White People Time: Grades, Showing Up On Time Are A Form Of White Supremacy
(h/t Colonialista)
53 Replies to “The “W” Word”
You’re wrong about that. You think that the purpose of forcing boring crap on children teaches them about self-discipline and unfairness of life? Because they really need that lesson delivered that way? There is no better way of doing it? Really?
When the school turns people off reading it fails at its most basic task. When reading becomes a chore again and again you’re guaranteed that students will do as little reading as possible. And that is a feature not a bug. When students don’t read they don’t look for new ideas anymore. And that is precisely what the education establishment wants.
I guarantee you that for every kid in grade school in Canada the total amount of material that is taught in a week could be compressed to one day for the brighter kids and to a max two full days for the slower ones. For the reminder of the week the school acts as storage for the children so both their parents (inner city/urban excluded here) can work full time, pay taxes and thus fund the storage. But something has to be done with kids in storage, well you give them painfully booooooring crap to read. You do not give them something they would enjoy, oh no, they may ask for more and that is more work for the storage managers. You give them crap about losers wallowing in self-pity. Give them Scarlet Letter, Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and if they still show interest in thinking hit them with Dostoyevsky that will teach them not to once and for all. Make sure that it is all dull, unappealing and depressing. And for god’s sake make sure they never get a book where the protagonist has testicles, fights for what is right, overcomes adversity and wins. Oh no, we do not want to teach kids that.
In Jr. High, I spent a fair amount of time in the library since I was a latchkey kid from a poor family. However don’t paint a picture of me as a library nerd, I also played all the sports and even “experimented” with several illicit activities including; sex, drugs, and rock+roll. My local librarian suggested that I read a book by Ray Bradbury … the Martian Chronicles. I was hooked. Both my brother and I read Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury. We subscribed to Popular Science and Popular Mechanics which fed our appetite for technology. Scientific American was interesting … but a bit ponderous for Jr. High kids.
However, in High School I had to read Gatsby, A separate Peace, The Bell Jar, Scarlet Letter, Huck Finn, along with every play by Shakespeare. Fortunately for me, our local High School was staffed by extremely intelligent English teachers who dedicated virtually all of our class time to discussion and analysis. They helped illuminate themes in all of these books which kept them interesting and relevant … and not too chick-movie-ish. However, I was a kid who would gladly see nothing but chick flicks all weekend long … if it meant I might get a little tickle and a cuddle at the end of it. I recall that ALL of my HS English Teachers had Masters degrees in Literature, and one of them even had a Doctorate. Why were they teaching at an Upper Middle Class HS ? The guy with a Doctorate had married a VERY WEALTHY girl from the East Coast … and just liked teaching kids for paltry wages … he didn’t need the money. Or so the rumor said.
When I was a grad student, I was just a TA in organic chemistry labs and physiology labs. There were some relatively inumerate students but nothing like I see now. When it comes to mathematics, Robert Heinlein said it the best:
“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”
I’m sure that a large part of the problem is inumerate teachers who haven’t a clue of how to do math themselves. Now I find it amusing to give people answers to their simple math problems before they’ve even had a chance to enter the numbers into a calculator. Annoyed a lawyer once when she told me about a “complex” financial question that they’d asked an accountant to do. When I asked her for the numbers, I quickly did the math in my head and gave her an answer which was the same as what the accounting firm had returned. Scary that not one lawyer there was capable of doing simple math.
Arthur Clarke was another of the authors I read in my childhood and remember reading Rendevous with Rama serialized in Analog being annoyed that I’d have to wait a month before I could get more of that book. Interestingly, SF was looked down upon when I was in high school whereas almost all technology that’s come about in last 40 years has come from people who started their lives reading SF.
You’re wrong about that. You think that the purpose of forcing boring crap on children teaches them about self-discipline and unfairness of life? Because they really need that lesson delivered that way? There is no better way of doing it? Really?
When the school turns people off reading it fails at its most basic task. When reading becomes a chore again and again you’re guaranteed that students will do as little reading as possible. And that is a feature not a bug. When students don’t read they don’t look for new ideas anymore. And that is precisely what the education establishment wants.
I guarantee you that for every kid in grade school in Canada the total amount of material that is taught in a week could be compressed to one day for the brighter kids and to a max two full days for the slower ones. For the reminder of the week the school acts as storage for the children so both their parents (inner city/urban excluded here) can work full time, pay taxes and thus fund the storage. But something has to be done with kids in storage, well you give them painfully booooooring crap to read. You do not give them something they would enjoy, oh no, they may ask for more and that is more work for the storage managers. You give them crap about losers wallowing in self-pity. Give them Scarlet Letter, Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and if they still show interest in thinking hit them with Dostoyevsky that will teach them not to once and for all. Make sure that it is all dull, unappealing and depressing. And for god’s sake make sure they never get a book where the protagonist has testicles, fights for what is right, overcomes adversity and wins. Oh no, we do not want to teach kids that.
In Jr. High, I spent a fair amount of time in the library since I was a latchkey kid from a poor family. However don’t paint a picture of me as a library nerd, I also played all the sports and even “experimented” with several illicit activities including; sex, drugs, and rock+roll. My local librarian suggested that I read a book by Ray Bradbury … the Martian Chronicles. I was hooked. Both my brother and I read Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury. We subscribed to Popular Science and Popular Mechanics which fed our appetite for technology. Scientific American was interesting … but a bit ponderous for Jr. High kids.
However, in High School I had to read Gatsby, A separate Peace, The Bell Jar, Scarlet Letter, Huck Finn, along with every play by Shakespeare. Fortunately for me, our local High School was staffed by extremely intelligent English teachers who dedicated virtually all of our class time to discussion and analysis. They helped illuminate themes in all of these books which kept them interesting and relevant … and not too chick-movie-ish. However, I was a kid who would gladly see nothing but chick flicks all weekend long … if it meant I might get a little tickle and a cuddle at the end of it. I recall that ALL of my HS English Teachers had Masters degrees in Literature, and one of them even had a Doctorate. Why were they teaching at an Upper Middle Class HS ? The guy with a Doctorate had married a VERY WEALTHY girl from the East Coast … and just liked teaching kids for paltry wages … he didn’t need the money. Or so the rumor said.
When I was a grad student, I was just a TA in organic chemistry labs and physiology labs. There were some relatively inumerate students but nothing like I see now. When it comes to mathematics, Robert Heinlein said it the best:
“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”
I’m sure that a large part of the problem is inumerate teachers who haven’t a clue of how to do math themselves. Now I find it amusing to give people answers to their simple math problems before they’ve even had a chance to enter the numbers into a calculator. Annoyed a lawyer once when she told me about a “complex” financial question that they’d asked an accountant to do. When I asked her for the numbers, I quickly did the math in my head and gave her an answer which was the same as what the accounting firm had returned. Scary that not one lawyer there was capable of doing simple math.
Arthur Clarke was another of the authors I read in my childhood and remember reading Rendevous with Rama serialized in Analog being annoyed that I’d have to wait a month before I could get more of that book. Interestingly, SF was looked down upon when I was in high school whereas almost all technology that’s come about in last 40 years has come from people who started their lives reading SF.