Here's some other possibilities, though they may be somewhat similar to your points.
Guess 4: The Catholic Church and other anti-birth-control religious groups are taken less seriously in richer countries. The USA has a lot of Catholics, but most of them seem to be OK with disregarding the stance against birth control.
Guess 5 (similar to #1 but not identical): In richer countries, you're expected to provide not only more things but also more space. Ever look at how crowded apartments in the former Soviet Union are, especially by American standards? Who's going to have six kids here (at least in the higher social classes) without being in possession of AT LEAST a four-bedroom house, so the kids aren't more than two to a room??
Guess 6: Smaller window of opportunity. Biological maturity is occurring younger, marriage (and usually childbirth) is delayed until much older than it once was, at the risks of childbearing later in life are highly publicized in this country. There seems to be at most a ten-year period (mid-20s to mid-30s) for upper-middle class Americans to do all their breeding.:)
People objected loud and clear (and rightly so!) to the "geek profiling" that occured post-Columbine. People ALSO objected to the stereotyping of "jocks" and other athletes.
So obviously it's not OK to stereotype men. But stereotyping women is fine and dandy? I don't think so, and evidently I'm not the only one. I did feel that the article was something of a slam against geek girls and against intelligent women in general, though I know it wasn't intended as such. In some ways, the fact that it WAS so unintentional makes it all the more dangerous IMHO. The Mars-and-Venus books and crap like The Rules make it very clear to women that if they have brains, they're supposed to hide them if they every want to catch a man (which is, of course, the overriding goal of all women, right?)
Having this perpetuated on Slashdot, even in fun, shows me (and apparently a lot of other/. readers) just how far-reaching these stereotypes are. I'm fully aware that this article was supposed to be funny, but the "fun" was at the expense of the female/. readership, and that bothers me.
I do understand that dating one's "clone" is a bad idea. However, the "traditional" marriage (what it sounds like this article is advocating) is something I've got BIG problems with. I mean, come on. Could the gender roles in this have been any more rigid? I do notice that this was posted under "It's funny. Laugh." which inclines me to give/. in general the benefit of the doubt as far as whether or not it's sexist goes... but sheesh.
I had a psych of personality book that basically said "marry your opposite"... and I disagree. I think that it's good for the balance of a relationship for the two partners to be different in SOME ways, but there is a certain amount of common ground that a relationship needs to be successful. For me, that common ground includes net-savviness, paganism, gaming, and the SCA. I love having someone to laugh with as I respond to the cybersex propositions of a "lesbian" with no clue about female anatomy, and who doesn't find this threatening. I love having someone around to argue politics with who can intelligently discuss damn near anything from sex to urban sprawl, and who doesn't necessarily think the same way I do. We learn a lot from each other.
I think that most of the problems some geek guys have with the idea of dating a female geek come down to some form of insecurity. Either they want the gorgeous babe to take back to their high school reunion as a "who's sorry now?", or they are afraid of being "beaten by a girl" and don't want an intellectual equal around, or (this seems to be the most frequent) they are disturbed by having a SO who has a lot of male friends and/or gets along quite swimmingly with their friends. For someone who is socially insecure as it is, that can be pretty threatening.:)
Especially that part about how shocked some guys are to have a female geek around. One of my good friends still refuses to forgive my boyfriend for his shocked reaction to meeting his first non-dragged-by-SO female gamer.
And I have to say (having dated both geek guys and non-geek guys, along with a couple of geek girls), that geek guys have definite advantages: they are (usually) more creative in bed, they can be incredibly sweet and chivalrous without making it feel like they're putting women down, they usually are OK to take home to the parents, their parents usually like you even if you're a bit strange because they're so happy to SEE their geek offspring with a member of the opposite sex, geek guys fix broken stuff quite well, and best of all they are worth talking to and will engage in conversation about almost anything. My geek boyfriend is wonderful (and, no you can't have either of us)!;)
A 17 year old was able to buy a game that is supposed to be sold only to those age 17 and older? Um, why is this bad? What are they arguing?
Do they want the age limit changed to 18 (or 21, or 25 or whatever), or do they have proof that the 17-year-old was sent by younger friends/siblings, or what? This makes no sense.:P
I understand legitimate privacy concerns. But there ARE times when people actually DO have a right to access certain information. For instance, someone in a nearby small town who tested HIV+ and had reported over 100 sexual partners (MANY of them underage girls). In a case where something is a legitimate public health hazard, there needs to be a way for the appropriate authorities to get the necessary information.
Nobody was EVER talking about putting medical records on a public website. I used to work for a medical school, and I know that the doctors would never allow that. However, being able to transfer treatment records more quickly to other medical professionals is enough of a benefit that with decent security in place it FAR outweighs the risks IMHO.
Hmm. Interesting perspective. But there is a point at which it goes overboard and IMHO genetic tinkering (with the possible exception of eliminating SEVERE illnesses/birth defects) is WAY over that line.
There are enough schools of thought as far as parenting is concerned as it is, some of which are wildly contradictory, and IMHO any ONE of them taken to an extreme is likely to produce a screwed-up kid or several. Now, they'll probably be screwed-up in different WAYS, but still they will have problems. It could be a stay-at-home mom who is reluctant to let "her little babies" out of her sight (even when said babies are teenagers), parents who drag kids to lesson after lesson rather than spending time with them, "accellerated preschools," and lots of other things I can't think of right now.
IMHO, it is the FIRST duty of the parent to let the child grow into an independent person, not an extension of the parent's ego. Living vicariously through one's kids may be common, but that doesn't make it morally acceptable.
... but that doesn't mean I think this is a good idea. *sigh*
I'm reminded of the scenarios in Player Piano and Brave New World, which do a rather nice job of pointing out the major logistical problem with all this: Someone still has to do the grunt work. As it is, we aren't too far off of Vonnegut's scenario of female PhD's in cutthroat competition for secretarial jobs, and a genetically-engineered meritocracy is only going to aggravate the problem. There will still need to be a "producer" class, which is something that people tend to forget, and in this day and age of cheap mass-market goods made by little kids in China, most people don't want (even if they can afford it) to pay good money for the honest labor of a talented craftsperson. Think of how much less clothing the average person owned when it was usually sewn by someone in the household (by hand even), and how much less than THAT the average person owned when cloth had to be hand-spun and woven as well. Machines DO take care of some of this, but people still must run the machines.
There's also the small matter of the likely high correlation between intelligence and insanity. Remember the "Eve" episode of the X-Files? This holds fairly true in my own life... some of the most brilliant people I know are also some of the least able to deal with reality. One friend of mine got a 750 on themath section of the SAT at the age of 12, failed out of engineering school and is now working at KFC. She was also extremely suicidal for most of the time we were in regular contact. I could tell similar stories of my cousin, my grandfather, and to a certain extent, myself and my father as well.
Trying too hard to "fix" a perceived problem tends to lead to backlash of some sort -- disease-resistant bacteria, anyone? There are two ways this could go, and I don't much care for either of them: An "all the children are above average" scenario, with "deviations" such as CP, Down's Syndrome, or perhaps even homosexuality ruthlessly stomped out, and people becoming ridiculously overqualified for even the most basic jobs; or a *deliberate* system of "breeding" a worker class (either human or AI). Gives me the creeps....
Design flaw #1: The assumption that human knowledge can be made into an assembly-line project. It can't. But the current educational system is built on precisely that principle. Learning too quickly, too slowly, or just in a non-standard way causes problems for the system, so it is squashed mercilessly as much as possible.
Design flaw #2: Bell curve based testing used as a marker of how "good" a school is. All the children are NOT going to be above average, and a reward/penalty system based on this is ludicrous.
Design flaw #3: The assumption that children and young adults are not full human beings in the same way that missionaries assumed that "savages" were not yet full human beings. Instead of accepting Jesus Christ, we have to accept the American Way of Life as our Savior. If kids were treated as rational human beings, more of them would have more incentive to ACT like rational human beings. The resemblance between schools and prisons is growing every day, and it frightens me. I've seen studies that have shown that first-time offenders sent to jail have a higher recidivism rate than those put on probation. It would be nice if those making decisions that affect today's youth would LEARN from this!
Design flaw #4: Teachers are treated like glorified baby-sitters by EVERYone -- students, parents, and administration alike. Then, they are attacked for "not teaching."
The replacement system I'd like to see: Students are free to learn at their own pace, in a manner of their choosing, and their education will be fully subsidized until they reach the age of 21. They may at any time take tests or an alternative method to prove themselves "certified" at any level in any subject. They do this when they feel ready. One of these tests would be something akin to the current GED, and would be accepted as a "general high school diploma." Anyone at this level gains emancipated minor status and the right to vote if not yet 18.
That sounds like a good, and smart, professor. I do think it's a good idea to know what the heck a professor is using as a basis for grading. It does help.
My favorite professor had a worksheet he stapled to the back of each paper. Each element of the paper (relevance of topic, coherence of argument, adherence to the assignment -- things like page length and use of APA style, and spelling/grammar) were given a certain amount of points. He would put down exactly where you "lost" the points, with comments. (I usually lost a point on bad APA style because I prefer MLA. But oh well.) Then again, this is the same professor who would always tell us "I have no problem giving everyone an A. I also have no problem giving everyone an F. You control your destiny in this class."
Sorry, but you'll find that learning something for the sake of learning it, or for the sake of being "educated," won't exactly make you any friends or get you anywhere in life. People just don't care anymore. They'll say Shakespeare is "boring" without even opening the book to find that much of what he wrote is still quite relevant. They'll say "When am I ever going to use this, anyway?" when faced with a mathematical concept that doesn't make immediate sense to them. They'll say, "Why should what a bunch of people did a hundred years ago matter?" and ignore the influence that those actions of a hundred years ago have on our lives today. They'll say "why should I bother to write a good resume?" and wonder why nobody will hire them for anything better than a McJob.
As I've posted in the past, overspecialization and the believe that one doesn't need to have any knowledge outside one's own profession does a lot to contribute to this. Few people are left who see the value of a good, well-rounded education. Whether it's the kid who majors in business or CS to "make a lot of money," or the classics major who thinks that communication majors "sit around watching I Love Lucy re-runs all day," or the hard science major who has never voluntarily cracked a book of poetry in his life, or the humanities/social science majors who take watered-down math and science classes so they can keep their high GPAs with a minimum of effort, or... you get the idea. All I have to say is, I don't like it. So there.;)
If students are ignoring the assignments by downloading ohter people's papers, and teachers are ignoring them by using mechanical graders, then perhaps the papers ought not to be assigned in the first place? If everyone has something better to do with their time, then why bother? Most students don't want to write about, say, the significance of Lady Macbeth's handwashing; most teachers don't *honestly* want to read 50 papers a semester on the topic.
Both sides of the issue in this column point to the same problems:
1. A society that considers someone who put in practically no effort through 16 years of schooling more "educated" than someone who has learned through the "school of hard knocks." This is, of course, complete and utter bullshit, yet it persists.
2. Pressure on students by bad/uncreative teachers to come up with "the right answer" rather than an answer that actually shows some thought. Required rather than suggested topics for essays, teachers who grade based on their own personal biases rather than for content, and "students" who'd rather be doing anything but going to school all contribute to the problem.
Fix problem #1, and problem #2 might be less of an issue. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a classroom full of people who honestly wanted to be there and who were THINKING about what they were doing?
I don't have one set of predictions. I see several possible "alternate futures," if you want to call them that. More about that further down the post.
One of the things that bothers me about predictions of the future is the way they go to extremes of Utopia and Dystopia, without realizing that some tihngs just flat-out aren't going to change EVER.
Politics, in some form, will exist. They always do in any group larger than two people. Likewise, people will be born, most of them will fall in love one or more times, most of them will have some form of sexual experience, many will reproduce, and we will all eventually die.
Many of the plots of the ancient Greek myths, Icelandic sagas, and Shakespeare's plays concern issues we still face today. Some things -- a quest for understanding of the divine, balancing responsibility between the individual and society, falling in love with someone who's in love with someone else, children defying their parents and "servants" defying their "masters," one culture insisting on its superiority to all others -- are always going to be with us. So, no matter what the change in the surrounding technology or the specific issues, the general ones are still with us.
Now, all that said, here's a few possible alternate futures:
Possible future #1: The Wal-Mart-Ization of The World Pretty much like it says. All shopping centers, malls, downtown store fronts, etc. are all replaced with Wal-Marts (or something similar). One company controls each industry. A few stubborn, rich eccentrics in a few isolated areas manage to provide alternatives without being bankrupt, but it's "more trouble than it's worth" for the average person to get there. Nothing particularly nasty or apocalyptic happens -- machines do not displace humans en masse, electric cars are introduced just before oil runs out, and some natural woodlands are preserved as "parks" to avoid wiping out more species completely. But life, on the whole, becomes rather dull. Most people don't seem to mind.
Possible future #2: "Bring Seeds!" For some reason or other, there is a World War III, or alternatively there are many smaller wars that cause civilization as we know it to collapse. (Or some other problem, like the Y2K bug, causes a mass collapse of civilization... not that I consider this AT ALL likely!) Groups of like-minded people gather at pre-determined sites to rebuild society. There is a long-standing and half-serious joke that if something big and nasty happens to the world, members of the SCA will gather as close to Cooper's Lake (the site of Pennsic, our largest annual event) and attempt to rebuild society from there. "Bring seeds!" is what the owner of the campground told us.:) Since the current multinational infrastructure is no longer in place, people's priorities change. A whole lot. But since pockets of knowledgable people survive, society is rebuilt (although it is very different from the old one), technology "comes back," etc.
Possible Future #3 -- REALLY Weird Science: (This may be used in conjunction with the prevoius, or as its own scenario.) What most of us currently think of as "magic(k)" starts "working" or "working better." Things that people once considered "impossible" start happening, and become difficult to control. Magic is regulated and/or outlawed, but eventually either the government gives in or the magicians overthrow the government. Unfortunately, having government-appointed telepaths available to snoop into people's minds ends up being a very bad thing for those who think subversive thoughts, although it does get all the kiddie-porn purveyors busted. (Yes, I realize this is incredibly similar to the Internet itself. Yes, this was intentional. *smiles*)
Possible Future #4 -- Dead Planets Aren't Much Fun: The Earth becomes increasingly inhospitible to life. Every nasty thing (or nearly so) that environmentalists worry about turns out to be true, and sufficiently few people care enough to do anything about it. Life becomes short, harsh, and unpleasant for most people.
Possible Future #5 -- Congratulations, You Have Won SimEarth! Technology marches on. We get to colonize some other planets, even other solar systems, and leave the earth behind as a nature preserve. Birds are now sentient at the stone-age level.;)
This is, in some ways, a bit like the "partial birth abortion" debate. Third trimester abortions are NOT done in this country unless there is a severe risk to the life of the mother, or the infant is not viable (ie is going to be born without a large portion of its brain). It does, however, make a nice strawman for those who are against abortion. And I *do* think that in the case of a VERY severe handicap, in some cases it is kinder to let the child die. It's easier on the child, it's easier on the parents, and it's easier on society as a whole.
BUT... the problem quickly becomes one of line-drawing. My boyfriend's mother works with mentally retarded adults, and they might not be the MOST productive members of society, but they aren't completely UNproductive either -- many of them have jobs, many of which us "more intelligent" folk would consider beneath our dignity to hold once we got past the age of 18. Another good example is cystic fibrosis -- 40 years ago, a "CF kid" was lucky to see an eighth birthday. Now, the average CF patient survives into his 30s. Should we kill off babies born with CF?
Which brings me to my next point: There are "severe disabilities" that are NOT apparent at birth. How old can the child become and still have the parents allowed to kill him, or at least to "let him die"? One year old? Five? Thirteen? Seventeen?
Last but not least, I am bisexual. My housemate is gay. If a "gay gene" is ever found, those who consider us "undesirable" might engage in selective abortion or infanticide. This gives me the chills on a very irrational, personal level. Likewise, I know that in ancient Scandanavia and in modern China, babies are killed or left to die for the "defect" of being female. Since I'm female, this does not sit well with me at all. "But those abuses won't happen!" How do you know that?
U.S. Representatives must be at least 25, Senators must be at least 30, and the President and VP must be at least 35. Kind of sucks for the 18-24 crowd, though I don't think there are quite so many age restrictions at the level of local politics.
Come to think of it, people's brains need to get amended a bit, too. Those may be the age limits, but how many under-30 Representatives are there? I'd say probably not very many. The youngest president we've ever had was IIRC 41, and he wasn't elected -- he was a VP who succeeded a Prez who got shot (T.R., who became President after McKinley's death.)
Even when Clinton/Gore ran for the first time, "are they too young?" was a big campaign issue even though they were in their mid-40s. Sheesh. For all the "Don't Trust Anyone Over 30" buttons, it seems like in practice "Don't Trust Anyone Under 50" is the way politics are REALLY played.
With a signature file like that, you really need to know the answer?;)
Well, here's a good example: Most school scientific experiments don't deserve the name "experiment". Generally, if you didn't get X for a result (X being whatever's in the teacher's guide), then YOU did something wrong. And the kids who rack up good grades in science classes and win science fairs confine themselves to this type of "experiment" for the most part. There's a built in "right" and "wrong" answer. Don't get me wrong, a lot of these principles need to be taught, but can we please not call them "experiments" when the conclusion is so predetermined?
And here's another one: The nice doctor and the nice psychologist know exactly what's wrong with you. And they're going to make it all better. Now take your Ritalin, Johny! (Alternatively, take your Zoloft, Jenny!) They're the experts, so they obviously know what's best for you.
History teachers that make fun of the mythology of other cultures and tell their students how "stupid" and "backward" and "savage" a culture that "believed that stuff" had to be are another excellent example. "WE are intelligent, modern people. We're above all that!" Apparently, some friends of mine had history teachers treat Christianity the same way, much to the ire of several parents.
*sigh* That's as good an example as any of what I'm talking about, and an area where it is much more dangerous. There are a lot of people who have quite a lot invested in the belief that modern medical technology is the Savior of Us All. Effective alternatives to surgery and a lifetime of drugs for certain diseases are being ignored and/or derided as "New Age Fluff" or "just a placebo" in the name of "modern medical science." People are being put on drugs with horrible side effects that don't actually fix the problem they're supposed to, and paying through the nose for the priviledge, because some doctor said so. THIS is what I mean by treating Science as God.
Scientists are no more immune from having an agenda than "men of God" are, and "scientific findings" have this interesting way of backing up popular public beliefs, or alternatively of not really seeing the light of day. Phrenology, anyone?
OK. The idea that, right off the bat, evolution shouldn't be taught because the Bible says the world was created in 4004 BC is just batty. Especially when one stops to consider that what appears in the Bible as "day" really means "period of time," and with a few minor exceptions the order that things were "created" in is a pretty good match for evolutionary theory. I also think that the theory of evolution is the best one out there.
Now, all that said, I've got some serious problems with people who claim there is no God and then turn around and turn Science into God. Scientific rationalism can be (and these days, often is) taken much too far, in the same way that Christianity can.
I consider myself quite religious, though I am not Christian. And the replacement of the Judeo-Christian God with the "non-God" of scientific rationalism just shifts the good/evil paradigm slightly. It really doesn't change the black-and-white outlook that most people seem to have. "I'm right, and I have PROOF! Therefore, you're an immoral idiot." Isn't it time to evolve past this (so to speak)?;)
(And before someone jumps all over me for this, I'm not trying to claim that the world was literally, actually, created by the remains of a giant cow. I do think that scientific evolution is the best *guess* we currently have as to "how we got here," but I don't want kids taught that Science is God any more than I want them forced to pray to Jesus every day.)
OK, first of all, energy-efficient alternatives have this way of getting scrapped in favor of wasteful ones in the name of "creating jobs" and because the more "wasteful" industries are big business. Racist stereotypes of Mexicans + heavy pressure from the lumber (and other) industries = criminalization of hemp. Oddly, there was once a (IIRC, WWII) propoganda film called "Hemp for Victory." Interesting, huh?
If someone were to develop a clean, cheap, efficient source of power, it would never hit the market thanks to Big Oil. When managed properly, hydroelectric, wind/solar, and even nuclear power can be quite effective. Locally, we use a good bit of hydro and nuclear power, and I haven't seen problems.
OTOH, one of the big problems with nuclear energy is the question of "where to put the waste." Locally, the people who run a nearby salt mine thought that abandoned parts of the mine would be perfect. But while they were in the process of getting this approved, some very bad things happened. Specifically, the abandoned mine began to collapse (whether due to a rare earthquake or a potentially-less-stable mining technique that was used there, I don't know). Water began flooding in at the rate of thousands of gallons a minute, eroding the salt, causing the mine to collapse further, and contaminating what was once a good source of groundwater with a very large quantity of salt. I was in college at the time, and found out that the dorm I lived in might have its foundation cracked sometime between five and 50 years from now if they can't find some way to stop the water. In nearby towns, there are areas where the land has just dropped six feet.
I'd rather not think about how much worse all this would have been if there HAD been nuclear waste in there. Ick.
Ray Bradbury had this one right YEARS ago, when he wrote an excellent short story called "The Murderer."
I highly encourage everyone to read it. The "murderer" of the story kills communication devices, and as a result has been sent to a mental institution. He has a lot of fun telling the psychiatrist that the specific flavor of ice cream he used to destroy the bus radio is probably going to experience a sales increase soon.
Back in reality, I can certainly understand the instinct. I have a SO who "worries" about me if we aren't in touch several times daily, and I end up putting so much time into my "online life" (both trying to stay "informed" and trying to stay "in contact," though information is key for me), that my work suffers at times. Like now.;)
And on a certain level, it is distressing when people can't manage without their gadgets. I lived in Rochester for a year without a car; at the time, I was working somewhere within easy walking distance of my house, and I also knew the public transit system quite well. And those who had a car since their 16th birthday always look askance. "You WALKED? Oh you poor thing, let me give you a ride." "How can you stand the bus system, it's horrible?" [No it's not!] And so forth. Similar incomprehension is directed at those who don't have a net-connection, a recent-model computer, a computer at all, a television, a cell phone, etc etc etc. It does get a bit silly after a while.
Very very well put. I doubt I could've said it better.
You might want to go and check out A.Lizard's pages on school reform (go to http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/ and start clicking links... I'd post links but for some reason they don't seem to save *sigh*). He proposes something fairly similar to your suggestions.:)
IMHO, one of the big problems with society is that the physical age of puberty keeps getting younger while the time at which someone is considered a competent adult keeps getting older. You need a four-year degree now, most of the time, to get what a high-school diploma would have gotten you 30 years ago. Four extra years to run around and not be anything approximating an adult. Just a long, protracted adolescense that keeps getting longer as the previous generation keeps on getting less-inclined to take anyone younger seriously. It's insane, I'm telling ya.:)
*sigh* Um, I attempt to disbelieve? I try really really hard to make it all go away?
Sheesh. ID tags I can actually understand (I have to wear them at work), not having your name flashing around to see I can understand if you're a little kid whose parents are worried about kidnapping, but... somehow I can't stomach this. (See subject heading of my post for a good reason why.)
Of course, what would IMHO be a sensible solution to this would be to make schools smaller and more specialized. That way, most likely you'd KNOW who was supposed to be there, kids with similar abilities and talents could work together under more-specialized instruction suited for them, and the world in general would be a brighter place.
Meanwhile, this is Yet Another Reason I'm Homeschooling My Kids When I Have Them(tm).
Let's see. Fifteen people, out of how many millions of high school students, were killed. Yes, this is a tragedy. NO, it is not a sign of the Apocalypse. Not to mention that at this point, what is done is done and there is absolutely NOTHING we can do to bring those fifteen people back. Reality check, please?
The aftermath: Hundreds, probably thousands, of kids wrongfully suspended or expelled from school, many more sent to inept "counselors" who want to "fix" them, and conformist kids and teachers basically declaring open season on non-conformist kids. Read some of the Goth websites, www.darklinks.com is a good start, to get some understanding of what happened. Kids, and young adults, were being physically *assaulted*... and the police was doing NOTHING about it. That serious enough for you?
No, of course not. They're not dead, and nothing will bring those fifteen kids back. But that's just the POINT. Fifteen people are dead. They are beyond our help. Let's do something REAL to help the people who are still ALIVE and can benefit from it, rather than fucking things up worse for them.
And yes, wrongful suspensions have the potential to screw kids' lives up big-time. For one thing, they can forget about getting into a good college for the most part. For another, it opens them up to more harassment by peers, and schools look the other way as long as it's not the freaks doing the harassing.
I left high school eight years ago, and graduated from college two years ago. I'm not a high school student "whining" about how I am now being restricted.
What happened, and what is happening now, goes FAR beyond "not being able to wear trenchcoats." Kids were getting SUSPENDED for saying "I would never kill anyone, but I can understand why someone would snap." This will "go down on their permanent record," so to speak. Are you honestly trying to tell me that THAT is productive?! And as I have already posted elsewhere, "mandatory counseling" is a big part of the problem when the "counselors" are incompetent. And believe me, there's a good chunk of them who are not only incompetent but also heartless. Their attitude is "you aren't like everyone else, which means you're broken and we need to fix you." Being told that sort of thing by an alleged "mental health professional" can fuck someone's head up for a good long time, if not for life. Sure, we may have "saved" one or two "disturbed" kids, but how many more did we push that much farther?
Think about it, and stop dismissing the other posters as "whining little kids." We're not.
Problem #1: Most of the time, they're getting the wrong kids. I don't have the URL handy, but The Escapist (a site dedoicated to the defense of RPGs and their players) recently ran an article about a program that would scan creative writing assignments for "key words" that supposedly meant the kids had a greater-than-average chance of being mentally disturbed. "Sincere," "forgive," "nowhere," and "shadows" were among the words, as were several others that you'd expect to see in the fiction of any gamer or scadian.
Problem #2: Even when kids who maybe could benefit from it get sent to counseling, the counselors are HORRIBLE most of the time and they do more harm than good. The attitude is "you're broken, how can we fix you so you're like everyone else?" I've been to three different counselors for various reasons and all three of them did me much more harm than good. The one I was sent to in 8th grade actually ended up making me MORE suicidal by telling me that my ways of coping with things (which generally involved my usually sarcastic sense of humor) was wrong. Then, there was the "advisor" I was required to meet with monthly when I was in an early-admissions program at college. I was being harassed by floormates (death-threat phone calls at 3 AM, etc.), knew who it was but had no proof, and the counselor refused to believe me. Then of course there was the one at college who came to talk to my dorm after one of the girls lived there took 90 Zoloft and died. "You may be feeling [insert list here], and none of that is valid..." Excuse me, if I'm feeling it, I consider it valid. It may not be ACCURATE, but who the hell is this guy to tell me my feelings aren't "valid"? And then of course I couldn't get an appointment because they "didn't have time" for me. And when my housemate went the following year and told them, "Drugs. I need drugs," they wrote her a prescription for Zoloft (the same med used in the previous year's suicide) and did nothing else. No counseling sessions, NOTHING, just a prescription for anti-depressants.
Or, if you want a really nasty example, my best friend basically ended up signing himself into a mental institution thanks to an inept school counselor who didn't tell him that that was what he was doing. It took his parents over a week to get him out of there. Talk about torturing a young teenager.....
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Guess 4: The Catholic Church and other anti-birth-control religious groups are taken less seriously in richer countries. The USA has a lot of Catholics, but most of them seem to be OK with disregarding the stance against birth control.
Guess 5 (similar to #1 but not identical): In richer countries, you're expected to provide not only more things but also more space. Ever look at how crowded apartments in the former Soviet Union are, especially by American standards? Who's going to have six kids here (at least in the higher social classes) without being in possession of AT LEAST a four-bedroom house, so the kids aren't more than two to a room??
Guess 6: Smaller window of opportunity. Biological maturity is occurring younger, marriage (and usually childbirth) is delayed until much older than it once was, at the risks of childbearing later in life are highly publicized in this country. There seems to be at most a ten-year period (mid-20s to mid-30s) for upper-middle class Americans to do all their breeding.
So obviously it's not OK to stereotype men. But stereotyping women is fine and dandy? I don't think so, and evidently I'm not the only one. I did feel that the article was something of a slam against geek girls and against intelligent women in general, though I know it wasn't intended as such. In some ways, the fact that it WAS so unintentional makes it all the more dangerous IMHO. The Mars-and-Venus books and crap like The Rules make it very clear to women that if they have brains, they're supposed to hide them if they every want to catch a man (which is, of course, the overriding goal of all women, right?)
Having this perpetuated on Slashdot, even in fun, shows me (and apparently a lot of other
I had a psych of personality book that basically said "marry your opposite"
I think that most of the problems some geek guys have with the idea of dating a female geek come down to some form of insecurity. Either they want the gorgeous babe to take back to their high school reunion as a "who's sorry now?", or they are afraid of being "beaten by a girl" and don't want an intellectual equal around, or (this seems to be the most frequent) they are disturbed by having a SO who has a lot of male friends and/or gets along quite swimmingly with their friends. For someone who is socially insecure as it is, that can be pretty threatening.
And I have to say (having dated both geek guys and non-geek guys, along with a couple of geek girls), that geek guys have definite advantages: they are (usually) more creative in bed, they can be incredibly sweet and chivalrous without making it feel like they're putting women down, they usually are OK to take home to the parents, their parents usually like you even if you're a bit strange because they're so happy to SEE their geek offspring with a member of the opposite sex, geek guys fix broken stuff quite well, and best of all they are worth talking to and will engage in conversation about almost anything. My geek boyfriend is wonderful (and, no you can't have either of us)!
Do they want the age limit changed to 18 (or 21, or 25 or whatever), or do they have proof that the 17-year-old was sent by younger friends/siblings, or what? This makes no sense.
Nobody was EVER talking about putting medical records on a public website. I used to work for a medical school, and I know that the doctors would never allow that. However, being able to transfer treatment records more quickly to other medical professionals is enough of a benefit that with decent security in place it FAR outweighs the risks IMHO.
There are enough schools of thought as far as parenting is concerned as it is, some of which are wildly contradictory, and IMHO any ONE of them taken to an extreme is likely to produce a screwed-up kid or several. Now, they'll probably be screwed-up in different WAYS, but still they will have problems. It could be a stay-at-home mom who is reluctant to let "her little babies" out of her sight (even when said babies are teenagers), parents who drag kids to lesson after lesson rather than spending time with them, "accellerated preschools," and lots of other things I can't think of right now.
IMHO, it is the FIRST duty of the parent to let the child grow into an independent person, not an extension of the parent's ego. Living vicariously through one's kids may be common, but that doesn't make it morally acceptable.
I'm reminded of the scenarios in Player Piano and Brave New World, which do a rather nice job of pointing out the major logistical problem with all this: Someone still has to do the grunt work. As it is, we aren't too far off of Vonnegut's scenario of female PhD's in cutthroat competition for secretarial jobs, and a genetically-engineered meritocracy is only going to aggravate the problem. There will still need to be a "producer" class, which is something that people tend to forget, and in this day and age of cheap mass-market goods made by little kids in China, most people don't want (even if they can afford it) to pay good money for the honest labor of a talented craftsperson. Think of how much less clothing the average person owned when it was usually sewn by someone in the household (by hand even), and how much less than THAT the average person owned when cloth had to be hand-spun and woven as well. Machines DO take care of some of this, but people still must run the machines.
There's also the small matter of the likely high correlation between intelligence and insanity. Remember the "Eve" episode of the X-Files? This holds fairly true in my own life
Trying too hard to "fix" a perceived problem tends to lead to backlash of some sort -- disease-resistant bacteria, anyone? There are two ways this could go, and I don't much care for either of them: An "all the children are above average" scenario, with "deviations" such as CP, Down's Syndrome, or perhaps even homosexuality ruthlessly stomped out, and people becoming ridiculously overqualified for even the most basic jobs; or a *deliberate* system of "breeding" a worker class (either human or AI). Gives me the creeps
Design flaw #2: Bell curve based testing used as a marker of how "good" a school is. All the children are NOT going to be above average, and a reward/penalty system based on this is ludicrous.
Design flaw #3: The assumption that children and young adults are not full human beings in the same way that missionaries assumed that "savages" were not yet full human beings. Instead of accepting Jesus Christ, we have to accept the American Way of Life as our Savior. If kids were treated as rational human beings, more of them would have more incentive to ACT like rational human beings. The resemblance between schools and prisons is growing every day, and it frightens me. I've seen studies that have shown that first-time offenders sent to jail have a higher recidivism rate than those put on probation. It would be nice if those making decisions that affect today's youth would LEARN from this!
Design flaw #4: Teachers are treated like glorified baby-sitters by EVERYone -- students, parents, and administration alike. Then, they are attacked for "not teaching."
The replacement system I'd like to see: Students are free to learn at their own pace, in a manner of their choosing, and their education will be fully subsidized until they reach the age of 21. They may at any time take tests or an alternative method to prove themselves "certified" at any level in any subject. They do this when they feel ready. One of these tests would be something akin to the current GED, and would be accepted as a "general high school diploma." Anyone at this level gains emancipated minor status and the right to vote if not yet 18.
My favorite professor had a worksheet he stapled to the back of each paper. Each element of the paper (relevance of topic, coherence of argument, adherence to the assignment -- things like page length and use of APA style, and spelling/grammar) were given a certain amount of points. He would put down exactly where you "lost" the points, with comments. (I usually lost a point on bad APA style because I prefer MLA. But oh well.) Then again, this is the same professor who would always tell us "I have no problem giving everyone an A. I also have no problem giving everyone an F. You control your destiny in this class."
As I've posted in the past, overspecialization and the believe that one doesn't need to have any knowledge outside one's own profession does a lot to contribute to this. Few people are left who see the value of a good, well-rounded education. Whether it's the kid who majors in business or CS to "make a lot of money," or the classics major who thinks that communication majors "sit around watching I Love Lucy re-runs all day," or the hard science major who has never voluntarily cracked a book of poetry in his life, or the humanities/social science majors who take watered-down math and science classes so they can keep their high GPAs with a minimum of effort, or
Both sides of the issue in this column point to the same problems:
1. A society that considers someone who put in practically no effort through 16 years of schooling more "educated" than someone who has learned through the "school of hard knocks." This is, of course, complete and utter bullshit, yet it persists.
2. Pressure on students by bad/uncreative teachers to come up with "the right answer" rather than an answer that actually shows some thought. Required rather than suggested topics for essays, teachers who grade based on their own personal biases rather than for content, and "students" who'd rather be doing anything but going to school all contribute to the problem.
Fix problem #1, and problem #2 might be less of an issue. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a classroom full of people who honestly wanted to be there and who were THINKING about what they were doing?
I don't have one set of predictions. I see several possible "alternate futures," if you want to call them that. More about that further down the post.
One of the things that bothers me about predictions of the future is the way they go to extremes of Utopia and Dystopia, without realizing that some tihngs just flat-out aren't going to change EVER.
Politics, in some form, will exist. They always do in any group larger than two people. Likewise, people will be born, most of them will fall in love one or more times, most of them will have some form of sexual experience, many will reproduce, and we will all eventually die.
Many of the plots of the ancient Greek myths, Icelandic sagas, and Shakespeare's plays concern issues we still face today. Some things -- a quest for understanding of the divine, balancing responsibility between the individual and society, falling in love with someone who's in love with someone else, children defying their parents and "servants" defying their "masters," one culture insisting on its superiority to all others -- are always going to be with us. So, no matter what the change in the surrounding technology or the specific issues, the general ones are still with us.
Now, all that said, here's a few possible alternate futures:
Possible future #1: The Wal-Mart-Ization of The World
Pretty much like it says. All shopping centers, malls, downtown store fronts, etc. are all replaced with Wal-Marts (or something similar). One company controls each industry. A few stubborn, rich eccentrics in a few isolated areas manage to provide alternatives without being bankrupt, but it's "more trouble than it's worth" for the average person to get there. Nothing particularly nasty or apocalyptic happens -- machines do not displace humans en masse, electric cars are introduced just before oil runs out, and some natural woodlands are preserved as "parks" to avoid wiping out more species completely. But life, on the whole, becomes rather dull. Most people don't seem to mind.
Possible future #2: "Bring Seeds!"
For some reason or other, there is a World War III, or alternatively there are many smaller wars that cause civilization as we know it to collapse. (Or some other problem, like the Y2K bug, causes a mass collapse of civilization
Possible Future #3 -- REALLY Weird Science:
(This may be used in conjunction with the prevoius, or as its own scenario.) What most of us currently think of as "magic(k)" starts "working" or "working better." Things that people once considered "impossible" start happening, and become difficult to control. Magic is regulated and/or outlawed, but eventually either the government gives in or the magicians overthrow the government. Unfortunately, having government-appointed telepaths available to snoop into people's minds ends up being a very bad thing for those who think subversive thoughts, although it does get all the kiddie-porn purveyors busted. (Yes, I realize this is incredibly similar to the Internet itself. Yes, this was intentional. *smiles*)
Possible Future #4 -- Dead Planets Aren't Much Fun:
The Earth becomes increasingly inhospitible to life. Every nasty thing (or nearly so) that environmentalists worry about turns out to be true, and sufficiently few people care enough to do anything about it. Life becomes short, harsh, and unpleasant for most people.
Possible Future #5 -- Congratulations, You Have Won SimEarth!
Technology marches on. We get to colonize some other planets, even other solar systems, and leave the earth behind as a nature preserve. Birds are now sentient at the stone-age level.
I think that's enough for now.
This is, in some ways, a bit like the "partial birth abortion" debate. Third trimester abortions are NOT done in this country unless there is a severe risk to the life of the mother, or the infant is not viable (ie is going to be born without a large portion of its brain). It does, however, make a nice strawman for those who are against abortion. And I *do* think that in the case of a VERY severe handicap, in some cases it is kinder to let the child die. It's easier on the child, it's easier on the parents, and it's easier on society as a whole.
BUT
Which brings me to my next point: There are "severe disabilities" that are NOT apparent at birth. How old can the child become and still have the parents allowed to kill him, or at least to "let him die"? One year old? Five? Thirteen? Seventeen?
Last but not least, I am bisexual. My housemate is gay. If a "gay gene" is ever found, those who consider us "undesirable" might engage in selective abortion or infanticide. This gives me the chills on a very irrational, personal level. Likewise, I know that in ancient Scandanavia and in modern China, babies are killed or left to die for the "defect" of being female. Since I'm female, this does not sit well with me at all. "But those abuses won't happen!" How do you know that?
Come to think of it, people's brains need to get amended a bit, too. Those may be the age limits, but how many under-30 Representatives are there? I'd say probably not very many. The youngest president we've ever had was IIRC 41, and he wasn't elected -- he was a VP who succeeded a Prez who got shot (T.R., who became President after McKinley's death.)
Even when Clinton/Gore ran for the first time, "are they too young?" was a big campaign issue even though they were in their mid-40s. Sheesh. For all the "Don't Trust Anyone Over 30" buttons, it seems like in practice "Don't Trust Anyone Under 50" is the way politics are REALLY played.
Well, here's a good example: Most school scientific experiments don't deserve the name "experiment". Generally, if you didn't get X for a result (X being whatever's in the teacher's guide), then YOU did something wrong. And the kids who rack up good grades in science classes and win science fairs confine themselves to this type of "experiment" for the most part. There's a built in "right" and "wrong" answer. Don't get me wrong, a lot of these principles need to be taught, but can we please not call them "experiments" when the conclusion is so predetermined?
And here's another one: The nice doctor and the nice psychologist know exactly what's wrong with you. And they're going to make it all better. Now take your Ritalin, Johny! (Alternatively, take your Zoloft, Jenny!) They're the experts, so they obviously know what's best for you.
History teachers that make fun of the mythology of other cultures and tell their students how "stupid" and "backward" and "savage" a culture that "believed that stuff" had to be are another excellent example. "WE are intelligent, modern people. We're above all that!" Apparently, some friends of mine had history teachers treat Christianity the same way, much to the ire of several parents.
Scientists are no more immune from having an agenda than "men of God" are, and "scientific findings" have this interesting way of backing up popular public beliefs, or alternatively of not really seeing the light of day. Phrenology, anyone?
Now, all that said, I've got some serious problems with people who claim there is no God and then turn around and turn Science into God. Scientific rationalism can be (and these days, often is) taken much too far, in the same way that Christianity can.
I consider myself quite religious, though I am not Christian. And the replacement of the Judeo-Christian God with the "non-God" of scientific rationalism just shifts the good/evil paradigm slightly. It really doesn't change the black-and-white outlook that most people seem to have. "I'm right, and I have PROOF! Therefore, you're an immoral idiot." Isn't it time to evolve past this (so to speak)?
(And before someone jumps all over me for this, I'm not trying to claim that the world was literally, actually, created by the remains of a giant cow. I do think that scientific evolution is the best *guess* we currently have as to "how we got here," but I don't want kids taught that Science is God any more than I want them forced to pray to Jesus every day.)
If someone were to develop a clean, cheap, efficient source of power, it would never hit the market thanks to Big Oil. When managed properly, hydroelectric, wind/solar, and even nuclear power can be quite effective. Locally, we use a good bit of hydro and nuclear power, and I haven't seen problems.
OTOH, one of the big problems with nuclear energy is the question of "where to put the waste." Locally, the people who run a nearby salt mine thought that abandoned parts of the mine would be perfect. But while they were in the process of getting this approved, some very bad things happened. Specifically, the abandoned mine began to collapse (whether due to a rare earthquake or a potentially-less-stable mining technique that was used there, I don't know). Water began flooding in at the rate of thousands of gallons a minute, eroding the salt, causing the mine to collapse further, and contaminating what was once a good source of groundwater with a very large quantity of salt. I was in college at the time, and found out that the dorm I lived in might have its foundation cracked sometime between five and 50 years from now if they can't find some way to stop the water. In nearby towns, there are areas where the land has just dropped six feet.
I'd rather not think about how much worse all this would have been if there HAD been nuclear waste in there. Ick.
I highly encourage everyone to read it. The "murderer" of the story kills communication devices, and as a result has been sent to a mental institution. He has a lot of fun telling the psychiatrist that the specific flavor of ice cream he used to destroy the bus radio is probably going to experience a sales increase soon.
Back in reality, I can certainly understand the instinct. I have a SO who "worries" about me if we aren't in touch several times daily, and I end up putting so much time into my "online life" (both trying to stay "informed" and trying to stay "in contact," though information is key for me), that my work suffers at times. Like now.
And on a certain level, it is distressing when people can't manage without their gadgets. I lived in Rochester for a year without a car; at the time, I was working somewhere within easy walking distance of my house, and I also knew the public transit system quite well. And those who had a car since their 16th birthday always look askance. "You WALKED? Oh you poor thing, let me give you a ride." "How can you stand the bus system, it's horrible?" [No it's not!] And so forth. Similar incomprehension is directed at those who don't have a net-connection, a recent-model computer, a computer at all, a television, a cell phone, etc etc etc. It does get a bit silly after a while.
You might want to go and check out A.Lizard's pages on school reform (go to http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/ and start clicking links
IMHO, one of the big problems with society is that the physical age of puberty keeps getting younger while the time at which someone is considered a competent adult keeps getting older. You need a four-year degree now, most of the time, to get what a high-school diploma would have gotten you 30 years ago. Four extra years to run around and not be anything approximating an adult. Just a long, protracted adolescense that keeps getting longer as the previous generation keeps on getting less-inclined to take anyone younger seriously. It's insane, I'm telling ya.
Sheesh. ID tags I can actually understand (I have to wear them at work), not having your name flashing around to see I can understand if you're a little kid whose parents are worried about kidnapping, but
Of course, what would IMHO be a sensible solution to this would be to make schools smaller and more specialized. That way, most likely you'd KNOW who was supposed to be there, kids with similar abilities and talents could work together under more-specialized instruction suited for them, and the world in general would be a brighter place.
Meanwhile, this is Yet Another Reason I'm Homeschooling My Kids When I Have Them(tm).
Let's see. Fifteen people, out of how many millions of high school students, were killed. Yes, this is a tragedy. NO, it is not a sign of the Apocalypse. Not to mention that at this point, what is done is done and there is absolutely NOTHING we can do to bring those fifteen people back. Reality check, please?
The aftermath: Hundreds, probably thousands, of kids wrongfully suspended or expelled from school, many more sent to inept "counselors" who want to "fix" them, and conformist kids and teachers basically declaring open season on non-conformist kids. Read some of the Goth websites, www.darklinks.com is a good start, to get some understanding of what happened. Kids, and young adults, were being physically *assaulted*
No, of course not. They're not dead, and nothing will bring those fifteen kids back. But that's just the POINT. Fifteen people are dead. They are beyond our help. Let's do something REAL to help the people who are still ALIVE and can benefit from it, rather than fucking things up worse for them.
And yes, wrongful suspensions have the potential to screw kids' lives up big-time. For one thing, they can forget about getting into a good college for the most part. For another, it opens them up to more harassment by peers, and schools look the other way as long as it's not the freaks doing the harassing.
What happened, and what is happening now, goes FAR beyond "not being able to wear trenchcoats." Kids were getting SUSPENDED for saying "I would never kill anyone, but I can understand why someone would snap." This will "go down on their permanent record," so to speak. Are you honestly trying to tell me that THAT is productive?! And as I have already posted elsewhere, "mandatory counseling" is a big part of the problem when the "counselors" are incompetent. And believe me, there's a good chunk of them who are not only incompetent but also heartless. Their attitude is "you aren't like everyone else, which means you're broken and we need to fix you." Being told that sort of thing by an alleged "mental health professional" can fuck someone's head up for a good long time, if not for life. Sure, we may have "saved" one or two "disturbed" kids, but how many more did we push that much farther?
Think about it, and stop dismissing the other posters as "whining little kids." We're not.
Problem #2: Even when kids who maybe could benefit from it get sent to counseling, the counselors are HORRIBLE most of the time and they do more harm than good. The attitude is "you're broken, how can we fix you so you're like everyone else?" I've been to three different counselors for various reasons and all three of them did me much more harm than good. The one I was sent to in 8th grade actually ended up making me MORE suicidal by telling me that my ways of coping with things (which generally involved my usually sarcastic sense of humor) was wrong. Then, there was the "advisor" I was required to meet with monthly when I was in an early-admissions program at college. I was being harassed by floormates (death-threat phone calls at 3 AM, etc.), knew who it was but had no proof, and the counselor refused to believe me. Then of course there was the one at college who came to talk to my dorm after one of the girls lived there took 90 Zoloft and died. "You may be feeling [insert list here], and none of
that is valid
Or, if you want a really nasty example, my best friend basically ended up signing himself into a mental institution thanks to an inept school counselor who didn't tell him that that was what he was doing. It took his parents over a week to get him out of there. Talk about torturing a young teenager