On her very first school report card, my kid got the highest marks in every category except “respects authority and follows directions.”
I’m very proud. Not of the high marks on everything else because who cares? But yes of the lower mark on obedience. The way things are, obedience is not a good thing.
Congratulations!
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It’s actually been a thing for decades. At that age it’s less a grade and more of a progress report—“this is what X is doing well at, this is what we will focus on the second half of the year,” etc. It’s more of a behavioral report, which can be particularly useful for parents, as social development at home does not always mirror social development at school. If a student has an IEP or a 504 plan, the teacher will also evaluate according to the plan and suggest adjustments as needed.
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Good on ya both!
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How to abuse 4500 university students:
Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
Criticizes Munger Hall as ‘Social and Psychological Experiment’ with Unknown Consequences
…
the radical new building concept, which calls for an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their small, single-occupancy bedrooms.
The idea was conceived by 97-year-old billionaire-investor turned amateur-architect Charles Munger, who donated $200 million toward the project with the condition that his blueprints be followed exactly. Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate. He also argues the off-site prefabrication of standardized building elements ― the nine residential levels feature identical floor plans ― would save on construction costs.
The bedroom in the photo looks worse than some European prison cells and, surely, students pay good money to attend this university. In sunny Israel our huge windows are always open. Were I a prospective student, one look at this room would pursuade me to look elsewhere. I feel like it is impossible to breathe w/o windows and become depressed w/o sun, light, fresh air. Does this billionaire hate people very very much?
Mike commented it’s the new pod future billionaires are imagining for the rest of us. I am sure Munger lives in a house with windows and Ivy students will have them too.
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“The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places…. It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world. ”
William Torrey Harris, 1835 – 1909, US Commissioner of Education, 1889-1906
// Nobody will ever convince me that being outside all day in any weather isn’t the most important educational experience for children.
I thought William Torrey Harris talked about university students, because if he talked of children, it’s too weird…
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Nope, Harris outlined his educational plan starting with little kids. He laid out a curriculum starting with 1st grade.
He was part of what I call the Great Bait & Switch in American education: the state had to promise more than the myriad 19th century independent schools could deliver, in order to put an end to them – and promise it did, a liberal 1-12 education that would put today’s typical college grad to shame. They even tried implementing it in some places. But then Dewey and others started efforts to keep kids down, to not trouble their little heads with anything like real ideas. Thus we end up with kinder, gentler schools that teach nothing and which – by design – frustrate the better students, who are forced down to the level of the average. Once all other options were destroyed, the schools could get along with their program to standardize and control everyone – the success of which efforts are clear everywhere you look today.
And keep the kids indoors in ugly places so they get any ideas from the beauty of creation.
American education has always been schizophrenic. At the same time Harris was pushing for ugly, windowless schools, colleges, high schools, and even grammar schools were being built in various classical styles as temples of learning. Architecture has a long lead time. It was only maybe the 1940s before schools began to be generally ugly, although much earlier examples of hideous schools can be found.
This parallels the split among teachers versus educators: Teachers want to teach, and find beautiful settings conducive; educators want to ‘educate’ and so don’t want any distractions. Ugly schools encourage the withdrawal from the world that is necessary if compliance is the goal – no external references allowed.
Thus, you end up with good teachers fighting a system designed to ‘educate’ us, in increasingly ugly buildings and increasingly intolerant environments. Those teachers are more and more forced out or brought to heel, parents are more and more excluded from schooling, until the messianic educators can bring about the promised paradise – an ugly, intolerant paradise of the willfully ignorant.
Yes – and the US, at the height of the push to destroy the one-room schools and bring all other independent schools to heel (they had succeeded by 1940) was lead by Harris, an intellectual mediocrity who wanted to ‘fix’ our kids – by keeping them away from nature in dark, ugly places.
You’ve seen American schools. Harris got his wish.
In our local public elementary school that has extremely high ratings, children are punished for not doing their homework (bleh!) by being deprived of recess. This is simply inhuman. I’d never send my kid to a school like that. It’s bloody torture is what it is. A friend’s 9-year-old developed obesity in that school. This should be criminal.
// The buildings where we teach have no windows.
I also studied in quite a few windowless university classrooms. However, sitting for 1.5 hours for a lecture is very different from living and sleeping in such spaces.
The only goal is cutting costs, while the woke-ish language of collaboration is used as one of justifications: “Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate.”
// “The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places”
Schools for the upper crust surely look nothing like this description. Surely, their parents aren’t ignorant about the purpose of schooling. Just recently read an article in Israeli teachers’ newspaper about the educator (forgot his name) who taught one of British princes and the emphasis put at his school on sports, developing character and so on. “Dark, airless, ugly” on the outside only helps the circulation of viruses 🙂 and the creation of the same feeling inside.
You should see our student dorms. They are a thing of beauty. Located in the woods, by a lake, there are deer walking around. Huge windows with stunning views. People should come to us instead of the stupid UC system. My international students said they wouldn’t have been able to bear the 10-day COVID quarantine upon arrival if it weren’t for the views. So I’m with you completely.
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Wanted to share photos of this sculpture “Children – victims of adult vices”. When I was in Moscow, saw it myself and liked the idea.
https://lovers-of-art.livejournal.com/1554711.html
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Talking of “dark, airless and ugly”, even Munger sounds tame compared to predictions of one Israeli professor I read in yesterday’s newspaper. According to this futurist, Israel’s population will continue rising till we’ll need to live in 100 story buildings, most of which will be underground (!).
First of all, I will happily die before this comes true.
Second, may be Israeli reproduction rate will go down a century from now, like has happened in most of the world, including in countries like Iran.
Just reading this was highly unpleasant, let alone living like this. We are not moles to live underground w/o sunlight!
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Found a nice translation of the word ‘woke’ – бдительный, with Latynina giving various examples of this phenomenon in the Soviet times.
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In addition to Russian literature, Russian visual art is also developing:
Петербургский художник написал картину, на которой толпа живых людей идет с портретами мертвых В ней увидели сходство с «Бессмертным полком». СК уже начал проверку
Картина «Живые и мертвые»
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Sadly because covid I can’t do my hobby 😦
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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