There is one, it's called the Better Business Burough. If you want service, typically you have to pay just a little bit more than rock bottom for it. Given the choice between service and cost, enough people choose cost that service seen as a costly extra to most businesses. You may be angry, but are you really willing to pay the extra 5-10% it would cost to provide good service? (if you were you probably wouldn't be shopping at Fry's).
There is no evidence to support your theory. In both the Reagan and previous Bush administrations debt and defecit increased in relation to the GDP (I do understand the concept, making the pie[the economy] bigger, so that the debt slice of the pie is relatively smaller, even though it may increase in size). However republican administrations have not reduced the size of government, they just change the fiscal priorities (our military budget is quickly moving to 400 Billion a year, we are outspending any other 3 countries on the planet, Canada and Mexico are not going to attack us, we are no longer threatened by the Soviets). In fact our national policies are being served to us behind the scenes by a bunch of sothern baptist fanatics looking forward to the rapture, when they can destroy all life on the planet, based on a 2,000 year old book that has been questionably translated and can be interpreted any number of a billion ways. The good news is that real time programming (lagely in C) jobs will be easier to get over the next 2 years because arms manufacturers will be building weapons like mad so we can kill brown people all over the globe.
IF the republican financial policy were real (and not just bushit) they would stick to a strickly defensive insular military (like Sweden) and spend our tax money on small business loans and education.
They will first appear in places where LCDs first appeared, portable deviced (they're in phones in Japan NOW) then move up the tech tree to PDAs (probably already happening), Notebooks and tablets (we'll see those more next year) [all these are no brainers, as cost becomes close the mechanical simplicity [no backlight] and lower energy usage of the LEP/OLED devices makes a lot of sense ], then to monitors in 2-3 years. Only instead of stopping there (where LCDs are slowing down in getting bigger) I expect that we'll see LEP/OLED technology to produce bigger, brighter televisions in 3-5 years (so that DTV you need to have by 2006 will probably be one of these IFF they can get the lifetime of the blue lights to increase [so far they've been succesfull in doing so, but device lifetime is a killer for the TV application]).
Just try making money in the Paradox/dBase arena and you'll get you're head handed to you by the 800 lb. gorilla on the block. Paradox was killed/sold to Corel (where software goes to die) because MS was giving Access away. It's hard to compete with free.
While I don't disagree that bombing Laos was a very bad thing to do. It did happen a while ago. And there's plenty of food problems in countries that we haven't bombed. If they can use the internet to find more efficient ways to raise crops and increase yields 10%, I'm sure that would more than pay for the energy used in getting the information.
Well, duh! You don't have the little midgets in a job where they carry things. You have them cleaning the moving mining equipment (where thier small finger's can fit where an adults couldn't). And all respectable businesses are using 14 year olds in thier third-world labor pool, just ask Kathy Lee Gifford.
Long Horn sounds like all the things Alan Cooper told MS they should do in 1995 when he wrote About Face. Designing an OS like "normal" people had to use it, Apple's been doing it for a while. This is MS attempt to clone what Apple's done with OS X.
I totally disagree. You could never have mass transit that uses a 50 or 100 year old technology. Check out www.skytran.net for an idea that WOULD work in the bay area. Mass transit has to get people from point A to point B as fast or faster than the automobile. It works in areas where it can do this, it doesn't work in areas where it can't do this.
No, he hasn't done more good. Apple has always had a better OS, and usually there have been at least a couple better products in any field that M$ has gone into (DOS, DR-DOS was better, Win3.1, GeOS was way way better, Win95, Linux was available and better, Access, Paradox is better, Excel, Visual Basic, Delphi/Kylix is better, essentially name a M$ product and there has been better competition that has been defeated by M$ because they used thier monopoly power). Bill is a stunningly shrewd (if unethical) businessman and had more luck than anyone deserves when he struck his deal with IBM for thier inferior PC in the early 80's. IBMs name legitimized the personal computer and Bill and company got a nice long if-not-free, then-very-very-cheap ride. Had IBM not selected MicroSoft, Bill Gates would just be another second rate programmer without a degree.
Re:FAQ from the SerialATA.org website
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 1
Why the arbitrary distinction between internally and externally connected devices. Why target one and not the other? SCSI works fine for both, why not design SerialATA to do the same?
Because drive manufacurers still want to be able to charge a premium for thier SCSI devices.
Will I still be able to use a serial ATA device 10 years from now? I can (and do) use 10 year old SCSI devices. Will the SerialATA consortium guarantee backward compatibility, or is this yet another lock in to a perpetual upgrade cycle?
I doubt we'll still be using harddrives in 10 years. I suspect SerialATA will kill SCSI and trying to get info off of old hard drives will be like trying to get information off of old 5 1/2" floppies.
Yep, sure. Someone raised with democracy as reality, rather than a nice idea, would join a cult that has leaders that tell people to kill themselves .
You say dexterity is taught in schools (assuming this is the same Anonymous Coward), I think that we learn tasks where dexterity is concerned (look at your doctor's handwriting, my guess is he obviously never learned to color inside the lines).
My view is that a real education should teach people
1) to think for themselves, not to follow orders (at least not without question)
2) to educate themselves.
Now this sounds like a reasonably good idea:
IMAGINE A SCHOOL
by Zoe Readhead-Neill
Imagine a school....
Where climbing trees and building dens are considered as important as learning decimal fractions.
Where you can shout at the teacher if you want to.
Where the rules governing everyday life are made democratically by the whole community.
Where the children are free to play all day if they want to......
Summerhill is such a school.
I am the current Principal of Summerhill, a school founded by my father, A.S. Neill, that has been running for 75 years on the principal of freedom for the individual. Freedom as opposed to licence.
My argument against todays Education system and popular child rearing is that they are both full of lies. Parents and teachers lie to children both with words and through their actions. They lecture to pupils, sons and daughters about what they should and should not do. By ignoring their basic right to make choices for themselves they take away their confidence and lower their self-esteem. many of these parents and teachers will themselves be guilty of using bad language, breaking speed limits, drinking and driving, cheating the tax authorities, having extra-marital affairs etc., etc. One rule for adults - another for children!
I don't think that anybody is good enough or clever enough to tell another person how to live.
I believe these lies set us apart from one another and are extremely dangerous. A child that has constantly been told No" will eventually stop
listening. In this way, children are taught by our society not to regard the words of adults or authority. If adults live as equals with children and gain respect and love because of the kind of people they are - then their words of warning or
advice will be listended to and acted upon much more readily. Children will know that they are being spoken to honestly and that the speaker has a genuine concern for them.
I don't think a parent or teacher has any right to make decisions about a child's personal life. Why should they dictate what clothes to wear or how to have their hair cut? I have heard of cases in England where boys were expelled from school
because they had a pony tail.
If adults were treated with the same disrespect as children there would be an outcry. Children in schools all over the world regularly have to do sports or go swimming or learn about subjects they do not like. I wonder what would happen at the average workplace if everybody had to go out and play football or run acroos country or learn about the meeting habits of the moth - and children do
not get paid for what they have to do!
This system of rearing and schooling will either produce obedient sheep, or rebellious and angry individuals. If people are suppressed and tyrannised they will live fearfully and harbour huge resentment. We can and have seen
throughout history the appalling results of this. Children reared with respect and self-regulation will never meekly follow a dictator - nor will they have seething anger waiting to erupt whenever the opportunity arises. I believe that the soldiers we see now committing atrocities upon the innocent have all suffered discipline and some form of degradation as children - often I am sorry to say - in the name of Religion.
To safeguard our society we need to rear well balanced, sociable children to grow into responsible, caring adults.
In Summerhill we are trying to redress the balance. In seventy five years we have learned a great deal about children and the way they like to live. We have learned that if you respect children as individuals and give them power to governtheir own lives, they will do so with sense and responsibility. This prepares them for adulthood in the best way possible. Only by having real responsibility and practicing it can you learn the true importance of your actions upon others.
I think of Summerhill not only as a school, but more a pattern for life.
Our aims could be described as the following:
To allow children freedom to grow emotionally.
To give children power over their own lives.
To give children time to develop naturally.
To create a happier childhood by removing fear and coercion by adults.
Allowing chldren freedom helps to develop self-motivation. Emotionally healthy individuals learn better and faster.
Giving children power over their own lives promotes a feeling of self worth and of responsibility to others. they learn from an early age that what they think is important and that others will listen to what they have to say.
Giving children time to develop means letting them play and play and play for as long as they want to. Only through free, imaginative play can a child develop the skills needed for adulthood. Just as a kitten learns to hunt by chasing leaves
and insects, so a child prepares for adult life by playing with other children.
Within the group are all the qualities, good and bad that will be encountered later. By making mistakes the child grow and matures without the need for morals to be taught. Neill constantly stressed the innate goodness of children and urged
us to have patience.
Quite naturally the established educationalists are sceptical about a system like this. How can you give children power over their own lives - and the lives of others? Are children to be trusted with this power? Can they really be relied on to
make sensible decisions?
The answer is yes. Yes they can run their own school. Yes they can make sensible and compassionate decisions. Yes they can be trusted to govern their own lives.
In Summerhill the staff are outnumbered. At any one time the kids could out vote us on any issue concerning our daily lives: issues like bullying, bedtimes or smoking - only drugs, alcohol and some safety issues are exceptions.
The reality is that the staff and the pupils are friends. We make decisions together as friends. Because the children are not afraid of us or our power they are able to treat us equally. If we step out of line we can be fined in the school
meetings just the same as the children can.
There have been TV documentaries about our school and many articles in the press. The impression everybody likes to give is that it is an anarchic society full of unkempt, rowdy children with no manners and no thoughts about the feelings of others. Needless to say, this is not true.
On any Friday afternoon you could walk into one of our Tribunals - which are the meetings we have to hear and discuss people's problems within the
community - and watch children of all ages listening, deciding and voting on issues such as bullying, stealing or bedtime noise. If you grow up in a system where you are treated with respect and you are aware that your opinion is valued, it naturally follow that you will bring injustices to the school tribunal and also be well prepared to listen to, and judge on the troubles of others. It is a system which encourages honestly and openness.
Our community is a group of approximately 80 people, adults and children. We are usually 12 staff and an international group of children. At the present time about a third of the school are from Japan while the rest are divided between
England, Germany and Taiwan, with one each from France and Brazil.
We are a self-governing community, which means that all the decisions regarding our daily lives in the school are made by the whole group. An important aspect of this is that the business side, the hiring and firing of staff, intake of
pupils etc. are not the responsibility of the children. They are not asked to take on roles which would be inappropriate or difficult for them.
Children have a very real interest in what time they go to bed at night but very little in who pays the electricity bills!
Our school decision making process is democratic. Each adult and child has an equal vote. Thus the youngest child Yuma, age 7, has the same voting power as me. Not only do the children have equal power in the school meetings, they also vastly outnumber the adults. Most teachers reaction to this is one of fear.
Imagine what would happen in a conventional school if the pupils outnumbered the staff in a vote? Total anarchy? Loss of all moral codes?
Possibly - but in Summerhill because of the freedom they already have had, most of the pupils are socially responsible and are used to thinking about the needs of the group rather than their own. This does not mean that we never have disputes or disagreements - one of the important things we have learnt here is that the needs of chldren and adults are very different indeed! What is important is that we all recognise these differences and try to negotiate a mutually agreeable solution to any problem, instead of the adults just making up the rules to suit themselves.
A typical meeting case may be this one as we had some weeks ago. The older kids in the school proposed that they could stay up as late as they like provided that they stick to the silence hour which is 10.30 pm. There was a long discussion about it as many people had things to say on the subject. Eventually the vote was taken and it was carried that they try it for one week to see if it
could work. A week or so later there was a special meeting because one of the staff had been woken up several times in the night. The community decided that the older kids had lost their chance and should get their bedtimes back again.
Occasionally we get rebellious children who want to break all the school laws and go against the community in whatever way they can. Sometimes such a child can whip up enough support to get some of the school laws dropped or changed.
Obviously it can be a bit disruptive but it is a good learning experience and is quickly put right. What better way to learn to be a law abiding citizen to try living without laws?
We believe in freedom but not licence. This means that you are free to do as you like but you must not interfere with somebody elses' freedom. You are free to go to lessons or stay away because that is your own personal business and you can make the choice. But you cannot play your drum kit at four in the morning because that would interfere with the freedom of others.
Within this structure we probably have more laws than any other school in the country - about 190 at the last count! They range from what time you have to be in bed at night to where you are allowed to shoot bows and arrows. Many laws are more or less seasonal and are changed or abolished when not needed.
Others carry on year after year.
Only 12 years and over are allowed sheath knives.
You must have a working front and back brake on your bicycle.
You can't ride little kids bicycles - even with permission.
You can't watch TV during lessons or meal times.
Writing graffiti on any wall - 1 pound fined.
Breaking bedtime laws - ½ hour community work.
Not getting up by 9.30 am - dessert fined.
We hold school meetings twice a week. One on Friday afternoon and one on
Saturday evening. The Friday meeting is called Tribunal and is used for people to bring cases against one another. Thus, if I have been riding your bicycle without permission or have broken into your box to steal your money, you will bring me up in the tribunel.
Chairing the meeting is a difficult task. Although nobody is exactly unruly it is demanding to keep up to 70 people of different ages sitting quietly for about an hour at a time. The Charperson has ultimate power! It is a strangely formal occasion and visitors have often remarked how much more order it is than the British House of Commons!
Sometimes teachers bring up children for being unruly in class. One such case recently carried the fine that the culprit should be banned from lessons for three days - but the child appealed the fine on the grounds that it was too severe!
Naturally the staff can be brought up too. It is a very levelling experience to be brought up before the whole community - specially if you have been teaching in the conventional system. Some new staff find it a bit too much and are very
embarassed about it. But I am sure it is a valuable experience for grown-ups to be put in a position where they can be brought up by children and fined accordingly.
All teachers should have the experience of teaching in a school like Summerhill where the children do not have to attend classes. Most teachers spend their entire working career teaching to a captive audience. It is a very
sobering experience to teach children who can get up and walk out if they want to.
I would like to finish with a brief word about kids living at the school. In society today there is a problem with children being sent away from their home and parents. We at Summerhill experience some negative feedback about this.
Boarding schools are no longer in favour and to send your child away is considered bad parenting. Whilst I agree that forcing your child away into an often hostile environment is a terrible thing - I must also speak from our experience at Summerhill. Although some children do suffer a little from homsickness during their first term or so, it is usually very mild. After that they
positively thrive. The sense of relief they get from living away from home and with a group of other children in a free environment is surprising. Although they love their homes and their parents, they value their indpendence and guard it jealously.
Summerhill is now 79 years old. Some like to say that it is old fashioned and the idea is out of date. Perhaps this is true. But until the people of the world begin to understand the true nature of childhood and treat their children with the
respect they deserve - Summerhill will continue to be a small beacon in the darkness to show that there is another way.
>Don't you wish you could pick out clothes that match?
No, I wish that clothes didn't matter, that everyone wore the same thing every damn day, because most of the (US) population judges people (in large part) by thier clothes.
>Don't you wish you didn't trip over your own feet?
Ridiculous, even in elementary school children are no longer tripping over thier own feet. What they are learning to do is march lockstep to the sound of authority (or be punished). The computer takes the sole focus off of the authority figure (the teacher). It enables the teacher to spend time with individual children or small groups of them. Potentially changing the relationships of the teacher to student from an authoritarian one to a more personal/democratic one.
>...dexterity is learned
Ok, so what, if that were important we could have dexterity drills instead of drawing with crayons.
>How about teaching kids to do things right the first time?
Oh yess, I think we should teach children to do everything right the first time, and punish the little shits if they fuck up, and start really young too. If we don't start young enough they might grow up to think for themselves. (My point being that at that young age school, any school is harmfull, children should still be with thier parents if they're learning right and wrong (classrooms should be a democracy, if a student is disruptive, the other students should decide what should be done with them, not the teacher), manual dexterity, or basic safety skills [don't drink that ammonia Johnny])
> There are two essentials that only using computers can bring: typing skills and being comfortable with a computer.
Typing is essential? I think that the ability to put together a good argument is essential, the ability to think for yourself (and understand others motivation for asking you to do things) is essential, the ability to articulate what you think is essential, but "being comfortable with a computer"?? That is not essential, by the time these kids are out of schools there is every chance that computers will be ubiquitous, they will not have any choice. >The internet has nothing to offer elementary schoolers
What if the kids in the school were able to communicate to thier piers at other elementary schools and learn from one another (via computer). What if the children were able to make movies describing what they had learned rather than writing about it?
What if each child were able to each learn a different lesson from a different teacher (while edutainment has a long way to go it beats the daylights out of a lot of the teachers I had) with the computer?
What if they could learn at thier own pace instead of being locked into the slowest pace of thier piers?
What if, instead of being a grade the parents could know exactly what thier child was really interested in at an early age.
Creativity? Parents are worried about thier children being creative?? Creativity in our society is a punishable offense. Creativity (at least in the artistic sense that seems to be referenced here) is a curse. How many people reading this wish they were art majors instead of computer science (zero, because another name for art major is unemployable). Our school system is still in the 19th century, it is still used to create pavlovian obedience to the bell so we can have good factory workers (even though there is no factory work to be had). Logic skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, these are what children need to learn, and computers are a fine way to do it (at least in the abstract). If the school has a better way to teach those youngsters problem solving skills, great, but if they're going to teach them to finger paint, forget it.
I'm going to be a total bastard and edit that a little:
1) President X submits budget which increases spending by say 10%...
2) It goes to congress where *BIPATISAN* appropriation commities pay back the folks that payed to get them in office ().
3) We, you and I (assuming you are an American taxpayer) pay back 10x-100x whatever that congressperson had to raise to get into orifice, oop I mean office.
I will certainly agree with the next guy that the license SUCKS. But if I look at the last 4 or 5 pieces of software I installed they had licenses that sucked too. What we *CITIZENS* should DEMAND is that licenses be echoed in *PLAIN ENGLISH* instead of legalise. I can read the legalese document and although IANAL I can read between the lines and know that lawyers will always attempt to write as conservative a document as possible.
Can Borland come to your house and check your PC software (to see if you've pirated software they are trying to make a profit on)? Yes, Can the cops come to your house (with guns, in the middle of the night, because some stranger told them you sold crack) and go through everything you own for essentially no reason YES (which one is scarrier?).
Microsoft may well continue to win the Desktop "war" for quite some time. But I expect that there will be far more Linux run (invisibly) at home than ever before. More smart devices will require a (fairly) stable OS, and a free one, the obvious choice Linux. While we may not have them now, smart telephones, refrigerators, stoves, and a bunch of widgets that aren't on store shelves yet will all use linux. That in my opinion is where it will win first. Eventually we'll want to hook up all these things to our home PC information furnace and the OS that will make the most sense is Linux (free, stable, good enough).
FAT frickin chance. Car makers have known how important aerodynamics are since at least the 1930's (check out Bucky Fullery Dymaxion if you have any doubt). Car designers are tasked with making the least expensive (to produce) cars that they can.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a malpractice solution. Business litigation is relatively common (because competence is so uncommon).
There is one, it's called the Better Business Burough. If you want service, typically you have to pay just a little bit more than rock bottom for it. Given the choice between service and cost, enough people choose cost that service seen as a costly extra to most businesses. You may be angry, but are you really willing to pay the extra 5-10% it would cost to provide good service? (if you were you probably wouldn't be shopping at Fry's).
There is no evidence to support your theory. In both the Reagan and previous Bush administrations debt and defecit increased in relation to the GDP (I do understand the concept, making the pie[the economy] bigger, so that the debt slice of the pie is relatively smaller, even though it may increase in size). However republican administrations have not reduced the size of government, they just change the fiscal priorities (our military budget is quickly moving to 400 Billion a year, we are outspending any other 3 countries on the planet, Canada and Mexico are not going to attack us, we are no longer threatened by the Soviets). In fact our national policies are being served to us behind the scenes by a bunch of sothern baptist fanatics looking forward to the rapture, when they can destroy all life on the planet, based on a 2,000 year old book that has been questionably translated and can be interpreted any number of a billion ways. The good news is that real time programming (lagely in C) jobs will be easier to get over the next 2 years because arms manufacturers will be building weapons like mad so we can kill brown people all over the globe.
IF the republican financial policy were real (and not just bushit) they would stick to a strickly defensive insular military (like Sweden) and spend our tax money on small business loans and education.
this is the killer question for LEP/OLEDs.
They will first appear in places where LCDs first appeared, portable deviced (they're in phones in Japan NOW) then move up the tech tree to PDAs (probably already happening), Notebooks and tablets (we'll see those more next year) [all these are no brainers, as cost becomes close the mechanical simplicity [no backlight] and lower energy usage of the LEP/OLED devices makes a lot of sense ], then to monitors in 2-3 years. Only instead of stopping there (where LCDs are slowing down in getting bigger) I expect that we'll see LEP/OLED technology to produce bigger, brighter televisions in 3-5 years (so that DTV you need to have by 2006 will probably be one of these IFF they can get the lifetime of the blue lights to increase [so far they've been succesfull in doing so, but device lifetime is a killer for the TV application]).
Just try making money in the Paradox/dBase arena and you'll get you're head handed to you by the 800 lb. gorilla on the block. Paradox was killed/sold to Corel (where software goes to die) because MS was giving Access away. It's hard to compete with free.
While I don't disagree that bombing Laos was a very bad thing to do. It did happen a while ago. And there's plenty of food problems in countries that we haven't bombed. If they can use the internet to find more efficient ways to raise crops and increase yields 10%, I'm sure that would more than pay for the energy used in getting the information.
Well, duh! You don't have the little midgets in a job where they carry things. You have them cleaning the moving mining equipment (where thier small finger's can fit where an adults couldn't). And all respectable businesses are using 14 year olds in thier third-world labor pool, just ask Kathy Lee Gifford.
Well I'm glad to hear that it's not just me.
Long Horn sounds like all the things Alan Cooper told MS they should do in 1995 when he wrote About Face. Designing an OS like "normal" people had to use it, Apple's been doing it for a while. This is MS attempt to clone what Apple's done with OS X.
I totally disagree. You could never have mass transit that uses a 50 or 100 year old technology. Check out www.skytran.net for an idea that WOULD work in the bay area.
Mass transit has to get people from point A to point B as fast or faster than the automobile. It works in areas where it can do this, it doesn't work in areas where it can't do this.
No, he hasn't done more good. Apple has always had a better OS, and usually there have been at least a couple better products in any field that M$ has gone into (DOS, DR-DOS was better, Win3.1, GeOS was way way better, Win95, Linux was available and better, Access, Paradox is better, Excel, Visual Basic, Delphi/Kylix is better, essentially name a M$ product and there has been better competition that has been defeated by M$ because they used thier monopoly power). Bill is a stunningly shrewd (if unethical) businessman and had more luck than anyone deserves when he struck his deal with IBM for thier inferior PC in the early 80's. IBMs name legitimized the personal computer and Bill and company got a nice long if-not-free, then-very-very-cheap ride. Had IBM not selected MicroSoft, Bill Gates would just be another second rate programmer without a degree.
LOLROFL too, give this man some points
Why the arbitrary distinction between internally and externally connected devices. Why target one and not the other? SCSI works fine for both, why not design SerialATA to do the same?
Because drive manufacurers still want to be able to charge a premium for thier SCSI devices.
Will I still be able to use a serial ATA device 10 years from now? I can (and do) use 10 year old SCSI devices. Will the SerialATA consortium guarantee backward compatibility, or is this yet another lock in to a perpetual upgrade cycle?
I doubt we'll still be using harddrives in 10 years. I suspect SerialATA will kill SCSI and trying to get info off of old hard drives will be like trying to get information off of old 5 1/2" floppies.
I think it will happen sooner rather than later. But largely because (VERY SOON) drives will zoom past the 150Gig limit imposed by IDE.
jvalenti@mpaa.org
phone (Washington MPAA office)
(202)293-1966
Yep, sure. Someone raised with democracy as reality, rather than a nice idea, would join a cult that has leaders that tell people to kill themselves .
You say dexterity is taught in schools (assuming this is the same Anonymous Coward), I think that we learn tasks where dexterity is concerned (look at your doctor's handwriting, my guess is he obviously never learned to color inside the lines).
My view is that a real education should teach people
1) to think for themselves, not to follow orders (at least not without question)
2) to educate themselves.
Now this sounds like a reasonably good idea:
IMAGINE A SCHOOL
by Zoe Readhead-Neill
Imagine a school....
Where climbing trees and building dens are considered as important as learning decimal fractions.
Where you can shout at the teacher if you want to.
Where the rules governing everyday life are made democratically by the whole community.
Where the children are free to play all day if they want to......
Summerhill is such a school.
I am the current Principal of Summerhill, a school founded by my father, A.S. Neill, that has been running for 75 years on the principal of freedom for the individual. Freedom as opposed to licence.
My argument against todays Education system and popular child rearing is that they are both full of lies. Parents and teachers lie to children both with words and through their actions. They lecture to pupils, sons and daughters about what they should and should not do. By ignoring their basic right to make choices for themselves they take away their confidence and lower their self-esteem. many of these parents and teachers will themselves be guilty of using bad language, breaking speed limits, drinking and driving, cheating the tax authorities, having extra-marital affairs etc., etc. One rule for adults - another for children!
I don't think that anybody is good enough or clever enough to tell another person how to live.
I believe these lies set us apart from one another and are extremely dangerous. A child that has constantly been told No" will eventually stop
listening. In this way, children are taught by our society not to regard the words of adults or authority. If adults live as equals with children and gain respect and love because of the kind of people they are - then their words of warning or
advice will be listended to and acted upon much more readily. Children will know that they are being spoken to honestly and that the speaker has a genuine concern for them.
I don't think a parent or teacher has any right to make decisions about a child's personal life. Why should they dictate what clothes to wear or how to have their hair cut? I have heard of cases in England where boys were expelled from school
because they had a pony tail.
If adults were treated with the same disrespect as children there would be an outcry. Children in schools all over the world regularly have to do sports or go swimming or learn about subjects they do not like. I wonder what would happen at the average workplace if everybody had to go out and play football or run acroos country or learn about the meeting habits of the moth - and children do
not get paid for what they have to do!
This system of rearing and schooling will either produce obedient sheep, or rebellious and angry individuals. If people are suppressed and tyrannised they will live fearfully and harbour huge resentment. We can and have seen
throughout history the appalling results of this. Children reared with respect and self-regulation will never meekly follow a dictator - nor will they have seething anger waiting to erupt whenever the opportunity arises. I believe that the soldiers we see now committing atrocities upon the innocent have all suffered discipline and some form of degradation as children - often I am sorry to say - in the name of Religion.
To safeguard our society we need to rear well balanced, sociable children to grow into responsible, caring adults.
In Summerhill we are trying to redress the balance. In seventy five years we have learned a great deal about children and the way they like to live. We have learned that if you respect children as individuals and give them power to governtheir own lives, they will do so with sense and responsibility. This prepares them for adulthood in the best way possible. Only by having real responsibility and practicing it can you learn the true importance of your actions upon others.
I think of Summerhill not only as a school, but more a pattern for life.
Our aims could be described as the following:
To allow children freedom to grow emotionally.
To give children power over their own lives.
To give children time to develop naturally.
To create a happier childhood by removing fear and coercion by adults.
Allowing chldren freedom helps to develop self-motivation. Emotionally healthy individuals learn better and faster.
Giving children power over their own lives promotes a feeling of self worth and of responsibility to others. they learn from an early age that what they think is important and that others will listen to what they have to say.
Giving children time to develop means letting them play and play and play for as long as they want to. Only through free, imaginative play can a child develop the skills needed for adulthood. Just as a kitten learns to hunt by chasing leaves
and insects, so a child prepares for adult life by playing with other children.
Within the group are all the qualities, good and bad that will be encountered later. By making mistakes the child grow and matures without the need for morals to be taught. Neill constantly stressed the innate goodness of children and urged
us to have patience.
Quite naturally the established educationalists are sceptical about a system like this. How can you give children power over their own lives - and the lives of others? Are children to be trusted with this power? Can they really be relied on to
make sensible decisions?
The answer is yes. Yes they can run their own school. Yes they can make sensible and compassionate decisions. Yes they can be trusted to govern their own lives.
In Summerhill the staff are outnumbered. At any one time the kids could out vote us on any issue concerning our daily lives: issues like bullying, bedtimes or smoking - only drugs, alcohol and some safety issues are exceptions.
The reality is that the staff and the pupils are friends. We make decisions together as friends. Because the children are not afraid of us or our power they are able to treat us equally. If we step out of line we can be fined in the school
meetings just the same as the children can.
There have been TV documentaries about our school and many articles in the press. The impression everybody likes to give is that it is an anarchic society full of unkempt, rowdy children with no manners and no thoughts about the feelings of others. Needless to say, this is not true.
On any Friday afternoon you could walk into one of our Tribunals - which are the meetings we have to hear and discuss people's problems within the
community - and watch children of all ages listening, deciding and voting on issues such as bullying, stealing or bedtime noise. If you grow up in a system where you are treated with respect and you are aware that your opinion is valued, it naturally follow that you will bring injustices to the school tribunal and also be well prepared to listen to, and judge on the troubles of others. It is a system which encourages honestly and openness.
Our community is a group of approximately 80 people, adults and children. We are usually 12 staff and an international group of children. At the present time about a third of the school are from Japan while the rest are divided between
England, Germany and Taiwan, with one each from France and Brazil.
We are a self-governing community, which means that all the decisions regarding our daily lives in the school are made by the whole group. An important aspect of this is that the business side, the hiring and firing of staff, intake of
pupils etc. are not the responsibility of the children. They are not asked to take on roles which would be inappropriate or difficult for them.
Children have a very real interest in what time they go to bed at night but very little in who pays the electricity bills!
Our school decision making process is democratic. Each adult and child has an equal vote. Thus the youngest child Yuma, age 7, has the same voting power as me. Not only do the children have equal power in the school meetings, they also vastly outnumber the adults. Most teachers reaction to this is one of fear.
Imagine what would happen in a conventional school if the pupils outnumbered the staff in a vote? Total anarchy? Loss of all moral codes?
Possibly - but in Summerhill because of the freedom they already have had, most of the pupils are socially responsible and are used to thinking about the needs of the group rather than their own. This does not mean that we never have disputes or disagreements - one of the important things we have learnt here is that the needs of chldren and adults are very different indeed! What is important is that we all recognise these differences and try to negotiate a mutually agreeable solution to any problem, instead of the adults just making up the rules to suit themselves.
A typical meeting case may be this one as we had some weeks ago. The older kids in the school proposed that they could stay up as late as they like provided that they stick to the silence hour which is 10.30 pm. There was a long discussion about it as many people had things to say on the subject. Eventually the vote was taken and it was carried that they try it for one week to see if it
could work. A week or so later there was a special meeting because one of the staff had been woken up several times in the night. The community decided that the older kids had lost their chance and should get their bedtimes back again.
Occasionally we get rebellious children who want to break all the school laws and go against the community in whatever way they can. Sometimes such a child can whip up enough support to get some of the school laws dropped or changed.
Obviously it can be a bit disruptive but it is a good learning experience and is quickly put right. What better way to learn to be a law abiding citizen to try living without laws?
We believe in freedom but not licence. This means that you are free to do as you like but you must not interfere with somebody elses' freedom. You are free to go to lessons or stay away because that is your own personal business and you can make the choice. But you cannot play your drum kit at four in the morning because that would interfere with the freedom of others.
Within this structure we probably have more laws than any other school in the country - about 190 at the last count! They range from what time you have to be in bed at night to where you are allowed to shoot bows and arrows. Many laws are more or less seasonal and are changed or abolished when not needed.
Others carry on year after year.
Only 12 years and over are allowed sheath knives.
You must have a working front and back brake on your bicycle.
You can't ride little kids bicycles - even with permission.
You can't watch TV during lessons or meal times.
Writing graffiti on any wall - 1 pound fined.
Breaking bedtime laws - ½ hour community work.
Not getting up by 9.30 am - dessert fined.
We hold school meetings twice a week. One on Friday afternoon and one on
Saturday evening. The Friday meeting is called Tribunal and is used for people to bring cases against one another. Thus, if I have been riding your bicycle without permission or have broken into your box to steal your money, you will bring me up in the tribunel.
Chairing the meeting is a difficult task. Although nobody is exactly unruly it is demanding to keep up to 70 people of different ages sitting quietly for about an hour at a time. The Charperson has ultimate power! It is a strangely formal occasion and visitors have often remarked how much more order it is than the British House of Commons!
Sometimes teachers bring up children for being unruly in class. One such case recently carried the fine that the culprit should be banned from lessons for three days - but the child appealed the fine on the grounds that it was too severe!
Naturally the staff can be brought up too. It is a very levelling experience to be brought up before the whole community - specially if you have been teaching in the conventional system. Some new staff find it a bit too much and are very
embarassed about it. But I am sure it is a valuable experience for grown-ups to be put in a position where they can be brought up by children and fined accordingly.
All teachers should have the experience of teaching in a school like Summerhill where the children do not have to attend classes. Most teachers spend their entire working career teaching to a captive audience. It is a very
sobering experience to teach children who can get up and walk out if they want to.
I would like to finish with a brief word about kids living at the school. In society today there is a problem with children being sent away from their home and parents. We at Summerhill experience some negative feedback about this.
Boarding schools are no longer in favour and to send your child away is considered bad parenting. Whilst I agree that forcing your child away into an often hostile environment is a terrible thing - I must also speak from our experience at Summerhill. Although some children do suffer a little from homsickness during their first term or so, it is usually very mild. After that they
positively thrive. The sense of relief they get from living away from home and with a group of other children in a free environment is surprising. Although they love their homes and their parents, they value their indpendence and guard it jealously.
Summerhill is now 79 years old. Some like to say that it is old fashioned and the idea is out of date. Perhaps this is true. But until the people of the world begin to understand the true nature of childhood and treat their children with the
respect they deserve - Summerhill will continue to be a small beacon in the darkness to show that there is another way.
>Don't you wish you could pick out clothes that match?
No, I wish that clothes didn't matter, that everyone wore the same thing every damn day, because most of the (US) population judges people (in large part) by thier clothes.
>Don't you wish you didn't trip over your own feet?
Ridiculous, even in elementary school children are no longer tripping over thier own feet. What they are learning to do is march lockstep to the sound of authority (or be punished). The computer takes the sole focus off of the authority figure (the teacher). It enables the teacher to spend time with individual children or small groups of them. Potentially changing the relationships of the teacher to student from an authoritarian one to a more personal/democratic one.
>...dexterity is learned
Ok, so what, if that were important we could have dexterity drills instead of drawing with crayons.
>How about teaching kids to do things right the first time?
Oh yess, I think we should teach children to do everything right the first time, and punish the little shits if they fuck up, and start really young too. If we don't start young enough they might grow up to think for themselves. (My point being that at that young age school, any school is harmfull, children should still be with thier parents if they're learning right and wrong (classrooms should be a democracy, if a student is disruptive, the other students should decide what should be done with them, not the teacher), manual dexterity, or basic safety skills [don't drink that ammonia Johnny])
> There are two essentials that only using computers can bring: typing skills and being comfortable with a computer.
Typing is essential? I think that the ability to put together a good argument is essential, the ability to think for yourself (and understand others motivation for asking you to do things) is essential, the ability to articulate what you think is essential, but "being comfortable with a computer"?? That is not essential, by the time these kids are out of schools there is every chance that computers will be ubiquitous, they will not have any choice. >The internet has nothing to offer elementary schoolers
What if the kids in the school were able to communicate to thier piers at other elementary schools and learn from one another (via computer). What if the children were able to make movies describing what they had learned rather than writing about it?
What if each child were able to each learn a different lesson from a different teacher (while edutainment has a long way to go it beats the daylights out of a lot of the teachers I had) with the computer?
What if they could learn at thier own pace instead of being locked into the slowest pace of thier piers?
What if, instead of being a grade the parents could know exactly what thier child was really interested in at an early age.
Creativity? Parents are worried about thier children being creative?? Creativity in our society is a punishable offense. Creativity (at least in the artistic sense that seems to be referenced here) is a curse. How many people reading this wish they were art majors instead of computer science (zero, because another name for art major is unemployable). Our school system is still in the 19th century, it is still used to create pavlovian obedience to the bell so we can have good factory workers (even though there is no factory work to be had). Logic skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, these are what children need to learn, and computers are a fine way to do it (at least in the abstract). If the school has a better way to teach those youngsters problem solving skills, great, but if they're going to teach them to finger paint, forget it.
I'm going to be a total bastard and edit that a little: ...
1) President X submits budget which increases spending by say 10%
2) It goes to congress where *BIPATISAN* appropriation commities pay back the folks that payed to get them in office ().
3) We, you and I (assuming you are an American taxpayer) pay back 10x-100x whatever that congressperson had to raise to get into orifice, oop I mean office.
I don't know why presidents proposed budgets get so much press. Presidents don't really make the budget congress does.
I will certainly agree with the next guy that the license SUCKS. But if I look at the last 4 or 5 pieces of software I installed they had licenses that sucked too. What we *CITIZENS* should DEMAND is that licenses be echoed in *PLAIN ENGLISH* instead of legalise. I can read the legalese document and although IANAL I can read between the lines and know that lawyers will always attempt to write as conservative a document as possible.
Can Borland come to your house and check your PC software (to see if you've pirated software they are trying to make a profit on)? Yes, Can the cops come to your house (with guns, in the middle of the night, because some stranger told them you sold crack) and go through everything you own for essentially no reason YES (which one is scarrier?).
Microsoft may well continue to win the Desktop "war" for quite some time. But I expect that there will be far more Linux run (invisibly) at home than ever before. More smart devices will require a (fairly) stable OS, and a free one, the obvious choice Linux. While we may not have them now, smart telephones, refrigerators, stoves, and a bunch of widgets that aren't on store shelves yet will all use linux. That in my opinion is where it will win first. Eventually we'll want to hook up all these things to our home PC information furnace and the OS that will make the most sense is Linux (free, stable, good enough).
FAT frickin chance. Car makers have known how important aerodynamics are since at least the 1930's (check out Bucky Fullery Dymaxion if you have any doubt). Car designers are tasked with making the least expensive (to produce) cars that they can.