MayorofOysterville
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User ID: 3800
MayorofOysterville
21hr ago
Yes but it's a lot more flexible and you can run it at your own pace. You could decide you want to be a doctor at 40 do a post-bacc and build an application. If all your med school applications get rejected you can strengthen your application and try again. It's selective but less zero sum because you can always improve and try again.
MayorofOysterville
21hr ago
I very much agree with this. Lukewarm believers, or even people who follow no tenants or like one. Don't make any sense to me, but I guess a lot of people treat religion totally different then other beliefs and also view it as something you are rather than a statement of the universe. As someone who was raised a conservative evangelical these views were railed against and I always agreed with that. If this stuff matters it really matters otherwise it's nothing. Episcopalians and the like make no sense to me but I'm happy they exist as someone who likes a secular world. I do view them as kind of useful idiots though.
If you believe, you ought to be acting like you believe. You should be giving away every cent you don't strictly need and praying until you can no longer stay upright, treating your eternal soul with at least the seriousness that most people reserve for their pension contributions.
No you don't that's what I meant when I started this. In most Christian denominations hell is fairly easy to avoid even if you sincerely believe in the premise. In most Evangelical denominations you just make a confession of faith or say the sinners prayer and your saved. Catholicism and Orthodoxy are a little more involved but not that much more. If you sincerely believe in the faith then you think you know the rules so hell shouldn't be an issue. None of the New Testament shows being saved as a particularly hard state to achieve.
MayorofOysterville
21hr ago
I guess I meant believers when I was a believer I never had much worry, faith the size of a mustard seed and all that, and my faith was much stronger then that. When I stopped believing well I no longer feared hell. In Thomas' thread a lot of people were saying when they were Christians they were worried about hell. I dunno maybe it's my Protestant upbringing that believing in Jesus and accepting him into your heart was how you got to heaven and since I did that I was never too fussed about the whole thing.
Inspired by the fear the reaper thread, It's always been odd to me that so many Christians and ex-Christians report being scared of hell. It always seemed pretty easy to avoid to me absurdly easy in Protestant's case but even for Catholics and Orthodox you just need to go to a priest.
MayorofOysterville
2d ago
I have a lot of thoughts on this. I tried to connect them but I don't think they tie up neatly. So first I think you have way to much of an Asian perspective on Western education and are missing a few key things.
I observed that strict discipline turns out to be the easy part. It isn't hard to produce a quiet, orderly classroom through any number of methods, some humane and some less so.
But the issue is Western classrooms and Western pedagogy are are not doing that. You may say it's easy and for sure it is but if teachers are not allowed to use the methods that would produce that and are taught that doing so is wrong in teachers colleges, then it doesn't matter how easy it is. There are a whole bunch of factors that prevent Western teachers from establishing discipline in classrooms so until that is fixed it doesn't matter what teachers do. And prior to the collapse of discipline and tracking and all the things that Freddie DeBoer complains about there was quite a bit of learning going on in Western classrooms. AP courses are almost exactly what you describe for tutoring centers. They are advanced classes which give college credit and have an Exam at the end so there is an objective measure for the teacher.
And on that topic I think you are way off on tutoring centers. As someone who has been in the belly of the beast, they are not selecting for better teachers simply more entrepreneurial ones. The fact is that virtually any teacher except the bottom 10% will be much more effective in a tutoring center environment. Because of smaller class sizes, often even one on one tutoring, and a more motivated student and parent body. Regardless managing the constant shifting schedules of working in a tutoring center is very different then A school. Additionally while school admins are often apathetic bureaucrats training center admins are often just after the bottom dollar and have no particular concern for education
Do I think this is a good thing, something to advocate for? Oh god no. I find it depressing. I'd like to claim that better schooling inside the schools would help, but surely you've understood that this is another Red Queen race right? You run as fast as you can just to stay in place, and making everyone faster doesn't change the composition of those making a podium finish.
I think this is a function of the yawning chasm of Indian society in general, you could end up a shipbreaker or something equally horrible, and Asian education style in general. America. while the red queen race exists it's much less of an all or nothing proposition. Virtually any above average American can be a doctor. Don't have good grades in high school go to community college. Don't have good college grades do a post bac. Don't have money for school join the military as a medic get healthcare experience and a full ride. Still have only an ok application apply for DO schools instead of MD. There's just so much more flexibility then an all or nothing exam that determines your entire future. I think another aspect is that in general it's much easier to make money in America then India. Kids who are just after the bottom line do an MBA or study computer science or hell start a plumbing business the entrepreneurship and opportunities make it much less of a win lose zero sum propostion.
But he ALSO thinks the top need to pay in terms of giving the bottom wide leeway in annoying them, disrupting them, inconveniencing then, etc since it would be somehow unfair to ask anything of the poor benighted bottom and the glorious top can surely take the hit. He doesn't QUITE go as far as saying the top should grin and bear being beaten, raped, and killed in order to spare the bottom the indignity of being policed but he sure implies it.
He definitely does not believe this he has many articles arguing against this very idea. So no he doesn't think that and he's very opposed to the leftists that do.
He does, however, believe that a large number of people are effectively too stupid to participate in the modern economy in an economically productive way and thus the conservative pull yourself up by your bootstraps and the liberal educate everyone into smarts are both loosing propositions for a significant portion of the population.
MayorofOysterville
2d ago
I really don't think so. He spends most of his energy arguing against the standard progressive school reforms and wokeness. Though he's pulled back on the latter I think because he didn't like the type of fans he was getting.
Ukraine is being killed, not committing suicide.
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