General

[zulu]

This thread is hilarious. All the generation crapping is amusing. To the people who've posted about the younger generation's inadequacies.........it's our fault for raising jobs and not children.

For the younger generation.....you do have it easier. The SAT's you take now have been dumbed down since my bio pscyh prof. took them. Unfortunately, all the mass media/new media has robbed many youth of the mental capacity for original abstract thought. My son loves playing video games.....I make him turn them off and spend some time drawing and coming up with his own characters or concepts. Heck, he even reads. And, yes the younger generations lack the same phonetic mastery that many of us older folk have because some idiot somewhere decided that they'd stop teaching phonetics in kindergarten and start teaching word ID by sight. I'd love to meet the genius who thought of that and those who were instrumental in instituting it.

I think Emily Dickinson said it best when she stated that "progress is a comfortable disease."

On to the article: My daughter plays now and she's 12 and VERY much a girly girl. She still gets out there, mows faces and wanted to wear pink until I told her that would make her an easier target (we play woodsball). She likes being cute, but is smart enough to know that function is greater than form in some cases.

[Listessa]

Originally Posted by RepomanGene

My advice to any Girl entering into this sport would be to find/hire a big,mean looking S.O.B. as your "Boyfriend" and drag him to enough games till the word spreads that Death is minutes away from smart *** comments or bad touching.

Bah. Break a few thumbs and you'll be all set on your own.

Originally Posted by zulu

This thread is hilarious. All the generation crapping is amusing. To the people who've posted about the younger generation's inadequacies.........it's our fault for raising jobs and not children.

Or some ended up so over-parented they moved thousands of miles and a whole continent away. Yes, I still don't tell my mom I play paintball.

Eh, as for the generation gap- I think proper representatives from both sides have filled it overflowing with enough crap for now.

[stevedavidson]

Yeah, but old person crap is usually smellier...

Zulu,

you hinted at my theory that explains the difference(s). I'm having a similar discussion on a science fiction related forum (the 'kids' are saying that anything pre-1984 is crap...)

here it is. you said "all the mass media/new media has robbed many youth of the mental capacity for original abstract thought"

Yes. Or rather, media/art/whatever you want to call it now spoon feeds the images rather than requiring the consumer to provide them. Or, the participants have gone from active to passive - but passivity that mimics participation (such as video games). They''re manipulating icons that someone else created, inside a 'universe' totally constrained by someone else's imaginings. Movies now 'show you everything'.

No imagination. No creativity. Just passively swallowing whatever is put in front of them, with little regard to 'taste'.

[HP_Lovecraft]

Originally Posted by stevedavidson

I know there are many fine teachers and professors out there, but they seem to be pebbles in the stream...... Schools have to make money too, so the natural solution is to simply let anyone in who can pay, regardless of qualification.

You are right about changing standards, but I do not believe it has to do with money directly. It has to do with power. The teachers union has evolved into one of the most powerful unions in the country.

They have threatened to throw the kids onto the streets with even the HINT of setting even the most trivial standards for teachers. At the same time, they are begging for more and more money, resources, assets, benefits, etc.

The American education system is heading the same direction that the American steel industry was heading 30 years ago: Total collapse. Unfortunetly, while we can import steel from China, we can not import education. Its a fact of life that we have to pay for all the corruption regardless.

This is why I send my kids to private school. The state of Maine is so corrupt, and incompetent that they actually FORBID any town for giving any sort of grant, pension, scholarship, or vocher for a private school. This is the result of pressure from Teacher Unions. All that tuition takes away from my paintball money....

Speaking of paintball, while the article did seem somewhat ignorant, I have seen the changing role of paintball women over the last 20 years.
From being very rare in the 80s, to "dragged to the game" in the 90s, to commonplace today, I thick much of that reflects the changing image from "wargames", to a well known "sport" today.

nick

[Christian Nelson]

You know what? I am really tired of grammar Nazi's..

The purpose of language is to effectively communicate, not to establish yet another way of showing yourself to be more superior in your anal retentivity than others.

If the thought is effectively conveyed, the purpose of language has been served. Her report, while not totally grammaticaly correct, is not as bad as some I've seen, and definitely communicates her thoughts effectively. Pick apart her thoughts, but not the grammar, sheesh.

Just like a debate, well, you can't spell a given word, so you must be stupid laughSORS..

God it is irritating.

I can see when someone is difficult to understand due to the grammar, and spelling mistakes, but any chastizement should be in the interest of being able to understand what this person is trying to communicate.

Rules made up centuries ago may have to change you know, or would you rather have other rules of conduct to follow that were around then as well?

I garuntee none of you would make it as a proper gentleman in the 1600's.

[zulu]

Originally Posted by Christian Nelson

I garuntee none of you would make it as a proper gentleman in the 1600's.

I wouldn't for sure. Heck, according to old laws I was only 3/5 human in the 1600's.

[Talfuchre]

Christian,

I believe the phrase is 'Anal Retentiveness' not the word you made up.

TF

[stevedavidson]

HP - sorry to disagree, but we do. I view home schooling and private schooling to be more of a danger to the future of society than I do a few incompetent teachers.

Basic reason? Unless kids socialize with each other at an age when they are still plastic and can learn that the BS their parents are filling their heads with is, in fact, BS, the BS gets perpetuated without question.

Given the responsibilities we place on teachers and what we expect them to do, its no wonder the unions come across as whiney and controlling and power hungry. They're the ones who ought to be commanding 6 figure incomes and a well-rounded public education ought to be what our governments spend the majority of their budgets on - teach the kids to think for themselves, teach them about economics and money and teach them about law and government - really teach them those subjects - and inside a generation we'll see some major changes.

The system may be broke, but its not the teacher's who are (mostly) to blame - its society's lack of prioritizing education that is.

[Christian Nelson]

Hey man, anal retentivity did not give me any trouble on the spell checker, so it must be a word..



You know Zulu, it is a backward odd way of doing it, but the idea behind 3/5 was to keep the slave states from making their slaves vote to keep slavery. The north was already trying to abolish slavery even then. They wanted to take power away from the slave states, so they could eventually outlaw slavery. That was the stated reason for that rule. Because of that, the north was successfully able to enact laws against importing more africans for slavery, had the south been able to vote with the full power of all of their population (even though the slaves wouldn't really have had a choice in voting) this would have not passed. The compromise was that they had to treat the northern african americans the same way in order to get the south to go along with it. Originally, it was to be freemen were worth 1, slaves worth 3/5, but the south wouldn't go for that.. So, in a way, it was an awkward attempt to curb the slave trade that eventually worked out sort of.. It wasn't perfect, but what is? After the emancipation, all former slaves were able to vote, and the KKK started trying to keep them form voting. So on, and so forth... Complicated, and crazy, and if people would have just realized that people are people, regardless of the skin tone, this would not have had to be this way.

Steven Davidson, I cannot imagine what worse of a statement you could possibly make than to basically state that parents have to hand their kids over to the government. You are sounding more and more like the nationalist socialists the liberals are..

When do the brown shirts come out next?

You think those of us fools who believe in god should be sent to re-education camps too, like Chairman Mao did in his cultural revolution? Why don't you move to North Korea, you'd fit in real good there.

This is even more reason to keep my kids out of the clutches of the indoctrination camps called schools, and the mind benders we call teachers.

For that, I would rise up and revolt against my government. You will not take my children.

When are you liberals gonna see that what you propose isn't new, and that every government that has enacted these things has been tyrannical at best, and genocidal most usually?

[big jim]

Steve,
How about people who home school for reasons other than religious? My oldest son was a hyperactive 4 year old when the speech therapist inserted him in a second grade class and found that he was interested and attentive. Since the school wouldn't accept a 4 year old in second grade, obviously not emotionally ready for that age group, the consoler suggested home schooling. He graduated at 16 and received an academic scholarship to a prestigious private collage where he is doing fine. Had we waited a year and then entered him in kindergarten he would have been a hyperactive trouble maker out of boredom and the school would have wanted him on drugs to calm him down. Would that have been a good thing?
Along with this many of the issues supported by the NEA appear to be very liberal in nature. If the parents hold conservative values, is this another example of B.S. indoctrination that the parents should not be allowed to teach their kids?

How about my second son who has been clinically diagnosed with dyslexia and will probably never be able to read at above a fourth or fifth grade level according to the doctors. He has had teachers tell him in front of the whole class that since he can't read he is to stupid to be in their class. They just can't explain how as a 14 year old sophomore he had the highest grade point in his grade when he had accommodations with someone reading his tests to him. He is doing his Algebra II in his head faster than the teacher can solve the problems with her calculator. If you don't fit into the education system's mold they don't know how to deal with you.

Sorry, I don't buy the concept that that the liberal brainwashing center... sorry, public schools are any better equipped to teach my kids than I am.