You have a good point, but it’s not something most people would be interested and for good reason.

We’re talking about children here. People who would let their teeth rot away if no one constantly fussed at them about brushing. People who don’t understand why they shouldn’t do a great many things that will actually kill them.

We don’t actually care about what children want to learn. This article is talking about math that is taught before puberty. That’s the math that people are struggling with. That’s everyday math. We’re not talking about calculus here.

You’re saying that there’s no pragmatic way to teach things, but really that’s not the problem of children and you know it. Kids get word problems and whatnot to tell them how math can be relevant, but just like English and history and basically all of school, they don’t want to do it. Math is weird because it actually builds on itself and you need to understand every part. It’s not something where if you forgot or never learned you can bullshit your way through.

I’m speaking as someone who went to a top engineering college and my English 101 class had to check for literacy. I was the literal only student out of like 20 who got to skip the exam. Several of my peers were functionally illiterate from reading their essays and whatnot.

It’s not just math. It’s everything and it’s the failure of the system that we do not fail children when they don’t achieve. If they don’t like it they can drop out at 16 get a GED or be known as the uneducated people they are.

I guarantee you that if we went back to failing kids they’d learn more. My sister failed a whole grade and the embarrassment from it and the pressure from my parents was a fantastic motivator.

The maybe rheu shouldn’t advance and be failed? Like to me if you’re bad at a subject, you should be required to take it until you pass it, not push along to the next harder version of it. Kids don’t get left back or failed now. That is the problem. If you’re not ready fine, but you can’t take algebra until you pass pre-algebra.

I’m speaking as someone who didn’t learn to read until 3 grade and still graduated on time and went to a good college. Failing classes is fine as long as you can also catch up if you rapidly learn the material as well.

I’m 100% in agreement. I think that our school system fails deeply in expressing the point. What I liked about college was what even if it was tedious, etc my professors took the time to explain why I needed to do it this way first and what the dangerous of not having some of these skills were. Did I always believe them? No, but now that I’m out in the world working I definitely know they were always right and I’m glad I did it anyway even if I didn’t always believe them.

Grade school is a different beast and I spent so much time frustrated and bored and not knowing what the point was. If it wasn’t for the fact that I just really wanted to be a roboticist and there was only one school in my state I could so that at, I probably would have done the least effort thing all the time.

I did appreciate my calculus teacher who gave us word problems. It really helped me understand the point of calculus. Those words problems showed me there were scenarios where algebra was not gonna cut it. I wish more of my grade school classes explained the point of it all after it became less obvious from middle school onwards.

I say history is for analysis because honestly anything that would let you truly understand today isn’t taught. Yes you will learn about segregation, but my history classes barely touched my grandparent’s time, so it’s hard to connect that middle missing period to today. Sure. I’m the mind of person to go fill in that middle period, but many people aren’t.

What was useful to me was the analysis part. Seeing how bias was in sources. Seeing how different people had the same sources, but different conclusions. Yes, seeing how a past event caused a future event.

But, I don’t think many people in the US connect US history with why we have many things going on today. Grade school history isn’t going to give that. My college history lessons did though. I had a whole ass history class on nothing by lobbying and I really gained an appreciation for why lobby should exist, how Americans are ridiculous, and how writing laws to keep the good of something, but not the bad is really hard. But no, I cannot tell you anything about the history of lobbying to day I spent 3 months studying and debating about it.

Back to math for a bit. I think that the logic part of math needs to be brought more into focus again. I think that programming is only going to become more and more important and it’s a shame we’re not teaching any of the fundamentals to allow people to even do things by make fancy excel formulas.

Oral would suck for the transition students. It’s a completely different style and skill set of answering questions and no kid would have training or the mental framework on how to do it. It’s great if you’re the kind of person who can write a mostly perfect draft essay from start to finish no skipping around or back tracking, but if that’s not you, it’s gonna be a rough learning curve. This is before we ask questions like how does a deaf person take this exam? A mute person? Someone with verbal paraphasia?

This is fine and all and you have a point, but in the current system many times the subject isn’t about the subject it’s about the auxiliary skills you pick up along the way. My history classes in high schopl weren’t really about history. I mean if I retained those facts, fantastic, they were more about analyzing given evidence and multiple references to make a point. I’m an engineer and I use that skill all the time. Facts about the Civil War not so much.

Even in college I had classes like that. It’s why just programming the answer wasn’t always allowed although literally everyone in the university took a programming class freshmen year. That wasn’t always the point.

To always allow AI is like never taking the time to teach kids how to do arithmetic by hand. I mean, sure, we could do that, but learning arithmetic is not really about memorizing times tables and more about understanding the concept of a number and internalizing counting and so much stuff people don’t realize they use all the time the existence of a calculator or not.

I think there is some value in not allowing AI usage sometimes. Before you use a calculator you should learn how to do it by hand so you can have a sense of when you’ve keyed something in wrong. AI has entered my workplace and it’s so annoying. People who never knew how to write the things they ask AI to do can’t vet the AI output and the result is somehow worse to me than if they’d bumbled something by hand. That’s kind of what I’m afraid of in the future. I don’t think that AI is ever going to be perfect and kids have to know what output they’re looking for before they’re taking this shortcut.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

Let’s just be simple about this: pensions and oth3r old age support. Who pays for those? Young people. If young people have to support a lot of old people, you’re gonna have a bad time. Everyone. The young people have have larger amounts taken out of their pay and old people who get less support because there are just literally not enough resources. And because old people outnumber young people young are pressured more and more under democracy to give more to older people.

That is only one terrible thing from demographic collapse.

You are correct. That’s why I didn’t assume maintenence guy, but instead rapist.

Nope. He had a key, I guess he used it? IDK I just heard my fucking door open. He was there to fix something or other that was causing issues with the apartment below Mr. It was like 2PM which I guess is why he didn’t announce himself, but yeah he almost died.

Because I’ve lived in shitty areas with actual drug dealers and BS like that. Less people have guns than you might imagine. Maybe it’s different in nowhere USA, but in urban shithole, USA and Middle class suburbia that’s about what I’ve found. People have like 3+ guns or none at all. I guess it’s possible all my friends are just hiding this from me for some reason and in my hometown I just happen to know all the people who shoot guns, but honestly it’s been rare that I’ve seen people with just one gun. It’s not that I’ve never seen it. My cousin’s husband owns exactly one gun.

I don’t think there’s any way to get stats, but I think that the US has more guns than people lends some credibility to this idea.

Honestly, if everyone woman only had 2 children that would still reduce the population without causing demographic collapse which is what Japan is undergoing. A rapid decline in population creates misery for everyone. You really what a birth rate that hovers around 2 for gentle population decline.

This is such an annoying answer. I’ve had a strange man enter my home unannounced. I remember standing just behind a wall with intent to stab him with the knife I had because if someone breaks into your house you don’t assume a good time. Even without guns strangers are dangerous. That maintenance guy was seriously lucky I happen to recognize him in that split sec and stopped before stabbing him in the chest.

I’m American and I’ve never worried about guns. They aren’t as common as people think in a lot of areas. Mostly we have a few yahoo’s with a shitton of guns and most people with zero. I’ve still been in several situations where I felt unsafe without guns even being a consideration. If this dude was doing all that at my house, I’d call the police and then wait with a knife like I did with that stupid maintenance guy I almost stabbed who should have known better.

It’s not that I disagree, it’s just that I can never see a scenario where both sides don’t have the same power. If you can quit at any time, then rhe employer can fire at any time. If you the employer has you give notice, so do you. I’ve never hear any stories online in different countries of the notice period not being both ways. And despite what one dude said to me sometimes weeks long, not a week. That would be actual hell.

That’s kind of my point? That some workplaces are toxic or you otherwise need to abandon your job because of external reasons. Maybe it’s just because I’m older (mid-30s), but I don’t know a single person who hasn’t run into a fuck this job moment for whatever reason. Either because it was deteriorating their mental health, or they prioritized their personal life. My life fell into a coma and I literally got on a plane thr moment I knew. I told my boss I wouldn’t be in and he could fire me or not, I don’t care. My brother had no one in that moment. I was lucky my bosses allowed me to keep my job while I acted as his advocate to get him care until the rest of my family could get there, but what if I wasn’t allowed because of some BS notice contract? Which at will I can just quit fuck it. With no at-will there would definitely be some punishment. This scenario may not overcome the good of getting ride of at will, but I think people should consider it. Consider what it would be like to trapped in a place you hate with a hostile work environment.

I obviously don’t know for sure, but I do see stories from people from those nations talking about how they have to say for whatever amount of time for a notice period. This is the thing where I have questions about abuse. I’m not saying at will is great, but I also don’t think it’s 100% awful and I think people should consider what it would be like to not be able to leave a job when you want to.

The question I have about people who are against at will is the flip side, which is being locked into a hellish job for some set period. I have had jobs that deteriorated my mental health. With at will I can just walk out the door whenever I want. Not so if both employer and employee are bound by some cool down counter clause.

Even without abuse there is opportunity cost to staying at your company. I’ve seen family members on the spot quit to care for people they cared about, but not people anyone would consider close enough to be covered by anything like FMLA, like your best friend’s child. I quit jobs that interfered with my college education.

It sucks to be let go, but I don’t think people consider if it might make more suffering yo be forced to stay. I can’t see a situation where companies have to give notice, but employees don’t. Sure I guess employees can sabotage their workplaces to be sent home with pay, but what a fantastic way to catch a charge and screw yourself over forever.

It’s food for thought.

I hear you, but I’m just saying that he probably won’t have any regrets about his kid’s childhood or literally everyone would. He’s spending a typical amount of time with his kids.

Could he spent more? Yeah. Will he have regrets around his life? Yes. That man will die of a heart attack or exhaustion, but his children will know him. And worse still, they’ll know that compared to most super rich parents, their dad paid them more mind than others in their peer group. Wealthy parents tend to offload their children onto others.

I get it. I have a kid and kids really eat into living your life even if you love them.

Except some problems don’t happen because you don’t have money, they happen because of your demographics. Every 20 years they do a study on hiring and time and time again employers would rather hire a white felon over an educated black person. It literally doesn’t matter if the black person had a degree from Harvard and has millionaire parents. If hiring managers can identify that they’re black, all of that is immediately negated.