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Do you really think that the kind of math you do in pre-med and ESPECIALLY business is going to hold a candle to the kind of proofs you have to do in physics? Two different worlds man, you of all people should know that. I do, and I hate math beyond all reason.
You are missing the point. I am not bothered that they messed up doing a unit conversion. What bothers me is when they calculate that their cell phone weighs 2000 lbs and they don't seem to understand why that is an absurd answer. I don't think they are stupid. I think that they haven't learned how to think. They filter information but they don't process it.
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. A couple actually get the right answer. I have horror stories that would make you shudder.The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. - So Crates
"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of
today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for
parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as
if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is
foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest
and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."
-Peter the Hermit, 13th Century ADI remember a quote i'll try to find about early colonial colleges, with a parent showing up and being surprised to find kids just lazing about the dorms, barely moving in a lethargic haze.
I don't think there was ever a time where what you're describing HASN"T been the case.
Typically I would agree with you. However, I think our ability to process and use information is being diminished by the way we access information. Basic skills that we took for granted aren't being developed. For example: When I discuss velocity with a student and I ask how far would one travel if their velocity was 20 mph north and they travel for 1 hour and they cannot give me the answer, I will try to relate it to a trip in the car during holiday. Several times students have said things like "I dunno I use mapquest". Now, using tools to navigate is fine and I welcome the technology. However, it is having an impact on basic arithmetic. Perhaps Socrates would be shocked that I don't have the manners of 399 BC, however, I would argue that cultural norms change as certain elements become obsolete. I may be getting old but arithmetic is not something that will every be obsolete. Then again I saw this documentary about the future called Idiocracy - I guess you wouldn't need arithmetic in that society.
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Do you really think that the kind of math you do in pre-med and ESPECIALLY business is going to hold a candle to the kind of proofs you have to do in physics? Two different worlds man, you of all people should know that. I do, and I hate math beyond all reason.You are missing the point. I am not bothered that they messed up doing a unit conversion. What bothers me is when they calculate that their cell phone weighs 2000 lbs and they don't seem to understand why that is an absurd answer. I don't think they are stupid. I think that they haven't learned how to think. They filter information but they don't process it.
Ah, math. My hatred of you continues.
Typically I would agree with you. However, I think our ability to process and use information is being diminished by the way we access information. Basic skill that we took for granted aren't being developed. For example: When I discuss velocity with a student and I ask how far would one travel if their velocity was 20 mph north and they travel for 1 hour and they cannot give me the answer, I will try to relate it to a trip in the car during holiday. Several times students have said things like "I dunno I use mapquest". Now, using tools to navigate is fine and I welcome the technology. However, it is having an impact on basic arithmetic. Perhaps Socrates would be shocked that I don't have the manners of 399 BC, however, I would argue that cultural.... A couple actually get the right answer. I have horror stories that would make you shudder.The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. - So Crates
"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of
today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for
parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as
if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is
foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest
and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."
-Peter the Hermit, 13th Century ADI remember a quote i'll try to find about early colonial colleges, with a parent showing up and being surprised to find kids just lazing about the dorms, barely moving in a lethargic haze.
I don't think there was ever a time where what you're describing HASN"T been the case.
Starting to agree with Kier here...
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I would agree that in general people have more knowledge today, but I would argue that more people today are deficient in processing and applying knowledge than ever before. I teach college level physics lecture and lab and many of my pre-med and business major students lack basic arithmetic skills to the point of absurdity. I bet that farmer could visualize a unit of measurement. If I told him that 1 kg is roughly 2 pounds on Earth, I guarantee he wouldn't tell me that a bag of seed masses at 2000 kg. He might not know the arithmetic to do the conversion but he would know that his answer, if it were 2000kg, can't be right. My students mass their cell phones, some of them remember that they have to multiply by the acceleration due to gravity to get weight in Newtons, and then they convert to pounds and tell me their cell phones weigh anywhere between 17-5000 lbs without batting an eye. A handful of them acknowledge that they...Your disdain for your students speaks volumes about you as a teacher.
Please enlighten me as to which part of my rambling showed that I believe that my students are unworthy of my consideration? I offer my students review sessions outside of class time, my door is always open if they need help, and I spend hours trying to come up with the best possible way to explain things. But somehow you believe it is logical to presume something about my character based on the small paragraph above? Everything I described above has happened and does so frequently. Disdain would involve me calling them stupid, or saying they shouldn't have gone to college, or complaining that I don't get paid enough for this. What I am talking about is a general trend. I don't think my students are stupid. I think that our education system has failed in training them how to think about their answers and judge whether or not they make sense. I tell my students that if they can't seem to get to an answer that makes sense they should note it on their test and explain why it doesn't make sense. If I see that they just made some minor arithmetic error but they knew that their answer was wrong and explained it to me I give them full points for understanding the physics.
I am merely passing on an observation that I have noticed in my ten years of teaching physics lab and lecture - an observation that seems to be getting measurably worse! If I just look at the average final exam grades over the last 5 years and plot them versus semester (excluding summer semester) it shows an alarming decline. My outliers are almost always students not from the United States or an honors student who couldn't get into the honors section. Departments get pressured from the higher-ups to adapt to this "new student" and make the curriculum easier to decrease the drop out rates so that the university can continue to generate money.
There's more than one way to show disdain for someone. Thus far, you have implied that because they are bad at math, they haven't learned how to think, which is another way of calling someone stupid. If you said that they hadn't learned how to think critically, I'd feel differently, but this is sounding more and more like the general disdain people who are good at math reserve for others not so gifted.
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There's more than one way to show disdain for someone. Thus far, you have implied that because they are bad at math, they haven't learned how to think, which is another way of calling someone stupid. If you said that they hadn't learned how to think critically, I'd feel differently, but this is sounding more and more like the general disdain people who are good at math reserve for others not so gifted.
Again you are missing the point. It doesn't bother me that they are bad at math, or make mistakes, or get crazy results. What bothers me is that they don't seem to understand why their answer is wrong. They tell me that their phone weighs 2000 lbs. If they wrote "I got 2000 lbs which I know can't be right so I must have made a mistake somewhere" I would be satisfied. This is especially the case during the lab course that accompanies the lecture. A student will ask me for help and I will notice that for the previous part of the lab they calculated their phone to be 2000 lbs. I will ask them to check their arithmetic for mistakes and they will ask me things like "how do you know it is wrong?". There is a disconnect somewhere. Not understanding that your mobile phone can't possible weigh 2000 lbs has nothing to do with being "good at math". If they actually thought about it for a second they would realize it - but they don't think about it at all.
Edit: I should say "critical thinking" to be precise.
There's more than one way to show disdain for someone. Thus far, you have implied that because they are bad at math, they haven't learned how to think, which is another way of calling someone stupid. If you said that they hadn't learned how to think critically, I'd feel differently, but this is sounding more and more like the general disdain people who are good at math reserve for others not so gifted.Again you are missing the point. It doesn't bother me that they are bad at math, or make mistakes, or get crazy results. What bothers me is that they don't seem to understand why their answer is wrong. They tell me that their phone weighs 2000 lbs. If they wrote "I got 2000 lbs which I know can't be right so I must have made a mistake somewhere" I would be satisfied. This is especially the case during the lab course that accompanies the lecture. A student will ask me for help and I will notice that for the previous part of the lab they calculated their phone to be 2000 lbs. I will ask them to check their arithmetic for mistakes and they will ask me things like "how do you know it is wrong?". There is a disconnect somewhere. Not understanding that your mobile phone can't possible weigh 2000 lbs has nothing to do with being "good at math". If they actually thought about it for a second they would realize it - but they don't think about it at all.
Edit: I should say "critical thinking" to be precise.
If you had said critical thinking to begin with, you wouldn't sound nearly as acerbic as you did above.
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If you had said critical thinking to begin with, you wouldn't sound nearly as acerbic as you did above.There's more than one way to show disdain for someone. Thus far, you have implied that because they are bad at math, they haven't learned how to think, which is another way of calling someone stupid. If you said that they hadn't learned how to think critically, I'd feel differently, but this is sounding more and more like the general disdain people who are good at math reserve for others not so gifted.Again you are missing the point. It doesn't bother me that they are bad at math, or make mistakes, or get crazy results. What bothers me is that they don't seem to understand why their answer is wrong. They tell me that their phone weighs 2000 lbs. If they wrote "I got 2000 lbs which I know can't be right so I must have made a mistake somewhere" I would be satisfied. This is especially the case during the lab course that accompanies the lecture. A student will ask me for help and I will notice that for the previous part of the lab they calculated their phone to be 2000 lbs. I will ask them to check their arithmetic for mistakes and they will ask me things like "how do you know it is wrong?". There is a disconnect somewhere. Not understanding that your mobile phone can't possible weigh 2000 lbs has nothing to do with being "good at math". If they actually thought about it for a second they would realize it - but they don't think about it at all.
Edit: I should say "critical thinking" to be precise.
I concede that. When I read what I wrote it is clear to me that when I say think I mean "thinking about their answers" but that is because I am a character in the tale. My apologies.
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My problem is how people pick and choose what they want to fit their own narrative. Ayn Rand is an excellent example. Came to mind because I keep seeing Gilt's name. :)
Many Christian Conservatives say that they enjoyed Atlas Shrugged or prescribe to her ideology. Ayn Rand was an Atheist and hated religion as much as she hated socialism. It's all over in her writing. That tells me that those guys either chose to ignore all of that and focus on what they agree with or they didn't actually read it and only going off filtered information. My point is if she's right about everything in socialism being bad, then the true must be same for religion. Or is she just mistaken about religion because that part the reader doesn't agree with her belief.
This whole America is a Marxist society is the same thing. You really think people won't take to the streets if the government marches into your home and says you have to be a police officer because we need police officers? Nothing against police officers btw, just an example.
Everyone (this includes myself) needs to listen to more than one narrative and ask what the ultimate objective is. Often the most extreme are the loudest because they're the smallest group. Much like forums on the internet. It's okay. Obama got re-elected. You will survive. Just like many liberals survived through Bush.
Of course Obama got re-elected, I voted for him! I'm not a Republican voter. Never have voted Republican. I think both political parties have serious issues that need to be addressed (the potential financial insolvency of Democrat policies and the stubborn dogmatic turn the Republicans have taken), but ultimately I felt Obama, while certainly not a stellar President, at least is a lot more transparent than Romney was. I know this is more voting with the heart than the head, and that's a bad thing, but Romney always struck me as insincere, like that guy who wants to get into your social events by trying way too hard to be your friend.
And I'm not saying America is Marxist. I'm saying that, given the narratives I've been looking at, Marxian ideals have crept into political discourse over the years, radicalizing people and fostering conflict that creates tyranny.
That one YouTuber I posted about goes even farther and basically says this: "Look at the horrific atrocities the Soviets committed, atrocities even worse than the Nazis. Atrocities condoned not just by Stalin, but by Marx and Trotsky too, who believed things like societies that had not even developed a capitalist economic yet were "racial trash" and that Poland as a nation and people had no reason to exist. Unless we strive to undo the brainwashing leftists have instilled in academia and in politics, the same thing will happen in the Western world, but instead of with race and nation, it will be with sex and family structure, men becoming the "racial trash" while the nuclear biological family will have "no reason to exist."
Asphere, I'm inclined to agree with you that our education system needs a serious look in the mirror at the very least. As I've said before, I work as a reading tutor at a public school. My job is to help students that are struggling with reading, but not to the degree that they qualify for things like special ed or Title I. I eat lunch with the 3rd Grade teachers and they were discussing how to help their students get the concept of "authorial intent." Some of the students in their classes still skip lines and words when they read aloud, for pity's sake! Of course they're not going to understand trying to figure out what the author's trying to tell them. They're having trouble just reading and comprehending the text to begin with! Of course, if they COULD do that stuff I'd be out of a job, yes, but if the education system was working well my job wouldn't even be necessary in the first place.
And Dario Nardi, thank you for your insightful and eloquent post. I've been rambling like a conspiracy theorist and that's not what I wanted to say. I don't believe there's a "conspiracy" in that a dedicated group of individuals is meeting in secret and plotting. It's more that several categories of people are pursuing their individual goals in one area of society, and these interact and bleed together to create the current societal climate.
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Being a Lit major, surely you can recognize the irony of poo-pooing other people's boogeymen while remaining frightened of the faceless, nameless threat of "cultural Marxists" who are marching forward with their decades-spanning plan of the destruction of Western civilization.
The Illuminati were basically an old free-thinker's club in Bavaria. They're harmless. :P
I'm aware. I was deliberately trying to tap that irony and make a joke, lest I seem like a nutty conspiracy theorist who can't be convinced of anything.
@Dario
Oh I know there are teachers that have kooky agendas, and that makes me mad, but we see that as much from a "conservative" as a "liberal" (to buy into the awkward dichotomy) perspective.
I had a (butch, lesbian) English teacher who blatantly favored women in my class. When it came time for our final paper, which was a review and report on the works and life of an American short fiction author, I knew there was trouble. She had scratched off several names from the list of authors that was part of the standard curriculum, and replaced them with obscure feminist authors.
The names scratched out? Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Aasimov, Harlan Ellison...
She managed NOT to scratch off Lovecraft, but only because she HAD NEVER HEARD OF HIM! I did not get my pick of lovecraft, being forced to pick last, and basically failed the class out of exasperation. I had to retake it the next year with a different teacher. Got a B.
p.s. This teacher, Ms. Washa, told us on the first day of class that we should try not to bother her too much over the course of the class, she hated kids. She mostly just put us in silent reading like 75% of each class so she could read by herself and not be bothered.
There's more than one way to show disdain for someone. Thus far, you have implied that because they are bad at math, they haven't learned how to think, which is another way of calling someone stupid. If you said that they hadn't learned how to think critically, I'd feel differently, but this is sounding more and more like the general disdain people who are good at math reserve for others not so gifted.
Standing with Asphere, then.
You don't have to be good at maths to understand that a cellphone doesn't weigh 2000 pounds and that you must have made a mistake somewhere.
It just takes a functioning brain, switched on.
A student who answer that a cellphone weighs a metric ton, or that an eagle flies faster that Mach 8 is clearly not using all his brain cells, not just the math processing ones.
All my (maths and physics) teachers insisted on the necessity of double-checking results through our own experience to root out such aberrant results. It's basic scintific thought : hypothesis, experiment, check.
Thank you, Dario. I never claimed that there wasn't bad education today. There is, oodles of it. Specifically, there are political agendas that are allowed to warp the various curriculi for their own ends. However: This is nothing new. The difference today is that while earlier generations had a very high dropout rate from university level studies, with only the top students completing their studies, many more students with mediocre results finish today. As a result, the top students still get the good study places, while mediocre ones end up in educations of lesser quality. Note, then: Earlier, you either got a good education, or virtually none. If you look at things over the general populace, however, people today are far more knowledgeable than general population in the times of yore. This will likely continue to be true.
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I concede that. When I read what I wrote it is clear to me that when I say think I mean "thinking about their answers" but that is because I am a character in the tale. My apologies.If you had said critical thinking to begin with, you wouldn't sound nearly as acerbic as you did above.There's more than one way to show disdain for someone. Thus far, you have implied that because they are bad at math, they haven't learned how to think, which is another way of calling someone stupid. If you said that they hadn't learned how to think critically, I'd feel differently, but this is sounding more and more like the general disdain people who are good at math reserve for others not so gifted.Again you are missing the point. It doesn't bother me that they are bad at math, or make mistakes, or get crazy results. What bothers me is that they don't seem to understand why their answer is wrong. They tell me that their phone weighs 2000 lbs. If they wrote "I got 2000 lbs which I know can't be right so I must have made a mistake somewhere" I would be satisfied. This is especially the case during the lab course that accompanies the lecture. A student will ask me for help and I will notice that for the previous part of the lab they calculated their phone to be 2000 lbs. I will ask them to check their arithmetic for mistakes and they will ask me things like "how do you know it is wrong?". There is a disconnect somewhere. Not understanding that your mobile phone can't possible weigh 2000 lbs has nothing to do with being "good at math". If they actually thought about it for a second they would realize it - but they don't think about it at all.
Edit: I should say "critical thinking" to be precise.
Fair enough- mile wide, inch deep seems to be the order of the day.
There's more than one way to show disdain for someone. Thus far, you have implied that because they are bad at math, they haven't learned how to think, which is another way of calling someone stupid. If you said that they hadn't learned how to think critically, I'd feel differently, but this is sounding more and more like the general disdain people who are good at math reserve for others not so gifted.Standing with Asphere, then.
You don't have to be good at maths to understand that a cellphone doesn't weigh 2000 pounds and that you must have made a mistake somewhere.
It just takes a functioning brain, switched on.
A student who answer that a cellphone weighs a metric ton, or that an eagle flies faster that Mach 8 is clearly not using all his brain cells, not just the math processing ones.
All my (maths and physics) teachers insisted on the necessity of double-checking results through our own experience to root out such aberrant results. It's basic scintific thought : hypothesis, experiment, check.
You might want to look at Asphere's response to my post. Also, the functioning brain comment is a sterling example of what I'm referring to with respect to disdain for others.
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Asphere, methinks it is not technology weakening the minds of the youth, but rather a constant and concerted effort to stymy critical thinking skills and individuality.
There is no single source to blame, no conspiracy, just the plain fact that human minds are capital. Interested parties have always wanted to control others, but the tools for doing so have gotten quite a bit more effective of late.
Thank the gods that they're in competition, or we'd be denied even the limited choices we have now.
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Asphere, methinks it is not technology weakening the minds of the youth, but rather a constant and concerted effort to stymy critical thinking skills and individuality.
There is no single source to blame, no conspiracy, just the plain fact that human minds are capital. Interested parties have always wanted to control others, but the tools for doing so have gotten quite a bit more effective of late.
Thank the gods that they're in competition, or we'd be denied even the limited choices we have now.
That and...well...people don't always know what you are asking. For all I know the kids in your class thought you were trying to teach them something about how numbers can be manipulated, or what happens when you don't put in all the variables.
They did what they believed they were told and gave the answer they came up with.
Perhaps the fault doth not always lie with the student...
That one YouTuber I posted about goes even farther and basically says this: "Look at the horrific atrocities the Soviets committed, atrocities even worse than the Nazis. Atrocities condoned not just by Stalin, but by Marx and Trotsky too, who believed things like societies that had not even developed a capitalist economic yet were "racial trash" and that Poland as a nation and people had no reason to exist. Unless we strive to undo the brainwashing leftists have instilled in academia and in politics, the same thing will happen in the Western world, but instead of with race and nation, it will be with sex and family structure, men becoming the "racial trash" while the nuclear biological family will have "no reason to exist."
I find it hard to see how Marx can be responsible for any Soviet atrocities, seeing as how he had been dead for, I think, 34 years before the October Revolution.
The "racial trash" thing (not sure if those are the right words or not, but they were probably something close) was more likely Engels during the Europe-wide 1848 revolutions, and I doubt it referred to the Poles, who were something of a cause celebre in late nineteenth century radical and liberal Europe. But I believe Engels did say some nasty things about the Slavic peoples and maybe the Hungarians. I don't remember, it's been a while.
Trotsky most certainly didn't believe that any nation was composed of "racial trash." And none of the Soviet atrocities, either the ones that I'm okay with (and, btw, I think one would be hard-pressed to argue that any of the atrocities that Trotsky condoned were worse than what the Nazis did) or the ones that I am opposed to, had anything to do with Marx and Engels on the national question during the 1848 revolutions.
Just sayin'.
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Asphere, methinks it is not technology weakening the minds of the youth, but rather a constant and concerted effort to stymy critical thinking skills and individuality.
There is no single source to blame, no conspiracy, just the plain fact that human minds are capital. Interested parties have always wanted to control others, but the tools for doing so have gotten quite a bit more effective of late.
Thank the gods that they're in competition, or we'd be denied even the limited choices we have now.
That and...well...people don't always know what you are asking. For all I know the kids in your class thought you were trying to teach them something about how numbers can be manipulated, or what happens when you don't put in all the variables.
They did what they believed they were told and gave the answer they came up with.
Perhaps the fault doth not always lie with the student...
I would agree that the fault doesn't always lie with the student. I used to think that I was just a terrible teacher, however, when I teach higher level courses the students give me reviews that make me blush and also my colleagues have similar complaints. Maybe I am just incapable of relating the material to students who aren't that interested in learning the material. However, I think the blame mostly comes from their public education. When they get to us they should understand, or have once understood, algebra and geometry. As a physics instructor I don't have time to teach them math as well as physics. Many of my students can't even multiply and divide numbers. Again I must stress that I don't believe them to be stupid.
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Asphere, methinks it is not technology weakening the minds of the youth, but rather a constant and concerted effort to stymy critical thinking skills and individuality.
There is no single source to blame, no conspiracy, just the plain fact that human minds are capital. Interested parties have always wanted to control others, but the tools for doing so have gotten quite a bit more effective of late.
Thank the gods that they're in competition, or we'd be denied even the limited choices we have now.
That is an interesting take and I find myself agreeing with it. I recognize the problem but I admit I have trouble figuring out the cause. This is probably why.
Asphere, methinks it is not technology weakening the minds of the youth, but rather a constant and concerted effort to stymy critical thinking skills and individuality.
There is no single source to blame, no conspiracy, just the plain fact that human minds are capital. Interested parties have always wanted to control others, but the tools for doing so have gotten quite a bit more effective of late.
Thank the gods that they're in competition, or we'd be denied even the limited choices we have now.
That and...well...people don't always know what you are asking. For all I know the kids in your class thought you were trying to teach them something about how numbers can be manipulated, or what happens when you don't put in all the variables.
They did what they believed they were told and gave the answer they came up with.
Perhaps the fault doth not always lie with the student...
From what I understand, history teachers often have similar problems. Not just a basic lack of critical thinking and failure to question what they're told, but sometimes lack the ability to articulate much as well.
I don't think it's a problem with "kids these days" but rather failures in our education system.
"He's had four years and proved himself to be a Wall Street President!"
Cornell West, one of the celebrity Cultural Marxist professors who has told me to shut up, on Marx and Obama.
Vive le Galt!
"He's had four years and proved himself to be a Wall Street President!"
Cornell West, one of the celebrity Cultural Marxist professors who has told me to shut up, on Marx and Obama.
Vive le Galt!
So long as there's Marxist on (marxist) violence, I'm fine with that. :)
[Smacks Cornel West]
This morning, I shot a stooge of the plutocracy in my pajamas....How he got into my pajamas, I'll never know!
That one YouTuber I posted about goes even farther and basically says this: "Look at the horrific atrocities the Soviets committed, atrocities even worse than the Nazis. Atrocities condoned not just by Stalin, but by Marx and Trotsky too, who believed things like societies that had not even developed a capitalist economic yet were "racial trash" and that Poland as a nation and people had no reason to exist. Unless we strive to undo the brainwashing leftists have instilled in academia and in politics, the same thing will happen in the Western world, but instead of with race and nation, it will be with sex and family structure, men becoming the "racial trash" while the nuclear biological family will have "no reason to exist."
Asphere, I'm inclined to agree with you that our education system needs a serious look in the mirror at the very least. As I've said before, I work as a reading tutor at a public school. My job is to help students that are struggling with reading, but not to the degree that they qualify for things like special ed or Title I. I eat lunch with the 3rd Grade teachers and they were discussing how to help their students get the concept of "authorial intent." Some of the students in their classes still skip lines and words when they read aloud, for pity's sake! Of course they're not going to understand trying to figure out what the author's trying to tell them. They're having trouble just reading and comprehending the text to begin with! Of course, if they COULD do that stuff I'd be out of a job, yes, but if the education system was working well my job wouldn't even be necessary in the first place.
You mean kids aren't supposed to do literary analysis in third grade? I did.
As for the "nuclear biological family" having "no reason to exist," you might want to look a little more closely at world cultures and children's literature to see how often it doesn't exist.
Taking third grade as the starting point, I remember my teacher for that grade, Mrs. Praisewater--who I couldn't stand, with good reason--did have the saving grace of good taste in literature. She read us Frances Hodgeson Burnett's The Secret Garden. It starts with Mary, living in India in one of those nuclear families, but as I remember her mother didn't know what to do with her and treated her more like a pet monkey before frivolously ignoring health warnings and having a party, after which every died of cholera except Mary. She's then sent back to live with her widowed uncle, finds out that her uncle is hiding his sickly son in another wing of the house, and finally things get decidedly better with their decidedly non-nuclear family.
Then there's her other novel, A Little Princess. Sara's mother dies before the book even starts, her father leaves her at boarding school then dies when he's off in India, she's kept as a drudge by the horrible Miss Minchin, and finally she's adopted by her father's business partner who as it turned out was neither dead nor bankrupt and she had never met either.
Then there's The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy is being raised by her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, who are nice people, but really more what would be her grandparents age.
Then there's The Wind in the Willows. I was pretty sure Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole were a gay couple. My sister thought so too. I later asked my father and he was of the same opinion.
Then there's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Charlie does indeed have the nuclear family, with the addition of the two sets of grandparents who also live with them and never get out of bed. Then in James and the Giant Peach, James nuclear parents are eaten by an escaped rhino, he's sent to live with his awful maiden aunts Spiker and Sponge until they're killed by a giant peach, he makes a new family of giant talking insects, and finally becomes an emancipated minor living in a peach pit in Central Park in New York.
Which is a long way of saying that there are a great number of possible kinship patterns, both historically and presently.
You mean kids aren't supposed to do literary analysis in third grade? I did.
Pretty excellent summation of kiddie lit, Citizen Murphy (never occurred to me that Misters Mole and Badger were gay, although I'm not sure about Mr. Toad), but please note that Archpaladin Zousha is talking about the "remedial" kids.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of us smarty-pants D&Ders were reading Dostoyevsky and Proust by the third grade. (Okay, maybe Tolkien and S.E. Hinton.)
The American nuclear family is something of an aberration in the scheme of human culture.
No. I didn't really get into books until long after high school.
I did read Illuminatus! in 1995 and it severely shaped my psyche.
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That one YouTuber I posted about goes even farther and basically says this: "Look at the horrific atrocities the Soviets committed, atrocities even worse than the Nazis. Atrocities condoned not just by Stalin, but by Marx and Trotsky too, who believed things like societies that had not even developed a capitalist economic yet were "racial trash" and that Poland as a nation and people had no reason to exist. Unless we strive to undo the brainwashing leftists have instilled in academia and in politics, the same thing will happen in the Western world, but instead of with race and nation, it will be with sex and family structure, men becoming the "racial trash" while the nuclear biological family will have "no reason to exist."I find it hard to see how Marx can be responsible for any Soviet atrocities, seeing as how he had been dead for, I think, 34 years before the October Revolution.
The "racial trash" thing (not sure if those are the right words or not, but they were probably something close) was more likely Engels during the Europe-wide 1848 revolutions, and I doubt it referred to the Poles, who were something of a cause celebre in late nineteenth century radical and liberal Europe. But I believe Engels did say some nasty things about the Slavic peoples and maybe the Hungarians. I don't remember, it's been a while.
Trotsky most certainly didn't believe that any nation was composed of "racial trash." And none of the Soviet atrocities, either the ones that I'm okay with (and, btw, I think one would be hard-pressed to argue that any of the atrocities that Trotsky condoned were worse than what the Nazis did) or the ones that I am opposed to, had anything to do with Marx and Engels on the national question during the 1848 revolutions.
Just sayin'.
Marx is held responsible because the Soviet Union, Mao's China, etc, followed Marx's ideas and were attempting to set up a society along the lines of his theories, and these nations harmed so many people, whether directly through projects like Mao's Great Leap Forward or the Ukrainian Famine, or through the fear in capitalist nations of them, like the Hollywood Blacklist.
The "racial trash" bit comes from an article Marx wrote January 1849 in Neue Rheinische Zeitung:
“The chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust”.
These groups included people like the Serbs, the Bretons of France and the Highlanders of Scotland. You're right about the Poles not being lumped in with this group, and actually the Hungarians were considered "bearers of progress" by Marx.
Not to mention the fact that even if you remove the onus of all that stuff from Marx, he remained an irresponsible husband and parent, refusing to get a job to feed his family, resulting in at least three of his children dying from neglect, in addition to the fact that his funding of revolutionary movements in various countries forced him to move from place to place. Had he merely published his theories or lectured about them, that probably wouldn't have been so bad. But he chose instead to deliberately try to bring them into being, at the expense of the people that depended on him.
I am reading Das Kapital, though a lot of the technical stuff is going over my head. Probably will have to go through it three or four times, but even so, I think a lot of this shows that while Marx himself didn't pull the trigger on any of those Soviet guns, his shadow still looms large over those horrific events.
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You mean kids aren't supposed to do literary analysis in third grade? I did.Pretty excellent summation of kiddie lit, Citizen Murphy (never occurred to me that Misters Mole and Badger were gay, although I'm not sure about Mr. Toad), but please note that Archpaladin Zousha is talking about the "remedial" kids.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of us smarty-pants D&Ders were reading Dostoyevsky and Proust by the third grade. (Okay, maybe Tolkien and S.E. Hinton.)
Mr. Toad, aside from having ADHD and being a thrillseeker, was some variety of genderqueer. Remember him cross-dressing as the washerwoman to escape prison? And doing it convincingly enough to fool the guards?
He obviously had practice.
you guys are crazy.
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Marx is held responsible because the Soviet Union, Mao's China, etc, followed Marx's ideas and were attempting to set up a society along the lines of his theories, and these nations harmed so many people, whether directly through projects like Mao's Great Leap Forward or the Ukrainian Famine, or through the fear in capitalist nations of them, like the Hollywood Blacklist.I think you have to look at these nations in context. It's not that Marx's ideas were snakes in Paradisaical Edens. Pre-Soviet Russia had centuries of brutal rule, usually by contending warlords struggling for the top position of Czar and then using brutal means to keep control of said position. China on the other hand, has always had a tradition of rulership by extremely strong central control as well as what an Westerner would call strong control over an individual's actions by his family. In many ways their respective Communist governments were just new hats drawn over the same coats which was why Peking and Moscow's marriage soured rather quickly after the honeymoon.
Marx on the other hand was a citizen of Western Europe who grew up in the context of the extreme beginnings of the Industrial Revolution which saw massive displacement of rural populations into a new class of the working poor. The Luddites weren't afraid of technology as tech, they just saw, very correctly, that they were being phased out of the economy with no place to go but downward.
I understand that, but that's also part of the problem: Marx didn't live in these societies, and made grand, one-size-fits-all kinds of statements that made it seem like Communism and Socialism were the way of the future. It's also important to note that the Nazis took Marx's ideas and used them in a slightly different manner. The ideas of Marx basically revolve around removing the parasite from society, and the Nazis, which IS short for their actual name of the National Socialists, concerned themselves with race, while the Communists, or international Socialists, were more concerned about class. Goebbels himself even said Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler himself. So in a way Marx's theories WERE employed in Western Europe, and they had terrible consequences that I think everyone's familiar with.
Perhaps it isn't a matter of actual malice on Marx's part and I'm sorry if I gave that impression, but Marx's theories only really seem to hold water when everyone is good and unselfish, and every time Marx's ideas have been implemented, regardless of how bad the societies they were introduced into already were, once those societies were Marxist, they almost always got worse with a totalitarian state free to commit genocide, unlawful search and seizure, brainwashing and with just one itchy trigger-finger away from destroying the entire world during the Cold War, and in a way, some of this can also be said about AMERICA during the Cold War as a result of fear of Marxist-controlled nations and Marxist sympathizers in their midst. Even if we replace malice on Marx's part with naivete, his theories, when they've been implemented, and his historical narratives, when they've been believed, seem to have almost always resulted in disaster.
I'm afraid I don't have as much time as I'd like because I have to attend my revolutionary socialist meeting in a bit, but, on this:
“The chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust”.
Citation please?
A quick glance through right-wing sites says that they were published in articles by Engels in Marx's newspaper.
Which seems like a dodge, but isn't. We said it.
There is a whole long history of the controversy over those articles (I have a book called something like Engels and the "Nonhistoric" Peoples: The National Question in 1848 by Roman Rosdolsky, but, uh, I never read it.)
The crux of the argument though is:
Marx and Engels expected that the 1848 revolutions would do for Germany and central Europe what the French revolution had done for France: the unification of a bunch of feudal estates (Bretons, Normans, whatever, I'm no expert) into one "French" nation-state. This is wicked abducito absurdum, btw, but I did just work 7 days in a row.
Anyway, Engels was predicting that the 1848 revolution would overthrow the various Germanic monarchies and create a unified German nation-state, and so would the Poles, and, from what you're saying, the Magyars would form their own bourgeois nation-states and they would assimilate the Wallachians and the Silesians and the Ruthenians and the whatever (again, no expert). There's also some anti-Russian stuff in there because, for the last 40 or so years, they were the traditional archreactionary gendarme of Europe.
"Revolutionary holocaust" is pretty evocative, I admit, and I bet Engels learned the phrase from his more fiery-tempered buddy, Mikhail Bakunin. And "holocaust" has a certain ring to it post-1945 that it didn't in 1848. I can't say for absolute certain, haven't having read this stuff in over a decade, but I bet that if you read the whole article it would be clear that Engels is not calling for racial extermination or ethnic cleansing.
But I could be wrong. It shouldn't be too difficult to find online. So, citation please?
As for Marx being responsible for the people that did things "in his name"(like the mania for building steel mills in every Chinese village during Mao's Great Leap Forward...lots of basis for that in Marx!):
By one estimate, US imperialism has killed between 20 and 30 million people all over the globe since the end of World War 2.
Should we blame that on Thomas Jefferson? That slave-raping douchebag?
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I'm afraid I don't have as much time as I'd like because I have to attend my revolutionary socialist meeting in a bit, but, on this:
“The chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust”.
Citation please?
A quick glance through right-wing sites says that they were published in articles by Engels in Marx's newspaper.
Which seems like a dodge, but isn't. We said it.
There is a whole long history of the controversy over those articles (I have a book called something like Engels and the "Nonhistoric" Peoples: The National Question in 1848 by Roman Rosdolsky, but, uh, I never read it.)
The crux of the argument though is:
Marx and Engels expected that the 1848 revolutions would do for Germany and central Europe what the French revolution had done for France: the unification of a bunch of feudal estates (Bretons, Normans, whatever, I'm no expert) into one "French" nation-state. This is wicked abducito absurdum, btw, but I did just work 7 days in a row.
Anyway, Engels was predicting that the 1848 revolution would overthrow the various Germanic monarchies and create a unified German nation-state, and so would the Poles, and, from what you're saying, the Magyars would form their own bourgeois nation-states and they would assimilate the Wallachians and the Silesians and the Ruthenians and the whatever (again, no expert). There's also some anti-Russian stuff in there because, for the last 40 or so years, they were the traditional archreactionary gendarme of Europe.
"Revolutionary holocaust" is pretty evocative, I admit, and I bet Engels learned the phrase from his more fiery-tempered buddy, Mikhail Bakunin. And "holocaust" has a certain ring to it post-1945 that it didn't in 1848. I can't say for absolute certain, haven't having read this stuff in over a decade, but I bet that if you read the whole article it would be clear that Engels is not calling for racial extermination or ethnic...
Take a look at this documentary: The Soviet Story. These are only excerpts, but the whole documentary is chilling stuff!
Using the evils of Russia to warn people about the perils of Marx is like using the dutch east India company to warn people about the perils of capitalism.
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That's Joseph Stalin, a man who in every way but name was essentially a clone of Adolf Hitler. Stalin's Communism owed it's heritage not to Marx, but to the tyrannical regimes that preceded it. Stalin plagarised Marx and Lenin and used them to disguise that he was nothing more than a typically brutal Russian despot, only armed with modern technology.
In World War 2, the United States knowing who what Stalin was allied with him anyway to oppose Hitler. After Vietnam we allied with Pol Pot a man who brutally killed a million of his own people, emptied the cities of Cambodia and liquidated every form of the intelligentsia and whoever had worked for civil service.
The Soviet Story is a slanted use of history. Right Wing autocracies have perpetuated the same kinds of crimes in places like Nicaragua before the prsent regime and the dictators we backed in Cuba, the Phillipines, and El Salvador. It loses it totally when trying to equate Nazi doctrine with Marxist solely on the common use of the term "Social"
I invite you to listen to Noam Chomsky on the subject of linking Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky with Marxism.
"Lenin was a right wing deviation of the Marxist ideal"
Noam Chomsky.
I've already looked at Noam Chomsky a bit. I'm not convinced by him. And his claim about Lenin being right wing in your linked video rings hollow to me regardless of what that PDF says. Lenin still claimed to be a Marxist, a LEFT WING political philosophy. If he'd been right wing, he'd have advocated for less violent overthrow of Russia, and he wouldn't have advanced the socio-political changes that rocked the country and set the stage for Stalin so quickly. Even Lenin himself had doubts about what had resulted from his attempt to implement Marxism, saying that what Russia had really needed was not one Lenin, but ten Saint Francis of Assisis. I paraphrase, but you get the idea.
It does a disservice to the countless people who died under corrupt Communist and Socialist regimes, as well as the countless people who died fighting them in conflicts like Vietnam, and at the hands of the dictators we propped up AGAINST the Soviets, like the Taliban. Marxism has to own up to that stuff, but it can't because otherwise it wouldn't have an ethical leg to stand on.
Zousha, your constant dismissals of anything you disagree with with nothing more than a youtube link, combined with your frequently unhinged apocalyptic conspiracy theory (which you can't even defend) and your egregious misunderstandings of basic elements of the political philosophies you oppose makes your honest, concerned seeker persona difficult to credit. I thought briefly that we made some progress, but you seem to have reverted to type.
Why is that?