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Posted by Amy Blankenship on November 28, 2007, 10:26 am
----- Original Message -----
Newsgroups: alt.planning.urban,alt.architecture
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 12:22 AM
Subject: Re: The value of shopping local
>
>>
> [ ... ]
>>>
>>> I know poeple who had a lto of variety of courses, as did you. I've
>>> also known people wose public "education" was pathetic.
>>
>> So, _some_ school systems are bad, others are good. Do you _really_
>> think that one room schoolhouses would have been uniformly good?
>
> THAT WAS NOT THE DAMN POINT ALREADY. It was one frigging example, a
> *postulate*, a *possible example*.
>
> You continually denegrate other people's supposed "lack of comprehension",
> yet overlook your own.
Not really... I was replying to your post as I went along. You hadn't yet
made your point that you hadn't really thought out your one-room schoolhouse
example.<
<stuff snipped>
>>>>> THe difference was that education was more local, and I think that
>>>>> people therefore were more invested in it.
>>>>
>>>> That certainly may be a difference, but since your root claim that
>>>> the education of the time was better than now doesn't seem to hold
>>>> much water, I am not sure whether it is relevant.
>>>
>>> That doesn't really follow - I said, basically, "X seems to have been
>>> the case, and if it was, I think it had to do with Y", and it's not
>>> really logical to reject Y because X might not have been accurate.
>>> IOW, Y was a proposed contribution to X, but if X is not accurate,
>>> that in and of itself in no way disproves Y.
>>
>> Nor does it prove it. The biggest problem with your assertion is not
>> whether or not any presumed quality in way-back education might have
>> been caused by community involvement is true or not, but that even if
>> it is true, there's probably not much we can do to generate community
>> involvement.
>
> Self-defeatism *certainly* won't agenerate community involvement - you've
> thrown in th etowel before you've even entered the ring. Yeesh.
That's not defeatism, it's accepting the things we cannot change and having
the wisdom to know the difference.
>>>>> Also, a huge problem is that the people born in the 60's and 70's
>>>>> *generally* (not of course universal) knew less hardship than did
>>>>> us "old geezers", and when they had kids, those kids (again, very
>>>>> general) knew even less hardship. It's not uncommon for kids to
>>>>> have weekly allowances exceeding $100-$300, even when the parents
>>>>> are working extra jobs to provide that allowance, and many kids
>>>>> don't even have trhe responsibility of taking out the garbage once
>>>>> a week, or mowing the law - they have no real *role* in their
>>>>> households, other than to exist.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure whether you can blame this circumstance on the
>>>> educational system,
>>>
>>> I did not do so. It's got to do with learning to take responsibility
>>> for oneself, which does have an impact upon how seriously one takes
>>> one's education.
>>>
>>>> except to the extent it has succeeded and led to a
>>>> higher standard of life. I doubt we'd want to reverse that success
>>>> to induce more hardship in future generations. If that is your
>>>> goal, there are plenty of countries that already have advanced
>>>> levels of hardship where you could move and raise children. Except
>>>> that you're probably not at an age where that's something you're
>>>> likely to be contemplating ;-).
>>>
>>> So mere material acquisition, and being able to relinquish personal
>>> responsibility, equates to "higher standard of living"...?
>>
>> Being able to eat when you are hungry and live in climate-controlled
>> comfort certainly does.
>
> So the onlyu thing you can see is either material glut, or starvation?
> How
> tediously black-or-white.
And you criticize my reading comprehension...
>>> As I said, many kids have no real *role* in their households, other
>>> than to exist - and I'll add, receive all sorts of comforts and funds
>>> regardless of how they behave. And, sorry, but no, that is not
>>> psychologically beneficial.
>>
>> And how is the educational system supposed to solve this?
>
> Again, I didn't say it was. It's one of the things that interferes with
> education.
>
> [ ... ]
>>> THe point is to look at what has worked in the past, consider *why*
>>> it worked, and think of how to apply those principles to the future -
>>> the point is *not* about some simplistic assunption of "returning to
>>> the supposed good old days". Part of what has been recurring
>>> throughout this thread is the fact that schools *are* often more like
>>> old turn-of-the century factories than they are like, oh, say,
>>> Socrates' interactive circle of students (i.e. hands-on so to speak),
>>> and wven worse, too many schools *are* mroe like warehouses than even
>>> factories.
>>
>> I agree with that. However, if the things that made old time schools
>> work (to whatever extent they did) was community involvement, but
>> community involvement is not something that can be made to happen, it
>> may not be terribly useful to try to emphasize that aspect too much.
>> Instead, we should look at what we _can_ do.
>
> I hate defeatism. I really do. It's too damn easy to say "it can't be
> done, so we won't try". Defeatism is one of the major factors behind most
> problems - people don't even bothe rtrying to do anything, because it's
> easier to just sit back and say it can't be done.
How bout: we're not likely to solve that one at first, so look at things we
CAN control and go after those first?
I noticed you deleted my points about the more likely causes of why the
school systems worked in the past and what we _actually_ need to do to solve
it. Sounds like you're not interested in any other perspectives than yours.
I suppose if you say "the reason schools were better then is X" and X is
something that's conspicuously difficult to recapture under today's
circumstances, then you don't need to feel so bad about not coming up with
any actual workable strategies for solving the problem.
-Amy
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