5 ms·

It seems to be a common thing for people who didn't get a decent education in maths and science to decry the teaching of maths and science.

rayiner 7y ago
> people who didn't get a decent education in maths and science Guess who teaches our kids?
- brighton36 7y ago
  The state assimilates children. It's the job of the parents to make them exceptional. That's the way it's always been. That's the way it has to be.
  - rtisdale 7y ago
    >That's the way it's always been. That's the way it has to be. My sarcasm detector may be off so if it was, please forgive me. Why must it continue to be that way? It's possible we must expect and accept that children from broken, impoverished, or abusive homes will just be, well, screwed in comparison to their better off peers. Can't we instead look for a better way? - Improve the funding and education of our public schools (particularly by the decoupling of property taxes being the primary source of school funding). - Take a hard look at our current minimum wage and find a way to make it easier for hard working people to make ends meet, allowing them more time to nurture and teach their children. Giving up on hard luck children is by extension giving up on our societies future. To me at least, thats simply untenable.
    - brighton36 7y ago
      Because exceptionalism requires knowledge asymmetry, relative to the mean. I think it's definitional that You can't have a macro-scale program that delivers exceptional results to all participants. I don't think mediocre is unacceptable. But, I do think the country's achievement systems do. And yes, we should look for better systems. I don't think funding will improve the education system much, unfortunately. Probably we would be better off spending that money reducing the number of single parent families. (Somehow...)
      - saiya-jin 7y ago
        I think I get the downvotes, although there is some truth. If everybody is exceptional, nobody is. For better or worse, we still live in system where parents are responsible for their kids wellbeing. You can't just outsource good parenting to school teachers. Just because somebody has this high paying job and doesn't have time for your kids at all, the reality won't reshuffle itself to make them feel like success. Do your god damn job as a parent, and don't just throw money at the problem. On the other side, we all would benefit from good quality education for everybody. I mean proper benefit for whole mankind for generations, golden age and whatnot. Currently, in many places which prefer predatory mindset (looking at you too, US), its everybody for themselves, fuck the rest, the higher I am above everybody else the better I am off. Well, not really if you actually want to live in society. Otherwise you end up walled in your luxury home like in South Africa, with private security, but afraid to go out after dark, carrying guns everywhere, high crime rate etc.
        brighton36 7y ago
        People don't want to hear what they don't want to hear. The downvotes are reasonable. The vote count has little to do with truth, and much to do with affirmation. I agree that we all benefit from a high quality education for the children. I think you're describing 'Bellum omnium contra omnes'. And yes, we seem to be heading in that direction in much of the world.
      - ElFitz 7y ago
        Depends; you can could consider the mean to that of the whole world, or the whole of History, and seek exceptionalism relative to that. In case, we would seek to have a macro-scale program delivering exceptional results to all of our current participants.
        brighton36 7y ago
        If we consider the mean to 'that of the whole world' then, our task is done. A child from today needs to merely watch television for an hour a day, in order to be wiser than the average human being across time. School would be unnecessary. Your last sentence isn't reasonable. We would test the performance of participants in your proposed program, and a bell curve would immediately arise.
    - thereisnospork 7y ago
      >we must expect and accept that children from broken, impoverished, or abusive homes will just be, well, screwed in comparison to their better off peers. It is worth noting that a world where children from broken, impoverished (etc.) homes are not disadvantaged is a world where one cannot advantage one's own kids. There is of course a strong argument for significant societal investment in keeping children from broken homes from raising broken homes of their own.
      - keenmaster 7y ago
        If every kid had an equally advantaged upbringing, the world would be a better place. The metaphorical pie would grow rather than just be subdivided more. Furthermore, the gains would be somewhat non-linear. There are many benefits to having a larger network of people on the same psycho-intellectual wavelength. Contributions from the marginal additions to the network would propagate back and forth across the network, adding value along the way in a manner that transcends the self. That is a strong case for greater state involvement and expenditure in setting our youth up for success, especially disadvantaged youth. It’s also a strong case for easing off of our property tax-based system for allocating school revenues, which naturally results in very different school quality. Even if you’re cynical about how much the government can do, let’s say that 20% of disadvantaged youth that otherwise would have led terrible lives instead become productive citizens and parents as a result of stringent, uncompromising education reform. That 20% will break the cycle for their kids, and after a few generations, the baseline level of parenting in this country will be improved by a good amount.
        thereisnospork 7y ago
        If every kid has an equally advantaged upbringing then by definition a crack-whore[1] is as good a mother as anyone's. I'm no social-psychiatrist but I'd wager 'wanting to provide better for one's offspring' ranks just behind 'food' and 'sex' as primal motivators. Please don't take this as an argument against taking steps to improve education and opportunity[2], only that anything approaching true flatness would represent a massive disruption of social order and motivation. [1] Literal. [2] I agree with most of your suggestions; educated persons are valuable.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    The people I know who I was regard as exceptional seem to have done it despite their parents, not because of them.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    You're correct, in the strictly logical sense. But, that doesn't mean we can't move the bar for all students upward. We can look for ways to ensure the average student learns more, or has more tangible skills, or whatever else we want. The rising tide floats all boats, yada yada yada.
- tptacek 7y ago
  This seems needlessly nasty. Are you sure that's a thing you want to have said, and that there wasn't a better, narrower way to have put it?
jhanschoo 7y ago
To go on a tangent, one very important topic (even more than STEM) that I don't think is formally taught at all is governance. I think children should get a proper education formally and practically on how to balance and how to meet the political (in the sense that these are needs that are solved at the societal / collective level) needs of a group of people. It doesn't have to be a large group; along the lines of the entire school or talking about the needs of a district or city would do. I think that such education would go a long way to help people understand what is important in governance, and be more resistant to political ideology that is harmful to these things.
- hnuser123456 7y ago
  Not sure I follow. In a government, the primary need is that the people feel free, feel like they're not being ordered around by a dictator, that they can have fun or do what they want or set their own rules. Any rigid structure of governance that is focused on anything else will eventually fail. The constitution is a list of things the government can't do.
  - jhanschoo 7y ago
    > In a government, the primary need is that the people feel free, feel like they're not being ordered around by a dictator, that they can have fun or do what they want or set their own rules. > Any rigid structure of governance that is focused on anything else will eventually fail. I don't think we are contradicting each other. The need to feel free and have flexibility in certain aspects of governance is a political need that needs to be balanced. An education in governance should address this aspect so that citizens are more tuned-in to abuses of office and institutions that infringe on freedoms that most citizens have not chosen to yield to the government. Even though we were not contradicting each other, I do not completely agree with this. > In a government, the primary need is that the people feel free, feel like they're not being ordered around by a dictator, that they can have fun or do what they want or set their own rules. I think you recognize that this freedom here is quite qualified. The freedom to do what we want or set our own rules certainly need to be qualified at least around to the extent that they do not cause negative consequences to other people. Where the exact boundaries are are always shifting depending on the specific circumstances and population, and this is why various needs need to be balanced by government; i.e. the extent of this freedom is being balanced by other societal needs. Hence I would say that prima facie, a primary objective is a balance of freedom and well-being of the citizenry, with neither need superior over the other. On the other hand, > [the freedom to] set their own rules may sometimes be done most efficiently and reliably through governmental institutions, using government institutions to conduct certain self-funded voluntary programs.
taneq 7y ago
From what I've seen they tend to go to either extreme. Some decry the technical subjects they missed out on as useless, some laud them as the pathway to a golden future.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Sort of how people with no education in philosophy and art decry them?

rayiner 7y ago

> people who didn't get a decent education in maths and science Guess who teaches our kids?

brighton36 7y ago
The state assimilates children. It's the job of the parents to make them exceptional. That's the way it's always been. That's the way it has to be.
- rtisdale 7y ago
  >That's the way it's always been. That's the way it has to be. My sarcasm detector may be off so if it was, please forgive me. Why must it continue to be that way? It's possible we must expect and accept that children from broken, impoverished, or abusive homes will just be, well, screwed in comparison to their better off peers. Can't we instead look for a better way? - Improve the funding and education of our public schools (particularly by the decoupling of property taxes being the primary source of school funding). - Take a hard look at our current minimum wage and find a way to make it easier for hard working people to make ends meet, allowing them more time to nurture and teach their children. Giving up on hard luck children is by extension giving up on our societies future. To me at least, thats simply untenable.
  - brighton36 7y ago
    Because exceptionalism requires knowledge asymmetry, relative to the mean. I think it's definitional that You can't have a macro-scale program that delivers exceptional results to all participants. I don't think mediocre is unacceptable. But, I do think the country's achievement systems do. And yes, we should look for better systems. I don't think funding will improve the education system much, unfortunately. Probably we would be better off spending that money reducing the number of single parent families. (Somehow...)
    - saiya-jin 7y ago
      I think I get the downvotes, although there is some truth. If everybody is exceptional, nobody is. For better or worse, we still live in system where parents are responsible for their kids wellbeing. You can't just outsource good parenting to school teachers. Just because somebody has this high paying job and doesn't have time for your kids at all, the reality won't reshuffle itself to make them feel like success. Do your god damn job as a parent, and don't just throw money at the problem. On the other side, we all would benefit from good quality education for everybody. I mean proper benefit for whole mankind for generations, golden age and whatnot. Currently, in many places which prefer predatory mindset (looking at you too, US), its everybody for themselves, fuck the rest, the higher I am above everybody else the better I am off. Well, not really if you actually want to live in society. Otherwise you end up walled in your luxury home like in South Africa, with private security, but afraid to go out after dark, carrying guns everywhere, high crime rate etc.
      - brighton36 7y ago
        People don't want to hear what they don't want to hear. The downvotes are reasonable. The vote count has little to do with truth, and much to do with affirmation. I agree that we all benefit from a high quality education for the children. I think you're describing 'Bellum omnium contra omnes'. And yes, we seem to be heading in that direction in much of the world.
    - ElFitz 7y ago
      Depends; you can could consider the mean to that of the whole world, or the whole of History, and seek exceptionalism relative to that. In case, we would seek to have a macro-scale program delivering exceptional results to all of our current participants.
      - brighton36 7y ago
        If we consider the mean to 'that of the whole world' then, our task is done. A child from today needs to merely watch television for an hour a day, in order to be wiser than the average human being across time. School would be unnecessary. Your last sentence isn't reasonable. We would test the performance of participants in your proposed program, and a bell curve would immediately arise.
  - thereisnospork 7y ago
    >we must expect and accept that children from broken, impoverished, or abusive homes will just be, well, screwed in comparison to their better off peers. It is worth noting that a world where children from broken, impoverished (etc.) homes are not disadvantaged is a world where one cannot advantage one's own kids. There is of course a strong argument for significant societal investment in keeping children from broken homes from raising broken homes of their own.
    - keenmaster 7y ago
      If every kid had an equally advantaged upbringing, the world would be a better place. The metaphorical pie would grow rather than just be subdivided more. Furthermore, the gains would be somewhat non-linear. There are many benefits to having a larger network of people on the same psycho-intellectual wavelength. Contributions from the marginal additions to the network would propagate back and forth across the network, adding value along the way in a manner that transcends the self. That is a strong case for greater state involvement and expenditure in setting our youth up for success, especially disadvantaged youth. It’s also a strong case for easing off of our property tax-based system for allocating school revenues, which naturally results in very different school quality. Even if you’re cynical about how much the government can do, let’s say that 20% of disadvantaged youth that otherwise would have led terrible lives instead become productive citizens and parents as a result of stringent, uncompromising education reform. That 20% will break the cycle for their kids, and after a few generations, the baseline level of parenting in this country will be improved by a good amount.
      - thereisnospork 7y ago
        If every kid has an equally advantaged upbringing then by definition a crack-whore[1] is as good a mother as anyone's. I'm no social-psychiatrist but I'd wager 'wanting to provide better for one's offspring' ranks just behind 'food' and 'sex' as primal motivators. Please don't take this as an argument against taking steps to improve education and opportunity[2], only that anything approaching true flatness would represent a massive disruption of social order and motivation. [1] Literal. [2] I agree with most of your suggestions; educated persons are valuable.
- arethuza 7y ago
  The people I know who I was regard as exceptional seem to have done it despite their parents, not because of them.
- alistairSH 7y ago
  You're correct, in the strictly logical sense. But, that doesn't mean we can't move the bar for all students upward. We can look for ways to ensure the average student learns more, or has more tangible skills, or whatever else we want. The rising tide floats all boats, yada yada yada.
tptacek 7y ago
This seems needlessly nasty. Are you sure that's a thing you want to have said, and that there wasn't a better, narrower way to have put it?

jhanschoo 7y ago

To go on a tangent, one very important topic (even more than STEM) that I don't think is formally taught at all is governance. I think children should get a proper education formally and practically on how to balance and how to meet the political (in the sense that these are needs that are solved at the societal / collective level) needs of a group of people. It doesn't have to be a large group; along the lines of the entire school or talking about the needs of a district or city would do. I think that such education would go a long way to help people understand what is important in governance, and be more resistant to political ideology that is harmful to these things.

hnuser123456 7y ago
Not sure I follow. In a government, the primary need is that the people feel free, feel like they're not being ordered around by a dictator, that they can have fun or do what they want or set their own rules. Any rigid structure of governance that is focused on anything else will eventually fail. The constitution is a list of things the government can't do.
- jhanschoo 7y ago
  > In a government, the primary need is that the people feel free, feel like they're not being ordered around by a dictator, that they can have fun or do what they want or set their own rules. > Any rigid structure of governance that is focused on anything else will eventually fail. I don't think we are contradicting each other. The need to feel free and have flexibility in certain aspects of governance is a political need that needs to be balanced. An education in governance should address this aspect so that citizens are more tuned-in to abuses of office and institutions that infringe on freedoms that most citizens have not chosen to yield to the government. Even though we were not contradicting each other, I do not completely agree with this. > In a government, the primary need is that the people feel free, feel like they're not being ordered around by a dictator, that they can have fun or do what they want or set their own rules. I think you recognize that this freedom here is quite qualified. The freedom to do what we want or set our own rules certainly need to be qualified at least around to the extent that they do not cause negative consequences to other people. Where the exact boundaries are are always shifting depending on the specific circumstances and population, and this is why various needs need to be balanced by government; i.e. the extent of this freedom is being balanced by other societal needs. Hence I would say that prima facie, a primary objective is a balance of freedom and well-being of the citizenry, with neither need superior over the other. On the other hand, > [the freedom to] set their own rules may sometimes be done most efficiently and reliably through governmental institutions, using government institutions to conduct certain self-funded voluntary programs.

taneq 7y ago

From what I've seen they tend to go to either extreme. Some decry the technical subjects they missed out on as useless, some laud them as the pathway to a golden future.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

Sort of how people with no education in philosophy and art decry them?