Oh, so you refer to dyslexia as the original point of this topic when it suits you, and then drop it again when it doesn't. I get it.
considering that the thread started with my commenting on dyslexia, yes.
In other words, you know your numbers are made up garbage. So you're inventing a problem that likely isn't even there.
No, they're not. They're a "talking point," which is different. They're there to demonstrate a principle, and nothing else. Your attacks on them are nothing more or less than an attempt to evade the issue.
Again, you fail at reading comprehension. My point was that one child shouldn't slow up the rest of the class. It is the schools job to teach the average child. Those that fall outside that average are NOT it's responsiblity. I've been very clear to that and my reasons why.
That's your opinion, not an established fact. I doubt very much that you'd find any educator to agree with you. However, as you have that as a fixed opinion, and I believe that it's the school's job to teach all the children, there looks like we'll never have a meeting of the minds, and should just drop the discussion as a waste of time. Quite frankly, I'm beginning to believe that your objections to spending the time to get slow readers up to grade level is the money it costs, considering your complaints earlier about how you're being charged for education even though you have no children in the school system.
But going back to the orignal point, a few extra minutes isn't likely to help someone with dyslexia.
You're assuming that every child who doesn't learn to read at the same rate as the rest of the class is dyslexic, and I'm not. And, my main issue is that teachers are "diagnosing" children as dyslexic simply because they're slow learning to read, and without proper testing. Good teachers don't, of course, they do what they can to get their students going properly, but not all teachers are good. And, of course, once a child's been "diagnosed" this way, they never do learn to read unless they're lucky enough either to have parents who are capable of doing something about it, or run across a teacher who doesn't agree and puts a bit of effort into it. There was a time when almost all children who reached sixth grade could read; why can't we do that now?
The problem is that without anything to back either of us up, my numbers are just as valid as yours.
I picked those numbers for a reason, not at random. At one point I linked to a program that teaches reading through phonics. It consists of a set of 30 minute lessons, and is very effective. I wanted my example to be slightly less per month than using that program would give. You can argue all you want about how accurate the numbers are, and I won't disagree. I notice, however, that you're avoiding actually discussing the principle behind my suggestion. I'm not suggesting, mind you, that you're trying to avoid it; you've already made it very clear that you don't think it's the schools responsibility to teach anything to children, except, possibly, by accident.
Yet it seems to me you think that they should be able to tell between legitimate learning disabilities vs. a kid that's "just a little slower," whatever that means.
No, I think that teachers shouldn't be so eager to assume that any child that takes longer to learn to read has a learning disability and give up. Not quite the same thing.
Yes, the teachers should focus on the class as a whole, not an individual.
But not to the extent that no child ever gets any individual attention. I see nothing wrong with giving the class a reading assignment and, while most of the children are reading it on their own, giving some extra time to the one or two (I hope, not more!) that are struggling. That way, the slow get extra help, and the rest get practice. A good teacher knows how to do things like that, instead of dragging the while class to a halt because one child's not keeping up.
But your example has no basis in reality. You pulled numbers out of your ass, without backing anything up.
I see: in your mind, the entire argument is invalid simply because the numbers aren't exactly right.
There is one place I sympathize with you: I too pay property taxes to support education although I have no children. Of course, instead of just complaining that I have no voice, I'd be attending meetings of the local school board if I had objections to the way they were spending my money. And, I might add, I view the whole expense as an investment in my country's future, rather than bitch and moan as you do.
You're spouting a fallacy. First, you're making up a number of hours needed per month, without any proof that's all that would be needed.
No I'm not. I'm giving it as an example, and showing that the amount of time needed is less than it looks, if you take it day by day.
Teachers aren't doctors, and shouldn't be diagnosising dyslexia.
In that, at least, we agree.
I'm saying that 1) it's not my responsiblity to ensure someone else's kid can read and 2) that if a child has a learning disability, everyone is better off with that child getting extra attention ELSEWHERE.
And my point is that most of those children don't really have a learning disability, they're just a little slower than average in catching on. (Remember, half of the children in the class will be below average.) I'm saying that the teachers should try to help those who can learn with a little more help, and you're saying that unless the parents can and will help, the teachers should just give up. And people wonder why education in America is going to hell in a hand basket.
You're so married to your own ideas that you don't even acknowledge that mine exist. What do you do in cases where the parent is incapable of helping the child? Give up? Unless you have an answer to that question, your idealistic ideas are meaningless because it's an all too common problem.
And, giving those children who need extra help two hours of attention a month sounds like a lot until you realize that it averages out to five minutes a day. Ignoring them, or saying, "Oh, they're dyslexic, they can't learn to read," (Which is, you'll probably have forgotten, where this discussion started.) isn't doing anybody any good, but in all too many cases, it's exactly how the teacher responds.
people with infected machines probably wouldn't know/care about what to do and would just object to being blocked.
Let them object, then. If that's how the ISP's TOC and/or AUC policy are written, their objections and $2.75 will buy them a cup of "gourmet" coffee, and nothing else. If they don't know how to clean up their systems, the ISP can point them in the direction of various services who can, and if they don't care to clean up their act, they don't get to send any more email.
Earlier, you said, "If the parents fail to find help and the kid gets left behind.. that's their own fault, and I'm certainly not going to lose sleep over it." In fact, you said roughly the same thing, several times. To me, this is putting the entire burden of seeing to it that the child learns to read on the parent, even if said parent is incapable of supplying that help. In case you haven't noticed, one of the skills that a teacher is expected to have is that of teaching all the children in their class how to read; putting the primary burden on the parent, other than giving whatever help they're capable of, is putting it in the wrong place. You've consistently insisted that it's the parent's job to see to it that their children learn to read, and if that isn't making it their responsibility instead of the teacher's, I don't know what is. Judging from what you've written, all the teacher has to do is say, "Johnny can't read, and it's his parent's fault for not teaching him."
UI bugs you mentioned are quite legitimate problems preventing adoption.
Corrupting files during copy (one of the problems listed) is not a UI bug, it's something that should never have gotten into the earliest beta, let alone the production version. That's a glaring, show-stopping bit of inexcusably careless coding, not a minor glitch. And how hard is it, anyway, to read a chunk out of one file, write it into another, then lather, rinse repeat until you're done? That's all a file copy is, after all, you don't process the data in any way shape or form, so where was the corruption coming from?
The official reason for the Crusades may have been religion, but it's amazing how many crusading knights ended up as major land owners in the Holy Land. The Pacific section of WW II was all about resources, as Japan's Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere should make clear. Asia ruled by Asians instead of Europeans was just a veneer to cover over the way the Japanese were grabbing control of the iron, coal and oil their economy needed, and the rice to feed their people.
I think most of the commenters here would prefer it if MS said, "We're planning on sending out 1 RC for sure, more if needed." The idea of "one and only 1 RC regardless of what turns up" is what they're objecting to.
The goal is laudable but strategically speaking: do we really want to focus more OSS efforts to replicate MS protocols and methods?
If you want to telecommute, you need to be able to access your work email. If your company is one of the many who use Exchange, you have to use a client that can talk to it. Having a native Linux client that can do this would mean that you wouldn't have to run Windows, even in a VM box if you didn't want to, just to get your work email.
I never said it was the parents job to teach the child how to read,
As a matter of fact, you did. Several times. You have consistently claimed that it was the parent's job to teach the child to read, not the teachers. Re-writing history doesn't work when your words are easily available to prove you wrong.
I wonder if that would include an unflattering review of something by composer and SF author S. P. Somtow? It's not mentioned in his Wikipedia article, but I've met him a few times, and he's related to their king.
Getting the teachers to do their job and teach Johnny and Jannie to read isn't lowering the bar, it's seeing to it that the children can get over the bar.
So, what you're saying is, there are some parents who can't teach their children how to read, but it's still their responsibility, not the school's. Sounds like a no-win situation for their children, doesn't it?
the laziness is for the most part falling on the parent and not the teacher.
So let me get this straight: a single mom working two minimum wage jobs to make ends meet is lazy because she's too tired to spend enough time teaching her child to read. And, you're assuming that this woman isn't functionally illiterate herself and knows how to teach. Right.
the ones that are unable to read will have their parents contacted to asses why they stopped teaching their children.
"That's your job, not mine!"
I'd almost bet money that this would be the most common answer, if the question were asked, but I doubt anybody would bother. I'm glad you're putting so much work into your child's education, and I wish more parents would do the same, but, alas, that's not the case. And, of course, those children who most need their parent's help in learning are usually those with parents who don't have the skills themselves.
I think the problem here is that you're talking about how things should be done (And I agree with you in that.) and I'm talking about how things actually are done in all too many cases.
Your link to the story adds nothing to the arguement.
Of course it doesn't. It was intended to identify my friend. And, in most cases, "slowing down the entire class" isn't needed, just a little one-on-one time as the other children do something else is often enough to do the job. After all, the class is already divided into groups depending on their reading ability (at least in the lower grades, where this is most important) so it's easy to have most of the class reading while the teacher gives some help to the least skilled group.
The problem with leaving it all to the parents is that you're assuming that they know how to read, know how to teach reading and have both the time and willingness to do so. That's not always true. How can you expect parents who never learned to read to teach their children reading, especially if they're too busy trying to scratch out a living to have the time? And, for that matter, it it is the parent's job, what are we paying the teachers for?
Second, it proves they do not know precisely what they are doing.
Of course they don't know precisely what they're doing. That's why what they're doing is called an experiment. If they did know precisely what they were doing, it wouldn't be an experiment, would it?
bug-submitters tend to think all their problems are life and death high priority.
Not always. I've submitted a number of bugs to different projects over the years, and I've never yet marked one as high priority. In fact, I made a bug report yesterday that I marked as Low, because it was recommended by SeLinux that I file a report, but it didn't have any obvious symptoms.
In those days schools were only for the people that wanted and were able to go.
I don't know what country you're writing about, but it isn't the USA. As of the 1840s, most schools were publicly funded and attendance (for whites) was compulsory.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure you didn't mean to type "precious bodily fluids?"
considering that the thread started with my commenting on dyslexia, yes.
In other words, you know your numbers are made up garbage. So you're inventing a problem that likely isn't even there.
No, they're not. They're a "talking point," which is different. They're there to demonstrate a principle, and nothing else. Your attacks on them are nothing more or less than an attempt to evade the issue.
Again, you fail at reading comprehension. My point was that one child shouldn't slow up the rest of the class. It is the schools job to teach the average child. Those that fall outside that average are NOT it's responsiblity. I've been very clear to that and my reasons why.
That's your opinion, not an established fact. I doubt very much that you'd find any educator to agree with you. However, as you have that as a fixed opinion, and I believe that it's the school's job to teach all the children, there looks like we'll never have a meeting of the minds, and should just drop the discussion as a waste of time. Quite frankly, I'm beginning to believe that your objections to spending the time to get slow readers up to grade level is the money it costs, considering your complaints earlier about how you're being charged for education even though you have no children in the school system.
You're assuming that every child who doesn't learn to read at the same rate as the rest of the class is dyslexic, and I'm not. And, my main issue is that teachers are "diagnosing" children as dyslexic simply because they're slow learning to read, and without proper testing. Good teachers don't, of course, they do what they can to get their students going properly, but not all teachers are good. And, of course, once a child's been "diagnosed" this way, they never do learn to read unless they're lucky enough either to have parents who are capable of doing something about it, or run across a teacher who doesn't agree and puts a bit of effort into it. There was a time when almost all children who reached sixth grade could read; why can't we do that now?
The problem is that without anything to back either of us up, my numbers are just as valid as yours.
I picked those numbers for a reason, not at random. At one point I linked to a program that teaches reading through phonics. It consists of a set of 30 minute lessons, and is very effective. I wanted my example to be slightly less per month than using that program would give. You can argue all you want about how accurate the numbers are, and I won't disagree. I notice, however, that you're avoiding actually discussing the principle behind my suggestion. I'm not suggesting, mind you, that you're trying to avoid it; you've already made it very clear that you don't think it's the schools responsibility to teach anything to children, except, possibly, by accident.
No, I think that teachers shouldn't be so eager to assume that any child that takes longer to learn to read has a learning disability and give up. Not quite the same thing.
Yes, the teachers should focus on the class as a whole, not an individual.
But not to the extent that no child ever gets any individual attention. I see nothing wrong with giving the class a reading assignment and, while most of the children are reading it on their own, giving some extra time to the one or two (I hope, not more!) that are struggling. That way, the slow get extra help, and the rest get practice. A good teacher knows how to do things like that, instead of dragging the while class to a halt because one child's not keeping up.
But your example has no basis in reality. You pulled numbers out of your ass, without backing anything up.
I see: in your mind, the entire argument is invalid simply because the numbers aren't exactly right.
There is one place I sympathize with you: I too pay property taxes to support education although I have no children. Of course, instead of just complaining that I have no voice, I'd be attending meetings of the local school board if I had objections to the way they were spending my money. And, I might add, I view the whole expense as an investment in my country's future, rather than bitch and moan as you do.
No I'm not. I'm giving it as an example, and showing that the amount of time needed is less than it looks, if you take it day by day.
Teachers aren't doctors, and shouldn't be diagnosising dyslexia.
In that, at least, we agree.
I'm saying that 1) it's not my responsiblity to ensure someone else's kid can read and 2) that if a child has a learning disability, everyone is better off with that child getting extra attention ELSEWHERE.
And my point is that most of those children don't really have a learning disability, they're just a little slower than average in catching on. (Remember, half of the children in the class will be below average.) I'm saying that the teachers should try to help those who can learn with a little more help, and you're saying that unless the parents can and will help, the teachers should just give up. And people wonder why education in America is going to hell in a hand basket.
And, giving those children who need extra help two hours of attention a month sounds like a lot until you realize that it averages out to five minutes a day. Ignoring them, or saying, "Oh, they're dyslexic, they can't learn to read," (Which is, you'll probably have forgotten, where this discussion started.) isn't doing anybody any good, but in all too many cases, it's exactly how the teacher responds.
Let them object, then. If that's how the ISP's TOC and/or AUC policy are written, their objections and $2.75 will buy them a cup of "gourmet" coffee, and nothing else. If they don't know how to clean up their systems, the ISP can point them in the direction of various services who can, and if they don't care to clean up their act, they don't get to send any more email.
Earlier, you said, "If the parents fail to find help and the kid gets left behind.. that's their own fault, and I'm certainly not going to lose sleep over it." In fact, you said roughly the same thing, several times. To me, this is putting the entire burden of seeing to it that the child learns to read on the parent, even if said parent is incapable of supplying that help. In case you haven't noticed, one of the skills that a teacher is expected to have is that of teaching all the children in their class how to read; putting the primary burden on the parent, other than giving whatever help they're capable of, is putting it in the wrong place. You've consistently insisted that it's the parent's job to see to it that their children learn to read, and if that isn't making it their responsibility instead of the teacher's, I don't know what is. Judging from what you've written, all the teacher has to do is say, "Johnny can't read, and it's his parent's fault for not teaching him."
Corrupting files during copy (one of the problems listed) is not a UI bug, it's something that should never have gotten into the earliest beta, let alone the production version. That's a glaring, show-stopping bit of inexcusably careless coding, not a minor glitch. And how hard is it, anyway, to read a chunk out of one file, write it into another, then lather, rinse repeat until you're done? That's all a file copy is, after all, you don't process the data in any way shape or form, so where was the corruption coming from?
The official reason for the Crusades may have been religion, but it's amazing how many crusading knights ended up as major land owners in the Holy Land. The Pacific section of WW II was all about resources, as Japan's Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere should make clear. Asia ruled by Asians instead of Europeans was just a veneer to cover over the way the Japanese were grabbing control of the iron, coal and oil their economy needed, and the rice to feed their people.
I think most of the commenters here would prefer it if MS said, "We're planning on sending out 1 RC for sure, more if needed." The idea of "one and only 1 RC regardless of what turns up" is what they're objecting to.
If you want to telecommute, you need to be able to access your work email. If your company is one of the many who use Exchange, you have to use a client that can talk to it. Having a native Linux client that can do this would mean that you wouldn't have to run Windows, even in a VM box if you didn't want to, just to get your work email.
As a matter of fact, you did. Several times. You have consistently claimed that it was the parent's job to teach the child to read, not the teachers. Re-writing history doesn't work when your words are easily available to prove you wrong.
I wonder if that would include an unflattering review of something by composer and SF author S. P. Somtow? It's not mentioned in his Wikipedia article, but I've met him a few times, and he's related to their king.
That makes two of us. However, please note that I never said he wouldn't close Gitmo, just that he never actually promised to.
Exactly. He didn't lie, he just gave his audience the chance to misinterpret his words. If anybody lied, it was his supporters lying to themselves.
Getting the teachers to do their job and teach Johnny and Jannie to read isn't lowering the bar, it's seeing to it that the children can get over the bar.
So, what you're saying is, there are some parents who can't teach their children how to read, but it's still their responsibility, not the school's. Sounds like a no-win situation for their children, doesn't it?
So let me get this straight: a single mom working two minimum wage jobs to make ends meet is lazy because she's too tired to spend enough time teaching her child to read. And, you're assuming that this woman isn't functionally illiterate herself and knows how to teach. Right.
"That's your job, not mine!"
I'd almost bet money that this would be the most common answer, if the question were asked, but I doubt anybody would bother. I'm glad you're putting so much work into your child's education, and I wish more parents would do the same, but, alas, that's not the case. And, of course, those children who most need their parent's help in learning are usually those with parents who don't have the skills themselves.
I think the problem here is that you're talking about how things should be done (And I agree with you in that.) and I'm talking about how things actually are done in all too many cases.
No, it isn't. That's what we pay teachers for, not just for group baby-sitting.
Of course it doesn't. It was intended to identify my friend. And, in most cases, "slowing down the entire class" isn't needed, just a little one-on-one time as the other children do something else is often enough to do the job. After all, the class is already divided into groups depending on their reading ability (at least in the lower grades, where this is most important) so it's easy to have most of the class reading while the teacher gives some help to the least skilled group.
The problem with leaving it all to the parents is that you're assuming that they know how to read, know how to teach reading and have both the time and willingness to do so. That's not always true. How can you expect parents who never learned to read to teach their children reading, especially if they're too busy trying to scratch out a living to have the time? And, for that matter, it it is the parent's job, what are we paying the teachers for?
Of course they don't know precisely what they're doing. That's why what they're doing is called an experiment. If they did know precisely what they were doing, it wouldn't be an experiment, would it?
Not always. I've submitted a number of bugs to different projects over the years, and I've never yet marked one as high priority. In fact, I made a bug report yesterday that I marked as Low, because it was recommended by SeLinux that I file a report, but it didn't have any obvious symptoms.
I don't know what country you're writing about, but it isn't the USA. As of the 1840s, most schools were publicly funded and attendance (for whites) was compulsory.