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dogma wrote:

Zyllos wrote:
Really, the way I see it, our values and views, while we think are logically sound, are shaped heavily by social pressures from our upbringings (is that a word?) and can skew our perception of actual facts.

Though the shaping is often unpredictable. Take the example of the child who grows up in a Christian household, and comes to reject any sort of empirically grounded morality.

Stop talking about me Dogma!



Sadly, morality is relative. The one good thing I can see about Christ's teachings is love for everyone regardless of their beliefs or deeds. I'd like to think a portion of the west, even non Christians, have built upon that to the point where practices such as homosexuality are no longer ostracized simply because it is not inherently evil (at least from my standpoint).

Sadly, morality is relative.

A good opponent to that opinion would be Sam Harris.

Kovnik Obama wrote:
A good opponent to that opinion would be Sam Harris.

I wouldn't hold Sam Harris up as a student of ethics and morality any more than I would hold Richard Dawkins up as a student of religion.

Zyllos wrote:Sense the US government and many of it's citizens believe in Christian values and morals, it only makes sense to have their social ideas dominate the laws and ideas of today.

Which Christian values and morals?

Because not all Christians, nor all Christian churches, are homophobes who attempt to use badly translated versions of the bible to justify their homophobia. Just the most vocal and outspoken ones.

Well, this thread appears to be going in a totally unexpected direction.

I wouldn't hold Sam Harris up as a student of ethics and morality any more than I would hold Richard Dawkins up as a student of religion

Well, yeah, and I don't agree with him integrally, but he is at least a proponent of scientifically objective morality. And while that is left to one's own opinion, I find that he properly trashed Craig in the God Debate II, who is a much more 'classical' student of ethics and morality.

And I wish people would forget about Dawkins already.

Kovnik Obama wrote:
And I wish people would forget about Dawkins already.

Now that Hitchens is dead that's less likely than ever.

Joey wrote:A mind map is when you write random stuff in bubbles that you connect to other bubbles. In another module the first thing we learned was how to multiply numbers. I'm not even kidding.
This is what happens when schools focus on letting children express themselves. Not only is it far cheaper and easier than teaching them things, it leads to a generation of people whose only knowledge has been imparted on them by their parents, hence why the class system is a lot more rigid than it was.

Wow thats stupid. You need to learn more important things like I did.
My first lesson was: 1) that rumbling you hear and think is a truck outside is not a truck; 2) Iranian math professors are better than canines in early earthquake detection. When they stop talking and just bolt from the classroom its probably and earthquake; and 3) Californians are absolute girly men, running outside screaming OHGODOHGODEARTHQUAKEOHGOD whilst Frazzled, pondering the sudden suspension in class on the first day, meanders outside. Later, he discovered VW Jettas are chick cars, but ONLY CUTE chick cars.

Frazzled learned on that day he was going to like college.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Amaya wrote:

Melissia wrote:Yeah, physical education classes can be pretty worthless at times.

I think this is the understatement of the year. The fact colleges require them is even more asinine.

On the positive without college PE I would never have discovered:
1. Aerobics classes in college are extremely enjoyable. The scenery is inspiring.
2. Don't put me against the teacher's pet in a fencing match after I've had a pitcher of beer. Giving him complements on his strike and technique after scoing on Frazzled will only make Frazzled "accidently" kick out his legs and send him flying. Ooops.. Sorryyy (hiccup).

Morals or standards of behaviour can be developed isolated from religion - a great number of athiests are capable of going out and not killing and raping people every day!

It is pretty easy to work out if something should be allowed or not: does it hurt anyone? If so, who, how much and in what way?

If the harm outweighs any benefits, then it will not be allowed.

I didn't kill or rape anyone today. Saying that, I'm atheist, so tomorrow's pretty much up for grabs...

Albatross wrote:I didn't kill or rape anyone today. Saying that, I'm atheist, so tomorrow's pretty much up for grabs...

There's nothing in life that can't be turned around with a crime spree...

I don't know - murder sprees can't solve running out of places to hide the bodies... Which reminds me... Need to get some more acid...

SilverMK2 wrote:I don't know - murder sprees can't solve running out of places to hide the bodies... Which reminds me... Need to get some more acid...

If you eat them then you'll always have a place to hide the bodies!
You could also sell bits of them and make loads of money...

Joey wrote:

Palindrome wrote:

mattyrm wrote:[
Schools done away with learning by rote and introduced a load of hippy crap. When I was at school I was stunned how little time we spent actually learning hard science and maths, and how much time we spent playing Puff The Magic Dragon on the BBC and drawing spider diagrams with slang terms for fanny's.

You must have gone to a 'special' school

No as I posted above that crap is endemic.
Actual education is reserved for private/grammar schools. State school kids are, basically, given balls of string to play with all day.

This is not even remotely true. I think that you just have some serious psychological issues with education.

But Alby, if he didn't succeed at uni the system MUST be broken. Right?

Albatross wrote:

Joey wrote:

Palindrome wrote:

mattyrm wrote:[
Schools done away with learning by rote and introduced a load of hippy crap. When I was at school I was stunned how little time we spent actually learning hard science and maths, and how much time we spent playing Puff The Magic Dragon on the BBC and drawing spider diagrams with slang terms for fanny's.

You must have gone to a 'special' school

No as I posted above that crap is endemic.
Actual education is reserved for private/grammar schools. State school kids are, basically, given balls of string to play with all day.

This is not even remotely true. I think that you just have some serious psychological issues with education.

I go to a state school in a very Left-Wing (See: Hippie) area, and we have always done Maths and English Papers over gaking ourselves and watching Barney.

Perhaps it's just a British thing.

Albatross wrote:

Joey wrote:

Palindrome wrote:

mattyrm wrote:[
Schools done away with learning by rote and introduced a load of hippy crap. When I was at school I was stunned how little time we spent actually learning hard science and maths, and how much time we spent playing Puff The Magic Dragon on the BBC and drawing spider diagrams with slang terms for fanny's.

You must have gone to a 'special' school

No as I posted above that crap is endemic.
Actual education is reserved for private/grammar schools. State school kids are, basically, given balls of string to play with all day.

This is not even remotely true. I think that you just have some serious psychological issues with education.

I tend to disagree with Alby on a lot but he's got a point...
It really isn't like how you describe it...
As for psychological issues... lets just leave that out shall we?

Corpsesarefun wrote:But Alby, if he didn't succeed at uni the system MUST be broken. Right?

Bingo!

And incidentally, it's only once I came to terms with my learning difficulty that I stopped blaming the education system, and started excelling in it. It took me more than ten years, mind.

I think Joey could benefit from my experience there, in actual fact. It wasn't a dig at all.

Maybe it's a Euro thing. Here in the states, public colleges can actually have a fairly good reputation for education.

The one I'm going to is quite well known for its excellent nursing program, for example (which I'm thankfully not in, as it requires a perfect score practically to get in).

My primary school (ages 5-11) was pretty good, my secondary school (11-16) was adequate and my college is pretty good.

All are publicly funded.

My wife is a teacher in the state sector and my parents both teach in the private sector. They all teach science and they all teach pretty much the same stuff (the methods are somewhat different as my parents have been teaching a long time and are a bit old schooland my wife is reasonably new and so was trained in many of the newer educational styles).

Pretty much the only difference is the kids - the state sector has to acommodate a much wider cross section of abilities and backgrounds than private schools do. A C grade at my parents school is pretty much an absolute failure, while some of the kids my wife teaches will be lucky to leave with any qualifications at all, not through how they are taught but because of other factors like home life, being in care, not wanting to learn, etc.

It does help that teachers at private schools will tend to try and do more for pupils than in some state schools, but at the end of the day they are teaching the same material in pretty much the same ways.

There's also the fact that students are more likely to be working while going to school in public colleges than private ones.

Lets be clear in the US college means university.
Public colleges in the US are some of the best schools in the world.

I'd put University of Texas, UC Berkeley and UCLA up against anyone. Plus Texas has its own nuke reactor. We'll nuke YOU!

True. Public college = publicly funded university in the states. College and university are synonyms here.

My missus has taught in both private and state primaries, and currently teaches in a specialist private school for autistic kids, and I can confirm what SilverMK2 is saying. I would add that the difference in class sizes seems to be an important factor in making private schools perform, on average, 'better' than state schools.

Private school kids just get better attention, if not facilities. In fact, all the private schools I've had experience of seem to have slightly worse facilities than the average modern state school. It seems obvious that if you put more money into teaching, kids perform better, even if your school is dropping to bits, and has old textbooks/computers.

Frazz HEck, The Community college i go to is one of the best ever.
We even have teachers who come here to teach from those universities to teach because they think its a great scool

AFAIK The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge still manage to turns heads across most of the world...
Posh bastards...

Oxbridge is well regarded for a lot of things. However I do laugh every time we go to visit my brother in law in Oxford that their engineering department's sign is falling over

SilverMK2 wrote:Oxbridge is well regarded for a lot of things. However I do laugh every time we go to visit my brother in law in Oxford that their engineering department's sign is falling over

No one ever said they were good at signs...

Melissia wrote:There's also the fact that students are more likely to be working while going to school in public colleges than private ones.

That depends on the university. You don't see many working class kids at University of Illinois, for example, but you see plenty at North Illinois, Western Illinois, and Eastern Illinois. The big name public universities in the US are, often times as, if not more, selective than private schools and often cost just as much.

Albatross wrote:It seems obvious that if you put more money into teaching, kids perform better, even if your school is dropping to bits, and has old textbooks/computers.

In the States you also have the option of expelling students, which has a way of keeping out the kids with disciplinary problems or, in some cases, poor academic performance. Public schools, by contrast, can't kick anyone out.