https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

Can everyone see this? Basically it's just a picture of 3 pregnant teens.

And the accompanying text is:



LOL. I understand that "teenager" is a new term, but saying its healthy and cool for teens who clearly can't support any children to have them is ludicrous in the extreme. Oh yeah get rid of public education and go back to living as we did in tribes! Such a good life that was! Yes people get killed now, but the proportion is faaaaaar lower than it was back then.

It's kind of hard to believe there are people that actually have such firm and silly beliefs. If you really feel this way, just move out to the bush lol and stop using computers and all such modern conveniences.

So do you guys know anyone like this? Or do you believe some or all of this? What are your arguments?

I don't know anyone with those beliefs, but damn, that is hilarious.
This comment too:



Some people are just downright stupid.

Well, if I didn't already think he was crazy as a sack of hammers, this line would've clinched it:



Jesus, dude. Most primates have more sense than that.

I'm also assuming by "the tropical sea" that he's referring to the aquatic ape theory, which would suggest he's using evolutionary theory (something developed through the scientific method, itself developed ultimately through progressive education) to explain why we don't need to bother with education.

HE AM WINNAR

Wait, also: Culture comes as a last resort in times of danger? O MY GOD THAT IS BRILLIANT

"SHIT, A TIGER! TIME FOR SOME FINE WINE, ORCHESTRAL MUSIC AND DISCUSSION ON THE NATURE OF CHARITY"

today I learned that not masturbating makes you crazy

...because having kids when you can't get anything more than a minimum wage job will NOT be a financial disaster.

But as preposterous as he is, there is some merit to the idea that college not always the right course of action. I attend a major college of this state, and it's a joke what some of the students are studying. Obviously the liberal arts majors like theater arts, jewish studies, and urban studies are a waste of money for the majority of the people. But I see plenty of people even with science degrees like chemistry and astronomy doing things for half their life which they could just as easily do without any kind of education at all. And the rate of information obsolescence ensures that even with the best possible degrees, people have to relearn things when they exist college.

What it comes down to is that almost everything taught in college you can learn for free in a public library or on the internet, but that won't get you a piece of paper with a stamp.

That's not quite his point, though. If he was saying "go learn in a library for free" then his argument might have more merit (slightly more...there's still an awful lot to be said for being taught by people who really know their shit).

He's saying "go live in the wild, huntin' and stabbin' and humpin' and living off the land and stuff, coz education's for fools".

...which is less meritous. Also, I would love to actually see how well he'd cope with that.

"What? Antibiotics? I think you mean WITCHCRAFT. Here, have a juju stick. I hear they're just great against bacterial meningitis."

What we really need is to seperate evaluations from teaching, because the two are distinct concepts, and while the university should do both, the two are not the same. The paper has woth through the evaluation - not the teaching.

The current system is ancient, and interestingly, it doesn't seem to be scientifically grounded. In fact, it seems to be largely political.

I've read one (1) paper on how to do multiple choice tests. A mathematically optimal way of doing it. It's used by the faculty at my university, but only for computer science courses.

There are multiple choice tests in other areas, but they don't use the scheme developed for comp sci, a scheme which, by the way, gives a very accurate picture of exactly what the students have learned as the dataset is increased in size.

I'm not aware of other papers guiding the design of our evaluations - and I'm not aware that any of my courses follow such rules. I've certainly never been presented with anything other than the teachers grading guide, which is clearly political, and which I've never seen anything scientific back up. In fact, even the danish grading scale is determined using political arguments. Last time the grading scale was changed, we reduced from the grades 00, 03, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 to -3 0 2 4 7 10 12. That is we went from 10 grades to 7. One of the arguments used? 'it can be hard to determine whether a paper should receive an 8 or a 9 at the current scale, so to give the grades more identity, we've reduced the number'.

That's right. Apparently, when a teacher has trouble deciding between two grades for something, the answer is not more granularity - it's less. Because danish politicians are fucking retards who do not have a clue what the concept of 'rounding' is....and regardless of all that....they're making political arguments rather than citing actual research.

These are the arguments cited in the official government publication on the change, by the way.

Anyway. Clearly the science of evaluation is anemic, and the results of it aren't even followed by our most prized learning institution, and if there is one point this guy as, it is that education is a bit of a scam as a result.

Maybe he thinks everyone shakes it fifty times before zipping up.

It's interesting about that danish problem, cause in sweden we had the absolute opposite problem. Our grades used to go from IG, G, VG and MVG (not pass, pass, pass with merit, pass with lots of merit). However, teachers were handing out things like G+ and VG- all the time, so then they swapped it to 0-5 numerical adding two steps.

And now people are mad its to hard to get the highest grade . Also we very very rarely do multiple choice things in sweden, except for the university exam thingie, which is only multiple choice....

And this is like the primary sign of a truly decadent society, people are having it so good they actually complain about how good they have it.


Yeah. Learning stuff on the internet for free is good and all, but in civilized societies you can learn stuff for free in universities

Heh, back when we still used the 13-scale, I had a teacher who used to add up to two arrows up or down. So just between the grades 8 and 9, there was 8↑, 8↑↑, 9↓↓, and 9↓.

He retired when they reformed the grading scale to have less steps.


13 used to be damn near impossible to get. I managed it only once in high school (at an actual exam that went in my records, that is) and that was in written English. Obviously. It was meant to be a special grade that was only handed out when you went above and beyond all expectations, a sort of 110%. I liked that, it was a very motivating goal to aim for. In university, I got 12 (the new highest grade) lots of times, but it's never really the same - you can't help but think, eh... it's just equivalent to 11, not like 13.

Pardon the tangent.

In the Netherlands, educators seem to be one of the people who at least get the grading right: 1 - 10. That's sensible. I've seen systems abroad which ranged from 130 to 170, from 0 to 120, from F to A or A+, from 1 to 7 &c. A decimal system is at least something we're all accustomed to.

However, it is not uncommon to add decimals to the grades. In fact, we are usually graded with an *.*, like 8.1, or 6.7, which gives 100 options. Which seems a bit insane. Final grades (for a course in university or a subject in secondary school) are usually rounded to the nearest 0.5, so you get 20 options.

In some extreme cases, I've actually officially scored something like 7.48.

On topic: I wish Mr Lewis good luck hunting with 300 million fellow Americans. Protip: the natural environment actually can't sustain such a large group of hunters. Good luck starving! Idiot.

I really don't know why you have all those steps. I can see why increased granularity would be good, but across 1000s of teachers in an entire country there would be so very little consistency. This would be bad. The only score we have in sweden with that kind of thing is the end high school score in the system I went through, there you got one decimal(because it was a weighted score of all the classes you had taken and the grades in them)

Since these scoring systems are an indicator of how well the said student can get a grasp of things would refining it to that extent matter?

If Gamer0004 and Jaedar get eights a NASA guy might offer them jobs because they seem to be pretty good at learning, so even if they know little about the relevant technology they appear to be able to understand what they may be taught about it. Bob on the other hand gets fours but teachers have reported him as industrious and self motivated....NASA offers him a janitorial position. I know it's an extreme example but I don't think a decimal point or two would change their thinking.


*Sorry Hashi, I think I've pushed this thread off the rails.



God knows how many of those hunters would accidentally shoot each other as well.

I like the idea of NASA headhunting their janitors.

"Son, your country needs you. Your teacher has given you an outstanding evaluation, and we believe you're the perfect candidate for our newly open janitor position cleaning the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Make Uncle Sam proud."

Sure, but in that case, it's not just teens that have that problem.