Posting Towards Gomorrah

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If you feel the same way about Bill O'Reilly that I do, you'll want to watch his appearance on David Letterman's show.

It reinforced my opinion that Letterman is willing to make up his mind without going through all the trouble of learning those pesky facts. He's quick, and facile, and seems proud that he doesn't know of what he speaks. Scary, that so many people would take what he says as information.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by bilmore
It reinforced my opinion that Letterman is willing to make up his mind without going through all the trouble of learning those pesky facts. He's quick, and facile, and seems proud that he doesn't know of what he speaks. Scary, that so many people would take what he says as information.

Sounds like he and Bill are perfectly matched.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Spanky
But this board is so much more fun. The FB board sucks because it is boring. I don't wanna go.

:bye:

I understand that they used to talk about sex a lot, which wasn't so boring. Then they met each other . . .

S_A_M

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by bilmore
It reinforced my opinion that Letterman is willing to make up his mind without going through all the trouble of learning those pesky facts. He's quick, and facile, and seems proud that he doesn't know of what he speaks. Scary, that so many people would take what he says as information.

He is a professional comedian and talk show host.

Being a semi-informed wise-ass and going for the cheap laugh are both parts of Letterman's schtick. No one should take him seriously, and I've seen no indication he desires that.

Now, Bill O'Reilly, on the other hand, strikes me as a semi-informed dumbass with an big axe to grind, who really wants to be taken seriously.

I prefer Letterman.

S_A_M

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
I understand that they used to talk about sex a lot, which wasn't so boring. Then they met each other . . .

That's what struck me as different when I read it this week. It now sounds like a ten-way conversation between a married couple.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
We spend way more time than everyone else trying to make kids feel empowered, and worthy, and self-confident, to the point where we even changed the basic theme of elementary ed to "we doan' need no stinking drills!" Too many kids weren't memorizing their eights and nines, and so, the philosophy holds, to continue to emphasize the drills would be too damaging to kids' self-esteem. I think that we DO need to do things that make kids feel able and useful and valued, but there's a balance that needs to be found. We're not there yet. Problem is, getting there won't happen until the education community regains some diversity - too many ed students from the last twenty years of ed college are so firmly settled into the anti-drill-and-basics mode that we'll need to wait, first, for the current ed school philosophy to switch back to valuing knowledge as much as self-esteem, and then for the grads of the new outlook to start taking over the field.

Clearly, by 2060, we'll see a start. Until then, anyone with kids needs to handle that very basic educational-system function themselves. We've done the drills with the kidlets since time began, and now, as the kids start entering non-elementary schools, they're consistently getting A's and B's. I can testify, after some long struggles to get our ADD kids out of the score basement, that there are few ways more effective to raise a kid's self-esteem than to give them the tools to start succeeding - like, drill them in math in the basics so they have a foundation to learn the more advanced stuff. (Trig is tough if you have to stop and figure out nine times seven.) The whole "teach self-esteem" movement simply wants kids to feel like they've succeeded without having to take the time and trouble to actually succeed.

I live in one of the leftier places in the country, and the school district my kids are in bears little resemblence to what bilmore describes above, which makes me suspect this "teach self-esteem movement" is the same sort of guide to educational policy that Trading Places was to trading commodities futures.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
He is a professional comedian and talk show host.

Being a semi-informed wise-ass and going for the cheap laugh are both parts of Letterman's schtick. No one should take him seriously, and I've seen no indication he desires that.

Now, Bill O'Reilly, on the other hand, strikes me as a semi-informed dumbass with an big axe to grind, who really wants to be taken seriously.

I prefer Letterman.

S_A_M

Don't get me wrong - I've always enjoyed watching Letterman. He's smart, quick, and funny.

But he's also always been a hard-core liberal, and he doesn't throw in liberal thought simply as a part of his schtick - he actively tries to convince, for the sake of the convincing. The scary part, to me, is that so many people who are fairly clueless (in a daily-events context) will watch him and let themselves be convinced by him.

Of course, in a country whose elections are driven by 30-second ads, pretty hair, and lawn signs, it's a bit quixotish (that's Romance-language for "stupid") for me to bitch about what Letterman does, I suppose.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Don't get me wrong - I've always enjoyed watching Letterman. He's smart, quick, and funny.

But he's also always been a hard-core liberal, and he doesn't throw in liberal thought simply as a part of his schtick - he actively tries to convince, for the sake of the convincing. The scary part, to me, is that so many people who are fairly clueless (in a daily-events context) will watch him and let themselves be convinced by him.

Of course, in a country whose elections are driven by 30-second ads, pretty hair, and lawn signs, it's a bit quixotish (that's Romance-language for "stupid") for me to bitch about what Letterman does, I suppose.

[ASIDE TO BILMORE]We don't use the word "convince" anymore -- we tell Letterman to "recruit."[/ASIDE]

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by bilmore
Don't get me wrong - I've always enjoyed watching Letterman. He's smart, quick, and funny.

But he's also always been a hard-core liberal, and he doesn't throw in liberal thought simply as a part of his schtick - he actively tries to convince, for the sake of the convincing. The scary part, to me, is that so many people who are fairly clueless (in a daily-events context) will watch him and let themselves be convinced by him.

Of course, in a country whose elections are driven by 30-second ads, pretty hair, and lawn signs, it's a bit quixotish (that's Romance-language for "stupid") for me to bitch about what Letterman does, I suppose.

Letterman's no liberal.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I live in one of the leftier places in the country, and the school district my kids are in bears little resemblence to what bilmore describes above, which makes me suspect this "teach self-esteem movement" is the same sort of guide to educational policy that Trading Places was to trading commodities futures.

Viewpoint may play a part in your perception. When you look at your kids' math books, and you see problems which don't really call for answers, but, instead, talk about things like "explore different ways that YOU might want to try to find a solution to this problem, and discuss these ideas with your exploration partners", and it strikes you as an appropriate approach to mathematics, well, I think our conversation is simply going to wander.

If, instead, your district has moved back to a more "yes, there IS one correct answer to this problem, and your job is to find it" mode, then, consider yourself lucky, because vast swaths of the country's school system have not yet done this. Speaking to an older friend, fairly high up in the MN ed system, and who is firmly of the belief that the "right answer" isn't as important as getting the kids to "think about strategies" last week, I was told that "a small percentage" of schools have "moved backward" in this regard - to the "find the answer" mode. I say this only to disclose where I'm getting the quantitative picture on where schools generally are across the country.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
Viewpoint may play a part in your perception. When you look at your kids' math books, and you see problems which don't really call for answers, but, instead, talk about things like "explore different ways that YOU might want to try to find a solution to this problem, and discuss these ideas with your exploration partners", and it strikes you as an appropriate approach to mathematics, well, I think our conversation is simply going to wander.

If, instead, your district has moved back to a more "yes, there IS one correct answer to this problem, and your job is to find it" mode, then, consider yourself lucky, because vast swaths of the country's school system have not yet done this. Speaking to an older friend, fairly high up in the MN ed system, and who is firmly of the belief that the "right answer" isn't as important as getting the kids to "think about strategies" last week, I was told that "a small percentage" of schools have "moved backward" in this regard - to the "find the answer" mode. I say this only to disclose where I'm getting the quantitative picture on where schools generally are across the country.

Huh. My kid's homework doesn't ask him how he feels about 8+4 , it just asks him what the answer is. OTOH, he's only in 2nd grade. Perhaps they'll start asking him about his exploration skills when he gets into trig and measuring the space under the curve.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
[ASIDE TO BILMORE]We don't use the word "convince" anymore -- we tell Letterman to "recruit."[/ASIDE]

My assumption here is that you are sarcastically making fun of the idea that Letterman tries to convince viewers of the correctness of the Democratic positions. I forgot that you believe the NYT is nonpartisan.

Shame how that Rather guy got railroaded, huh?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I live in one of the leftier places in the country, and the school district my kids are in bears little resemblence to what bilmore describes above, which makes me suspect this "teach self-esteem movement" is the same sort of guide to educational policy that Trading Places was to trading commodities futures.

2.

Just like the Rs like to run against McGovern, the advocates for a curriculum focused on standardized tests like to attack some kind of hippie free for all education that I seemed to have missed altogether (and my mother taught school for over 30 years).

Many of us have nothing against tests, but it's the standardized test and the curriculum focused on beating the test rather than learning the lesson that I find problematic.

But for some reason, it seems like this hippie-dippie curriculum that so upsets people is only used in the fly-over red states.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by bilmore
Viewpoint may play a part in your perception. When you look at your kids' math books, and you see problems which don't really call for answers, but, instead, talk about things like "explore different ways that YOU might want to try to find a solution to this problem, and discuss these ideas with your exploration partners", and it strikes you as an appropriate approach to mathematics, well, I think our conversation is simply going to wander.

If, instead, your district has moved back to a more "yes, there IS one correct answer to this problem, and your job is to find it" mode, then, consider yourself lucky, because vast swaths of the country's school system have not yet done this. Speaking to an older friend, fairly high up in the MN ed system, and who is firmly of the belief that the "right answer" isn't as important as getting the kids to "think about strategies" last week, I was told that "a small percentage" of schools have "moved backward" in this regard - to the "find the answer" mode. I say this only to disclose where I'm getting the quantitative picture on where schools generally are across the country.

My kid's homework looks nothing like this, though he is in private school so maybe that's why.

On the other hand, I once represented a non-profit that developed teaching techniques and materials for schools -- originally focused on teaching reading to elementary school kids, but later expanded to include writing, math, and science, and to reach middle school as well.

This program, which was in over 1000 schools, was extremely drill-oriented. The classes were highly structured. "Self-esteem" teaching did not seem part of the program, at least not from the materials I saw.

I raise this because the program was developed by some of those same, dread "academics" that Bilmore talks about, at one of those dreaded liberal universities that he believes is staffing our schools with teachers who believe that 2+2 can equal 5 if that makes you feel better.

Put differently, I suspect that things are a bit less monolithic that Bilmore argues. This may fall in with the "Dems who commit traitorous acts and support terrorism" line. (i.e., in the category of "complete Bilmore bullshit")


eta: I don't doubt that some teachers and books are like this. But schools throughout the country dominated by the "teach self-esteem" "movement", because that is what university education programs teach? Not so sure.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
this "teach self-esteem movement" is the same sort of guide to educational policy that Trading Places was to trading commodities futures.

What precisely is wrong with the the advice to buy low, sell high? To make no friends in the pits and take no prisoners?