Posts tagged “education”

I'm not advocating mandatory parental licensing, but we should be teaching parents how to parent. Research shows parenting styles meaningfully predict children's educational success. We already offer financial support to disadvantaged kids; teaching parents evidence-based parenting skills is another tool worth using. The question is how.

A Christian college receiving $10 million in state funding expelled an honor roll student simply for being gay. This is textbook discrimination, and exactly why church and state must stay separate. Spread this story.

Federally funded abstinence-only sex ed is teaching kids that touching genitals causes pregnancy and half of gay teens have HIV. My tax dollars are funding medieval gender roles dressed up as science. I am furious. You should be too.

Grade inflation is real and inevitable given the vicious cycle: examiners reduce syllabus to boost pass rates, so teachers teach less, so students learn less, requiring further reductions just to maintain results. Pass rates were never meant to rise indefinitely; they exist to indicate relative ability and enable selection.

I have mixed feelings about the Harvey Milk LGBTQ school. It treats symptoms rather than the real problem: American high school culture's brutal treatment of anyone different. But since fixing that culture is nearly impossible, I'll take what I can get. At least some kids will be safe.

Finished my degree at Warwick with a 2.1. The fear is gone. Relief. Joy. Breathe.

Finished with school, and I couldn't be happier about it. Screw the educational establishment! (Except Edinburgh's Informatics Department. Please call me.)

A prerequisite map for learning about computers, structured as an outward-flowing bubble diagram. Students progress from the center outward, completing each topic before unlocking the next. Essentially a mind-map of computer literacy, but surprisingly effective as a teaching tool.

I found a nifty disk-wiping tool on Freshmeat that boots from a floppy and nukes hard drives, with obvious legitimate uses and some delightfully evil ones. Also, UK exam boards have massively screwed up grades this year, leaving everyone uncertain whether students deserve their university places.

I attended St. Mary's College in Trinidad and hated every minute of it. Crumbling facilities, Catholic indoctrination, non-Catholic students used as unpaid groundskeepers, a culture of universal mutual hostility, and a teaching staff composed almost entirely of incompetents and burnouts. Sadly, it's still one of the better schools in the country.

I'm angry about Columbine. America's conformist moron majority makes life hell for anyone different, then acts shocked when those kids snap. I was bullied, gay, and miserable in school. Until America stops punishing nonconformists and starts holding bullies accountable, my sympathy for shooting victims is basically zero.