Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected?

rtobyr writes "We use the Internet — E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs to communicate with colleagues, friends, and family. When I was in Iraq with the Marine Corps, we used e-mail (secured with encryption and stuff, but e-mail nonetheless) to communicate the commanding officer's order that a combat mission should be carried out. My third grade daughter produces her own YouTube videos, and can create public servers for her games with virtual private network technology. Yet here I am trusting a third grade girl to deliver memos to me about her educational requirements in an age in which I can't remember the last time I used paper. Teachers could have distribution lists of the parents. The kids' homework is printed. Therefore, it must have started as a computer file (I hope they're not still using mimeograph machines). Teachers could e-mail a summary of what's going on, and attach the homework files along with other notices about field trips or conferences that parents should be aware of. Teachers could have an easy way to post all these files to the Internet on blogs. With RSS, parents could subscribe to receive everything that teachers put online. If teachers want to add to the blog their own personal comments about how the school year is going, then all the parents would see that also, and perhaps have the opportunity to comment on the blog. It seems to me that with the right processes, the cost and additional workload would be insignificant. For example, instead of developing a syllabus in MS Word, use Wordpress. Have schools simply not paid attention to the past decade of technology, or is there a reason that these things aren't in place?" It seems odd that primary schools in at least the U.S. don't use technology to communicate with students much. My younger sister went to a private school that made reasonable use of Blackboard, but that seems to be the exception.

Comments

Re:Poor people exist

[causality]

Poor people exist. And attend school.

And reproduce. A tiny percentage of poor people just had "bad luck" or lack of opportunity. The vast, vast majority are poor because of a reason. Here is (one example of) what that reason looks like: "let's see, I can barely afford to feed myself, I have not completed my education, I have not achieved a solid career for myself, I have no savings worth mentioning, and I am not in a stable committed relationship. Wow, I sure am in a great position to have children! I'll just pretend like babies magically happen and are not the product of adult decisions and have lots of risky, casual, unprotected sex with partners who have no intention of becoming parents, yeah, that's the best move I can make at this point in my life!" For fuck's sake, you can get birth control for free and, I hate to break this to you, you can also survive without sex. And for some reason when they complain that life is not what they hoped it would be, you guys drag out the pity-party and think that only a terrible person would ever question the facts of the matter. You are not Mother Theresa, people like that are not victims, and feeling sorry for them does not make you noble and good. It makes you an enabler who legitimizes bad decision-making by adults who should know better. You're such mindless sheep you don't even realize this pity-movement is not even your own idea. It's politically useful to the Democrats and other Leftists who just love social inequalities because it means more power for them. You drank their flavor-aide. Now you think it's your own idea just like every other follower. See the funny thing about feelings is they can be extremely deceptive. You have strong feelings about this and you think that makes it real. That's another thing mature adults don't fall for.

And there's an odd notion that we shouldn't make things even more unfair for them than they already are.

Yes, it's so terribly *unfair* to expect a person who thinks they can afford a child ($$expensive$$) to also afford a computer (cheap). You know what *fair* is? When adults who make good decisions reap what they sow, and adults who make bad decisions also reap what they sow. Anything else is by definition not fair.

What I write below is not an endorsement of the quoted post. I simply want to point out that this is low-quality, abusive moderation. By "abusive" I mean it is not the intended purpose of the moderation system to down-mod posts with which you disagree. Note that there was no bigoted language or anything like that which would actually justify a summary down-mod.

You know, I get mod points from time to time myself. I never bought into this childish culture of using that to silence things simply because I dislike them. The ultimate expression of that mentality was the Spanish Inquisition -- say the wrong thing back then and you might just find yourself tied to a stake. It makes me wonder if these cowardly type of moderators can see what's wrong with that while denying their own hypocrisy. That would be a severe load of cognitive dissonance.

Let's outline two simple conditions:

A) The mod is a total coward with no belief in the strength of his own beliefs.
B) The mod disagrees with this poser.

If and only if both Condition A and Condition B are true, it follows that the moderator would take the cheap-and-easy route of modding this down. If Condition A is false, but Condition B is true, the mod would rebut it. If Condition A and Condition B are both false, there is no action to take.

Now, let's see if there are four cowardly mods who will put me into -1 territory as well. I quoted the post verbatim just to tempt you. Go ahead, I have lots of karma.

Meanwhile, if this post is so terribly wrong it should be easy to demonstrate why.