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Sounds like you might want to read this.

It's not as complicated as many make it out to be, encourage today's youth to think for themselves and experiment, not conform.

Either you didn't go to school in the U.S., or you are really really old.

Today's schools are ALL ABOUT CONFORMITY!!!! If you don't conform, you are labeled, socially persecuted, and outcast by the flock. Schools also don't like it when you think for yourself. Try having your kid question a teacher or principal on a confrontational position they take. MOST, not all, will pull power trip and put you in your place. Fear has been instituted into the educational system, as the method for keeping the authoritative position. I point you here, http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html/, as a good start at where the US educational system is at. Its a few years old, and things have probably gotten worse since then.

Teaching kids to think for themselves, and explore and experiment with their environment, IS the right idea. The educational system isn't going to do this though. This will have to start at home, which is why there has been a huge increase in the amount of kids being homeschooled. Also, remove the concept that not everyone can play in the NBA, NFL, MLB, and that wealth equates happiness, and you might see that people start living for something other than money. Institute the idea that accomplishment and discovery has virtue greater than wealth, and you might just see a change in our social consciousness.

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

For the last hundred years, your public education system has been dumbing people down and encouraging conformity. Entire generations have now been raised which don't have the values, beliefs or courage of the people who founded your country.

• The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong."
• The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch.
• The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command.
• The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study.
• In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth.
• In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched.

If you don't want to read the whole book, try The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher (by the same author). By the way, Gatto was New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991.

Actually, it's about the six lessons.

Yeah, there's no agenda here. Why, this is only being done to make each of them better, happier, and more productive citizens. As an Anonymous Coward said, this is a reiteration of Hitler Youth, much like the D.A.R.E. program.

The D.A.R.E. program will never encourage children to consider whether it is just for a government of a "free country" to tell its citizens what they may or may not put into their own bodies (on the basis of regulating interstate trade, no less ... aren't those "implied powers" great?) -- if it were such an absurd thing to consider, then it could at least be mentioned and demonstrated as such. No, instead, D.A.R.E. is "taught" by armed, uniformed police officers instead of former drug addicts who have overcome an addiction and don't want someone else to go through the same ordeal, because former drug addicts would not be so interested in encouraging the children to help them police the parents and extended family. The basic idea here is that if your law requires police-state tactics to enforce, then your law is broken.

Likewise, you can bet your ass that this program will never encourage children to evaluate for themselves whether the RIAA/MPAA are using the law to prop up an obsolete business model and whether or not these future voters should consider eliminating such corruption, which is what being a good citizen is all about. Rather, you can expect that this civil matter concerning arbitrary copyright and its infringement will be falsely elevated to the status of a moral question and will be taught in terms of right and wrong.

In both situations the parents are reaping the rewards of ignoring their responsibility and depending on large organizations like the government education monopolists or the Boy Scouts to take care of the upbringing of their children. Not that it matters, really, since vast numbers of them love their children so much that they decided to allow themselves to become single parents and/or to allow their children to be born into poverty. I guess "free" education starts looking pretty good when you put no forethought into one of the most important decisions you can make.

We badly need for a country that values independent thought, critical thinking, and minimal government to economically kick the asses of the rest of the world and demonstrate that these things are more than luxuries. Unfortunately I don't know of such a domain; a long time ago this was the USA, but oh how far we have fallen. Most of the rest of the world seems heavily invested in the groupthink bandwagon as well.

Dada21 isn't the only one. The current public education system sucks. Here is a critique of the public school system from an insider:

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

John Taylor Gatto puts it very nicely in his essay entitled "The Six Lesson Schoolteacher".

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

This is why I homeschool my kids.

I'll be the first to point this out (as I'm sure it's been pointed out many times on slashdot)--Gates has openly stated in an interview with Focus Magazine that users aren't interested in bug fixes.

I've read other interviews with Gates in which he went further to explain himself by saying that the feedback they received from users was rarely requesting a bug fix. He listed a percentage in the high nineties that was feedback suggesting new features. And so, with each upgrade and patch, the aim wasn't for security or bug fixes but instead for new features which a lot of people asked for. The engineers will blame him for taking that approach but I'm sure the businessmen will laugh and follow Gates all the way to the bank.

Now, to be fair, it seems he has changed his stance (which--calm down--I believe people are allowed to do). And I applaud them if they really are trying to rectify what they made mistakes on in the past with their new patching strategy. There is (obviously) much debate about if they actually are trying to fix it and if these are actually quality patches. I'm sure the flamewar that ensues on this article will demonstrate that adequately.

I will make a speculation though. IN MY OPINION, the largest thing Microsoft has to fear is a perfectly secure operation system they have created and distributed throughout the world. This is because they will no longer have "upgrades" or new versions of Windows to offer costumers. Yes, some customers are looking for new features, but oftentimes I find myself on my Windows machine just begging it to behave properly as a cut and dry OS. If the rumors of Vista are true and it is an efficient and secure operating system that can function in plain jane deterministic manners, then I want it dual booting with Linux and nothing more ... ever.

I don't know about you guys, but I think we should be teaching science in science class.. NOT religion, guess what, I bet everyone agrees with me on that one -- so why is there such a controversy over this? why is everyone up in arms disputing one another?
This is why:
People do not want their children being taught a religion that is contrary to their own while spending their own tax dollars to pay for their childrens indoctrination.

Ok, well lets dig a bit deeper into this. There are a few different definitions for evolution, but that is because they apply to particular areas of it, let's look at each area.
The overall complete theory of evolution (please someone, anyone, correct me if I am wrong -- I wasn't indoctrinated by our public school system, I learned on my own.) goes something like this.
1. Cosmic evolution - how time and space came into existance, the origins of our universe (big bang)
2. Chemical evolution - how we have all these different elements, even though the big bang was only thought to produce hydrogen, helium, and maybe lithium.
3. Stellar/planetary evolution - how the stars and planets were formed.
4. Organic evolution - how non living material came to life. spontaneous generation from years of raining on a rock to produce a 'life soup'.
5. Macro evolution - all the life on earth having a common ancestor, the process of one type of animal producing another type of animal due to a wide array of different variables.


and last but surely not least

6. micro evolution - the variations and differences that exist within 2 animals of the same type.

You know the odd part? They're going to show your kids 5000 different examples of micro evolution, why? because it happens, it's *science*. no creationist in their right mind would say that microevolution does not happen. everyone knows it does. however, the school doesn't want to sell it on its own, it's a package deal with the rest of the theory -- which is NOT science. Science is an array of phonomena that we can test, observe, and recreate. There is *NO* proof for any of the items listed above, 1-5, and there is NO way to observe test or prove them. That isn't science, folks.. it's religion.

Now think about it a second. You don't want to pay for the far right christian whacko's teaching your children that in the beginning, GOD created everything, including us, although we have no proof for this -- however, you do want your tax dollars teaching your children that a ROCK created us, although you have no proof for it.

You want something that will make you sick? Read this. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.htmlThe truth of public school teaching, from a teacher that taught public school 35+ years.

same difference.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

I found this essay in the Fall '91 issue of Whole Earth Review. It finally clarified for me why American school is such a spirit-crushing experience, and suggested what to do about it.

Before reading, please set your irony detector to the on position. If you find yourself inclined to dismiss the below as paranoid, you should know that the design behind the current American school system is very well-documented historically, in published writings of dizzying cynicism by such well-known figures as Horace Mann and Andrew Carnegie.

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.

Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:

The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.

In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.

The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.

The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.

The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your wi

The evil public school system oppresses everyone equally, not just smart kids.

The Six Lesson Schoolteacher, by John Taylor Gatto

Hell, in general the US could use a major overhaul of the educational system. It's way too focused on conformity and process than on results.

Sure. You can read The Underground History of American Education online. If you don't feel like you have time to read the whole book just now, start with his short essay, The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher .

It isn't just science education. It's the math education, too. Math education in this country sucks. Really sucks.

All the math classes I have seen or heard of in the US are all about learning the "designated correct" way of doing things. If you came to the right answer using sound mathematical principles that differ from the procedural manner taught, you are marked wrong. It's as if learning about mathematics and learning how to do well in math class are two entirely different subjects.

The current system teaches following directions at the expense of critical thinking. Learning to follow directions is certainly useful, but it shouldn't be the entire point of math classes and the educational system as a whole.

What we have is a system that turns out automatons, not intelligent people capable of *using* math (and other education) as a tool. Here is an inside opinion on what our school system really teaches, from the state of NY's Teacher of the Year:

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

I'm going to assume this is a mistranscription or a bad editor; otherwise, this is the single greatest thing to come out of Bill Gates' mouth, ever.

It's just a misleading summary. This one is still champion:

"There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed."

Other gems, from the same interview:

If you really think there's a bug you should report a bug. Maybe you're not using it properly. Have you ever considered that?

Sit in and listen to Win 95 calls, sit in and listen to Word calls, and wait, just wait for weeks and weeks for someone to call in and say "Oh, I found a bug in this thing". ...

On another note, dumbing-down the curriculum is horribly counter-productive. I lived overseas for a bit as a child and was impressed by the British education system's level of rigor and detail. It may scare some kids away but it's necessary.

Offering a more varied approach to education would also help. Acknowledge that people have different interests and hook them with an angle. This would probably be best at the secondary education stage. To some extent we already have different "tracks" for high school students but there needs to be a greater number of options. It would be interesting to see classes in environmental science, archaeology and astronomy (to name a few) at the high school level.)

Finally, destroy education as an institution. It's a horrible beauracracy that scares away potential teachers, dulls bright minds and generally does little more than produce obedient consumers (but, then again, isn't that what The System is for?) Read this by John Gatto for a succinct summary of what is wrong. Here is some more of his writing: http://www.home-ed.vic.edu.au/Resources/Gatto.htm

Gamer's Desiderata

"You only need to port what's necessary," he said. "If you've got a little graphic interface and it looks real pretty and it's 32-bit, that's fine - it'll run. But when you need the 32-bit addressing, the bigger data space, certainly port that into 64-bit."
This reminds me of some other famous quotes:

"There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed." Source: Focus Magazine, nr.43, pages 206-212, (October 23, 1995) (http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html)
"Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document that" Source: Speech at Computer History Museum (http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/10/01/HNgates talksmuseum_1.html), InfoWorld magazine, October 2001
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

Note that is exactly what Microsoft claims. All those problems with security holes and viruses - that's the user's problem

FOCUS Magazine Interview with Bill Gates: Microsoft Code Has No Bugs

Gates:
No! There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.

FOCUS:
Oh, my God. I always get mad at my computer if MS Word swallows the page numbers of a document which I printed a couple of times with page numbers. If I complain to anybody they say "Well, upgrade from version 5.11 to 6.0".

Gates:
No! If you really think there's a bug you should report a bug. Maybe you're not using it properly. Have you ever considered that?

If it doesn't interfere with revenue, it's not a bug, by Bill's definition.

Read the book The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto. It is available for free on his website. If you want to see briefly what it is about before you read it (fair enough) there is a 2 page essay that is kind of similar by him here. However unlike in his essay, in his book gatto meticulously quotes from primary sources to make his points about the evils of our educational system.

...cautioned the reader to take the material with a grain of salt. This is *always* good advice: people should never blindly accept any theory as fact.

Don't forget that the school system does not want you to question authority...

(Look up John Gatto, he's got some interesting writing out there.)

-1, Offtopic. We were talking about schools. What do schools have to do with education?

You will find some background on education versus schooling here. I've got a very brief commentary on American vs foreign school funding here.

What it all boils down to is that American schools do their job very well, but that job is not providing the kind of education which makes good citizens for our republic: that job is to churn out docil workers for the 19th century industrialists, and cannon fodder for the 19th century armies.

If it weren't for a great many good teachers doing what they can in spite of the system, our educational system would be far more destructive than it is.

I have this article bookmarked for easy access when people say stupid things. Fortunately I myself have avoided the American school system (grown up overseas... yay) except for one year, but from that one year (freshman year of high school) I have to agree with it all the way.

John Taylor Gatto, The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

"There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed."

Maybe if MS put features in their products before they worked, and actually had free support, they'd find out what's broken in the features and be able to fix them faster.

Of course, according to Bill Gates, MS Word is perfect for all users using the software properly, so why would MS need to do that?

Funny how rather than spend $1/2 billion on a phone line, open source software finds ways to solve such problems faster and quicker (and cheaper) than waiting for "statistically significant" numbers of people to call and complain.

A quick intro to the ideas explained at length in the book may be found at The Six Lesson Schoolteacher, from an article by Gatto published in Whole Earth Review in 1991.

Microsoft Code Has No Bugs

>Do it anyway. He'll get a better education that way.

I was going to say you were right, but then I realized that you're wrong. The kid won't get a better education, he'll get an education! Schools are about schooling, and education is not included.

There are very few good teachers, but those few are responsible for all the education which happens in the schools. For a good view of what schooling is all about, and how it differs from education, see John Taylor Gatto's essay, The Six-Lesson School Teacher.

I use nkvir-rc under procmail to filter them, which leaves only a few dozen bounce messages per day from sites that got viruses with my return address on them. I have amended nkvir-rc to work properly with Maildir-style mailboxes. (Probably the next released version will have these improvements.)

Bill Gates -- "Do you want to know what percentage of those phonecalls relates to bugs in the software? Less than one percent."

Microsoft Word/Office or any other Microsoft products after Bill Gates gave this interview in 1995.

And no, it's not a fake.

Preparing students for society actually is the primary function of school. It's far more important than either educating the kids in traditional subjects or keeping kids out of their parents' hair. Read The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher by John Taylor Gatto for more info.

Yes, sometimes the truth hurts, but that doesn't make it "overrated."

Rob

Ben Franklin advised his son not to allow schooling to interfere with his education.

A side note about public libraries and such: I've never been able to reconcile my views on individual sovereignty and property rights in relation to public libraries and schools. Thomas Jefferson and I had the same problem.

An individual should not be forced to pay taxes to fund a program for the benefit of others. Yet an uneducated populace is an easy target for propaganda and dictatorship.

The second mistake is to assume that public schools help people resist propaganda. That's just silly. Without public schools, people would probably be better than they are now at recognizing propaganda because they wouldn't have been subjected to so much irrational dogmatic nonsense disguised as education. Having a single legal monopoly provider of education services in a huge geographic region makes it much easier for those who want to bias the curriculum in various ways to do so by dumbing down the textbooks and in other ways influencing the statewide curriculum.

In a more competitive system, teaching methods and information sources would be more varied with different schools trying different approaches. There'd be no single point of failure, no solitary commitee one could influence in order to change the information that 90% of the students in a state are exposed to. So the propagandist's task would be harder than it is today.

LOL -- I love it when people think the left wing runs "the conspiracy." Good luck with that one ;)

*peels of laughter*

*ahem.*

Now, fuck off.

"Our ability to hear is quite good."

Anyone remember this?

1. Never use open-ended statements, such as "if you do this" and "just about every time", without first reminding readers that you are an expert in your field, and you only discuss facts.
2. When arguing that the user is the principal cause of computer problems, be sure to also state that MS has always had a policy of considering the user's needs first and foremost when designing products.
3. Never end a comment by stating "But I'm sure we can twist this into an anti-MS thread anyway" without a friendly wave (all fingers out) and a smile.

I haven't touched it in a year, because Gmate never released source for anything but the kernel. Worse, their web site had a place to upload things, but anything they didn't like, (like my cool USB base station mod, evidently [see the serial number?]) they just tossed, without a reply -- the upload would just vanish into the ether. (I uploaded three times just to be sure it was deliberate.)

It appears they wanted people to write applications, but not to fool with the hardware or kernel.

I hope they have got less contemptuous of hackers in days since. At this point I would be a lot more likely to order one of those Japan-only Zauruses.

Bugs (that cause crashes, etc.), actually...are cool .

Oh, and users are 'Luddites'. So, it's the loose nut behind the wheel, not the CPU or the software that is the root cause, after all.

...FLAME ON
You... FUCKING... Jackass. With a capital J. I mean seriously.

I'm going to beat you with a clue stick for a minute based on your ASSumptions. 1) You don't know what freedom is or what it means until you don't have it. The first thing the military does is take that freedom away, long enough to show you just how precious it is - which is why the most ardent defenders of freedom are typically in the military. Dumb ass. 2) School... oh Christ, get a clue. If you think school was a waste of time, you probably didn't get anything out of it... because your an idiot.
Now... let's hit your quotes:
Life is about the struggle, constant improvement, striving to make each day better than the last How would you know? What's the last challenge, struggle or self improvement task you've completed in the last 6 years? Seriously, your whole rant screams that you've never left your own suburb. But you managed to lose your mind...
Schools were created to train people to crave the direction of leaders and to feel empty without someone telling them what to do Really? OH DAMN! Your RIGHT! I'll bet schools were created for just that purpose! I can't believe we didn't see it before! IT'S A SECRET GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY! The... the... illuminati! Who meet thrice yearly with "The Colonel" in a secret meeting place known only as... the meadows... What a jackass.

I find nothing pathetic about trying to open the eyes of someone blinded by deceit. That is a human life out there, wasting a way not much greater than an animal. Instead of kidding myself that a warrior caste is necessary to protect the people, I try to give mindless drones their lives back. Maybe I don't always succeed, but I sure as hell try. Thats life. It's pathetic when the one who's trying to open the other person's eyes doesn't have a brain. You don't know enough about religion, the beliefs people have about God, world cultures or true oppression to make any of these judgments. You've never seen shacks filled with villagers, all dead, who made the mistake of refusing to give all of their food to Columbian rebels. You've never seen an Afghani woman who's had her face cut off (literally) by her family because she was raped. The warrior caste you speak of is necessary because people like you will deny that these things happen, and when faced with the reality that it does, will claim that those people should just stick up for themselves. People like you are what make things like this possible.

Anyway, have fun slaughtering the innocent citizens of Iraq Truly a pathetic attempt at the 'baby killer' epitaph of the 70's. (And I never once said I was in favor of this war. You ASSume too much again.)

You don't know anyone in the military or anyone who believes in God, and if you do, the most you know about them is their name and that they are in the military or believe in God. You're a bigot. You've succeded. That's your life. How enlightened you must be.

Focus was too. Did you follow the clueless response link?

He doesn't have to, IMHO it looks like a satirical story.

From the Cantrip Corpus homepage:

cantrip: (kän tRip), n. (Chiefly Scot.) 1. a magical charm or enchantment; 2. an elaborate deception or prank.
corpus: (kôr pus), n., pl. -pora, 1. a complete set of writings; 2. a dead body.

It doesnt need to be verified, in the same ways that this this and this don't need to be verified.

One of the things that makes it funny is how penetratingly insightful it is, but only accidentally!

Check out this clueless response to the interview. This person had similar thoughts.

How do /. editors know that this was a real interview ?

This link is not even on FOCUS magazine's website

This post fooled you all
The interview link in the post is on The Cantrip Corpus
website

cantrip: (kän tRip), n. (Chiefly Scot.)
1. a magical charm or enchantment; 2. an elaborate deception or prank.
corpus: (kôr pus), n., pl. -pora,
1. a complete set of writings; 2. a dead body.

How do /. editors know that this was a real interview ?

This link is not even on FOCUS magazine's website

This post fooled you all
The interview link in the post is on The Cantrip Corpus
website

cantrip: (kän tRip), n. (Chiefly Scot.)
1. a magical charm or enchantment; 2. an elaborate deception or prank.
corpus: (kôr pus), n., pl. -pora,
1. a complete set of writings; 2. a dead body.

Better to put the responsibility for fixing a driver or api call on somebody who is both libel to me and who has experience in doing so.

- dasmegabyte


To quote the FOCUS Magazine interview with Bill Gates [October 23, 1995]:

"FOCUS:
Every new release of a software which has less bugs than the older one is also more complex and has more features...

Gates:
No, only if that is what'll sell!

FOCUS:
But...

Gates:
Only if that is what'll sell! We've never done a piece of software unless we thought it would sell. That's why everything we do in software ... it's really amazing: We do it because we think that's what customers want. That's why we do what we do.

FOCUS:
But on the other hand - you would say: Okay, folks, if you don't like these new features, stay with the old version, and keep the bugs?

Gates:
No! We have lots and lots of competitors. The new version - it's not there to fix bugs. That's not the reason we come up with a new version.

FOCUS:
But there are bugs an any version which people would really like to have fixed.

Gates:
No! There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.

FOCUS:
Oh, my God. I always get mad at my computer if MS Word swallows the page numbers of a document which I printed a couple of times with page numbers. If I complain to anybody they say "Well, upgrade from version 5.11 to 6.0".

Gates:
No! If you really think there's a bug you should report a bug. Maybe you're not using it properly. Have you ever considered that?

FOCUS:
Yeah, I did...

Gates:
It turns out Luddites don't know how to use software properly, so you should look into that. -- The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard. When we do a new version we put in lots of new things that people are asking for. And so, in no sense, is stability a reason to move to a new version. It's never a reason."


So, you can see that your assumption is incorrect. YOU CAN NOT DEPEND ON YOUR VENDOR TO FIX IT. We found this out the hard way at my job - after spending millions of dollars; now we have an open architecture system where we can plug and play different vendor solutions easily, and use open source next to vendor supplied applications.

On the other hand, I have written the maintainer of a famous development environment [don't want to drop names - not good form] - and he returned my email the same day with an answer to my question. My experience tells me your basic understanding does not jive with reality.