Peter3d ago
had dinner last night with a couple of kids from Texas and their assessment is that the education system is completely fucked. it's all teachers using ChatGPT to make lessons that kids complete using ChatGPT and then teachers grade the work using ChatGPT. you couldn't undermine a society more effectively if you set out to do it on purpose.
Show threadPoloniousmonk2d ago

@peter

I hafta say--it was deliberately fucked a long time before that. Hell, I'd say forced schooling was deliberately fucked from the get-go. The medium is the message, it teaches punctuality and obedience. It teaches to never learn more than the bare minimum necessary to bullshit the rest, and never admit when you don't know something. Forced schooling was deliberately instituted to extend childhood, hence the age-segregation. What we consider an eighteen year old maturity level today would be a thirteen year old a hundred years ago. A lot of people never develop further, and who's easier to manipulate and control than a child? People like Dewey used to brag on that stuff. Forced schooling was implemented to destroy ethnic identities. Grandpa became a silly old guy who talks funny rather than a venerated source of cultural continuity. Forced schooling ain't a positive, but this is just the historical stuff. These days...

It was bad enough when I went through in the 80s and 90s, but after bush2 stole his election, it fell off a cliff. The very idea that phones are allowed in the classroom is absurd. They changed fucking math. I tried to help my gf's kid with her algebra homework but couldn't understand it. I can do calculus, and offered to teach her how to do algebra, but she preferred to jump through hoops to pass algebra class. And as far as I know, the children still have power over the teacher's salary, and even employment. That is an absurd power inversion. I was in a county college when I was in my mid 20's, taking classes with teenagers straight out of high school, and they were spoiled obnoxious. I saw them break a physics teacher. Nobody did the homework so homework review took the whole class so no new topics were ever introduced. Since even at the collegiate level, you're not allowed to fail a whole class despite the fact they all deserve it, after the mid term the prof gave up on teaching physics and just gave everyone a B.

LLMs simply formalized the hollowness of American forced schooling. It's great for producing amoral frat-boy salesman types and general infantry. Terrible for producing artists and scientists. And informed voters.

Education is a lifelong, self-directed process, and forced schooling exists to subvert that and replace it with a bare minimum of received wisdom.

Show threadMissConstrue

@Uair @peter My first semester teaching philosophy 101, I realized that 80% of the class was going to fail. And not because the material was difficult, but because they wouldn’t do the work. Granted, the philosophy department had a very high failure rate, but I went to the dean and was like “um?”, and he said “yep, teaching to the test students. Your job is to teach them how to think for themselves. Have fun with that.”

I did not last long in academia.

Jun 6 at 9:47pmWeb
Show threadDeep Breath; Start Again2d ago
@MissConstrue @Uair @peter
I had a friend who was a philosophy professor. She had a student complain about a test being too difficult. She asked if the student had read the assignments. Her response? "I don't do books." My friend retired that year.
Show threadMissConstrue2d ago

@caban4 @Uair @peter

One of our neighbor's came in for something, and stood there in my library (which was supposed to be the dining room, I think) and looked at the books and said "Nobody could read all those books in a whole lifetime." and I laughed, thinking she was joking.

Show threadPoloniousmonk1d ago

@caban4 @MissConstrue @peter

"I don't do books" stuck with me. I have to finish the dialog.

"Then what the fuck are you doing here? Drop out and go to vocational school or something. Sell drugs. Whatever. You are here to read books--that's like joining the sports team and insisting you 'don't do balls'."

Then I'd hammer the student in every class. "Do you do books yet? Then sit down and shut the fuck up." I'd make it a personal mission to drive that student all the way out of school with emotional abuse. Sorry, spoiled child. This is the way the real world works. If you want to be that big an asshole, it'll be done to you at every job you try.

*****

I'm really temperamentally unsuited for a lot of careers :) My HS guidance counselor gave me that aptitude test and told me I'd be a good in-flight engineer. That's the person in the airport who teaches a flight attendant how to repair the landing gear with a seat back tray table and then land the plane because both pilots had the chicken Kiev for dinner. I'm both smart enough to find workarounds in airplane engineering and cool enough in emergencies to manage it, plus I'm a master communicator.

And how many of those jobs actually exist? I would have been better off if he'd told me to be a rock star or professional athlete.

Show threadMissConstrue1d ago

@Uair @caban4 @peter

I'm relatively sure I was meant to be a Patrician, in the Terry Pratchett sense. (Matrician, I suppose.)

Quietly, efficiently, ruthlessly, but with a touch of humor and self deprecation, ruling the world.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to test the theory, so it goes unproven. But should the chance to fix the world arise, I shall jump, verily leap upon it.

Show threadDeep Breath; Start Again23h ago

@Uair @MissConstrue @peter
Such a full response! I love it. 😂😂😂

She wasn't of the nature to respond that way, but instead took it as the sign that it was time to quit working and enjoy her time. She'd already experienced the move away from reading and critical thinking in the classroom,, and that experience was the nail in the coffin for her.

Show threadPoloniousmonk2d ago

@MissConstrue @peter

I literally lol'ed. Thanks.

Y'know, I'd actually like to run a class or two. I really am in honorary doctorate territory in my own unique way, and am a natural teacher. My class would very quickly end up looking like Johnny Depp's in 'The Professor', except mine would self sort. I'd just be hard ass about learning and shit on people who didn't do the work until they left of their own accord. The ones that stayed would learn more in a semester than they would in four years if they had to carry the rest of the idiots.

Show threadMissConstrue2d ago

@Uair @peter

I would like to do a home economics course, but in the same sort of "if you don't want to be here, don't be here" sort of way.

My kid was an AP student, and she graduated without ever being formally taught the first thing about home ec. Such as; how to balance a checkbook, how to reconcile accounts, how taxes work, how to do a budget, how to do forward budget planning, how to shop seasonally, how to can and preserve, how to cook basic food, how to clean, how to disinfect, how to launder....

These are all incredibly important life skills that we are now almost 3 generations away from teaching formally.

I would like to *take* a shop class, but practical, like how to fix stuff around the house that doesn't require a licensed professional, how to know when to call a pro, why is my miter box lying to me, a picture frame can't be this hard, that sort of thing.

Show threadPoloniousmonk2d ago

@MissConstrue

I worked as a handyman's helper for about five years. Part time, under the table. That's how I learned the basics of household stuff. I'm sure any handyman around would adore having a professional helper like yourself. Mostly they employ a revolving door of drug addicts and useless morons.

I taught myself how to cook. It's not hard to learn.

Amusingly, I don't balance a checkbook or keep a budget, but not because I don't know how. Because I found a way to live without doing that. I let the computers balance my checkbook for me and simply trim my needs down under my penurious income.

I'm gen x and was never taught that stuff in school, either. In the smart classes, I did learn basic civics, but the reason something like 40% of Americans can't name the three branches of government is that civics education has been chucked by the wayside along with all of that other practical stuff.

The giant vocational school where I grew up got rid of welding and auto shop and replaced it with dance and theater. I guess there's more jobs for a stripper than for a welder, but I thought it a bad idea to prioritize the next generation's pole dancers over welders.