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Text removed -- yakface

To whoever's about to deal with Rambo: can you just deal with him and leave the thread unlocked? It's a good enough discussion, and unrelated to his... outburst there.

Text removed -- yakface

Why would you try to get yourself banned when you seem to be only really bothered by one poster?

 Cheesecat wrote:
Why would you try to get yourself banned when you seem to be only really bothered by one poster?

Probably because someone stole the account and is trolling with it.

KalashnikovMarine wrote:I can kinda see Grey's point. I stopped going to English class my Junior year of high school, because it took me a couple hours to read Hawkin's "The Scarlet Letter".

Hawthorne.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, keep the reading relavent. Maybe have a couple classics, but make sure they also read contemporary books(that are also popular)

Seriously, who wants to read How to Kill a Mockingbird? Like maybe 10% of each class. Have them read something they'd actually like for a change.

It's To Kill A Mockingbird. It's not an instruction manual. It's quite easy to read, very engaging and its themes are still relevant.

DutchKillsRambo wrote:Is this serious? Really? So the only literature we can learn from is that we enjoy? You're going to tell me John Grisham has as much to offer as Marcel Proust?

Well, to be fair, Proust is absolutely terrible. Grandpa Simpson's rambling story about the time he went ot Shelbyville and tied an onion to his belt (as was the style at the time) is about as good, and something like a million words shorter (sadly, not an exaggeration).

However, there are many school reading lists that could use an update. I'd personally like to see Bronte's Jane Eyre replaced by McCarthy's Blood Meridian and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath replaced by East of Eden.

 azazel the cat wrote:

KalashnikovMarine wrote:I can kinda see Grey's point. I stopped going to English class my Junior year of high school, because it took me a couple hours to read Hawkin's "The Scarlet Letter".

Hawthorne.

In my own defense I am on SERIOUS painkillers at present.

Heh, I always mess up that title

And no, its not a difficult read. Just not my cup of tea. and I can't really remember anyone that really found it a book they would have read if they didn't have to.

I could find another book that has the same themes that I liked better if I tried.


I suppose thats the real issue, static reading lists. Not enough options. Although there are definitly reasons to keep the number of books down to a level so the teacher can actually grade the student. Not much good if the book the student picked is one the teacher hasn't read.

So I guess its a real doozy of a problem with no real good answer. Need more books to have variety and to stay current, but at the same time the teachers need to be familar with the literature the assignments are being written about.

KalashnikovMarine wrote:In my own defense I am on SERIOUS painkillers at present.

And you can evidently see, so all must've gone well.

Grey Templar wrote:I suppose thats the real issue, static reading lists. Not enough options. Although there are definitly reasons to keep the number of books down to a level so the teacher can actually grade the student. Not much good if the book the student picked is one the teacher hasn't read.

So I guess its a real doozy of a problem with no real good answer. Need more books to have variety and to stay current, but at the same time the teachers need to be familar with the literature the assignments are being written about.

I think static reading lists are a necessity. Otherwise, it's very difficult to engage in a critical discussion. However, a selection of 3 or 4 novels and then having the class split into smaller groups, each with its own novel is one way, and could serve to give students some choice.

But I disagree with the "stay current" bit... I think that so long as the book has relatable themes that are current (the best ones will be generally timeless) that's all that matters. The actual publishing date shouldn't really be a determining factor in book selection.

 azazel the cat wrote:

KalashnikovMarine wrote:In my own defense I am on SERIOUS painkillers at present.

And you can evidently see, so all must've gone well.
.

My vision is in and out, and should begin to stabilize to "driving safe" in the next couple days, with full healing and final vision coming in around a month's time. 20/20 or better is a good bet.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Perhaps they shouldn't use dry, antiquated reading materials in English, then. Make them read A Song of Ice and Fire or something, and focus more on grammar and spelling than spurious analysis of no-longer-relevant books.

Absolutely no. Thinking isn't in memorising the tricks and quirks of english, either in the spelling or the grammar, but in the ability to consider and reflect on an argument made.

That 'spurious' analysis is what actually matters. Perhaps not in the form it was unfortunately taught to many - 'the corpses in the red badge of courage represent the reality of Henry's dream of a glorious death compared to the reality of such death' and all that nonsense. Not bullet points to be memorised and regurgitated in a text, but actual knowledge and beliefs to be taken from a book, and the ability to take those lessons and compare them to one's own life experiences for contemplation.

To address this, and the larger list culled above: basically all of these matters are perfect examples of my premise: that about 98% of schooling is good for nothing but instilling the discipline to shut up and work or the basic language skills necessary to do so. Shift over the earlier focus to maximizing the efficacy of this fundamental aspect of schooling, and you can devote more of schooling to meaningful and productive study rather than just more instilling self-discipline.

Absolutely not. The ability to think - to form coherent rational arguments and express them as such, is a critical skill. To just disregard that and claim school is about the discipline to shut up and develop language skills is totally fething barking mad.

And your decision to just cull all those individual points and just revert to repeating your base claim is pretty good evidence that you know, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, that your claim doesn't hold up at all.

YThe thing is, as said above, when schooling ultimately already revolves around instilling self-discipline, we can clearly see that's the most important aspect of the current system.

Circular poppycock. Schooling about instilling discipline, therefore we should focus on instilling discipline, therefore discipline is the most important thing.

Discipline is not the fething point. If it was, we'd just have marching drills for six hours a day. Learning to think fething matters.

If you don't get that basic fething thing, you cannot have a sensible opinion on education.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

No. Discipline is the capacity to choose the better option over what your gut wants you to do, and the better option is determined by the specific circumstances of the situation.

I'm still not sure why the self is not part of the "specific circumstances" of any given situation. I mean, as it stands, you're basically arguing that all people should do as they're told.

 sebster wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Perhaps they shouldn't use dry, antiquated reading materials in English, then. Make them read A Song of Ice and Fire or something, and focus more on grammar and spelling than spurious analysis of no-longer-relevant books.

Absolutely no. Thinking isn't in memorising the tricks and quirks of english, either in the spelling or the grammar, but in the ability to consider and reflect on an argument made.

That 'spurious' analysis is what actually matters. Perhaps not in the form it was unfortunately taught to many - 'the corpses in the red badge of courage represent the reality of Henry's dream of a glorious death compared to the reality of such death' and all that nonsense. Not bullet points to be memorised and regurgitated in a text, but actual knowledge and beliefs to be taken from a book, and the ability to take those lessons and compare them to one's own life experiences for contemplation.

While the ability to make up a random point and rationally support it with nonsense analysis of quotes and references is a valuable skill, or collection of skills (this is 100% of what I learned from AP English in highschool-make something up and rationally argue it), I think it is something of a problem that it gets conflated with a class that's also supposed to be teaching language skills and formal forms of writing as a sort of technical background for a lot of other classes.

What about the point of not using antiquated reading material? Even going beyond the stilted speech (an inevitable result of language shifting), they tend to be outright primitive in structure, coming from a time before the proper methods were really developed and refined. Like how really old movies are absolute nonsense more often than not. Shakespeare, for instance, was massively influential, yes, but his work is still rather rubbish besides the better elements of modern writing. Especially as plays are a ridiculous thing to be reading outside of studying how to write screenplays or the like.

Absolutely not. The ability to think - to form coherent rational arguments and express them as such, is a critical skill. To just disregard that and claim school is about the discipline to shut up and develop language skills is totally fething barking mad.

Two points: one, how much of that is true of the most rudimentary elements of education, where it pretty much revolves around taking years and years and years just to hammer the most basic elements of language and math into the students? Two, how does openly emphasizing self-discipline preclude any of that?

And your decision to just cull all those individual points and just revert to repeating your base claim is pretty good evidence that you know, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, that your claim doesn't hold up at all.

Actually, I just wanted to make the crack about reading material, and didn't think to copy/paste the rest of the list until after I'd deleted it (this phone lacks an undo feature, so I couldn't really fix that oversight without jumping through a whole bunch of hoops).

Circular poppycock. Schooling about instilling discipline, therefore we should focus on instilling discipline, therefore discipline is the most important thing.

Discipline is not the fething point. If it was, we'd just have marching drills for six hours a day. Learning to think fething matters.

If you don't get that basic fething thing, you cannot have a sensible opinion on education.

I never said schooling was coherently organized at this point, I just made a valuation of what it's doing based on my experiences. 99% of the material is, in and of itself, useless outside the context of simply being something on which to focus the actual lesson: the capacity to undertake an unpleasant and often arduous task which offers no clear purpose or benefit.

Perhaps my experiences are skewed a bit, as I've always been sharper than the system is built to accommodate (as in, never payed more than the scantest attention, never did any work, never studied, and proceeded to ace every test-the only thing that even began to challenge me was calculus, which was solved by simply paying attention instead of playing trials 2 on my laptop), rendering all the little learning tools they use nothing but pointless, repetitive tasks, which has led to my conclusion, looking back, that it was really about the one thing I lacked at the time: the discipline to do all those pointless little tasks anyways. Perhaps this is a flawed conclusion, but I think if they were at least open about the value of doing seemingly pointless tasks anyways things could improve dramatically.


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 dogma wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

No. Discipline is the capacity to choose the better option over what your gut wants you to do, and the better option is determined by the specific circumstances of the situation.

I'm still not sure why the self is not part of the "specific circumstances" of any given situation. I mean, as it stands, you're basically arguing that all people should do as they're told.

I'm really not. Perhaps the choice of the word "discipline" is what's confusing the matter? I've been trying to prefix it with "self-" when I remember. I'm arguing for the strength to do what is ultimately best for yourself (however you may decide on what you ultimately feel is best-not even restricting this to one specific and myopic category of benefit), even if your momentary impulses disagree.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

I'm really not. Perhaps the choice of the word "discipline" is what's confusing the matter?

No, its your description of "discipline".

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:What about the point of not using antiquated reading material? Even going beyond the stilted speech (an inevitable result of language shifting), they tend to be outright primitive in structure, coming from a time before the proper methods were really developed and refined. Like how really old movies are absolute nonsense more often than not. Shakespeare, for instance, was massively influential, yes, but his work is still rather rubbish besides the better elements of modern writing. Especially as plays are a ridiculous thing to be reading outside of studying how to write screenplays or the like.

That's the thing about timeless literature: it never gets antiquated.

Having said that, did you seriously just say that Shakespeare plays such as Hamlet are rubbish?

 dogma wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

I'm really not. Perhaps the choice of the word "discipline" is what's confusing the matter?

No, its your description of "discipline".

How are you drawing this conclusion, particularly when I keep pointing out that that's not what I'm saying at all? I assumed the term I was using was the source, since it can have other connotations as well, but saying that "the strength to follow a longer term, rationally chosen purpose over immediate gratification of impulse" is advocating blind obedience is just sort of baffling.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azazel the cat wrote:
That's the thing about timeless literature: it never gets antiquated.

I disagree that "timeless literature" is a thing that exists. Old works tend to receive disproportionate praise simply for being the first halfway competent example of a genre, or theme, or whatever. This gives them no more value than their actual quality outside anything but a history class concerning itself with such trivia as who happened to do some now-common thing first.

Having said that, did you seriously just say that Shakespeare plays such as Hamlet are rubbish?

Beside the better elements of modern writing, yes. Hell, beside the better elements of writing in the 19th century, even. People get progressively better in every field, including the arts (except the ones where the "mainstream" elements gave up on quality hundreds of years ago, and have turned the field into one long string of "doing it wrong", because doing it right isn't a unique skill anymore).

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
While the ability to make up a random point and rationally support it with nonsense analysis of quotes and references is a valuable skill, or collection of skills (this is 100% of what I learned from AP English in highschool-make something up and rationally argue it), I think it is something of a problem that it gets conflated with a class that's also supposed to be teaching language skills and formal forms of writing as a sort of technical background for a lot of other classes.

Absolutely, make something up and rationally argue it - an absolutely essential skill. Far, far more important than learning i before e, except before c, and also a bunch of other exceptions.

What about the point of not using antiquated reading material? Even going beyond the stilted speech (an inevitable result of language shifting), they tend to be outright primitive in structure, coming from a time before the proper methods were really developed and refined. Like how really old movies are absolute nonsense more often than not. Shakespeare, for instance, was massively influential, yes, but his work is still rather rubbish besides the better elements of modern writing. Especially as plays are a ridiculous thing to be reading outside of studying how to write screenplays or the like.

I agree on modernising reading lists. Much of what is to be gained from reading a classic is about the history of writing (and therefore the dumbest thing to be giving to someone who by definition is only just starting to read).

Calling Shakespeare rather rubbish is kind of ridiculous, though. But I do agree that assigning his plays just to be reading rather than as something to be performed is bad teaching. In year 9 (I think it was in year 9, with Mrs Blair...) we broke off into groups to perform individual scenes from Romeo and Juliet. It worked well. In Yr 11 we just read MacBeth and wrote an essy on it. That was beyond pointless.

Two points: one, how much of that is true of the most rudimentary elements of education, where it pretty much revolves around taking years and years and years just to hammer the most basic elements of language and math into the students? Two, how does openly emphasizing self-discipline preclude any of that?

One - those rudimentary parts of education are complimentary to thinking. Maths is just a form of abstract thought, and through appreciating it you become more capable in other forms of abstract thought.

Two - the difference is in your earlier claims that discipline should be put first and foremost. Rather, discipline is only a means to an end.

Actually, I just wanted to make the crack about reading material, and didn't think to copy/paste the rest of the list until after I'd deleted it (this phone lacks an undo feature, so I couldn't really fix that oversight without jumping through a whole bunch of hoops).

Fair enough

I never said schooling was coherently organized at this point, I just made a valuation of what it's doing based on my experiences. 99% of the material is, in and of itself, useless outside the context of simply being something on which to focus the actual lesson: the capacity to undertake an unpleasant and often arduous task which offers no clear purpose or benefit.

Most knowledge gained in class isn't directly applicable. Unless you end up writing train timetables you'll never have to know exactly when the train leaving Pockipsie at 3:45 will pass the train leaving Bannockburn at 4:20. But the ability to take real world elements and break them down in to numbers and then use those numbers in calculations is absolutely essential.

So essential in fact, I reckon you take for granted how often you do it everyday.

Perhaps my experiences are skewed a bit, as I've always been sharper than the system is built to accommodate

Most of us are. The system is, afterall, designed to leave behind no more than the absolute least talented students, and that means the top 80% odd of kids will be bored in class.

Perhaps this is a flawed conclusion, but I think if they were at least open about the value of doing seemingly pointless tasks anyways things could improve dramatically.

It is perhaps a conclusion driven too much by personal experience, without taking in to account the system as a whole.

And look, I'm not saying education is perfect. Far from it. But I am saying that it is better than most people recognise, and that improvements have to be made with a clear understanding of what it is that's really important.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
That's the thing about timeless literature: it never gets antiquated.

I disagree that "timeless literature" is a thing that exists. Old works tend to receive disproportionate praise simply for being the first halfway competent example of a genre, or theme, or whatever. This gives them no more value than their actual quality outside anything but a history class concerning itself with such trivia as who happened to do some now-common thing first.

The reason some stories are constantly repeated and others fade into obscurity is because the themes are still relevant to modern society that's why a story like Cinderella that is several hundred years old is still widely known by public as the themes of sibling rivalry and finding a partner

who is successful in life are still important to modern society, if Cinderella's motifs weren't still important to us most people wouldn't of heard of it.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Old works tend to receive disproportionate praise simply for being the first halfway competent example of a genre, or theme, or whatever. This gives them no more value than their actual quality outside anything but a history class concerning itself with such trivia as who happened to do some now-common thing first.

I'm not even going to engage with your commentary, as it is a celebration of ignorance on all levels. You have simultaneously revealed that you have no credible understanding of literature, its history or its value as an art form. I'm not sure exactly how your experiences with literature have managed to obviously fail you so spectacularly, but I'm truly sorry for your loss.

 azazel the cat wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Old works tend to receive disproportionate praise simply for being the first halfway competent example of a genre, or theme, or whatever. This gives them no more value than their actual quality outside anything but a history class concerning itself with such trivia as who happened to do some now-common thing first.

I'm not even going to engage with your commentary, as it is a celebration of ignorance on all levels. You have simultaneously revealed that you have no credible understanding of literature, its history or its value as an art form. I'm not sure exactly how your experiences with literature have managed to obviously fail you so spectacularly, but I'm truly sorry for your loss.

You're arguing that people, informed by the successes and failings of their predecessors, cannot and do not surpass their achievements with great regularity? Do you believe that Edison's Conquest of Mars is better than modern sci-fi by virtue of being the first to use basically every standard theme that is sci-fi?

Looking back at historical literature from a modern context, I see no way one can reasonably put it on a pedestal above later, superior works. It's only intrinsic value comes in the context of specifically studying the history of literature, which is far from a useful pursuit. I don't need to know the history of algorithmic math to program, nor do I need to know the history of western music theory to utilize its teachings. Likewise there is no value to a general education to be derived from historically significant works that are nonetheless surpassed in quality by later, but less historically significant, ones.

 azazel the cat wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Old works tend to receive disproportionate praise simply for being the first halfway competent example of a genre, or theme, or whatever. This gives them no more value than their actual quality outside anything but a history class concerning itself with such trivia as who happened to do some now-common thing first.

I'm not even going to engage with your commentary, as it is a celebration of ignorance on all levels. You have simultaneously revealed that you have no credible understanding of literature, its history or its value as an art form. I'm not sure exactly how your experiences with literature have managed to obviously fail you so spectacularly, but I'm truly sorry for your loss.

Well I suppose he could be making the high minded argument that Shakespeare for example was in all reality low brow entertainment for the masses with an over reliance on a good fart joke (Chaucer is responsible the first fart joke in English to be written down as I recall) then mixing that argument with the actual good point that none of what we call classics today were written as anything but entertainment, or occasionally a public way to insult one's enemies (see The Divine Comedy) with English teachers liking to add layer upon layer of symbolism that most likely isn't there. Forgetting the actual audience and purpose of a work is also endemic to film studies who again like to pull symbolism from the ether to make things seem more important and nuanced then they actually probably are. (Hitchcock and a few other auteurs being exceptions that prove the rule)

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

How are you drawing this conclusion, particularly when I keep pointing out that that's not what I'm saying at all?

I'm not drawing a conclusion, I am telling you about the source of my disagreement.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

I assumed the term I was using was the source, since it can have other connotations as well, but saying that "the strength to follow a longer term, rationally chosen purpose over immediate gratification of impulse" is advocating blind obedience is just sort of baffling.

You didn't say that, at least according to my reading of the thread.

On the subject of Calculus, I made A's and B's at University, but hated every minute of it.

Since getting my Chemical Engineering degree, I used Calculus exactly once at work (needed an equation to determine the actual volume of a cylindrical tank on it's side relative to the % level indicated by the height of the liquid). Now, a simple google search and Wala. I wish more time had been spent on Statistics and process data analysis. I do that gak all day.

 Cheesecat wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
That's the thing about timeless literature: it never gets antiquated.

I disagree that "timeless literature" is a thing that exists. Old works tend to receive disproportionate praise simply for being the first halfway competent example of a genre, or theme, or whatever. This gives them no more value than their actual quality outside anything but a history class concerning itself with such trivia as who happened to do some now-common thing first.

The reason some stories are constantly repeated and others fade into obscurity is because the themes are still relevant to modern society that's why a story like Cinderella that is several hundred years old is still widely known by public as the themes of sibling rivalry and finding a partner

who is successful in life are still important to modern society, if Cinderella's motifs weren't still important to us most people wouldn't of heard of it.

I'm going to disagree with a particular point. Cinderella is famous not because of its motifs and lessons, but rather because Disney made a movie out of it years ago. There are plenty of other fairie tales, with a variety of good and useful lessons, but they are almost unknown to the majority of people. How many people could name more than 3 of Aesop's Fables, for instance, if even that many?

Just a small nitpick.


As to "timeless quality" of assigned reading material, such an ephemeral and ultimately subjective quality really should have no bearing on educational material selection. I nearly failed several years of english classes in high school, not because I didn't understand or could not do the material, but because the books we read were SO FRELLING AWFUL. Their Eyes were Watching God, As I lay Dying, The Great gods damned Gatsby... ugh. Just... ugh. We finally do a reading of Ender's Game and how much discussion did we have? 0 days. Not one minute. We were asked to read the book, but not given a single assignment, lecture, lesson, test or quiz to actually determine if we did or not. End result being that a book I read in two days was completely irrelevant, while reading Romeo and Juliet for the billionth frelling time and talking about it for close to 6 weeks. I'm a fan of the Bard, mind, but seriously... can we at least give kids some new options that haven't been made into a million bad movies? Can I get some King Lear maybe? Some Twelfth Night? No no, R&J, Hammie, and MacMommyissues. I think we covered each of those books twice each during my time in middle and high school.

 streamdragon wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
That's the thing about timeless literature: it never gets antiquated.

I disagree that "timeless literature" is a thing that exists. Old works tend to receive disproportionate praise simply for being the first halfway competent example of a genre, or theme, or whatever. This gives them no more value than their actual quality outside anything but a history class concerning itself with such trivia as who happened to do some now-common thing first.

The reason some stories are constantly repeated and others fade into obscurity is because the themes are still relevant to modern society that's why a story like Cinderella that is several hundred years old is still widely known by public as the themes of sibling rivalry and finding a partner

who is successful in life are still important to modern society, if Cinderella's motifs weren't still important to us most people wouldn't of heard of it.

I'm going to disagree with a particular point. Cinderella is famous not because of its motifs and lessons, but rather because Disney made a movie out of it years ago. There are plenty of other fairie tales, with a variety of good and useful lessons, but they are almost unknown to the majority of people. How many people could name more than 3 of Aesop's Fables, for instance, if even that many?

Just a small nitpick.

I disagree if people didn't find the themes in the Disney adaptation of Cinderella important to the there lives it wouldn't be a success, why would parents still show the movie to there kids if they didn't think there was anything important to be learned from it?

 Cheesecat wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
That's the thing about timeless literature: it never gets antiquated.

I disagree that "timeless literature" is a thing that exists. Old works tend to receive disproportionate praise simply for being the first halfway competent example of a genre, or theme, or whatever. This gives them no more value than their actual quality outside anything but a history class concerning itself with such trivia as who happened to do some now-common thing first.

The reason some stories are constantly repeated and others fade into obscurity is because the themes are still relevant to modern society that's why a story like Cinderella that is several hundred years old is still widely known by public as the themes of sibling rivalry and finding a partner

who is successful in life are still important to modern society, if Cinderella's motifs weren't still important to us most people wouldn't of heard of it.

I'm going to disagree with a particular point. Cinderella is famous not because of its motifs and lessons, but rather because Disney made a movie out of it years ago. There are plenty of other fairie tales, with a variety of good and useful lessons, but they are almost unknown to the majority of people. How many people could name more than 3 of Aesop's Fables, for instance, if even that many?

Just a small nitpick.

I disagree if people didn't find the themes in the Disney adaptation of Cinderella important to the there lives it wouldn't be a success, why would parents still show the movie to there kids if they didn't think there was anything important to be learned from it?

Because it is a cartoon, and children like cartoons. If it were the story itself, you would find other versions of the story that were equally as successful, and yet the Julie Andrews version is rarely seen and even contemporary releases see nowhere close to the success of the Disney version. Even the story has changed from the original version(s). Prior to 1967 the Cinderella story completely lacked a fairy godmother, pumpkin coach (which makes today's reference of 'turning into a pumpkin at midnight'), or glass slippers! Basically, Disney's version is the most famous because it built on Grimm (the most famous but certainly not original version of the time) and even then, changed the story that the Grimm brothers actually penned into something that was appropriate to children. Spoiler alert: in the Hans Christian Anderson story of the Little Mermaid, Ariel dies. And yet we the most popular version has her living Happily Ever After.

But seriously, 3 Aesop's Fables without looking it up.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Replace calculus with basic programming.

Now that is a GREAT idea.

Actually, it should be broken up into two distinct subject matters:
1) A Logic Class - - Explain the logic in basic programming... if-then statements, do-while, subroutines...etc...
2) Basic Programming - - can be anything, VB, HTML, Java, Perl... just a taste.

The only books i liked in class(Brave New world, Lord of the flies and The jungle book) we all dropped because people didnt like it.

 whembly wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Replace calculus with basic programming.

Now that is a GREAT idea.

Actually, it should be broken up into two distinct subject matters:
1) A Logic Class - - Explain the logic in basic programming... if-then statements, do-while, subroutines...etc...
2) Basic Programming - - can be anything, VB, HTML, Java, Perl... just a taste.

That is a really good idea.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Replace calculus with basic programming.

Now that is a GREAT idea.

Actually, it should be broken up into two distinct subject matters:
1) A Logic Class - - Explain the logic in basic programming... if-then statements, do-while, subroutines...etc...
2) Basic Programming - - can be anything, VB, HTML, Java, Perl... just a taste.

That is a really good idea.

Thanks... I don't know if I'd get rid of Calculus. While it might not be used in whatever profession you end up, at least it gives the brain some "excercise". I mean... isn't that the point at school? I fething hated Shakespare in my English class, but I understand why it's important in a literary sense.

However, I'd STRONGLY advocate at least some sort of logic class in each major phases of education, because it's so integral to our everyday life.