Comments

Episode-1887- Listener Calls for 10-20-16 — 6 Comments

  1. To the caller who asked about how to sort truth from fiction. The best tool I have found for this by far is the Trivium. Being able to pick logical fallacies when you hear or read them is critical to understand when you are being lied to, whether it is intentional or not. http://www.triviumeducation.com isa good place to start

  2. Regarding fear of failure…. I also agree it’s the school system that drives it into us, and the media that reinforces it by feeding us a constant diet of fear. And speaking from my own experience it’s not just Millenials who had fear of failing and making mistakes pounded into them. I was born in the mid-70’s (late Gen-X’er I guess), and I felt that fear and the importance of ‘gotta get it right the first time’ being driven into me constantly in school. This fear of making mistakes has taken a lot of effort for me to resist, and I use the term “resist” versus “overcome” because it is always whispering to me in the back of my mind. I’ve found the best way to minimize it and resist it is to force myself out of my comfort zone for long periods (living in a different country and trying to learn a different language is a pretty good way of doing that I’ve found).
    This is one of the three big reasons I’m homeschooling our 7yo son now, and urge others to do so too (if they can). If one can’t, at least tell your kid on a regular basis that it’s ok to make mistakes, because it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever hear that at school. I really wish that I had accepted and internalized this back when I was a young adult, and I figure this wisdom is one of the best gifts I can give to my children. I honestly shudder to think that this conditioning might actually be worse now than when I was in school.

    • So I guess the fact that I have Aspergers was even more of a gift. I think I just never gave a shit.

      Teacher – “John if you don’t do this report you can only get a C this quarter even if you get all As on the test”.

      Me – “Okay great so that means, I will get a final average of an A because your tests are so easy I could read the entire book in a week, then take all your tests in a day and get all As, so there is no good reason for me to waste time on this report”.

      Teacher – (dumbfounded look) mumbles something about “the importance of learning from doing a complex project”.

      Seriously I just never really gave a flying fuck about school. I just wanted to do good enough to get done with it and move on with my life. I never even as a little kid believed the bullshit about my “permanent record”. That died a swift death.

      Me – “Hey dad like if you go to get a job or whatever do they look at your permanent record”.

      Dad – “What do you mean like if you committed a crime or something like that”.

      Me – “No like the teacher says if you do anything bad and it goes into your permanent record that it will follow you forever”.

      Dad – “Shhhhiiiiiittt, there isn’t an adult around that has ever seen such a thing, it doesn’t exist”.

      Me – “So the teachers are liars”.

      Dad – “Yea but don’t say that to them, that will get you into trouble”.

      Me – “Thanks Dad”.

      I saw it creep in on my son with the stupid STAR tests, that is Texas’ standardized you don’t graduate if you don’t pass tests. I told him son you are an A-B student, that test is one semi retards should be able to pass, that test is NOT FOR YOU, it is for your teacher to make sure she isn’t fudging the books. ‘

      Still it took him till about 10th grade to realize that I was right and let go of the fear. I can see how if I hadn’t been that way he never would of. If I knew then what I know today, that you can opt out and they can’t do shit I would have ended it before it became a problem.

    • I wish I had that “don’t give a shit factor” going on for me back then (took me a while to develop that on my own). Probably the two things that helped me eventually work my way through it was 1) my intense desire to just be left alone, and 2) my mom refuting the worst of the BS coming from school. What you say about finishing a whole semester in a week is serious deja vu… besides sketching and drawing in class, probably the next most common thing I caught hell for was ignoring the lecture and instead doing the reading & homework assignments ahead of time (because I just wanted over with), despite acing just about every one of those assignments. Even as a little kid I realized how ridiculously screwed up that situation was. The number of classes and teachers I found interesting and/or challenging enough to pay attention in class were definitely in the minority.
      As an aside, my homeschooled 7yo son is a few pages away from completing the huge 2nd grade 500+ page workbook after only 2 1/2 months, and will be moving to the 3rd grade workbook next week (at this rate I’ll need to pick up the 4th & 5th grade big workbooks by Xmas). I would have moved heaven and earth for the opportunity to do that when I was little and avoided the glorified daycare… er… school system 🙂

  3. You, off the cuff, mentioned Panera having a Kiosk. Just yesterday I saw that the OKC/Edmond Panera’s are installing ordering kiosks.

    Crystal ball much. Lol

  4. I think it is important to note that K12.com is a platform, not a school. Online schools pay for the K12.com platform to run their school on and they choose if they want to follow a state-mandated offering and therefore get certified and issue “diplomas”. Only if you want a state accredited graduation certificate does any of this even matter. Further if you are willing to pay there are several offerings outside of the “public” schools that use the K12.com platform.

    My son just completed last spring grades 7-12 (which he got done in 5 years) through Michigan Virtual Charter Academy that used the K12.com platform. While we did have to accept some stuff we probably would not have picked if we were completely doing out own thing, we felt the trade-off was worth it at this time to get a “real” diploma through a State of Michigan school. If he had been 5 years younger we probably would have picked a different path.

    I think we are rapidly approaching the time when other accrediting organizations outside of the various states will pop up and their diploma will be recognized as one from a state accreditation. After all, you have got 50 different sets of state rules on what it takes to graduate high school and I’ve never heard of anyone saying “Well since you graduated from a school in we don’t recognize your diploma as valid”.

    For someone that wants to really shake up the education system the K12.com platform could be used for that without any problems. Just because Government Schools use it doesn’t mean it couldn’t be used for any offering someone sees value in and gets parents to fund for their students.