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General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)

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Comments

  • edited 2020-10-18 17:55:39
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Again with the idea wars.

    I guess that's fundamentally why we won't agree. Every time I see a policy idea I ask about its real impacts and practical implications; you instead focus on its and its proponents' ideological lineage.

    If I were to put this less charitably, I'd say I care about what something does, and you care about whose cooties are on it.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Apparently, facebook's messenger app has a new logo - instead of uniformly blue, it's kinda... rainbow-y. See for yourselves, I'm not linking a picture since it's not the images thread and I'd have to look for a good image. (Actually more like a colour gradient from blue to some sort of purple-ish.)

    Bringing it up here since folks're claiming it's an insidious plot to promote gay ideology, figured you might want to discuss this issue.
  • edited 2020-10-19 01:10:40
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    i remember when it was called thefacebook.com lol

    I don't have any particular opinion on this change though. But I don't really see how this would be associated with the pride flag, as the pride flag is pretty specifically rainbow through six colors (red orange yellow green blue purple) while this one is only ever a subset of them. Perhaps if someone associated rainbows in general with gay pride, I could see that, but such an association is no more meaningful than a joke.
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    it's kinda... rainbow-y

    It's a barely yellow/purple/blue gradient, not a rainbow.
    promote gay ideology

    ...

    Man I want this to be true because it'd be hilarious but it isn't.

    Anyways I don't know if you guys saw the last time I posted about it but Mozambique now has ISIS. ISIS.
    Again with the idea wars.

    I'm starting to wonder if this thread has magic "Speak of the Devil" powers because yesterday Patrice Cullors inked an overall deal with Warner Bros. TV to create "entertainment" for them.

    McCarthyism was apparently looking in the right places after all (just the ones on the tail end)!

    Moving to France, a teacher was beheaded in public for showing students caricatures of Mohammad to students in a lesson on free speech.

    I have no doubt if there's anything that'll legitimately still be a thing in 20 years it'll be "you can't make fun of Mohammad if you want to keep living." Or at the very least, living without heavy security.
  • edited 2020-10-19 08:38:43
    "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    But I don't really see how this would be associated with the pride flag, as the pride flag is pretty specifically rainbow through six colors (red orange yellow green blue purple) while this one is only ever a subset of them.
    We've been through that, a few weeks ago some guy trolled the nationalist righties with a gay flag on his balcony, and for some reason this developed into an extended discussion on how many colours does a rainbow have, what is and what isn't a Gay Pride flag and how many stripes it has, what is the symbolism of a rainbow in the Bible and elsewhere, and so on. Frankly I don't really understand why this happened. My guess is that the guy acted on his own, he was declared too silly for serious protest, and nobody wanted to admit to him, but how this erupted into such a discussion on ever-tangential issues is more than I can say.
    Perhaps if someone associated rainbows in general with gay pride, I could see that, but such an association is no more meaningful than a joke.
    A few years ago there was a case when a town in the countryside commissioned an official town logo, and the local righties declared it satanic and gay. (As far as I remember it, it depicted the contour of the town's old square - looked a bit like a hand, which was declared an occult symbol and whatever - and some small detail on it had rainbow colouring.)
  • I'd have thought it'd be considered a symbol for non-binarity, you know, a cerulean-pink gradient
    Perhaps they're making an association between that and homosexuality, but at any rate that's anything but a rainbow.
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    Trans is pink-white-blue and enby is white-yellow-purple-black (presumably enby is that because pink-white-blue was taken) so it'd be closer to the former than the latter.

    IIRC there was a push to make blue-purple gradient a bisexual thing but then everybody realized that was just how movies lit creepy bad-part-of-town scenes (and they couldn't just cancel all the movies).
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    IIRC there was a push to make blue-purple gradient a bisexual thing

    I don't really devote my life to these sorts of things, but I'm pretty sure it still is. Unless you mean something much more specific than I, in which case refer to the first part of previous sentence.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    how many colours does a rainbow have
    Turns out that number varies, as far as flags go:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_flag
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    I'm pretty sure it still is

    Maybe it's just quieted down lately where I check on this sort of thing.

    Today I learned that DIE has been expanded into DEIB. That is Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

    Belonging covers how included you feel despite other's efforts, and so surely won't be exploited at all in any way. Still, Equity remains on the throne as the most insidious of all of these.
  • edited 2020-10-19 14:48:17
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    On one hand I'm tempted to ask you where that's from and why the last sentence but on the other hand that's probably just going to spark another argument between you and me.

    Edit: oh screw it.

    1. Where are these terms from?
    2. Why is "Equity" (again with an unusual capitalization) "insidious"? It might be reasonably regarded as "misguided" or "overly idealistic", depending on how it's defined, but "insidious" is a strange way to think of another term for fairness.
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    ask you where that's from

    Yale Nursing School guidelines.
    why the last sentence

    Equity means, a dedication to at least parity of outcomes amongst race/sex/etc groups. For example, anti-racism wants parity in all areas of anything, and if there aren't that's racism.

    That means creating policy in order to force said outcomes.

    Like removing grades entirely and removing penalties for handing in work late.
    Board members say the changes are part of a larger effort to combat racism.

    It goes on to say;
    teachers fail minority students more than White students

    Therefore, the teachers are engaging in systemic racism, and so;
    In an effort to change that racial imbalance, the school board voted unanimously this week to make several big changes to its grading system.

    Which means;
    Academic grades will now focus on mastery of the material, not a yearly average

    ie subjective grading

    And just for funzies;
    the board will also review potential student disparities stemming from its zero-tolerance disciplinary policy on cheating
  • edited 2020-10-19 15:30:18
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Equity means, a dedication to at least parity of outcomes amongst race/sex/etc groups.
    No, equity is a dedication to a parity of consideration.

    You're taking a statement about "racism is bad" to mean "people are not differentiable in any way", which is your own going way overboard with your interpretation.

    FWIW, I did just notice that the quotes you picked out aren't from the Yale School of Nursing.

    Meanwhile, from the article you linked about the San Diego school system:
    During the first semester of last year, 30% of all D or F grades were given to English learners. One in four, 25%, of failing marks went to students with disabilities.

    By ethnicity, 23% went to Native Americans. Another 23% of failing grades went to Hispanics. And 20% of D or F grades went to Black students.
    Yes, that's evidence of a problem; they need to be taught more effectively, rather than simply being left behind.

    And you're missing the second half of this quote:
    Academic grades will now focus on mastery of the material, not a yearly average, which board members say penalizes students who get a slow start, or who struggle at points throughout the year.
    Evil interpretation: "subjective grading", with the implication being "so teachers can inflate grades even for students who don't perform well"
    Proper interpretation: "focus on evaluating how much people have learned, rather than penalizing them for not keeping up with the class early on"

    Except somehow you seem to be unaware of, or have forgotten, how grades are calculated. If a student does have a slow start to the semester (or year, depending on how they're averaged, but my school did a semester average), then various amounts of bad grades from the beginning of the semester get baked in, even if the student later actually learns the material.

    So the way grades typically work is less a measure of "mastery of the material" (i.e. actual understanding) but instead more a measure of keeping pace with the class throughout the semester.

    And just for funzies:
    the board will also review potential student disparities stemming from its zero-tolerance disciplinary policy on cheating
    Evil interpretation: "the board will excuse cheaters"
    Proper interpretation: "the board will see whether cheating cases disproportionately affect certain types of people".

    As someone who's actually dealt with academic integrity cases, I can definitely tell you that I had a disproportionate number of immigrant/ESOL students run into them. Cases of cheating were thankfully uncommon, but most of the few there were were people who simply didn't understand English well, but were asked to write a paper using it. In order to just get the work done, they plagiarized. They shouldn't have, and they faced the consequences for doing so. But, the following are true:
    1. Throwing academic dishonesty consequences at someone (including blemishes on their record) doesn't actually help them learn the material that the class is trying to teach.
    2. Forcing someone to turn in a plagiarized paper doesn't either.

    I wish they'd sought help before they ended up turning in plagiarism, but they didn't. Then again, y'know, language barrier, and while a teacher of another subject shouldn't be responsible for teaching them English, this might instead be something that the ESOL English-teaching crew ought to be aware of and address. That's how to start improving things.

    Not by going "hurr durr they just want equity of outcomes so cheating will be declared okay lel"
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    I'm thinking if I was a Native American, me failing English would be something I'd brag about.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Surprisingly, I've yet to run into a Native American who's felt spiteful over this.

    Then again, I don't know that many Native Americans.
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    No, we're not doing this.

    I've said my piece, you've said yours. Let's move on.
  • edited 2020-10-19 16:32:03
    There is love everywhere, I already know
    Nevermind;

    I was unaware that you'd identified the problem, GMH, and it was that non-white children learn at a slower pace than white children, and so the grading system needs to change to stop those pesky fast-learning white kids from outpacing minorities, who all uniformly need more time than them to learn the material.



    I was also unaware that not speaking English was a completely legitimate way of skipping all that stuff about morals and integrity because those of us who can speak it should feel bad enough not to punish you when you enter a playing field that's meant to be equal, no matter what skills were brought in beforehand.

    Let alone the lack of proficiency tests required to get into this class that requires English skills (a tenet of equity, perhaps?).
  • edited 2020-10-19 16:52:31
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I was unaware that you'd identified the problem, GMH, and it was that non-white children learn at a slower pace than white children, and so the grading system needs to change to stop those pesky fast-learning white kids from outpacing minorities, who all uniformly need more time than them to learn the material.

    Before you try "no this is for everyone!" remember that this is explicitly about being anti-racist, as observed in the article.
    Don't you misrepresent what I said.

    And I'm not sure what you're even thinking with 'Before you try "no this is for everyone!"'. But oddly, you're saying "non-white children learn at a slower pace than white children", while also saying "this is explicitly about being anti-racist".

    Anyhow, my point was simply to look at what students have learned.

    And I think I made it pretty clear that keeping up continuously with a class is not the same as learning the material. Related? Yes. The same? No.
    I was also unaware that not speaking English was a completely legitimate way of skipping all that stuff about morals and integrity because those of us who can speak it should feel bad enough not to punish you when you enter a playing field that's meant to be equal, no matter what skills were brought in beforehand.
    Again, do not misrepresent what I said.

    The point of a class is to teach the material addressed in that class. If the class is a biology lab (for example), then the point isn't to teach "morals and integrty". Rather, it is assumed that people already know the appropriate morals and integrity not to cheat, and then we focus on the material, while anyone who cheats is simply thrown into the academic integrity system. Like I said, the academic integrity system isn't a way to help people learn the material of the class.

    If you want morals and integrity to be part of the curriculum, then we can talk about incorporating that into the curriculum directly. That said, it is actually quite standard already for class syllabi to indicate that cases of academic misbehavior will be referred to a department that handles such things.

    Also, education isn't about punishment. It's about learning. If punishment is part of the learning process, then it may be appropriate, but it's a completely fair question to ask whether any particular form of it produces the learning results intended. I want the classroom to be a place where people learn. What do you want it to be? A mechanism for weeding out the unworthy?
    Let alone the lack of proficiency tests required to get into this class that requires English skills (a tenet of equity, perhaps?).
    There actually are proficiency tests. The TOEFL is a standardized one, and many schools have their own proficiency requirements (albeit more typically in the form of prerequisites than tests).
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Also I'd just like to highlight this:

    I wrote this:
    As someone who's actually dealt with academic integrity cases, I can definitely tell you that I had a disproportionate number of immigrant/ESOL students run into them. Cases of cheating were thankfully uncommon, but most of the few there were were people who simply didn't understand English well, but were asked to write a paper using it. In order to just get the work done, they plagiarized. They shouldn't have, and they faced the consequences for doing so. But, the following are true:
    1. Throwing academic dishonesty consequences at someone (including blemishes on their record) doesn't actually help them learn the material that the class is trying to teach.
    2. Forcing someone to turn in a plagiarized paper doesn't either.

    Somehow you interpreted this interpreted as:
    not speaking English was a completely legitimate way of skipping all that stuff about morals and integrity

    You seem to be implying that I am excusing their cheating, except the fourth sentence in my quote says otherwise.

    Meanwhile, you're focused on that, and focused on your contention that it is one of the negative consequences of "equity" as a goal, that you didn't even seem to notice that my point was about teaching the subject matter effectively.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    I'm reminded of a conversation I once had with a friend who studied in in England. She said, they're all like "wait, you're telling me one can CHEAT at exams?". I haven't really had a comparable experience myself, but I can say cheating on exams does not carry a particularly heavy stigma in here. Although I'm willing to assume it's slowly changing.

    Also, this talk about rewarding results reminds me of a debate on grades in physical education. Some folks believe students should be rewarded for how much of a difference they made during the year, rather than simply for results. Because obviously, the chads are going to always have better marks than scrawny nerds if the latter is the case, having done nothing in particular to achieve this. I wonder how much of this can be applied to more intellectual areas of study.
  • edited 2020-10-19 20:25:09
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I'm not really too sure how physical education classes are even graded (my high school experience was just "show up to class, and stay in motion and don't just sit in one corner of a gym chatting"). But what you seem to be describing definitely happens in the more typical book-learning type of class, especially in stuff like mathematics.

    You can have people who've already learned one thing in a class with other people who haven't. And there's rarely ever a rule stopping someone who's already learned the material on their own, from taking the class with the rest of the students. In the case of electives, the only reason to do this would be to get an easy A or to satisfy some sort of elective count. In the case of required classes, though...well, imagine if your high school requires students to start at Algebra II at the highest (i.e. they can't just jump into Precalc or Calculus, and there are no ways to test out of Algebra II), and people who already mastered it just breeze through it. It's sort of a waste of time and money. (And, if the class happens to be graded on a "curve", then depending on how the curve is calculated, it may be unfair to other students, but that's because of the use of the curve, which is a whole nother issue.) Ideally there'd be ways for them to test out of that requirement, or test into or otherwise get approved to go into something higher.

    Regarding grading based on improvement: I think it doesn't make sense to grade solely based on improvement. People who already get all questions right literally can't improve their performance any more, if the metric is getting questions right. If you had to cover both improvement and mastery in one single grade, I guess you could try to combine them as an either-or, but that's still fundamentally trying to smash two distinct data points together, and I don't really like that that much.

    Besides, I still think that grades should primarily be on how well students have mastered the material by the end of the class, because the purpose of the class is to teach the material, and the purpose of the grade is to indicate how well a student has learned the material. Those who already know it will breeze through this evaluation; those who learned it well will also do well.

    However, using improvement to encourage low-performing students may be a useful teaching tool, because increase student self-confidence may make (at least some of) them more engaged in the learning process. But you wanna do this early enough in the class that the learning results can actually bear fruit by said end of the class. In contrast, weighing early grades too heavily just ends up leaving people with a bad record of sucking at the beginning that they can't erase by doing better later.

    As for giving different grades based on different levels of mastery, perhaps a more proper way to do this would be to simply split enrollment in levels -- for example you could have a painting "class" where different students are enrolled in Painting I and Painting II and are taught and graded differently based on their formal class enrollment, even while sharing the same classroom time/space.

    I know I haven't really gotten into exactly how to increase the performance of low-performing students, though I do know that some students lack the confidence to approach the material, hence my addressing that particular concern. Obviously, different low-performing students have different reasons for their poor performance. For others it may be poor time management/self-discipline skills (or lack of discipline from their parents); for yet others it may just be that they need to work to supplement their family's finances. I doubt there's a one-size-fits-all solution.
  • I'm reminded of a conversation I once had with a friend who studied in in England. She said, they're all like "wait, you're telling me one can CHEAT at exams?". I haven't really had a comparable experience myself, but I can say cheating on exams does not carry a particularly heavy stigma in here. Although I'm willing to assume it's slowly changing.
    I get a similar feeling too when reading stuff from (university) students in the US talking about cheating, some of what they consider cheating is stuff you can tell your professors here. Stuff like asking a friend who's already graduated to explain homework things would be considered research, studying previous exams' problems would be considered preparedness (assuming the prof. didn't provide them in the first place), etc.
  • edited 2020-10-19 22:52:42
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I'm reminded of a conversation I once had with a friend who studied in in England. She said, they're all like "wait, you're telling me one can CHEAT at exams?". I haven't really had a comparable experience myself, but I can say cheating on exams does not carry a particularly heavy stigma in here. Although I'm willing to assume it's slowly changing.
    I get a similar feeling too when reading stuff from (university) students in the US talking about cheating, some of what they consider cheating is stuff you can tell your professors here. Stuff like asking a friend who's already graduated to explain homework things would be considered research, studying previous exams' problems would be considered preparedness (assuming the prof. didn't provide them in the first place), etc.
    I don't think I've ever run across a student here in the US who would consider the stuff you've described "cheating".

    If the prof reuses questions from old exams that's the prof's problem.

    Cheating would be doing stuff like having notes open on a closed-book exam, sharing answers, going online to get help, or having someone else do the test for you.

    Sometimes people may refer to some things as "cheating" that aren't officially considered cheating, such as being able to use a TI-89 for symbolic calculations (even differentiation and integration) on tests like the SAT or the AP Calculus exam. I've genuinely wondered whether the TI-89 does give people who use it an unfair advantage. Though, at sufficiently low levels, like the SAT (which doesn't go up through calculus, and barely touches trig), it may be the case (though I have not actually confirmed this in any way) that the people who would use a TI-89 are pretty much already so competent at the required math skills that there is no meaningful difference.
  • edited 2020-10-20 04:28:24
    There is love everywhere, I already know
    Equity and Anti-Racism, right from the horse's mouth;

    From this Racial Equity Glossary;
    Anti-Racist Ideas

    Antiracists argue that that racist policies are the cause of racial injustices.
    Racial Justice

    Racial Justice [is defined] as the proactive reinforcement of policies, practices, attitudes and actions that produce equitable power, access, opportunities, treatment, impacts and outcomes for all.
    Racial Equity

    Racial equity is the condition that would be achieved if one's racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares.
    Racist Policy

    A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between or among racial groups.

    This is why grading had to go. For anti-racism.

    I must have missed the train a bit on this one;
    Racism

    Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination. Racism involves one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination through the institutional policies and practices of the society and by shaping the cultural beliefs and values that support those racist policies and practices.

    So, like, officially, what I think is racism is not what progressives think is racism. I just thought they added these new definitions, but they actually excised the old one too!
    Racist Ideas

    A racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.

    This one sounds okay until you realize Racist Ideas include Assimilation, and Cultural Racism (????).
    White Supremacy

    white supremacy is ever present in our institutional and cultural assumptions that assign value, morality, goodness, and humanity to the white group while casting people and communities of color as worthless

    I...yeah...

    Now let's learn from one of my favorite Ibram X. Kendi Snippets; The Department of Anti-Racism;
    Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy [...]
    The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    For what it's worth, I meant the more blatant cases. Like, having a cheat sheet prepared.

    (Which is itself quite dumb in the context of math, since it can at best help you remember an equation, and these tend to be on the concise and memorizable side; and in context of humanities you'd need a lot more text on it. And the time you spent researching the material to prepare a cheat sheet you could have spent just memorizing it instead.)

    I can't speak for the guy in the story, because, you know, friend-of-a-friend, but the way my friend described the encounter made me assume the guy was thinking about this kind of cheating. I cannot say anything about researching past questions and stuff in this context. As for me, I know of at least one American university publishing the exams to its PhD program in physics, along with the suggested solutions, so I'd assume it doesn't count as cheating in the US. (It also helps keep my sense of worth low, on a good day I can solve like half of classical mechanics.)
  • ^^^ Well, now that you mention it IIRC the one about past exams was thought of as a grey area. I coild be misremembering the other one too but the main idea that the standards for what constitutes cheating differ.
    ^ I'unno, we studied stuff where your typical problem has non-obvious steps, catches and so on that require either understanding the material or checking up some similar problem or notes. IIRC those weren't in pure math, tho.
  • edited 2020-10-20 14:51:30
    There is love everywhere, I already know
    @glennmagusharvey; I think, like with many of our arguments, it's time we took this one out to the backyard and shot it.

    So... truce?
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    ^^^ People use the term "cheat sheet" to refer to self-made formula sheets that are actually allowed in various classes' exams.



    ^ Whelp, you posted that before I got around to posting the reply I wrote up last night.

    I don't feel like all that effort going down the drain so I'll just stick it behind the following togglebox.

  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    ...

    'splodes

    okay, yeah, truce
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    People use the term "cheat sheet" to refer to self-made formula sheets that are actually allowed in various classes' exams.

    Heh, I was trying to come up with an English translation for a term I had in mind. But yeah, the word is sometimes used tongue-in-cheek for such allowed notes, although I've a feeling it's still a lot more tongue-in-cheek than "cheat sheet" is for you guys.
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