Gaashk
7hr ago
There's a sense in which we don't educate them, certainly. In my preferred world, the ones who aren't expected to live independently would have a pleasant sensory environment prioritized over being in a school setting, freaking out at "transitions" every hour or so. We could build some gardens with greenhouses for what we currently spend on specialists, and have them hang out enjoying the pleasant sensory experience.
My main impression of why we don't is that if they're in a normal school, with normal administrators stopping in and checking on them now and then, and normal specials teachers trying to engage with them, it will be obvious if their minders become weird and abusive towards them. Whereas if they're in a completely different environment, everyone might just spiral into even more misery and degradation, even if there are gardens.
Gaashk
7hr ago
Someone who can follow Khan Academy is probably at least 10th percentile in public education, and would be fine in a regular remedial class. They might have an IEP, but it'll just say things like they should sit near the teacher and have extra time on tests. Perhaps an extra study hall and interventionist time.
Gaashk
7hr ago
Self contained social education classes are often like that in some respects, though they need. lot of help still with things like bothering each other and toileting.
I don't necessarily have a problem with the argument that this is tax money, redistribution is the best form of distribution, and the Public doesn't care how aggravating your childhood is. Well, I'd rather have even more niche schools than charter friendly states currently have, but it's a valid preference. My main problem with the current article is:
Parents, credulous towards this propaganda and often already looking for excuses to separate their children from poor kids and students of color, pull their kids out of public schools.
Which is entirely unproven, and more snide than he usually is. What if it's not that the kids are poor, but that they're flailing around in the school entrance, screaming their heads off? (I've seen this) What if it's not that they're of color, but that they're pacing around relentlessly, stealing everyone's school supplies, tearing up their papers, for hours at a time? (I've seen this) What if your child has a disability, and their also disabled classmate keeps pulling her by the hair, and the staff are all wearing helmets and shin guards, because the classmate kicks them and throws things at their heads, but your child doesn't have those protections, and isn't able to protect herself because she's a six year child with Down's syndrome? (I've seen this)
I don't mind Freddie having his Marxist policy preferences, as long as he shows that he knows how disruptive the most disruptive 5% of children are.
In general, I like Freddie DeBoer's takes on education. There's a lot of poor thinking about how if only... teachers were better paid, or worse paid; students were tested more, or tested less; unions were weaker, or stronger -- then things would be better. Freddie's there to point out that American public education is exactly what one would expect, given that it is full of Americans.
Enter his newest essay. American schools are exactly what you would expect, given their demographics, there isn't much to be done about that, the teachers and systems are exactly what they need to be, given the constraints they're under, and so... well off parents are racist for preferring schools that are allowed to expel the very lowest performing children.
Wait, what?
My main impression is that when he hears "bad kids," he's somehow thinking of a well meaning black kid who uses AAVE and wants to play sports ball more than learn math, but is in general pretty normal. And in a lot of classrooms it does. But sometimes, in some classrooms, it means a kid freaks out, smashes the other kids' stuff, sometimes hits the other kids, screeches, thrashes around on the floor, and then when they eventually leave, they come back five minutes later with candy in their mouth. None of the other kids are allowed to eat candy in that classroom even if they have it. It doesn't matter, the teacher just mutters to finish the candy quickly and get on with it.
Maybe it's an overrepresented dynamic in schools I've observed, but in addition to outlier events like knife fights, if a kid has the misfortune to be assigned an all day elementary class with a "disregulated" classmate or two, there's literally nothing to do about it, other than changing schools. This is a Problem, actually. It is a Problem with the laws and court decisions, not necessarily individual decisions on a school or even district level, but Freddie is simply wrong in how he talks about the "hardest to educate students." Education Realist was more on track when he wrote about the topic a couple of years ago.
Special ed law originated before medical advances kept children alive in conditions we never anticipated. Imagine just one severely disabled child born at 25 weeks, blind, wheelchair bound, incontinent, and destined to life institutionalization. That child will need an expensive wheelchair, transportation, at least two paras, at a cost of what–$100K or more? Now multiply by what, 100,000 kids? Fewer? more? Now move up the disability chain to kids who can walk, can make it to the bathroom with an escort, but and can’t be put in a classroom without two full-time paras and they’ll disrupt the classroom every day. Or the kids who are locked in an autistic world, screaming if touched. There are still several steps up the chain until you get to the merely low cognitive ability students, the “mildly retarded” as they used to be called, the Downs Syndrome children that IDEA was originally intended to support.
This isn't the same disregulation most parents are pulling their kids out for, since they're in segregated classrooms, but is in fact the "hardest to educate students" that public schools are dealing with. As I recall Freddie did teach actual school at one point, but it looks like he was teaching high school composition, and for all his research, still underplays what the bottom of even normal suburban public schools are like.
Gaashk
1d ago
The one for my area is, to be clear, not Marketplace based, but a group where people ask other people for recommendations. I might use Google if I didn't have any other choice, but knowing it's a bad source for that kind of thing. I'd be more likely to call the number I see on a sign on the side of the road.
Gaashk
1d ago
Do people find plumbers from Google search results? There's a neighborhood Facebook group that's mostly about that, and people will ask in person if they can about that and auto mechanics, unless it's the most trivial possible thing everyone can do. Most of them don't even have listings or websites, that's how they signal they can get enough in person recommendations.
Gaashk
2d ago
There was the time I cleaned out a closet full of dead mouse bodies without a mask, and then people said: you shouldn't do that, mouse droppings carry diseases! I have now mildly updated towards not doing that in the future.
Gaashk
5d ago
I would consider watching an episode or two of a Youtube of this, or Hell's Kitchen tier reality show. But ultimately it would come across as trashy, and get stale fast. I would never use it to actually choose a restaurant to eat at.
Gaashk
6d ago
I enjoyed the essay, as well as "The Colors of Her Coat,"but lacking in his usual clarity -- I don't know what he likes, or whether he's really secure enough in those preferences to defy the snobs. He seems to like Studio Ghibli style custom images, Art Deco doors, and stained glass windows. He sort of wanted a stained glass window with a famous scientist in it a while back, but I think not enough to actually commission one. Of course, custom art windows aren't cheap, but that was also true in the past, people who weren't nobility would have to get by with art they made themselves. Sometimes he seems to hope that AI art will solve his problem, but I don't think it will, because things that can be printed already exist to suite all tastes, and things like doors and windows are not getting there any time soon.
I feel basically neutral about Angelus Novus. I think I like the art better than the flowery description that Scott quoted, despite not liking it all that much. The description of the new mono print process he used to make it was interesting. The mouth is quite interesting. Visiting David did not fill me with awe at the human figure, though I was impressed with the scale.
The Aesthetic Experience aspect of great art may have been overhyped. Sometimes people have great spiritual experiences when praying or meditating or whatever, but traditional Christianity is right to discourage people from chasing after it. It's neat to go to the Chicago Art Institute and look atet impressionist paintings. They're quite large! It's fine to just admire them, they have good colors, the painters used a lot of paint! Someone probably could gain art fans by doing actually Impressionist things, like hauling a giant canvas off to the haystack every week to get the different lights. But hardly anyone wants to, they are not enamored with the idea, it is not the right moment, there have only ever been a few people who were truly passionate about it, and there aren't any I've heard of now.
Writing about art critics seems unlikely to lead much of anywhere.
Gaashk
6d ago
This is similar to my observations. Hispanic women with working class mothers also like impractically long nails.
I'm not sure what "Ressentiment" adds to the discussion, or why it looks like a fake French version of resentment, which is similar and widely understood. If someone is resentful about their impotency, like some of the characters in JD Vance's book, how is it helpful to add "ressentiment" on top of that?
Gaashk
11d ago
Conservative women mostly aspire towards marriage, and are picky about religious groups, which clump politically as well. Like if a Catholic girl is a bit socialist, and her prospective partner is a bit into Republican coded Fait and Family stuff, but they both think they should listen to the Pope and bishops on serious matters, then that's fine.
Gaashk
11d ago
It is obvious, because that's literally what matchmaking is about, thinking about the desires of both parties, and whether they will match up. That's why I referenced Emma, because it's a novel where the female protagonist thought too much about what she valued in her friend, rated her too highly in respect to marriage, and made a mess of things as a result.
The ick is probably from times and places where women were literally bought and sold, and didn't get to choose.
Gaashk
12d ago
Yes, if he talks with his women friends about romantic matches and references Emma, they will probably be more interested and experience less ick.
Gaashk
12d ago
Yes, it does seem like that would come across as crass in most contexts, like thinly veiled male locker room talk.
Many women have complicated feelings about being hot, attractive, or even beautiful, and are constantly policing each other about modesty. Traditionally, they should be attractive enough to attract a husband, but not so hot that men are constantly lusting after them. They should have kids while they can, but also at a respectable adult age. Most belief systems regulate these things quite heavily, and "SMV"maxers are defectors, scorned by other women.
Gaashk
16d ago
Yes, something along those lines. For most men, that he is able to, and wants to, work an ordinary, predictable, man in the grey flannel suit kind of job while his wife has and raises children for a decade, then spends several more years training for and finding outside work.
Gaashk
17d ago
That was my experience as well. I heard it. It was fun! I listened five times of so, and that was enough. Now sometimes I hear it and groan. That's also how I feel about "Golden," but since I have little girls, I'll continue hearing it for some time, probably.
Gaashk
17d ago
(unattractive) men are expendable, mostly unwanted, dangerous, useless, and generally deserve to be lonely, poor, and depressed.
There are some different things going on.
Yes, men who act like depressed women are unattractive to women. Very clearly so.
You say that women's actions have changed, but men's haven't. That is untrue. Men's actions have changed from running an economy where most of them were farm laborers, and many of them are soldiers at some point in their lives, to one where most of them are doing basically the same work as women. It's romantically neutral to negative to work the same job as a romantic interest, but it's unwise for a woman to choose to try to attract an older man and become his tradwife, because there aren't actually that many such positions available (it's much harder to find a breadwinner husband than a job), he has to actually be extremely trustworthy, because being a divorced housewife is pretty lame even with alimony (it probably won't work twice), and they actually have to get along, we all live in nuclear families now.
Yes, of course a man who expresses that the particular woman in front of him is wonderful, and he would be so pleased to write her a poem, take her out to dinner, dance with her, and stare longingly into her eyes is more attractive than a man who expresses that she's fundamentally just acting out her sordid evopsyche roles, that she is in fact a cheap whore.
That's not to say that there aren't women who are achingly badly, or even that current social systems don't produce more bad action from women than some other systems.
Should we as a society do something? Should we pay women to be single mothers?
Paying women to be single mothers seems like a bad idea: children should have fathers. Not enough having involved fathers is part of the current social malaise.
Perhaps we should live in smaller social groups. The only time I've gotten romantic attention from men, and eventually found a husband, was through small social groups. It's not that women find 80% of men unattractive full stop. They find 80% of men who are strangers unattractive. If there are 10 eligible bachelors, it's much clearer whether any of them are a good match or not. I would like my children to be involved in smaller social groups, including in high school, college, church, and clubs as teens and young adults. Even modern churches are the wrong size! Many are tiny, weird house churches or enormous, town sized mega churches. People are meant to interact with about a hundred people or so, the appearance of infinite choice is going very badly. We've discussed moving to some more village like environments when our daughters are older.
Gaashk
17d ago
Those clubs sound like they would be highly gender segregated. That's fine, I think basically banning gender segregated spaces was a mistake.
One of the things that people did in the past was to have tension between most activities, which were sex segregated (school, sewing circle, calling for tea, books, cigars, and talking about politics, etc), and a few activities, which were not (church, dances, dinners). Then the people in the segregated spaces are not datable, but those in the mixed spaces are. That seems probably better for romantic tension than the current set up where a bunch of people at work or in the robotics club or wherever seem like they might be datable, but in practice aren't.
Technical high schools and community colleges are relatively popular, but they're for the average student, or above average working class, not the trouble makers.
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