Gaashk
1mo ago
The standards aren't super high for posting yourself. Just write a bit about why you find it interesting and a question, more or less. I'd prefer a short but new post to another wall of text.
Gaashk
3mo ago
Possibly so, there’s nothing to say even a more functional democracy than ours currently is needs to optimize entirely for economics.
Gaashk
9mo ago
One of my friends was asked to help develop parts of a national curriculum and tells me that teachers are pretty stupid, allergic to nuance and don't even follow the curriculum that much. Not all teachers and so on... But it was like there was some vast Power that was inserting errors of fact, errors of punctuation, errors of logic into the curriculum, that my friend was swimming against the tide. Endless anecdotes of frustration at incompetence.
My impression is that your friend, while plausibly smarter than the teachers in question, is actually a net negative for the system.
Given the facts on the ground (teachers as a class are intellectually average), one would most want to leverage that averageness by having them learn to teach one thing, and then they keep teaching that one thing over and over again, and don't change it without a really good reason.
This is actually pretty satisfying for average intelligence people when it works. For a while, I worked at Starbucks. There are a lot of really short, satisfying interactions. A person wants a desert latte. The barista makes the desert latte exactly as instructed. The person gets exactly what they expect. Everyone is happy (most of the time), or perhaps eventually realizes that the drinks are silly, but doesn't blame the barista, they probably made it in keeping with the recipe. There were also some other positions that were scripted, but basically fine. Things got bad when we had a lot of down time, everyone was bored and someone would suggest deep cleaning something without proper training. This is a reasonable job for average and slightly below average intelligence people.
It would be very reasonable to teach a slightly below average intelligence person who's generally responsible and decent with kids how to, for instance, teach 7 year olds phonics. There are several curricula, they mostly seem just fine, she could become an expert in teaching 7 year olds phonics according to some specific just fine curriculum curriculum. It's satisfying seeing a kid go from not connecting letters to sounds, to connecting letters to sounds. The kids feels good about it, the teacher feels good about it, they get a good performance review, perhaps they get a pay raise.
I have a degree in teaching in my specific subject area. They taught us the subject area. They taught us... who to write essays about John Dewy, and some formats one could use to write lesson plans, if anyone ever asks, which they don't... Well, they taught us our subject matter, anyway. But they did not actually teach us very much about teaching our subject matter to kids, and the standards change every couple of years anyway, so I just kind of make stuff up that seems kind of like a watered down version of what I learned about the subject, and keep tinkering with it when it doesn't work.
This is absurd.
Personally, I kind of like designing curriculum, so I don't mind that I'm just making everything up myself. But also, that's absurd. Maybe I'm making up complete nonsense -- someone who doesn't know my content area comes in to check once a year, to see if it looks like I'm teaching something that seems kind of reasonable (actually, to make sure there isn't too much chaos). Why is each teacher making their own Philosophy of Education? I like philosophy, and it was still a waste of my time, because the constraints are pretty tight, so we're really going for optimization more than creativity.
If the problem is that teachers aren't that bright, then they should learn A Curriculum, for something pretty constrained, and learn to teach it well. It will be fine if all seven year olds just learn to behave appropriately, and to connect sounds to letters really strongly, and then the rest of the time is enrichment or something. All the smart sneering people tinkering with the curriculum every year, so that all the average intelligence teachers are trying to learn it as they teach every year is a significant part of the problem.
This is, ultimately, my problem with the review as well. Two hour essays on shiny new conceptualizations instead of "here are ten great stories to read to an eight year old, including the best adaptation." Everyone already wants to tell the kids stories. That is not where the weakness lies at all, even a little bit.
Gaashk
10mo ago
That's an interesting and somewhat surprising observation. As I recall, in mid-America, married women are about as likely to vote conservative as their husbands, but I'm not sure how that translates to willingness to attend formal public political events.
Gaashk
2d ago
Sure, I suppose I was mostly responding to the first two items on the list being "patriarchy, gender norms." I grew up in a conservative homeschooling community, and the families that were more serious about patriarchy and gender norms (also very heavy on "cheerful obedience") than about the other items experienced some poor results. The families that were more serious about the exposure to nature part through small agricultural operations run by the mother and children generally seemed happier.
Gaashk
8d ago
Maybe that's why I didn't really care for it. I already prefer very low stimulation, and things like meditation sitting alone in the dark.
Gaashk
8d ago
Interesting, I hadn't really thought about it. I asked my husband, and he is but doesn't mind it. Our religious tradition goes both ways, with no particular opinion on the matter. We'll consider.
Gaashk
10d ago
The people I knew in Chicago did. But they or their parents are working class and close to the neighborhoods in question. The Irish, Polish, Black, and city worker neighborhoods know. They're mostly people who had to keep working in person through the riots and Covid. I don't have a good understanding of the wealthier neighborhoods. I've also know people who are intergenerational middle class and talk a lot about systemic injustice for work and status, but are weirdly racist in person.
The people I knew in Minnesota didn't talk about what happened in front of me at all, and just hiked or fished alone all through the Spring and Summer of Covid/Floyd.
Gaashk
25d ago
I found a business casual shirt that fit me well in my closet, and I was able to find the exact same brand/size on Amazon.
Yeah, that sounds like a good use case for Amazon.
I've become accustomed to clothing offerings being incredibly unstable, hence the buying within half an hour of launch behavior. I once bought a dress with some kind of rayon crinkle fabric (what my mother's generation would call "broomstick") that has held up really well, and was my daughter's comfort item for most of a year. I searched to see if I could buy a similar fabric for her, or another dress in that fabric, but I've never seen it again. The same brand and line offered a new broomstick series in the fall, but the fabric was completely different.
My husband and I have found pretty good hiking clothing, and especially footwear at https://www.sierra.com. It's somewhat discount, and has a bunch of brands that I hadn't heard of but have held up fairly well. Also a fan of Duluth Trading Company -- they aren't that cheap, but everything I've gotten there has held up very well. I got a jacket on sale that fits over three other layers without being especially bulky, keeps the wind and snow out, and has lasted six years so far with no signs of giving out. Also a plaid shirt that has a little microfiber strip sewn in for lens cleaning purposes, which has been helpful, which doesn't seem like it will ever wear out. But it does look very upper Midwest hiker.
Gaashk
1mo ago
I was surprised. It looks like they're doing blood cell counts, antibody counts, and insulin tests. I guess maybe they wanted some more blood on hand, just in case something was off?
Gaashk
2mo ago
They do this, it's called student teaching.
Some states do let people start teaching before earning their degree, and some do allow the degree to be from a much cheaper community college. My daughter's pre-K teacher just sent a letter home about this, asking to include activities with the kids in her (regional college) coursework. I am unworried, it is pre-K, I can teach her to read and count myself if it comes to that.
Anyway, it's true, but not any more true than for at least half of jobs currently requiring a college degree. An admin assistant doesn't really need to study... whatever it is that the median low level administrator studied in college, yet here we are.
Gaashk
3mo ago
I see what you mean better now, thanks. I was partly confused by your use of "artist," which is more often used for visual arts and a bit musicians, where it seems like you mean something more like storytellers, for the most part.
It would be interesting to try, though I'm pretty skeptical. The way you describe it, it sounds sort of like offering sabbatical opportunities to non-academics, in exchange of some expectation that the person will create stories, and then like you say, that isn't necessarily compatible with many people's career paths. Would it be somewhat like Scott's grants projects, where it's posted somewhere that interested people are likely to see the opportunity and apply? Or maybe someone knows a person who has something in mind, and offers it personally? I could see Brandon Sanderson organizing something like that, but just for fun storytelling, rather than Culturally Important Art.
Movies and video games are quite different industries, as far as I can tell, and way more expensive (especially movies), but maybe they'll be getting cheaper with the new AI technology? At least in a decade or two? Could offer some interesting opportunities for smaller operations to try to enter the field.
I'm an extremely shallow consumer myself, and read all sorts of litRPGs, fantasies, and prog fantasies, wasting easily hundreds of hours per year. I can think of only one which even slightly scratched the itch I have for "person gets powerful and then protects others." Books like that exist, I'm sure, but all that I've found have been super low-quality. There's a big market for these stories, but the people who would write them are too busy with safer ventures.
I used to read a lot of low brow fantasy (spent a whole winter alone in Alaska with Edgar Rice Burroughs novels). The morality seemed... fine, I think? Lots of emphasis on courage, anyway, which is fine.
I want to write that story myself, but at my current trajectory I might be able to retire in about 5 years if I work hard, leaving me with another ~45 to find and pursue whatever I determine to be the best use of my time. So it's not happening for 5 years.
Interesting. Have you written stories before?
I kind of liked the subplot in That Hideous Strength where Jane is on birth control, and is super bored alone in her flat, trying to work on her dissertation. And then later Merlin says that they could have had a child who would have been super important and amazing, but the time for that is past, idiots! My guess would be that the book reading population (or at least the population willing to read a book written by a Mottizen) is significantly more likely to be in that kind of situation than the (more numerically common, but unlikely to be affected by this meme space) "never married 19-year-old with three children, below the poverty line" mentioned by an article I just looked up on the statistics. Or the young underclass women Theodore dalrymple is known for writing about.
Gaashk
6mo ago
Not iconographic, but just saw this rather impressive thread artist https://www.ceciledavidovici.com/
Gaashk
6mo ago
But for one example -- women will boundary test (like children) (also known in PUA as shit test or fitness test), all women will boundary test, and they like it if you pass the test and are deeply uncomfortable if they fail. An wife ultimately wants to rely on you as her rock, and as part of that is having enough of a sense of command to do what is good for her, not always what she says she wants at the time.
This is why I was asking more for anecdotes.
Do women prefer decisive men who have a vision for their family, and are able and willing to lead them toward that vision in the face of opposition, sometimes even from their wives? And also have good judgement to actually know what's best, better than their wives? Do they prefer men who are able to provide and protect, can leave demeaning jobs and get by on their own if necessary? Sure. That's, sure enough, why all romance novel leads are like that, and also tall and strong.
However, to the extent that here in reality there are a bunch of men who are directionless and depressed, going into bullshit jobs every day where they get demeaned by their female boss while their infants are in daycare all day because it still isn't enough to afford a mortgage, what then? Rervrn to harems and multiple wives for the capable? To drafty tenements so the wives of the working class can stay home and... what? Supervise their laundry machines and dishwashers and crock pots? Homeschool their children, but then get so upset about the lack of in-house leadership they outsource is to IBLC? This has been tried.
Yeah, he’s probably not a bad priest, at least not going off on wild zeitgeist chases like some churches.
Gaashk
9mo ago
This doesn't seem true, but I would expand the category of "teacher" to include writers and people who make instructional videos.
To take a very simple example, the other day we had to change a flat tire. We went onto Youtube, and several people had uploaded videos about the basic process, and various ways to get stuck tires off when changing them. This was much better than just trying to guess, based on physical reality and the tools found in the back of the car. The video makers were teaching.
Children who grow up with books around, but never have phonics explained to them generally do not learn to read English very well. Most children need someone to teach them how phonics work, even if it's just the person reading a script to the kid about how it works (and then it's a collaboration between person reading and curriculum writer).
Nobody taught me algebra in high school, because I was homeschooled and my parents just gave me a textbook, but not really one that was meant to teach an average teen all by itself. It kind of just said "here's how you manipulate these symbols correctly, here are some examples, here are some practice problems where you can manipulate the symbols yourself," without much hand holding about why anyone would want to manipulate the symbols correctly, or what they meant. I did not learn much algebra. Later, I listened to a teacher lecture, watched Khan Academy videos, and did practice problems with instant feedback. All these things were teaching (but the textbook alone didn't have enough communication channels or interactivity for me to succeed at learning from it). If someone who actually was good at explaining math had tutored me, it would probably have gone even better.
I agree that the idea of a brilliant Teacher who guides and shapes young minds, and also teaches them way more than they would learn from the standard model of lecture+demonstrations+practice+feedback is mostly a myth. I've known people I would consider elders -- very wise and I learned a lot from them in their area of interest, but it probably didn't and couldn't make a big difference in standardized tests or my ability to find and perform work.
Gaashk
9mo ago
Fair enough, I had pretty superficial interactions, and didn't try all that hard.
A family member and also a good friend went to Catholic school for years and grew up Catholic, and also reported not having anything social to do, to the point of going to Evangelic youth group/LDS family events. It's likely this varies a lot by region/predominant culture.
Gaashk
9mo ago
Thanks for the perspective!
I tried to take a chanting class from an Egyptian chanter, and also from a (country of) Georgian teacher, and was very, very lost.
The Arab chant would designate a tone, then write out a sequence of up here, down two steps there, up with a trill, and so on, but no other reference point, and no instruments. Sometimes they would use a tuning fork for a moment at the beginning of a piece, or the lead chanter would hum -- I suppose that wouldn't be necessary for someone with perfect pitch? Someone once mistook me for a potential chanter, and gave me a tuning fork as a gift, but I never figured out what to do with it. They talked about taking pitch cues from the priest, and would sometimes complain he was intoning too high or low and making it hard to sing their part.
The Georgians sung three part polyphony, and it seemed extremely interesting, but too far from my skill level to sing a different part than the others.
It would be really cool if my kids could sing polyphonic pieces someday, they sound so beautiful, but I seem to be missing some core ability not to get immediately confused.
Gaashk
9mo ago
I don't think so? A surface level web search suggests that there are different opinions on the matter, they're mostly highly motivated, but that while adults can learn to read, it's more of a slog than for children. I don't see any sources on whether that's because it's actually harder, or because practicing enough to read fluidly and silently is very time intensive.
Gaashk
9mo ago
We spend almost all of our discretionary income (which is not very much at present) on somewhat short trips (gas, a rather nice tent, motel rooms, fast food, will probably need sleeping bags), though there are a few hundred dollars a year going to digital entertainment, art supplies, and children's toys. This is probably something like 5% of the budget, but I haven't been keeping track as much as would probably be wise.
Gaashk
11mo ago
In addition to nostalgia, I like that my husband thinks it's disgusting, so it's still there when I want a drink.
I think I have, but a different brand. It seemed drinkable, but not an improvement on soda, or even iced tea.
...Well I'm not going to find original Romanian records.
The main personal stories I've heard from Romania in that era were through Orthodox priests talking to other priests and more visible Christians who had lived there, and the enforcement of atheism sounded pretty brutal, so my baseline is "enforcement of preferred state outcomes was pretty brutal."
To the extent that you're simply observing a fact, and not making any policy proposals, I suppose. And the USSR did make it through WWII intact and modernize significantly under Stalin. No judgement. Everything else is mostly noise.
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