I was going to say something about this, but with my luck I figured they’d have the flamethrowers out. Yeah, I noticed it starting in late October on several message boards all at once. It was uncanny. It got to where I couldn’t post anything without making somebody mad. As if by posting any seemingly innocuous remark I unknowingly tripped a hidden trigger to someone’s private trauma. I was asking, What has gotten people so on edge these days? But then I read,
Some teachers, often very good ones, quite happily choose the lower pay of the private schools over the higher pay of public schools. In return, they lead a life free of the dreaded public school bureaucracy, and teach a selected group of students.
Lots of the things the public schools have to contend with, like poverty, students with overwhelming special needs, disciplinary problems, and multi-track education paths like vocational training - well, they simply don’y exist in this environment. These schools do not serve those students, for better or worse.
In addition, the parochial schools continue to be staffed to a considerable degree by nuns and friars, many of whom are excellent teachers and moral exemplars and consider education of youth part of their religious calling.
This isn’t meant to disrespect public school teachers, most of whom are indeed fine teachers and professionals. They include, in fact, several members of my own family. It is true, though, that fine teachers are to be found in private schools as well, and saying that they’re not likely to be found there due to the low pay seems to needlessly insult those teachers for no real benefit to public school teachers.
Exhibit A: Ma Weaver, on the current incarnation of The Amazing Race: Family Edition. In only a few short weeks, she has:
Wondered aloud whether Pennsylvania is a state
Asked what state Washington, DC is in
Informed her children that Lake Pontchartrain is one of the five Great Lakes
And ivylass? Just to further your worries, she’s a private school teacher.
Yeah, it’s enough to make you weep. I’m glad to see someone going into elementary education like you, Daniel, who actually has a chance of passing on actual knowledge. And facts. (What a strange idea!)
As for the message board thing, I’m not sure, but I’ve seen it happen with email lists, too – one list I was on for several years that had absolutely no problems suddenly turned vicious with just one member who simply couldn’t grasp the idea that the way he treated other people was pure shit. All it took was that one person to light the fire and things started spiraling out of control. I have no explanation for it, but I agree that all definitely happens.
Maybe Mercury is retrograde or something.*
*This was an all-purpose excuse used by a dear friend of mine whenever things started going wrong. I use it these days with affectionate mockery, since she had the nerve to go and die on me a few years ago.
** Mr. Moto**
Most of your points are fair enough, when it concerns parochial schools, but some of the private schools around these parts are schools started to feed off of the choice school mandates around here. There are so many fly by night operations that feed off of the public dime, that it is scary. There is one local choice school that lost all the transcripts for all of it’s students. I have a student repeating 9th grade because there is no proof he passed any classes. I get very frustrated with the idea that Private=better.
Alot of these choice schools are pretty good, but they tend to be the ones that were running before this experiment started, and not the ones fighting to avoid having to meet the standards public schools do.
** Mr. Moto**
Most of your points are fair enough, when it concerns parochial schools, but some of the private schools around these parts are schools started to feed off of the choice school mandates around here. There are so many fly by night operations that feed off of the public dime, that it is scary. There is one local choice school that lost all the transcripts for all of its students. I have a student repeating 9th grade because there is no proof he passed any classes. I get very frustrated with the idea that Private=better.
Alot of these choice schools are pretty good, but they tend to be the ones that were running before this experiment started, and not the ones fighting to avoid having to meet the standards public schools do.
LHoD - Stay strong, boss. And continue throwing the bums out without pity. If you don’t want your board to turn into a vile cesspool of flames and trolls and sociopathic behavior, that’s your only choice. Frankly, I think you’re being far too kind to these cretins as it is. Just say “I understand your frustration, but unfortunately, the rules are very clear on this matter, and you were given more than adequate warning. I don’t like having to ban people, but I had no choice.” Or if that’s too cumbersome, go with “I’m sorry, you’ve obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a crap.*”
Seeing what virtually every message board devolves into is just horrifying. I want to shake some these moderators and say "For the love of Odin, this is your property!!! You own every bit and byte of those boards, and you’re letting these slimeballs crap all over them! Ban them! Jackbooted Nazi? Heavy-handed? Whatever it takes. Hey, if they tore up your living room or smashed up your car, you wouldn’t just let it happen because you were afraid of being called a Nazi or whatever, right? So why should your online holdings be any different?
As for why it happens…look, when a nuclear reactor is thirty seconds from meltdown, you don’t ask why, why, why. Avert permanent crisis first, ask questions later. I can almost guarantee that this won’t be the last time this happens, so you might want to remember that.
“When I want your worthless opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.” is also pretty good.
I remember, in sixth grade, at St. Monica’s, one of the students used the world “conscious,” and the next ten minutes of class were spent by a bunch of twelve-year-olds trying to get their teacher to understand what “conscious” meant.
Generally, yes. Apparently inevitably, given current software.
See Clay Shirky’s writings on the design of “Social Software” and the contrast with ‘machine-centered software’. He discusses how the current design of messageboard software is inadequate to deal with negative users; in fact it seems to be designed to encourage them. Some quotes:
“Flame wars are not surprising; they are one of the most reliable features of mailing list practices.”
“mailing list software is … a tool for creating and sustaining heated argument.”
He suggests several possible ways to design software with the social group in mind, rather than an individual at his machine. Several of his suggestions sound quite worth trying to me:
[ul]
[li]Induced Lag: a cooling off period, where after x posts within xx minutes, subsequent posts to the same thread by the same author would be delayed x minutes before posting. (x minutes increases for each additional post.)[/li][li]Get a Room! feature: any thread ping-ponging between 2 users x times in xx minutes would be automatically redirected to a subthread, which anyone could browse, but only those two could post (to each other, to their heart’s content).[/li][li]Thread Jail (Blackballing): a button to click to vote this thread as unending or pointless; if enough users vote this, the thread is automatically locked.[/li][li]Post Rationing: limits on how many times one user can post to a thread; x times in 24 hours; or x% of the posts in the thread, etc.[/li][/ul]
I can see many instances on this board (maybe even in this thread!) where such software mechanisms would have enhanced the conversation.
That wouldn’t work, though, on forums that have game threads. For instance on my other favorite board, we’ve got a members-only forum for stuff like that and one of the most popular is “The Next Poster - True or False”. You post something like “The next poster likes cats” and the next person answers true or false and puts up another "The next poster"statement. We usually end up adding a bit to the answer, like “True! I’ve got three cats and I’ve got one helping me type!” It moves pretty fast sometimes too.
I agree on the waves of snipe. It does run in cycles, doesn’t it? At the same board, we get boxes - little squares - beside our names as a warning. Five boxes and you’re gone. In practice, you can get all your boxes at once for doing something truly nasty and OTOH, you can get 'em deleted for good behaviour. In over a year we’ve only had one banning and that’s with 300+ registered users.
It’s a fanboard, for a Rock performer. Yeah, we’ve got differing opinions on several topics, but on the whole it’s pretty darn friendly. Of course our Mod is very good at keeping order without pissing people off.
That’s not always a sure thing. I would go over my daughter’s reports, helping her with grammar, spelling, and communicating ideas. She hated it (that’s a given in any parent/child relationship). Then, at a parent-teacher conference, I had the opportunity to read the “A” board. I was appalled at what passed for an A at one grade level above my daughter. I think all that was necessary was stringing together at least one noun and a verb in a sentence, regardless of spelling. I could understand if it was a stream-of-consciousness exercise, but paragraph-long run-on sentences in “English Language Arts” should be pointed out. Don’t worry about hurting little Johnny’s feelings. Worry about sending little Johnny to HS unable to effectively communicate on paper.
Not quite, but you’re close. Mercury goes retrograde on November 14, then goes direct again on December 4. Last summer, Mercury was retrograde for a few weeks, and here I was hanging around with Witches for whom it was a running joke. Someone on a Witch Yahoo group held a Retrograde Mercury contest, tell your funniest story of
cognitive or communicative screwup.
My SIL is a public school teacher. She will be leaving at the end of the year because she can no longer put up with the bureaucracy and the lack of support from the administration.
At my children’s school there is a lower student to teacher ratio, there are a lot more extracurricular activities, and there is no tolerance for problem children. You screw up, you’re expelled. You fail a class, you attend mandatory extra study. You are “invited” back each year, and my son has had classmates that were not “invited” back.
Bottom line, the school does not have to put up with delinquents and bullies and truants. Public school does.
I don’t mean this in a hostile way, but how do you think your son is going to deal with delinquents, bullies, and tyrants when he leaves school? For better or worse, I think that learning how to handle assholes is one of the most valuable things a student can learn in school.
Granted, they really hit you hard with that lesson. But still.
From what I’ve seen, it is always worse the first few times that the mod-hammer has to come down (or first few times after a long break), and then calms down when most people see that there are enforcable rules that are actually and appropriately enforced.
Of course there are always those few who will loudly announce that you are evil fascist thugs grinding precious personal freedoms under your hobnailed boots when you don’t let members run around raping kittens in public. Take that as a given and move on.
However, if you look at the example of this board, the earliest bannings of long-time members created major shit-storms that spawned weeks of multiple multi-page threads with sympathetic members leaving the boards in protest–with the occasional suicide-by-mod. Now, most bannings rate no more than a yawning page and a half in the Pit.
I think that the best feature that this board has going for it is the BBQ Pit.
I wouldn’t even lurk there for the first few years, thinking it would be a cesspool of insults and invective. I eventually followed a thread there after things got a bit ugly in another forum, and was generally impressed at the continued levels of literacy and reason, even when the gloves were off.
I think that folks occasionally need a place to vent; to say what is on their mind even when it is considered unacceptable in a “civilized” exchange of ideas.
Can you do the same on your board? Give folks a place to duke it out while leaving the rest of the board for reasoned discourse?
I’ve advocated for it, but the board admin is dead-set against it. I understand his reasons (he really wants to keep the board as a place that parents are comfortable letting their teenagers visit), but I agree with you that it’d allow folks to let off a lot of steam.
I do not send my son to school so he can learn how to deal with bullies. I send him to school so he can learn how to read, write, do math, think, compile essays, plan his time so he can do a big project, etc., things that will hold him in good stead when he gets to college and the workforce. These things build confidence, which will help him deal with the assholes.
When I spoke of dealing with bullies, I’m speaking of being in classrooms so crowded the teacher has to suspend both the victim and the bully for three days because they can’t take the word of one student over another, and because the teacher is so busy dealing with the problem children the good, shy, retiring children get picked on or fall through the cracks. In private school, IMHO, the parents pay closer attention to what goes on because they’re spending hard earned dollars to keep their kids in school. The school can decide which children they want to accept and can get rid of the ones they don’t. By doing that, they can concentrate on providing good academics and extracurricular activities, which in turn will mean something on a college transcript.
I don’t know how it is where you live, but my public school district is abysmal. I want my children to get a good quality education without fear of having a distracted teacher who doesn’t have a classroom to call her own, without fear of bullies who don’t want to be there, and with the knowledge that they have to work to earn their grades.
Sorry, we got off on a huge tangent there, didn’t we? Would it be possible to restrict the “venting” board to adults? Can you have two levels of membership, one for the teenagers and one for the adults?
