by DavidPiper on 10/20/25, 1:07 AM with 33 comments
by pols45 on 10/20/25, 3:33 AM
What youtube educators don't get is every time a student suffers a setback some one has to take responsibility and sit there with them till they get over the obstacle. Views and Likes don't provide that signal of how many are lost or stuck.
Books and Libraries have existed long before Edu systems or Youtubers emerged, but kids and adults can easily get lost in that jungle if they don't have a feedback loop for guidance and support system when they stumble. Design of that system can be co-opted by Commercial and Political interests. Power corrupts all systems. But then there is always a counter reaction to pull the system back. Boundaries and balance emerge. It's a long slow process.
People maybe frustrated about how long it takes for trees to grow, but whether they are interested in designing a botanical garden or a healthy forest a good sign they will fail is when frustration starts turning into resentment.
The only way to prevent that happening is to stay humble at how complex it all is. Go into the garden. Get your hands dirty. Get one plant to flourish.
by fake-name on 10/20/25, 3:42 AM
From their quoted section:
> We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embr}-o great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply.
And then the removed section, which effectively negates the (facial) point of the previous statement:
> We are to follow the admonitions of the good apostle, who said, ''Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low degree." And generally, with respect to these high things, all that we shall try to do is just to create presently about these country homes an atmosphere and conditions such, that, if by chance a child of genius should spring up from the soil, that genius will surely bud and not be blighted.
This is a really, REALLY common quote (with the latter part deliberately omitted) in lots of places complaining about the way the US education system works, as well as antigovernment movement people.
I certainly will not claim the US education system isn't broken, but using such a deliberate, malicious out-of-context quote casts a pall over anything else the author has to say, particularly given it's long, storied history in antigovernment propaganda.
by mindcrash on 10/20/25, 5:14 PM
"[...]THEY’VE GOT YOU BY THE BALLS! They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want.
They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest.
That’s right.
They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
They don’t want that.
You know what they want?
They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.[...]"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/george-carlin-dumb-amer...
by gxonatano on 10/22/25, 3:21 PM
This sounds like the frustrated research log of someone lacking research skills. An undergrad-level annotated bibliography from someone interested enough to gather sources, but undiscerning enough to tell the good ones from the bad.
by Avicebron on 10/20/25, 3:44 AM
by snvzz on 10/20/25, 6:45 AM
That is, on its own, a red flag.
by pkilgore on 10/20/25, 3:49 AM
by duxup on 10/20/25, 1:19 AM
There are such random grandiose statements too like "There is no part of modern education that helps children." What does that even mean?
by delis-thumbs-7e on 10/20/25, 8:48 AM
Pretty much every time somebody ”does their own research” it means that they don’t know what they are talking about and have nothing of value to give.
by lapcat on 10/20/25, 1:40 PM