4 ms·

Well, gee, I don't know! What part of "sit in this room for 8 hours a day until we cut the umbilical cord, then get a job and contribute to society so that you

Well, gee, I don't know! What part of "sit in this room for 8 hours a day until we cut the umbilical cord, then get a job and contribute to society so that you can afford to live and maybe retire one day. because otherwise you are human garbage." sounds like it supports mental health? How many people will quickly blame social media, or adults paying too much attention to children's emotional needs for ruining our children when it's our toxic social structures that are doing it? Oh, oh! I know. These kids are just too coddled these days. If they would just grow thicker skin they wouldn't be so severely depressed and constantly anxious. It's not as if what ails society hurts the most vulnerable and malleable of us first and most. The way society treats children like raw materials pushed through a factory until they can be extruded as adults is horrifying.

askafriend 11y ago
Very snarky comment but I think the general point you're making is a good one: that too often the blame for problems like these is placed in misguided places and pushed around but we fail to zoom out and examine the very core of societal structures.
- danharaj 11y ago
  I think snark is appropriate. If you asked the children what they want, you would get accurate answers. If you asked the teachers what the children need, you would get accurate answers. Instead, we ask (and get answers even if we don't ask) the adults what the children want and the bureaucrats what the children need. The bureaucratic, overmanaged, underfunded education industry is not structured for education. It's structured to be controlled at successively broader levels of government and industrialized at national and international scale; optimized for inculcating into children the civil religion [1] and a receptiveness to strict organization of their time by authority figures. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
  - crazy1van 11y ago
    > underfunded education I was sympathetic to your argument until this part. It varies by region, but we spend what seems like a fortune on school. DC public schools spent over $18,000 per student in 2010 [0]. That's more than my state college tuition. Where does that money go? [0]: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_insurance_real_estate/cb12-113.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_ins...
    - danharaj 11y ago
      s/underfunded/misfunded Money that is wasted may as well never have been used.
    - germinalphrase 11y ago
      Not sure - but as a high school teacher I've been turned down to buy paperbacks (that actually have all their pages) for my classroom due to budget constraints. You're not wrong, and there is a lot of money in compulsory education (hence the push since the 80's to privatize)- but the macro view of educational budgeting doesn't necessarily speak to the direct effect of budgeting on classroom resources.
      - ryandrake 11y ago
        Don't worry, there's plenty of money for sports and administration. The Assistant Vice Principal doesn't have money problems.
      - aianus 11y ago
        That was the opposite of my experience in high school. My math teacher was forced by admin to buy a shipping pallet of shiny new $130 Calculus textbooks which sat in the closet unused all year because the new textbooks covered less material than the ones from the 80s we were already using (the curriculum had since been dumbed down).
logicchains 11y ago
>What part of "sit in this room for 8 hours a day until we cut the umbilical cord, then get a job and contribute to society so that you can afford to live and maybe retire one day. because otherwise you are human garbage." I think the expectation that "people should be good to me just because I was born" lies at the root of much distress. Reality can be harsh: if you don't have anything to offer them, most people don't care much about you. Maybe this is a terrible failing on the part of society, but from a pragmatic perspective it's much easier to change one's viewpoint than to change society. It can be surprisingly liberating to not expect anything from the world.
- danharaj 11y ago
  > I think the expectation that "people should be good to me just because I was born" lies at the root of much distress. Reality can be harsh: if you don't have anything to offer them, most people don't care much about you. I think your first sentence is either logically vacuous or a sneaky way to disregard someone's emotions: Either you are stating that "feeling mistreated is the same as existing and feeling mistreated" or your clause "just because I was born" is putting words in this abstract person's mouth: "I feel mistreated but I am unjustified in feeling mistreated." Like, your ideas are logically consistent: If you don't feel mistreated then you don't feel mistreated. If you can just stop feeling mistreated then you will be liberated from feeling mistreated. It completely sidesteps the issue: People feel mistreated for a reason. Why not apply this logic to everything? "Just because I was born, people shouldn't saw off my leg at the knee". The gall of such entitlement! If only one adjusted to the viewpoint that their leg should be sawed off at the knee, they would have a much easier time! Does it sound absurd because I am exaggerating? I'm not really exaggerating that much: depression and anxiety can hurt so much that they drive people to kill themselves. How could such illness be anything but agonizing? You call it reality, but it is not indifferent and impersonal like disease or a storm that sweeps one's home away: We are talking about people. People are intelligible to people. People are answerable people. People interacting with people changes the way people interact with people.
  - logicchains 11y ago
    >Like, your ideas are logically consistent: If you don't feel mistreated then you don't feel mistreated. If you can just stop feeling mistreated then you will be liberated from feeling mistreated. It completely sidesteps the issue: People feel mistreated for a reason. Feeling mistreated isn't a feeling; feeling bad is a feeling. We feel bad when we perceive something we interpret as bad happening to us. If we didn't perceive that action as bad, as "mistreating", then we wouldn't feel bad about it. This is hardly a new idea; philosophical traditions like Buddhism and Stoicism are bad around the idea what what causes suffering is our perceptions of the world, and by changing how we perceive things (making fewer value judgements) we can increase our happiness with the world. >You call it reality, but it is not indifferent and impersonal like disease or a storm that sweeps one's home away: We are talking about people. People are intelligible to people. People are answerable people. People interacting with people changes the way people interact with people. It doesn't matter whether it's a natural disaster or people causing the issue: the point is that if it's not something that can easily be changed, getting emotional about changing it won't lead to a happy state of mind. >Why not apply this logic to everything? "Just because I was born, people shouldn't saw off my leg at the knee". The gall of such entitlement. If someone saws your leg off at the knee and there's nothing you can do about it, you'll have a less miserable time if you just accept it and move on than if you remain bitter about it.

askafriend 11y ago

Very snarky comment but I think the general point you're making is a good one: that too often the blame for problems like these is placed in misguided places and pushed around but we fail to zoom out and examine the very core of societal structures.

danharaj 11y ago
I think snark is appropriate. If you asked the children what they want, you would get accurate answers. If you asked the teachers what the children need, you would get accurate answers. Instead, we ask (and get answers even if we don't ask) the adults what the children want and the bureaucrats what the children need. The bureaucratic, overmanaged, underfunded education industry is not structured for education. It's structured to be controlled at successively broader levels of government and industrialized at national and international scale; optimized for inculcating into children the civil religion [1] and a receptiveness to strict organization of their time by authority figures. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
- crazy1van 11y ago
  > underfunded education I was sympathetic to your argument until this part. It varies by region, but we spend what seems like a fortune on school. DC public schools spent over $18,000 per student in 2010 [0]. That's more than my state college tuition. Where does that money go? [0]: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_insurance_real_estate/cb12-113.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_ins...
  - danharaj 11y ago
    s/underfunded/misfunded Money that is wasted may as well never have been used.
  - germinalphrase 11y ago
    Not sure - but as a high school teacher I've been turned down to buy paperbacks (that actually have all their pages) for my classroom due to budget constraints. You're not wrong, and there is a lot of money in compulsory education (hence the push since the 80's to privatize)- but the macro view of educational budgeting doesn't necessarily speak to the direct effect of budgeting on classroom resources.
    - ryandrake 11y ago
      Don't worry, there's plenty of money for sports and administration. The Assistant Vice Principal doesn't have money problems.
    - aianus 11y ago
      That was the opposite of my experience in high school. My math teacher was forced by admin to buy a shipping pallet of shiny new $130 Calculus textbooks which sat in the closet unused all year because the new textbooks covered less material than the ones from the 80s we were already using (the curriculum had since been dumbed down).

logicchains 11y ago

>What part of "sit in this room for 8 hours a day until we cut the umbilical cord, then get a job and contribute to society so that you can afford to live and maybe retire one day. because otherwise you are human garbage." I think the expectation that "people should be good to me just because I was born" lies at the root of much distress. Reality can be harsh: if you don't have anything to offer them, most people don't care much about you. Maybe this is a terrible failing on the part of society, but from a pragmatic perspective it's much easier to change one's viewpoint than to change society. It can be surprisingly liberating to not expect anything from the world.

danharaj 11y ago
> I think the expectation that "people should be good to me just because I was born" lies at the root of much distress. Reality can be harsh: if you don't have anything to offer them, most people don't care much about you. I think your first sentence is either logically vacuous or a sneaky way to disregard someone's emotions: Either you are stating that "feeling mistreated is the same as existing and feeling mistreated" or your clause "just because I was born" is putting words in this abstract person's mouth: "I feel mistreated but I am unjustified in feeling mistreated." Like, your ideas are logically consistent: If you don't feel mistreated then you don't feel mistreated. If you can just stop feeling mistreated then you will be liberated from feeling mistreated. It completely sidesteps the issue: People feel mistreated for a reason. Why not apply this logic to everything? "Just because I was born, people shouldn't saw off my leg at the knee". The gall of such entitlement! If only one adjusted to the viewpoint that their leg should be sawed off at the knee, they would have a much easier time! Does it sound absurd because I am exaggerating? I'm not really exaggerating that much: depression and anxiety can hurt so much that they drive people to kill themselves. How could such illness be anything but agonizing? You call it reality, but it is not indifferent and impersonal like disease or a storm that sweeps one's home away: We are talking about people. People are intelligible to people. People are answerable people. People interacting with people changes the way people interact with people.
- logicchains 11y ago
  >Like, your ideas are logically consistent: If you don't feel mistreated then you don't feel mistreated. If you can just stop feeling mistreated then you will be liberated from feeling mistreated. It completely sidesteps the issue: People feel mistreated for a reason. Feeling mistreated isn't a feeling; feeling bad is a feeling. We feel bad when we perceive something we interpret as bad happening to us. If we didn't perceive that action as bad, as "mistreating", then we wouldn't feel bad about it. This is hardly a new idea; philosophical traditions like Buddhism and Stoicism are bad around the idea what what causes suffering is our perceptions of the world, and by changing how we perceive things (making fewer value judgements) we can increase our happiness with the world. >You call it reality, but it is not indifferent and impersonal like disease or a storm that sweeps one's home away: We are talking about people. People are intelligible to people. People are answerable people. People interacting with people changes the way people interact with people. It doesn't matter whether it's a natural disaster or people causing the issue: the point is that if it's not something that can easily be changed, getting emotional about changing it won't lead to a happy state of mind. >Why not apply this logic to everything? "Just because I was born, people shouldn't saw off my leg at the knee". The gall of such entitlement. If someone saws your leg off at the knee and there's nothing you can do about it, you'll have a less miserable time if you just accept it and move on than if you remain bitter about it.