There are plenty of technologically-induced distopias to worry about.
Yeah, like the horrid age of computers where people can't spell...;-)
OT: where'd all the 4/5 comments go?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Is it just me, or has something drastically changed here at Slashdot? I'm seeing almost no 4/5-moderated comments on any Slashdot stories for the past few days...
I'm glad you included "the community" in there. Unfortunately, what you don't understand is that for "the community" to have a say in education content and/or practices, they're going to have to organize themselves in some manner. And then, lo and behold, what do you know, you've got yourself a government.
Better yet, if you've ever played TuxRacer you know how when Tux loses a round, at the end he stands there looking all sad with his head down, kicking the ground with one of his little feetsies?
I think when Linux crashes or has a major problem a little animated graphic of Tux doing exactly that, looking all sad and disappointed in himself, should be what pops up.
Trust me, my girlfriend suggested it.
And also, on a slightly related note, when a Linux system is "busy" and the user has to wait for something to happen, the cursor should change to a little Tux hopping back and forth from one foot to the other (dancing, not impatient). This would be like when the cursor changes to an hourglass on Windows systems, or even more, like when the cursor changes to the spinning beachball of doom on OS X systems. Linux would be so much better, happier and more entertaining than either of them! A dancing Tux! Who wouldn't love that?
Um, I don't think these are all the same people. Most "treehuggers" I know of are quite in favor of wind power, and well aware that it poses no threat to birds.
If there really are a bunch of media stories about the dangers to birds of wind turbines, I can't help but think the source of these stories may be attributed to either 1) creative but lazy reporters dreaming up stories to fill their quotas, and/or 2) energy industry competitors and NIMBYs who don't want wind power catching on and will dream up anything to that end.
I was not being elitist, I was replying to the sentiment prevalent higher up in the thread, and in TFA premise itself, that it's either us or them, that fighting is inevitable.
More specifically, in the post to which I was replying, I was responding to this:
Whoever builds at a Lagrange point first effectively owns it, as any other power trying to build there would first have to remove the existing station.
Sorry, I should have quoted it.
Additionally, I reject the premise that putting forth the viewpoint of peace and sharing is somehow inherently elitist, and that the only way one can avoid being elitist (assuming that's a worthwhile objective in the first place) is to argue that we have "accept" war as an expected norm. Continuing to advocate for peace and sharing does not imply that the advocate thinks other people "don't know any better."
However, given the original topic, a proposal is put forth to capture an available space resource and control it, and keep others away from it, I would say that the proposal willfully ignores other possibilities, and definitely reflects not knowing any better. In fact, I would say that rather than labelling peace advocates as elitist, perhaps war and war preparedness advocates should be labeled appropriately as pathological obsessive-compulsives. Or, to put it succinctly, insane warmongers.
Perhaps the history of "the rest of us" "fighting a lot of the time" has its root cause in people rushing out to claim territory that they don't really have any particular rightful claim to. And then other people get pissed and come along pummeling, and then the warmongers shout, "Hey, are we just going to sit here and get pummelled, or are we going to fight?" when they're the ones that provoked the attacks in the first place.
I would never advocate against defense, only against offense. Unfortunately, sometimes people who like war like to blur the distinctions. TFA's proposal seems to me to be some sort of "pre-emptive defense" which, as far as I'm concerned, is more accurately called offense.
Certainly, a cooperative research effort should be prepared for conflict and be prepared to defend itself. Say we put a research station up there in cooperation with Europe, and then China got pissed and decided to attack it, it'd be pretty stupid to not be prepared for that possibility.
Luckily, it's not an either/or situation. We can be prepared to repeat it, yet at the same time put some effort into creating situations where it is less likely to be repeated.
In other words, prepare for the worst, expect the best. And not just expect the best, but try to bring it into existence. If you're lucky, maybe you'll create some new history to be repeated in the future. But you'll still be prepared for the worst, just in case.
We could always choose to build something there for the purposes of research and exploration, and invite others along if they want. You know, like, they show up at the door and instead of blowing them away we invite them in?
Scarcity doesn't have to mean fighting, sometimes it can mean sharing.
I agree with most of your points, but here's one I don't think was fully thought out:
No more teaching to the test! BAN IT. Don't tell the teachers what is on the test or when it is. The test will be given at random points testing what the students should know up to that point (and then some as described above). That way you can avoid that who "For the next two months we will be focusing on the basic things you'll have to know how to do for the CAT tests so we can get more funding." nonsense.
The problem is more complex than simply hiding test contents from teachers. You can't do that because past tests are supposed to be public knowledge (and arguably with good reason). If public, than teachers can have access to it, too. If teachers are judged based on the test performance of their students, then obviously teachers are going to protect their interest and seek out ways to make sure their students can pass the tests. If one teacher does the "right thing" by actually getting her students to learn, but another teacher spends half his time making sure his students get high grades on the test, the first will soon be out of a job for poor performance because, although her students may be better educated, their test scores will likely still be at least a little under those of the second teacher's students.
The problem here, I feel, is in the devotion to standardized tests as the best measure of whether students have been educated properly.
I don't really have any good solution to this, but I think in general that teachers teach better and students learn better when the teachers can create their own comprehensive teaching and testing methods. Some of my best teachers had creative, course-content specific ways of testing the progress of their students.
The problem is how to introduce trusted accountability into the system. If you just judge teachers on grades and the teachers are assigning the grades, that just demands suspicion. Thinking by the seat of my pants, here, but perhaps introducing some randomness to the system might help, like, say, by having teachers anonymously score other teachers' tests? Then the grades students receive will have some outside input and the effectiveness of the teachers might become at least slightly more transparent?
So if I'm paying for their education (via that tax money that will fund vouchers), I can't have any accountability as to how my future fellow citizens are being educated? How did education not become an interest of society as a whole?
Or on the other hand, why can't the public system be modified to allow for accountability to parents? What makes a voucher system the only way to achieve the result you describe? I think allowing for diversity of approaches in the public school system (some schools geared towards high achievers, others geared towards the less gifted or less willing) is possible and more desirable. It would allow for students (they're the ones who matter, not the parents, forgive me parents) to be responded to appropriately by the system and given the teaching methods most appropriate to their needs, while ensuring for society that good content is still being taught (e.g. real science as opposed to creation ideology).
Also, I did not mention standardized tests or complicated funding formulas from Washington. In fact, if not in my post to which you responded, I have argued against these things elsewhere. I would in fact be supportive of less involvement of Washington and more federalism in the education system so we can get some real variety of approaches. If, say, Kansas, wants vouchers, and New York doesn't, fine. Then we can have some actual science done and find out what actually works best to have an adequately educated populace. I would suspect that vouchers wouldn't improve anything, but I'm happy to be proven wrong as long as my own state doesn't have to adopt such a system if it doesn't want to until such time as such proof is forthcoming.
So you're suggesting it would be better for our society if greater numbers of citizens were educated based on religious beliefs rather than based on actual facts and science? Simply because they choose it? The value of choice is more important than the value of citizens functioning with a real understanding of modern science, history, government, etc.? Better than the value of a properly educated workforce/entrepreneur pool?
I would argue that it is in the best interests of society that education in matters of faith be left to the parents and to the church, and that, separate from that, an education in matters of facts, science and letters be left to a decidedly neutral (not siding with any religion) education system.
I can easily argue that it is most definitely in my interest as a US citizen, and the interest of all current citizens, that the future fellow citizens of our shared society and economy have a solid understanding of math, science, etc., which I cannot be guaranteed that a religious school will properly undertake.
As for "having to take a secular stance," how is, say, teaching evolution, which is not incompatible with any religion I know of, and ignoring the scientifically unaccepted idea of "intelligent design" - how is this taking a secular stance in the first place? Isn't it just teaching the facts of modern science responsibly? Even if it is decidedly secular somehow, how is it acceptable to allow people who feel that "secular" is "anti-religion" to prevail? How does that benefit our civilization? How is it not better to ensure a basic education and leave modification of that to parents and private organizations such as churches? How can we be sure that these parochial schools are teaching real science and history and not leaving important things out wholesale?
What if the proponents of vouchers are wrong in their predictions and the real result is that, say, 50 years from now, half the schools in the US are teaching Scientology? Probably not likely, I know, but as a thought experiment, would such an outcome be preferable because it reflects increased choice, or would it be better to avoid that in the interests of a strong, healthy America?
Being a bully and a "bad" person isn't what I was talking about. I was talking about performance and achievement; grades and attitude towards school. It goes up and down with mood and energy.
You're talking about behavior. I wouldn't expect esteem to have much to do with behavior, although I have heard that assumption in the past, and I do recall that "story" you linked to. I believe it also appeared here on Slashdot.
If the GGP to which I was replying was talking about self-esteem as relates to "bad" behavior, then yes, my comments become irrelevant, but in the context of school/student performance I felt they were talking about esteem as it relates to that.
In which case, I stand by the idea that having a greater sense of self-worth and opportunity, and a greater sense of the worth of education to one's life (a related issue), would improve school effort and performance on the side of students. Maybe I am wrong, but I have the impression that some psychological research backs this up.
Re: dragging down next year's classes, you don't have to hold back free riders, you can separate them in other ways.
I don't see how creating more private schools would solve the free rider problem you identified. Would not they end up just going to the private schools?
If the private schools are good because they require greater effort getting in, how will vouchers solve the problem of free riders in public schools? If they are not denied entrance to private schools, they'll just be in private schools. If they are denied entrance to private schools, you'll just have a public school system filled with students who do poorly. And people will be even less interested in funding it or fixing its problems.
Eventually you'll have lots of private schools, filled with the same teachers & other staff from the old public schools, and most of the same students, probably doing the same poor work, and a good number of children going without education because the public system will be disbanded and the private system won't let them in.
Or the private system will let them in, thus keeping the same free rider problem.
I guess I just don't see how vouchers actually address any cause of the problems of public education. It seems they would just shove the problems over to private schools, or dump them back on society.
If private schools are good because they select only for good students, sending bad students to private schools or giving them no education at all can't help them. If voucher-supporters forsee the creation of private schools that specialize in underachieving students, why do we need vouchers to get that? Why not just adopt that approach to public schools, creating public schools that select for the high achievers and redirect the underachievers to schools that specialize in them? (as opposed to the current system that just separates students based on economic status). If that's the real issue, why not just do that rather than creating a special voucher system with associated voucher bureaucracy and praying that the market works out the way you hope it will to get that result?
Wow, you just said something I've tried to say in a few other comments in a much more succinct way that I managed.
For a bunch of engineers, you'd think it would be obvious to most slashdotters (not to say that I haven't seen a lot of good ideas and suggestions here).
1) Diagnose the problem 2) Propose solution 3) try solution on a pilot basis 4) if failure, repeat 1-3; if success, proceed 5) adopt solution everywhere appropriate 6)... 7) profit! (due to a better educated workforce, of course)
I think you are half-right, but also half-wrong on the whole issue of esteem.
I would agree that it often seems taken to rediculous proportions. I would agree that students need to be responsible for the quality of their work, hence fail them (or have some other significant consequence, like shunt them off to a remedial level program or something, so they can at least still be with other failing students their own age), etc.
But self-esteem is definitely important. Being put in a positive mood and feeling optimistic about yourself and your prospects has been demonstrated to increase performance in and of itself. Forgive me for not citing any references other than I just finished reading a book called Exuberance which made the idea quite clear.
I think this hypothesis (that feeling better about yourself and having more self-esteem in general affects performance on a number of mental levels) is actually quite self-evident. I know I tend to do better work when I am happier and more enthusiastic about life, and worse work when I am in the doldrums.
The problem is that people tend to take it the wrong way and say, "well, we can't fail people then because it'll make them feel bad." You can't simultaneousl posit that people hold themselves in low esteem because they fail and that they fail because they hold themselves in low esteem. Sure, failing isn't going to help, but I think the proper approach would be to try to diagnose the various reasons why different students tend to think they're not worth anything or that they have little opportunities or prospects in life, and try to address those root causes. Try to address why some children just don't see education as worth it to them. Things like that.
I agree with your unrelated (to esteem) comments in the same paragraph about the silly acquiescence to meaning. You're here learning history because learning history is important, now sit down and read what you've been told to read.
Although perhaps if there were a simple way of explaining why history was important, that would be better than simply saying "because it is", etc... I mean, like, that the way the world is today affects you even if you just work at a cash register, because it affects laws about how you get paid and whether you can be drafted to fight a war, etc. The reasons behind why the world is the way it is are called history, so in order to have an understanding of things that will happen to you in life as an adult, you need to learn history.
Well, there's my poor attempt. I also know, as an aspiring science teacher (planning to quit my job in a year or so and switch careers), that many kids just aren't going to comprehend to listen to any explanation, because that's not what they really want, they just want to not have to do the work. Some kids are just unreachable and it has to be accepted.
Vouchers sound like a good idea, but what you'll really get is:
A) dilution of good private schools - enough parents will be interested in their children's education (or at least in making their children better positionted to get good jobs later on), but won't know much more than that "private schools are better." As you just pointed out, the main reason private schools tend to be better is that they can select their students. With vouchers, they will start becoming "diluted" with students they wouldn't select on their own. And they'd darned well better not deny students with vouchers. Just as public schools have to accept everyone, private schools should be made to accept anyone who wants to if they're going to start getting public funding. I realize vouchers aren't direct public funding, but as far as I'm concerned, the principle is the same. The whole point of vouchers is to provide "choice," but if the "better" schools get to deny everyone anyway, what's the point?
B) no way to verify results. Private and parochial schools will not be held to any scrutiny or standard measure. I think standardized testing is an unfortunate fetish of our society, but if we really think it works, I will demand that all schools receiving vouchers be held to the same standards and measurements as public schools, even if that continues to be standardized testing.
C) a great increase in religious school enrollment. This is what people will really end up using vouhers for; it's largely the religious ed. community that tends to push for them. This is demonstrated here.
I think a rational solution to poor public education would be not to just shunt students off to private schools but to diagnose the problem with the existing system and propose solutions to it. I think that's also what any reality-based Democrat would want to do. Why phase out the existing system if it's performing poorly when there's 1) no reason to suspect the existing system can't be fixed and can't perform better, and 2) every reason to expect that phasing it out and replacing it with voucher-funded private schools will ultimately result in education that is just as bad?
Without doing much research into any already-existing attempts to diagnose the ailments of the public school system, I would think a Democratic solution to the problem would probably include, at the very least, reforming measurements of performance so that they actually encourage good teaching instead of just encouraging teachers to inflate grades and pass students who should really fail. I would also expect it to focus on reinforcing basic skill requirements like math, grammar, etc. The "three R's" as they're known.
Your own diagnosis (the "free rider" problem) invites a very simple fix, rather than the complex, additional government bureaucracy (why do libertarians support this?) that would obviously need to be created for voucher programs. What simple fix? Well, removing the free riders by keeping them back and failing them. Alternatively, or additionally, create advanced opportunities (like extra AP classes or something) for the students who actually care. For people who think it'll do too much damage to fail people and hold them back, the real problem there is that students who perform poorly will have no job prospects and have difficulty supporting themselves. It seems to me that that presents an obvious solution (or attempt at one): acknowledge that humans exist with much diversity, and some are just going to be brighter than others. Be truly compassionate and address the dimmer side of humanity by providing them direct assistance in finding occupations that will suit them. Make it very clear to the people who need it most that they do have opportunities to support themselves and their families. I'm not saying give them jobs (I'm not a socialist, heaven forbid), I'm saying, very openly steer the lower end of the education spec
Less "standardized testing" fetish, more funding
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More funding is exactly what will help many poorly-performing schools in lower economic areas. The question is, what type of funding? I would say
1) resources (books, facilities, etc.)
2) programs to improve the community's perception of education (especially in many poor communities, education is seen as pointless and "not worth it"; why bother studying when you can make more money faster selling drugs, etc. - sorry for the stereotype, just trying to make a basic point. Any sort of endeavor to highlight the importance of a good education, and make sure that people who feel they have no opportunity for escaping their lot in life are aware of the real opportunities they have, will go a long way towards increasing student and family participation, and therefore increase school performance)
3) teacher training (help teachers do their jobs better, instead of punishing those who don't)
4) teacher pay (note how I list this after all the others. once the others are in place, make sure the people who do these difficult jobs, especially those who work in the most run-down schools, are compensated appropriately. please, no comments about unions. if you feel teachers are already compensated appropriately, fine, then focus on previous 3 items)
Aside from funding, I would also start to ignore the increasing fetish for standardized testing. As far as I can tell, it seems that the more standardized testing they do, the less apt the students become. It makes teachers' jobs difficult, too, because they have to focus on making sure their students can pass all the tests in order to keep their jobs, rather than focusing on actually getting their students to learn.
If we truly believe that standardized testing is a good measure of school performance, then if my money is going to start paying for kids to go to private school, those schools had better be held to the same standards as other publicly funded schools.
Besides, it seems to me that private schools tend to be viewed as "better" because they get to cherry-pick their students, while public schools have to accept everyone. Once vouchers are in place, private schools will just become diluted and useless.
Back to the topic, if Netflix did this, pretty much as you described, I'd actually stay with them. I joined up with them when I got four months free as an xmas gift last year. I've been enjoying working through a list of movies I've wanted to see, but once that's done I plan to cancel; I'm not a big movie watcher and hardly rented more than 3-4 movies a year before Netflix. I watch more with Netflix, but because of the slight delay, I find that upon receipt of a new disc I'm usually not in the mood I was when I put it on my list, so it sits around for a while, and, rarely, gets returned without watching so I can move on to the next item.
On-demand would solve that. The important thing would be selection, though. My local cable has an on-demand service (that I had for a year, and gave up to get a lower bill). It works OK but they only had a small selection of popular titles. I'd love to see even just half of Netflix's catalog made on-demand.
Especially TV shows. That's really the killer thing for me. I like watching old series I missed or picking out a few favorite episodes of shows I like. It's why most of the DVDs I own aren't movies but TV collections. If TV shows were on-demand, I'd jump on that service in an instant. For example, I just got into Farscape thanks to Netflix, and have made it almost all the way through the series in 5-6 months. I'd love to be able to watch it over again in the future, or at least just some of the best episodes, but the DVDs are too expensive to buy, and I'm not that into it. But if Netflix could on-demand the series, that'd be a perfect solution.
Too bad licensing issues will likely cripple the service to much less than what it could and should be.
I imagine such services will exist one day, but for another few decades at least, after the entertainment industry goes through a whole lot of shake-up.
I do the same thing in Safari (put feeds on my toolbar). They also update automatically and show me how many new posts they have. In fact, I group similar feeds in folders, and the folder on my toolbar shows me how many total new posts there are in all the feeds in the folder. When I click on the fold, the bookmarks menu that pops down shows me the individual feeds, and then shows me a "View all RSS feeds in this folder" selection which opens them all up in one page, aggregate-style. I can view separate feeds if I like.
And these methods aren't mutually exclusive. Safari could make the feed bookmarks expandable and show the headlines as individual bookmarks like Firefox does. Firefox could let you click on the feed link itself and show all the stories in an interface like Safari, and add a "view all feeds in this folder" option to display the content in aggregate.
And I feel the other way. Safari lets me load multiple RSS feeds at once, as if they were one feed, with the most recent posts from all at the top. That way I can quickly grasp what's going on at multiple feeds, and scan the content as well.
Firefox requires me to go to the bookmarks or my bookmark bar and activate each one individually, and then only shows me the headlines, with no idea of how recent a new post is, or what its actual content is without click on it to go read the whole thing.
Slashdot Mirror
There are plenty of technologically-induced distopias to worry about.
;-)
Yeah, like the horrid age of computers where people can't spell...
Is it just me, or has something drastically changed here at Slashdot? I'm seeing almost no 4/5-moderated comments on any Slashdot stories for the past few days...
Which in no way negates the idea of buildings providing their own power.
No, not Windows Fiasco, I think Stanislaw Lem would turn in his grave.
(yes, I know he's not dead.)
I'm glad you included "the community" in there. Unfortunately, what you don't understand is that for "the community" to have a say in education content and/or practices, they're going to have to organize themselves in some manner. And then, lo and behold, what do you know, you've got yourself a government.
Who's going to take responsibility for education?
Better yet, if you've ever played TuxRacer you know how when Tux loses a round, at the end he stands there looking all sad with his head down, kicking the ground with one of his little feetsies?
I think when Linux crashes or has a major problem a little animated graphic of Tux doing exactly that, looking all sad and disappointed in himself, should be what pops up.
Trust me, my girlfriend suggested it.
And also, on a slightly related note, when a Linux system is "busy" and the user has to wait for something to happen, the cursor should change to a little Tux hopping back and forth from one foot to the other (dancing, not impatient). This would be like when the cursor changes to an hourglass on Windows systems, or even more, like when the cursor changes to the spinning beachball of doom on OS X systems. Linux would be so much better, happier and more entertaining than either of them! A dancing Tux! Who wouldn't love that?
Um, I don't think these are all the same people. Most "treehuggers" I know of are quite in favor of wind power, and well aware that it poses no threat to birds.
If there really are a bunch of media stories about the dangers to birds of wind turbines, I can't help but think the source of these stories may be attributed to either 1) creative but lazy reporters dreaming up stories to fill their quotas, and/or 2) energy industry competitors and NIMBYs who don't want wind power catching on and will dream up anything to that end.
Probably not very many, if any at all.
I'm tired of just ignoring and tolerating stupidity and ineptitude and excuses. It has to stop.
I think that's a stupid and inept idea.
I was not being elitist, I was replying to the sentiment prevalent higher up in the thread, and in TFA premise itself, that it's either us or them, that fighting is inevitable.
More specifically, in the post to which I was replying, I was responding to this:
Whoever builds at a Lagrange point first effectively owns it, as any other power trying to build there would first have to remove the existing station.
Sorry, I should have quoted it.
Additionally, I reject the premise that putting forth the viewpoint of peace and sharing is somehow inherently elitist, and that the only way one can avoid being elitist (assuming that's a worthwhile objective in the first place) is to argue that we have "accept" war as an expected norm. Continuing to advocate for peace and sharing does not imply that the advocate thinks other people "don't know any better."
However, given the original topic, a proposal is put forth to capture an available space resource and control it, and keep others away from it, I would say that the proposal willfully ignores other possibilities, and definitely reflects not knowing any better. In fact, I would say that rather than labelling peace advocates as elitist, perhaps war and war preparedness advocates should be labeled appropriately as pathological obsessive-compulsives. Or, to put it succinctly, insane warmongers.
Perhaps the history of "the rest of us" "fighting a lot of the time" has its root cause in people rushing out to claim territory that they don't really have any particular rightful claim to. And then other people get pissed and come along pummeling, and then the warmongers shout, "Hey, are we just going to sit here and get pummelled, or are we going to fight?" when they're the ones that provoked the attacks in the first place.
I would never advocate against defense, only against offense. Unfortunately, sometimes people who like war like to blur the distinctions. TFA's proposal seems to me to be some sort of "pre-emptive defense" which, as far as I'm concerned, is more accurately called offense.
Certainly, a cooperative research effort should be prepared for conflict and be prepared to defend itself. Say we put a research station up there in cooperation with Europe, and then China got pissed and decided to attack it, it'd be pretty stupid to not be prepared for that possibility.
Luckily, it's not an either/or situation. We can be prepared to repeat it, yet at the same time put some effort into creating situations where it is less likely to be repeated.
In other words, prepare for the worst, expect the best. And not just expect the best, but try to bring it into existence. If you're lucky, maybe you'll create some new history to be repeated in the future. But you'll still be prepared for the worst, just in case.
We could always choose to build something there for the purposes of research and exploration, and invite others along if they want. You know, like, they show up at the door and instead of blowing them away we invite them in?
Scarcity doesn't have to mean fighting, sometimes it can mean sharing.
I agree with most of your points, but here's one I don't think was fully thought out:
No more teaching to the test! BAN IT. Don't tell the teachers what is on the test or when it is. The test will be given at random points testing what the students should know up to that point (and then some as described above). That way you can avoid that who "For the next two months we will be focusing on the basic things you'll have to know how to do for the CAT tests so we can get more funding." nonsense.
The problem is more complex than simply hiding test contents from teachers. You can't do that because past tests are supposed to be public knowledge (and arguably with good reason). If public, than teachers can have access to it, too. If teachers are judged based on the test performance of their students, then obviously teachers are going to protect their interest and seek out ways to make sure their students can pass the tests. If one teacher does the "right thing" by actually getting her students to learn, but another teacher spends half his time making sure his students get high grades on the test, the first will soon be out of a job for poor performance because, although her students may be better educated, their test scores will likely still be at least a little under those of the second teacher's students.
The problem here, I feel, is in the devotion to standardized tests as the best measure of whether students have been educated properly.
I don't really have any good solution to this, but I think in general that teachers teach better and students learn better when the teachers can create their own comprehensive teaching and testing methods. Some of my best teachers had creative, course-content specific ways of testing the progress of their students.
The problem is how to introduce trusted accountability into the system. If you just judge teachers on grades and the teachers are assigning the grades, that just demands suspicion. Thinking by the seat of my pants, here, but perhaps introducing some randomness to the system might help, like, say, by having teachers anonymously score other teachers' tests? Then the grades students receive will have some outside input and the effectiveness of the teachers might become at least slightly more transparent?
So if I'm paying for their education (via that tax money that will fund vouchers), I can't have any accountability as to how my future fellow citizens are being educated? How did education not become an interest of society as a whole?
Or on the other hand, why can't the public system be modified to allow for accountability to parents? What makes a voucher system the only way to achieve the result you describe? I think allowing for diversity of approaches in the public school system (some schools geared towards high achievers, others geared towards the less gifted or less willing) is possible and more desirable. It would allow for students (they're the ones who matter, not the parents, forgive me parents) to be responded to appropriately by the system and given the teaching methods most appropriate to their needs, while ensuring for society that good content is still being taught (e.g. real science as opposed to creation ideology).
Also, I did not mention standardized tests or complicated funding formulas from Washington. In fact, if not in my post to which you responded, I have argued against these things elsewhere. I would in fact be supportive of less involvement of Washington and more federalism in the education system so we can get some real variety of approaches. If, say, Kansas, wants vouchers, and New York doesn't, fine. Then we can have some actual science done and find out what actually works best to have an adequately educated populace. I would suspect that vouchers wouldn't improve anything, but I'm happy to be proven wrong as long as my own state doesn't have to adopt such a system if it doesn't want to until such time as such proof is forthcoming.
So you're suggesting it would be better for our society if greater numbers of citizens were educated based on religious beliefs rather than based on actual facts and science? Simply because they choose it? The value of choice is more important than the value of citizens functioning with a real understanding of modern science, history, government, etc.? Better than the value of a properly educated workforce/entrepreneur pool?
I would argue that it is in the best interests of society that education in matters of faith be left to the parents and to the church, and that, separate from that, an education in matters of facts, science and letters be left to a decidedly neutral (not siding with any religion) education system.
I can easily argue that it is most definitely in my interest as a US citizen, and the interest of all current citizens, that the future fellow citizens of our shared society and economy have a solid understanding of math, science, etc., which I cannot be guaranteed that a religious school will properly undertake.
As for "having to take a secular stance," how is, say, teaching evolution, which is not incompatible with any religion I know of, and ignoring the scientifically unaccepted idea of "intelligent design" - how is this taking a secular stance in the first place? Isn't it just teaching the facts of modern science responsibly? Even if it is decidedly secular somehow, how is it acceptable to allow people who feel that "secular" is "anti-religion" to prevail? How does that benefit our civilization? How is it not better to ensure a basic education and leave modification of that to parents and private organizations such as churches? How can we be sure that these parochial schools are teaching real science and history and not leaving important things out wholesale?
What if the proponents of vouchers are wrong in their predictions and the real result is that, say, 50 years from now, half the schools in the US are teaching Scientology? Probably not likely, I know, but as a thought experiment, would such an outcome be preferable because it reflects increased choice, or would it be better to avoid that in the interests of a strong, healthy America?
Being a bully and a "bad" person isn't what I was talking about. I was talking about performance and achievement; grades and attitude towards school. It goes up and down with mood and energy.
You're talking about behavior. I wouldn't expect esteem to have much to do with behavior, although I have heard that assumption in the past, and I do recall that "story" you linked to. I believe it also appeared here on Slashdot.
If the GGP to which I was replying was talking about self-esteem as relates to "bad" behavior, then yes, my comments become irrelevant, but in the context of school/student performance I felt they were talking about esteem as it relates to that.
In which case, I stand by the idea that having a greater sense of self-worth and opportunity, and a greater sense of the worth of education to one's life (a related issue), would improve school effort and performance on the side of students. Maybe I am wrong, but I have the impression that some psychological research backs this up.
Re: dragging down next year's classes, you don't have to hold back free riders, you can separate them in other ways.
I don't see how creating more private schools would solve the free rider problem you identified. Would not they end up just going to the private schools?
If the private schools are good because they require greater effort getting in, how will vouchers solve the problem of free riders in public schools? If they are not denied entrance to private schools, they'll just be in private schools. If they are denied entrance to private schools, you'll just have a public school system filled with students who do poorly. And people will be even less interested in funding it or fixing its problems.
Eventually you'll have lots of private schools, filled with the same teachers & other staff from the old public schools, and most of the same students, probably doing the same poor work, and a good number of children going without education because the public system will be disbanded and the private system won't let them in.
Or the private system will let them in, thus keeping the same free rider problem.
I guess I just don't see how vouchers actually address any cause of the problems of public education. It seems they would just shove the problems over to private schools, or dump them back on society.
If private schools are good because they select only for good students, sending bad students to private schools or giving them no education at all can't help them. If voucher-supporters forsee the creation of private schools that specialize in underachieving students, why do we need vouchers to get that? Why not just adopt that approach to public schools, creating public schools that select for the high achievers and redirect the underachievers to schools that specialize in them? (as opposed to the current system that just separates students based on economic status). If that's the real issue, why not just do that rather than creating a special voucher system with associated voucher bureaucracy and praying that the market works out the way you hope it will to get that result?
Wow, you just said something I've tried to say in a few other comments in a much more succinct way that I managed.
...
For a bunch of engineers, you'd think it would be obvious to most slashdotters (not to say that I haven't seen a lot of good ideas and suggestions here).
1) Diagnose the problem
2) Propose solution
3) try solution on a pilot basis
4) if failure, repeat 1-3; if success, proceed
5) adopt solution everywhere appropriate
6)
7) profit! (due to a better educated workforce, of course)
I think you are half-right, but also half-wrong on the whole issue of esteem.
I would agree that it often seems taken to rediculous proportions. I would agree that students need to be responsible for the quality of their work, hence fail them (or have some other significant consequence, like shunt them off to a remedial level program or something, so they can at least still be with other failing students their own age), etc.
But self-esteem is definitely important. Being put in a positive mood and feeling optimistic about yourself and your prospects has been demonstrated to increase performance in and of itself. Forgive me for not citing any references other than I just finished reading a book called Exuberance which made the idea quite clear.
I think this hypothesis (that feeling better about yourself and having more self-esteem in general affects performance on a number of mental levels) is actually quite self-evident. I know I tend to do better work when I am happier and more enthusiastic about life, and worse work when I am in the doldrums.
The problem is that people tend to take it the wrong way and say, "well, we can't fail people then because it'll make them feel bad." You can't simultaneousl posit that people hold themselves in low esteem because they fail and that they fail because they hold themselves in low esteem. Sure, failing isn't going to help, but I think the proper approach would be to try to diagnose the various reasons why different students tend to think they're not worth anything or that they have little opportunities or prospects in life, and try to address those root causes. Try to address why some children just don't see education as worth it to them. Things like that.
I agree with your unrelated (to esteem) comments in the same paragraph about the silly acquiescence to meaning. You're here learning history because learning history is important, now sit down and read what you've been told to read.
Although perhaps if there were a simple way of explaining why history was important, that would be better than simply saying "because it is", etc... I mean, like, that the way the world is today affects you even if you just work at a cash register, because it affects laws about how you get paid and whether you can be drafted to fight a war, etc. The reasons behind why the world is the way it is are called history, so in order to have an understanding of things that will happen to you in life as an adult, you need to learn history.
Well, there's my poor attempt. I also know, as an aspiring science teacher (planning to quit my job in a year or so and switch careers), that many kids just aren't going to comprehend to listen to any explanation, because that's not what they really want, they just want to not have to do the work. Some kids are just unreachable and it has to be accepted.
Vouchers sound like a good idea, but what you'll really get is:
A) dilution of good private schools - enough parents will be interested in their children's education (or at least in making their children better positionted to get good jobs later on), but won't know much more than that "private schools are better." As you just pointed out, the main reason private schools tend to be better is that they can select their students. With vouchers, they will start becoming "diluted" with students they wouldn't select on their own. And they'd darned well better not deny students with vouchers. Just as public schools have to accept everyone, private schools should be made to accept anyone who wants to if they're going to start getting public funding. I realize vouchers aren't direct public funding, but as far as I'm concerned, the principle is the same. The whole point of vouchers is to provide "choice," but if the "better" schools get to deny everyone anyway, what's the point?
B) no way to verify results. Private and parochial schools will not be held to any scrutiny or standard measure. I think standardized testing is an unfortunate fetish of our society, but if we really think it works, I will demand that all schools receiving vouchers be held to the same standards and measurements as public schools, even if that continues to be standardized testing.
C) a great increase in religious school enrollment. This is what people will really end up using vouhers for; it's largely the religious ed. community that tends to push for them. This is demonstrated here.
I think a rational solution to poor public education would be not to just shunt students off to private schools but to diagnose the problem with the existing system and propose solutions to it. I think that's also what any reality-based Democrat would want to do. Why phase out the existing system if it's performing poorly when there's 1) no reason to suspect the existing system can't be fixed and can't perform better, and 2) every reason to expect that phasing it out and replacing it with voucher-funded private schools will ultimately result in education that is just as bad?
Without doing much research into any already-existing attempts to diagnose the ailments of the public school system, I would think a Democratic solution to the problem would probably include, at the very least, reforming measurements of performance so that they actually encourage good teaching instead of just encouraging teachers to inflate grades and pass students who should really fail. I would also expect it to focus on reinforcing basic skill requirements like math, grammar, etc. The "three R's" as they're known.
Your own diagnosis (the "free rider" problem) invites a very simple fix, rather than the complex, additional government bureaucracy (why do libertarians support this?) that would obviously need to be created for voucher programs. What simple fix? Well, removing the free riders by keeping them back and failing them. Alternatively, or additionally, create advanced opportunities (like extra AP classes or something) for the students who actually care. For people who think it'll do too much damage to fail people and hold them back, the real problem there is that students who perform poorly will have no job prospects and have difficulty supporting themselves. It seems to me that that presents an obvious solution (or attempt at one): acknowledge that humans exist with much diversity, and some are just going to be brighter than others. Be truly compassionate and address the dimmer side of humanity by providing them direct assistance in finding occupations that will suit them. Make it very clear to the people who need it most that they do have opportunities to support themselves and their families. I'm not saying give them jobs (I'm not a socialist, heaven forbid), I'm saying, very openly steer the lower end of the education spec
More funding is exactly what will help many poorly-performing schools in lower economic areas. The question is, what type of funding? I would say
1) resources (books, facilities, etc.)
2) programs to improve the community's perception of education (especially in many poor communities, education is seen as pointless and "not worth it"; why bother studying when you can make more money faster selling drugs, etc. - sorry for the stereotype, just trying to make a basic point. Any sort of endeavor to highlight the importance of a good education, and make sure that people who feel they have no opportunity for escaping their lot in life are aware of the real opportunities they have, will go a long way towards increasing student and family participation, and therefore increase school performance)
3) teacher training (help teachers do their jobs better, instead of punishing those who don't)
4) teacher pay (note how I list this after all the others. once the others are in place, make sure the people who do these difficult jobs, especially those who work in the most run-down schools, are compensated appropriately. please, no comments about unions. if you feel teachers are already compensated appropriately, fine, then focus on previous 3 items)
Aside from funding, I would also start to ignore the increasing fetish for standardized testing. As far as I can tell, it seems that the more standardized testing they do, the less apt the students become. It makes teachers' jobs difficult, too, because they have to focus on making sure their students can pass all the tests in order to keep their jobs, rather than focusing on actually getting their students to learn.
One other issue: vouchers. Stupid idea. Where it's been done, it seems it just ups enrollment at religious schools, and little verification is done that the performance of the schools is any good.
If we truly believe that standardized testing is a good measure of school performance, then if my money is going to start paying for kids to go to private school, those schools had better be held to the same standards as other publicly funded schools.
Besides, it seems to me that private schools tend to be viewed as "better" because they get to cherry-pick their students, while public schools have to accept everyone. Once vouchers are in place, private schools will just become diluted and useless.
Hey, I'm Adam, stop that!
Back to the topic, if Netflix did this, pretty much as you described, I'd actually stay with them. I joined up with them when I got four months free as an xmas gift last year. I've been enjoying working through a list of movies I've wanted to see, but once that's done I plan to cancel; I'm not a big movie watcher and hardly rented more than 3-4 movies a year before Netflix. I watch more with Netflix, but because of the slight delay, I find that upon receipt of a new disc I'm usually not in the mood I was when I put it on my list, so it sits around for a while, and, rarely, gets returned without watching so I can move on to the next item.
On-demand would solve that. The important thing would be selection, though. My local cable has an on-demand service (that I had for a year, and gave up to get a lower bill). It works OK but they only had a small selection of popular titles. I'd love to see even just half of Netflix's catalog made on-demand.
Especially TV shows. That's really the killer thing for me. I like watching old series I missed or picking out a few favorite episodes of shows I like. It's why most of the DVDs I own aren't movies but TV collections. If TV shows were on-demand, I'd jump on that service in an instant. For example, I just got into Farscape thanks to Netflix, and have made it almost all the way through the series in 5-6 months. I'd love to be able to watch it over again in the future, or at least just some of the best episodes, but the DVDs are too expensive to buy, and I'm not that into it. But if Netflix could on-demand the series, that'd be a perfect solution.
Too bad licensing issues will likely cripple the service to much less than what it could and should be.
I imagine such services will exist one day, but for another few decades at least, after the entertainment industry goes through a whole lot of shake-up.
I do the same thing in Safari (put feeds on my toolbar). They also update automatically and show me how many new posts they have. In fact, I group similar feeds in folders, and the folder on my toolbar shows me how many total new posts there are in all the feeds in the folder. When I click on the fold, the bookmarks menu that pops down shows me the individual feeds, and then shows me a "View all RSS feeds in this folder" selection which opens them all up in one page, aggregate-style. I can view separate feeds if I like.
And these methods aren't mutually exclusive. Safari could make the feed bookmarks expandable and show the headlines as individual bookmarks like Firefox does. Firefox could let you click on the feed link itself and show all the stories in an interface like Safari, and add a "view all feeds in this folder" option to display the content in aggregate.
And I feel the other way. Safari lets me load multiple RSS feeds at once, as if they were one feed, with the most recent posts from all at the top. That way I can quickly grasp what's going on at multiple feeds, and scan the content as well.
Firefox requires me to go to the bookmarks or my bookmark bar and activate each one individually, and then only shows me the headlines, with no idea of how recent a new post is, or what its actual content is without click on it to go read the whole thing.
But, to each their own.