Selective Magnet School in Virginia moving towards a lottery system

Great Debates
802

(my bolding)
It’s like Ayn is right here in the room with me…*shiver*

…no? At least, I didn’t when I was there.

Did I say anything about tracking? Finland does well because of all those things you list, and the pedagogy model they use.

Science is not going to end global warming. Better human behaviour is.

No, they need political solutions. Human behaviour.

There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about producing new vaccines. It’s relatively known work that doesn’t require any more supergeniuses.

However, many more lives would already have been saved (especially in the USA) if people weren’t selfish dicks. Human behaviour, again.

You’re talking to a trained scientist. I don’t need to be told about the benefits of science.

Or pissed on and told it’s raining magical cure-all science-juice.

Yes, it was.

The world (and the USA, especially) is lacking one much more than the other.

Then it’s hardly a comparison to what I’m talking about, is it?

803

Well, you know, Rand is widely and correctly considered a poor writer whose turgid, didactic prose was full of exaggerated caricatures of mustache-twirling villains who don’t think, act, or speak like any real human being. So, the fact that your posts manage to actually sound like one of those characters, up to and including the ideas that we should teach “friendship” in math class, that “individuals with their own goals” should be stamped out by state policy, and that science has nothing to do with solving global warming or pandemics, is quite an achievement! I’ve never met a straw man villain in real life before.

804

Your explicit position is to deny choice, just as my own school denied my choice.

That’s sufficiently close comparison for me.

805

Are you saying that there aren’t some people that are significantly better at math and science than others? People are not in fact identical in ability or talent. It doesn’t make them better people any more than someone who can weave compelling poetry are better than those that are tongue tied.

Perhaps it would help if you clarified your argument. because your initial statements were that kids were better off helping their slower classmates with geometry than learning calculus, or something to that effect.

You are probably wrong. We just had the biggest drop in use of fossil fuels in human history last year. Pretty much everyone that can work from home is working from home. Airline travel is at the lowest levels since deregulation. Leisure travel has more or less bottomed out. A few more years like this and we will be dealing with far more immediate problems than rising oceans.

We cannot conserve our way out of this problem. It is waaaaaaaay too late for that. We cannot conserve our way out of this, we cannot politick our way out of this. We cannot protest our way out of this. All those things will do is give our scientists more time to come up with a solution.

The solution to global warming isn’t changing human behavior. The solution to global warming is some combination of carbon capture, clean energy and energy efficiency. That will require as many well trained minds as we can muster.

Poor people in poor countries have a lot of kids, how do you propose to change that behavior? We need science and technology to provide the means and the prosperity necessary to reduce infant mortality and increase standards of living so that people will have fewer children. Science and technology will also provide the means to feed all those hungry mouths and develop their potential.

But aren’t these vaccines in fact pretty revolutionary? They are different from previous vaccines. The science behind these vaccines promise new advancement in autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis.

Ok. What field of science do you specialize in? Because you seem to be unaware of things that I would expect most scientists to be aware of.

LOL no it wasn’t. You are projecting straw men.

Sounds like an opinion.

806

That’s his ideology, and when reality keeps failing to conform, he’s gonna get out the hammer and the saw and bash down anyone who persists in violating the notion that everyone is equal.

And on top of that, he doesn’t even understand that we’re talking about a truly exceptional group here - he wants ANYONE capable of taking a calculus class to go to Friendship Training instead! We can then all end up as cows chewing our cud. Every cow has the same score on the math part of the SAT as every other cow and that’s what matters. But he doesn’t like this description of the thing he’s vigorously fighting to make happen.

807

I think we probably strongly disagree with who the villains are in Rand’s books.

Here’s a hint - “slow-witted” is not a good thing to call any kid.

…and here I was thinking it was your post that had the John Galt voice down so well.

No, my position is to offer different choices.

No. As one of them at school, why would I do that?

I’m saying that thinking of fucking children in terms of “best” and “slow-witted” is a Randian nightmare society.

No, just “best” :roll_eyes:

I initially just said kids are better off learning by teaching than just being bored, actually. Then the whole currently-successful active learning pedagogy was questioned, and I responded.

Are you claiming scientists created coronavirus? Because otherwise what’s your point? You’re just highlighting how human behaviour has had a tangible effect on the environment. And then you turn around and contradict it in the next paragraph. Cognitive dissonance much?

It’s a proven fact that educating and empowering women lowers birthrates. This is not rocket science and doesn’t need a hard science answer.

No, they’re not. mRNA vaccines have been around for over a decade, the tech wasn’t newly-developed for Covid.

I trained firstly as a geologist, and then as a geographer with an emphasis on human development issues.

And your field of science is…?

And I’d expect anyone who spouts off about reducing population growth rates to know the impact of female empowerment, yet here we are…

Yes, it was - that you’ve backpedaled doesn’t change that you originally wrote about kids in transactional terms, emphasizing their lack of compensation as a negative.

The USA doesn’t lack for moon rockets. But seems awfully short on peaceful transitions of power. So no, an observation, not just an opinion.

The sarcasm you apply to such a simple concept as “children working together in a classroom” is telling.

808

The offer of turkey or ham is certainly a different set of choices, but for a vegetarian, it still represents an unacceptable and unjustified narrowing of what should reasonably be available.

People can still read what you wrote.

You didn’t merely suggest more flexible approaches to pedagogy – adding to the available choices – something most people here would be receptive to. You were openly incredulous and even disparaging that people might prefer, and have a right to, choices that don’t show up on your favored menu.



Something else which is worth slightly more response:

You don’t know this.

We don’t know how much more the price of renewable energy sources will drop with more scientific discovery. We don’t know whether feasible carbon sequestration technologies might become available. We don’t even know if the cost of mitigation efforts being developed might ultimately become less than the value of more carbon output (that doesn’t seem particularly likely, but it’s not strictly impossible).

Familiarity with science should lead to more circumspection about delimiting the bounds of the possible.

809

Why are you so incredulous that kids would volunteer to learn extra calculus, then?

810

The assumption here, of course, being that vegetarianism is an unalloyed good that is a reasonable alternative with no downsides

People can still read what you wrote.

Yes, and…?

I’m not incredulous, selfishness isn’t a strange phenomenon to me, but I am disparaging, yes, that people would only frame things in terms of handicap rather than benefit.

It’s true what they say - When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Here you are, framing things in terms of “rights”.

Kids have a right to education, they don’t have an additional overarching right to special treatment.

I do know this. And not because I’m a trained earth scientist, but because I’m an observer of human nature. If people remain greedy and selfish assholes, all the tech in the world is just going to be used to prolong the inevitable.

Because I was a kid, I’ve taught kids, and I have kids. Absent adult encouragement, what normal kid prefers extra calculus lessons over socializing?

I will grant that there are kids who would, but I think they would strongly skew to those having some kind of social disorder. And I’m only talking about normal kids. Special needs kids are a whole other topic (although “keep them with their peers as much as possible” is also the answer there)
.

811

I stayed after school to study for the STEP paper just for fun, and got a lot more beneficial socialising from that than I did when stuck in a class with normal kids who think you’re a weirdo if you like maths. I don’t think learning to be embarrassed and ashamed of my interests, and to play stupid, was a particularly valuable lesson. Perhaps you disagree.

And now we are back to ‘these are really special education schools’, which you want to deprive kids of.

812

Who said anything about “playing stupid”? You think being the clever one in a group of less-advanced kids doesn’t get noticed? Of course it does. I never pretended to not be well-read or able to solve classwork faster than my buddies. But we were friends and they didn’t think I was a “weirdo”. Sorry for you poor schooling.

I don’t want to deprive special needs kids of anything they need. I just don’t agree that “good at Maths” is a special need, or that staying with your cohort is a deprivation…

813

Well, that’s something you’re going to need to get past. In the U.S., Algebra I is taught to 9th graders as a standard and to 7th graders who are considered “accelerated” at math by the criterion of being in the top third or so of their local school district - hardly the sort of elite-of-elites we’re talking about. If someone in 11th grade is still struggling with algebra in any way, let alone to the extent that the people actually paid to teach them throw up their hands and say “let’s cancel the calculus class and have the good students try to get through to this clod, I’m out of ideas” then yeah I think “slow-witted” is a perfectly good term for that student’s math skills. Dumb, stupid, bad at math, innumerate - whatever you need to call it in order to face the reality that people have different abilities and some people are at the low end. Maybe the slow-witted math student is competent or great at history or art or playing the oboe, but at math their abilities resemble the tortoise, not the hare.

Both students deserve appropriate instruction and having the student who should be in calculus try to teach the dumbbell is not going to help either of them at math. I doubt it will encourage much “friendship” either, as opposed to frustration at the two wasting each other’s time and potential, but I honestly don’t care.

I don’t think of obvious reality as a “nightmare.” That must be a traumatic way to go through life. Things are what they are. That people, by the 11th grade, are obviously sortable into a great deal of tiers by math ability is a fact, that must precede and be accounted for by, ideology, not something you can deny because you’d prefer it not be true.

Let’s not dare call the kind of student who can’t figure out how to solve for x in 11th grade “slow-witted,” but let’s assume that anyone interested in academic achievement has a “social disorder!” That’s fine!

This is nothing more than populist meatheads shouting “NEEEERDS” dressed up as social policy. Your kind should be kept away from determining how education works with great force.

814

How about “No”. Done talking to you, then. Hope you didn’t put a lot of effort into that long post.

815

Of course I don’t. One of my friends at university learned a different lesson: he lost several ‘friends’ at 16, when maths was no longer compulsory and they didn’t need help with their homework anymore.

(And note that the tens of thousands of kids who opt to do A level maths each year are voluntarily choosing to study calculus.)

It was average to good for England, actually. There were and are much worse schools.

Level appropriate instruction is as much a need for those who are ahead as those who are behind.

Lol, indeed. But actually IME there’s a substantial correlation between ability in technical subjects and poor social skills. I just don’t think putting people with wildly differing abilities in the same classroom is an effective way to improve either.

816

The whole book is a straw man, it doesn’t really leave a lot of judgment calls up to the reader. It doesn’t invite you to think, it tries to tell you what to think. There are no heroes or villians just Rand’s opinion.

So you are taking issue of the use of the term “slow-witted” versus something like “less academically talented” or something like that?

Can you clarify what choices you are presenting to the child that is academically 2 or 3 years ahead of the rest of his age cohort? Because it seems like there is only one choice being offered but maybe I am missing part of what you are saying.

Why do I get the feeling you haven’t read a lot of ayn rand?

That’s a good point there are other ways to lower birth rates. But science certainly offers a very compelling pathway to lowering birthrates.

Really, please name another mrna vaccine before 2020.
Sure the idea of mrna isn’t new but isn’t the technology new?

I never claimed to be a scientist. I am an economist and a lawyer.
I was just shocked by your attitudes towards education and science.
I thought you might have been a “social” scientist or something.

No it wasn’t.
BTW, how did I backpedal? I certainly didn’t intend to.

Can you please explain your observation? How would the storming of the capitol been prevented by more friendship? I think less polarization would have helped but your arguments don’t seem less polarized. It sort of seems like you are taking a random bad thing and attributing it to something you disagree with in a debate.

And the world absolutely lacks for technology, I suppose that will always be the case. Better solar panels would help. better battery technology would help, carbon capture technology would help. More friends is nice but not quite sure how that solves global warming.

What does it tell you?

He’s not just familiar with science, he’s a scientist. A wizard should know better.

Does an alternative have to have no downsides to be a reasonable alternative? Do any of your alternatives have no downsides? Are any of your alternatives unalloyed good? Choices are frequently about tradeoffs.

From the child’s perspective, it is frequently an easy choice to study more challenging material with others who can also handle that more challenging material at the expense of being in the same class and learning at the same pace as their friends from the neighborhood.

Why do you think kids have a right to education? And if they have that right, then why don’t they have a right to an education that best suit their needs? I suppose they could always go to private school and that way only the bright children of wealthy parents can have an education that suits their needs.

At this point, I think you are straying from science and into social science. I started out in the social sciences and what you call “greedy selfish assholes” we call human beings. We hope for “enlightened” self interest from these “greedy selfish assholes” but we frequently just end up with plain old self interest (and consequently market failures).

And once again, we just had the largest drop in fossil fuel consumption in the history of the world during the pandemic and it was barely a blip. How is any reasonable change in human behavior going to change that?

Perhaps this is the disconnect, we are not talking about normal kids. These kids are about three standard deviations to the right of norm. And I don’t know if teaching less academically gifted classmates geometric proofs is really “socializing” or any more attractive to these kids than learning something new.

Or maybe they would just rather hang out with other kids like them.

817

The notion seems to be that special education for kids that are significantly below norm is good. special education for kids that are significantly above norm is special treatment. So tracking down is ok but tracking up is elitist.

Perhaps this is considered “encouraged by adults” (who want them to go to college and have professional careers).

To be clear, I am (or was) a social scientist (economist) so I do not believe all social scientists…

I don’t know. IME, this is all relative. At younger ages, this phenomenon largely seems driven by priorities and focus. The kids who are not as into academics focus on other things that are more accessible and socially popular than calculus or physics. At my age, the “social skill” disparity seems to be almost entirely eliminated and frequently reversed.

818

We’re not allowed to recognize that anyone below average exists, and if we see anyone above average we need to cut off their education and turn them into unpaid tutors and friendship trainees.

Everyone must be part of the collective gray mass, no one has any individuality or difference, and this is a good thing because now we are all equal. Mooooo.

819

The point appears to be to prevent them from getting ahead of their age cohort.

820

Hrmm. I suppose that is one answer. At least if you can’t afford private school.

I wonder how this works in the current remote learning environment. How do the kids help each other remotely? Do they each get a zoom account?

821

I don’t know about Zoom, but many programs offer breakout rooms that a teacher can bounce between. The whole deliberate stunting thing aside, small group work is pretty common IME and certainly doable with online platforms.