Government for the people. How?

[Izzy]

The objective of this thread is to altruistically* design a political structure wherein the needs and interests of EVERY inhabitant of this country are met. (None of this "general public" crap, we should try to make everyone happy. ) It's impossible to not be aware of how inconceivable this sounds, but I think by being mindful of what we're trying to accomplish, but.. just might be feasible?**

Now, before we can even begin devising laws, creating our constitution, bill of rights, etc., I think it's best we assemble a list of what people want from their government. Feel free to contribute ANYTHING. (I stole some of these from the world's smallest political quiz and the bill of rights. >_>)

1. Government should not censor speech, press, media, or internet.
2. Military service should be voluntary.
3. There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults, where a consenting adult is anyone of 16 years of age or older.
4. Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.
5. End government barriers to international free trade.
6. Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security.
7. Keep government welfare, but no taxation without representation.
8. Freedom of speech, religion, sexuality, peaceful protests, and petition.
9. Soldiers may not be quartered in a house without the consent of the owner.
10. People may not be unreasonably searched or kept in captivity.
11. The right to a free, public, and speedy trial.
12. Laws are to remain the same from State to State.
13. Eventual globalization is a priority.

*We can get into the semantics of altruism later. I have.. mixed feelings, but this most closely elucidates my intentions. (Lol, I swear, I bounce back and forth from being the apathetic hippy civilian who just wants to live to the extremely fervent humanitarian practically daily. >_>)
** Eh, truthfully, it isn't. Too many people disagree on matters of religion, which define the moral code for a LOT of people (even if they don't strictly adhere to it, haha). We need to agree now to define morals for ourselves and not base them off of religious texts. Like, if someone proposes "Don't kill", that's perfectly acceptable, and I expect it to be fully ratified. If someone else suggests "Love God", this is more open to debate. While you can submit ideas that coincide with religious texts, submit them because they are mandates you want and agree with, not just because your scripture of choice tells you to follow them.

Edited February 13, 2014 by bonanova

[gvg]

So it seems (I not entirely sure, me and primaries don't mix. I only really know national stuff. 'Cept for O'Donnell of course =)) the tea party has been bad for the republicans.

Now what I meant by democrat or independent: The truth is, the democrats are just as focused on party loyalties, campaign money, keeping their position, etc. as the rep. are. If we get an independent, wouldn't they not have those problems (Well, maybe the funding part) because of their independence?

And what do you guys feel about the DADT issue being resolved by the judges? Does this prove that the judicial system is the most powerful branch? Should we dare to vote in a judge as president, if one runs? (Just sayin')

I'm trying to think of discussion points here. Anybody have anything to add?

[Izzy]

Dawh, my history teacher refers to the tea party as t-baggers.

Talked to my English teacher today (and somehow missed half a class ), and given his other beliefs, I'm pretty sure he's liberal. I hadn't noticed it before, but the room is lined with Noam Chomsky posters, and the ones of Hitchens, Einstein, and Dawkins weren't a false indication. (We're writing an essay about religion's infiltration of politics soon<3.)

*pre-post edit* Umm.. There's a two media file limit. So.. instead of three of Alex's commercials, three of Scott's, the below snippet of Scott, and something on Alan Grayson (who is a jerk, but our jerk), there's an Alex Sink vid. and a Scott one. A quick YouTube search will reveal the difference between the two. Sink tends to promote herself and has one commercial (this) incriminating Scott while.. Scott has nothing but videos bashing Alex for being an Obama-liberal. *end pre-edit*

Republicans waste so much money on commercials.. Here's a taste of your general liberal adverts vs. Republican ones. *sigh*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPoO_B18tYM

Xenophobic f'ucktard? Well, expected.

McCollum is a little too Republican for my taste, but he's pretty moderate. If this was a McCollum vs. Sink election, I wouldn't be too upset if the Tories got this. =/

---

Okay, let's go in another direction, but something came up today that we actually haven't discussed yet.

What do you guys think of precautions taken to balance the socio-economic status of all people, especially through means like affirmative action? I'll probably post this in the school reform thread (so you'll either have to copy and paste your answers or be twice as creative as the first time ) a little later.

In history today, some girl up front mentioned a book that was featured on the Colbert Report, that my history teacher was familiar with. I wasn't paying very close attention at this point, but the general gist of it is that the US scores comparatively low when contrasted with other countries academically. The t-bagger reference was used, and I tuned in. He started with an anecdote.

Several years ago when he first started teaching high school, he was desperate enough to take on a summer school class. English, even though he's a history teacher. His first intimation that it wouldn't be a fun time was when the then-principal told the class of 50 that if they didn't cooperate, he could kick them out and that he'd be fully backed by the administration. After the first week, the class of 50 was reduced to 35. After the second, 20. A relatively easy class: remedial English, with only class work. Basically, show up to class, do the work, don't distract anyone, and he'll pass you. After a few days, he realized that almost none of the kids (primarily seniors that needed the credit to graduate) could read. He asked the remaining 20 kids to raise their hands if they were going to go to college. All but two did. He then asked us what we thought illiterate adults could contribute to society. McDonald's? Won't hire them. Dish washer? Maybe, doubtful. Learn to read? Why, they made it 16-18 years without needing it. They look outside and see drug dealers making more money than they can imagine. What's the point for them?

There is honestly very little opportunity here.

He then looked at us, almost staring. He said he knew what every single one of us was thinking. That the kids were stupid. He hears it in the hallways. The IB kids give the standard kids grief, and the standard kids sure as hell give the IB kids grief. But why is there such a division in the school? Why are all the standard kids failing? Socio-economic division.

Well, the zoning of my school is very weird. About 80% of the kids (3200 students, 1200 of which are freshmen. Just imagine the drop-out rate) come from the immediate area around the school. The icky rural city of Sanford. The idea is to get all the poor kids grouped into one school, and then import rich kids from Heathrow so the average income meets regulations. The maybe 10% are imported from the rest of the county and they make up the IB and Health Academy programs. Sanford: houses missing roofs with bars over doors. Heathrow: Lake Mary's Beverly Hills.

IB and HA? At the school to hide how terrible the test scores of the standard kids are.

Why the division? The school is clearly competent of hiring credentialed teachers or no students would be successful. Considering some teachers instruct a combination of IB and standard classes, it's crazy how much better the IB kids do.

There are few lurking variables here. There is a direct correlation between wealth and academic success. I think we really realized it when he asked us who was planning on going on the Epcot field trip, and then was like "See, you've already been divided. 70% of the school is black. There is one black person in here. A $70 field trip is no problem. Half of these kids won't eat anything again until lunch on Monday."

Eh, I'm probably rambling at this point. What I'm trying to get at is that it isn't the schools that are failing. Standard classes are a joke, but they have to be because of the people in them. Education is being curved to lower levels so people can understand it, not because of a lack of former education, but because the students don't come from environments where education is a primary concern, considering food and housing is more important at the moment.

(Which, by the way, is why countries like China and Saudi Arabia appear to have smarter students than America. We educate everyone; they education their elite and unnaturally talented. I specifically asked what the statistics would be like if we only compared the top 5% of students in all countries, and the answer I got, (*shrug* about the accuracy, but I smiled) was that "Oh, we'd kick their a**.")

So, there are two ways to look at this. Do we stop educating people that aren't successful, or do we step up and do something about the home situation, either by increasing welfare, or.. what?

[gvg]

Well, we are not going to stop teaching everyone. I think education is a right, so we aren't going to start only teaching our elite (Think class divisions are crazy now? Think about it if the happens).

Instead of teaching down, we need to bring the students up. I pick the first option you gave. We could do this in a number of ways. Maybe we could give tax credits to those households who have a kid who gets a certain grade on a state wide exam (the more great students, the more the tax cuts). Of course, this would give some an unfair advantage in some instances, but it's a start.

Or maybe if a school, overall, gets a certain grade (Say, and average of 75%), then the entire community (who have kids in the school of course) gets rewarded somehow. Again, though, that would be unfair to those without kids.

So see, that's the problem. We need to pursue the first option. But it's hard to find something that still is fair to the rest of the community. And I'm big on fairness. But if worst comes to worst, we have to throw fairness out the window to be able to fix the problem.

In my school, they made my honors class take a regular student state test, so that the grade's wouldn't be horrible. Thing like that need to stop happening. Honors take one test, regs. another. We need to make sure that those who get help need it, and if they don't deserve to make it to the next grade, well, hold them back. Those who excel should be given the chance to skip grades. (Neither of these things happen by me, I dunno about you...) We need to truly see what the problem is before we can fix it, and help those who need it.

(Now, I want to say something about affirmative action. I am not 100% cool with it. Case in point: I know a scholarship program that you can only pursue if you are black; sorry to the white, or latino, or asian student with the same credentials. Businesses are FORCED to interview minority candidates, even if they have no chance of winning the job because, well, they're bad at what they do; and this has been known to take away chances from people who deserve the job. I could go on. Now, I understand the helping minorities tid bit; there's obviously reasons for it. But we should help them be EQUAL in society, not give them special treatment to beat out people even if they don't deserve it. Yes, keep that scholarship program, but make it available for everyone. Yes, keep that financial help thing for blacks, but make it available for EVERYONE. See what I mean? [i hope you guys understand that I'm not racist. I am a technically a minority myself{hence the map; GO BRAZIL!}, but even if I wasn't, I don't want anyone to biring up cries of racist. I don't think you guys specifically will, but I've known others who have.])

Edited October 23, 2010 by gvg

[Guest]

This is related to the abject failure of "No Child Left Behind". The "goal" of NCLB was to raise standards for all schools, but rather than offer the carrot, they preferred the stick. If schools failed to meet standards, they would be punished and possibly closed if they couldn't get students to pass. I don't know specific details, but I'm sure that there were all sorts of ridiculous gimmicks similar to the ones used in Izzy's school to keep a lot of districts open. Teaching to a test is never going to produce a smart populace. Those who take tests well will always do well, no matter how much they actually learn and those who don't are just left to suffer.

Perverse "incentives" like those imposed by NCLB are part of the reason students get passed through a grade, even if they never learned the material. If a student fails a class, that can appear to reflect badly on the teacher and if there is a consistent problem in the school of students failing to pass their grade, that adversely affects the whole school. So it becomes in everyone's interest (other than the students, but who cares about them? ) to just pass them onto the next grade and hoping that by keeping them with students who do learn the material they might learn by osmosis (or something).

What you really need more than anything else is a way to show kids that an education is a ticket to a better life. Like Izzy said, if they see illiterate drug dealers in their neighborhoods making money hand over fist, where's the incentive to learn to read and go to college (the prohibitive costs of secondary education don't help their prospects either )? Of course, because they don't really learn to think and problem solve in school, they don't realize that the proportion of drug dealers that live it large in comparison to those that wind up in dire straits is probably very small. For every one that makes a lot of money, dozens probably fail miserably and a lot probably end up dead pretty quickly too. But there's that feeling of "Get Rich or Die Trying" that seems more compelling than an education.

Complicating the socio-economic situation, there are all sorts of different learning styles. I'm a terrible auditory learner. If I spent all of my time in school with the teachers verbally lecturing (no books, no blackboards, no notes), I would probably have failed miserably. I can't keep things in my head if I can't visualize it. But I can teach myself very easily from a textbook (so long as it's decent) or from notes on a chalkboard. Case studies and examples are my bread and butter. But there are people who have completely different learning styles to me. Some people can only really pick up new concepts by hearing them out loud or by actively doing something related to the subject. Public schooling doesn't have a mechanism for making sure that people with different learning styles can be accommodated.

Both of my brothers were labeled as having "non verbal" learning disorders. They do phenomenally well with English and when the teachers allowed it, they made up their own vocabulary tests in Elementary school (with words like 'endoplasmic reticulum' ), but they really had trouble learning from the teachers. They struggled in math, not because they couldn't do the material (they usually excelled at whatever they turned in), but they couldn't be bothered to do the work. If they already knew the material, why should they have to do a worksheet with 50 practically identical, redundant questions? They both eventually found their way to a school started by someone who hadn't learned to read until Eleventh grade, not because she was dumb, but because no one had tried to teach her using a different method from the standard way until then.

I realize that the "high-functioning" aspect of schooling sort of seems to be on the opposite side of the spectrum from the people who are more concerned about putting "food on their family", but there are the cases of the double-whammy where people have low socio-economic status and difficultly learning in a standard environment. It's probably a fairly small minority, but I think any true solution to the problem of educating everyone is going to have to address both issues and the solutions to both problems may even be related. I don't exactly know the answer, but I do think that there should be more rigorous teaching accreditation coupled with higher pay, which would help draw more high-quality teachers into the field. If you can make 10x as much money being a physicist than you can being a high school physics teacher, why would you choose to be the teacher if you weren't completely committed to the idea of education? You might be really good at teaching, but with the sacrifice in salary, you might not be willing to make the commitment. We treat teaching as a middling profession, when in actuality, it ought to be one of our most precious and coveted jobs.

So any new society we build should definitely emphasize education in the utmost.

[Izzy]

If they already knew the material, why should they have to do a worksheet with 50 practically identical, redundant questions?

Or three 5x5 matrices.

But we're done with algebraic review and doing trig again.

Recently (in my area at least), there's been a huge pressure to get university professors to teach college in high school. I'm not sure how their salaries measure up, but it's been suggested that they're better than those of normal high school teachers.

Three (that I know about) of my teachers have multiple doctorates, and seem to be financially stable, so that might explain why they were able to move down to a high school level. My math teacher last year went to MIT (...and then got a vision from God that told him to become a teacher. Mixed feelings. On one hand, wtf bro. On the other, he's hands down the best math teacher I've ever had and can't wait until next year until he's teaching my level again.)

Potential solution would be to identify learning styles early and group students together based on that? (I.. still don't know what I am? I just learn best when the content makes sense. Like 2*3=6 because 2+2+2 = 6 as opposed to "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. (1493, Columbus stole all he could see.) I know I'm terrible self-taught. I took Latin online, and that turned into a huge daily cheating session. >_>)

Hiiiggghhhheeeerrr taaaaxxxeeeessss. *glares at Rick Scott*

Smaller class sizes, better teachers, better teacher pay. More focus on math and science early on. I know coloring is great and all.. but..

...Maybe extended school day, but no homework? Personally, I'd rather be at school like 7-6 (the only problem would be sports teams.. ) with no homework than be up until eleven working on stuff I already learned that day. That way poor kids can eat more at school, and won't really suffer from their at-home status. ..Though, it should be optional to drive home for dinner.

Meh. *shrug*

[gvg]

Oh, that reminds me:

Why not have a 6 day week? The sixth day is mandatory for those who do poorly (Should we make it those failing or d+ and below...?)and optional for everyone else. All lunch helping things apply, it's a normal school day that doesn't count against your attendance, but can be used as an extra day for those that have missed a lot of time. Also, extend the school day, i suppose (Although clubs and sports like you said... but we can always start it early. My school goes from 7:20 to 1:55. Maybe instead to 2:30??? I dunno.)

Dawh: Your post is very true. Education should be of utmost importance. Same to Izzy.

And some parts of NCLB are OK... Doesn't it require help for mentally challenged individuals??? We have to keep that.

[Izzy]

Sports could be in the morning, clubs could be in the afternoon, and we could have blocks so that's possible?

...No to the six day week. I only have one day off a week as it is.

[gvg]

But see, it's optional for people like you who get good grades and mandatory for those who are failing or almost failing. it won't affect you unless you choose to go.

[Izzy]

No, see, it will probably effect those excelling more. We're crazy competitive as it is, and the sixth day will be seen as another strategy to surpass one another. Teachers will probably be obligated to have lesson plans, and optional labs and assignments will be scheduled. As it stands, kids that don't need to go to tutoring go to tutoring just to get an edge over each other. Teachers like to divulge test answers and crazy help. Some of us have sport and club (MAO, Science Olympiad, and Debate Team) liabilities that make going for technically unnecessary information impossible.

Hmm. Mandatory sixth day, absolutely NO homework aside from studying, extra stuff or quarterly projects, but the days go from 7 to 4, leaving enough time for clubs and sports. Once every three weeks, there will be a 2 or 3 day weekend for optimal rest and family time. Thoughts?

Hmm. Maybe even mandatory clubs/sports. So, a 7 to 6 day, people will be well educated, home early enough to chill, and involved enough for it to look good. Accommodations provided so freshmen and sophomores don't need to worry about rides home.

[gvg]

Perfect. I like it. but don't make sports/clubs mandatory. That's a little too much; if they want to, they will, and those who don't will simply join something... and not show up. But 7-4, 1 hr. periods... I like it.

Edited October 26, 2010 by gvg

[Guest]

No, see, it will probably effect those excelling more. We're crazy competitive as it is, and the sixth day will be seen as another strategy to surpass one another. Teachers will probably be obligated to have lesson plans, and optional labs and assignments will be scheduled. As it stands, kids that don't need to go to tutoring go to tutoring just to get an edge over each other. Teachers like to divulge test answers and crazy help. Some of us have sport and club (MAO, Science Olympiad, and Debate Team) liabilities that make going for technically unnecessary information impossible.

Hmm. Mandatory sixth day, absolutely NO homework aside from studying, extra stuff or quarterly projects, but the days go from 7 to 4, leaving enough time for clubs and sports. Once every three weeks, there will be a 2 or 3 day weekend for optimal rest and family time. Thoughts?

Hmm. Maybe even mandatory clubs/sports. So, a 7 to 6 day, people will be well educated, home early enough to chill, and involved enough for it to look good. Accommodations provided so freshmen and sophomores don't need to worry about rides home.

You still have the issue of the difference between "going to school" and getting a "good education." Unmotivated students still won't learn in an environment like that and bad teachers won't facilitate learning in a system like that. And it doesn't help when the schools are a willing service arm of religious indoctrination. I mean all the students must be turning Muslim now that they've been twice addressed by that "Muslim" president of ours, right? In all seriousness though, in conservative, Christian areas, the public schools often support all kinds of Christian propaganda that has no business being in the public school system. Of course, they can't officially endorse Christianity, but so long as they buy the "right" textbooks, the kids can't help but pick up the "good news."

"Now class, by law, we are not allowed to teach Chapter 12, 'Why Jesus Christ is Your Savior', but I have it on good authority that there might be upwards of 50 extra credit points on the History exam from that chapter."

That's the primary reason a lot of these rural areas want to be able to set their own curriculum. If they had their way, you would only learn the "approved" history of the world (part 1) and anything (like evolution) that disagreed with their preconceived notions of reality would be thrown out the window. Take what they've just done in Texas. They just reworked the high school textbook standards with a crazy majority of conservatives setting the agenda. In addition to learning about the Conservative Revolution of the 1980s that involved figures like Phyllis Schlafley (crazy anti-feminist), Ronald Reagan (not all that popular while in office ) and Newt Gingrich (still thinks he can be president), they also removed Thomas Jefferson from the list of important Founding Fathers. How can you exclude the author of the "Declaration of Independence" from the list? Apparently he's just a little too progressive in his writings for their liking. [i was going to say something rather snide, but I thought better of it, though I will say that it has to do with his will.]

[/rant]

But back on topic, part of the problem is that we can't create this new system in a vacuum. Assuming it was feasible to change the school system in the way you've described, it would probably seem terribly oppressive to the slacking students who are used to the current system. The students who don't push themselves in school already and who take the easy classes don't have much homework to begin with. The end of homework would be a small victory compared to the lengthening of the school day. Of course, that might mean different hours for teachers too, some of whom might not be too happy with the new arrangements. Though of course, they wouldn't have homework to grade, but they would probably still have to grade tests by hand. IN any case, you might find quite a bit of resistance to your plan from both students and teachers. It's like the Matrix; some people are too ingrained in the system to be unplugged.

I really don't know that shifting hours around will create the change you hope to see. We're all looking at it through the rose-tinted lenses of having been a motivated student (or so I assume). So while increasing school hours might seem a good idea to a person who is there to learn, everyone else might view it as torture. I can say that I do like your system, but before I think it would be workable, you would have to change the culture. You would have to get students interested in their education, which hinges upon inspiring kids at a young age. So I really think the emphasis should be on early education, and not like being totally anal, "Standardized tests for Preschoolers!" Rather, we should try to find what inspires each student and find ways to facilitate learning around that idea. Of course that's so much harder than what we do now, but I do think that that is the best opportunity we would have.

[gvg]

Make it more advanced in Kindergarten. it's the first year of real school, and I remember most of my time being spent on arts and crafts, with very little otherwise. Make it more focused on math, science, English, SS, etc. early on, and less art.

[Guest]

Make it more advanced in Kindergarten. it's the first year of real school, and I remember most of my time being spent on arts and crafts, with very little otherwise. Make it more focused on math, science, English, SS, etc. early on, and less art.

I think that that's exactly the wrong way to emphasize it. I agree that in a lot of ways kindergarten was just structured play-time (with a little bit of learning letters and some such), but you really can't expect most kids that age to understand concepts required for math and science. I personally think that the best approach for something like kindergarten would be to create "games" that reinforce the core concepts necessary for math and science. What's more important than learning math or science is learning the constructs that allow math or science to exist (logical reasoning and problem solving). While those concepts may be a little advanced, you could start simply with things like pattern-matching. Given a picture of a dog, a cat, a horse and a table, which one doesn't belong? And things of that nature.

I was always attracted to logical reasoning. We had a computer lab at my Elementary school with a bunch of Apple 2 computers. There were a bunch of games that were available to play and other exercises (though I can't remember what they were) and the teacher in charge would usually have a particular game that we had to play for most of the session, but if you finished early or it got near the end of class, you were allowed to pick your own game to play. The structured gaming usually involved games like "Number Munchers" (I think that's the right name), where you moved around on a grid and the cells were filled with different numbers. Monsters moved across the grid in Q-Bert style patterns and you had to avoid them and you were also told to "munch" all numbers that fit a certain pattern: multiples of 3, for example. You would lose a life if you got hit or munched the wrong number. I enjoyed games like that, though I'm pretty sure some of the other students didn't. But during the free span, a lot of kids would play "Oregon Trail," a game that I've always found boring and tedious, or other mindless games of that nature. I usually tried different games to see what they were like and one in particular that I remember was a lot like some of the "Carmen Sandiego" games where you were traveling around the world, following clues to solve a crime. I don't remember the name of that game, but I do remember that that was a game I came back to more than once when I had free time in the computer lab. I doubt that most kids in my class would have chosen that game if they had known about it, but I liked it. That would have probably been in Fifth grade, or thereabouts.

It seems to me that if we expose kids to concepts based around logic and problem solving at a young age, it might inspire further curiosity in them to branch out and learn more things. I can't remember who it was or where I read it, but someone wrote an article about how in today's age of Information, there's really no reason to teach so much information to children. They need to know the letters and how to read and how to add and subtract numbers, basic arithmetic and all that, but once you get into the realm of information: write a report on volcanoes or something like that, you're really wasting people's time. That sort of information is readily available because of the Internet and such, so what really should be teaching is how to process information. That's what learning to read and arithmetic are, ways to process information.

So we supposedly teach these basics, but by the time you get to Middle School, the emphasis changes to learning information. They throw all sorts of facts and figures at you. They make you read books you may not like and write about them. And there's a lot of good that can come from things like that, but what's often lacking from the curriculum is how to take facts and figures and draw valid conclusions from that data. There is certainly a basic level of information that I think that everyone should know, but once you get beyond that threshold, you should change your focus not to the information itself, but rather how that information fits into the whole of the topic, since the information is easy to come by.

In fact, information and misinformation are so readily available today, that it can be hard to differentiate between the two. So what we really need is to focus on methods of distilling important information out of lots of data and how to discern when information presented to us may not be accurate. Most people today are very bad at processing information that doesn't agree with their model of the world. People often throw out valid data because it doesn't match what they've seen before, or they accept invalid data because it fits with the data they already have. If we tried to find a way to teach kids to process the information more cautiously from an early age, a lot of learning just comes par for the course from there.

Sorry for the long post; it just sort of snowballed.

[Izzy]

So we supposedly teach these basics, but by the time you get to Middle School, the emphasis changes to learning information. They throw all sorts of facts and figures at you. They make you read books you may not like and write about them. And there's a lot of good that can come from things like that, but what's often lacking from the curriculum is how to take facts and figures and draw valid conclusions from that data. There is certainly a basic level of information that I think that everyone should know, but once you get beyond that threshold, you should change your focus not to the information itself, but rather how that information fits into the whole of the topic, since the information is easy to come by.

In fact, information and misinformation are so readily available today, that it can be hard to differentiate between the two. So what we really need is to focus on methods of distilling important information out of lots of data and how to discern when information presented to us may not be accurate. Most people today are very bad at processing information that doesn't agree with their model of the world. People often throw out valid data because it doesn't match what they've seen before, or they accept invalid data because it fits with the data they already have. If we tried to find a way to teach kids to process the information more cautiously from an early age, a lot of learning just comes par for the course from there.

Your description of education above concerning the treatment and selection of information matches my middle school life, but this has changed significantly since the start of high school. Freshmen history, French, English, and World Religions were a joke, but the rest of my classes, while in depth in information, had far more practical purposes and explanations that accounted for how and why things work, rather than "They do, please regurgitate this on the next test." (The latter actually makes me sad, though that had to do in large with the stupidity of *certain* Christians in that class that would stop us every time someone said something they didn't agree with. Once we were supposed to write a creation myth (emphasis on myth), and this dude copied down Genesis. When he read it aloud, I was like "Oh, happy to know you think it's a fairy tale", and.. he's a bit of a jerk.) As of now, the only class I have that is based on information rather than an underlying understanding is French. ..We're baby French-ists, it's expected. A run-down of my day to highlight this:

Physics: Playing with fan-powered cars that turn into boats to cement an understanding of acceleration, resistence, etc. (Lawl, later that day I ended up on the science building roof with one of my friends. "I wonder how high up we are?" *me gets out iPod* "Dude, spit, try to keep it completely vertical with no initial vertical velocity. Phhhyyyyyssssics." "That. is. awesome." (33.9 meters, btw. )

English: Myteacherissoawesomesowe'rewatchingmoviesonDawkinsandatheismandscienceandstuff<333333333333. The documentary we just finished watching has to do entirely with getting over ourselves and accept things with reasonable evidence even if we don't like them. AP Lang really is a highever level thinking class, truly. It's not merely reading comprehension anymore, it concerns why something is written the way it is and how the author achieves the effect.

French: Napped?

World history: We're actually in a process of changing textbooks. Currently, my teacher diverges from the book (Which he's correctly labeled as crap) so he can connect, say, the Aztecs and the Mongols, or show how event x has had impacts in places a, b, and c. Really, you won't pass if you're relying on memorization. His tests questions are written like "What is the irony of Roman democracy?" or "Why did most of the Chinese live in this area?" Obviously, you have to know things to answer these questions, but knowing them isn't enough if you can't connect them to the larger meaning.

Pre-calc: Oh. Yeah, we don't really.. do.. much, often. It's a fun class, and sometimes we do these awesome geometrical-esqe activities, not really because they're relevent, but because they're awesome and we're geeks.

Stat: *vomit*

Chem: <333. I can't describe this class. It's.. just<333. More work than play. The only thing we've had to memorize thus far is element names/symbols and the polyatomic ions that can't be easily derived from the period table.

I had a thought today. Is the benefit of grouping by ability possibly outweighed by the potential ill-feelings of students? In elementary, we were all the same grade level, but had drastically varying abilities. Some couldn't read, some read Harry Potter, others read Quantum Mechanics books. In third grade, some people couldn't even add double-digit numbers on paper while in-head double digit multiplation and division of things that came out to be whole numbers were no problem for others. In middle school, people were sorted by ability in math and science classes, but everything else was uneffected. In high school, aside from a stray few, everyone is more or less of the same ability level. Some get better grades than others, but that seems to be a measurement of willingness rather than anything else. Basically, you have all the 0.0-2.0 GPA students together (not purposesly, it just ends up like that because of the classes they're taking), the 2.0-3.5, 3.5-4.5, and then 4.5+. ..If every student feels 'average' because they're not really exposed to the ability of others, then smart ones won't try to excell outside of the class room because of the pessimistic view that it's nothing special, while dumb ones will remain where they are because they're getting the same grades as "everyone else". Iunno.

Though, I don't deny the upside. Less distractions and level-appropriate discussions ftw.

[gvg]

My English class is awesome too; we always get off topic (That's the fun part =)) and twice now she wanted to start discussing religion (mythology unit, she's an atheist i think), but she stopped herself because it wasn't a college class.

And it is true, in high school you have to figure stuff out more (excpet in languages and health. meh [but health is fun])

The thing is, with the last part, I don't see that. All of the honors kids I know (Don't want to brag, but I'm in every honors class I can be in, soo...) freak out more than the regulars, and try harder. If you want to work, you will, regardless of where you are.

[Izzy]

That's not exactly what I meant (poor phrasing on my part). (This isn't meant to seem condescending or anything, not that I'd think either of you would interpret it like that, just a disclaimer. )

I'm in IB. I'm a sophomore with a 4.65 GPA. (All A's. It would be a 4.78 if I wasn't an idiot and didn't take Latin online and German freshman year. Freaking 4.0 classes. ;_

Compared to the school, I'm in the 99th percentile. I think there are two kids in my grade with higher GPAs, and that's only because they're taking AP classes online and their middle schools offered foreign languages, so are already in the 5.0 weighted language classes. Basically, GPA isn't an accurate representation of intelligence, yet that's what we all fuss over. I'm smarter than the people I know with higher GPAs than me, yet I can think of one stunning example of a kid with a modest GPA (above 4.5) that..is just completely beyond the level of anything any of us are doing. Am I infinitely jealous? Hell yeah. He's also one of my best friends, and he's just so chill about it.

Anyway, all these 4.5+ GPA kids are together. I think 4.82 is the maximum GPA a current sophomore can have, and that's only if they took high school biology in middle school (only one school I know of offered it), and either high school French or Spanish in middle school (two offered it). That would require taking all AP/IB classes aside from chem sophomore year and two AP electives and AP biology freshman year. Doable. Difficult. Anyone capable of this kind of work getting these results is undeniably intelligent, especially considering this involves total well-roundedness. Imagine 100 or so of these kids grouped together, taking more or less the same classes.

..It's discouraging. Yes, this is a fantastic sight, and yes, yay future, but.. you have to emphathize that there are some thoughts these kids are having. I think they have a lot to do with how a lot of these kids have emotionally attached themselves to their eduactional status for years, and the mixture of teenage hormones and realizing you're not the best is, well, brutal. Most people compete to win. If they know, or are inclined to think, that they can't win, why would they try? Losing isn't fun.

I hope that clarified a little. It's kind of hard to express what I mean without.. coming off the wrong way. >_>

[gvg]

I know what you mean. I have friends who are better than me in some things, and I'm better in others. Yes, people compete; truthfully, I love it. It drives me, to try and get better, to pass them. I may be connected to education, and I freak if I don't see A+'s, but I understand that this is part of a bigger picture, and that the competition doesn't end (I want to be a biologist in case you care). Those who give up, well, they don't deserve it. Work hard to succeed. See the connection in a sorta political way? (Socialism maybe? But not really... I dunno.)

I'll explain better later, I'm being rushed. =)

Edited October 27, 2010 by gvg

[Guest]

That's not exactly what I meant (poor phrasing on my part). (This isn't meant to seem condescending or anything, not that I'd think either of you would interpret it like that, just a disclaimer. )

I'm in IB. I'm a sophomore with a 4.65 GPA. (All A's. It would be a 4.78 if I wasn't an idiot and didn't take Latin online and German freshman year. Freaking 4.0 classes. ;_

Compared to the school, I'm in the 99th percentile. I think there are two kids in my grade with higher GPAs, and that's only because they're taking AP classes online and their middle schools offered foreign languages, so are already in the 5.0 weighted language classes. Basically, GPA isn't an accurate representation of intelligence, yet that's what we all fuss over. I'm smarter than the people I know with higher GPAs than me, yet I can think of one stunning example of a kid with a modest GPA (above 4.5) that..is just completely beyond the level of anything any of us are doing. Am I infinitely jealous? Hell yeah. He's also one of my best friends, and he's just so chill about it.

Anyway, all these 4.5+ GPA kids are together. I think 4.82 is the maximum GPA a current sophomore can have, and that's only if they took high school biology in middle school (only one school I know of offered it), and either high school French or Spanish in middle school (two offered it). That would require taking all AP/IB classes aside from chem sophomore year and two AP electives and AP biology freshman year. Doable. Difficult. Anyone capable of this kind of work getting these results is undeniably intelligent, especially considering this involves total well-roundedness. Imagine 100 or so of these kids grouped together, taking more or less the same classes.

..It's discouraging. Yes, this is a fantastic sight, and yes, yay future, but.. you have to emphathize that there are some thoughts these kids are having. I think they have a lot to do with how a lot of these kids have emotionally attached themselves to their eduactional status for years, and the mixture of teenage hormones and realizing you're not the best is, well, brutal. Most people compete to win. If they know, or are inclined to think, that they can't win, why would they try? Losing isn't fun.

I hope that clarified a little. It's kind of hard to express what I mean without.. coming off the wrong way. >_>

I sort of get what you're saying and I don't really know how much of an issue it really is. My high school just had a 4.0 scale and we only had AC/AP classes (AC being "Accelerated" for classes like Geometry that don't have an AP test or it's something you would take as a freshman or sophomore). We had a fair few 4.0 students (I was not quite one of them, but I was pretty high), but there were a number of people with a higher GPA than me who were definitely not smarter than me. Rather, they didn't take the challenging classes and just coasted through with the minimum effort. So they got their 4.0 taking "American History" instead of "AP American History" and they maybe took "Math Analysis AC" (pre-calc) as a senior (Algebra 3, 4, a junior class, was the highest that was required to graduate ) while the rest of us had taken "Math Analysis AP" (though there was no actual AP test) as a junior and then even went on to some form of Calculus senior year.

In high school, and to some extent in middle school, we're given some self-determination (at least nominally) to choose our own course load and path and we stratify ourselves based on pressure from our parents and our own view of our abilities. Senior year, outside of elective classes, I pretty much had exactly the same group of students in each class. We were all on the "Advanced/College-Prep" path, while there were at least two other levels of students who were on different paths and there was almost no overlap between them. I'm not really sure what conclusions can be drawn from the divisions.

I will say that the students at the top tend to be more motivated to be at the top, usually to some degree from their upbringing, so they will be more competitive in general since they expect more of themselves (or at the very least their parents expect more of them ). Those further down the grade/class totem pole are not given the same expectations, so they don't perform higher than that expectation. So there's no question that parenting plays a huge role in deciding how well a student will do and public schooling can only mitigate that so much when the parent isn't supportive, but there are definitely things that can be done to improve schooling.

Part of the issue is that a fair number of the students in the lower groups got turned off to learning at some point in their education. I think that there could be quite a bit of upward mobility in those groups if they wanted to apply themselves, but they saw no reason to do so. So somewhere along the line, the system broke down. And like I've said earlier, I think the crux of it is in early education. We just sort of brush off elementary school as "everyone learns the basics using the same rote methods and everyone will come out of it roughly the same." And that's not true at all. We always talk about "our impressionable" youth and education is no different. If you teach kids that learning is boring and staid and dull, dull, dull, then they are going to learn that first and foremost and it's going to stick with them for the rest of their school career. So when they get to high school and they have the opportunity to choose more challenging classes or more specific classes that go into more depth on a topic, what impetus have they been given to push themselves? Certainly nothing that they've done earlier in their schooling.

So all this focus on high school test scores is wrong-headed. You need to start kids on the path to learning at the earliest possible point. I've using an analogy to a tree in the past, but I just thought of a different analogy that I like: education is a tube of toothpaste. If you start at the far end from the nozzle and push up from there, you'll get more toothpaste out of the container. If you insist on squeezing the tube at the one inch mark from the front, you'll squeeze it flat at that point and you'll push a lot of toothpaste deeper into the tube. Arbitrarily raising testing standards at the high school level is like squeezing the tube one inch down the side and expecting the paste at the bottom to come out the top. The toothpaste already at the top will come out, but anything further down will stay there. In order to get the toothpaste out from the bottom, you have to push from the bottom. Though now I find that my analogy breaks down because I wouldn't advocate just pushing on the bottom as well (higher testing standards at the elementary level would be the analog...). Instead, you should be coaxing it through the system slowly but surely, trying not to leave any of it behind. (Maybe it worked better than I thought it did. )

[gvg]

Alright people, time to vote!!!! Wish I could (too young) but those who can, REMEMBER:

I liked you're metaphor Dwah's. It does work =)

[Izzy]

Electiondayelectiondayelectiondayelectiondayelectiondayelectiondayelectiondayelectiondayelectiondayelectionday!!!! Hey Floridians, give me a reason to have some faith in humanity, yeah?

Talked to my English teacher today, and he didn't vote for Rick Scott<3. Atheist liberals ftw. Ahem. >_>

Alex Sink, Yes on 4, Yes on 5 and 6. NO on 8. Lez doo this.

*crosses fingers for legalized weed in California* This is be the first step in fair drug rights, methinks/mehopes.

Who am I kidding? More nervous than excited. =/

Edited November 2, 2010 by Izzy

[gvg]

Pass my video on to everyone. The link is here (remove the space in youtube)http://www.you tube.com/watch?v=QlBOv8m_Xa8&feature=player_embedded

[gvg]

AMERICA, THY NAME IS STUPID.

Really, this'll help progress.

Guess the only smart people participate in this forum huh? =)

[Izzy]

I share a state with idiots. I'd post what my Facebook status post-election results was, but it might get me banned.

Three ammendments went the way I wanted them to, though.

WTF California?

[gvg]

Yeah, Cal. let us down. =(

Now let's see if congress does anything. =(

[Guest]

To go back in time on the thread a little bit, here's an interesting article on economic theory as it relates to government. It's not too long, and I think that it gets right to the heart of the matter of a much earlier (and extremely long ) discussion.

I agree with most everything that the author wrote in the article. Government regulation shouldn't be designed to kill business, but it should protect business from itself. Like the author said, what's good for an individual business in the short term can be very bad for the "business community" as a whole. Sure, selling derivatives in the financial market using risky mortgage loans made a lot of people very rich, very quickly, but in the long run it was basically guaranteed to collapse. It boosted the companies' stocks in the short term, but when people started calling in their debts, no one could pay out. As a result, everyone lost faith in the financial market and it tanked.

It took the government stepping in to shore it up and save what could still be saved. There's almost no question in most credible economists' minds that had the government not acted, we would have had a catastrophic collapse that would have rivaled the Great Depression. Liberalism is not the enemy of Capitalism; Conservatism and Regressivism are. They continue to hearken back to an age that no longer exists in the US. "The Good, Old Days" weren't all that good unless you were a rich, white landowner. The world has changed and it requires progress, not regress, to handle it.