Education in the United States
We have a thread devoted to academic freedom at universities, and we have a thread devoted to whether higher education should be subsidized. This thread is a landing spot for discussion of other issues related to education -- issues like school integration, pedagogy, the influence of politics on education (and vice versa), charter schools, public v. private schools, achievement gaps, and gerrymandering of school districts.
I'll start the discussion with two articles. The first deals with a major changes in the public school system in NYC.
NYC's public schools are highly segregated for such a diverse city. Last Friday, Bill DeBlasio announced the following:
Middle schools will see the most significant policy revisions. The city will eliminate all admissions screening for the schools for at least one year, the mayor said. About 200 middle schools — 40 percent of the total — use metrics like grades, attendance and test scores to determine which students should be admitted. Now those schools will use a random lottery to admit students.
In doing this, Mr. de Blasio is essentially piloting an experiment that, if deemed successful, could permanently end the city’s academically selective middle schools, which tend to be much whiter than the district overall.
DeBlasio also announced that:
New York will also eliminate a policy that allowed some high schools to give students who live nearby first dibs at spots — even though all seats are supposed to be available to all students, regardless of where they reside.
The system of citywide choice was implemented by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2004 as part of an attempt to democratize high school admissions. But Mr. Bloomberg exempted some schools, and even entire districts, from the policy, and Mr. de Blasio did not end those carve outs.
The most conspicuous example is Manhattan’s District 2, one of the whitest and wealthiest of the city’s 32 local school districts. Students who live in that district, which includes the Upper East Side and the West Village, get priority for seats in some of the district’s high schools, which are among the highest-performing schools in the city.
No other district in the city has as many high schools — six — set aside for local, high-performing students.
Many of those high schools fill nearly all of their seats with students from District 2 neighborhoods before even considering qualified students from elsewhere. As a result, some schools, like Eleanor Roosevelt High School on the Upper East Side, are among the whitest high schools in all of New York City.
Here is the New York Times article that describes the changes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/nyreg...
Obvious questions for discussion include:
- How large a priority should cities place on ensuring that city schools are representative of the city as a whole?
- Are measures like the ones that DeBlasio is implementing likely to be effective in making schools more representative?
- Will these measures have unintended (or intended) consequences that extend far beyond changing the representativeness of city schools?
I am a Very Serious Person in the eyes of who? I am 100% certain that my musings on politics are meaningless to the world. I have no more influence on public policy or the political opinions of others than a random person on the street.
I try to think things through in a rational way, but I assume that everyone here believes the same about themselves.
That's just the term used for people whose positions mostly align with the NYT and WashPo and who trust the experts and the media-- it doesn't have much of a reflection on how much influence you might have, although Very Serious People do tend to make more money and/or have the sorts of jobs that rely on them accepting the propaganda (as per Chomsky on the topic below)
One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda. Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system—and they believe what the system expects them to believe. By and large, they’re part of the privileged elite, and share the interests and perceptions of those in power.
No, it's a term that you use after picking it up in an article, one that allows you to be dismissive of others as not questioning things, unlike deep thinkers such as yourself.
https://crookedtimber.org/2015/07/22/a-b...
This would seem to align pretty well with my take. No specific mention of the NYT or WaPO is made, but the Iraq war and its supporters are mentioned and you certainly had plenty of cheerleading and war propaganda from both of those publications.
Just to expand on the bolded-- essentially the very serious people are the ones who think they have all the answers, and they think that because their answers are reinforced by the institutions of power and their media mouthpieces (e.g NYT and WaPO).
And on a deeper level they likely parrot these opinions of power because they they enjoy it and because they enjoy the proximity to power, and in many cases their own livelihood depends on it-- so it wouldn't just be their sense of self-worth but the
At least the last time you used the Chomsky quote, it was clear it was unrelated to this VSP silliness.
That's just the term used for people whose positions mostly align with the NYT and WashPo and who trust the experts and the media-- it doesn't have much of a reflection on how much influence you might have, although Very Serious People do tend to make more money and/or have the sorts of jobs that rely on them accepting the propaganda (as per Chomsky on the topic below)
To state the obvious, Chomsky himself is highly educated (Ivy League PHD) and a lifelong academic.
No, it's a term that you use after picking it up in an article, one that allows you to be dismissive of others as not questioning things, unlike deep thinkers such as yourself.
No I did not pick it up in that article lol. I've never seen that website before or since posting that article.
I'm not sure where I picked it up. It's possible I coined it myself.
Definitely listen carefully when the resident school shooter truther gives us advice on how to be serious people.
No I did not pick it up in that article lol. I've never seen that website before or since posting that article.
I'm not sure where I picked it up. It's possible I coined it myself.
Where you picked it up is unimportant, or even if you coined it yourself. The point was that it's not "the term used...", which implies that is a common usage.
And that you use it to be dismissive of others as unable to question things in the thorough way that you believe yourself to.
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Looks like it started around 2012, right when the very serious people really started taking off.
At least the last time you used the Chomsky quote, it was clear it was unrelated to this VSP silliness.
I'm still not sure what you're trying to say here, and I guess you would have to quote when the last time I used that Chomsky quote because you did quote doesn't reflect what you're saying. But in that article you claimed I got this from, there is a passage which reflects Chomsky quite well
Being a Very Serious Person is about occupying a structural position that tends to reinforce, rather than counter, one’s innate biases and prejudices. Put slightly differently, the Very Serious Person theory is one that is at least as much about _collective structures of opinion_ as it is about individuals. We all err, sometimes very badly. The theory says that VSPs face less incentive either to second guess their errors as they are making them, or to think through their errors after they have made them, because collective structures reinforce their tendency to think that they are right in the first instance, and their tendency to think that they ought to have been right (if it weren’t for those inconvenient facts/specific and contingent circumstances that meant that things didn’t go quite as predicted just this once) in the second.
Being a Very Serious Person sounds fun, but I'm still not sure that I qualify.
I usually assume that I have neither sufficient information nor sufficient competence to confidently offer opinions on highly complex topics.
That's why I usually avoid offering strong opinions on things like large-scale health care reform, the effectiveness of providing military aid to Ukraine, balancing environmental concerns v. energy requirements, optimal monetary policy, etc.
you know how the 1a works? if a majority wants to ban speech they dislike for whatever reason, they can't.
That's the model i propose to extend simply to all individual freedoms. How you work, who you hire, what substances you want to consume, what you want to do with your own building and so on.
Severely limiting the perimeter of what the state can do wrt individual freedom.
But what happens when my exercise of my freedom interferes with your exercise of yours? For example, when I decide that I want to burn tires at the back of my building every night and the noxious smoke keeps going straight into your bedroom window? Or I decide that I want to consume a bunch of those substances and exercise my absolute freedom to drive and run you over? Or I hire you to paint my building and forget to tell you that the insulation is asbestos and you get cancer?
You realise that with the exception of laws against drugs and prostitution (both of which I also think should be legal, btw), most laws and regulations are there to protect you from me doing things that might harm you without your knowledge or consent?
"Muh freedumbs" is a nice soundbite that works on simpletons like MAGA chuds, but it doesn't really mean a whole lot when you scrape the surface, since I doubt anyone, even you, would actually want to live in a world where everyone has "freedom" to do anything. It would be close to anarchy.
Ultimately, it works for speech, because speech and speech alone can't physically harm anyone. Although it's still restricted when it does have serious potential to cause physical harm, such as incitements to violence.
But what happens when my exercise of my freedom interferes with your exercise of yours? For example, when I decide that I want to burn tires at the back of my building every night and the noxious smoke keeps going straight into your bedroom window? Or I decide that I want to consume a bunch of those substances and exercise my absolute freedom to drive and run you over? Or I hire you to paint my building and forget to tell you that the insulation is asbestos and you get cancer?
You realise that w
The answer to some of your questions is "tort law", to others is civil responsibility.
It doesn't matter why you drive over me and there is no reason to treat it differently if it's because you are tired or under drugs.
What matters is the damage caused and only that.
Most laws and regulations are there to create a never ending huge stream of revenue for "experts", and to create a stream of revenue (and votes) for politicians who carve exceptions to those rules for their donors.
In other cases they are there just to exercise control over people for the sake of it, a bdsm, sadistic legal construction.
In some cases it's just about violently forcing the majority moral system upon the minority (drugs, alcohol, smoking, porn legality, prostitution and so on and on).
Btw according to many (most?) people who love rules speech can actually cause harm and that's why in most countries they wildly regulate it (against their political opponents of course).
The idea that you mandate plastic bottles to have caps that can't be removed easily to "protect you from me doing things that might harm you without your knowledge or consent" is for the actual dumb people to believe.
The idea I have to click a popup in every site to protect me is the same
Ok, let's dive a little deeper into this cauldron of craziness. What if I just shoot you in the kneecaps because I felt like it that day (I think it's a safe assumption that in this utopian world of yours I have my own personal arsenal handy), is that also a civil matter?
But what happens when my exercise of my freedom interferes with your exercise of yours? For example, when I decide that I want to burn tires at the back of my building every night and the noxious smoke keeps going straight into your bedroom window? Or I decide that I want to consume a bunch of those substances and exercise my absolute freedom to drive and run you over? Or I hire you to paint my building and forget to tell you that the insulation is asbestos and you get cancer?
You realise that w
I've had a variation of this discussion with Luciom in the past. For most of this stuff, he is going to say that it is a violation of property rights and that people who violate property rights generally should be subject to harsh criminal punishments.
In the real world, it is often uncertain whether one person (which often is an entity, not a natural person) is violating another person's property rights. But he doesn't deal in nuance, as you know.
I've had a variation of this discussion with Luciom in the past. For most of this stuff, he is going to say that it is a violation of property rights and that people who violate property rights generally should be subject to harsh criminal punishments.
In the real world, it is often uncertain whether one person (which often is an entity, not a natural person) is violating another person's property rights. But he doesn't deal in nuance, as you know.
I deal in nuance, but you don't as you never even try to reason in terms of the damage caused by regulations, you only see the problem they purportedly try to solve and not the costs.
It's not like there aren't grey areas where it's unclear how to deal with a possible property right violation. There are.
It's that most regulations cause more damage than they reduce, and a lot of it is indirect, and it is almost never accounted for by people like you who like the regulatory state.
To begin with every man hour in society dedicated to writing rules, enforcing them, studying them, and complying with them is a cost that should be fully accounted for.
And then there is the negative sum cat,-mice race between regulator and regulated individuals/companies that simply wastes resources.
Do you ever account for all of that for every single rule before reasoning on the purported benefits?
I don't have to click a pop-up every time I go to a new site on the internet. For sites in the U.S., nothing pops up as a matter of regulation, and you can download pop-up blockers if you are driven to distraction by the occasional website that asks you to opt in to cookies.
I've had a variation of this discussion with Luciom in the past. For most of this stuff, he is going to say that it is a violation of property rights and that people who violate property rights generally should be subject to harsh criminal punishments.
In the real world, it is often uncertain whether one person (which often is an entity, not a natural person) is violating another person's property rights. But he doesn't deal in nuance, as you know.
So, basically, he just wants to be able to do a bunch of obnoxious and negligent stuff, but if the same stuff is done to him, he wants to invoke some massively broad "property rights" that sound like they mean whatever he wants them to mean at the time.
I don't have to click a pop-up every time I go to a new site on the internet. For sites in the U.S., nothing pops up as a matter of regulation, and you can download pop-up blockers if you are driven to distraction by the occasional website that asks you to opt in to cookies.
Yeah, that's a thing in Europe, it's GDPR related as Luciom says. It's hardly the massive inconvenience he makes it out to be though, it's literally one click for most web sites the first time you visit them on a fresh browser cache.
There are several million people who dedicated their entire career to help other comply with rules and/or elide them, and the totality of their work is a societal waste of resources.
Ofc if those hundreds of billions/couple trillions per year are booked as "gdp-services" as if it was wealth creation for society , then you will love the regulatory state.
70-90% of lawyers fees and 90-95% of accountant fees are pure societal waste. Destruction of value, bright minds spent on attrition
I . For sites in the U.S., nothing pops up as a matter of regulation, and you can download pop-up blockers if you are driven to distraction by the occasional website that asks you to opt in to cookies.
You aren't in the EU , the USA isn't the only country in the world.
There are sometimes American sites I can't access s without a VPN because they don't care to be gdpr compliant
Ok, let's dive a little deeper into this cauldron of craziness. What if I just shoot you in the kneecaps because I felt like it that day (I think it's a safe assumption that in this utopian world of yours I have my own personal arsenal handy), is that also a civil matter?
There would be a civil and a criminal matter arising from that as currently, I don't understand your doubt.
But in my model the sentencing would be far harsher than in yours (high probability that person will never again be part of society of the event as described can be proven on trial).
Gratuitous violence would be punished by death
