LAZY: I word I don't like to use -- it is basically the judgmental version of "unmotivated". However, in this case, I think it is justified.
Basically, the law enforcement systems in the USA are being lazy.
With new technology and new communication systems, it is increasingly difficult to both maintain individual freedoms and stop the "bad people" from doing bad things to hurt people.
It's not impossible, just harder.
It's not impossible to actually find the guns and knives and bombs on airplanes, and to only remove individual freedoms from individuals who are actually committing crimes - but it is much EASIER to assume that everyone who has a liquid or a gel MIGHT be a criminal, and to remove the freedoms from everyone.
It is not impossible to actually find the people breaking traffic laws, but instead, it is EASIER to film every car through the city and record and track their location and speed.
It is not impossible to actually find the people who are abusing the children, but instead, it is EASIER to find anyone with a picture of a naked child and ASSUME they are harming children.
It is not impossible to actually find people planning to commit crimes, and stop them before they commit the crime, or track them down afterwards. People with years in law enforcement know this. It is MUCH EASIER to assume that everyone MIGHT be a criminal, and track all their names and activities - in case any of them MIGHT be a criminal.
etc etc etc...
Without judgment, I understand people want to make their jobs easier. They want to make it faster and better and more seamless to stop the bad behavior in our society. Doing so is become really hard to do well, as technology and mass communication are advancing at a staggering pace.
However, I say to those out there in charge of law enforcement: STEP UP TO THE PLATE. GO READ THE CONSTITUTION. Take the challenge of your job seriously - actually stop the real criminals and leave the rest of the people alone. Ignore them unless you have PROBABLE CAUSE. It would be a little bit harder, but you could put the same effort into building systems that ONLY went after the bad guys and then the broad population of people would SUPPORT YOU in stopping REAL CRIMES. The current methods have ALL the people having to make a choice - to agree to submit and relinquish freedoms or to fight back against you. You will fail in the end if people make that choice, because eventually people will always choose freedom.
It is such a simple message. Sorry for the caps, but people just don't seem to get it.
The MS/Novell deal and (almost) killing Hula may be connected, maybe not. It doesn't matter.
It represents the largest, most obvious call to arms for the open source community in years:
We need to build a viable Exchange killer: a open, free (as in speech) alternative for IT managers who would choose Exchange.
This would be a massive project, but so were the Linux Kernel, Apache, Samba, Sendmail and others. We probably would not want it to be a single application, like Exchange, complete with kitchen sinks and deck chair stands... but a suite of tools that mirrored functionality and talked seamlessly with existing Exchange installations would be adequate.
The essence the basics Without it you make it Allow me to make this Childlike in nature Rhythm You have it or you don't that's a fallacy I'm in them Every sprouting tree Every child apiece Every cloud you see You see with your eyes I see destruction and demise Corruption in disguise From this fuckin' enterprise Now I'm sucking to your lies
to everyone: it's about connections, stupid. connections (communication) between people is the most important thing we do, and it is why the Internet is important.
Exchange is the MS communications gateway, allowing people to connect on MS the proprietary platform with the single most popular online communication tool.
An open source alternative to Exchange is the single most important project the open source community could develop to allow IT managers to migrate away from Microsoft.
Now, only days after a deal between MS and Novell, the open source project to build an exchange alternative is hurt by Novell removing support.
exactly. during those several million years of human evolution, mostly there were no cubicles and no office chairs. what humans are doing today is not how we evolved. this is causing our pain.
I was not implying that we should (or could) evolve to fit the cubicle chairs, but that we should change what we do to better fit the bodies humans have evolved.
This is crap. Most "human nature" is a result of our activities and culture (long term), not the cause. The real nature of people is very simple: have the good feelings and avoid the bad ones. That is it. Most everything else about how we act is learned.
We need to rethink this idea that humans have evolved to be ABLE to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day, 200 days a year and function. They didn't. Humans need to be active, challenged and mobile. The reason sitting people have back pain is because they are sitting so much. Hmmmm, let's arrange the deck chairs and tell people to sit differently???
Sorry to say folks, but the ideals that created America were pure and just, and they have run their course.
What I mean by this is not that we should give up on those ideals, rather, they simply won't work any more in the land mass and 300 Million strong group of people we now call the U.S.A. The ideals need to be there even more than ever before.
In fact, we need to restart, and re-assert with utmost clarity the freedoms that allow humanity to flourish. We need to have another continental congress (of sorts) and begin the process of building smaller groups that support human freedoms from the tyranny that Newt represents.
Statements like those by Newt are sad by not unexpected. Rome failed too, and so will the USA, for similar reasons. In Newt's world, he CAN NOT SEE how people can be truly free and actually realize the real freedoms encoded in the constitution while simultaneously maintaining the system of controls needed for the USA to function the way it does now.
The challenge is different now than it was in the mid 1770s. People have lots more guns, a lot less land to move into, a more technology for those in power to maintain control. Yet - it has to happen, and it will, even if only virtually. People need to reassert the freedoms that we agree upon, and structure the society we live in to maintain those freedoms. The USA no longer does.
I don't see any Democrats stepping up to repeal the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act. I don't see them stepping up to reduce the abuses of the executive branch. They won't, because they can't. Pelosi will block impeachment. Dems benefit from more powerful government as most of them are career politicos just like the Republicans. The USA version of Left/Right in politics is a false dichotomy supported for power by the right and unable to be opened/changed by the dis-united left.
plus another/. story recently on smuggling in cell phones in their underwear
schools are becoming a battleground over communication. those who have the powerful minds yoked are losing control of the system that keeps the humans docile and working for other's benefit, and they do not like it. ("stay in school, you get a good job!"... crap) People younger and younger are realizing that the way out is through self sufficiency and most of the formal education systems simply do not teach that, and certainly will not allow it during the student's forced stay/sentence.
Kids need to stand up and claim personal rights to devices that permit and enable communication, or simply refuse to participate in the system. find education elsewhere. their parents need to support them in this, or they are selling out their kids.
any argument taken seriously that prevents young minds from communication is very troubling
the real issue here is NOT health - it is being driven by the idea that young minds have access to a world of ideas not under control from those in power. the Internet has a global set of ideas - empowering, liberating, libralizing, and educating ideasl this is quite contrary to the mentality in most lower schools which are follow the rules, learn/do what you're told, and tow the line.
the idea that kids the age of 8 or 9 or 10 (ish) are educated and empowered is deathly frightening to small minded parents, who are so childish themselves they can't deal with strong people. So instead, they cite some completely absurd health scare to keep kids from easy, broad access to online content.
it is sadly ironic that by applying an argument to protect their health, they will actually harm these children by limiting their access to the Internet
wow, your lack of understanding of human nature combined with assertive writing style is unnerving. amazing, grad education... I've commented inline below
* single-classroom style -- many students learn in ways that do not work with a single classroom and oral lectures, which is the style almost all high schools use. Almost never are students allowed independent study, and even if they only learn from reading, they are still required to sit in class, which is a complete waste for them
They had independent study at my high school. It was called study hall. Everyone went out of their way to avoid study hall, including honors students.
introverts need a room of their own; independent means alone, so being in a room with 20 others does not count
* forced attendance -- by forcing people to attend, there is no motivation to make the most out of it. There is no real opportunity cost to being in the classroom, making a high percentage of people there unmotivated to learn.
The motivation behind attending school is the opportunity to change your station in life. I went to a public school in Mississippi. Of the top of my graduating class, we had a student go from living in a trailer park to a full ride at LSU and later to medical school. We had someone escape an abusive family life to become an officer in the US Air Force and go on to law school. Personally, I got a full ride through my Ph.D. in Computer Engineering.
unfortunately, no one outside a person gets to dictate motivation. if it does not come from within, it's not motivation, it's being forced. Also, and most importantly, you seem to be connecting both low cost degrees and more degrees with some metric for success, neither of which are valid correlations as far as I can tell.
* separation of teaching from learning -- mostly in real life, people become experts and learn things when they turn around and teach others. Almost never are high school students given the chance to teach what they learn, and almost never are their rewards for them in teaching others.
There were plenty of opportunities for me to teach people outside of school. It even gave me an opportunity to date the hot girl because she thought I was friendly.
this reveals much about your character. the discussion here was for how to get the high school system to work, not how or why to have solutions outside the system because it is broken
* national curricula -- teachers have almost no flexibility on what they teach or the ability to customize lessons for what students really need to learn. Learning is an interactive process that drawn a person to a new understanding from their current one. Set teaching standards eliminate the ability of teachers to understand what their students know now and customize the lessons for maximal learning.
This is where extracurricular activities step up. I did quiz bowl, Mu Alpha Theta, math and science team, and symphonic band. Each of these offered an opportunity to learn things outside of the classroom. No, they weren't taught in class. Yes, they required extra effort. However, the opportunities were there for everyone.
most students don't have those oportunities. Also, why should they be *extra* curricular? the only reason they are not part of the curricula is because the system is so broken and focused on the lowest common denominator, extra activities need to be created to meet the needs of students who excel. this issue is closely related to the age-groupings used to assign students into learning groups instead of (much smaller) skills and ability groupings of near-aged kids.
* lack of content applicability -- most lessons in high school are useless and disconnected from real world applications. They are abstracted and meaningless for students who dont experience how to apply what they learn.
there are ways it could work, consider something like this:
Each student takes each class twice, students taking it for the first time are r1, second time are r2. material is presented faster and harder than normal. r2 have an obligation to teach r1 students and are tasked and evaluated as such. this creates an almost 1-1 ratio between students who see material the first time, to those who see it a second time. r1 students' evaluations help contribute to the grades of r2 students. over the semester, r1 and r2 students are set into different pairs and groups to cover material and complete assignments. r2 are additionally tasked with harder problems that are only solved with mastery of the material.
Such a teaching method would work best in technical areas, such as math, science, or CS - where discreet jumps in understanding are required to progress. less technical areas, such as art, literature, etc. would not be suited for this. some benefit would come in mixed disciplines like history and social studies.
the whole concept of grades and how testing would happen would be different in this type of environment, and it would mostly only work with students who had made an active, personal choice to want to be there and want to learn.
it would also require removing the student-vs-student competition that currently happens in high school, and rather getting to a point where the real goal was getting everyone to understand all they could about a topic together.
I think public education is severely broken in the US, for many reasons:
* single-classroom style -- many students learn in ways that do not work with a single classroom and oral lectures, which is the style almost all high schools use. Almost never are students allowed independent study, and even if they only learn from reading, they are still required to sit in class, which is a complete waste for them
* forced attendance -- by forcing people to attend, there is no motivation to make the most out of it. There is no real opportunity cost to being in the classroom, making a high percentage of people there unmotivated to learn.
* low pay -- financing education on the local level means limited funds to attract highly educated and highly functional people. While most high school teachers are extremely motivated and devoted, the simple financial reality is that jobs that pay 20-40K/year do not attract top quality people. This is part of a larger issue of simple limited resources put on education
* separation of teaching from learning -- mostly in real life, people become experts and learn things when they turn around and teach others. Almost never are high school students given the chance to teach what they learn, and almost never are their rewards for them in teaching others.
* national curricula -- teachers have almost no flexibility on what they teach or the ability to customize lessons for what students really need to learn. Learning is an interactive process that drawn a person to a new understanding from their current one. Set teaching standards eliminate the ability of teachers to understand what their students know now and customize the lessons for maximal learning.
* lack of content applicability -- most lessons in high school are useless and disconnected from real world applications. They are abstracted and meaningless for students who dont experience how to apply what they learn. Mostly, high school has become a babysitting exercise to keep people out of the work force as long as possible to remove competition for existing workers.
In sum, kids dropping out makes sense to me. High school is not helpful to them. This situation will only continue as virtual communities continue to form and become more organized and effective.
all communication is essentially libralizing - so from my point of view, more commnication is always a good thing
surveillence is one kind of communication. the problems that happen is when the information gathered by surveillence is not shared or accessible broadly
in an ideal world, there would be lots and lots of surveillence, including all the interactions and discussions by the public, elected officials, and all the feeds could be viewed by the public
create systems on cots technology that are searchable and transferable to new media - and the parts people want to keep they will, either by paying for them or creating groups to preserve them, like museums
we can not save all our information, and trying too is foolish. no one cares about all the people in ancient Egypt - just some of them to get a good idea what life was like. The same token, we won't care about every photo and every bit of information.
Yes, they are, now. People like owning things because our social system encourages it in many ways. At a deeper level, what people really want is to have good feelings and avoid bad feelings.
Humans' nature is very malleable.
Many many experiments have shown that people can change their nature extremely quickly (a few weeks) given different circumstances. See both the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram experiments on authority as two popular examples, and there are many others.
"Enslave" may be melodramatic, but a Troll moderation is missing the point.
Have you ever been to a zoo? What benefit do we get from a zoo? Would you like to be in a zoo?
Have you seen the people who kill giant apes to make ashtrays out of their hands? Who slash and burn their habitat?
Making no more sense or having no reason why in not a good enough argument to not take the idea seriously - instead start with Cui Bono, and recognize that many many things happen all the time that are senseless when seen logically, yet they still happen.
As for chimps - the point perfect. The nature of a completely logic-based system will be (as in the worst cases of unhealthy humans) to eliminate the possibility of competition for resources.
As a matter of the most sincere policy, power generation and high-tech, bleeding edge comptuer systems should never be combined. Period, full stop, no exceptions.
I'm not talking about the control or safety systems, but rather networked systems with access to the broader Internet.
All moves toward creating more "intelligent computers" must be separated from the ability to generate power. Intelligent, autonomous, machines will happen, estimates vary from the most rosy (5 years) to the most absurd (50-75 years). Their ability to progress will far outstrip humans almost instantly, and the only control we will have on them when they really get moving will be to control their power intake.
The long term catastrophy that could result: Crossing intelligent computer systems with a system for power generation are the 2 elements required for the enslavement of the human race by machines.
As long as *anything* is scarce, your society will never exist. -- given the current prevailing mentality people have over getting and holding scarce resources, yes, I agree.
But: when people change their attidute about scarce resources - and there are social norms that disincentivize extrodinary use of scarce resources - there won't be conflict over resources. Scarce is not a binary thing, it's a relative thing and there are varying degrees of scarcity about everything. When people have what they need, and we have traditions that maintain that situation and creates and maintains health in people, then people will change their attitude about the need to abuse resources and prevent others from having/using them.
It is fundamentally a characteristic of unhealth to consistently think you are "missing" out on other people's trip.
The beautiful thing is that I don't need to convince anyone of this. It will happen all by itself, the only question is how soon.
the only reason the US (or other gov-ment) has any real power is they maintain a local monopoly on largescale deadly force.
no other group but a governement (when one exists) gets to raise an army; this is a point rarely discussed.
Given how much more deadly the US guv-ment's Army is compared to everyone else, the US money is "worth" something. the group will kill to maintain it (oh wait -- they are).
But mostly money is just a pack of lies and three-card monty games built up on top of a big convention we call "property".
In the long run, effective, peaceful human society will eliminate the concept property entirely. This will be a new form of society unlike ANYTHING ever seen on the earth. I'd give it about 80-120 years to get there from now. If I'm lucky, I'll still be alive.
Slashdot Mirror
LAZY: I word I don't like to use -- it is basically the judgmental version of "unmotivated". However, in this case, I think it is justified.
...
Basically, the law enforcement systems in the USA are being lazy.
With new technology and new communication systems, it is increasingly difficult to both maintain individual freedoms and stop the "bad people" from doing bad things to hurt people.
It's not impossible, just harder.
It's not impossible to actually find the guns and knives and bombs on airplanes, and to only remove individual freedoms from individuals who are actually committing crimes - but it is much EASIER to assume that everyone who has a liquid or a gel MIGHT be a criminal, and to remove the freedoms from everyone.
It is not impossible to actually find the people breaking traffic laws, but instead, it is EASIER to film every car through the city and record and track their location and speed.
It is not impossible to actually find the people who are abusing the children, but instead, it is EASIER to find anyone with a picture of a naked child and ASSUME they are harming children.
It is not impossible to actually find people planning to commit crimes, and stop them before they commit the crime, or track them down afterwards. People with years in law enforcement know this. It is MUCH EASIER to assume that everyone MIGHT be a criminal, and track all their names and activities - in case any of them MIGHT be a criminal.
etc etc etc
Without judgment, I understand people want to make their jobs easier. They want to make it faster and better and more seamless to stop the bad behavior in our society. Doing so is become really hard to do well, as technology and mass communication are advancing at a staggering pace.
However, I say to those out there in charge of law enforcement: STEP UP TO THE PLATE. GO READ THE CONSTITUTION. Take the challenge of your job seriously - actually stop the real criminals and leave the rest of the people alone. Ignore them unless you have PROBABLE CAUSE. It would be a little bit harder, but you could put the same effort into building systems that ONLY went after the bad guys and then the broad population of people would SUPPORT YOU in stopping REAL CRIMES. The current methods have ALL the people having to make a choice - to agree to submit and relinquish freedoms or to fight back against you. You will fail in the end if people make that choice, because eventually people will always choose freedom.
It is such a simple message. Sorry for the caps, but people just don't seem to get it.
I started this thread and parent is not a troll. Exchange really is a great product, but also bloated and closed, both source and standards.
Getting the open source folks organized to really provide an alternative will be a HUGE task.
as I have said many times, america is over
The MS/Novell deal and (almost) killing Hula may be connected, maybe not. It doesn't matter.
It represents the largest, most obvious call to arms for the open source community in years:
We need to build a viable Exchange killer: a open, free (as in speech) alternative for IT managers who would choose Exchange.
This would be a massive project, but so were the Linux Kernel, Apache, Samba, Sendmail and others. We probably would not want it to be a single application, like Exchange, complete with kitchen sinks and deck chair stands... but a suite of tools that mirrored functionality and talked seamlessly with existing Exchange installations would be adequate.
described best here:
The essence the basics
Without it you make it
Allow me to make this
Childlike in nature
Rhythm
You have it or you don't that's a fallacy
I'm in them
Every sprouting tree
Every child apiece
Every cloud you see
You see with your eyes
I see destruction and demise
Corruption in disguise
From this fuckin' enterprise
Now I'm sucking to your lies
to everyone: it's about connections, stupid. connections (communication) between people is the most important thing we do, and it is why the Internet is important.
Exchange is the MS communications gateway, allowing people to connect on MS the proprietary platform with the single most popular online communication tool.
An open source alternative to Exchange is the single most important project the open source community could develop to allow IT managers to migrate away from Microsoft.
Now, only days after a deal between MS and Novell, the open source project to build an exchange alternative is hurt by Novell removing support.
No theories needed here, just look at the facts.
Actually, I've structured my job to be active, challenging and mobile. I'm rarely in a cubicle and that's the way I have it for my employees.
;)
200 was just a guess that I didn't give much thought to it. I guess with 10 vacation days the typical US worker spends the other 51 in meetings.
exactly. during those several million years of human evolution, mostly there were no cubicles and no office chairs. what humans are doing today is not how we evolved. this is causing our pain.
I was not implying that we should (or could) evolve to fit the cubicle chairs, but that we should change what we do to better fit the bodies humans have evolved.
Main bullet from TFA:, 00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2475021
* "back pain is part of human nature"
This is crap. Most "human nature" is a result of our activities and culture (long term), not the cause. The real nature of people is very simple: have the good feelings and avoid the bad ones. That is it. Most everything else about how we act is learned.
We need to rethink this idea that humans have evolved to be ABLE to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day, 200 days a year and function. They didn't. Humans need to be active, challenged and mobile. The reason sitting people have back pain is because they are sitting so much. Hmmmm, let's arrange the deck chairs and tell people to sit differently???
Sorry to say folks, but the ideals that created America were pure and just, and they have run their course.
What I mean by this is not that we should give up on those ideals, rather, they simply won't work any more in the land mass and 300 Million strong group of people we now call the U.S.A. The ideals need to be there even more than ever before.
In fact, we need to restart, and re-assert with utmost clarity the freedoms that allow humanity to flourish. We need to have another continental congress (of sorts) and begin the process of building smaller groups that support human freedoms from the tyranny that Newt represents.
Statements like those by Newt are sad by not unexpected. Rome failed too, and so will the USA, for similar reasons. In Newt's world, he CAN NOT SEE how people can be truly free and actually realize the real freedoms encoded in the constitution while simultaneously maintaining the system of controls needed for the USA to function the way it does now.
The challenge is different now than it was in the mid 1770s. People have lots more guns, a lot less land to move into, a more technology for those in power to maintain control. Yet - it has to happen, and it will, even if only virtually. People need to reassert the freedoms that we agree upon, and structure the society we live in to maintain those freedoms.
The USA no longer does.
I don't see any Democrats stepping up to repeal the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act. I don't see them stepping up to reduce the abuses of the executive branch. They won't, because they can't. Pelosi will block impeachment. Dems benefit from more powerful government as most of them are career politicos just like the Republicans. The USA version of Left/Right in politics is a false dichotomy supported for power by the right and unable to be opened/changed by the dis-united left.
this is exactly why the concept of property as we know it (both IP and assigned physical stuff) will not work in a super-connected world.
there are only 2 ways to justify property rights: convention or information disequalibrium (not counting the "God" stuff)
if you go with property as social convention, then people will simply reject the convention
if you go with the info argument, then mass communication of all ideas breaks that one down
either way, people are going to have to start looking seriously into social systems without the concept of property
hope it's not to painful to change our story
and some wonder why they are quitting school ???
/. story recently on smuggling in cell phones in their underwear
... crap) People younger and younger are realizing that the way out is through self sufficiency and most of the formal education systems simply do not teach that, and certainly will not allow it during the student's forced stay/sentence.
plus another
schools are becoming a battleground over communication. those who have the powerful minds yoked are losing control of the system that keeps the humans docile and working for other's benefit, and they do not like it. ("stay in school, you get a good job!"
Kids need to stand up and claim personal rights to devices that permit and enable communication, or simply refuse to participate in the system. find education elsewhere. their parents need to support them in this, or they are selling out their kids.
any argument taken seriously that prevents young minds from communication is very troubling
the real issue here is NOT health - it is being driven by the idea that young minds have access to a world of ideas not under control from those in power. the Internet has a global set of ideas - empowering, liberating, libralizing, and educating ideasl this is quite contrary to the mentality in most lower schools which are follow the rules, learn/do what you're told, and tow the line.
the idea that kids the age of 8 or 9 or 10 (ish) are educated and empowered is deathly frightening to small minded parents, who are so childish themselves they can't deal with strong people. So instead, they cite some completely absurd health scare to keep kids from easy, broad access to online content.
it is sadly ironic that by applying an argument to protect their health, they will actually harm these children by limiting their access to the Internet
wow, your lack of understanding of human nature combined with assertive writing style is unnerving. amazing, grad education... I've commented inline below
* single-classroom style -- many students learn in ways that do not work with a single classroom and oral lectures, which is the style almost all high schools use. Almost never are students allowed independent study, and even if they only learn from reading, they are still required to sit in class, which is a complete waste for them
They had independent study at my high school. It was called study hall. Everyone went out of their way to avoid study hall, including honors students.
introverts need a room of their own; independent means alone, so being in a room with 20 others does not count
* forced attendance -- by forcing people to attend, there is no motivation to make the most out of it. There is no real opportunity cost to being in the classroom, making a high percentage of people there unmotivated to learn.
The motivation behind attending school is the opportunity to change your station in life. I went to a public school in Mississippi. Of the top of my graduating class, we had a student go from living in a trailer park to a full ride at LSU and later to medical school. We had someone escape an abusive family life to become an officer in the US Air Force and go on to law school. Personally, I got a full ride through my Ph.D. in Computer Engineering.
unfortunately, no one outside a person gets to dictate motivation. if it does not come from within, it's not motivation, it's being forced. Also, and most importantly, you seem to be connecting both low cost degrees and more degrees with some metric for success, neither of which are valid correlations as far as I can tell.
* separation of teaching from learning -- mostly in real life, people become experts and learn things when they turn around and teach others. Almost never are high school students given the chance to teach what they learn, and almost never are their rewards for them in teaching others.
There were plenty of opportunities for me to teach people outside of school. It even gave me an opportunity to date the hot girl because she thought I was friendly.
this reveals much about your character. the discussion here was for how to get the high school system to work, not how or why to have solutions outside the system because it is broken
* national curricula -- teachers have almost no flexibility on what they teach or the ability to customize lessons for what students really need to learn. Learning is an interactive process that drawn a person to a new understanding from their current one. Set teaching standards eliminate the ability of teachers to understand what their students know now and customize the lessons for maximal learning.
This is where extracurricular activities step up. I did quiz bowl, Mu Alpha Theta, math and science team, and symphonic band. Each of these offered an opportunity to learn things outside of the classroom. No, they weren't taught in class. Yes, they required extra effort. However, the opportunities were there for everyone.
most students don't have those oportunities. Also, why should they be *extra* curricular? the only reason they are not part of the curricula is because the system is so broken and focused on the lowest common denominator, extra activities need to be created to meet the needs of students who excel. this issue is closely related to the age-groupings used to assign students into learning groups instead of (much smaller) skills and ability groupings of near-aged kids.
* lack of content applicability -- most lessons in high school are useless and disconnected from real world applications. They are abstracted and meaningless for students who dont experience how to apply what they learn.
there are ways it could work, consider something like this:
Each student takes each class twice, students taking it for the first time are r1, second time are r2. material is presented faster and harder than normal. r2 have an obligation to teach r1 students and are tasked and evaluated as such. this creates an almost 1-1 ratio between students who see material the first time, to those who see it a second time. r1 students' evaluations help contribute to the grades of r2 students. over the semester, r1 and r2 students are set into different pairs and groups to cover material and complete assignments. r2 are additionally tasked with harder problems that are only solved with mastery of the material.
Such a teaching method would work best in technical areas, such as math, science, or CS - where discreet jumps in understanding are required to progress. less technical areas, such as art, literature, etc. would not be suited for this. some benefit would come in mixed disciplines like history and social studies.
the whole concept of grades and how testing would happen would be different in this type of environment, and it would mostly only work with students who had made an active, personal choice to want to be there and want to learn.
it would also require removing the student-vs-student competition that currently happens in high school, and rather getting to a point where the real goal was getting everyone to understand all they could about a topic together.
why do you post AC?
I think public education is severely broken in the US, for many reasons:
* single-classroom style -- many students learn in ways that do not work with a single classroom and oral lectures, which is the style almost all high schools use. Almost never are students allowed independent study, and even if they only learn from reading, they are still required to sit in class, which is a complete waste for them
* forced attendance -- by forcing people to attend, there is no motivation to make the most out of it. There is no real opportunity cost to being in the classroom, making a high percentage of people there unmotivated to learn.
* low pay -- financing education on the local level means limited funds to attract highly educated and highly functional people. While most high school teachers are extremely motivated and devoted, the simple financial reality is that jobs that pay 20-40K/year do not attract top quality people. This is part of a larger issue of simple limited resources put on education
* separation of teaching from learning -- mostly in real life, people become experts and learn things when they turn around and teach others. Almost never are high school students given the chance to teach what they learn, and almost never are their rewards for them in teaching others.
* national curricula -- teachers have almost no flexibility on what they teach or the ability to customize lessons for what students really need to learn. Learning is an interactive process that drawn a person to a new understanding from their current one. Set teaching standards eliminate the ability of teachers to understand what their students know now and customize the lessons for maximal learning.
* lack of content applicability -- most lessons in high school are useless and disconnected from real world applications. They are abstracted and meaningless for students who dont experience how to apply what they learn. Mostly, high school has become a babysitting exercise to keep people out of the work force as long as possible to remove competition for existing workers.
In sum, kids dropping out makes sense to me. High school is not helpful to them. This situation will only continue as virtual communities continue to form and become more organized and effective.
all communication is essentially libralizing - so from my point of view, more commnication is always a good thing
surveillence is one kind of communication. the problems that happen is when the information gathered by surveillence is not shared or accessible broadly
in an ideal world, there would be lots and lots of surveillence, including all the interactions and discussions by the public, elected officials, and all the feeds could be viewed by the public
information that gets used, gets saved.
create systems on cots technology that are searchable and transferable to new media - and the parts people want to keep they will, either by paying for them or creating groups to preserve them, like museums
we can not save all our information, and trying too is foolish. no one cares about all the people in ancient Egypt - just some of them to get a good idea what life was like. The same token, we won't care about every photo and every bit of information.
People are selfish; they like owning things.
Yes, they are, now. People like owning things because our social system encourages it in many ways. At a deeper level, what people really want is to have good feelings and avoid bad feelings.
Humans' nature is very malleable.
Many many experiments have shown that people can change their nature extremely quickly (a few weeks) given different circumstances. See both the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram experiments on authority as two popular examples, and there are many others.
"Enslave" may be melodramatic, but a Troll moderation is missing the point.
Have you ever been to a zoo? What benefit do we get from a zoo? Would you like to be in a zoo?
Have you seen the people who kill giant apes to make ashtrays out of their hands? Who slash and burn their habitat?
Making no more sense or having no reason why in not a good enough argument to not take the idea seriously - instead start with Cui Bono, and recognize that many many things happen all the time that are senseless when seen logically, yet they still happen.
As for chimps - the point perfect. The nature of a completely logic-based system will be (as in the worst cases of unhealthy humans) to eliminate the possibility of competition for resources.
As a matter of the most sincere policy, power generation and high-tech, bleeding edge comptuer systems should never be combined. Period, full stop, no exceptions.
I'm not talking about the control or safety systems, but rather networked systems with access to the broader Internet.
All moves toward creating more "intelligent computers" must be separated from the ability to generate power. Intelligent, autonomous, machines will happen, estimates vary from the most rosy (5 years) to the most absurd (50-75 years). Their ability to progress will far outstrip humans almost instantly, and the only control we will have on them when they really get moving will be to control their power intake.
The long term catastrophy that could result:
Crossing intelligent computer systems with a system for power generation are the 2 elements required for the enslavement of the human race by machines.
As long as *anything* is scarce, your society will never exist.
-- given the current prevailing mentality people have over getting and holding scarce resources, yes, I agree.
But: when people change their attidute about scarce resources - and there are social norms that disincentivize extrodinary use of scarce resources - there won't be conflict over resources. Scarce is not a binary thing, it's a relative thing and there are varying degrees of scarcity about everything. When people have what they need, and we have traditions that maintain that situation and creates and maintains health in people, then people will change their attitude about the need to abuse resources and prevent others from having/using them.
It is fundamentally a characteristic of unhealth to consistently think you are "missing" out on other people's trip.
The beautiful thing is that I don't need to convince anyone of this. It will happen all by itself, the only question is how soon.
global instantaneous communication
the only reason the US (or other gov-ment) has any real power is they maintain a local monopoly on largescale deadly force.
no other group but a governement (when one exists) gets to raise an army; this is a point rarely discussed.
Given how much more deadly the US guv-ment's Army is compared to everyone else, the US money is "worth" something. the group will kill to maintain it (oh wait -- they are).
But mostly money is just a pack of lies and three-card monty games built up on top of a big convention we call "property".
In the long run, effective, peaceful human society will eliminate the concept property entirely. This will be a new form of society unlike ANYTHING ever seen on the earth. I'd give it about 80-120 years to get there from now. If I'm lucky, I'll still be alive.
it doesn't make any more sense in a made up world (made to look like th real one) - than it does in the real one.
imagine that!