time she was born she'd already accomplished 2 impossible things.