Mar 12 2012: talks like this grate my nerves! As if passion only exists in the superlative form. As if society benefits more from an effort described in more shrill language.
Feb 28 2012: Seems to me that this thread is built on an obvious fallacy: sibling connection, or one of the other relations, is in fact a condition, so the question is moot. I would also assert that though there is something about loving without expectation, the absence of projected result does not presume an absence of condition.
Aug 14 2011: These issues and ideas are so grand that they are nearly impossible to respond to.
Why is it that whenever someone refers to the world or universe as interconnected that the assertion is put into the romantic box? It seems that her horror is that recognition--that her consumerist assumptions are implicated in the atrocities she safely assumed were perpetrated by monstrous and male others. If the better insights here are upheld and harnessed as a part of uprooting cancers, pollutions, and violations it is that they are part and parcel of our greed, our comforts, our ambitions. Or at least that the truth of the connection she witnesses is messier than the illusion that the atrocities are separate from ourselves.
Mar 14 2011: I am grateful that he is bringing attention to this problem. The state of education and its funding is a near crisis situation. However, Gates repeats some of the problems of the past. Incentive pay will have similar net effect as accountability (no child left, anyone?): performance assessment is deeply flawed. Test scores go up, but actual learning goes down. If there is pay at stake, cheating and teaching to the test are what really become incentivised. That problem will be greatly exacerbated if governing bodies generate the incentive structures. Changes in the system need to be made by people who have expertise and real experience in education--not government or corporate experience.
The policy should be simple: we need better, more funding for education, and we need to provide substantial supports for those within the education system to allocate and prioritize those funds. It is true that in the past there were instances where greater funding within school districts failed to improve success rates, but with a little digging one could easily discover that the funds were directed out of the teaching stream and into the administrative stream.
Smaller student to teacher ratios improve learning. Period. Teachers with better educational background improve learning period. Better pay attracts teachers with better educational background. Period. Vouchers and choice are great for communities who have resources--but they privatize and leave the poor with no resources. Public education must remain public. People who have resources already have enough access to the best institutions.
We also need to lose the poetics here: students are not the future leaders. They become our services and support systems very much in the here and now. Too many people fail to connect an educated skilled population with immediate needs--do you really want a doctor with better test scores but fewer cognitive problem-solving skills? Dumber Americans means compromises right here and now.
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A comment on Talk: Larry Smith: Why you will fail to have a great career
A comment on Conversation: Can we get "Unconditional Love" from people not related? (other than siblings, parents or wife)
A comment on Talk: Eve Ensler: Suddenly, my body
Why is it that whenever someone refers to the world or universe as interconnected that the assertion is put into the romantic box? It seems that her horror is that recognition--that her consumerist assumptions are implicated in the atrocities she safely assumed were perpetrated by monstrous and male others. If the better insights here are upheld and harnessed as a part of uprooting cancers, pollutions, and violations it is that they are part and parcel of our greed, our comforts, our ambitions. Or at least that the truth of the connection she witnesses is messier than the illusion that the atrocities are separate from ourselves.
A comment on Talk: Bill Gates: How state budgets are breaking US schools
The policy should be simple: we need better, more funding for education, and we need to provide substantial supports for those within the education system to allocate and prioritize those funds. It is true that in the past there were instances where greater funding within school districts failed to improve success rates, but with a little digging one could easily discover that the funds were directed out of the teaching stream and into the administrative stream.
Smaller student to teacher ratios improve learning. Period. Teachers with better educational background improve learning period. Better pay attracts teachers with better educational background. Period. Vouchers and choice are great for communities who have resources--but they privatize and leave the poor with no resources. Public education must remain public. People who have resources already have enough access to the best institutions.
We also need to lose the poetics here: students are not the future leaders. They become our services and support systems very much in the here and now. Too many people fail to connect an educated skilled population with immediate needs--do you really want a doctor with better test scores but fewer cognitive problem-solving skills? Dumber Americans means compromises right here and now.