We can significantly change public schools without abandoning them. In the aftermath of Littleton and the illegal footdragging of some local school districts in supporting charter schools, I think it's time to seriously consider abolishing the school boards and "professional" school administrators outright!
The students will still have to take standardized tests, of course, but I can think of nothing that will stop this nonsense faster than empowering parents to tell principals that since they refuse to deal with the fact that their child is shoved into a locker every day they'll take their kids to another school... and the associated state funding. Contrawise principals that ensure *every* kid feels safe will have waiting lists.
Face it; as things stand today we're a democracy everywhere *except* in selecting our public schools.
(I know that school boards are elected... but have you ever seen a bad board thrown out? I saw it happen once, after a popular HS principal was kicked out by the board and she ran for office. She won... and the "professional" administrators have whined nonstop ever since. It makes you wonder where the power really lies...)
In many of these cases the teacher asked the students to tell their honest emotions as part of the healing process (which is legitimate), then turned around and punished students for speaking an unpopular truth!
What do the students learn from this? To hide what they really feel. To distrust everyone in authority. To solve problems themselves, instead of counting on the system.
Are these lessons that we really want to teach our children?
As far as I'm concerned, any teacher (or principal) who stigmatizes a student for being honest about his concerns (and who isn't a direct and immediate threat to others) should be fired on the spot. The little bit of discomfort other students might feel in this situation is an imperceptible fraction of the discomfort of a society where nobody trusts the government. Just look at the ongoing rumors about a coverup of the Kennedy assassination, the claims that the CIA financed illegal foreign operations by smuggling cocaine into US cities... even the claims that the US is holding alien hostages at Area 51!
"All it takes for evil to triumph is for men of honor to remain silent."
This dialog has moved far, far beyond the issue of a couple of nutcases in Littleton. We're talking about an educational system which needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Totally eliminating public schools isn't the answer, but I'm looking at the local charter schools (and the extreme hostility towards such schools shown by several of the local school boards, even in the face of outright court orders that they obey with the law!) and wondering if maybe it's time to abolish all school boards and replace them with a cluster of charter schools. Some of the charter schools will emphasize academics and moral development over sports (like this should even be a matter of debate!) and the geeks could simply flock together in a supportive environment.
It depends on the school and the era. When I was in HS the drinking age was 18, and I knew a few of the jocks who ran cross-country in the spring. Their idea of a party was to get drunk. This is also a popular party with south suburban Denver HS students, judging from the rather high death toll of drunk driving accidents in the paper, only in this case nobody there legally bought the booze.
As for jocks being interesting in computers, perhaps. Or perhaps not. We didn't have computers in the dark ages, but I saw very few of the hardcore jocks in my advanced math, science, or foreign language classes. I did see a most of the other runners, though. In fact, most of the few juniors picked for the Nat'l Honor Society were active in track or cross-country; I don't recall any team sports players so honored.
Are you prepared to claim that I it was somehow unhealthy for me to pass on drinking parties and non-academic courses? Before you answer that, remember that I got out of a 3-year HS (10-12) in only two years by taking summer courses and applying a college class for the last half credit.
P.S., I, and many others, loathe team sports because of the clique mindset they inevitably develop. Individual sports (track, swimming, even wrestling) develop strong individuals; team sports (football, baseball, basketball) develop a herd mentality.
The "freaks" may be hazed more than others, but every coworker I have discussed this with had HS horror stories. Actions routinely go on in high schools which would result in criminal prosecution anywhere else -- and the penalties often apply only to people acting in self defense... then the authorities act shocked when someone snaps.
I agree that the kids need to talk to people, but Jon Katz is reporting incidences where the kids were invited to speak their mind... then told that they must undergo therapy or be suspended/expelled.
Had the students in question said "I plan to shoot Joe Smith with my father's gun after gym class on Thursday" (specific, credible threats) this would be understandable. But these kids did nothing other than say that they had an inkling of what the shooters felt.
Not only are the individual kids now punished for opening up to an adult, the other kids have also seen what happens. The administrators have heard the pressure kettle start to whistle... and responded by clamping down on the safety vent. Another blowup is looking more and more likely... and despite what the media will say it won't be due to a "copycat" killer, but the sour harvest of the administrators' own incompetence.
I was dating a former "popular" girl when "Heathers" came out; she strongly identified with it, but I was confused. (Amused, but confused). Then "Pump Up The Volume" came out and even though all of the details were different, it struck me as very real. It was her turn to be confused.:-)
We were close to the same age. Is it any wonder that so many administrators and parents are clueless?
Your response is like the old joke about not thinking about pink elephants. Us survivors are answering questions posed by teens in the hell that is high school... and now you claim that our discussion somehow "proves" that we've carried the trauma with us.
Sorry, but in the past 20 years I've thought about HS exactly twice. The past week, since the Littleton shooting is local news, and a year ago when an intense exercise program started bringing up flashbacks to HS track practice. (And I don't fully understand the connection there, but am wise enough to listen.) Other than that I don't think about HS or what happened to the losers who thought it was the best time of their life.
Your argument would have a lot more weight if the gunmen hadn't already broken a dozen other laws. Do you think they wouldn't have broken into a gun store to steal guns, if they couldn't get them through other means? Are you ready to criminalize millions of law-abiding citizens by attempting to close all gun stores?
And even an absolute gun control law wouldn't have stopped them from building bombs using household materials. Or chemical weapons. Or even biological weapons, if anyone recalls that "Mr Wizard Ecology Kit" from a few weeks ago where it was suggested that the student collect molds from the garbage.
Just wait until security camera footage from some national crime scene hits the net.
On the bright side, the pundits predicting the end of civilization due to the corrupting influence of the net would probably keel over and die of a stroke at the thought of thousands of high school and college students watching footage of mass murder that they downloaded from the net. It's almost a rumor worth starting just to see who's the most credulous.
Of course *we* see Windows as notoriously flaky. And it is; the same hardware that runs Linux flawlessly for months will lock up after a few days with Windows.
But think about it from the perspective of most people. Compare Windows crashing vs... traffic patterns. How "reliable" are traffic signals? (I know I always check cross traffic before entering an intersection after a red light turns green.)
How "reliable" are physics experiments? In my undergraduate program, we always laughed at the Intro to Physics students who could get g=9.81m/s^2 using a meter stick, rubber ball and stop watch. Us physics upperclassmen were happy to get g=10+/-2 m/s^2 with the same gear. I don't think I *ever* got the same answers twice to any lab exercise except for a few involving microwaves.
Yet that's physics, one of the hardest of sciences. Many (not all) of the mystics are dealing with real phenomena under virtually no control... and few of them realize it.:-( (That's why pseudoscience is so rampant in the field, and James Randi is a patron saint of us skeptical mystics.) To them, even the flakiest system we have ever seen is highly reliable.
(BTW, CSICOP has a far better grasp of reality than most FOX shows, but it's still a fairly limited worldview. Every so often the experts do learn something new which explains a former bit of "nonsense," but after reading SI for many years I don't expect to learn it from them.)
Without getting into the question of whether THC is worse than caffeine, I find your pseudocode disturbing.
You didn't test for someone incapacitated by pot; you test for someone who tests positive for pot at *any* time. It apparently doesn't matter to you whether they smoked the joint before the big presentation to clients... or they simply attended the "wrong" concert with the "wrong" crowd over the weekend. (Or they ate too many poppy seed bagels too close to a random drug test....)
You didn't offer to help the person overcome any drug abuse problem, you simply wiped them out. Deleted them. Hell, if you used C syntax, I'm sure you would have kill'd them.
*sigh* I guess it's time to write another check to the Drug Policy Foundation. I don't have an opinion on whether drugs are dangerous... but I have absolutely no doubt that your attitude *is* dangerous. The focus should be on abusers (especially since no drug test is 100% reliable) and the emphasis should be on helping them stop. Or do you also fire social drinkers?
(Insert obligatory pointer to drug policy run amok. The popular local sub shop closed down because one employee received *payment* for 'shrooms at work, without knowledge or consent of employer. Even the narcs admitted that no drugs were ever in the store. (Ahem. In this particular case.:-) Store reopened only after middle-aged yuppies in town threatened a public demonstration/riot in support of store. The teenager driver facing a "drunk driving" charge because the state's "zero tolerance" policy towards alcohol makes no exemption for NyQuil. Another 12,341,861 examples available in your local newspaper.)
The article is about drug users who program, not programmers who use drugs. It sounds like a subtle point, but look where they collected their stories: London clubs, not London offices.
But anything that shows how geeks are shady characters sell, so next week expect an in-depth expose of programmers and pornography... conducted at the local sex toys store.
BTW, did anyone else wonder if the programmers interviewed weren't just pulling the reporter's leg to see how far it would go? "Do I use drugs?" "Sure! Heroin helps me write code faster!"
This is basic Jungian psychology. Programmers *must* be literal during their working hours, and this pulls out the "chaotic" aspects of their shadow. Some of us embrace it; others are spooked by it and yet others deny it then turn around and embedded flight simulators into spreadsheets and wonder why people get upset.
Likewise, the "mystics" embrace the "chaotic" aspects of life and their shadow pulls up the structured aspects. Some of them become control freaks (e.g., self-castrating Heaven Gaters, or much of the "religious right") and some of them are attracted to computer systems but they can't quite explain why.
The reason is simple: computers (even Windows) are remarkably reliable and consistent... at least compared to what they deal with on a daily basis. (Linux, of course, is Nirvana.) The mystic's claims of how computers work leave us rolling in the aisle, but the important thing is that it provides balancing structure to their life. Before you laugh at them too hard, what do you do to achieve such balance? Or do you really think the universe is as tidy as CSICOP claims?
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We can significantly change public schools without abandoning them. In the aftermath of Littleton and the illegal footdragging of some local school districts in supporting charter schools, I think it's time to seriously consider abolishing the school boards and "professional" school administrators outright!
The students will still have to take standardized tests, of course, but I can think of nothing that will stop this nonsense faster than empowering parents to tell principals that since they refuse to deal with the fact that their child is shoved into a locker every day they'll take their kids to another school... and the associated state funding. Contrawise principals that ensure *every* kid feels safe will have waiting lists.
Face it; as things stand today we're a democracy everywhere *except* in selecting our public schools.
(I know that school boards are elected... but have you ever seen a bad board thrown out? I saw it happen once, after a popular HS principal was kicked out by the board and she ran for office. She won... and the "professional" administrators have whined nonstop ever since. It makes you wonder where the power really lies...)
In many of these cases the teacher asked the students to tell their honest emotions as part of the healing process (which is legitimate), then turned around and punished students for speaking an unpopular truth!
What do the students learn from this? To hide what they really feel. To distrust everyone in authority. To solve problems themselves, instead of counting on the system.
Are these lessons that we really want to teach our children?
As far as I'm concerned, any teacher (or principal) who stigmatizes a student for being honest about his concerns (and who isn't a direct and immediate threat to others) should be fired on the spot. The little bit of discomfort other students might feel in this situation is an imperceptible fraction of the discomfort of a society where nobody trusts the government. Just look at the ongoing rumors about a coverup of the Kennedy assassination, the claims that the CIA financed illegal foreign operations by smuggling cocaine into US cities... even the claims that the US is holding alien hostages at Area 51!
This dialog has moved far, far beyond the issue of a couple of nutcases in Littleton. We're talking about an educational system which needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Totally eliminating public schools isn't the answer, but I'm looking at the local charter schools (and the extreme hostility towards such schools shown by several of the local school boards, even in the face of outright court orders that they obey with the law!) and wondering if maybe it's time to abolish all school boards and replace them with a cluster of charter schools. Some of the charter schools will emphasize academics and moral development over sports (like this should even be a matter of debate!) and the geeks could simply flock together in a supportive environment.
It depends on the school and the era. When I was in HS the drinking age was 18, and I knew a few of the jocks who ran cross-country in the spring. Their idea of a party was to get drunk. This is also a popular party with south suburban Denver HS students, judging from the rather high death toll of drunk driving accidents in the paper, only in this case nobody there legally bought the booze.
As for jocks being interesting in computers, perhaps. Or perhaps not. We didn't have computers in the dark ages, but I saw very few of the hardcore jocks in my advanced math, science, or foreign language classes. I did see a most of the other runners, though. In fact, most of the few juniors picked for the Nat'l Honor Society were active in track or cross-country; I don't recall any team sports players so honored.
Are you prepared to claim that I it was somehow unhealthy for me to pass on drinking parties and non-academic courses? Before you answer that, remember that I got out of a 3-year HS (10-12) in only two years by taking summer courses and applying a college class for the last half credit.
P.S., I, and many others, loathe team sports because of the clique mindset they inevitably develop. Individual sports (track, swimming, even wrestling) develop strong individuals; team sports (football, baseball, basketball) develop a herd mentality.
The "freaks" may be hazed more than others, but every coworker I have discussed this with had HS horror stories. Actions routinely go on in high schools which would result in criminal prosecution anywhere else -- and the penalties often apply only to people acting in self defense... then the authorities act shocked when someone snaps.
I agree that the kids need to talk to people, but Jon Katz is reporting incidences where the kids were invited to speak their mind... then told that they must undergo therapy or be suspended/expelled.
Had the students in question said "I plan to shoot Joe Smith with my father's gun after gym class on Thursday" (specific, credible threats) this would be understandable. But these kids did nothing other than say that they had an inkling of what the shooters felt.
Not only are the individual kids now punished for opening up to an adult, the other kids have also seen what happens. The administrators have heard the pressure kettle start to whistle... and responded by clamping down on the safety vent. Another blowup is looking more and more likely... and despite what the media will say it won't be due to a "copycat" killer, but the sour harvest of the administrators' own incompetence.
I was dating a former "popular" girl when "Heathers" came out; she strongly identified with it, but I was confused. (Amused, but confused). Then "Pump Up The Volume" came out and even though all of the details were different, it struck me as very real. It was her turn to be confused. :-)
We were close to the same age. Is it any wonder that so many administrators and parents are clueless?
Your response is like the old joke about not thinking about pink elephants. Us survivors are answering questions posed by teens in the hell that is high school... and now you claim that our discussion somehow "proves" that we've carried the trauma with us.
Sorry, but in the past 20 years I've thought about HS exactly twice. The past week, since the Littleton shooting is local news, and a year ago when an intense exercise program started bringing up flashbacks to HS track practice. (And I don't fully understand the connection there, but am wise enough to listen.) Other than that I don't think about HS or what happened to the losers who thought it was the best time of their life.
Your argument would have a lot more weight if the gunmen hadn't already broken a dozen other laws. Do you think they wouldn't have broken into a gun store to steal guns, if they couldn't get them through other means? Are you ready to criminalize millions of law-abiding citizens by attempting to close all gun stores?
And even an absolute gun control law wouldn't have stopped them from building bombs using household materials. Or chemical weapons. Or even biological weapons, if anyone recalls that "Mr Wizard Ecology Kit" from a few weeks ago where it was suggested that the student collect molds from the garbage.
Just wait until security camera footage from some national crime scene hits the net.
On the bright side, the pundits predicting the end of civilization due to the corrupting influence of the net would probably keel over and die of a stroke at the thought of thousands of high school and college students watching footage of mass murder that they downloaded from the net. It's almost a rumor worth starting just to see who's the most credulous.
Of course *we* see Windows as notoriously flaky. And it is; the same hardware that runs Linux flawlessly for months will lock up after a few days with Windows.
:-( (That's why pseudoscience is so rampant in the field, and James Randi is a patron saint of us skeptical mystics.) To them, even the flakiest system we have ever seen is highly reliable.
But think about it from the perspective of most people. Compare Windows crashing vs... traffic patterns. How "reliable" are traffic signals? (I know I always check cross traffic before entering an intersection after a red light turns green.)
How "reliable" are physics experiments? In my undergraduate program, we always laughed at the Intro to Physics students who could get g=9.81m/s^2 using a meter stick, rubber ball and stop watch. Us physics upperclassmen were happy to get g=10+/-2 m/s^2 with the same gear. I don't think I *ever* got the same answers twice to any lab exercise except for a few involving microwaves.
Yet that's physics, one of the hardest of sciences. Many (not all) of the mystics are dealing with real phenomena under virtually no control... and few of them realize it.
(BTW, CSICOP has a far better grasp of reality than most FOX shows, but it's still a fairly limited worldview. Every so often the experts do learn something new which explains a former bit of "nonsense," but after reading SI for many years I don't expect to learn it from them.)
Without getting into the question of whether THC is worse than caffeine, I find your pseudocode disturbing.
:-) Store reopened only after middle-aged yuppies in town threatened a public demonstration/riot in support of store. The teenager driver facing a "drunk driving" charge because the state's "zero tolerance" policy towards alcohol makes no exemption for NyQuil. Another 12,341,861 examples available in your local newspaper.)
You didn't test for someone incapacitated by pot; you test for someone who tests positive for pot at *any* time. It apparently doesn't matter to you whether they smoked the joint before the big presentation to clients... or they simply attended the "wrong" concert with the "wrong" crowd over the weekend. (Or they ate too many poppy seed bagels too close to a random drug test....)
You didn't offer to help the person overcome any drug abuse problem, you simply wiped them out. Deleted them. Hell, if you used C syntax, I'm sure you would have kill'd them.
*sigh* I guess it's time to write another check to the Drug Policy Foundation. I don't have an opinion on whether drugs are dangerous... but I have absolutely no doubt that your attitude *is* dangerous. The focus should be on abusers (especially since no drug test is 100% reliable) and the emphasis should be on helping them stop. Or do you also fire social drinkers?
(Insert obligatory pointer to drug policy run amok. The popular local sub shop closed down because one employee received *payment* for 'shrooms at work, without knowledge or consent of employer. Even the narcs admitted that no drugs were ever in the store. (Ahem. In this particular case.
The article is about drug users who program, not programmers who use drugs. It sounds like a subtle point, but look where they collected their stories: London clubs, not London offices.
But anything that shows how geeks are shady characters sell, so next week expect an in-depth expose of programmers and pornography... conducted at the local sex toys store.
BTW, did anyone else wonder if the programmers interviewed weren't just pulling the reporter's leg to see how far it would go? "Do I use drugs?"
"Sure! Heroin helps me write code faster!"
This is basic Jungian psychology. Programmers *must* be literal during their working hours, and this pulls out the "chaotic" aspects of their shadow. Some of us embrace it; others are spooked by it and yet others deny it then turn around and embedded flight simulators into spreadsheets and wonder why people get upset.
Likewise, the "mystics" embrace the "chaotic" aspects of life and their shadow pulls up the structured aspects. Some of them become control freaks (e.g., self-castrating Heaven Gaters, or much of the "religious right") and some of them are attracted to computer systems but they can't quite explain why.
The reason is simple: computers (even Windows) are remarkably reliable and consistent... at least compared to what they deal with on a daily basis. (Linux, of course, is Nirvana.) The mystic's claims of how computers work leave us rolling in the aisle, but the important thing is that it provides balancing structure to their life. Before you laugh at them too hard, what do you do to achieve such balance? Or do you really think the universe is as tidy as CSICOP claims?