As John Taylor Gatto suggests in "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher": https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationliberat...
        " ... Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are prime training for permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And over time this training has shaken loose from its own original logic: to regulate the poor. For since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to the point that it now seizes the sons and daughters of the middle classes as well.
        Is it any wonder Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, preempting the teaching function, which belongs to everyone in a healthy community.
        With lessons like the ones I teach day after day it should be little wonder we have a real national crisis, the nature of which is very different from that proclaimed by the national media. Young people are indifferent to the adult world and to the future, indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence. Rich or poor, schoolchildren who face the twenty-first century cannot concentrate on anything for very long; they have a poor sense of time past and time to come. They are mistrustful of intimacy like the children of divorce they really are (for we have divorced them from significant parental attention); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction.
      All the peripheral tendencies of childhood are nourished and magnified to a grotesque extent by schooling, which, through its hidden curriculum, prevents effective personality development. Indeed, without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children, our schools could not survive at all, nor could I as a certified schoolteacher. No common school that actually dared to teach the use of critical thinking tools -- like the dialectic, the heuristic, or other devices that free minds should employ -- would last very long before being torn to pieces. School has become the replacement for church in our secular society, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith."

So most teachers earn their money doing well what it is teachers are supposed to do (as planned in Prussia in the 1800s when compulsory schooling was introduced to make Prussia a military power).
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fodyssey-fm.com%2Fwhy-sch...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmetropolis.cafe%2F2017%2F0...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdukereportbooks.com%2Fbo...
        "The Prussian Blueprint
        In tracing the roots of American education, Gatto illuminates the foundational influence of Prussian schooling. In 19th-century Prussia, the state constructed a comprehensive education system to mold loyal, obedient subjects. The purpose was explicit: to instill uniformity, suppress individuality, and ensure that children would grow into citizens who followed orders. America adopted this model eagerly, not because it worked educationally, but because it aligned with elite interests.
        This importation was neither organic nor public-driven. It was orchestrated by a coalition of industrialists, politicians, and academic theorists who viewed schooling as a tool to engineer society. They believed in planned progress and social stability, achieved not through democratic participation but through controlled upbringing."

So, the big -- and usually unacknowledged -- issue is that what teachers (and schools) are supposed to do (turn kids into obedient dumbed-down low-initiative robots for industry and warfare cannot fodder) is no longer something our society needs (if it ever did) or wants.

Until people accept compulsory schools are doing exactly what they were designed to do, and are doing it very well, it is hard to have a productive discussion about changing -- or abolishing -- them. And likewise, it is hard to have a productive discussion about how educational computing should be used in schools when compulsory schooling has very little to do with education.

Thanks, but even looking at the full context and with that definition, I'm missing the joke. So why haven't the moderators rated it Funny already?

I have to disagree regarding the human cloning. However I think it is being hidden quite carefully because it is illegal.

Having said that, I think the most interesting clone candidate would actually be John Henry. I'm sure there are some gene samples available since he didn't die until 2007.

Pretty sure "gyre" is intended as a joke, but websearch failed me [just] now. Care to clarify the joke?

The "future shape" I was thinking of actually involved smartphone-enhanced clothing. Still don't understand why no one (that I know of) is making clothing with suitable adaptations for smartphones. Also shower proof pouches for people who worry about missing a message when they are in the shower...

As I suggested in 2008 in "Post-Scarcity Princeton":
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Freading...
"Wikipedia. GNU/Linux. WordNet. Google. These things were not on the visible horizon to most of us even as little as twenty years ago. Now they have remade huge aspects of how we live. Are these free-to-the-user informational products and services all there is to be on the internet or are they the tip of a metaphorical iceberg of free stuff and free services that is heading our way? Or even, via projects like the RepRap 3D printer under development, are free physical objects someday heading into our homes? If a "post-scarcity" iceberg is coming, are our older scarcity-oriented social institutions prepared to survive it? Or like the Titanic, will these social institutions sink once the full force of the iceberg contacts them? And will they start taking on water even if just dinged by little chunks of sea ice like the cheap $100 laptops that are ahead of the main iceberg? Or, generalizing on Mayeroff's theme, will people have the courage to discover and create new meanings for old institutions they care about as a continuing process?"

AI is just one more aspect of that trend of post-scarcity technological change, as (AI-based) one-on-one tutoring is now cheap (or effectively free if you are paying for AI access for other reasons).

Indeed, educational videos on-demand to reflect current interests and needs via YouTube or elsewhere are another example of how compulsory schooling is increasingly obsolete.

Thanks for the Alfie Kohn link. He is an amazing insightful compassionate writer whose words have shaped some of my beliefs. John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, Pat Farenga, and Grace Llewelyn are some other writers who have shaped my beliefs on education -- as are stories from sci-fi writers like James P. Hogan (e.g. "Voyage from Yesteryear"), R.A. Lafferty ("Primary Education of the Camiroi"), and Ursula K. Le Guin ("Always Coming Home", "A Wizard of Earthsea") and others.

Almost everything has pros and cons, and it is true that free schools or progressive schools have some benefits. Sadly, as I wrote here circa 2009:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Ftowards...
        "See, that is the false choice -- suggesting you either confine a child to [school as] prison or they will commit their first violent crime and have to be imprisoned [as a truant]. That is a very dim view of human nature, neighborhoods and families. Yet, it is a self justifying view, in part destroying the very neighborhood fabric it claims to be defending. So, we are left with streets that are safe because there are no people on them. We have successfully destroyed the village in order to save it, using compulsory schooling instead of napalm."

One reason given for sending a child to compulsory school is so they will be around kids their own age -- ignoring that the only reason there are not kids their own age around during the weekday is precisely because of compulsory school (and even on weekends there is homework and then making up for missed family time during the week due to schooling which tend to keep kids indoors).

As a former high school debater, I especially like this point by Aife Kohn on the dark side of debate training from the page you linked to:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alfiekohn.org%2Farti...
        "Kohn: I grew up in Miami Beach, Florida, a very odd place, where the median age was deceased. I went to a large public high school, which was an intellectual wasteland. I didn't do sports. I had elements of competitiveness to be sure - in punning, for example. But in high school I was a nationally ranked debater. And although I was winning and liking it, it took me years to unlearn the poisonous messages I was taught: that any argument can be successfully defended if you're clever enough. And that winning is what counts most. I still describe myself today as a recovering debater. Sports carries with it its own set of problems, but competition is not limited to that. So when people say we need academic awards, debates, science competitions, and national spelling bees, what I hear them saying is, "Well, we destroy the athletes by turning their lives into an attempt to defeat everyone in sight - why shouldn't we do that to everyone else, too?""

And from the end:
        "Thuermer: If you had to reinvent yourself tomorrow, Alfie, what would you do?
        Kohn: I think if my career takes a turn in the next ten years, it's likely that I'll be thinking about raising kids and helping parents rethink the tendency to treat kids like pets. People have come up with cleverer ways of getting compliance - getting the kids to do what the parents want - as opposed to helping kids become responsible, caring, reflective people who can make decisions, who are socially skilled. Now that I'm a parent, this is increasingly an issue for me. A lot of it just deals with the fundamental lack of respect for children in this culture."

I quoted Alfie Kohn here (in 2008) from his "No Contest: The Case Against Competition" book in "Post-Scarcity Princeton" critiquing Princeton University and suggesting how that institution could improve:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Freading...
        "[Alfie Kohn's words:] If competitiveness is inherently compensatory, if it is an effort to prove oneself and stave off feelings of worthlessness, it follows that the healthier the individual (in the sense of having a more solid, unconditional sense of self-esteem), the less need there is to compete. The implication, we might say, is that the real alternative to being number one is not being number two but being psychologically free enough to dispense with rankings altogether. Interestingly, two sports psychologists have found a number of excellent athletes with "immense character strengths who don't make it in sports. They seem to be so well put together emotionally that there is no neurotic tie to sport." Since recreation almost always involves competition in our culture, those who are healthy enough not to need to compete may simply end up turning down those activities. ... Each culture provides its own mechanisms for dealing with self-doubt. ... Low self-esteem, then, is a necessary but not sufficient cause of competition. The ingredients include an aching need to prove oneself and the approved mechanism for doing so at other people's expense. ... I do not want to shy away from the incendiary implications of all of this. To suggest in effect that many of our heroes (entrepreneurs and athletes, movie stars and politicians) may be motivated by low self-esteem, to argue that our "state religion" is a sign of psychological ill-health -- this will not sit well with many people.(Page 103)"

ACK, and I was also probably wrong about the location. I had just had my first look at a tiny map and I didn't realize how much farther north the tsunami zone was. Only about a three-meter tsunami, which is quite small compared to March 11th.

Mod parent funny.

And Ponzi schemes are sure to collapse.

Thanks for the heads up. Middle of the night here, but if you want to follow it in English, https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww3.nhk.or.jp%2Fnhkworl... has a live feed. I'm watching it now. Haven't seen the epicenter, but the tsunami warning zone indicates the same area as the quake in 2011 that killed 20 thousand people and led to the Fukushima #1 fiasco.

That's kind of my take on the story, but my wording would be more along the lines of "What are the success criteria?" Or perhaps "Would I donate to support this?" (Surely I would not donate on the basis of the description here and not even feeling motivated to learn more.)

But that's also why I wouldn't donate to support the project. You could think of it as a kind of paradox of choice. There are LOTS of things I could donate money to, but in general the success criteria are almost never clear. Whatever I donate to, it's likely that I could have had "more success" donating somewhere else.

Disclaimer needed? I was weird enough to pay for some freely distributed software. Long time ago, and usually for educational purposes for me or my students. One of the results I was hoping for was that the software would continue to exist with support and possibly even improvements, but can't recall any cases where that actually happened. Later donations often had more clear objectives, but my batting average for "wins" was so low that I mostly stopped donating...

Deserves the Funny, but it's also too true in a sad way. In those days the machines were basic enough that you could actually figure out what was going on. Now they are entirely black boxes at every level and from every perspective.

Obligatory quote against the censor trolls. However I have two substantive responses to your topics.

First, I think the extreme megalomanics with sufficient resources are already cloning themselves. Still a secret, but I think the basic plan involves a series of clones a few years apart, all of them carefully indoctrinated to believe whatever the cloner believes. The "upgrade" plan will involve only one major jump, presumably explained as a "relative" who just looks remarkably similar to the megalomaniac at the head of the chain, and then each few years a fresh prime-age clone will be swapped into the top (and only visible) role. Not sure how long the "prime-age" span is, but the plan will be to make the cloner appear to be ageless. (And by the time it becomes obvious what is going on, no one is expected to be able to do anything about it.)

Second, the extreme sociopathic elitists only want medical care for themselves. The only reason "the peasants" should get any healthcare at all is for the sake of developing new medical treatments for the elite. Human guinea pigs, but treated with less respect. Apart from that, they probably believe that peasants can be allowed to buy whatever healthcare they can afford, but at full market price and while maximizing the profits for the elite.

So I thought I would get an example of a "shooting yourself in the foot" (using JavaScript, but I should have gone for examples with Ruby and JavaScript) to try and extend the Funny moderation. However the google search is so sick and literal minded these days that it went off on the tangent of subtle programming mistakes when using JavaScript. Which devolved into another stupid argument with the AI.

In theory it could have asked me what I was looking for, but in practice I think I human being wouldn't have started out on such a stupid foot.

So glad to hear that it was entirely in my mind.

Then again, you might be crazy if you're taking medical advice from Time magazine, such little as is left of it...

But I also felt you needed to be quoted against the ADHD censors with mod points.