Battletard wrote:
Schools should be places to learn, not factories to produce citizens. And that's the core of the issue. Anyone who is 'too different' is ostracized, and this tendency is institutionalized from the students to the teachers, from the ground up.
I look at it the other way around. I absolutely believe that schools should be factories to produce (skilled) citizens. I believe that it is the place of school to impose the national social model.
If schools were not factories to produce citizens, then they'd be getting into the dangerous realm of nihilism and law of the jungle. Factories build to specifications and so should schools. What do you have without specifications? "Personal preference". Well, whose? Based on what? Surely not kids who have no power and can't make informed decisions. So what that really becomes is the mess we have now with special interests and vacuous PTA types doing as they please...a lack of specifications turns into "some people's" "preference".
I don't mind admitting that my experiences at the Quaker colony have done much to shape my dismissive attitude towards liberal (philosophically speaking) schooling.
In life, the ideal is, everyone ought to be equal before the law and share the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Citizenship is a one-size-fits-all institution and therefore school should be as well.The flip side of that is, if the national social model, or the way in which it is being imposed, excludes large numbers of the best and brightest and disincentivizes boldness, assertiveness and critical thinking - qualities a free society needs to thrive - then that's a problem, either with the social model, or the way in which it is being imposed.
Kayllaira wrote:
I don't have any citrus trees in my yard, though my sister does. My dad grows a few tomatoes and things of that nature. But I live pretty much ON the beach and my front lawn is sand with some crab grass on it.
I recommend mint, bay leaves, and succulents.
Kayllaira wrote:
it's really hard to get anything to grow, and it's so fucking hot here half the time I don't even want to go outside to get in my car for groceries much less bake out there.
You could just pay a few poor kids $2 an hour to carry around a giant parasol and fan you with palm fronds. I'm serious. Give the kids some spending money and something to do, and you get to pretend you're some sort of...I don't know what.
...I'll stop now.