Slashdot Mirror
Former Supreme Court Justice Switches to Video Games
TechDirt is reporting that former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has moved into the one industry that I don't think anyone might have expected, video games. Not only did she speak at a recent gaming conference, she is also working on creating a video game about the courts. "There have been many similar 'civic education' video games out there, like the UN video game to teach kids about world hunger and, my personal favorite, a video game to teach kids how to gerrymander voting districts to get political support. It's not clear how successful any of these sorts of games really are, but it's nice to see a former Supreme Court Justice taking an interest in these sorts of things. Though, some might point out that this could be seen as something of a gimmick, and students might just be better served by adding a decent civics curriculum back into school (it's apparently gone thanks to No Child Left Behind)."
http://www.redistrictinggame.com/
Try it out.
Yeah, because there weren't any schools failing before that law passed, and states don't have a choice whether to participate.
Perhaps it doesn't work. Fine. What would you have the government do?
I'll start: abolish the Dept. of Education and get the Feds out of the schools. Period.
Don't like that? What's your idea? Don't have one? Then STFU.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Legalize highly explosive fireworks and wait a month?
There is a problem in that the Federal government has no mandate to enforce common standards in education. But lets say the states allowed the Federal government that power, and I agree this might be a good thing to do for some under performing schools. I also agree blaming NCLB isn't addressing some of the serious problems. But by the same token, NCLB itself doesn't address the serious problems, and in its implementation is a hindrance to effective education.
I don't see the evidence that the litigious nature of schools and hyper-sensitive parents have a significant detrimental effect on education. Short of hitting kids, what methods of classroom discipline are teachers scared of using and getting sued for? More to the point, it is the parents that flat don't care to foster a learning environment for their children that create the most problems in schools, and long term in our society.
There is also a great disparity in funding between schools in rural Alabama vs. inner-city New York, etc. If the Federal government is going to place standards on education, I think school funding should be federalized and equalized based on local expenses and needs for meeting the standards.
Conversely teachers and administrations are under threat of losing funding and their jobs if children don't pass the NCLB tests. There are 2 problems here, standardized tests don't teach children anything in and of themselves, not all children are good at taking this one kind of pseudo-objectified test, and of course this incentivizes teachers and administrators to teach to the test up to excluding other valuable education to become a well rounded person.
NCLB must be scratched. If we chose to reenact national standards, we first need to look at the outcome we want, think about how to incentivize that outcome, and then craft subtle regulations and funding mechanisms to create that reality, along with looking at the larger social picture. The bellicose political proclamations that became the NCLB are not an appropriate method to resolve the large and important problems here.
Describe in a thousand words or less how you accomplish that without facism. [wikipedia.org]
1. Remove all government fiscal incentives (direct and indirect) for having children.
2. Thorough and compulsory sex education.
3. Free contraceptives.
Every time someone presents a reasoned argument to change an existing status quo, why does someone have to trot out the 'slippery slope' argument? I'm not a U.S. citizen and don't really want to comment on it, but the No Child Left Behind act is incredibly harmful to any intelligent kids imho, based on what I've read about it (mind you, this is mostly /. comments).
The GP was suggesting that people with no/little aptitude for thinking aren't steered into professions that require a lot of it. I certainly think it's a good idea - the brighter students can learn at a faster pace (and be positively influenced by having other bright students around them); and when they graduate will hopefully not be as pathetic at work as the current workforce in most industries.
If a kid is dyslexic or a 'visual learner'; this does not imply anything about their intelligence - I'm sure there are plenty of dumb dyslexics in the world too. For those that aren't; surely the better teachers can guide them well without holding back the rest of the class. I completely fail to see why some kids having health or abuse problems justifies dragging back other kids who, presumably, didn't hurt or abuse them.