I read Zinn's book on my own; my schools never mentioned anything remotely like it.
The fact remains that Zinn is popular high school and college reading because his political ideology is popular with teachers and intellectuals; his book is an example of what is being taught in mainstream schools, not an example of suppressed views of history.
Zinn isn't invalid. It's a different style but it is not false.
I am afraid I disagree. I think Zinn has crossed the line from biased history to propaganda in many places; that is, I think he knowingly omits facts and scholarship in order to fit and promote his political agenda.
Zinn dispels the authoritarian bias in our history; which also rubs people the wrong way, the US is after all, quite an authoritarian society (if you don't like that tough, perhaps you should unload that word and accept it's real meaning.)
I've actually lived in an authoritarian society and, sorry, you don't know what you are talking about.
Zinn was a well-meaning man (although there is a great deal of "doing well by doing good" in his populism) and he is worth reading and thinking about, critically. But, ultimately, his political views are wrong precisely because if followed, they lead to authoritarianism that is at least as bad as the authoritarianism he decries.
Are you so stupid that you don't understand the difference between statements of the form "millions of people died" and "millions of people died because of imperialism/fascism/communism/monarchy/..."?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yes, which is why one shouldn't have debates with people like you.
You're missing the point. My comment wasn't about the absolute number of incidents in NYC (obviously, a big city is going to have more than a small city), but I observed as an aside that an unusually large proportion of incidents in NYC actually involve police misconduct (as opposed to justifiable use of force).
Nevertheless, as I also pointed out, even in NYC, police misconduct is representative of the population of suspects and perpetrators.
By the way, the books historyasaweapon.com suggests are about as propagandistic, misleading, and dishonest as they come, starting with "A People's History Of The United States by Howard Zinn. Zinn's book, incidentally, is widely read in schools today. You might as well be teaching young earth creationism, it's about as valid.
The powerful (winners) have been writing the mainstream history for a long time
True, if by "winners" you mean the large number of left-leaning academics and teachers; people who use education as a propaganda tool in order to increase their status and train students to advance their political objectives. They are complemented by a smaller contingent of right wing and Christian groups that are doing the same thing with a slightly different ideological bend, often in their own private schools.
From what you say, it appears you merely are with the first group of scoundrels, as opposed to the second group. Both the left and the right are vehemently opposed to doing what the school system should be doing: teach people skills and knowledge that empowers them to take control of their own lives.
Reading is the primary method (and best) for learning history...
True, reading is necessary, but it's not sufficient; if you select your reading to fit your world view, it's the same as merely reading propaganda that reinforces your preexisting prejudices.
You know re-reading your response, I have to say: you really have to be a f*cking partisan moron to accuse people who favor school choice and school vouchers of "want[ing] to ensure that money from wealthier school districts never leaks over into poorer ones". Really, you deserve to be "crapped upon", using your words.
Please don't apply that belief to ASTM standards for wiring. Poor states would have 50 house fires per day. It's funny, nobody suggests applying "local standards" to other professions.
What are you talking about? Lots of people want mandatory building codes abolished. Nevertheless, there is an essential difference between building codes and history: at least for building codes, you can objectively determine what effects they have (at least in principle); for interpretations of history, you cannot.
I don't crap on people who believe this stuff, but MY private belief is that they want to ensure that money from wealthier school districts never leaks over into poorer ones.
Not sure what you mean by that. The school districts spending the most money per student are often the ones doing most poorly. And the people who hold these kinds of beliefs (myself included) would actually like to see school voucher and school choice programs that let poor students go to whatever schools there are, including the ones in "wealthier school districts". It's people who hold beliefs like you who strenuously oppose school choice and school vouchers.
You seem to live in a fictional universe where building codes demonstrably protect people, history teaches objective truths, and spending more money on education leads to better outcomes while forcing students to keep attending shitty schools and forcing school districts to keep retaining lousy teachers. In the real universe, none of those statements are true; they are self-serving myths created by people wanted to enrich themselves at others' expense.
how technology and social trends influenced history etc.
Trouble is that nobody has valid scientific theories of "how technology and social trends influenced history"; all we have is ideologically and politically motivated storytelling.
And that those same rules that work in elementary sciences also apply to EVERYTHING ELSE.
Unfortunately, they don't. In the elementary sciences, you can verify the truth of many statements by direct, independent experimentation. You can't do that in history or many other fields.
And by "the 1%" I mean academics like Diane Ravitch. Not only are academics like that among the wealthy and powerful in this country, far removed from the concerns of the ordinary citizens, they still have a chip on their shoulder because they look at the top 0.001% and think that they are being treated unfairly.
As for Gates, he isn't in the 1%, he is in a class of its own. He has so much money and power that I doubt he is motivated by acquiring more. His history is unlikely going to be very good, but it's probably no worse than the ideologically motivated trash that is usually being used in schools.
Our education system could be improved in a lot of ways. But those improvements should be optional to the education systems and not compelled.
Sure, after we get school choice and school vouchers that let parents take their kids to the school of their choice, a school that teaches their kids the way the parents like it, not the way politicians or teachers' unions want it.
No, you merely said that it is supposed to serve a useful purpose. In reality, it largely fails to serve that purpose anymore, while other mechanisms work a lot better these days.
According to a 2010 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men in theed States have been raped. The actual number is likely higher, experts say, as incidents of sexual violence are severely underreported in the United States -- particularly among male victims.
That's utter nonsense. The number you cite is from a 1995 survey of college students. You are then deftly switching to the term "sexual violence", falsely suggesting that the CDC report actually dealt with legal incidents and violence, when it actually included self-reported college sex that people had second thoughts about afterwards.
Incidents of sexual violence are likely underreported to the police, but they are quite rare at 0.04% / year.
Incidentally, males are primarily victimized in prison.
The difference between "online review" and "peer review" is mostly in the reviewers and the editors. Peer reviewers have at least some modicum of training and expertise in the field.
With peer review, you have no idea whether the reviewer has any qualifications at all; neither does the editor for that matter. With online review, you can read those reviews by people you know and trust, you know their qualifications, and you know whether they are the right people to evaluate a paper; it's a much better system.
As a society, regardless of the situation, a representative of the state should NEVER shoot an unarmed man. Period.
How nice for you to hold that opinion. Why don't you become a policeman and then see whether you'll stick to that principle when a 6'5" violent criminal is rushing at you "unarmed".
Firearm usage should be the absolute last thing a cop uses. Not, as we've been seeing, one of the first.
It's pretty simple: in most places in the US and Europe, if you don't stop when police tell you to stop, you risk getting shot. Don't like it? Try to convince your fellow citizens to change the laws. Good luck with that.
Of course it happens more frequently in NYC than elsewhere
I didn't say that "it happens more frequently in NYC", I said "they seem to be found guilty of misconduct more frequently than other police departments". Are you too dumb to understand the difference?
Peer review is supposed to suggest improvements to papers, and to serve as a filter to pass papers that might be interesting and don't have obvious big flaws.
Your point being what?
There is limited space to publish lots of stuff still, and there is certainly limited time to go through all sorts of papers where the abstract doesn't match the techniques or conclusion, there's glaring errors, that sort of thing.
Proper scientific reviews by qualified scientists with higher degrees are non negotiable, if we want science to remain a high quality human endeavour.
That train left the station long ago. Being a "qualified scientist with a higher degree" is not a prerequisite for being a peer reviewer. Peer reviews are frequently (probably usually) carried out by students without higher degrees. Even many people with higher degrees are not "qualified scientists". Citation statistics are frequently gamed (RTFA), and some people manage to arrange to review their own submissions. And science isn't a "high quality human endeavor": like most human endeavors, most people are poor at it, with a few really good people who actually produce good stuff.
Finally, even if peer review were carried out by highly qualified people, it never was intended to guarantee correctness or quality; the point of peer review is to pick interesting papers, not good or correct papers. Obviously incorrect papers are not interesting, which is why they get weeded out as a side effect. But many interesting papers turn out to be wrong. Some of the most reputable journals keep publishing scientific fraud because fraudulent papers often appear to be some of the most interesting ones (until people discover the fraud).
In addition to working better, dropping peer review would have the advantage that even naive people like you get disabused of their misconceptions about science and scientific publishing. In different words: get a f*cking clue.
In my opinion the peer-review should be changed to a double-blind system:
I think peer review should be scrapped entirely; it used to serve a purpose when there was limited space to publish stuff. These days, online citation statistics, comments, and ratings are a much better system.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact remains that Zinn is popular high school and college reading because his political ideology is popular with teachers and intellectuals; his book is an example of what is being taught in mainstream schools, not an example of suppressed views of history.
I am afraid I disagree. I think Zinn has crossed the line from biased history to propaganda in many places; that is, I think he knowingly omits facts and scholarship in order to fit and promote his political agenda.
I've actually lived in an authoritarian society and, sorry, you don't know what you are talking about.
Zinn was a well-meaning man (although there is a great deal of "doing well by doing good" in his populism) and he is worth reading and thinking about, critically. But, ultimately, his political views are wrong precisely because if followed, they lead to authoritarianism that is at least as bad as the authoritarianism he decries.
Are you so stupid that you don't understand the difference between statements of the form "millions of people died" and "millions of people died because of imperialism/fascism/communism/monarchy/..."?
Yes, which is why one shouldn't have debates with people like you.
You're missing the point. My comment wasn't about the absolute number of incidents in NYC (obviously, a big city is going to have more than a small city), but I observed as an aside that an unusually large proportion of incidents in NYC actually involve police misconduct (as opposed to justifiable use of force).
Nevertheless, as I also pointed out, even in NYC, police misconduct is representative of the population of suspects and perpetrators.
By the way, the books historyasaweapon.com suggests are about as propagandistic, misleading, and dishonest as they come, starting with "A People's History Of The United States by Howard Zinn. Zinn's book, incidentally, is widely read in schools today. You might as well be teaching young earth creationism, it's about as valid.
True, if by "winners" you mean the large number of left-leaning academics and teachers; people who use education as a propaganda tool in order to increase their status and train students to advance their political objectives. They are complemented by a smaller contingent of right wing and Christian groups that are doing the same thing with a slightly different ideological bend, often in their own private schools.
From what you say, it appears you merely are with the first group of scoundrels, as opposed to the second group. Both the left and the right are vehemently opposed to doing what the school system should be doing: teach people skills and knowledge that empowers them to take control of their own lives.
True, reading is necessary, but it's not sufficient; if you select your reading to fit your world view, it's the same as merely reading propaganda that reinforces your preexisting prejudices.
You know re-reading your response, I have to say: you really have to be a f*cking partisan moron to accuse people who favor school choice and school vouchers of "want[ing] to ensure that money from wealthier school districts never leaks over into poorer ones". Really, you deserve to be "crapped upon", using your words.
What are you talking about? Lots of people want mandatory building codes abolished. Nevertheless, there is an essential difference between building codes and history: at least for building codes, you can objectively determine what effects they have (at least in principle); for interpretations of history, you cannot.
Not sure what you mean by that. The school districts spending the most money per student are often the ones doing most poorly. And the people who hold these kinds of beliefs (myself included) would actually like to see school voucher and school choice programs that let poor students go to whatever schools there are, including the ones in "wealthier school districts". It's people who hold beliefs like you who strenuously oppose school choice and school vouchers.
You seem to live in a fictional universe where building codes demonstrably protect people, history teaches objective truths, and spending more money on education leads to better outcomes while forcing students to keep attending shitty schools and forcing school districts to keep retaining lousy teachers. In the real universe, none of those statements are true; they are self-serving myths created by people wanted to enrich themselves at others' expense.
Trouble is that nobody has valid scientific theories of "how technology and social trends influenced history"; all we have is ideologically and politically motivated storytelling.
Unfortunately, they don't. In the elementary sciences, you can verify the truth of many statements by direct, independent experimentation. You can't do that in history or many other fields.
And that is different from professors at elite universities... how?
And by "the 1%" I mean academics like Diane Ravitch. Not only are academics like that among the wealthy and powerful in this country, far removed from the concerns of the ordinary citizens, they still have a chip on their shoulder because they look at the top 0.001% and think that they are being treated unfairly.
As for Gates, he isn't in the 1%, he is in a class of its own. He has so much money and power that I doubt he is motivated by acquiring more. His history is unlikely going to be very good, but it's probably no worse than the ideologically motivated trash that is usually being used in schools.
Sure, after we get school choice and school vouchers that let parents take their kids to the school of their choice, a school that teaches their kids the way the parents like it, not the way politicians or teachers' unions want it.
No, you merely said that it is supposed to serve a useful purpose. In reality, it largely fails to serve that purpose anymore, while other mechanisms work a lot better these days.
That's utter nonsense. The number you cite is from a 1995 survey of college students. You are then deftly switching to the term "sexual violence", falsely suggesting that the CDC report actually dealt with legal incidents and violence, when it actually included self-reported college sex that people had second thoughts about afterwards.
Incidents of sexual violence are likely underreported to the police, but they are quite rare at 0.04% / year.
Incidentally, males are primarily victimized in prison.
No, and neither do you. Nobody does.
But it's clearly a lot less than what some hysterical feminists scream about for political reasons.
And what's the problem with that? I mean, the whole point of the kind of wealth and liberty we enjoy is that we can do what interests us.
I think the money for Ebola is a boondoggle, but heck, not as bad as most of those things.
But continued financing of the Export Import Bank is an outrage. Obama himself said it should be shut down when he was a candidate.
With peer review, you have no idea whether the reviewer has any qualifications at all; neither does the editor for that matter. With online review, you can read those reviews by people you know and trust, you know their qualifications, and you know whether they are the right people to evaluate a paper; it's a much better system.
How nice for you to hold that opinion. Why don't you become a policeman and then see whether you'll stick to that principle when a 6'5" violent criminal is rushing at you "unarmed".
It's pretty simple: in most places in the US and Europe, if you don't stop when police tell you to stop, you risk getting shot. Don't like it? Try to convince your fellow citizens to change the laws. Good luck with that.
And that is relevant to what I was saying ... how?
I didn't say that "it happens more frequently in NYC", I said "they seem to be found guilty of misconduct more frequently than other police departments". Are you too dumb to understand the difference?
Are you senile or something?
Your point being what?
Again, your point being what?
In what sense? The NYPD kills people all the time (they seem to be found guilty of misconduct more frequently than other police departments):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
However, as elsewhere, the police killings appear to be representative of the population of suspects and perpetrators:
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
That train left the station long ago. Being a "qualified scientist with a higher degree" is not a prerequisite for being a peer reviewer. Peer reviews are frequently (probably usually) carried out by students without higher degrees. Even many people with higher degrees are not "qualified scientists". Citation statistics are frequently gamed (RTFA), and some people manage to arrange to review their own submissions. And science isn't a "high quality human endeavor": like most human endeavors, most people are poor at it, with a few really good people who actually produce good stuff.
Finally, even if peer review were carried out by highly qualified people, it never was intended to guarantee correctness or quality; the point of peer review is to pick interesting papers, not good or correct papers. Obviously incorrect papers are not interesting, which is why they get weeded out as a side effect. But many interesting papers turn out to be wrong. Some of the most reputable journals keep publishing scientific fraud because fraudulent papers often appear to be some of the most interesting ones (until people discover the fraud).
In addition to working better, dropping peer review would have the advantage that even naive people like you get disabused of their misconceptions about science and scientific publishing. In different words: get a f*cking clue.
I think peer review should be scrapped entirely; it used to serve a purpose when there was limited space to publish stuff. These days, online citation statistics, comments, and ratings are a much better system.