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by throwawayqqq11 26 days ago
I am sick of these "government bad" takes. They lack constructive suggestions, like your "sink it" nugget, they lack decent problem descriptions, as if anything after the sinking (likely private governance, aka feudalism) is immune to the ills of big-gov, and on top perpetuate reductivist arguments as if any kind of restrictions of freedom is by definition bad.

This broad rejection without good reasons is borderline sociopathic. ... and parental control is not the gov raising anyone.

4 comments

Friend, we have a fair amount of suggestions ( including constructive ones! ). Do you know why? Because we mostly know how to make education decent for individual students like:

- keeping class sizes small - keeping class within similar development range ( AP with AP. short bus with short bus )

None of it is a secret, but government can't (edit:or won't) make it happen. Hence regular people just doing the best they can within the system at their disposal.

I know people who will adamantly insist that keeping classes within similar development ranges is harmful and will vociferously reject any such proposal, up to and including things such as "gifted" schools and the like.

It's why some schools in (iirc) California did away with higher maths like calculus entirely.

Sadly, it seems there's nothing actually common about common wisdom.

I will admit that I never heard a serious argument from anyone that did not rely on issues not related to individual student's education. If you have any materials on those, I would love to read some of it.
Montessori advocates for mixed age classes where more advanced help teach the less advanced, as the teaching itself solidifies it in the more advanced student's mind. Not sure if it is valid. But it is something with studies and meta studies that may have been done well or poorly, not just an aesthetic choice. I think Vulcan style training pods driven by AI like khanmigo will end up being better education than the vast majority of students will ever have access to in person. Or consider it the realization of "a young lady's primer" from diamond age.
Montessori does advocate that, but mixed ages is not mixed intelligence.
Yes, that is an issue. There isn't much separation until age 11 or 12 and even then it is usually at the same physical facility. Is there good data on how to handle that? Don't want to make irrevocable decisions too early, seen lots of people good at arithmetic that can't do math and the reverse almost as often. Then is it bad to have socialization absent between different intelligence levels? Most public schools in the us seem to intentionally leave no time for critical thinking or actual history lessons (as opposed to propaganda).
I dunno, "government bad" seems like a pretty reasonable default. Governments typically have a high amount of corruption and are generally unhealthy organizations. It doesn't make sense to delegate more responsibility to an entity with such structural issues.
I'm not a libertarian; I just don't get why I should have to prove my age on every device I own regardless of what I access online when I don't have kids. Parental controls already exist on devices, so that's not really what this is legislation is proposing. I don't have a concrete solution because I don't even agree that "theoretically we don't know for sure that this device couldn't be used by a child to access pornography" is a problem that it's my job to solve as someone with no kids and plenty of mundane uses of the internet like paying bills, contacting medical providers, filing taxes, etc.
I am categorically not a "government bad" person. There are things that only government can do to help society and it's an important institution. However government shouldn't take over things in your household. I feel for the government to do a thing it should have to demonstrate that the state has an defensible interest. Gay marriage? Gov't has no business in marriage. Gov't demanding age checks in apps or in electronics? No, gov't doesn't need that.

> like your "sink it" nugget, they lack decent problem descriptions

Let me be clearer then: The legislation has passed but it is 100% possible to repeal that law. And it should be repealed, and we need to not let up pressure on California until it is rescinded. It was a bad law that was not thought out at all and fails to solve any problems.

I'm not worries about corporate feudalism and app age checks.

I'm not sociopathic, you're just making broad assumptions.