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[The Mad Engineer]

Oh, and although the Japs did bomb us first, we still shouldn't have utterly annihilated 300,000 innocent lives.  Drop the bomb in the harbor first, and show them we aren't bluffing.

Truman was an asshole.

Somebody hasn't studied WW2...

Somebody isn't explaining their position. 

Let me attempt to put this thread back on track, away from the discussion of the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities.

All you whiny high-schoolers, all of you need to shut up. The purpose of the school system is not to foster creativity, it is for you to learn. To learn, among other things, the history of your civilization, the necessities you will need in the future, and most importantly, to become productive members of society.

Schools are far more rigorous elsewhere, and because of this fact, foreign high school students are outperforming you, and they are better prepared to become productive members of society than you are. That's why they come here and take all the high paying jobs. Meanwhile, you're taking remedial classes in college because high school failed to teach you what you need to know because it was concerned about your 'feelings'.

So shut up, stop whining, and start studying. And quit complaining about your creativity. Sheesh, you're still in high school. Euclid, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Democritus, Aneximander, Newton, Euler, Gauss, Faraday, Einstein, Feynman, and many, many others, were all far more creative than you. Maybe when you know what they knew, you can complain about your creativity being stifled.

And I went to a difficult high school, so I have the authority to talk. A mere few years ago, every day I was discussing a great work of the Western Tradition for two hours in the morning: Aristotle, Aquinas, Plato, Socrates, Marx, John Locke, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and a whole lot of others. And then in the afternoon I was evaluating integrals and studying the effects of the electric field. Oh, and I studied four years of Latin, too.

And don't give me that the education system was for the Industrial Revolution. Less than a half-century ago, the education system produced graduates capable of putting a man on the moon. So it's clearly effective, or should I say, it was effective.

So, quit your whining about your AP chemistry, or your English class, or how the education system stifles creativity. The way I see it, the education system is failing you, and you don't have the nerve to complain about that instead of your precious 'creativity'. You should be demanding more rigor from your classes, more homework, more school time, more difficult subject matter, because you will need it if you want any chance in hell of getting a satisfying job where you get to use that giant ball of gray mush in your head instead of at a fast food restaurant or a retail store.

tl;dr Shut up and go study.

You have no idea about this, do you?

THERE IS NOT AN HOUR WHEN I AM NOT DOING SOME MEANINGLESS TASK!

And I don't mean that as a hyperbole.  Literally every waking hour is spent preparing for college.  I am not learning anything.  I'm padding my GPA.

We are not complaining about the amount of work.  We are complaining about the type of work.  I, for one, would love to participate in a discussion about Western tradition, or examine electric field effects.  I find integrals to be like a wonderful puzzle.  But please, just make them stop the mindless discussions about MLA format!


The students here in America DREAM about being able to attend a foreign system.

[Wooty]

Or bomb a military target.

From what I've heard, bombing some kind of military base was the original plan, but we decided that if we flew over one our plane might get shot down. Heh heh heh. We'd already killed using firebombing something like 8 times the civilians dead after both the atomic bombs anyways.



And yes, enough of the MLA format type crap is something everyone can agree on. There's a big difference between growing to be a productive member of society and knowing how to correctly format a paper to the school system's standards.

[Akigagak]

Shut about WW2 now, please.

[Cheeetar]

Shut about WW2 now, please.

On what authority do you ask this?

[Akigagak]

None, but this thread is about school killing creativity, not genocide.

[Awayfarer]

And yes, enough of the MLA format type crap is something everyone can agree on. There's a big difference between growing to be a productive member of society and knowing how to correctly format a paper to the school system's standards.

As an english major and a soon-to-be graduate, and as someone who recently had to write a 35 page thesis, I agree that the MLA format is a pain in the ass. It's kind of a necessary evil though. It's easier to read and critique work if everyone in a certain field is writing in the same format.

[Dr. Johbson]

Great video. Guy's a genius.

[Caz]

One potential problem with your all-in-one course idea:  Students who excel in a particular field will not have the opportunity to learn at the proper level.  By that I mean someone who might have what it takes to learn "grade 10 math" alongside "grade 5 X" will instead have to sit through "grade 5 math".  Sure, they can learn the more advanced material on their own time, but if they have to do it all themselves then why the hell should they waste their time in a public school?

Yeah over here in the UK we can take different subjects at different levels if needed, so it works a little better than the grade system imo.

[Yanlin]

Over here, if you get decent grades, attend classes and don't behave like an asshole, you get a 95-100 on your report card.

But the Bagrut system is something I loathe. My history Bagrut involves me studying about 9th and 10th century Baghdad...

WTF DOES THAT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING?!

[Virex]

Over here, if you get decent grades, attend classes and don't behave like an asshole, you get a 95-100 on your report card.

But the Bagrut system is something I loathe. My history Bagrut involves me studying about 9th and 10th century Baghdad...

WTF DOES THAT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING?!

Baghdad was kind of the center of the Arabic world during that time, or at least quite an important part of it. So that'd make it quite a wee bit important...

[Strife26]

It doesn't affect the modern world much though.
18th century London is a hundred times more important.

[Yanlin]

I keep saying that. Why don't we learn about the Roman empire? WWI? Alexander the great? The crusades? The industrial revolution? Historical patterns?

But NO!!!! We gotta learn about how Muslims treated women in 9th century Baghdad and how the bath houses were designed in the 10th century in Baghdad!

I hate history class.

[Ciarog]

Well, you don't have to throw nukes onto cities, you know.  I'm fine with using the nuke to end the war.  But what we basically did was:

America:  "Hey, Japs!  If you don't stop the war, we will use our super secret megaweapon to obliterate you!"

Japan:  "Ummm... yeah.  Whatever.  You go do that."

BOOM!

Japan: "OH MY GOD!"

It would have been a better move to bomb it close to the city, or perhaps on a nearby island.  Then, if they don't surrender, start moving progressively inward...

If the John Birch Society is to be trusted (it ain't, but this is still an interesting theory) World War II could have ended at Iwo Jima.

[Muz]

Gah, so many words and derails. I'm not going to read through the whole thread. I did watch the video, though

Killing creativity is not a bad thing, not all the time. Creativity makes your mind wander. You'll learn things in more depth, be able to make things of your own, but with too much creativity, you won't have time to master the technicalities of something. Sure, you'll be able to reinvent it, yeah, but early on you don't have to.

The American school system is built for maximum creativity. Asian ones, especially the Chinese ones are exact opposite, actually punishing you for being creative in your tests.

I've learned in the USA, Malaysia, and now Australia. What I've found out is when you're not being creative, you learn a hell lot more. So what if kids don't know why you can't divide by 0 or memorize multiplication tables. It could be better in the long run if they just learn it without caring. But.. not being creative makes you unable to evolve - if your plans don't work, you'd be doomed without creativity. (also why Asians are all life and death about getting good grades)

Looking at how that ended up, we could see that plenty of inventions are made in the West, but it's the uncreative people in the far East who are actually assembling those inventions.

And as you guys have shown, being creative about history makes your mind wander far from the topic

[RavingManiac]

Gah, so many words and derails. I'm not going to read through the whole thread. I did watch the video, though

Killing creativity is not a bad thing, not all the time. Creativity makes your mind wander. You'll learn things in more depth, be able to make things of your own, but with too much creativity, you won't have time to master the technicalities of something. Sure, you'll be able to reinvent it, yeah, but early on you don't have to.

The American school system is built for maximum creativity. Asian ones, especially the Chinese ones are exact opposite, actually punishing you for being creative in your tests.

I've learned in the USA, Malaysia, and now Australia. What I've found out is when you're not being creative, you learn a hell lot more. So what if kids don't know why you can't divide by 0 or memorize multiplication tables. It could be better in the long run if they just learn it without caring. But.. not being creative makes you unable to evolve - if your plans don't work, you'd be doomed without creativity. (also why Asians are all life and death about getting good grades)

Looking at how that ended up, we could see that plenty of inventions are made in the West, but it's the uncreative people in the far East who are actually assembling those inventions.

And as you guys have shown, being creative about history makes your mind wander far from the topic

There is a difference between creativity and a short attention span. I should know, I have mild ADD.

That said, the current school system is meant to prevent lazy students from slacking off, with stifling creativity as a side-effect. The more freeform a project is, the wider the bell-curve of the actual quality.