What the fuck did you just say? [Student Thread]

[Jalpha]

I think that that is what they are going for when they break out the edgey social justice warrior discussions

If you take any university level class that has the ability to discuss even a small spectrum of topics you will notice that the discussions eventually move towards society, race, ethnocentrism and white privilege.

I believe one of the requirements of the final paper most people submit as part of their degree, although it may only be for masters I'm not sure, is that it be on a topic or theme which has never been discussed before. Unfortunately with the emphasis of education being the making of money this results in a quantity over quality situation and the ensuing papers filled with long-worded fluff in order to meet the minimum word requirement.

I've never been to university though, so I can't comment with too much knowledge on the way things work at the university level. It does seem though that they are places where the topics of the day are discussed most openly and in the most detail. Unfortunately for this time period the SJW movement we are all bombarded with in our day to day lives has become the topic of the day. I'm sure society will move on, and things will go back to normal only hopefully the world will be a little bit better of a place. My personal opinion on the matter is that it's incredibly unhealthy to reward people for playing the victim instead of encouraging them to develop their emotional maturity. If you're a victim of your emotional state you are a victim of yourself, it's nobody elses fault how you feel.

While this was true for me in primary and middle school, my highschool has an independent board of markers, who never even meet the students, so favouritism never plays a part. I do most of my subjects through distance education and they have a pretty good system going.

That seems like a good system but unfortunately I have never seen it used at college or "TAFE" level, and it was never implemented in my primary or secondary education, which admittedly, was some time ago now. I'm also not entirely sure it's such a bad thing because social skills are important to doing well in life. At least so long as more capable people aren't being overlooked.

[shubla]

What are you studying? Doesn't sound like STEM.

This degree is in Child and Youth Care, but I also did a semester in an Addictions degree before transferring and taking a program in Autism and Behavioural Science over the summer.

I already have a college diploma in mental health & addictions counseling.

I don't regret my education, but I am very turned off by the language used by a lot of the people who are meant to be educating us. Any teacher in the social service field will swear up and down that it is best practice to bring material down to the level of the learner and then to expand from there, but they don't practice what they preach. I've also had several courses that simply hand you a textbook, tell you to read it and then give you the exam and assignment dates with no formal instruction at all. It's just a very different teaching style which I'm not sure is very effective.

Your teacher is trying to raise her/his self esteem by using terms that students don't know so (s)he can feel good about herself/himself by knowing all these things.

[jordancoles]

If the classroom teacher isn't doing the marking would the school board use that as an excuse to pay them less?

[dafels]

I h8 lecturers that feel the need to prove themselves to the students and they explain basic and simple things as complex as possible just because they would sound smarter and barely anyone in class understands what the talk is about smh...

[Ysh]

[MagicManICT]

How do student loans work in America-land btw? Here we have 2 systems, a provincial loan (OSAP in my case) and bank loans. Neither of them are overly good, but bank loans are arguably better in terms of interest and monthly payments.

There are federal student loans that are guaranteed by the government (they'll take any tax returns if you don't pay). Used to be they were all issued by a federal agency, but now they just keep it organized and they're all made by private banks and organizations. They're split between subsidized (interest doesn't accrue while in school) and unsubsidized (interest accrues from day of loan, not necessary to pay on as long as student is in school). Loans can be issued to students and parents, and there are limits as to how much a student can take out. There are private options, but usually require some form of collateral or are no different than revolving credit.

Depending on the election goes, there may be changes, but people still going to get fucked over unless the Sanders school idea can get put through (free public education up to 4 years of college as long as at a state university or college, no private institutions). Student debt is the biggest burden as changes were made to it so that it couldn't be discharged in bankruptcy.

[shubla]

How do student loans work in America-land btw? Here we have 2 systems, a provincial loan (OSAP in my case) and bank loans. Neither of them are overly good, but bank loans are arguably better in terms of interest and monthly payments.

There are federal student loans that are guaranteed by the government (they'll take any tax returns if you don't pay). Used to be they were all issued by a federal agency, but now they just keep it organized and they're all made by private banks and organizations. They're split between subsidized (interest doesn't accrue while in school) and unsubsidized (interest accrues from day of loan, not necessary to pay on as long as student is in school). Loans can be issued to students and parents, and there are limits as to how much a student can take out. There are private options, but usually require some form of collateral or are no different than revolving credit.

Depending on the election goes, there may be changes, but people still going to get fucked over unless the Sanders school idea can get put through (free public education up to 4 years of college as long as at a state university or college, no private institutions). Student debt is the biggest burden as changes were made to it so that it couldn't be discharged in bankruptcy.

If US would lower their army budget even for a fraction. They could provide free healthcare and basic education for everyone.

[MagicManICT]

Who gives a shit? Show some empathy for your fellow man.

What does this have to do with empathy? We're moving from specific to general. We're losing information for no reason. It's akin to instead of calling people male or female we just call them human. Yes, there are reasons to use that specification, but in a class that is specifically relating to teachers and their students, it seems a pointless reductionism. Perhaps instead of humans, we should call them organisms, lest we insult those who identify as non-humans.

In this point, I agree. A lot of times our language changes are a loss of information. In other cases, it is a refinement of information. Instead of one word to say three things, we're making or changing a word to say one thing and using the old or other words to say the other two things.

Overall, I think many of our modern language changes have been all about empathy. We used to call anyone of an African decent by a certain word I won't repeat out of politeness. Now, it's just acceptable to say "Black" because it's shorter and easier than "African" or even what is still used, "African American." However, in the example coles gave, the "student"/"learner" label, it all means exactly the same thing. Both are 7 letter words, have two syllables, and mean exactly the same thing. It's just a change.

We're changing specific terms for increasingly ambiguous terms in the effort to protect feelings. If that's what you mean by empathy, then fuck that. Using increasingly round-a-bout ways to say the same thing doesn't change the intention or meaning, it simply changes the way you say it.

I'm not sure what ambiguous terms you refer to. I quit hanging out on college campuses quite a while ago, and abhor Facebook and most other social media. From what I see on the news and other media outlets, I'm not really seeing any changes from when I was still in school. The only things I can think of off the top of my head are the "gender pronouns."

If your thoughts behind it are still the same, yeah, no point in changing the words other than to be polite. Maybe it's the point of view that needs to be changed, instead? Feelings are dictated by a thought process, and not the other way around. I'm not trying to tell anyone to change how they think, but maybe if the thought process is understood better, then there won't be quite as much hostility towards the change.

My thoughts on empathy is just understanding that the other person is just as fucked in the head as I am. It means giving them some respect, even if that means calling them some strange thing.

I h8 lecturers that feel the need to prove themselves to the students and they explain basic and simple things as complex as possible just because they would sound smarter and barely anyone in class understands what the talk is about smh...

I find the worse ones to be the "student" teachers who have advanced degrees, but don't have the experience the professors do, such as what nearly everyone gets at state universities in the US for basic classes like English that nearly everyone has to take.

However, I just have to say... when you spend all the rest of your day in discussion with others in your field and you get into a certain mode of language, maybe it's hard to remember to change back to the "student" level of discussion? I may not be that anyone is intentionally being an ass, maybe they just can't make that change? (though they may be... after all best way to learn a foreign language is to be forced to communicate with it)

ps. sorry for wall of text

[Jesus_Smith_Nandez]

If US would lower their army budget even for a fraction. They could provide free healthcare and basic education for everyone.

That's not how economics work. Yes, the government has fucked over students in the US with certain fiddling making school stupidly expensive and loans ridiculous, but the answer is not to subsidize education or healthcare like you're proposing. That would just remove competition and make it worse.

[ArvinJA]

What are you studying? Doesn't sound like STEM.

Exactly, do a real degree and the problem disappears.

No it doesn't. Took CS, and honestly, you're waaaay better off just problem-solving/programming on your own time if you actually want to learn anything. I had friends who'd learn the least squares algorithm in the linear algebra course, and when I asked them about it a year later when I was taking it, they had a vague idea of what the algorithm was, but no idea on what it was used for. People end up taking the laziest approach to everything, which is usually to cram before exams, and then they, surprise surprise, don't remember anything useful afterwards.

The level of programming in the programming courses is also pretty far-removed from real-world programming, a month of hacking the H&H client will better prepare you for working in the real world, where you'll have to internalize other people's code, learn to debug stuff that's more than a few lines of code, learn where the appropriate place to put your Fancy New Thing is, as to not drive down FPS, and of course, learn about those inherent trade-offs that always pop up.
E.g. why is Amber sometimes not rendering qualities when you scroll items (I haven't actually looked into this, but I have my suspicions as to why without looking)?

Compare CS at university to making a game on your own time, or solving math problems for the fun of it. In those cases you'll learn new concepts because they're needed. Some of the concepts you might even need to repeat as part of the process of building something, and then they're even easier to remember.

University really doesn't make much sense if you take the usual justifications at face value, and that's largely because there are strange things afoot, hidden impersonal forces messing with us, and if this is getting too spooky for you, best stop reading, because it's gonna get much spookier. What you are about to read can not be unread. Moloch ahead. You've been warned.

It all starts out with employers. When they want to hire someone, they lack information about which prospective employees would be the most productive, so they're forced to go on whatever information they do have. Given a choice between a person without a degree, and a person with a degree, the employer will always choose the person with a degree, all else being equal. Not because the degree necessarily imbues the person with all the necessary skills needed to do a great job, but simply because education filters some people out, and the people who get filtered out are in general less productive as employees.

An education pretty much says that you jumped through all these hoops. You weren't a complete idiot, a complete idiot wouldn't be able to pass the tests you did. You put in the work! Great! You'll be putting in a lot more work at $company, so we're already off to a great start. You managed to show up in time. Complete work before deadlines. And so on, and so forth.
Notice how I didn't need to mention anything about learning? If you actually did learn anything, that's great too, but it's not really needed. Education is a great signal on its own, simply because it is a great filter.

Alright, so we have an employer who needs to sort potential employees somehow, and we have people looking for jobs. Let's get this arms race started. Since it is in the employer's rational self-interest to hire the person with the most education, and in the prospective employees rational self-interest to procure said education, we now have a situation where smart people use up years of their lives unproductively building up their signalling value, instead of, you know, actually doing something productive. And we can't even blame anyone! Each party was just doing whatever was best/natural for them. Like puppets dangling from some invisible string, they danced the only dance they knew how to dance.

In a perfect world, the employer would of course pick someone who on the surface seems somewhat capable, and then, if that person lacked the appropriate training (this is more often than not the case, with or without a university degree) train that person until he or she can perform whatever task the employer wants to get done. Instead, we have force everyone to get a super long education, something that didn't use to be the norm just 50 years ago (see why this really is an arms race?). I mean sure, getting an education is one of those things that creates a negative externality, so as a wise technocrat you might want to tax it instead of subsidizing it, and I wouldn't even disagree with that. But then you end up with people getting I-can't-believe-it's-not-education, or lots of useless Github projects or what-have-you, but maybe that's not as spooky. I don't know. I haven't been inside the belly of that particular beast.

Recommended reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/me ... on-moloch/
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ss ... on-speech/