[ExI] next county

Tue Aug 4 15:29:35 UTC 2020

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat
Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 6:50 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] next county

On Tue, Aug 4, 2020 at 9:15 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

>Everything is not political.

Very true, everything is not political, however if I were to systematically debate your points one by one, as is my usual habit, in the current atmosphere there's not a doubt in my mind that I would be accused of being political and booted off the list. Therefore your arguments must remain unchallenged.

John K Clark

OK cool no worries John, we understand.  A toxic environment developed here over the past few yrs, many valued contributors left.  But we can fix it.  This is long, but please at least skim it, for I could use the advice.

Here’s why I am obsessing about all this.  I was chosen as a member of a board of advisors for the local public schools.  We have members on that board who span the traditional spectrum and those who are not on it at all: Indians on H1B visas who plan to stay only long enough to learn how to build electric cars, after which they will go back to India and China and build them there for instance, and at least one I think is an illegal immigrant but none of that matters because this is a free state with only one mainstream party.

The governor has some influence on how we start school in 9 days, but ironically… the people who may have the most direct influence are members of the county health department, who can shut us down if we don’t pass their inspection.  But we don’t know who they are, because they… are… not… elected.  Think about that for a minute.  Oy vey, mercy.  Unelected bureaucrats can overrule everything we are trying to do.

I come from an oddball case: I am working with advanced students as a volunteer (we volunteers get to choose what we volunteer to do (it’s one of the privileges of not accepting a paycheck (I have a lot more to offer high school level elite students than I do to struggling or disengaged or younger (I have no idea how to help those.)))))   My oddball case: my son and his cadre have done GREAT under distance learning.  The teachers mostly got off the runway and they took right off, they soar with eagles.

OK then.  We are not directors, but we are advisors.  The state wants us to enforce social distancing, even if it means double shifting students.  Problem: this particular high school is so crowded, we could double-shift and still not make the necessary 6 ft or 2 meter distancing.  Not only that… well, we have all been to high school.  Regardless of the rules, sometimes in high school the social distance goes to zero.  Hell, for some students it even goes… um… negative.  And sinusoidal but I digress.  They won’t necessarily follow the rules.  We didn’t either. 

We could cut the student body in half and still not make the county and state guidelines for this particular high school.  if we fail they could unapologetically kick us all off the campus adios amigos, Which creates a whole nuther bunch of headaches.  

However… I also know that my case is an oddball: after a survey (and similar results from others doing the same) we confidently (if disappointedly) conclude that distance learning has been generally a failure for most students, and is inadequate even for average students.  We think it is completely inadequate for younger students.

So…

None of this has anything to do with traditional politics from what I can see, so I would think it would be allowed on ExI.  I am not criticizing anyone or promoting anyone.  If I were to promote anyone, it would be the non-politician Sal Khan (it is not too lake to draft that guy (drag him kicking and screaming to Washington to make him be our leader (but that would be a tragic waste of a perfectly good Sal Khan (and we have only one of him.))))  

I am not advocating for any particular party or philosophy, only reporting what I see: distance learning is working for a few, generally not working well for the middle and is a total failure for the lower end students, many of whom disengaged entirely.

The baseline plan which starts in 9 days: we will have all mainstream students distance learning at first, probably the first semester.  The students identified as struggling, the disengaged, language challenged, economically challenged, homeless, the illegal immigrants, the learning disabled, juvenile delinquents on probation for major violent felonies etc will be on campus starting 13 August as will some of the (bravest) teachers.  

We rigged up some cameras which follow motion, so they can broadcast lectures the way baseball contests are being done: to mostly empty classrooms (I don’t know if students will be offered the opportunity to pay 100 bucks to make cardboard likenesses of themselves to place in a chair in the mostly empty classrooms.)

John that’s where I am: trying to figure out if we have made some kind of systematic error in how covid numbers were counted.  It might be there was some error but it wasn’t huge.  It could be that over time, more and more people will test and find they had covid and recovered without incident, we don’t know.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for the local public school advisory board, I am all ears.

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