annyeonghada

I agree with what you say in an ideal world where every teacher is of good quality but given that many teacher are incompetent or actively despise their students[1], how can I trust them that they're evaluating students in a unbiased, just, meritocratic fashion. I've always had top grades but seeing teachers' behavior has never let me trust them. I have respect for the job, I've even passed the exam to become a teacher (!) but it takes a toll on your mental health knowing that the majority of your coworker is unrespectable.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31482113

Speaking as someone living in Italy sometimes it's worse than activism: it's pure laziness.

I (27 y/o) recently discovered that my sister's (16 y/0) History teacher hasn't done more than a week of lessons in the entire year: he comes in class, turn on the IWB (Interactive Whiteboard, the last unnecessary technology creeping in school), put on a video and let them watch while she do whatever she fancies.

During the entire year, out of a 400 page History textbook, they have done 39 pages. Now it is clear why there was so much opposition to the idea of online lessons: parents could finally see that their kids were not lying when they said that the teachers were incompetent.

The worst thing is that the teachers' mafia here refuse any kind of evaluation while teachers while touting the necessity of evaluation for the students: they are basically unfirable and devoid of any form of accountability.

I could stay entire evenings recalling events that should never happen in a normal school set[1], and that would be easily prevented with some quality control: they do not even need to be good teachers, just decent persons.

[1]One of my "teachers" used the fact the a dear friend of my classmate was killed in a car crash to mock her, the only satisfaction was having the entire class scream that she was a "dumb bitch": this in a very high-income, sophisticated, old money school.

>Grades are just a bad IQ test and most things you learn in high school don't matter.

Well, speak for yourself. It may be a very unpopular opinion here on HN but I learned a lot at school, be it elementary, middle, high or university. But I went to school in Italy, and it was a good school.

>But I think that for most people many things that are taught in high school are useless while more important things (understanding how social media affects you, how to declare taxes, how credit cards work) are not covered (at least here in Germany, I suspect its no different in the US).

This are thing that you can easily google. Why would I want to waste time teaching such trivial things while there are subjects much more interesting and intellectually engaging. Talk about inefficiency.

If someone does not want to study academic subjects it is not obliged to finish school, they can simply abandon once they reach the appropriate age (in Italy, 16 y/o): I know someone who did it and went the trade route and was very happy, but please, please, let us, academically inclined people have our own habitat.

If someone start a Physics degree without knowing how to add fraction is it the duty of a university professor to correct such deficiencies?

>Just stop acting like its someone else's problem to solve.

It is a problem for all the precedent teachers that let pass someone so unprepared.

Speaking of a statistical reality is not racism. It's just reality. One can debate of the causes - societal, genetics, single motherhood, whatever - but the fact remains that it is reality.

>Does each child have their own, adequately sized, room with a study desk to work in and concentrate? During the pandemic it turned out to be a real problem that children who had to share rooms had issues following streamed lectures.

I had a small that I shared with two brothers. My desk was minuscule. I had top grades.

>Do the children, particularly those of working age (14 and above, but especially 16 and above) have to work actual jobs to make pocket money or contribute to household income?

My family was so poor at a time we didn't have the money to pay the mortgage and the bank wanted to take our house. I had top grades.

>Are the parents largely absent from their children's lives because both parents have to work full-time or worse jobs just to make ends meet?

My parents were and are apathetic to my existence. I had top grades.

>Can the parents invest time and money into furthering their children's education? Can they sit together with them in the afternoon/evening and work through homework problems? Can they afford side education, playing instruments or similar activities that have been shown to have a positive effect on education?

None of that existed in my house. Nobody helped me doing homework and nobody sit with me exploring my life path. I rented instruments and asked as few money as possible. I had top grades.

>Do the parents have enough money to feed the children? Hundreds of thousands of students alone in New York depend on schools handing out free lunches, which turned out to be a massive problem during the pandemic.

Admittedly, even in poverty we never were hungry.

>Poverty causes stress - not just from being cooped together in too small living spaces, but also in food insecurity, increased fights between parents over the stress, or in the worst cases from literally being homeless.

This I wholeheartedly agree, that's why the "money doesn't make you happy" is such a lie.

I know my tone was rather flippant but the relationship between money, stress and academics is so important to me. And by the way, even after all these top grades, and a Physics degree and speaking English, French, Italian and German and whatever I haven't escaped poverty. I'm back living to my parents at 27. It seems like the best way to make money in Italy is to inherit it.

If by defeatist attitude it is meant acknowledging the reality that some people have a head start or immense amount of luck than I'm not only a defeatist, I am a Christian during the 31th December 999, 11:59:59PM waiting for the apocalypse.

I have a family relative, one of the most lazy people in the world, that some day found herself rich. How? Hard work? Business value? Education? No, she discovered she had a grandaunt and that she would be the heiress of three 300000EUR houses, plus half a million euro. The scene seemed out of a 90s love comedy, if only it weren't tragic.

>No one (or certainly no one not conventionally successful) will ever laud your success as a teacher making $45,000

Well, I've always loved being a teacher. I started tutoring weaker students in my last year of high school. I really couldn't care less that someone "conventionally successful" will not laud me for not destroying my soul in a high earning, high stress, high burnout environment. I will take the lauds of my students, thanks.

Buddhism is definitely a religion with a specific epistemology, claims on the supernatural (karma, cycle of samsara), manifestations of the divine (Bodhisattva), rituals, chants and prayers. Some Buddhist sects can be pretty radical, even.

Buddhism as conceptualized in the western world is a marketing strategy that appeals to people thanks to the fact the Buddhism is exotic, the same reason Christian symbolism is à la mode in Asia (just see how many anime have Christian themes). If you could repackage Christianity to convince these people that it is new, exotic and exciting they would convert immediately.

By the way, there are philosophical traditions, both in Buddhism and Christianity, that reject any supernatural claim and see religion as a useful but not true moral framework, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism

P.S.: I'm an atheist. I'm not defending a religion or another.

>Centuries ago almost no one lived long enough to die from heart disease, cancer, or dementia. Now those are common, diseases of old age, imposing tremendous costs. I don’t propose going back to 35 year lifespans

This is false. The life expectancy one you reached puberty was very similar to the current one. The 35 years lifespans were due to insane infant mortality. Modern medicine has been able to avoid the death of children but it hasn't being able to extend the duration of your healthy life other than from the statistical point of view.

Then you start adding commute and preparation and it's never 1-1.5 hours, it's 2-2.5.

Then you start taking into account that you hate physical exercise (I've tried group sport, gym, running, swimming, walking etc...) and you start treating it like a job and instead of being relaxing is another chore. So not only I'm doing something just for maintenance, but it feels like work (in my case, it is work) and while I'm sweating at the gym I'm not doing something I'm really interested in and after the supposedly beneficial exercise my mental energy is too depleted to do the things I really want to do.

I'm never been more miserable than when I exercise regularly: "nothing" you say, uh?

>but none of them (this is my personal experience) regret striking out on their own.

This is like having children: nobody would say they regret it even if they do and when pressed they will rationalize with a mental gymnastic the flexibility of which would be a yogi to shame.

>3 year degree into a 5 year slog

Same here. It took me 7 years. I would usually vomit before every exam.

The horrible thing was that my grades were 98th percentile and my study method was very effective for me. I've never had this problem until the end semester of the first year of University. I don't really know what happened given that that first semester ended perfectly: two exam with a 100% and one with a 93%; such are mental tribulations like anxiety

I remember my life before the Internet. It was much more focused and much more creative. The paradox of having all this information but having to constantly battle the context witch, the firehose, the shiny new things has made the Internet a waste of time more than an aide in my flourishing.

Nowadays I've cut most of the site I used to visit. It remains: reddit, HN, YouTube, Wikipedia and some streaming sites. Gradually I will curb even them and will use the Internet as a giant library: a place where I will download books and article I find interesting but the library is not interesting in itself.

Will I be free? Wish me luck.

So I'm self-medicating? I've never felt that sleep helps as much as people claim and if I sleep too much I actively feel worse. Another thing to look out in a depressive episode.

>Unsolicited advice is generally offensive. If they wanted your advice on how to fix their problems they would ask you.

It is not generally offensive to offer a suggestion about how to solve a problem, what's offensive is abusing people time by rehearsing the same complaints over and over again while ignoring any kind of solution. If they whine constantly about a problem but never seek any way to solve it, it is just attention-seeking behavior.

>If they don't and you go ahead anyway then you imply that you are superior to them and just come off as obnoxious.

No. It implies that the person has already had the problem and solved it successfully or they have the knowledge to solve it successfully or they are trying to brainstorm what they would do.

Thanks. I was born in a completely blue collar family (first to go to university) and my father was the first one to congratulate me on not having to do what he does for exactly the same reason you wrote.

Really? Thermometers have existed since way before the introduction of the concept of temperature, as rigorously defined in Physics. You can measure "something" and notice that that X is correlated to Y and investigate what that X is.

>IQ is regularly being dismissed as a poor measure of intelligence

By whom? Previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31376980

This is completely false propaganda. The scientific consensus is completely different. Here[1] some research.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/oh6115/perf...

>only to find out that this is a loser's strategy

I'm still processing this truth. I basically put my life, university and career on stop to help my sister. I oscillate between thinking "I'm a good person" to "I just wish I were a selfish bastard".

Definitely a loser's strategy.

Or... some people are smarter than others. Here[1] some research.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/oh6115/perf...

Here[1] there's a summary of the evidence for and against IQ.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/oh6115/perf...

>I thought IQ tests were pseudoscientific anyway?

This is false. Look a this reddit post[1] for a summary of the scientific consensus.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/oh6115/perf...

>Plant-based diet means a higher quality of life for everyone - people

Where is the evidence that vegan/vegetarian diet is beneficial? I've never been more depressed and tired then when I've tried to go all vegan.

Come on. Read what Von Neumann could do since a young age. He memorized eight volumes of the most comprehensive History of the World textbook of the time. He remembered every date, every name, every place and the page where they appeared. If I remember correctly, while doing his Math PhD he took an interest in Chemical Engineering and studied the whole degree in two weeks. Very smart but normal people take 4-6 years to do the same. I don't know you, but I find the denial of inborn talent very cruel: "See, the reason you can't understand fraction in 11th grade is because you haven't worked hard enough otherwise you would be von Neumann". As someone who started tutoring younger people in the last year of high school I've found plenty of lazy smart who need a push and plenty of stupid hard workers who suffered while unable to understand the material.

>Because Italy is an elderly care state with a hierarchy that is so rigid it might even impress the Japanese.

This is the best description of my homeland I've ever seen. By reading the Italian news one would think the main enemy of the Italian State are young people that are constantly berated, ridiculed and forced to keep hearing how lazy they are.

>Idk but in France, when I was still a teenager, it was not that uncommon to talk/joke about the fact that we will never be able to retire.

The same in Italy. It was very disheartening and certainly contributed to our discontent.

>home ownership becoming harder and harder

This is starting to weigh more and more in our life (mine and my age cohort). The average monthly pay in my region is 1200EUR while the average cost of an house is 250000EUR, so 17 years of salary. On the other hand my father bought two houses with a manual laborer stipend and my mother never worked a day in her life and she had four children. I really don't know when (or better, if) I will be out of my house.

This is what happened to me at 14: the first time I've ever had an Internet connection at home. I am now 27 and it's really a downward spiral. I'm starting to think that the only solution, at least for me, would using Internet only for 10 minutes a day and only to download offline all the things I would like to read.