Teacher! Leave That Context Alone!


Damn it, if I had to be pushed through a meat grinder to graduate school, then those damn kids should have to too!

Bruce Deitrick Price, American Idiot:
Progressive Education’s War on Knowledge

There are few things more instantly hilarious than a conservative trying to argue that they are standing against a War on Knowledge. For fuck’s sake, they’ve been running around for nearly a decade now literally declaring war on reality and facts and have been against education and intellectual curiosity for FAR longer than that. They couldn’t have less credibility on the issue if they were a comic book villain in a PSA comic about literacy.

So when you stumble on something even more instantly hilarious than that, you know you’re freebasing the good shit. And today, that extra teaspoon of fail is our good friends at the American Thinker trying to weigh in on education theory.

Yes, let’s let the stellar analysts behind “Bill Ayers is a Time Lord working on behalf the Mandingo Conspiracy” and “The Sapphic Lust of the Girl Scouts will Destroy us All” wax poetic on the best methods to educate young minds. Surely we’ll only get the most nuanced of inputs.

An educational futurist, in a video on Edutopia, objects to the teaching of data and information. That’s the sort of thing, he sniffs, that Google can find.

Or not.

So yeah, the elephant turd in the room would be that the linked video is to a fucking YouTube video. Yup, standing in for all Progressive Education ever is one person on YouTube taping a poorly attended lecture panel at some Pedagogy Conference somewhere. And it’s not even on a big education channel. It’s just the guy’s personal channel. But yeah, apparently that is every teacher everywhere forever and ever amen.

Fuck, if writing posts for Wingnut Welfare is that fucking easy, I really need to get on this bandwagon. Hmm, should I start with how this guy shows how public school teachers are just having our kids play video games all day instead of learning things? Or maybe how the existence of commentary on Korean Pro Starcraft games is proof of Kim Jong Il performing technological terrorism on nerds. Ooh, maybe how Keyboard Cat is the first step to Feline Overlords using us for kitty litter!

The futurist wants a high-tech classroom where students work only on sophisticated projects, such as “Is there life on Mars?”

Oh Brucie dear, I hate to break it to you but futurist doesn’t mean scum of the Earth. Nor does it mean “person who acknowledges that there is a future and we’ll have to prepare for it rather than bumbling forward blindly like a drunk uncle”.

A futurist is a term either given to a scientist whose work entirely deals with predicting the future from current trends or to a member of an artistic movement at the beginning of the 20th century trying to capture the excitement of the times for what a future could be (think HG Wells or Tommaso Marinetti) (and now I’ve provided more knowledge in one paragraph than Bruce Price has in his entire life).

The futurist scorns traditional ways of teaching. For one thing, teachers wasted a lot of time on trivial stuff. His voice almost shakes with incredulity: “Teaching kids that ‘In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue’ — why on earth waste time presenting that?

The reasoning runs like this. Anything you want is on Google, so why bother learning anything? I worry that this is a destructive little sophistry. Let’s think about it.

Well, Brucie my boy, like a blind bird randomly pecking on the ground, you’ve actually stumbled onto something genuine. So yes, modern educational theory has been very critical of the whole “names and dates” method of teaching for a good long time now. And there’s some really good reasons why.

First the method is terminally boring and reduces legitimately interesting subjects like History into something the kids will want to snooze through and disengage. And if the kids are not engaged with the material, they aren’t going to bother to learn shit and even if they do to pass the tests, they aren’t going to commit it to long-term memory.

Second, names and dates are the single worst way to teach anything, mainly because there is no reason to care or find anything meaningful about names and dates. Especially when they are used as they are in too many classes on their own as the most important thing to know. Who cares about a guy named Columbus and the year 1492? To care about that, you need to know what the culture was in Europe in the late 15th century. Why taking that trip was so novel and groundbreaking. What the impact was on the Native cultures. All the things that are usually left out of the discussion to focus on just meaningless dates.

Which brings up the third, which is that learning names and dates takes forever. And that’s because there is a lot of similar information that is hard to keep straight. Which means the teacher needs to spend more time on each name and date repeating it more often and inventing clever mnemonics to keep it all straight. Thus they end up teaching less information in total so there is less to confuse together.

In fact, the only benefit (and the reason it is so popular) is that it’s the easiest method to design a standardized multiple choice exam around.

I suppose I should act surprised that a Know-Nothing is vehemently in favor of the teaching method that includes the least amount of actual information.

When I was a kid, all knowledge, for all practical purposes, was in the encyclopedias we had in our den or the school library. Did that mean I didn’t need to learn anything? Quite the contrary. Just thumbing through the pages of those encyclopedias was confusing and overwhelming. It was then. It is now.

Which would be a strong argument for context over memorization, now wouldn’t it?

Also, memorization of dates and names is becoming a lot less tenable because sure, it was in ecnyclopedias before, but that meant you needed to know how to spell the word, own an encyclopedia that contained it and a meaningful entry, and then spend the time getting a book, opening it up and checking. Nowadays, you google it on your phone. Takes about five microseconds and means having a good memory for factoids is less important than knowing the skills to find them and understand their importance.

You need to have the anchor points, the organizational blueprint that arranges details in a logical way. In short, you need to know the fundamental stuff. You absolutely need to know that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue!

Yeah, nothing could be more important than a contextless date and a name we only barely remember in our adulthoods. Truly without that, we’d be unable to function in a modern society. We’d just have to imagine that the Americas were first discovered by I dunno, some drunken Viking or perhaps even a collection of Asian hunter-gatherers crossing a land-bridge in Alaska.

Perhaps for your “fundamental”, you should have a) picked something that actually provides more information than a penchant for sailing not to mention b) about something legitimately important and not currently being used as the number one example of misleading information taught in schools.

But yeah, seeing a name and date that had a catchy rhyme as the center on which history turns might explain why wingnuts think teaching, you know, the reality behind the factoids is fascist communist genocide times a gajillion.

Before discussing whether there is life on Mars, you need to know, for example, what Mars is; what life is; and why it’s profoundly interesting to ask, “Is there life on Mars?”

Again, that’s an argument for context not names and dates. If you teach kids to memorize the dictionary definition of life or that life existed on Mars, that’s fundamentally less interesting than teaching what life means. What being alive entails, why they should care, and think about what life needs to be life and thus why scientists get all excited about ice layers.

Bonus points if you can design that learning to be something the kids do themselves in order to pursue another goal.

Today, Google is in effect an encyclopedia with a million times more information than the encyclopedias we knew years ago. So, while the search may be quicker, it’s also far more complicated, disorienting, and nearly hopeless. How do young students know where to start, and what are the primary facts in a given field?

Yeah, that is a problem. It’s almost like teaching students how to think about information and access it is a more important skill to focus the majority of time on rather than trying to turn our brains into overly complicated, disorienting collections of random factoids.

Eh, fuck it, dates and names are easier to turn into an overly simplistic standardized test that KAPLAN can sell test prep for.

The futurist does see the danger: “Just because they know how to control the technology doesn’t mean they know how to judge the value or accuracy of information they may be finding.” Exactly. Then he skips over his own caution.

You may be noticing a distinct lack of arguments for teaching rote memorization in this post besides “that’s the way it’s always been done”. This isn’t because American Thinker is entirely staffed by people terrified of the concept of change, but rather…

Oh hey, a new paragraph.

I want to suggest a model that describes all learning, and shows us the danger in the futurist’s vision. This model states that the acquisition of knowledge starts with an armature, a skeleton. The armature, even when simple, lets you build elaborate structures on it.

Without an appropriate underlying armature, everything can end up being a hodgepodge of unconnected information which makes no sense. That’s why you have to teach children foundational knowledge. The younger that the students are, the more this is true.

Yeah, to avoid creating a hodgepodge of unconnected information which makes no sense, we’ll make sure we instill in kids a hodgepodge of unconnected information that doesn’t make sense to them! Especially at a younger age!

Then we’ll raise government revenue by deliberately lowering government revenue through massive tax cuts. And then promote good moral values by teaching kids information they discover is false almost immediately from people trying to literally fuck them.

It’s worth noting that our Education Establishment has been disdainful of knowledge going back almost 100 years. Here’s a quote from a textbook written in 1929 by Edward Thorndike and Arthur I. Gates, two of our leading educators: “Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language and history include content that is intrinsically of little value.”

Note the disdainful tone of voice. So much for history, language, arithmetic, and phonics! It’s the same tone we hear in this video pitching the idea that we needn’t bother with easy-to-find facts.

Noooo, that would be your weekly meeting of “Teach the Controversy” nutjobs. Actual education theorists talk about how we teach history, language, and arithmetic as being of little value of kids “learning the fucking skill”. Mainly because it is boring as listening to a conservative talk about anything except for their love life. And frankly, any time history ends up boring, something has gone fundamentally wrong somewhere.

At some point, however, we always come up against one of life’s harsher truths. To those who have is given more. Certainly, in the case of knowledge, this is completely obvious. You first need a foundation on which you can build. To learn a lot, you first learn a little, which enables you to learn more, then more.

Well, gee howdy, that’s a nice stream of meaningless buzzwords. What do you do again?

Bruce Deitrick Price is an author, artist, and education reformer. He founded Improve-Education.org in 2005; his site explains theories and methods.

You don’t say.

Conversely, those who have little are likely to have even that taken away. We see these pathetic people, when Jay Leno goes Jaywalking, unable to answer the simplest questions.

Huh, students who were taught the right and proper method of names and dates not only remain ignorant of context, but are unable to recall any of those names and dates even into early adulthood, no matter how simply the question is phrased?

Well, boy howdy, if that wasn’t an endorsement for the status quo, I don’t know what is!

Seriously, can we get one fucking wingnut who manages to remember what side he’s supposed to be arguing all the way through their post? Just one!

Probably, geography provides the simplest paradigm. It used to be considered The Queen of the Sciences. (That our schools neglect it now is a warning sign.) You cannot study history, science or current events, you cannot study the environment, you cannot study much of anything unless you know the names of the oceans and continents, the rivers and mountains, the main features of the planet Earth. The fact that this information is readily available on Google or in an atlas isn’t a good reason for not learning it. That’s the sophistry, right there.

Damn straight, if you don’t know how to find the Yangtze River, the current capital of Mozambique, or which lakes lie on the Altai Mountain Range, then you can’t possibly understand how acids and bases react!

Yeah, the main problem isn’t so much that people don’t know where Afghanistan is, but that people just don’t care. The search is literally done in microseconds, but people have so many bad flashbacks of memorizing things for school and internalizing that not knowing random names of the top of your head makes you stupid that no one bothers to check it out and care about lands we’re sending people to die in.

Also, funny how geography usually took the place of learning anything of about 90% of the areas covered. Eh, just look over the Asian countries, we won’t go into their histories, we need to save time for memorizing the reign dates of a bunch of random white kings you’re supposed to care about for reasons.

The futurist is obsessed with the fact that it’s so easy to find information. He wrongly concludes that students don’t need to acquire any. He focuses on the power of modern technology and all the fancy new ways to present information. But what could be easier than opening an encyclopedia and looking at the information? There it is, easy!

Googling it? Wikipedia?

I mean, sure, opening a book is easier than scaling a mountain and asking a random old guy with frostbite on his butt, but it’s still a pain in the ass for small facts.

You need to know where you put your encyclopedias, find which book your information is in, flip back and forth to the right page and then scan for the information which may not even be in there.

Versus just plugging your question right into google or inserting the word into Wikipedia. The microsecond gap between curiosity and knowledge means that there are no real excuses for not looking something up when you can.

Well, no legitimate excuses, the wingnutosphere has firmly demonstrated that there is always an excuse to being ignorant. Like you Bruce, trying to come up with any excuse to avoid googling why educational professionals seem so peeved about teaching to test.

But how would children know how to do that efficiently? They have no sense of what’s important or minor, what to read first, and what to go to next. Without a hierarchy of knowledge, you have intellectual and cognitive chaos.

Sigh.

All right, everyone all together.

“That would be the critique.”

Cause trying to turn kids into living encyclopedias of random facts loses a little in translation when their fucking phones can do that faster and more reliably.

At this point, I’m just going to assume he’s doing this because some vestige part of his cognition is trying to smash the rest of his flailing neurons with a Cluehammer.

The futurist is fascinated by all the new technology, some of which lets him project information on the walls of the classroom. Great. But why is that conceptually different from a teacher showing a picture or scribbling a diagram on a blackboard? I submit it’s not different (albeit much more expensive).

Huh, now he’s degraded entirely into old fogeyism.

Dangnabbit, the way we did it back in my day is the way they should always do it! Kids don’t need their classroom technology to keep up with regular technology or have some sort of spectacle to grab their attention and get them engaged! Just use the expensive technology and devices they used for me when I was younger.

Really, if all the world stopped so wingnuts could perpetually live out their youths through everyone else, then everything would be a lot better overall.

The crucial thing is not the ease of presenting information but the easy coherence of the information presented.

Love of technology shouldn’t be an excuse for disdaining facts. It’s not either/or. Why not more of both? Let’s stop accepting shallow alibis for teaching less.

Fine, I’ll take the easy pitch.

“Yes, surely it is the futurist’s argument which is the shallow alibi.”

Ugh, I feel like a trained monkey. Yeah, nice reading comprehension there. Translating basic educational theory into “technology needs to replace teaching”.

Also, is there anywhere outside of the Fundie Circuit when you can have a career supposedly about keeping abreast of teaching theories and methods wherein you know nothing about leading teaching theories and are disdainful of nearly all teaching methods including those that would seek to purchase new products from companies like Bruce’s?

Anyone can build great schools on these two premises: facts are fun and knowledge is power. Therefore, teach more.

Anyone can build great schools if they use enough cliches! Stay in school! Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! The customer is always right!

You’ll know education is improving when you hear the Education Establishment brag about how they have figured out ingenious new ways to teach more facts.

They have. They did. That’s what you’re bitching about Brucie.

And they’d have switched over years ago if it wasn’t for you and your band of Know-Nothings screaming and wailing every time someone tried to teach actual information in schools.

But hey, that’s apparently okay as long as the kids today get the same inaccurate, inefficient, and boring methods of teaching that produced the incurious, angry at change morons that write for American Thinker. Cause if it was good enough for them, then the kids will damn well suffer the same fate and like it!

Dagnabbit!

 

Comments: 212

 
 
 

FrUST!

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

The futurist is fascinated by all the new technology, some of which lets him project information on the walls of the classroom. Great. But why is that conceptually different from a teacher showing a picture or scribbling a diagram on a blackboard? I submit it’s not different (albeit much more expensive).

(Emphasis mine)

Fuck, does this idiot know how much one of those overhead projectors we used in school costed, even 50 years ago? Not one of those cheap-ass saran-wrap-and-grease-pencil transparency abominations, but the ones with the huge lens you could put an open book in and project it on a screen? I don’t know if they even make them any more—they’d probably cost more than a 12″ Celestron if they did. Find me a phone with a projector that costs that much. Wadda maroon!

 
 

Well, hey! I know what let’s!!! Let’s get rid of alla these “careerist” teachers, with their “degrees” and their “unions” and all, and get a bunch of people in there who’ll do it for minimum wage, y’know……………just because they love it so much. THEN you’ll see some goddamm teachin.

And SPANKIN’S too, by God. That’ll teach the little bastards where Uzbeki-beki-bekistan is.

There. Problem solved. Now, can we get back to finding out who Jan Smithers’ boyfriend was?

 
Just Alison in a red velvet hat
 

Anyone can build great schools on these two premises: facts are fun and knowledge is power. Therefore, teach more.

Sorry, dude, t’ain’t the case – ‘facts’ on their own are shitlessly boring, as Cerberus eloquently points out, and a knowledge that consists solely of these facts really won’t give much power at all. Honestly, haven’t these tosspots read anything like Venus Plus X or Brave New World?
You’ll know education is improving when you hear the Education Establishment brag about how they have figured out ingenious new ways to teach more facts.

Bzzzt! Sorry, wrong again – they’ll be bragging when they’ve figured out new ways to teach students to think critically and to motivate them to want to learn.

 
 

Now, can we get back to finding out who Jan Smithers’ boyfriend was?

Tried. Failed. But I’m gonna use Kip Winger as a placeholder until someone delivers the real thing.

 
 

You’ll know education is improving when you hear the Education Establishment brag about how they have figured out ingenious new ways to teach more facts.

As Norman Mailer said, and not recently either, “Facts you can always look up someplace”.

F’r example: now I know who Kip Winger is!!

 
 

I doan need no fancy book larnen…

 
 

Facts are the Jew of Liberal Educationism.

 
 

John Revolta-

Yeah, there’s millions of ways to increase facts. The best ways have the kids excited to look them up on their own time without being forced.

Like tangential learning which is where creating something interesting that casually mentions something else gets the person to look up what was casually mentioned so to learn more about it.

But yeah, the one thing that all those ways have in common? Making learning fun and interesting on its own merits so that the kid has genuine desire to engage with learning and associate positive experiences with being a giant nerd who educates themselves in their spare time.

 
 

Or to put it another way: I learned in high school how to solve quadratic equations—I couldn’t solve one now if you held an asp to my breast. QE fuckin’ D, bitches.

 
 

I doan need no fancy book larnen…

Will the distinguished Senator please yield the floor?

 
 

Forget about Google and Wikipedia — you could just go to the library and look up a map of the cat way back in the 30s.

 
 

Which brings us neatly to the map of Tassie

 
 

one of those overhead projectors we used in school […] Not one of those cheap-ass saran-wrap-and-grease-pencil transparency abominations

He who acetates is lost.

 
 

You absolutely need to know that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue!

In 1493 Columbus stole all that he could see.

 
 

I have no doubt that Bruce thinks factoid-based education could be improved through the use of PowerPoint.

 
 

Although normal people understand that “fun” in this context = interesting, challenging, and ultimately satisfying, because it stimulates natural learning processes reinforced over millions of years of human evolution, the average conservatoid asshole knows that anything “fun” is immoral, unnatural, and ultimately something they have never had.

 
 

Just thumbing through the pages of those encyclopedias was confusing and overwhelming. It was then. It is now.

Thinkin makes mah haid hurt. It did then and it does now.

Today, Google is in effect an encyclopedia with a million times more information than the encyclopedias we knew years ago.

This newfangled thinkin makes mah haid hurt even more.

How’re we supposed to instill in our chilluns the importance of blindly following and repeating rote information if we don’t structure our educational reward system solely around repeating rote information?

meh

This fucking twit is out of his depth in a birdbath.
—————————————

Oddly, I spent third and fourth grade reading the World Book end to end, but I’m weird like that. It was pretty heady stuff for a kid, but a great excuse to look up all sorts of words in the huge honkin dictionary in the classroom. I thought it was pretty awesome. Confusing? Yeah, sure, but that’s kind of the point of learning, isn’t it?

 
 

You absolutely need to know that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue!

And he sailed all the way to Ohio, which is why you can find the Santa Maria here on the Scioto River.
~

 
 

When did his sister, Columbia, come over?

 
 

When I was in 4th or 5th grade the school library had a Time-Life book on aviation that had a 2-page picture of a Boeing 707 cockpit.

I would sit there and look at that book and think “Oh man, it would be so cool to fly a Boeing 707 someday”.

20-some years later, I flew the KC-135, which is pretty much a Boeing 707.

 
 

In Russia facts teach you.

 
 

This fucking twit is out of his depth in a birdbath.

Hogeye sums it up very neatly. Let’s go off-topic!

 
 

Ain’t that fancy book lernin’ for elitists anyhow?

 
 

When did his sister, Columbia, come over?

I believe she landed with the Riff Raff.

 
 

I thought the “learn the dates/people/places” nonsense wasn’t to stimulate learning, but to enforce conformity. That it was uninteresting out of context was sort of the point.

 
 

You absolutely need to know that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue!

Cerb touched on this, but there’s a slightly more sinister objective than the typical wingnut stupidity: it’s not about understanding details, it’s about imprinting historical talking points (“Nuh-uh! It was Columbus in 1492!”).

 
 

sparks-

Pretty much. In fact, most of why education seems off is based on the fact that liberals and conservatives have wildly differing goals from education.

Liberals want education to provide as much information, critical thinking, and knowledge as possible so that children can grow into well-rounded adults able to think about their world and be curious about how it works.

Whereas conservatives see school as a place to instill proper respect for authority, how to parrot what someone in power tells you to believe, how not to question dumb assignments and live life to please one’s boss, to learn the safety of conformity and how to bully any who try and deviate, and most importantly to never be challenged on anything they are teaching their kid at home or in Church.

Which is why school ends up being a hodge-podge of attempted education methods brutally hamstrung by things that make learning harder, less meaningful, and overall shitty.

It’s also why conservatives have been increasingly hostile to schools and teachers because the education institutions have been less and less willing to put up with deliberate worsenings of education for the fee fees of mouth breathers.

 
 

Well, hey! I know what let’s!!! Let’s get rid of alla these “careerist” teachers, with their “degrees” and their “unions” and all, and get a bunch of people in there who’ll do it for minimum wage, y’know……………just because they love it so much. THEN you’ll see some goddamm teachin.

They’re way ahead of you on that.

<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/shadrack-mcgill-alabama-teacher-pay-bible_n_1247765.html&quot;

Bonus points for it being in the Bible, too.

 
Shadrack McGill, Alabama State Senator
 

“I believe God made everything to be in balance. He weighed the Earth and the valley and the mountains and the hills on a scale to keep them in balance because he knew he was going to be spinning it real fast, so that’s the jist of it.”

As someone once said, how can a poor man stand such times and live?

 
 

“Teachers need to make the money that they need to make,” McGill said, according to the Times-Journal. “If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach … and these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It’s just in them to do. It’s the ability that God give ’em.”

But if we replaced every “teacher” reference with a “CEO” reference, then that’s *mean*, right?

Also the whole “The people who are responsible for educating our country’s future leaders should be fine with being paid in lint and bread crumbs because it’s their calling” bullshit is the bullshittiest of bullshit to ever be shitted from a bull.

 
 

Brave New World?

c’mon, alison! just the looking at the title of this one would cause any number of winguts to die of apoplexy

 
 

It’s worth noting that our Education Establishment has been disdainful of knowledge going back almost 100 years. Here’s a quote from a textbook written in 1929 by Edward Thorndike and Arthur I. Gates, two of our leading educators: “Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language and history include content that is intrinsically of little value.”

Note the disdainful tone of voice. So much for history, language, arithmetic, and phonics! It’s the same tone we hear in this video pitching the idea that we needn’t bother with easy-to-find facts.

Wow, pointing out that overusing “artificial exercises” and low-value content is wasting valuable teaching time is completely throwing out the entire subject matters in which stupid drills are overused? Google some reading comprehension drills, dude.

You know, there’s a special place in Hell for people who pine for the golden days of yore where education is concerned; the enrollment rate used to be about 1/2 of all children, and in 1820 over 10% of adult whites were illiterate and 80% of adult blacks.

 
 

These people have already trashed public education with 1) their brainless insistence on multiple-choice tests that determine school funding, merit pay and probably how much toilet paper the school is allotted and 2) their hysterical refusal to contemplate anything that contradicts their idiotic worldview in any way.

When the U.S. Education Dept. tried to establish a history curriculum–you know, an actual curriculum that spelled out exactly what should be taught–Lynne Cheney, who’s every bit as useless as her husband, had a hissy in the Wall St. Journal op-ed page that it mentioned Harriet Tubman too much and the Wright Brothers not enough, or something. This terrified the education establishment (which seems to terrify easily) into removing all specifics, leaving a “curriculum” that was a bowl of mush about how students should learn the context of the meaning of the significance of the development of the blah blah blah. Have you seen a high-school history textbook lately? Look at one if you’re feeling excessively happy and need something to depress you.

This process is aided and abetted, of course, by the stranglehold that the Teatards have over textbook purchases in Texas and California (and thus, the rest of the country).

 
 

old brucie hasn’t been to the doctor’s office lately, i see…even our rural hospital and clinic are hooked up to the latest in records management and use the epic system, meaning that, for example, when he is seen here, hubbkf’s doc in sioux falls can have almost immediate access to lab results, etc.

and, because these new records management systems have all sorts of other cool things they can do, patient education is going to be amazing…after a patient’s initial set-up in the system, the nurse asks how you best learn new information: a)reading it, b)hearing it, c)reading it & hearing it, d)reading it, hearing it & doing it?*

cuz guess what, bruce? people learn things differently! sounds crazy, i know, but it’s true!

also, too…i struggled in college with my ‘brit lit’ class…loved my prof to death, but she was mighty hung up on us knowing all the dates…my brain was about 38 years old then, so massive amounts of new info such as dates and places…yeah, not so much. i bought a roll of butcher paper, made huge timelines and hung them about my house in an effort to memorize, memorize, memorize! i felt super-dumb that i couldn’t retain the info…i realized after the fact, that hey! i didn’t NEED to know all of that stuff…sure, if i planned on becoming a brit lit prof or historian or such, then i would hope that i would have more than half a semester to learn it all…

both of my kids are of the ‘reading, hearing & doing’ type…they get that from me…hubbkf, on the other hand, just absorbs info and can just look at something and know what to do with it**

*no
**yes

 
 

Have you seen a high-school history textbook lately? Look at one if you’re feeling excessively happy and need something to depress you.

oh, dog, yes! sometimes out at the club, i help the youngsters with their homework…gah! that’s all i can say…it is awful!

 
 

We’re talking here about an education system which produces an elected official who can, in all seriousness, use the phrase “It’s the ability that God give ‘em” to justify the hiring of teachers solely on the basis that they will work for minimum wage.

Truly, the circle is complete.

 
 

The futurist is obsessed with the fact that it’s so easy to find information. He wrongly concludes that students don’t need to acquire any. He focuses on the power of modern technology and all the fancy new ways to present information.

The “education reformer” is obsessed with the counterfactual notion that memorization is learning. He stupidly and wrongfully concludes that the futurist is arguing that students don’t need to acquire any. He focuses on the straw man he just created to execute yet another self-pwn, just as he has in most of his other paragraphs.

 
 

Whereas conservatives see school as a place to instill proper respect for authority, how to parrot what someone in power tells you to believe, how not to question dumb assignments and live life to please one’s boss, to learn the safety of conformity and how to bully any who try and deviate, and most importantly to never be challenged on anything they are teaching their kid at home or in Church.

So my third grade teacher wasn’t a hateful incompetent, she was just a Republican? Now you tell me.

 
An Actual Futurist
 

We stand on the last promontory of the centuries! … Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed!

 
 

I do hope that I never encounter this bonehead at an education conference. Security will undoubtedly be pulling me off him, or I’ll break my Kindle bashing in his skull.
How dare any conservative ever complain about crappy superficial treatments of geography or any social studies? W gutted social studies with NCLB. Conservative whining has blanded out or ruined every single set of state standards since California in 1994. The drive to “back to basics” emphasized by every pinhead conservative since Khrushchev got Sputnik in orbit has reduced the significance of anything taught, which then causes schools to contract still further until they are doing nothing but standardized tests. Not enough facts? Textbooks are nothing but disconnected facts.
The only hopeful development to date is that some in the educational establishment are starting to realize something. If, as the media suggests, our children are dumb as rocks, why is it that the “superior” systems in the USSR or Japan translated to far fewer technological innovations or entrepreneurs? In fact, and this is hysterical to me, China and Singapore (often cited examples of better educational systems) are sending their educational bureaucrats to the United States to see how we produce so many creative thinkers (mainly by allowing some creativity and not shaming students to the point of being terrified of mistakes).

 
 

So my third grade teacher wasn’t a hateful incompetent, she was just a Republican?

Oh silly N__B, the one does not preclude the other.

 
 

But if we replaced every “teacher” reference with a “CEO” reference, then that’s *mean*, right?

As Balloon Juice this morning so accurately put it: “Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less.”

So my third grade teacher wasn’t a hateful incompetent, she was just a Republican?

The word “wasn’t” implies a contradiction where none exists…

 
 

Oh silly N__B

MY GOD, YOU’RE HER! …which means you’re about 110 years old…

 
 

We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.

 
 

Jan Smithers was married to Kipp Whitman. I can’t find anything on her dating life aside from that and her marriage to James Brolin.

 
 

I can’t find anything either.

 
 

Jan Smithers / Kipp Whitman.

Waylon Smithers / Walt Whitman

I think we can all see what’s going on here.

 
 

Time and Space died yesterday.

then that morgan freeman is full of shit! i wish i would have known this before letting hubbkf fall asleep on the couch clutching the remote directly after he tuned into ‘through the wormhole’…

 
 

I think we can all see what’s going on here.

actor is tintin?

 
 

Fuck, does this idiot know how much one of those overhead projectors we used in school costed, even 50 years ago? Not one of those cheap-ass saran-wrap-and-grease-pencil transparency abominations, but the ones with the huge lens you could put an open book in and project it on a screen? I don’t know if they even make them any more—they’d probably cost more than a 12? Celestron if they did. Find me a phone with a projector that costs that much. Wadda maroon!

A new Buhl Opus overhead projector costs about $1200, which is roughly the modern version of the old Taylor Spotlight OH projectors we had in school back in the 1960s-70s. I was an AV assistant (geek) kid then and remember the teacher telling us, “those things cost $500 so be careful with it!” $500 in 1970 is the same as nearly $3000 in 2012. She may have been exaggerating for effect, but those big greenish-blue metal monsters cost surely the equivalent of a low four figures today. My suburban junior high had three.

 
 

actor is tintin?

I knew we’d get there eventually.

 
Montgomery Burns
 

Hello Smithers. You’re quite good … at turning me … on.

 
 

actor is tintin?

I knew we’d get there eventually.

wanna know how i knew that? ‘cuz, duh! in 1492 columbus sailed the ocean blue’

 
 

Hello Smithers. You’re quite good … at turning me … on.

i guffawed in a most unseemly manner…

 
 

We do what we can …

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

I thought it was in 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Grenada and expelled the Jews?

 
 

Anyway, it’s three a.m. in the morning here, so I’ma leave you with some American music …

 
 

ahhhhhh…nothing like mangoes on a monday morning!

•Some people are selfish and have other interest in life such as crime, drugs, mental illness, lazy, etc. They tend not be too interested in how or if their child learns. That is a fact you probably won’t find on Google.

yes, that is one thing i’ve noticed about parents with a mental illness…their selfishness is appalling!

If every brick and mortar school in this nation were to permanently shut down tomorrow, the **same** children getting an education today would still get one tomorrow. The **same** children who are not getting an education would still not get one tomorrow. Why?

Answer: Because nearly all ( 100%?) of learning happens IN THE HOME and outside of the school and is entirely due to the efforts of the parents and the child himself.

it is true, i did learn much about drinking from my dad…

 
 

It is because of idiots like this that my son is getting a copy of Lies My Teacher Told Me before he turns 10

 
 

let’s play ‘spot the dissonance!’

Redhawk –

You have touched on the Leftist strategy regarding education, but you have not explained it completely. I will do so now. Leftists lie: constantly, repeatedly, about everything, both to themselves and to everyone around them. Why? Because if everyone knew the truth and the facts, no sane/rational person would ever be a Leftist or ever support them. So they have engaged in a strategy, which is succeeding, to ensure that no one knows the truth and the facts: dumbing down the education system to the point where it is nothing more than a giant baybsitting system – no real teaching is ever done. The mainstream media long ago ceased reporting on the news; they are just giant propaganda machines, spewing out garbage to follow the agenda of misleading the general population and encouraging people to believe the lies of the Lefists. Only thoroughly misinformed people will vote for politicians and engage in activities that go directly against their own best interests. Not so? Look at it this way: if no one knows anything, then when Leftists lie to them, no one knows they are being lied to and will never challenge those lies (look at how Obama has been getting away with it with the full support of the mainstream media – the only time he tells the truth is by accident). Instead, they will believe the lies they are told and act upon those lies. How else could anyone like Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and all those other lying, treasonous b–tards ever get elected? Socially destructive behaviors are encouraged as well, to help bring down our society, the ultimate goal of the Leftists. Just look around you at the popular culture and tell me I am wrong. Repeated surveys show that more than 60% of Americans don’t read so much as even a single book in a year. Think about that: less than 40% of the population read a book last year. How does one learn anything or add to one’s knowledge if one never reads? My parents taught me that knowledge is everything, that one can never know too much. I am nearly 59, but I have two teenage boys. I review their schoolbooks and schoolwork, and I am appalled by what I see. I fear for the future they are facing in a world that is being taken over by the Left. I fear that this country is on its way down for good. G-d help us all.

 
 

yes, that is one thing i’ve noticed about parents with a mental illness…their selfishness is appalling!

I didn’t know it was less an illness than an “interest.”

Only thoroughly misinformed people will vote for politicians and engage in activities that go directly against their own best interests.

While on the contrary, thoroughly informed people will vote for politicians and engage in activities that further the Koch’s best interests.

 
 

He writes like he’s attacking an armoured car with a Nerf gun.
The quotes Cerberus gave made my eyes curse.

ct;cwv { clicked through; closed without viewing }

 
 

Today, Google is in effect an encyclopedia with a million times more information than the encyclopedias we knew years ago. So, while the search may be quicker, it’s also far more complicated, disorienting, and nearly hopeless. How do young students know where to start, and what are the primary facts in a given field?

You start in Google’s preferences and turn the Safe Search off. From there on it’s learning learning learning.

 
 

Think about that: less than 40% of the population read a book last year.

Then how does Jonah Goldberg get on the best seller list?

 
 

Forty years ago, believe it or not, the same ‘educational futurist’ opportunists tried to sell our school on isolating students in individual work cubicles in which early computer terminals would ‘educate’ us.

Fortunately, our school stuck to ‘old fashioned’, time proven effective methods.

Today’s educational futurists sound the same, lazy drip-nose grandchildren of marxist agitators who prefer making a massive salary by pointing their massive derrieres at students and gassing off communist/jihadist/racialist ideology which they make up on the fly.

Sure they prefer students willy nilly surfing Google all day long, tangentially jumping from ‘oral sex’ to ‘autoerotic asphyxia’ to other innovative concepts, to ensure a stupefied, irrational mass of inhumanity who will use chaos to get its way.

Same as we saw with the fat slobs who destroyed the Wisconsin State Capitol, who bite fingers off innocent citizens in modern day sacrifice to styrofoam greek love idols.

geez…i wanna find out where this d00d lives…and then stay far, far away from there…

 
 

Think about that: less than 40% of the population read a book last year.

Then how does Jonah Goldberg get on the best seller list?

um, duh! kindle…

 
 

bbkf is our intrepid mango hunter for the day. That last one takes the prize for incoherence (so far).

 
 

Then how does Jonah Goldberg get on the best seller list?

My guess: the pages of his books are soft, strong, AND absorbent.

pointing their massive derrieres at students and gassing off … ideology which they make up on the fly.

This is how wingnuts know you don’t need to spend thousands on hardware for projection.

 
 

let’s play ‘spot the dissonance!’

Um…everything after “You have.”

 
 

So yeah, the elephant turd in the room would be that the linked video is to a fucking YouTube video. Yup, standing in for all Progressive Education ever is one person on YouTube taping a poorly attended lecture panel at some Pedagogy Conference somewhere. And it’s not even on a big education channel. It’s just the guy’s personal channel. But yeah, apparently that is every teacher everywhere forever and ever amen.

and yeah, actually…it’s a video of the guy at some technology conference, so he’s basically selling his product…also, too…i did not hear him subscribe to the view that teaching is silly when you can find anything you want on google…in fact, i do not recall hearing him say ‘google’…

and guess what? the kids in his little demonstration? they were given facts! facts about mars…but not from a teacher telling them this…it was presented in another way…and guess what else? the kids learned some NEW facts! in a way they could understand and with technology that may be quite useful to them once they graduate…

all i can say is that bruce is a giant fail of the edumacational system he pines for if he watched the entire video and only comprehended: ‘duh…let them google it…’ either that or he is selfishly mentally ill…

 
 

bbkf is our intrepid mango hunter for the day. That last one takes the prize for incoherence (so far).

right? is that not just out and out crazay?

somebody really, really needs to chime in over at the stinker and let it drop on the wingnuteers that ‘futurist guy’ is really just pitching his product in the hopes of making a tittyfucking shit ton of federal money by getting a sweet, sweet contract with the doe…capitalism at it’s finest! so, why do they hate america?

 
 

relevent

holy fuckaroo! chimmy chong ding dong will now join my tittyfucking lexicon…thanks tigris!

 
 

“I want to suggest a model that describes all learning, and shows us the danger in the futurist’s vision. This model states that the acquisition of knowledge starts with an armature, a skeleton. The armature, even when simple, lets you build elaborate structures on it.

Without an appropriate underlying armature, everything can end up being a hodgepodge of unconnected information which makes no sense. That’s why you have to teach children foundational knowledge. The younger that the students are, the more this is true.”

Just terrible. But there’s an interesting analogy here, one that Price botches.

Organisms begin as genetic material that may or may not encode stuff about skeletons. The skeleton begins to develop when appropriate – cells don’t need them. Describing a skeleton as an armature is radically reductive and unhelpful. It is not foundational or preliminary to further development …

A body of knowledge grows organically. A child begins pre-school with quite a lot of knowledge, and can already handle symbols and abstractions far better than an ape. The child’s knowledge is organized along extensible and mutable lines. We use existing frameworks to make sense of things as we go, and as we do so, the frameworks are themselves altered. This is all commonplace knowledge …

Price is too confused and shallow to credibly talk of models. He purports to write about learning in the general sense, but mainly he’s worried that students’ sense-making will develop in inappropriate ways. On that point everything’s already been typed above.

 
 

“Same as we saw with the fat slobs who destroyed the Wisconsin State Capitol, who bite fingers off innocent citizens in modern day sacrifice to styrofoam greek love idols.”

Sacrifice to what now? Is this a wingnut meme I have yet to encounter? (I know about the finger-biting.)

 
 

An educational futurist, in a video on Edutopia, objects to the teaching of data and information. That’s the sort of thing, he sniffs, that Google can find.

not only was the video in question not on edutopia (it’s on eduvision), but the guy is not in any way shape or form objecting to the teaching of data and information! he’s a part of TED which stands for technology, entertainment and design…if you click here, you can find out exactly what it is

so yeah, the futurist may have said, hey why waste your time getting kids to memorize when columbus sailed when they can just look that up on teh internets…how about if we take them (via holodeck) into the past to show them realistically what happened? and teach them a few things along the way?

he’s not advocating for an overthrow of education to turn all students into slobberingobamabotsocialists for dog’s sake…like i said, he just wants to sell his product…

and that bruce wrote an entire article claiming the opposite and that the stinker wingnuteers swallowed it hook, line and s(t)inker and have busily huffed out a bunch of lyingleftiessuck! comments bemoaning the sorry, sorry state of education today only proves to me that a)bruce is purposely mis-leading his wingnuteers or that b)they have zero comprehension abilities…which could be a byproduct of rotely learning myriad factoids and nothing else…

 
 

Apropos of nothing I am reminded that this goofy celebration of the e-bow and Casio keyboards exists.

aaaand thank you! now i just want to go home and watch a bunch of john hughes movies…

 
 

Bruce’s argument, such as it is, is indicative of the value of his “education reforms.” Dunning-Kruger poster boys, all of them.

 
 

There is a video on Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/david-thornburg-future-classroom-video

It’s presented (by Edutopia) as something to think about and debate, not as a policy prescription.

 
 

Sacrifice to what now? Is this a wingnut meme I have yet to encounter? (I know about the finger-biting.)

I’d guess that it has to do with the columns on display at Barack Obama’s 2008 Convention Speech, but I’m not well versed in the wingnut arcana, or the effects of overuse of Thorazine.

 
 

My guess: the pages of his books are soft, strong, AND absorbent.

Do Not squeeze the Loadpants!

 
 

i just want to go home and watch a bunch of john hughes holmes movies…

You’ve seen one sappy teenage movie made by a man with a huge PENIS, you’ve seen them all.

 
 

There is a video on Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/david-thornburg-future-classroom-video

hmphf! well that is not the one he linked to…

i just want to go home and watch a bunch of john hughes holmes movies…

ha! i gave myself a confoozed and initially couldn’t remember if i meant hughes or holmes…at any rate, i knew i could trust you to go there…

 
 

john hughes holmes movies

He went downhill after Pretty And Pink…

 
 

Although Sixteen Candles Up The Ass was quite creative in its use of props.

 
 

Probably, geography provides the simplest paradigm. It used to be considered The Queen of the Sciences.

OFF WITH HIS HEADWATERS!

Also:

http://www.google.lv/search?q=%22queen+of+the+sciences%22&ie=UTF-8

 
 

He went downhill after Pretty And Pink…

Although Sixteen Candles Up The Ass was quite creative in its use of props.

i’m quite the fan of ‘uncle bucknaked’ and ‘home masturbating alone’…

 
 

Also:

http://www.google.lv/search?q=%22queen+of+the+sciences%22&ie=UTF-8

wow, that queen of the sciences sure gets around!

 
 

http://www.google.lv/search?q=%22queen+of+the+sciences%22&ie=UTF-8

Is there any particular reason you sent us to Latvian Google?

 
 

Da Vinci gets my nod for queen of the sciences.

 
 

I thought “Pretty in Pink” and “Sixteen Candles” were suggestive titles as-is.

Nobody saw “Drillbit Taylor,” so there’s little point altering that (thx imdb).

But surely there was a John Hughes knockoff entitled “Uncle Fuck.” You’d need a randy John Candy stand-in just as fat ‘n’ handsome as Candy.

 
 

I’m not well versed in […] the effects of overuse of Thorazine.

Prolonged use may lead to the construction of additional pyramids.
If erection continues for more than four hours, recruit more builders.

 
 

styrofoam greek love idols

Band name of the mo., & it’s only the fourth.

 
 

U mad bro?

I saw a youtube video once and now I’m scared shitless and you all better be scared too.

 
 

Da Vinci gets my nod for queen of the sciences.

damn you! i was going to make this joke but i was administering motherly advice to my lovelorn son…

 
 

Fortunately, our school stuck to ‘old fashioned’, time proven effective methods.

Says the idiot conservative who is decidedly NOT smarter than a 5th grader…

Irony, I hardly knew ye…

 
 

i was administering motherly advice to my lovelorn son…

I assume you told him to use lube next ti — oh, you said lovelorn, never mind.

 
 

styrofoam greek love idols

Apollostyrene.

 
 

I assume you told him to use lube next ti — oh, you said lovelorn, never mind.

you know, i get told quite a bit that i’m ‘inappropriate’ but you and n_b make me look like a piker…make of that what you will…

 
 

What’s a piker?

 
 

What’s a piker?

well, tsam…a person could google that sort of information, but frankly, i’m surprised you didn’t learn this in school in the time honored tradition of vocabulary word lists…

pik·er/?p?k?r/Noun:
1.A gambler who makes only small bets.
2.A stingy or cautious person.
Synonyms: skinflint – niggard

 
 

heh…some might say obama is a piker…

 
 

What’s a piker?

It’s the kind of dude who leaves you love-torn.

OT: fuck band drama. I left junior high many moons ago, when bands played on sticks and hollowed out skulls.

 
 

So I decided to take a trip to Mr. Price’s website. The comment made by Thorndike and Gates on phonics seemed to really piss him off, which made me wonder about his stance on phonics vs. whole word. It’s a weirdly partisan debate, with lots of conservative educators and “reformers” claiming that it’s part of some liberal scheme.

As I expected, there are multiple articles on his site condemning whole word. But his arguments are interesting, especially when compared to his American Thinker piece. Example:

The silliness of Whole Word is that it flipped the calendar back thirty centuries and tried to devolve English into an ideographic language like ancient Egyptian. Our educators wanted to abandon all the gains bestowed by the alphabet, and make children memorize English words one by one by one. Letters and syllables aren’t sounded out (indeed, children are forbidden to do this) . . . Furthermore, despite absurd claims to the contrary, the human memory is quite limited. Only the very smartest Chinese can retain even 20,000 of their symbols; which shows the impossibility of memorizing the far larger English vocabulary as sight-words. A college graduate probably knows 200,000 words and names. Whole Word, however, aims for a few hundred words per year, because that’s all that most children can memorize.

So, Price does acknowledge that rote memorization is not the best means of education, and a more organic solution is often called for . . . but only for one very specific topic. Anything else, and it’s out with the list of facts, children.

He also has an article called “The Conspiracy Chronicles” in which he argues that whole word was part of a plot by Communists to destroy the United States:

The new theories were not properly tested state versus state, city versus rural; there were no statistics, no proof of concept. Here’s what I think actually happened. The Great Depression seemed to confirm for the left that Marx was right, America was finished, and Russia was going to win. So the educators wanted to jump in front with this radical bold idea. Reading as these people understood it was to be an ideological tool that could serve to keep each class of students at roughly the same level.

No joke. He also cites CanadaFreePress.com as an authoritative source.

There’s been a distinct lack of rancor in this comment. Allow me to rectify that. In a really out-of-place article on the Dao De Jing, he writes:

Some scholars question whether there really was a Laotzu (pronounced Lout-zoo).

That’s not how it’s pronounced, dipshit. Maybe if you’d been taught how to learn, you could figure that out for yourself.

 
 

thought it was in 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada and expelled the Jews?

Perfect example of limited American appreciation of world history; the inability to link events in US with key events elsewhere.

The Louisiana Purchase! Yay for us! Know why France sold it? Not so much. (Napoleon needed fast cash to raise a couple of corps for the Grande Armee.) The War of 1812! Fort McHenry, national anthem, Jackson at New Orleans, burning of DC!

Didn’t have anything to do with the Napoleonic Wars, N’s ‘continental system’, the British Orders in Council, or ‘right-of-search’ on the high seas.

The French-and-Indian War? Hmmm, is this the same thing as the Seven Years War? Only, you know, a minor sideshow of it in colonial backwaters?

No, by cracky! The US is–and always has been–at the absolute center of human history!

 
 

make of that what you will…

Oooh, it could be a broach, or a pterodactyl, or…

OT: fuck band drama. I left junior high many moons ago, when bands played on sticks and hollowed out skulls.

I saw a band play this weekend for the first time after they got back together. Their previous gig the guitarist and singer got in a fist fight and broke the band up on-stage. Now that’s entertainment.

 
 

I’m going to stick up for geography.

I have become quite interested in history and war. When I read a classic, like Grousset’s Empires of the Steppes, is it a problem that I have to figure out where in the Altai mountains a particular lake, of some momentous event, is situated.

I know I’m about as far from the typical case as can be imagined, but I’m the educatee that you wish you could arm to learn about the universe.

Not that I did badly.

 
 

The US is–and always has been–at the absolute center of human history!

Shit yeah! I remember the Battle of Hastings like it was yesterday. USA USA USA!

 
 

chimmy chong ding dong will now join my tittyfucking lexicon

Well isn’t that a bag of tits?

 
 

tigris and bbfk have been awesome in this thread!

bbfk: Saw that you and hubbfk were doing yard work over the weekend. So is he getting some relief from the pain? How do things stand on pinning down the cause? And getting treatment? Is the daughter still in love? Is this yet another Fenwick question blitz?

 
 

OK, on a completely different subject I just saw an ad for the Sci-Fi original movie “Jersey Shore Shark Attack”.

Go shark!

 
 

Fenwick said,

June 4, 2012 at 23:52

he’s still got the pain and stuff…just getting through it for right now…we go to the mayo on july 23, so we’ll see what they say…actually he’s prolly got more pain from the sunburn he got because i insisted he take his shirt off so he doesn’t look like casper this summer…the daughter is possibly on to man #2 now…they have prom on thursday, where hubbkf and the grands and i will get to meet him…

 
 

More on Price and the sinister Whole Word Conspiracy. In another AT piece, he writes the following:

Recently, a French teacher wrote me about the unexpected problem she was having. Her students, never asked to memorize anything in most of their schooling, were stunned to find that in order to learn French, they would actually have to learn French vocabulary. What a bizarre concept. Nobody else made such an unreasonable demand. Why did she?

So it’s literally just English where an intuitive approach is desired. Any other subject – even other languages – need to be learned through sheer determined force of will. Just open an Almanac and bang your head against the pages until the facts seep in.

It’s not that I’m unsympathetic to Price’s views, it’s just that he doesn’t really seem to understand what the reformers are talking about. Yes, the Internet has a very low signal/noise ratio; yes, the facts are overwhelmed by bias, spin, misunderstanding and dishonesty. But you’re never going to give a person such a vast base of knowledge that they can distinguish fact and fiction on sight. Skills like logical deduction, critical thinking and research techniques are far more useful in today’s world.

Shorter: You’re never going to stop people from being idiots and liars, so let’s teach our children how to recognize the idiots and liars and avoid them.

 
 

“Some scholars question whether there really was a Laotzu (pronounced Lout-zoo).”

Confucius say, Tea Party is Lout Zoo.

 
 

Im a bit older even than Brucie andi recall the memorization based years. And there was this thing they called “new math” that everyone was complaining about much like Brucie does w.r.t. today’s stuff. I think it was second or third grade where we were doing different number bases. Tried explaining it to my mom and even some (much) older siblings. They still can’t figure out bases other than ten and even then they have trouble with magnitudes.

I recall my first open book, open notebook, open any damn thing you want to, test in college. At first I was like “cool!” Then I was all “fuck, that means I have to actually learn how to figure out what the problems are, not just apply memorized formulae.” Price would surely be horrified by that approach and inistst that the prof. was an idiot.

 
 

In 1493 Christopher Columbus was stung by a bee.
In 1494 Christopher Columbus was…

 
 

Shorter: You’re never going to stop people from being idiots and liars, so let’s teach our children how to recognize the idiots and liars and avoid them.

Bruce: “Anathema! Heresy! Then they wouldn’t pay any attention to us! “

 
 

There was stuff about Jan Smithers int he last thread? One of my childhood crushes, to say the least. Maybe I should have read it after all.

 
 

I learned today that I am a person who is easily amused.

 
 

I have a feeling that Spearhafoc won’t even notice that there’s a cat in that video.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Shit yeah! I remember the Battle of Hastings like it was yesterday. USA USA USA!

I was there, damn thing snarled up traffic on the Saw Mill River Parkway for hours!

 
 

I have a feeling that Spearhafoc won’t even notice that there’s a cat in that video.

LOL. I know.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

I have a feeling that Spearhafoc won’t even notice that there’s a cat in that video.

LOL. I know.

There was a cat in that video?

 
 

There was a cat in that video?

TWO.

 
 

Spearhafoc, who skipped the last thread because military history (not set in space or a fantasy world like Middle Earth or Westeros) bores him

Ha ha ha. This.

 
 

Here’s mine.

Pretty damn cute. Why isn’t it ginger?

 
 

Pretty damn cute. Why isn’t it ginger?

I didn’t choose her. She walked into our house out of the rain last Fall. She was tiny and hungry and it was impossible to send her away. She’s been here ever since.

 
 

And there was this thing they called “new math” that everyone was complaining about much like Brucie does w.r.t. today’s stuff.

Let’s face it, New Math was an absolute debacle and a complete bag of tits. “Oh look, the Bourbaki group of French mathematical absolutists are trying to derive the entire edifice of mathematics from basic foundations of set theory. I know, let’s follow the same approach in introductory textbooks, without even testing this idea to see if it helps kids’ learning!”

The episode does not reflect well on educational theorists.

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

Laotzu (pronounced Lout-zoo).

Far be it from me to defend the OP (Original Pustule), but as an English speaker, I find it almost impossible to pronounce unaspirated, unvoiced stops without some trick like this. I have that in my mind, and then at the last second choke off the flow of air just before the final “t” or whatever—almost like “louh-tsoo”.

Now if I were trying to pronounce a Salishan language, with voiced/unvoiced, aspirated/unaspirated, glottalized/unglottalized stops, I’d be SOL.

 
 

Well, only one of those two goes naked on the show but it’s a lot.

 
 

I’ll set off my male-gaziness with some Game of Thrones related beefcake. Chicks dig this dude, right?

 
 

To offset my male-gaziness a bit, here’s some Game of Thrones related beefcake.

 
 

My repeated attempts to post pictures of Mr. uh…The Guy Who Plays Jon Snow resulted in my IP adress being banned and me having to change it. That’s a lot to go though considering that I’m not even into dudes. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice, ladies and gentlemen of that particular persuasion. Or at least forgive my inability to control my own male-gaze. Ahem.

 
 

And now that I’ve successfully killed the thread, I shall dance on its grave.

 
Dennis, Prince of Tennis
 

In fourteen-ninety-nurple Colombus sailed the ocean purple.

 
 

My mother ended up having to teach me math in 5th and 6th grade because I couldn’t learn via the “new math”.

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

I think I’ve got it.

See, given how much of the evangelical culture the conservatives feed off of relies on rote memorization of biblical page numbers and citations without understanding of context or insight into motivation, of course they would be a-fear of an education which discards those notions in other educational fields. Why, if someone learns things in history that way, they might start asking to apply that to biblical education as well, and then everybody is fucked.

So Columbus must sail the ocean blue, in 1492 because otherwise they might have to start teaching what exactly was going on with the Hebrews in 32.

 
 

The fact is, I can’t wait until this time tomorrow. I will be rubbing Dem faces in there own fecies as Scott Walker wins handily the pathetic, pukelike challenge to his authority from the Unions and Barry Sotero Inc. Real Americans will register solid support of his agenda and send you to the woodshed wilderness for another decade.

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

The fact is, LLLLLLLrLLL

 
 

The fact is, teachers need to work for a lot less, and no unions or free health care or retiring when you are 35. We don’t have any more money! They have it so easy, and yet all are students are failing. Only when public schols are destroyed while we get to rebuild American education with the free market principals that made USA great. Also, less liberal bias in wrong facts and more balance we will be able to get more freedom and job creators not under attack

 
 

The fact is, there is so much liberal hooey taught as “fact” when it is only brainwashing to make more leftists and gay rights. Also, global warming? Al Gore lies and lies, thats all liberals can do, is, lie.

 
 

The fact is, we need to eleminiate PBS and NPR, as well as New York Times. BIASED! More facts and realty like Fox News, the best information.

 
 

The fact is, I am so sick of multiculuralism and moral relationism. We are taught to be ashemd to be white, but who made USA great through history? And who was lazy leaches? Think about it

 
 

The fact is, King Joffrey is the one true heir of Robert Baratheon, First of His Name.

 
 

You’re never going to stop people from being idiots and liars, so let’s teach our children how to recognize the idiots and liars and avoid them. — D Johnston

Should be framed and hung on the wall in every school’s faculty lounge.

 
 

To me, New Math is like reading Bulgarian. I can’t make heads or tails of it. Also, I learned by phonetics. It was–and still is–a help to me in puzzling out unfamilar words. Helps understanding of prefix and suffix; helps by breaking words into phonemes and morphemes; hence linguistically sound, in my estimation.

 
 

all are students are failing

Oh bravo.

 
 

Good work, Fake Gary! “Realty” made me chuckle.

Pope-in-Avignon: Yer comment at 3:46 was spot-on dead-center bullseye.

Spear: Thanx for kitteh. I like it when cats chose their peeples. Every one I’ve ever met has been a wonderful and affectionate critter. Also thanx for red-haired wimmins! I share your fascination.

BBBB once asked me what sort of fiction I wrote. One element of my insane project is an elaborate invented military history of Gondor from its founding. Example: I’ve got 60 polished pages on Anarion’s campaigns from the Last Alliance (including the imaginary battles of Crimson Water, Stonewalls Pass, the Siege of Osgiliath, and Ithilgate). Most emphasis, of course, is on the Ring War. I also cover the Kinstrife.

The military history is only ONE element of a much larger project of invented history, which I call The Lore of Minas Tirith I’ve been patiently workling on it for 30 years. The goal is to fit it seamlessly into Tolkien’s work…modest embroidry in the blank spaces of his tapestry.

There are embedded short stories masquerading as ‘excerpts’ from dozens of invented source documents; its enormously fun to write in archaic language and syntax. “Then Isildur was wroth.” Who gets to use a word like “wroth”?

Of course, I’m batshit insane….

 
 

New math. Set theory IS the base of all math.

FYWP

 
 

Was New Math that thing where you had digits that represented powers other than 10? If so, I could understand it all right, but I never saw any point to it.

 
 

who was lazy leaches?

FUCK YOU! Lazy Leaches was the Who! Well, until that tragic accident and he was replaced with Keith Moon.

 
 

The point is it’s really hard to teach just facts without hitting or otherwise bullying…so if you feel like hitting you some kids….

 
 

As SC pointed out, New Math was (in truth) some bullshit based on “N. Bourbaki” (who wasn’t even a person) type academic nonsense (well, it was only nonsense when they tried to make a fucking grade school curriculum out of it).

Made perfect sense to me but it did seem to be problematic for most of my classmates. I think that my early exposure gave me a leg up when I studied algebras in college. Group theory felt … right, right from the getgo whereas some of my class mates were uncomfortable with abstraction.

 
 

I should have something to say about this, being as I did an advanced degree in something similar to rhetoric, and I’ve spent a long time on the other side of the desk, and my current job mostly involves explaining esoteric technology-thingies full of cabley-wabley stuff to other people, but fuck it, I got nuthin’, except maybe to wish that Mr. Rote Memorization up there would suddenly wake up, sort of like a linguistic Gregor Samsa, with a vague sense that something is terribly, terribly wrong, and speaking only one of those languages that are not as explicit about certain things as English is, so that you basically have to (learn to) read and listen for context…

 
 

I loved the New Math, and it was key to my understanding and mental flexibilty. I might not have been a mathematical physicist without it. I am not everyone, though.

The answer? “Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!” 

 
 

Spearhafoc, who has been watching too much Game of Thrones said,
June 5, 2012 at 5:21

This is my only knowledge of New Math.

AHEM sir I say AHEM!

 
 

Teh Ho is live tonight – it’s Andre Rieu which sucks but he likes the opportunity to dress up in his tux – so I’m having a fucking tuna melt and chips for dinner. Yes. I. Am.

 
 

Spear: Bullseye, buddy.

 
Just Alison in a red velvet hat
 

But you’re never going to give a person such a vast base of knowledge that they can distinguish fact and fiction on sight. Skills like logical deduction, critical thinking and research techniques are far more useful in today’s world.

Huzzah, huzzah! You deserve a gold-plated bathtub and an oiled bath attendant, sir or madam.

except maybe to wish that Mr. Rote Memorization up there would suddenly wake up, sort of like a linguistic Gregor Samsa, with a vague sense that something is terribly, terribly wrong

I think even if Mr Rote Mem. woke up as a cockroach, he still wouldn’t have the sense that something was terribly wrong.

But then, it probably wouldn’t feel much different.

 
 

Group theory felt … right, right from the getgo whereas some of my class mates were uncomfortable with abstraction.

Oh yes. But sadly, there are few career paths that draw upon skills in group theory and high-end computing and a general aptitude for languages; and even fewer careers where you are allowed to talk about your work afterwards.

 
 

Good post.

However, you did not point out the hidden agenda.

The hidden agenda for wingnut education is exactly the memorization of names and dates. Context creates critical thinking, which they hate, hate hate. They just want the students to remember some shit, go to work, and STFU. These guys (and of course, most of them are guys) don’t want people asking questions. They just want to say ‘We have the power, because. Now do as you’re told.’

NB: I teach in China, so I have to undo this sort of mental abuse every day. Oh, the irony. The wingnuts are trying to copy the ChiComs.

 
 

Touché, Mr. Clyde. If that is your real name.

 
 

Smut Clyde skrev :

He who acetates is lost.

Now that’s why I read SN!

 
 

@D. Johnson

“Some scholars question whether there really was a Laotzu (pronounced Lout-zoo).”

The Lao-Tse who can be described is not the Lao-Tse who existed.

 
 

The philosophy of the Lao Tse Tse puts me to sleep.

 
 

are you fucking kidding me?!?! goddamn al roker is in london covering the jubilee…there is no justice in this world…

 
 

The funny thing about the comments here is it’s mostly anti-gay conservatives versus desperate for votes moderate Republicans, but each side thinks that they’re talking to liberals.

 
 

The funny thing about the comments here,,,

Hee hee. Dick Tizzy.

 
 

Hee hee. Running for Congress in Ass-sex county. Hee hee.

 
 

the japanese had a good saying for people like him. HARRY CARRY.

 
 

Heretic on June 5, 2012 at 7:01:

There were Cold War conservatives who seemed to have a metaphorical hard-on for the State Capitalist Bolschewiks when it came to culture: ‘They listen to classical music, not degenerate dzhast or rock; their young men keep their hair short, and don’t dodge the draft or take drugs [so wrong, those claims], and RESPECT THEIR ELDERS [true enough, if by ‘respect’ you mean ‘fear’ and they always do]. They learn hard stuff at school, and get failed and dig ditches if they can’t.’ Unspoken, but paranoid ol’ me also heard, ‘They’re smarter than the Nazzis—they use their Jews for what they’re good-for, but keep them in their place.’

When you love Authority enough, it doesn’t matter who wields it, and if there’s a nice transgressive flavour (‘Tee hee! I’m naughty, I said something good about the Reds!’) some spice were added.

(So Dinesh D’Souza’s metaphorical hard-on for Islamic extremists is nothing new.)

For all their faults (or, rather, one really horrendous one), the “Libert”arians at least couldn’t stomach being in the same room with that sort of conservative.

 
 

In 1492, Columbus got as far as Hispaniola. It wasn’t until 1498 that he finally reached South America. Wiki tells me he never accepted that he wasn’t in Asia.

So nevermind the fact that the “New World” was already inhabited, and that it had been visited by expeditions well before 1492, and that Columbus never actually set foot on North America at all – d00d thought he was in Siam or China or wev. After four separate trips.

 
 

Dragon-King Wangchuck :

Columbus landed on land that is rightfully OURS, and that’s all that counts. What do you think we mean by ‘America’?

 
 

“goddamn al roker is in london covering the jubilee…there is no justice in this world…”

Because……………………..?

 
 

“goddamn al roker is in london covering the jubilee…there is no justice in this world…”

Because……………………..?

If we’re going to send an assassin to finally take out the monarchy, it needs to be someone with more gravitas than Roker. Woody Woodpecker, perhaps.

 
 

What do you think we mean by ‘America’?

I did not realize that Manifest Destiny included the Bahamas and Margarita Island.

 
 

Manifest Desire.

 
 

I hear your mom’s stripper name is “Man Feast Destinee”

 
 

,,,but anyone who dresses up their pets should be drug out into the street and shot.

No comment.

 
 

“goddamn al roker is in london covering the jubilee…there is no justice in this world…”

Because……………………..?

because al roker is the single most unattractive, untalented and annoying weather person on the face of the earth…i don’t know why network people insist on fellating him 24/7…it was bad enough that he invaded my beloved weather channel, but getting to go to london for the jubilee just because he’s al roker is heinous to me…also, too…what n_b said…

 
 

,but anyone who dresses up their pets should be drug out into the street and shot.

No comment.

They may look cute, but you’re just giving them motivation to start the Animal Revolution early, and we’re not prepared.

But maybe “shot” was a little harsh; howza ’bout “smacked with a bag of oranges?”

 
 

I doubt any bag of oranges is going to do as much damage as First New Cat did while I was trying to do up her pants*.

*I will admit that I am openly trolling for a Comment Out Of Context spot.

 
 

anyone who dresses up their pets should be drug out into the street and shot.

here’s some things: polar bear with a cone on his head = LULZ, betty white truly does know animals for i did not know that giraffes can hear through their nostrils and was putin attempting to attach fricking laser beams to those dolphins?

 
 

Just wasting our hard-earned money.

i have been sorely tempted to submit information such as this to our local news rag, ‘the indigestion’ because the publisher and most of the olds in the community have severe butthurt over obama and continually submit things about his out of control spending, teleprompters and birther blather….but after reading last night’s edition, i figured it’s kinda pointless as one of esteemed publishers ‘editorials’ featured his flabbergasted joy and gratitude that whoever packs bush’s baked beans in the tiny can somehow manage to ALWAYS PUT A TINY CHUNK OF BACON IN EACH CAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he truly marveled at the wonder of such technology…

 
 

> I did not realize that Manifest Destiny included the Bahamas and Margarita Island.

It manifestly did.

(Pet peeve: students are taught phrases without going into the meanings of the individual words, or older terminology in general, as in:
bully pulpit==very good pulpit (funny that a formerly weak child liked ‘bully’ as a positive term so much)
Manifest Destiny==obvious destiny
Grand Old Party==Grand, Old, Lemon Party for the Wealthy
making love==romantic sweet talk
)

 
 

Oh, and
constitution==the make-up of a body, hence ‘strong constitution’==’a body that works well’, and ‘unwritten constitution’ is _not_ an oxymoron (even though it contains moronic bits in need of either oxycontin or OxyClean(tm) or both).

 
 

I did not realize that Manifest Destiny included the Bahamas and Margarita Island

The first USMC (then Colonial Marine) amphibious landing was in the Bahamas.
I still claim that they were looking for drinks

 
 

> The first USMC (then Colonial Marine) amphibious landing was in the Bahamas.

Was the landing made by frogs, or did we land _on_ frogs?

(Newts?)

 
Lurking Canadian
 

I know nobody’s reading anymore, but I must chime in because, now that I have a child who ought to learn to read Real Soon Now, I have been thinking lately about phonics. I am increasingly convinced that the true value of phonics is that it makes kids confident enough to think they can do it. English has so many damned special cases that once you get beyond C-A-T spells cat! it really isn’t providing much of an algorithm anymore.

 
 

I read it. Good luck with the kid. Pretty sure my daughter learned by memorizing what the words looked like before she understood what letters did. You might want to try words first and spelling second: I touched the words in the book as I read them.

 
 

I first learned using IPA, which has the advantage of making sense. I was able to bootstrap from there into English spelling, though I was sub vocalizing “pee-oh-” every time I spelt “people” for years.

 
 

Damned tablet et the last “pleh” in that subvocalisation; it also fails to understand that Noah Webster were an arsehole and a ninny-hammer.

 
 

(comments are closed)