The point is that opponents are talking about informants "not deserving" death from Taleban. This is really the moment of "you can't have your cake and eat it too".
Erm, if they were after that, they'd lay their weapons down immediately. All you just describe is already in force in Afghanistan, from tight religious laws passed by Karzai, to oligarchy.
It's notable that main difference under Talib government was lack of oligarchy. There was concentration of power, but attempting to boast about the riches led to being killed off by rulers. This is much more how West has ruled - installing small rich minority that oppresses the majority
I have some TERRIBLE news for you. Taleban are in with the locals. They ARE the locals in majority of places in Afghanistan (or specifically mujahideen, which share goals with Taleban and form it).
They know essentially ALL movements NATO makes in near real-time, because locals serve as their eyes and ears, and immediately after talking to a NATO soldier, they go and find their contact to tell anything new about invaders. If your troop movement happens where it can be seen by a civilian, mujahideen will know about it within seconds at worst and hours at best.
That's how mujahideen utterly destroyed Red army. That is how they are and will destroy NATO army. There are no troop movements in half a year old data that matter that they didn't know at most the day after the move was made. And for the record, this is one of the things that can be visible in the war records - unlike the couch generals here, soldiers in the field KNOW that mujahideen around them know their moves and are in waiting for a mistake.
I don't get it. You take the real problem, gloss over it completely dismissing it as "ah well, I have that problem too but who cares", and then proceed talking about a problem that:
1. Can be fixed in less then an hour of simple re-installation of OS with possible another 30 minutes or so of other software re-installation and getting the settings back. Though to be honest, I haven't bothered doing that with my 3year+ notebook and probably never will unless it develops something that breaks actual running of the OS, specifically because of point 2.
2. Is nowhere near as bad as you make it out on XP or later OS, as you can simply hibernate the system (which many people already do) instead of powering it down, as it has remarkably high stability from SP2 and up, and in general use requires no reboots for weeks on end. Not to mention that hibernation cuts boot times to seconds, essentially as fast as your hard drive can load the image back into the RAM, and is mostly slowed down by large amounts of RAM modern notebooks have and slow hard drives then any actual OS features/bugs.
In a nutshell: who cares if it takes 4 minutes to boot up the system instead of 1-2, when it happens once every blue moon, and the rest of the time you just wake the system from hibernation in less then 30 sec? Yet at the same time, you get all the new software you want provided your hardware can actually run it, without any artificial "oh, you can't run new software, anymore because we think that you've used your current hardware enough and you need to pay us some more money if you want to use new software" - crap that apple does to its customers.
Really, apple has many things going for it in its line of notebooks. Longevity is NOT one of them.
After the warranty ends, apple is the single WORST laptop manufacturer, due to their software policy of "update hardware every few years or be unable to use new software completely".
In other words, unless you're looking at a completely broken laptop vs apple laptop, every other comparison ends with apple on the bottom when looking at long term functionality of the laptop. Unless you boot windows/linux on it of course.
Nokia 5230 would fit his description, though it's largely considered a smartphone ourside some tech crazed reviews as far as I know. It costs around 120 euros atm (no subsidies, straight from retail).
I do know quite a few people and have seen reviews that don't consider it a smartphone though, seemingly mostly because of the price. Around here these phones are mostly sold to younger kids and early teens, who want a cheap touchscreen smartphone, as it's essentially the same platform as n97 processing hardware-wise, being able to use most of the n97 apps.
You may consider putting your hopes into MeeGo with this. It's planned to be an OS that will function in both netbooks (and notebooks) and smartphones, and just might smuggle linux onto desktop through the back door.
Or at least get it decent games and applications finally making it a worthy opponent of windows, rather then one that is constantly playing catch up, and never having any good games supported natively.
It's kinda funny. These people first don't mention their pool in the tax returns/fees they pay, complain that government isn't efficient enough, and when government uses a far more efficient system to nail them for violating rules, they complain that government would be even more efficient if it didn't even bother checking.
Talk about tears of a kid who got with his hand in the cookie jar.
Kindly link to where I posted such drivel so I can hit myself in the head. All I recall posting (and can see in this thread) is the answer to drivel claiming that "there are two versions currently available, one with all the names still in, and one with redacted names!", stating that no, there is no non-redacted version - the only version available online is sanitized.
Hyperbole. He's saying "there is always potential for us to have missed something". What we have in western media is a pretty massive "throw shit at him and see what sticks, then hammer it in". This particular angle seems to have stuck a chord.
And finally, informants are trash in eyes of any invading army - this is an established fact with US Army from many of our past wars, as well as countless armies. They're on local sellouts on payroll, and once their usefulness is up, they're left to fend for themselves at best, and killed or "traded" to the people they originally sold out at worst. In this light, the claims of "saving, extracting, being worried about safety" et al psychological waxing seems ironic at best, mainly aimed at people who don't understand anything about waging a war of conquest and occupation.
I urge you to look into and study most documented examples of how such people were treated in the past if you even for a moment consider that invading army will care for informants after their usefulness as infiltrators is up.
Just no. There is no link anywhere to non-sanitized version. Leaked docs that are posted on wikileaks are sanitized. Taleban is doing what it was doing since 1970s - scaring the shit out of informants though any means necessary, which includes lying. I'm sorry, but you're clueless.
So...you've taken the facts and arguments I presented, and called them unscientific—even theological...presumably because you disagree with me. That's called the ad hominem fallacy.
I would agree with you and admit my error... if your post actually held any contradicting facts. Instead, it only holds blank statements and opinions. While you are correct on your point of lack of "scientific rigor", one does learn to expect a bit more then "I disagree" when facts are presented here - it's one of the main differences between slashdot and say, digg or similar "general" discussion board.
Pedagogy is a science? If you don't consider "social sciences" to be an oxymoron, then I guess maybe it's so. What's the scientific backing for the OP's assertion that expecting kids to "learn through play" works? That's one school of thought that's been very prominent among 20th century educational theorists, but there are conflicting views that advocate a more rigorous training in basic skills for beginning learners.
The entire point was that this isn't a theory - this is something that is shown to work in practice across decades of implementation and produces stable results that end up within the best of the best on internationally comparable scale, where those who go in american style competitive schools tend to not be able to compete. Which is why we had over international 100 delegations across the world this year to learn from our school system.
Consider this: could it be that there are some fundamental differences between, say, Finnish primary school kids and American kids? Could there be differences in the educational needs of, say, an inner city Chicago kid and a kid from a "privileged" background (either Finnish or American) that require a different pedagogical approach for each? Maybe it doesn't matter all that much what method you use for kids who come from upper class educated families—or from a typically well-educated and homogenous society like that of Finland. They'll learn no matter what method you use—even despite the methods that are used. But the inner city kids will not learn a thing if they're left to "play"; they have no encouragement at home to learn, and no peer pressure to perform well academically. They have no clue what they need to learn, and do not value learning. They require a teaching method that gives direction and emphasizes basic skills, such as reading, writing and arithmetic.
There is a potential seed of truth here, except that we have quite a few of those kids in our schools, and our children aren't all "privileged" - not anywhere near it in fact. In a way, it's just the way we chose to build our society - it doesn't really matter if you parents are in top100 earners in the country or poorest 100 - you'll likely go through similar (and in some cases SAME) school. This forms a very powerful social equalizer on a far greater level then education - it teaches rich and poor kids who tend to meet face to face that in the end, we really are all just human. In more deeply capitalist societies with competitive schools, you tend to segregate those children so they never really meet each other in every day life.
I think that you really need to go and watch the BBC video presented in the link. They describe the motivator as something profoundly different then "peer pressure to conform", and note that the way used works, no matter how strange and alien someone raised in a different society with diametrically opposed view on things may find it. It is what I refer to as a "fact", essentially something that has existed for decades, and is proven to produce significantly better results then simple "peer pressure" and "competition".
Perhaps I wasn't clear on this, but our finals are exactly the same for everyone country-wide, though grading system is two-fold. Essentially central teaching organisation does the tests every year. Students take exactly the same test across the country. Then the test is first graded by your teacher at your local school. After this, the test goes out to the central teaching organisation, where their teachers grade it again.
It essentially allows teachers to check how their grading skills are twice every year against those that are considered specialists in that field (we have tests in autumn and spring).
Agreed. This is largely negated by the fact that all teachers here must hold master's degree in their respective fields, and are generally knowledgeable.
But if you work in an environment where sub-standard teachers are a norm, those might be a bad idea. I suspect that different test system wouldn't help much if teachers are bad though.
If the high ranking you report for Finland's educational system is, indeed, meaningful, then I have to say that Finland succeeds despite the methods you have cited, and not because of them. Or perhaps education is just as dismal as the U.S. version everywhere else in the world.
So you've taken the facts presented to you, willfully ignored all facts that contest your point of view, presented several opposing claims with no facts backing them up, claimed that your belief is the correct one and bashed the system that doesn't match your world view.
Erm, this is slashdot, the place where geeks are supposed to gather. I'm fairly certain that we accept scientific methods over theological ones when it comes to sciences, and pedagogy is a science.
I find it funny that for all the protesting, none here have suggested that they should lose their right to vote.
So in the end, you have people as gullible as that voting people with biggest campaign budgets in. And then some blue-eyed naive "pro democracy" people tell us in all seriousness that elected people represent their constituents.
My country (Finland) has a percentual grading system for high-school's equivalent (we call it lyceum here) is mostly percentual. It's averaged against all participants, so that top 5% always get best possible grade, and down from there. This makes sure that if the test is biased/bad/improper in spite of multiple checks, top people still compete directly against each other, rather then test itself. I have no problem with this when people are going through end-of-school grades, which are used by universities to grade incoming students.
Problem is, when child is in early age, he's still learning how to learn, among other things. You'll note that many geniuses known to history, specifically many mathematical geniuses which should be close to the heart for slashdotters, have been bad in primary school phase, down to flunking and getting set back a year. Examples are too numerous to be listed here.
The main point of primary school according to good pedagogy is to teach child to ENJOY LEARNING. The actual factual learning of subjects can come once he/she has learned to enjoy learning and come to want more. One of the most important tenets behind this is to not allow too much competition to the point where someone who is getting left behind doesn't find school fun. Some people refer to this as coddling. Around here we call it teamwork. And it works. In fact it works so well, that numbers of delegations from countries that have competition-based primary school system are sending people here to learn why and how it works better are now in triple digits.
It should be noted that my country is known as being pretty much permanently wedged in top5 of international tests. BBC had a really nice long editorial on top countries and compared them to UK and US, which failed at them quite badly when compared to the top. Finland ranked #2 last year, and one thing that BBC reporter noted was that almost every school here takes that motto to a heart - NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND. We even have essentially play school up to sixth grade. So I'm not sure where you take the "coddled children end up failing to compete", because it seems that our "coddled children" utterly devastate those who come out of far more "competitive schools" when it comes to very competitive tests.
It may open your eyes to just how ineffective competition-based early education really is in the long run by simply showing you a concrete result of the opposite - teamwork based education and just how much better it works in practice. If you go through follow-up, you'll notice that they also interviewed politicians and experts (as BBC usually does with stories as big as that one) for more background information on the topic.
And if you think a bit more about my cave comparison, it will start making sense very fast in this light. Think, what was the most important part of allowing humans as species to truly rise above other species? The most important one is most definitely our emphasis on teamwork over internal competition on both small scale and large scale.
In the end, the issue at hand can be summed in one sentence: "It's not about excelling or passing, it's about LEARNING AND ENJOYING LEARNING". And you can't measure that with a grading system in childhood. Therefore, grading system should be as large as reasonably possible to make sure that when child is graded, it will give an accurate picture of child's progress to teacher, parents and student himself.
Reducing the scale size results in significantly diminished returns on this subject.
Confidential and for official use only in US army intelligence are very broad-access ratings and are not considered a "secrecy rating" per its actual meaning. US "secret" is same as UK's confidential, which is UK's lowest secrecy rating as well. BBC had a very good article on topic as the case broke out, but sadly I can't find it on google because of the massive flood of follow-up stories.
You'll just have to take my word for it. Or you can take your time and dig through google or BBC website for the early analysis.
Note the age. This isn't university teaching where being bad may actually have an impact on your professional skills, these are actually young kids who are just entering their rebellious age. Messing their lives because they "aren't the best" is sociopathic at best.
"In todays world, youve either got it, or you dont, Kentucky principal Steve Frommeyer said. Theres no opportunity to just be OK. "
People with this line of thought who are teaching anything below university level (i.e. before children/teens have decided what they want to do with their lives) need to get fired yesterday, and be permanently banned from any teaching position. They destroy lives, literally, by forcing children to be "either great or dead". We no longer live in the caves, and most learning issues, especially at age that young are not "excel or die". People who disagree are in the wrong profession.
Now you just show that you don't have a faintest clue what information was actually released. Fact: it has nothing but combat reports. It's the stuff that is considered "confidential", not "classified".
US rating is "secret", which is the lowest possible secrecy rating. This has no major "wow, dangerous" stuff, and apparently most of the stuff that is being held back is about operations that may still be in progress, or people that can be identified.
"Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear your friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exist because of their silent consent"
Now you're just fooling yourself. Mujahideen have been doing this for decades, and yes, THEY KNOW. They have the experience, the agents on inside everywhere, the sympathy of the locals and support of at least ISI and Iran.
So don't be an ostrich and shove your head in the sand here - they know everything related to SOP when it comes to fighting.
1. Wikileaks definitely cleaned up their act since the video release. This time we get everything but the damaging stuff, and they are promising to release the rest asap. There is no omission of facts going on on their side.
2. At the same time, as these documents prove, there is a massive omission of facts going on in both media (that claims that there's nothing new there in spite of not reporting much of the information until literally faced with it), as well as government. How are voters supposed to make choices when they are being fed half-truths with many facts omitted by both governments and the media that is supposed to be government watchdog?
The second part is the reason why wikileaks and similar organisations are necessary in modern world.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that opponents are talking about informants "not deserving" death from Taleban. This is really the moment of "you can't have your cake and eat it too".
Erm, if they were after that, they'd lay their weapons down immediately. All you just describe is already in force in Afghanistan, from tight religious laws passed by Karzai, to oligarchy.
It's notable that main difference under Talib government was lack of oligarchy. There was concentration of power, but attempting to boast about the riches led to being killed off by rulers. This is much more how West has ruled - installing small rich minority that oppresses the majority
I have some TERRIBLE news for you. Taleban are in with the locals. They ARE the locals in majority of places in Afghanistan (or specifically mujahideen, which share goals with Taleban and form it).
They know essentially ALL movements NATO makes in near real-time, because locals serve as their eyes and ears, and immediately after talking to a NATO soldier, they go and find their contact to tell anything new about invaders. If your troop movement happens where it can be seen by a civilian, mujahideen will know about it within seconds at worst and hours at best.
That's how mujahideen utterly destroyed Red army. That is how they are and will destroy NATO army. There are no troop movements in half a year old data that matter that they didn't know at most the day after the move was made.
And for the record, this is one of the things that can be visible in the war records - unlike the couch generals here, soldiers in the field KNOW that mujahideen around them know their moves and are in waiting for a mistake.
I don't get it. You take the real problem, gloss over it completely dismissing it as "ah well, I have that problem too but who cares", and then proceed talking about a problem that:
1. Can be fixed in less then an hour of simple re-installation of OS with possible another 30 minutes or so of other software re-installation and getting the settings back. Though to be honest, I haven't bothered doing that with my 3year+ notebook and probably never will unless it develops something that breaks actual running of the OS, specifically because of point 2.
2. Is nowhere near as bad as you make it out on XP or later OS, as you can simply hibernate the system (which many people already do) instead of powering it down, as it has remarkably high stability from SP2 and up, and in general use requires no reboots for weeks on end.
Not to mention that hibernation cuts boot times to seconds, essentially as fast as your hard drive can load the image back into the RAM, and is mostly slowed down by large amounts of RAM modern notebooks have and slow hard drives then any actual OS features/bugs.
In a nutshell: who cares if it takes 4 minutes to boot up the system instead of 1-2, when it happens once every blue moon, and the rest of the time you just wake the system from hibernation in less then 30 sec? Yet at the same time, you get all the new software you want provided your hardware can actually run it, without any artificial "oh, you can't run new software, anymore because we think that you've used your current hardware enough and you need to pay us some more money if you want to use new software" - crap that apple does to its customers.
Really, apple has many things going for it in its line of notebooks. Longevity is NOT one of them.
After the warranty ends, apple is the single WORST laptop manufacturer, due to their software policy of "update hardware every few years or be unable to use new software completely".
In other words, unless you're looking at a completely broken laptop vs apple laptop, every other comparison ends with apple on the bottom when looking at long term functionality of the laptop.
Unless you boot windows/linux on it of course.
Nokia 5230 would fit his description, though it's largely considered a smartphone ourside some tech crazed reviews as far as I know. It costs around 120 euros atm (no subsidies, straight from retail).
I do know quite a few people and have seen reviews that don't consider it a smartphone though, seemingly mostly because of the price. Around here these phones are mostly sold to younger kids and early teens, who want a cheap touchscreen smartphone, as it's essentially the same platform as n97 processing hardware-wise, being able to use most of the n97 apps.
You may consider putting your hopes into MeeGo with this. It's planned to be an OS that will function in both netbooks (and notebooks) and smartphones, and just might smuggle linux onto desktop through the back door.
Or at least get it decent games and applications finally making it a worthy opponent of windows, rather then one that is constantly playing catch up, and never having any good games supported natively.
It's kinda funny. These people first don't mention their pool in the tax returns/fees they pay, complain that government isn't efficient enough, and when government uses a far more efficient system to nail them for violating rules, they complain that government would be even more efficient if it didn't even bother checking.
Talk about tears of a kid who got with his hand in the cookie jar.
Kindly link to where I posted such drivel so I can hit myself in the head. All I recall posting (and can see in this thread) is the answer to drivel claiming that "there are two versions currently available, one with all the names still in, and one with redacted names!", stating that no, there is no non-redacted version - the only version available online is sanitized.
Hyperbole. He's saying "there is always potential for us to have missed something". What we have in western media is a pretty massive "throw shit at him and see what sticks, then hammer it in". This particular angle seems to have stuck a chord.
And finally, informants are trash in eyes of any invading army - this is an established fact with US Army from many of our past wars, as well as countless armies. They're on local sellouts on payroll, and once their usefulness is up, they're left to fend for themselves at best, and killed or "traded" to the people they originally sold out at worst. In this light, the claims of "saving, extracting, being worried about safety" et al psychological waxing seems ironic at best, mainly aimed at people who don't understand anything about waging a war of conquest and occupation.
I urge you to look into and study most documented examples of how such people were treated in the past if you even for a moment consider that invading army will care for informants after their usefulness as infiltrators is up.
Just no. There is no link anywhere to non-sanitized version. Leaked docs that are posted on wikileaks are sanitized. Taleban is doing what it was doing since 1970s - scaring the shit out of informants though any means necessary, which includes lying. I'm sorry, but you're clueless.
So...you've taken the facts and arguments I presented, and called them unscientific—even theological...presumably because you disagree with me. That's called the ad hominem fallacy.
I would agree with you and admit my error... if your post actually held any contradicting facts. Instead, it only holds blank statements and opinions. While you are correct on your point of lack of "scientific rigor", one does learn to expect a bit more then "I disagree" when facts are presented here - it's one of the main differences between slashdot and say, digg or similar "general" discussion board.
Pedagogy is a science? If you don't consider "social sciences" to be an oxymoron, then I guess maybe it's so. What's the scientific backing for the OP's assertion that expecting kids to "learn through play" works? That's one school of thought that's been very prominent among 20th century educational theorists, but there are conflicting views that advocate a more rigorous training in basic skills for beginning learners.
The entire point was that this isn't a theory - this is something that is shown to work in practice across decades of implementation and produces stable results that end up within the best of the best on internationally comparable scale, where those who go in american style competitive schools tend to not be able to compete.
Which is why we had over international 100 delegations across the world this year to learn from our school system.
Consider this: could it be that there are some fundamental differences between, say, Finnish primary school kids and American kids? Could there be differences in the educational needs of, say, an inner city Chicago kid and a kid from a "privileged" background (either Finnish or American) that require a different pedagogical approach for each? Maybe it doesn't matter all that much what method you use for kids who come from upper class educated families—or from a typically well-educated and homogenous society like that of Finland. They'll learn no matter what method you use—even despite the methods that are used. But the inner city kids will not learn a thing if they're left to "play"; they have no encouragement at home to learn, and no peer pressure to perform well academically. They have no clue what they need to learn, and do not value learning. They require a teaching method that gives direction and emphasizes basic skills, such as reading, writing and arithmetic.
There is a potential seed of truth here, except that we have quite a few of those kids in our schools, and our children aren't all "privileged" - not anywhere near it in fact. In a way, it's just the way we chose to build our society - it doesn't really matter if you parents are in top100 earners in the country or poorest 100 - you'll likely go through similar (and in some cases SAME) school. This forms a very powerful social equalizer on a far greater level then education - it teaches rich and poor kids who tend to meet face to face that in the end, we really are all just human. In more deeply capitalist societies with competitive schools, you tend to segregate those children so they never really meet each other in every day life.
I think that you really need to go and watch the BBC video presented in the link. They describe the motivator as something profoundly different then "peer pressure to conform", and note that the way used works, no matter how strange and alien someone raised in a different society with diametrically opposed view on things may find it. It is what I refer to as a "fact", essentially something that has existed for decades, and is proven to produce significantly better results then simple "peer pressure" and "competition".
Perhaps I wasn't clear on this, but our finals are exactly the same for everyone country-wide, though grading system is two-fold. Essentially central teaching organisation does the tests every year. Students take exactly the same test across the country. Then the test is first graded by your teacher at your local school. After this, the test goes out to the central teaching organisation, where their teachers grade it again.
It essentially allows teachers to check how their grading skills are twice every year against those that are considered specialists in that field (we have tests in autumn and spring).
Agreed. This is largely negated by the fact that all teachers here must hold master's degree in their respective fields, and are generally knowledgeable.
But if you work in an environment where sub-standard teachers are a norm, those might be a bad idea. I suspect that different test system wouldn't help much if teachers are bad though.
If the high ranking you report for Finland's educational system is, indeed, meaningful, then I have to say that Finland succeeds despite the methods you have cited, and not because of them. Or perhaps education is just as dismal as the U.S. version everywhere else in the world.
So you've taken the facts presented to you, willfully ignored all facts that contest your point of view, presented several opposing claims with no facts backing them up, claimed that your belief is the correct one and bashed the system that doesn't match your world view.
Erm, this is slashdot, the place where geeks are supposed to gather. I'm fairly certain that we accept scientific methods over theological ones when it comes to sciences, and pedagogy is a science.
I find it funny that for all the protesting, none here have suggested that they should lose their right to vote.
So in the end, you have people as gullible as that voting people with biggest campaign budgets in. And then some blue-eyed naive "pro democracy" people tell us in all seriousness that elected people represent their constituents.
My country (Finland) has a percentual grading system for high-school's equivalent (we call it lyceum here) is mostly percentual. It's averaged against all participants, so that top 5% always get best possible grade, and down from there. This makes sure that if the test is biased/bad/improper in spite of multiple checks, top people still compete directly against each other, rather then test itself. I have no problem with this when people are going through end-of-school grades, which are used by universities to grade incoming students.
Problem is, when child is in early age, he's still learning how to learn, among other things. You'll note that many geniuses known to history, specifically many mathematical geniuses which should be close to the heart for slashdotters, have been bad in primary school phase, down to flunking and getting set back a year. Examples are too numerous to be listed here.
The main point of primary school according to good pedagogy is to teach child to ENJOY LEARNING. The actual factual learning of subjects can come once he/she has learned to enjoy learning and come to want more. One of the most important tenets behind this is to not allow too much competition to the point where someone who is getting left behind doesn't find school fun. Some people refer to this as coddling. Around here we call it teamwork. And it works. In fact it works so well, that numbers of delegations from countries that have competition-based primary school system are sending people here to learn why and how it works better are now in triple digits.
It should be noted that my country is known as being pretty much permanently wedged in top5 of international tests. BBC had a really nice long editorial on top countries and compared them to UK and US, which failed at them quite badly when compared to the top. Finland ranked #2 last year, and one thing that BBC reporter noted was that almost every school here takes that motto to a heart - NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND. We even have essentially play school up to sixth grade. So I'm not sure where you take the "coddled children end up failing to compete", because it seems that our "coddled children" utterly devastate those who come out of far more "competitive schools" when it comes to very competitive tests.
I really recommend that you watch the pieces of editorial here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8605791.stm.
It may open your eyes to just how ineffective competition-based early education really is in the long run by simply showing you a concrete result of the opposite - teamwork based education and just how much better it works in practice. If you go through follow-up, you'll notice that they also interviewed politicians and experts (as BBC usually does with stories as big as that one) for more background information on the topic.
And if you think a bit more about my cave comparison, it will start making sense very fast in this light. Think, what was the most important part of allowing humans as species to truly rise above other species? The most important one is most definitely our emphasis on teamwork over internal competition on both small scale and large scale.
In the end, the issue at hand can be summed in one sentence: "It's not about excelling or passing, it's about LEARNING AND ENJOYING LEARNING".
And you can't measure that with a grading system in childhood. Therefore, grading system should be as large as reasonably possible to make sure that when child is graded, it will give an accurate picture of child's progress to teacher, parents and student himself.
Reducing the scale size results in significantly diminished returns on this subject.
Confidential and for official use only in US army intelligence are very broad-access ratings and are not considered a "secrecy rating" per its actual meaning. US "secret" is same as UK's confidential, which is UK's lowest secrecy rating as well. BBC had a very good article on topic as the case broke out, but sadly I can't find it on google because of the massive flood of follow-up stories.
You'll just have to take my word for it. Or you can take your time and dig through google or BBC website for the early analysis.
Note the age. This isn't university teaching where being bad may actually have an impact on your professional skills, these are actually young kids who are just entering their rebellious age. Messing their lives because they "aren't the best" is sociopathic at best.
From the original article:
"In todays world, youve either got it, or you dont, Kentucky principal Steve Frommeyer said. Theres no opportunity to just be OK. "
People with this line of thought who are teaching anything below university level (i.e. before children/teens have decided what they want to do with their lives) need to get fired yesterday, and be permanently banned from any teaching position. They destroy lives, literally, by forcing children to be "either great or dead".
We no longer live in the caves, and most learning issues, especially at age that young are not "excel or die". People who disagree are in the wrong profession.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38441360/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
Now you just show that you don't have a faintest clue what information was actually released.
Fact: it has nothing but combat reports. It's the stuff that is considered "confidential", not "classified".
US rating is "secret", which is the lowest possible secrecy rating. This has no major "wow, dangerous" stuff, and apparently most of the stuff that is being held back is about operations that may still be in progress, or people that can be identified.
"Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear your friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exist because of their silent consent"
Now you're just fooling yourself. Mujahideen have been doing this for decades, and yes, THEY KNOW. They have the experience, the agents on inside everywhere, the sympathy of the locals and support of at least ISI and Iran.
So don't be an ostrich and shove your head in the sand here - they know everything related to SOP when it comes to fighting.
Agreed 100%. Now, two points based on that:
1. Wikileaks definitely cleaned up their act since the video release. This time we get everything but the damaging stuff, and they are promising to release the rest asap. There is no omission of facts going on on their side.
2. At the same time, as these documents prove, there is a massive omission of facts going on in both media (that claims that there's nothing new there in spite of not reporting much of the information until literally faced with it), as well as government. How are voters supposed to make choices when they are being fed half-truths with many facts omitted by both governments and the media that is supposed to be government watchdog?
The second part is the reason why wikileaks and similar organisations are necessary in modern world.