New Testingstan

Oh hey, rather than write all these words about pedagogy, I should have just linked to Lockhart's Lament instead, which is basically what dar is talkin' about- the idea that math should be taught as something beautiful and fascinating.

Yes! Lockhart's Lament should be required reading for anyone with even a passing interest in education.

dfk y u not in mah house????

:-( :-( :-(

Because I'm still a terrible driver and I don't think I would survive

laem just take a bike up

so i kinda srsly wanna take the bike to visit the old people

if i completed that ride in a somewhat decent time i'd finally respect myself as an athlete

but i suspect it'd be awfully expensive prolly looking at like a month travel time each way


and i'm sure i don't have the legs for it this year anyway. i'll prolly take a choo choo train or something if i can go this year

dar wrote:So what's the minimum standard for learning math?

i use a song to set my educational standards

it makes the requirements easier to remember

seriously can you name your ed requirements? if you used song i betcha you could

here let me quote a few lines for you re MATH

i am very well acquainted too with matters mathematical
i understand equations both the simple and quadratical
about binomial theorem i am teeming with a lot news
with many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse

i am very good at integral and differential calculus
i know the scientific names of beings animalcules
in short in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral
i am the very model of the modern major general

[...]
in conics i can floor peculiarities parabolous
[...]
and i can whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense pinafore

A BRITISH TAR IS A SOARING SOUL
AS FREE AS A MOUNTAIN BIRD
HIS ENERGETIC FIST SHOULD BE READY TO RESIST A DICTATORIAL WORD

So I'm going to write an effortpost about the War of 1812 and why it's actually important to American history and is actually probably even more so than it is to Canadian history. Basically, the cause of the War of 1812 was that the British wouldn't abandon their Native American allies in areas like Michigan and Wisconsin, which was hampering settlement in those areas. Slaveholders really didn't like that, because those areas were thus barred to settlement and the expansion of slavery, which was perceived as a critical need for slavery to survive in the long run. Thus, during the war, there was massive opposition from New England and even talk of secession in some quarters because it was perceived as a land grab for slavery. But the US seized on some minor harassment at sea as a casus belli to declare war, and the war went on, and in the end, what came out of it was that the British broke their alliances with Native Americans, which meant that now no Native American group or alliance could have a chance in hell of stopping US expansion or securing anything for themselves.

The immediate consequence of this was the seizure of Florida and the expulsion of the Shawnee and other members of Tecumseh's Alliance westward, and mid-term consequences were the Seminole Wars, the removal of the Cherokee and the other members of the "Five Civilized Tribes", the Texas War, and the Mexican War, and in the long term, the westward settlement and the concept of Manifest Destiny only really became practical with the ability of the US to bear its full power on whatever Native Americans stood in their way without any fear of intervention from other powers, which derives from this war. So it's a pretty important war. Nothing of this is taught in American history courses in high school. Processes are neglected in favor of one damn thing after another.

My AP History course covered 1812 but the material mostly focused on impressment, and how Andrew Jackson used his fame from said war to get the presidency. The ramifications for native Americans were not covered extensively until I took some additional college courses.

Baks-kun wrote:I'm guessing that what's going on here is that people tend to assume that there are no such things as bad systems- you can see this in "communism would work fine if people were angels" as well- people simply don't want to admit that there can be such a thing as a bad system, so even systems that they ultimately feel are wrong get this caveat to say that, well, it might work if not for the people.

I don't know where this comes from, though.

I don't think they have any particular view of systems as such, as much as they do of the humans as some sort of failed or pre-ordained organism (and I think you will find that people who say "ethical system X is good and a bad person is bad", are actually personally invested in ethical system X). That idea might go all the way back to St. Augustine or beyond, but I do think it's an interesting question to ask; where do people in general pick up this idea?

i mean it used to be in churches and maybe it still is in certain parts of the world

but not in sweden


oh, also, even more re: schools and maths. If you want to teach math as something beautiful, you first have to realise that schools couldn't teach the appearance of rainbows as something beautiful. When you are forced to do things, in a repetitive and scheduled way, for no reason you can discern, etc. etc., anything can become boring and ugly. Here is a video I enjoy of shit that's wrong with education in general: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U (it's not by some random youtuber but a talk by a real person)
of course it can be correctly argued that certain economic systems require the existence of a disadvantaged underclass that truly believe they do not deserve better than their current lot in life

Yeah, rote learning and repetition would have to go to get a decent educational system in place, because as it stands they definitely turn off the majority of students.

i'm so looking forward to retirement

i have a list of video games i want to play again and athletic shit i wanna do and a bunch of other things

its gonna be so great

"hey what are you doing today?"

"ANYTHING I WANT"


omg i can't wait

I cannot understand the people who go "I don't know what I'd do with all my time if I retired."

There's something wrong with them.

I am expecting retirement to be synonymous with death for me

i am totally gonna watch this robot land on mars

When I retire I anticipate there will be lots of TV to watch.

Also holidaying.

Retire? What's that?

Something most do in the civilised world.

Sam and I plan to retire and just tour about in a big van.

What colour

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Robot sends to Earth:

OK, I'm here, in circle, do I get a medal, too?

Dooey Jo wrote:oh, also, even more re: schools and maths. If you want to teach math as something beautiful, you first have to realise that schools couldn't teach the appearance of rainbows as something beautiful. When you are forced to do things, in a repetitive and scheduled way, for no reason you can discern, etc. etc., anything can become boring and ugly.

I remember hearing once that the modern school system sort of started out as training for a nineteenth century industrialized labor force i.e. school is a place where you're trained to sit down, shut up, obey orders, and do tedious boring tasks for hours on end.

No wonder this is terrible at instilling any kind of joy in knowledge, and may in fact have exactly the opposite effect, actively turning people off stuff they now associate with tedium and unpleasant authority.

Dudes we live in the first world, pensions and stuff. Unless you really love your job or your family is annoying, retirement should be great (it is in fact better then working).

assuming they don't push the retirement age to infinity during the next crisis of course