Study habits don't "rub off". I don't know where this nonsense idea came from that good study habits are a contagious disease that idiots can catch from smart kids.
Kids imitate eachother to feel accepted. Thats why they all want to dress alike and listen to certain types of music. They absorb values through their peer group. If their peer group values good grades, they might be encouraged to get good grades too. I never said it happens all the time, but it does happen. I've seen it happen. It's happened to me.
"working in teacher assigned pairs" is really code for "Make the smart kids teach the dumb ones so the teacher can sit on their lazy ass".
Yeah well obviously if you have a lazy teacher who doesn't keep an eye on the students progress, some kids will take advantage of others. You gotta make it easier to fire incompetent teachers. You also gotta make it easier to hold kids accountable. Keeping slow students at pace with good students doesn't mean letting bullies skip out on their responsibilities. Your teacher should have been fired.
Survival of the most fit. What's wrong with giving the best advantages to the kids who can make the most of it? Is there some nobility to having a world full of mediocre achievers?
Putting "dumb"kids in class with "smart" kids limits the heights to which the smart kids can grow. Putting emotionally or psychologically deficient kids in class with normal kids is disruptive to the normal kids. Do you think the smart/normal kids want the dumb/deficient kids in their class? Of course not.
But guess what? The dumb/deficient kids don't want to be there either. These dumb/deficient kids would much prefer to be in classes with others that are more like them, so they can feel "normal" by comparison with their peers, and receive the appropriate teaching methodologies at a comfortable rate that allows them to feel a sense of accomplishment they otherwise could never achieve when mixed in with kids far above their intelligence.
You completely ignore the reality that many supposedly dumb kids are potential smart kids with no motivation to improve, because everyone around them tells them they are hopelessly dumb, and all their dumb friends think it's cool to be dumb.
No, in most cases, being made fun of makes you feel like you aren't worth anything, and then you stop trying. Only in very few cases does it motivate someone to work harder. Case in point: fat people get made fun of every day. But it doesn't motivate them to lose weight. It makes them sad, which makes them eat, which makes them get fatter.
And what test metric measures a students creativity, critical thinking, and capacity for independent thought? The medium is the message. Tests aren't designed to teach that kind of knowledge. You can change the questions on the tests, but the fact that they are tests means they will always be test questions. In other words, questions with a clear simple answer. How do we test students on subjects without simple answers? Essays are probably more effective in that area, as would be the type of experiential testing that I'm advocating.
"I don't consider myself a genius because there are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way." That's a very special comment right there.
It's also an incredibly shallow triumph of an Olympic grade platitudinous pandering politically correct aphorism. The kid's teacher says he can "see right through the complications," but he's still been brainwashed into thinking that he's not unusual. What a shame. And how typical.
Or maybe he's so smart, he's learned life's most valuable lesson: Nobody will be your friend if you act like an asshole.
Many kids see no immediate positive benefit to education. I know I didn't as a kid. Oh, sure, I knew that "In order to get a good job, you need to go to college!" but I didn't really feel that my efforts got me any semi-immediate gratification. I mean, you're telling a teenager or younger to put out efforts for something that is years, or even decades, away for them.
While I don't agree with this program, I do agree that kids need to see the immediate benefits of education. Kids in poor cities do worse in school, and it's no surprise why: Everyone they see around them is poor. When all you see is poverty, you give up hope of rising above it. And once you've given up on your dreams, education seems like a waste of time. Why bother succeeding in school if you're destined to work in a crappy job for low pay.
I think the answer lies in changing the way we teach. You don't need to think in order to get good grades in today's schools. You only need to memorize, study, and bullshit your way through school. Paying kids for grades will only encourage them to get better at taking tests and spewing out facts and definitions. It doesn't mean they actually understand the material, or care about it.
We need to show kids the benefit of education... but we also need to teach the intrinsic value of education and the joy of thinking. I think the best way for students to learn both lessons is to get experience doing real work where they get to think for themselves, make decisions, and become a valued member of a team. Experience learning. They can see the benefits of having a rewarding job where you feel valued, while learning to think on their feet and become leaders. When I went to college, I had a class in public relations where teams of students were paired up with local non-profits, and had to create a pr campaign for them. It was the hardest thing I ever did in school, but I learned more in that class than I ever did in all 4 years of high school.
What I'm saying is, paying kids is nice, but if you really want them to learn, get them involved in what their learning. Instead of drilling kids on the menus in microsoft word, how about we let them explore computers on their own in a supervised environment. Lets have more science experiments and less science quizzes. It will unlock the benefits of education right away, while teaching them how to learn on their own. They will learn lessons they'll never forget.
I remember taking my first English test in high school. We'd all read this book, and were to be tested on it. I read the book cover to cover, and felt like I really understood it. Not just what the book said, but what it meant. I felt like I picked up on the theme of the book, and the message the author had embedded in the story. Nobody knew that book better than me.
But when I get the test, not one question required me to discuss the book intelligently. It was a multiple choice test, where each question asked you to recall some obscure detail in the book. Example: What was the name of so-and-so's aunt. How many times did whatshername etc. The questions did not test whether you understood the book - just that you read it and memorized parts of it.
And that's the problem with schools and testing - you can pass a test without even understanding the material. Just memorize the details without exploring real concepts and ideas. And thus, it's no wonder this program works. Kids don't need to think in order to pass school, they just need to devote unreasonable amounts of time memorizing facts. And of course, nobody wants to do that sort of tedious studying, unless they are paid for it.
Our school system was set up to prepare students to work in mechanical, fragmentary jobs. They teach kids to memorize and spew out information on command. They teach kids to obey authority, and walk in lines. They teach kids to sit in rows and eat lunch at scheduled times when the bell rings. It's a great way to prepare kids to work in textile mills. Sadly, we have a different type of economy now, where those skills no longer apply.
We must teach kids the intrinsic value of learning. We must teach them to think for themselves, and question the world around them. We must reward creativity, and encourage imaginations to run wild. The students who learn those lessons will succeed in todays information economy. Paying students small wages to do trivial work will only prepare them for jobs where they are paid small wages to do trivial work: McDonalds.
We don't stratify. In other words, we uniformly put the slowest idiots in with everyone else, rather than putting the brightest in one
class and on down the line.
Putting the dumb kids in one class would only pigeon hole those kids. They would be made fun of at school, and systematically taught that they are not as good as the other kids. Whoever ends up teaching "the dumb class" would naturally have low expectations for these supposedly helplessly dumb students, and as we all know, teachers teach worse when their expectations are low. So your plan would help the kids who are already smart, while ruining the lives of kids who need the most help. Hell, many times putting a very dumb student in a class full of smart students improves the dumb student's grades, because good study habits rub off on them.
Re:Talk about your leaky abstractions
on
Unix Turns 40
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· Score: 2, Funny
or copy your mouse electronically until you have a warehouse full of mice? That's how staples can sell em so cheap.
Copyright wasn't established to "control whats yours". It was created to encourage creative ideas by allowing people with good ideas to profit off of them. The right to an artificial monopoly on your own creative works is not a natural right.
Sorry to be pedantic, but by making fun of my misspelling, you've acknowledged that you understood my intent. Clarity is all that matters, and if you understand what I say, it doesn't matter if the way I write it is "correct".
Hell yeah - take email. Email by nature is decentralized. Nobody has a monopoly on email and everybody can have their choice of email providers. But when we start using myspace and facebook messages more than email, we have a problem - myspace cant send messages to facebook and vice versa. So if you want to talk with your friends, you need to join that network. The owners of that network can then have total control of how messages are sent.
I think we could solve this problem by creating ways for social networks to communicate to eachother. Some kind of standard. That way if you didn't like facebook TOS, you could join another network, but still keep in touch with your friends. That will never happen though, since it causes facebook to loose money. Another solution would be to build some new alternate decentralized social networking standard from the ground up, and hope that it gets popular enough to topple the current oligopoly.
Bottom line: Companies have no clue how to thrive in a decentralized world where users have control, so like always, they try to make internet work like centralized old media. Reminds me of a quote from Marshall Mcluhan: We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.
I know I am doomed to sound sexist, but seriously, only a woman can think that spending 5 years salary on a 1 hour ceremony + the hell of putting entire clumps of both families together, while drinking, is a good idea.
No, any idiot with lots of money and unrealistic expectations about marriage could come up with this plan, be they man, woman, or other.
Just because used games cut into new game profits doesn't mean we should go out of our way to level the playing field for game companies. People have always enjoyed reselling their possessions, and it's absurd to forcefully end this practice just so some game company can get more money. If game companies are upset about their profits, it's up to them to change what they sell. They have no right infringing someone else's economic freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll create a BLACK HOLE that ENGULFS THE EARTH! Just like the LHC!
I agree. After a certain age, students should choose most of the classes they take.
Because if we fired the pilots, they'd ask lawmakers for a bailout.
Study habits don't "rub off". I don't know where this nonsense idea came from that good study habits are a contagious disease that idiots can catch from smart kids.
Kids imitate eachother to feel accepted. Thats why they all want to dress alike and listen to certain types of music. They absorb values through their peer group. If their peer group values good grades, they might be encouraged to get good grades too. I never said it happens all the time, but it does happen. I've seen it happen. It's happened to me.
"working in teacher assigned pairs" is really code for "Make the smart kids teach the dumb ones so the teacher can sit on their lazy ass".
Yeah well obviously if you have a lazy teacher who doesn't keep an eye on the students progress, some kids will take advantage of others. You gotta make it easier to fire incompetent teachers. You also gotta make it easier to hold kids accountable. Keeping slow students at pace with good students doesn't mean letting bullies skip out on their responsibilities. Your teacher should have been fired.
I'm saying you understood the intended meaning instead of the written meaning, and that's all that matters. Quit being a troll.
Survival of the most fit. What's wrong with giving the best advantages to the kids who can make the most of it? Is there some nobility to having a world full of mediocre achievers?
Putting "dumb"kids in class with "smart" kids limits the heights to which the smart kids can grow. Putting emotionally or psychologically deficient kids in class with normal kids is disruptive to the normal kids. Do you think the smart/normal kids want the dumb/deficient kids in their class? Of course not.
But guess what? The dumb/deficient kids don't want to be there either. These dumb/deficient kids would much prefer to be in classes with others that are more like them, so they can feel "normal" by comparison with their peers, and receive the appropriate teaching methodologies at a comfortable rate that allows them to feel a sense of accomplishment they otherwise could never achieve when mixed in with kids far above their intelligence.
You completely ignore the reality that many supposedly dumb kids are potential smart kids with no motivation to improve, because everyone around them tells them they are hopelessly dumb, and all their dumb friends think it's cool to be dumb.
No, in most cases, being made fun of makes you feel like you aren't worth anything, and then you stop trying. Only in very few cases does it motivate someone to work harder. Case in point: fat people get made fun of every day. But it doesn't motivate them to lose weight. It makes them sad, which makes them eat, which makes them get fatter.
And what test metric measures a students creativity, critical thinking, and capacity for independent thought? The medium is the message. Tests aren't designed to teach that kind of knowledge. You can change the questions on the tests, but the fact that they are tests means they will always be test questions. In other words, questions with a clear simple answer. How do we test students on subjects without simple answers? Essays are probably more effective in that area, as would be the type of experiential testing that I'm advocating.
"I don't consider myself a genius because there are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way." That's a very special comment right there. It's also an incredibly shallow triumph of an Olympic grade platitudinous pandering politically correct aphorism. The kid's teacher says he can "see right through the complications," but he's still been brainwashed into thinking that he's not unusual. What a shame. And how typical.
Or maybe he's so smart, he's learned life's most valuable lesson: Nobody will be your friend if you act like an asshole.
Bullshit.
It's a well known fact that kids imitate each other to feel accepted.
I think this is a fantastic idea.
Many kids see no immediate positive benefit to education. I know I didn't as a kid. Oh, sure, I knew that "In order to get a good job, you need to go to college!" but I didn't really feel that my efforts got me any semi-immediate gratification. I mean, you're telling a teenager or younger to put out efforts for something that is years, or even decades, away for them.
While I don't agree with this program, I do agree that kids need to see the immediate benefits of education. Kids in poor cities do worse in school, and it's no surprise why: Everyone they see around them is poor. When all you see is poverty, you give up hope of rising above it. And once you've given up on your dreams, education seems like a waste of time. Why bother succeeding in school if you're destined to work in a crappy job for low pay.
I think the answer lies in changing the way we teach. You don't need to think in order to get good grades in today's schools. You only need to memorize, study, and bullshit your way through school. Paying kids for grades will only encourage them to get better at taking tests and spewing out facts and definitions. It doesn't mean they actually understand the material, or care about it.
We need to show kids the benefit of education... but we also need to teach the intrinsic value of education and the joy of thinking. I think the best way for students to learn both lessons is to get experience doing real work where they get to think for themselves, make decisions, and become a valued member of a team. Experience learning. They can see the benefits of having a rewarding job where you feel valued, while learning to think on their feet and become leaders. When I went to college, I had a class in public relations where teams of students were paired up with local non-profits, and had to create a pr campaign for them. It was the hardest thing I ever did in school, but I learned more in that class than I ever did in all 4 years of high school.
What I'm saying is, paying kids is nice, but if you really want them to learn, get them involved in what their learning. Instead of drilling kids on the menus in microsoft word, how about we let them explore computers on their own in a supervised environment. Lets have more science experiments and less science quizzes. It will unlock the benefits of education right away, while teaching them how to learn on their own. They will learn lessons they'll never forget.
I remember taking my first English test in high school. We'd all read this book, and were to be tested on it. I read the book cover to cover, and felt like I really understood it. Not just what the book said, but what it meant. I felt like I picked up on the theme of the book, and the message the author had embedded in the story. Nobody knew that book better than me.
But when I get the test, not one question required me to discuss the book intelligently. It was a multiple choice test, where each question asked you to recall some obscure detail in the book. Example: What was the name of so-and-so's aunt. How many times did whatshername etc. The questions did not test whether you understood the book - just that you read it and memorized parts of it.
And that's the problem with schools and testing - you can pass a test without even understanding the material. Just memorize the details without exploring real concepts and ideas. And thus, it's no wonder this program works. Kids don't need to think in order to pass school, they just need to devote unreasonable amounts of time memorizing facts. And of course, nobody wants to do that sort of tedious studying, unless they are paid for it.
Our school system was set up to prepare students to work in mechanical, fragmentary jobs. They teach kids to memorize and spew out information on command. They teach kids to obey authority, and walk in lines. They teach kids to sit in rows and eat lunch at scheduled times when the bell rings. It's a great way to prepare kids to work in textile mills. Sadly, we have a different type of economy now, where those skills no longer apply.
We must teach kids the intrinsic value of learning. We must teach them to think for themselves, and question the world around them. We must reward creativity, and encourage imaginations to run wild. The students who learn those lessons will succeed in todays information economy. Paying students small wages to do trivial work will only prepare them for jobs where they are paid small wages to do trivial work: McDonalds.
We don't stratify. In other words, we uniformly put the slowest idiots in with everyone else, rather than putting the brightest in one class and on down the line.
Putting the dumb kids in one class would only pigeon hole those kids. They would be made fun of at school, and systematically taught that they are not as good as the other kids. Whoever ends up teaching "the dumb class" would naturally have low expectations for these supposedly helplessly dumb students, and as we all know, teachers teach worse when their expectations are low. So your plan would help the kids who are already smart, while ruining the lives of kids who need the most help. Hell, many times putting a very dumb student in a class full of smart students improves the dumb student's grades, because good study habits rub off on them.
or copy your mouse electronically until you have a warehouse full of mice? That's how staples can sell em so cheap.
GNU's not Unix, you insensitive clod!
You can do whatever you want with your copy except copy it.
Not any more. Now you can only do what the copyright holders tell you to do with it. See: EULA, DRM, etc.
It's about controlling what's yours.
Copyright wasn't established to "control whats yours". It was created to encourage creative ideas by allowing people with good ideas to profit off of them. The right to an artificial monopoly on your own creative works is not a natural right.
Sorry to be pedantic, but by making fun of my misspelling, you've acknowledged that you understood my intent. Clarity is all that matters, and if you understand what I say, it doesn't matter if the way I write it is "correct".
Sorry to be pedantic is a new meme.
Hell yeah - take email. Email by nature is decentralized. Nobody has a monopoly on email and everybody can have their choice of email providers. But when we start using myspace and facebook messages more than email, we have a problem - myspace cant send messages to facebook and vice versa. So if you want to talk with your friends, you need to join that network. The owners of that network can then have total control of how messages are sent.
I think we could solve this problem by creating ways for social networks to communicate to eachother. Some kind of standard. That way if you didn't like facebook TOS, you could join another network, but still keep in touch with your friends. That will never happen though, since it causes facebook to loose money. Another solution would be to build some new alternate decentralized social networking standard from the ground up, and hope that it gets popular enough to topple the current oligopoly.
Bottom line: Companies have no clue how to thrive in a decentralized world where users have control, so like always, they try to make internet work like centralized old media. Reminds me of a quote from Marshall Mcluhan: We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.
When will these scientists realize the cubic properties of time and space?
I know I am doomed to sound sexist, but seriously, only a woman can think that spending 5 years salary on a 1 hour ceremony + the hell of putting entire clumps of both families together, while drinking, is a good idea.
No, any idiot with lots of money and unrealistic expectations about marriage could come up with this plan, be they man, woman, or other.
and just pay a viral-marketing team to personally give the middle finger to every poor person on earth.
Just because used games cut into new game profits doesn't mean we should go out of our way to level the playing field for game companies. People have always enjoyed reselling their possessions, and it's absurd to forcefully end this practice just so some game company can get more money. If game companies are upset about their profits, it's up to them to change what they sell. They have no right infringing someone else's economic freedom.
fans of hulu will migrate to a competing web video service, if they are forced to pay.