[ExI] Update on the Hawaiian observatory shutdown

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat

Subject: Re: [ExI] Update on the Hawaiian observatory shutdown

 

>…Spike - can you tell me what's happening in your school?  And we have always had an anti-intellectual bent.  Natural thing - envy.  Refusal to believe that someone is way better than you, despite tons of evidence.  And it's also political - most of the undereducated people are conservatives and most educators are liberals.  Natural antagonism.  

 

 

 

BillW, let me go off on a fun tangent from your comment about undereducated people are conservative and most educators are liberals.

 

Just for fun, and let me acknowledge up front, that your mileage may vary.

 

Instead of the misused and vilified term “liberal” let us use progressive, not necessarily politically but as one model has it: the conservative doesn’t want too much change, but the progressive is good with major changes that happen quickly.  For the sake argument, let’s go with it.

 

By that paradigm, our legal system is perhaps one of the most progressive aspects of our culture, for it is adapting to so many new stimuli, such as the functional legalization of dope in pretty much all forms.

 

If we look at the other end of the spectrum, the most conservative aspect of modern culture would be… the public education system.  Faced with astonishing new technologies and opportunities, the public school system struggles to maintain the factory education model, even after it is perfectly clear that it doesn’t work for everyone.  With the arrival of excellent free online curricula, the student has the option of just going out and getting everything she needs, gobbling up advanced educational material at her own pace, going far beyond what the schools can or will provide.

 

This isn’t the school’s fault.  There is a large contingency of parents who believe their children should be taught the same way they were, even though their world is far different from the one we grew up in.  If children were taught the same things we were in the same way, I consider that an abject failure.  But that is what they are asked to do.

 

The worst part of it is that schools are incentivized not to improve average scores but to reduce the spread between the high achievers and the low.  In spite of every effort, that spread is increasing dramatically.  Oh boy can I offer examples of that in my own community, mercy.  The public school is still mostly populated with students who expect the teacher to be a sage on the stage, giving traditional lectures, not expecting (or getting) much in return.  The elite students expect the teacher to be a guide on the side, and they fully expect (and achieve) far beyond what the teacher know.

 

Details available on request.

 

spike

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