UNSCHOOLING

[Duchess]

Have you heard of that? I have not, not until this morning. For lack of a better explanation, it's a version of homeschooling. With my own ears I heard one mother proudly say "we don't teach our children anything".     For fucks sake!


Our species is doomed, kids.

[sally]

We’re already doomed with the ones that do go to school.

[username]

My head is firmly in the sand about A.I. but it makes me wonder to what degree, if any, it will make some aspects of “schooling” almost wasteful. I mean…why learn how to solve a complex mathematical equation when you can just ask your computer and get an instant result?

Computers in general have radically changed the way students learn (hell, I remember encyclopedias and visiting libraries). I can’t (don’t really want to) get my head around what AI is doing/will do.

[sally]

When you get instant answers to questions then that means people don’t have to use their minds anymore. Something tells me that it’s not a good thing.

[username]

When you get instant answers to questions then that means people don’t have to use their minds anymore. Something tells me that it’s not a good thing.

That’s my gut feeling as well. I mean systems can fail, electricity can fail and u end up with store clerks that can’t calculate change. Or people that can’t drive a fucking car because all they’ve known is auto pilot or autonomous vehicles. It’s creepy to me which is why I tend to want to bury my head where the subject is concerned.

That said, I also think it might be a time to revisit curriculum in schools in general. Maybe bring back more fundamentals and practical skills (like English, math, composition, history, computer skills along with woodworking, agriculture and survival skills, lol). I don’t think all high school seniors should have to pass calculus or trigonometry to get into college. 

There ought to be different paths to choose from.

[BigMark]

google search nows does a summary instead of links, I did one of the image generators and it was racist.

[Duchess]

I know a kid whose parent was working with the kid to have better penmanship and the teacher told the parent that many of the kids in that grade were experiencing difficulty because they would have been learning that at school during the period of time Covid shut down everything. The parent even bought penmanship lesson books in order to support her kid and to help him and the teacher/s told her not to make such a issue out of it because nearly all their work is done on a tablet or laptop now. I think that's a bullshit response, people need to know how to communicate with the written world. I'm probably old school about this, but I feel strongly about it.

[Carsman]

I know a kid whose parent was working with the kid to have better penmanship and the teacher told the parent that many of the kids in that grade were experiencing difficulty because they would have been learning that at school during the period of time Covid shut down everything. The parent even bought penmanship lesson books in order to support her kid and to help him and the teacher/s told her not to make such a issue out of it because nearly all their work is done on a tablet or laptop now. I think that's a bullshit response, people need to know how to communicate with the written world. I'm probably old school about this, but I feel strongly about it.

Agree! 

Many of the young folks I know can't write in script, they only can print! 

[sally]

I know a kid whose parent was working with the kid to have better penmanship and the teacher told the parent that many of the kids in that grade were experiencing difficulty because they would have been learning that at school during the period of time Covid shut down everything. The parent even bought penmanship lesson books in order to support her kid and to help him and the teacher/s told her not to make such a issue out of it because nearly all their work is done on a tablet or laptop now. I think that's a bullshit response, people need to know how to communicate with the written world. I'm probably old school about this, but I feel strongly about it.

Maybe his penmanship just naturally sucks, all the hand smacks didn’t fix my husband’s or son’s. My daughters and I have lovely penmanship. I think in general females are better at it than men, I remember in school that the boys had terrible handwriting.

[Duchess]

Dang it, Sal, I said "written world, not written word". I only notice this stuff after the fact.

[Duchess]

Good Lord, "dang it", Duchess? Ahahahaha.

*face palm*

[Clang McFly]

I know a kid whose parent was working with the kid to have better penmanship and the teacher told the parent that many of the kids in that grade were experiencing difficulty because they would have been learning that at school during the period of time Covid shut down everything. The parent even bought penmanship lesson books in order to support her kid and to help him and the teacher/s told her not to make such a issue out of it because nearly all their work is done on a tablet or laptop now. I think that's a bullshit response, people need to know how to communicate with the written world. I'm probably old school about this, but I feel strongly about it.

Maybe his penmanship just naturally sucks, all the hand smacks didn’t fix my husband’s or son’s. My daughters and I have lovely penmanship. I think in general females are better at it than men, I remember in school that the boys had terrible handwriting.

I can agree with that. Maybe it's an age thing. My penmanship was fairly decent when I was younger, but seems to being getting worse the older I get. Still not as bad as my dad's penmanship.  His handwriting was looked like hieroglyphics.

[sally]

I didn’t even notice it.

[BigMark]

I write like a cavemen or doctor.

[sally]

I got to wear the gold star all year long because I had the best cursive writing in first grade. I was hot shit back in those days. I write in D’nealian now which I think most old folks do.

[sally]

D’nealian is the easiest way to teach it and how I taught my kids. Some kids are just naturally better like with art.

[username]

Why bother? Cursive is dying. My two adults can sign their names in cursive but it would probably take them ages to write a paragraph in cursive. It saddens me in some regards but I’m grudgingly acknowledging that it isn’t terribly important to the survival of civilization. I remember being somewhat appalled when my kids were in elementary school and cursive was only on the curriculum for a month or two. I thought that I should teach them myself and also thought it would get revisited with them at school at some point. It wasn’t.

I *could* write beautifully in cursive but now I tend to do some mish mash between cursive and print writing.
The point of cursive (IIRC) was to reduce the number of times one needed to lift a pen from paper. Not saying there’s no validity to that but…

I was thinking about how much writing I do in any given month. I don’t do a lot but if I wanted to I could probably do almost zero.

[sally]

I do a lot of writing and it’s a thing of beauty. I have an account with the post office that I pay for monthly to send letters certified. I just told those cunts at the water department that I am not creating an online account and to kindly go fuck themselves. If their sorry asses aren’t here Tuesday morning to fix the burst reclaimed water pipe that I backed over with my truck and then denied knowing anything about it then there will be hell to pay.

[sally]

I also sent Spectrum a piece of my mind. They said I have to drop off the cable equipment at their office or they’re going to charge me for it. I sent them a nice little letter saying to pick up the pieces of shit yourselves , why the hell do I have to drive to your office and wait in line. They came and got it.

[sally]

Same thing with my Roomba that broke and was still under warranty. I’m not downloading your stupid troubleshooting app or talking to some fucking Indian on the phone. They got the letter and sent me a new one.