Our Schools or our System... WHY

[CoolBlue71]

Dzhokhar Tsarnev - Product of our colleges...?? unsure of status.

Adam Lanza - Product of our schools - high school loner

James Homes - Product of our schools - Grad school drop out

Jared Lee Loughner - Product of our schools - Kicked out of community college


So does all this link together to our schools or our society?

Is crime of any kind going to be linked to "our schools"?

How about Wall Street criminal behavior? That, too?

You can say that everything that every contributed to the life of an individual, up to the point just prior to the start of having committed crime, have a connection.

It doesn't allow for these individuals to excuse themselves and say, "Well, it's this. It's that."

And we have millions in "our schools," who do not commit crimes while in "our schools" and after they have graduated from "our schools."

 

[JayHawk]

Is crime of any kind going to be linked to "our schools"?

How about Wall Street criminal behavior? That, too?

You can say that everything that every contributed to the life of an individual, up to the point just prior to the start of having committed crime, have a connection.

It doesn't allow for these individuals to excuse themselves and say, "Well, it's this. It's that."

And we have millions in "our schools," who do not commit crimes while in "our schools" and after they have graduated from "our schools."

See the post above the one you responded to.

I seek not excuses for bombers and madmen. I seek solutions to a society gone astray. Or at a minimum a discussion and opinion.

 

[chance1]

ooooooh

that's what u meant

yeesh

 

[maxpowr9]

Random fact: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck met at the same school Dzhokhar attended.

 

[altlover85]

The question is, what are they now being taught. Were these kids taught that America is all about enslaving blacks, persecuting the Indians, the immigrants, with huge numbers of poor, polluted rivers and air, etc? Liberals pride themselves in seeing all the negatives about America, as opposed to those simpletons who think America is good.

I haven't been in high school in a decade, but I certainly wasn't taught that the US was all bad and I grew up in a relatively conservative small town so I doubt that my teachers were liberals. It seems that you simply want to make things black and white and spout your talking points though.

WHOOOOOAAAAAA!!!! Nellly

it appears we have had a severe

I think you are on to something JayHawk. I wish I had the answers.

 

[bankside]

Re: Our Schools

The question is, what are they now being taught. Were these kids taught that America is all about enslaving blacks, persecuting the Indians, the immigrants, with huge numbers of poor, polluted rivers and air, etc? Liberals pride themselves in seeing all the negatives about America, as opposed to those simpletons who think America is good.

I was raised in Soviet Canuckistan and we were not even taught those things about the States in liberally liberal liberal land.

We had a geography overview, boston tea party, revolution, slavery, WWII eventual ally, trade. And then we learnt about the other 95% of the world.

 

[zoltanspawn]

There is zero mystery in why most bizarre acts of aggression are perpetrated by young men that are predominantly white. Although for some similar and some different you could argue the black youth has been destroying itself for the last five decades.

Hmmm, there is maybe something totally normal about young men needing to establish their worth...and things going awry when they can't.

What a rotten motivation prestige can be.

Some will need their sense of worth assuaged.

Others may be convinced there's something to humility.

 

[maxpowr9]

Hmmm, there is maybe something totally normal about young men needing to establish their worth...and things going awry when they can't.

What a rotten motivation prestige can be.

Some will need their sense of worth assuaged.

Others may be convinced there's something to humility.

I'm not one to vaunt poetry but my favorite poem comes to mind...

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

 

[Kulindahr]

Whether it be guns, video games, movies, evil lefties, evil righties or fucking king tut the root of the problem is society and how we have evolved into a group of separate people instead of a family, then a village and then a city and then a state and so on.... we are all in our separate worlds these days.

there are a few books on the matter of societal influence on youth and the outcomes.

Iron John is one examining mens issues and the other is Boys Adrift.

In Iron John it is explained through a critical analysis of a a Grimm Fairy tale. That book holds a lot of truth to me. Mostly from my own life and through leading young men and watching them grow. Men have a need to belong and be accepted. Since our society moved to industry and working in abstract it is harder and harder for the dad to demonstrate that he does something of value. If he is present at all. Role models are almost non-existent in young-men's lives because of the fears driven by everything from pedophilia to corrupt influence. it is saddening and sickening.

Adrift hits more of a parenting angle with a focus on the psychology of the young male mind but again blames societal change for the problem. he offers decent methods to change course.

The problem for me is we are losing half our countries most precious assets. There is zero mystery in why most bizarre acts of aggression are perpetrated by young men that are predominantly white. Although for some similar and some different you could argue the black youth has been destroying itself for the last five decades.

That is kinda what I wanted to discuss, society and its effect on our youth NOT predisposed political postions that have been posted ad nauseum.


But go forth and prosper I wont change the course of the thread if you all dont want to change.

As far as schools -- they're no longer the major influence they were twenty years ago, thanks to changes in communications technology. The system we use was outdated then; it's close to useless now -- seeing as it was developed to produce "productive citizens" for a society where conformity was prized, and the set of skill sets useful in life was far, far narrower. If any blame can be placed there, it's that teaching facts can't possibly produce responsible people when no critical thinking skills are imparted. There's a failure in values, too, but really on just one area: we do not teach self-ownership, which is the foundational truth for mental health, self-responsibility, and respect for others.


But...

There's a serious point above about role models. In an attempt to "protect" young people, the legal structure of our society has in actuality been building ever stronger fences between responsible adults and young people, especially teens. There's always been a generational division, but now the law itself turns adults into the enemy, unless they're adults willing to break the law.

One glaring exception is where wealth intervenes, but the know-your-place authoritarian propertarianism espoused here as "conservatism" is as bad as (or worse than) the culture of rebellion, drugs, and alcohol. That neo-fascist view of the world is at least as destructive to respect for other human beings as anything propagated by street gangs (or held up for admiration by rappers).


I can't decide what book you have in mind with Adrift; more details would help. But young people are adrift, because it's pretty plain that the one side claiming to represent values really represents a selfish pursuit of wealth and power, while the other side represents a demand for mushy conformity under an authoritarianism poorly disguised as "caring". The combined lesson is to not give a shit about others, but to grab what power you can, and use others as pawns to get where you want to go.

So the real surprise is not that we get young people who do mass murder, it's that we get as few as we do, and also don't have them blowing things up and burning things down on a serious scale on a regular basis.

 

[Kulindahr]

And we have millions in "our schools," who do not commit crimes while in "our schools" and after they have graduated from "our schools."

Perhaps our schools do too good a job of beating the initiative and creativity out of the vast majority.

 

[Kulindahr]

Hmmm, there is maybe something totally normal about young men needing to establish their worth...and things going awry when they can't.

What a rotten motivation prestige can be.

Some will need their sense of worth assuaged.

Others may be convinced there's something to humility.

There's a book, one of those sci-fi novels which is really social commentary, that addresses the issue of human need for prestige/acclaim/affirmation, and how our economic and political system(s) currently fail to meet those for most people, with a suggested solution. It's also a good read, so I recommend Voyage from Yesteryear, by James Hogan, to any interested in exploring a concept that would be far healthier than the cult of acquisition our "conservatives" uphold or the fuzzy "you're all valuable" affirmation with no foundation needed.

 

[JayHawk]

The book i refer to is Boys Adrift...

I wanna run a business post Navy but I wanna change this as well. It is inexplicable that ALL of our youth and young adult programs are breaking down. I am encouraged by several others doing the same for youth in LA and Great Britain. What bothers me though is that we are doing it to recover youth in the system.... our goal should be loftier... lets keep them from the system.

 

[bankside]

Ahh. Dr. Sax.

Here's his prescription for education:
http://www.boysadrift.com/ed_horizons.pdf

He's part of the Men are from Mars Women are Venus crowd, and I think it's a bit nuts.

If I had a teacher like this:

I would have told him to go fuck himself. It wouldn't have made me "engage."

The reason I'm skeptical is because of this:
https://machineslikeus.com/news/men-are-earth-women-are-earth/page/0/1

The average for men and the average for women is different for any given trait. But if you look at any individual man or any individual woman, they're all over the chart. The men and the women overlap almost completely. It's only the average that's different. And we don't teach an "average" in school, we teach an individual.

I think a curriculum and teaching style that focusses on the individual is going to be way more powerful than just focussing on his gender.

 

[JayHawk]

Ahh. Dr. Sax.

Here's his prescription for education:
http://www.boysadrift.com/ed_horizons.pdf

He's part of the Men are from Mars Women are Venus crowd, and I think it's a bit nuts.

If I had a teacher like this:

I would have told him to go fuck himself. It wouldn't have made me "engage."

The reason I'm skeptical is because of this:
https://machineslikeus.com/news/men-are-earth-women-are-earth/page/0/1

The average for men and the average for women is different for any given trait. But if you look at any individual man or any individual woman, they're all over the chart. The men and the women overlap almost completely. It's only the average that's different. And we don't teach an "average" in school, we teach an individual.

I think a curriculum and teaching style that focusses on the individual is going to be way more powerful than just focussing on his gender.

I couldn't agree with you more IRT individual training to educate our children but that is not what this post refers to... the schools reference was to a growing sentiment, during the time I posted, that insinuated our school were the singular problem facing the failure to contain our boys.

Couple of things...

Men are from mars, Women from Venus ?? Do you not agree that men and women are programmed differently and react differently because of gender? We aren't talking test scores.

SGT Hulka and an angry shouting male figure is exactly what we don't need. I have no idea how you look at Iron John and Boys Adrift and then extract that what we need a yelling drill Sargent. That conclusion couldn't be farther from reality. A conclusion easily found IF one reads the books instead of reading about them.

Your link's author attempts to find some traction off a popular theory by bashing it. Quite a popular sport among those looking to get published with no real point. While there is some truth to the things the link you provide states, at the end of the day there is just as much truth in the innate differences. The lesbian or gay characteristic is an ignorant analogy because of the difference between gender and sex. Your author confuses Sex which is anatomy and gender which is self and societal viewpoints. Or a set of behaviors condoned by society to relate to a specific gender and has nothing to do with wee-wees or hoo-has. So the gay and lesbian reference handed up as ultimate proof is simply insulting and proves that person knows not their head from a hole in the ground.

Finally, my point is not that our education system is bad and based on the lowest common denominator instead of the individual. No, my point is that our BOYS are being lost. Those are the ones identifying as male gender-ed. They are becoming deadbeats, failures at school, psycho killers, and all other sort of weirdos that do not contribute to society. The thing the female gender has that the male gender does not is a gender community. Women hold each other when they cry, women support and comfort one another. Men typically have the attitude that anything of that sort is weak. And no it does not matter if you personally do not embrace such perceived manly gender requirements, society does. Men have lost all the activities where it was OK to learn from another male. An industrial and then service economy developed the male worker into a creature that was separate from his younger male family members. The young male can't go on the Microsoft word edit journey with dad, but back when getting food required hunting, he could hunt with dad. Then you have the perverse notion of the adult male. Based on plenty of example, men are not trusted with our young men. between the church, the scouts and abuse of all sorts in schools, the adult male is simply sex obsessed and can't control themselves.

What we need are examples of what it is to be a successful adult male to provide to our male children. Examples that are lacking in most boys lives.

 

[bankside]

I couldn't agree with you more IRT individual training to educate our children but that is not what this post refers to... the schools reference was to a growing sentiment, during the time I posted, that insinuated our school were the singular problem facing the failure to contain our boys.

Couple of things...

Men are from mars, Women from Venus ?? Do you not agree that men and women are programmed differently and react differently because of gender? We aren't talking test scores.

SGT Hulka and an angry shouting male figure is exactly what we don't need. I have no idea how you look at Iron John and Boys Adrift and then extract that what we need a yelling drill Sargent. That conclusion couldn't be farther from reality. A conclusion easily found IF one reads the books instead of reading about them.

Your link's author attempts to find some traction off a popular theory by bashing it. Quite a popular sport among those looking to get published with no real point. While there is some truth to the things the link you provide states, at the end of the day there is just as much truth in the innate differences. The lesbian or gay characteristic is an ignorant analogy because of the difference between gender and sex. Your author confuses Sex which is anatomy and gender which is self and societal viewpoints. Or a set of behaviors condoned by society to relate to a specific gender and has nothing to do with wee-wees or hoo-has. So the gay and lesbian reference handed up as ultimate proof is simply insulting and proves that person knows not their head from a hole in the ground.

Oh, meant to quote the study in the link, not the link - it's a bit more substantial.
http://www.psych.rochester.edu/people/reis_harry/assets/pdf/CarothersReis_2012.pdf

Not just a pop sci axe to grind, but actual statistically valid information showing men and women are not programmed differently nor do they innately react differently because of gender. Most men and most women have a tendency to react the same way in a given circumstance. The averages are offset a bit. There are outliers at either end, but mostly we overlap.

You do make a very good point in the next bit, but if women benefit from supporting and comforting each other, and men suffer from a lack of that, it just shows how universal the need is for support and comfort. HUGGGGG!!!!!! (no homo though)

Finally, my point is not that our education system is bad and based on the lowest common denominator instead of the individual. No, my point is that our BOYS are being lost. Those are the ones identifying as male gender-ed. They are becoming deadbeats, failures at school, psycho killers, and all other sort of weirdos that do not contribute to society. The thing the female gender has that the male gender does not is a gender community. Women hold each other when they cry, women support and comfort one another. Men typically have the attitude that anything of that sort is weak. And no it does not matter if you personally do not embrace such perceived manly gender requirements, society does. Men have lost all the activities where it was OK to learn from another male. An industrial and then service economy developed the male worker into a creature that was separate from his younger male family members. The young male can't go on the Microsoft word edit journey with dad, but back when getting food required hunting, he could hunt with dad. Then you have the perverse notion of the adult male. Based on plenty of example, men are not trusted with our young men. between the church, the scouts and abuse of all sorts in schools, the adult male is simply sex obsessed and can't control themselves.

What we need are examples of what it is to be a successful adult male to provide to our male children. Examples that are lacking in most boys lives.

Yes we do. Unlike some of the authors we're both reading, I blame the absence of those role models on feminism done badly by certain misanthropic women, and stupid, insulting notions like "male privilege" and the most offensive and wrong notion of all, "schrodinger's rapist." And I also see the need for us to get off our asses: men to demand a place at the table of community, instead of being stereotyped as loner perverts, or bumbling hapless buffoons seen in just about every TV ad, whose sole purpose in life seems to be to validate the relative competence of women.

After that though, men and women need to talk about the common community catering to all of our needs instead of breaking into two separate encampments that are really justified more by social inertia than biology.

Oh! I wanted to ask you, is the military still a community of men who can learn from each other and support each other, or does it have its own military weirdness that gets in the way of the kind of social bond you're talking about?

 

[JayHawk]

In the military it depends on the community. Whether you are Special Forces or airmen launching aircraft. Oddly, it is all perception because the task viewed as most dangerous and manly are typically characterized by a community that does support one another. In other words the flight deck personnel on a carrier try to act manlier and more isolated and singular to one another than SEALs. Yet that level of care for a shipmate is there.

We take that care and example out of the military too. Every ship I have ever been on typically sponsors an elementary school. The Sailors go and interact in different ways with the kids. From tutoring subjects to self improvement or self help projects at the school. Every deployment I have been on has an element of doing that sort of service for foreign orphanages and schools and communities.

I come from a community that is a brotherhood of men. For a time it was only men but women are being introduced into submarines. Still I have no doubt the community will remain close knit and supportive of one another. The odd thing about the military, as you get higher and higher in rank, then that support structure starts to dwindle. In any one area there is only one Captain of the ship. Or a singular Chief of the Boat. Those people do not have a peer to turn to.

That is my experience in the navy. I have had the opportunity over the years to work with the Army and those guys... that I have met.. are over the top trying to prove they are macho and manly. It makes it easy to poke fun at them. But I would imagine as you get more specialized then that comradeship develops.

 

[JayHawk]

P.S. studies of business women and traders on the market based on gender would clearly go against the study you post. In leadership, women are more democratic and men more autocratic for instance. On the trading floor women take less chances and are less emotional making decisions. That is thoroughly gender based.

 

[Kulindahr]

Then you have the perverse notion of the adult male. Based on plenty of example, men are not trusted with our young men. between the church, the scouts and abuse of all sorts in schools, the adult male is simply sex obsessed and can't control themselves.

From the diatribe of a prosecutor at an accused sex offender, along these same lines, one could easily get the idea that males should be allowed to have two or three children and then be shot... for the sake of society.

 

[bankside]

P.S. studies of business women and traders on the market based on gender would clearly go against the study you post. In leadership, women are more democratic and men more autocratic for instance. On the trading floor women take less chances and are less emotional making decisions. That is thoroughly gender based.

Okay but what do those trading studies show?
View attachment 955848
View attachment 955847

Some measurable average gender difference? Probably nobody (no scientist) would argue with that. Some gender difference based on biology? Probably no argument there either.

But totally different categories? Not very often. There can be a measurable trend, but it still means most people can overlap regardless of maleness or femaleness on any given trait.

 

[JayHawk]

Well of course we are not totally different as we are the opposites sexes of the same species. Still to argue there are no differences is not being truthful. I would agree we could go a lot further if we would stop using 'assumptions' about gender to determine the righteousness of an action or decision. However, to ignore the differences would result in unintended consequences that the femme-ing of the modern male has produced. Neither is a 100% approach.

It would seem we are on the same page but with slightly different angles. Young males in our society are suffering for lack of adequate role models to emulate for socially acceptable behavior. Equally the blind ignorance with which people dismiss portions of others personality based on gender roles is just as damaging.