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[da_nang]

So...

CNN threatens to doxx a private citizen... because memes...

I can't imagine why the Internet is beating on the war drums again...

People at CNN should ask themselves, "Is it a good idea for me to give out my name, my phone number, my home address, pictures of myself, my spouse and my kids for all the world to see? That wouldn't be painting a giant red target, would it?"

And once they've gotten through that conundrum, they should be stunned by realization. "Wait... All of this, because some guy on the internet posted a meme? What even is my life?"

----

And people look at me like I'm from another planet when I tell them I don't have Facebook, Twitter etc and avoid using personal info as much as possible.

Now I hope they'll know why.

[EnigmaticHat]

high school will require students to have college-acceptance or job offer before allowing them to graduate.

This measure is receiving high praise as encouragement for students to make a plan for their life.
Personally, I see it only as incentive not to even bother trying to get an education in a city where many cannot afford college and job offers are very limited. I foresee dropout rates rising to all-time highs.

What a fucking mess.  Education isn't just about jobs.  Whether or not you can get a job is unrelated to whether you learned well.  On top of all that, graduating high school is a thing you put on your resume (before someone calls me out on that, its not about it looking good; its about the absence looking really really bad).  Denying kids that is going to hurt them so much.   This is the same city where the cops have a "black site" so I can only assume the entire city government has its head up its ass.  Between Illinois and Michigan it seems like the midwest is waging war on its urban poor.

As for CNN, yeah, that's unacceptable.  If they had doxxed the guy it would have been in poor taste and possibly exposed him to hatemail/worse.  Worth pointing out that they didn't, they just threatened him with doxxing if he kept making threatening memes against them.  Which is worse because in addition to being in poor taste its also totally outside the realm of journalism.  Yeah investigative journalism involves a certain amount of deceptive or borderline illegal behavior.  But reporting on your own misdeeds is not investigative journalism.

[Lord Shonus]

high school will require students to have college-acceptance or job offer before allowing them to graduate.

This measure is receiving high praise as encouragement for students to make a plan for their life.
Personally, I see it only as incentive not to even bother trying to get an education in a city where many cannot afford college and job offers are very limited. I foresee dropout rates rising to all-time highs.

What a fucking mess.  Education isn't just about jobs.  Whether or not you can get a job is unrelated to whether you learned well.  On top of all that, graduating high school is a thing you put on your resume (before someone calls me out on that, its not about it looking good; its about the absence looking really really bad).  Denying kids that is going to hurt them so much.   This is the same city where the cops have a "black site" so I can only assume the entire city government has its head up its ass.  Between Illinois and Michigan it seems like the midwest is waging war on its urban poor.

It isn't as bad as it seems, based on what I can find out. Anyone who graduates high school is guaranteed acceptance into the small colleges in the area, and the proposal only requires an acceptance letter, not a commitment to attend. I can understand the general idea, but this is an extremely bad way to go about things.

As for Michigan, there the problem is largely that the state took a hard skew redwards in the Tea Party surge of 2010, and Republican support has been steadily eroding (Snyder narrowly won relection against a weak opponent, and is almost certain to lose the next election unless something major happens) since. This has lead the state government to push extremely hard on R goals while they still have power, in the hope that either there won't be enough support to revert the changes or else that people will be happy with the results even if they hated the idea.

[Dunamisdeos]

If that's all it is, then I think I approve of that. It sounds like they are taking steps to ensure that those kids have a chance at further education without massive debt (less at least?).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's exactly the kind of paternalist crap that schools have become so fond of instead of educating people.

[redwallzyl]

If that's all it is, then I think I approve of that. It sounds like they are taking steps to ensure that those kids have a chance at further education without massive debt (less at least?).

No, that's just not how the nebulous "jobs" works and people change due to circumstances all the time.

[wierd]

There are two mindsets to hold concerning education and success.

1) A successful education leads to more monetary gain, through being a better educated worker. (Defacto implies that the only reason to get an education is to improve your labor rate, and thus that your only reason to exist is to work for somebody, or to employ people.) Failing to obtain the higher paying job means your education experience was not successful (because the base pay rate is what you are seeking the education FOR, and if you fail to get it, it means you either did not understand the material, or you are just a pathetic loser who cant compete for whatever reason.)  This tends to be favored by the corporate elite, and by many conservatives.

2) A Successful education improves your ability to use your mind, in a wide and varied range of applications-- from arranging more symmetrical floral arrangements with better color and texture choices (by being more knowledgeable of what plants are potentially available, knowledge of what humans find psychologically attractive, etc), to designing amazing space ships, and everything in-between, and outside of those two posts. An education exposes you to more information, and exposes you to modes of thinking that better enable you as a person to do *ANYTHING* you set yourself to, and thus, a successful education is one where the person is able to better themselves in whatever way they seek.

The issue mainly comes from taking view #2, then putting it under a burning lens of economic theory, because your whole worldview revolves around economies and cost benefit ratios. Non-economic benefits of a good education are overlooked, because they dont translate into improvements in production, consumption, or distribution, and thus do not contribute to economic activity directly, while having a direct cost associated.

Things like this are telltale of what the priorities and valuation matrices of the people in charge are.  A person or group of people who stick to view #1, will want to maximize employment rates, and see education as a means to stimulate economic function.  To them, your dear darling child is nothing more than the next new production run of disposable human widgets to install into the economic machine to keep it running. A person or group of people who stick to view #2, will want to maximize your child's total potential, and are unconcerned with how that child makes use of the education, as long as their use of that education brings them some value in their daily lives, it is a successful education.  To them, your dear darling child is the next generation of people in society.

[EnigmaticHat]

It's exactly the kind of paternalist crap that schools have become so fond of instead of educating people.

Kind of.  US government has taken a paternal attitude towards schools.  This bill was passed by the mayor supported by the school board (which remember is a political position).

The overarching education narrative in the US is that our school system is failing because of the people inside it.  Either the teachers or the parents or the kids.  Remember, education reform in the last 15 years has made life very difficult for teachers.  Both schools and teachers are held to standards (growth or proficiency but both are standards) and if they don't meet them they can be penalized in various ways.  In some cases the penalties are automatic.  On top of that almost all control over curriculum has been taken away from schools and put into the hands of politicians and businessmen.  Schools do not want most of this and they do not benefit.

Of course in reality the problem has always been the politics not the people.  Of course the blame exists at all levels of government and some of it is on voters that have toxic and backwards beliefs about education.  But primarily the story of recent-ish education reform has been the executive and legislative branches of the federal government punishing schools for not performing well, while simultaneously passing legislation that makes them perform badly.  And, of course, the reason kids in dropout factories are hard to teach (further spreading the narrative that bad education can somehow be the fault of the student body), is because they come from poor crime ridden neighborhoods and then their property-tax-funded schools don't have any money.  If only there were some kind of individual who could represent the interests of a population, and direct collective action to assist the the population, and take responsibility when things go badly for the population.  Some kind of... poputician.  No that's stupid, it must be kids.  If they wanted an education they shouldn't have been born poor.  And if those teachers didn't want to get drummed out of the system they shouldn't have worked in a school with a 9% graduation rate.

[wierd]

That requires the politician to work toward the public interest, instead of self-interest.

In the landscape of career politicians, that is a non-sequitur.

[Folly]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are two mindsets to hold concerning education and success.

1) A successful education leads to more monetary gain, through being a better educated worker. (Defacto implies that the only reason to get an education is to improve your labor rate, and thus that your only reason to exist is to work for somebody, or to employ people.) Failing to obtain the higher paying job means your education experience was not successful (because the base pay rate is what you are seeking the education FOR, and if you fail to get it, it means you either did not understand the material, or you are just a pathetic loser who cant compete for whatever reason.)  This tends to be favored by the corporate elite, and by many conservatives.

2) A Successful education improves your ability to use your mind, in a wide and varied range of applications-- from arranging more symmetrical floral arrangements with better color and texture choices (by being more knowledgeable of what plants are potentially available, knowledge of what humans find psychologically attractive, etc), to designing amazing space ships, and everything in-between, and outside of those two posts. An education exposes you to more information, and exposes you to modes of thinking that better enable you as a person to do *ANYTHING* you set yourself to, and thus, a successful education is one where the person is able to better themselves in whatever way they seek.

The issue mainly comes from taking view #2, then putting it under a burning lens of economic theory, because your whole worldview revolves around economies and cost benefit ratios. Non-economic benefits of a good education are overlooked, because they dont translate into improvements in production, consumption, or distribution, and thus do not contribute to economic activity directly, while having a direct cost associated.

Things like this are telltale of what the priorities and valuation matrices of the people in charge are.  A person or group of people who stick to view #1, will want to maximize employment rates, and see education as a means to stimulate economic function.  To them, your dear darling child is nothing more than the next new production run of disposable human widgets to install into the economic machine to keep it running. A person or group of people who stick to view #2, will want to maximize your child's total potential, and are unconcerned with how that child makes use of the education, as long as their use of that education brings them some value in their daily lives, it is a successful education.  To them, your dear darling child is the next generation of people in society.

Either of those options would be vastly preferable to my experience of what the educational system actually is; which is to say that the entire system seems to be about forcing children to memorize small samples of utterly meaningless test answers just long enough to regurgitate them so that they can maintain a grade point average just high enough to ensure the school keeps getting enough tax dollars to continue paying the teachers their minimum wage.

[redwallzyl]

It's exactly the kind of paternalist crap that schools have become so fond of instead of educating people.

Kind of.  US government has taken a paternal attitude towards schools.  This bill was passed by the mayor supported by the school board (which remember is a political position).

The overarching education narrative in the US is that our school system is failing because of the people inside it.  Either the teachers or the parents or the kids.  Remember, education reform in the last 15 years has made life very difficult for teachers.  Both schools and teachers are held to standards (growth or proficiency but both are standards) and if they don't meet them they can be penalized in various ways.  In some cases the penalties are automatic.  On top of that almost all control over curriculum has been taken away from schools and put into the hands of politicians and businessmen.  Schools do not want most of this and they do not benefit.

Of course in reality the problem has always been the politics not the people.  Of course the blame exists at all levels of government and some of it is on voters that have toxic and backwards beliefs about education.  But primarily the story of recent-ish education reform has been the executive and legislative branches of the federal government punishing schools for not performing well, while simultaneously passing legislation that makes them perform badly.  And, of course, the reason kids in dropout factories are hard to teach (further spreading the narrative that bad education can somehow be the fault of the student body), is because they come from poor crime ridden neighborhoods and then their property-tax-funded schools don't have any money.  If only there were some kind of individual who could represent the interests of a population, and direct collective action to assist the the population, and take responsibility when things go badly for the population.  Some kind of... poputician.  No that's stupid, it must be kids.  If they wanted an education they shouldn't have been born poor.  And if those teachers didn't want to get drummed out of the system they shouldn't have worked in a school with a 9% graduation rate.

There is definitely a huge problem with unequal funding fundamental undermining reform. if it is not abolished and replaced with a equal funding source not based on how well off the community is it would be on much better economic footing instead of teachers getting the shaft every time. its the old seems fair but actually invidiously oppressive local funding that screws poor people.

not that government control is all good or all bad. precisely, letting the crazy's get away with teaching bullshit creationism in schools is stupid. also standardized tests are stupid. oh and fuck that slime they call food. this shit is why we cant fix shit Michigan, i love you but our government is stupidly obsessed with bullshit neoliberal policies. *shakes fist toward Betsy devos's house down the street* yes I'm serious.


the cut cut cut shit is even effecting collages. they don't even want to hire full time anymore, its part time everywhere so they can pay them less for as long as possible.

[wierd]

RE: folly

That is the result of a system that uses metrics, and has to justify itself. (See impetus behind view#1, specifically with cost-benefit ratio based thinking, which is innately metrics based.)

Any metric you assign as having controlling value will be gamed for by the system, because that is the measure by which "benefit" is tabulated. Rather than provide you with actual job skills (the real goal of view #1), or with real life skills (the real goal of #2), it provides you with crap designed to game the system.

[MrRoboto75]

The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

[wierd]

My favorite example:

"Define: Nucleus"

where on the earth science quiz, you get "the part of the cell containing DNA"

and on the life sciences quiz, you get "The center of the atom, composed of neutrons and protons."

Depending on which one was introduced first.

[Antioch]

My favorite example:

"Define: Nucleus"

where on the earth science quiz, you get "the part of the cell containing DNA"

and on the life sciences quiz, you get "The center of the atom, composed of neutrons and protons."

Depending on which one was introduced first.

But isn't nucleus just a synonym for "core"