#education system critical

[eris-abomination]

I would have enjoyed the books I was assigned to read if I wasn’t assigned to read them. It’s not even like I wasn’t a big reader, the educational system just made English classes such a slog to go through.

I’m sure I would have liked The Great Gatsby or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest a LOT more if I wasn’t assigned a hard deadline of three chapters per night (otherwise you won’t pass the quiz on Friday!), told to annotate and color-code my copy (pink highlight for character names, blue for symbolism, yellow for vocab words), and assigned countless quizzes and tests about meaningless trivia like what color the protagonist was wearing in one scene. I find myself more attached to the short stories we had to read (The Yellow Wallpaper, All Summer in a Day, A Modest Proposal, Harrison Bergeron, etc) because the teachers didn’t make them such a chore and I actually had time to digest and enjoy them. Hell, I ended up enjoying Shakespeare a lot more than the novels because we got to “perform” it in class.

I know for a fact I would have appreciated these books a lot more if the act of reading them wasn’t tied up in the obligation of passing a class or the stress of having to scrutinize the dialogue in preparation for a test. I’ve been trying to rediscover my love for reading as something relaxing and fun; the education system almost ruined that shit for me.

I straight up do not trust you if you did not enjoy a single book you had to read for English class. I know they assigned some real stuffy stinkers and the curriculum varies across districts but not one? Not The Outsiders? Not The Picture of Dorian Gray? Not Fahrenheit 451? Not even Frankenstein? Damn. That’s crazy.

[0alix0]

boy do i love how the only reason bioware replaced Lucerni with Shadow Dragons was because they wanted middle class citizens being the driving force of the changes for Tevinter.....

.......... and STILL ended up with them being run by a former member of magisterium, a rich altus diplomat and a fucking BLACK DIVINE

[baldwinheights]

nice. of course the k-12 education system is underfunded, leading to constant teacher shortages, inadequate facilities, and subpar student outcomes. healthcare access is alarmingly poor, with an unneeded high uninsured rate that leaves many without normal, essential medical services, and even with recent medicaid expansion, mad issues still remain. health outcomes are fckn dismal, with high rates of chronic diseases and preventable deaths. obesity levels are among the worst in the nation (no wonder with all the food insecurity and lack of healthy lifestyle options around there). income inequality is out of control. they got many of their citizens living in poverty with almost zero prospects for improvement. on top of these issues, oklahoma has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, driven by harsh sentencing laws and systemic failings which targets black and poor (because of course (because america)). all on top of a legacy of racial injustices. i mean the tulsa race massacre. need i say more? but yea they should totally spend 1bil on entertainment. that's a totally reasonable thing to do smfh.

[mokeonn]

The most annoying phenomena on this website is grown adults refusing to educate themselves, despite the abundant recourses at their disposal, because their heads are still stuck in highschool.

[victusinveritas]

A friend of mine wrote this on Facebook and since it's a better critique of anything than I could hope to write, I'm sharing it here.

[artigas]

i love my job. i am very lucky to be doing my job. it is a privilege to be pursuing your dream career. but last night i spent four hours grading essays where my students argued that edgar allan poe's attraction to the fictional character annabel lee is proof that he was a child predator. i cannot explain to you the psychic damage and profound concern i suffer when i am forced to grade.

[purpletrashcans]

This is a rant, an oddly specific, very unnecessary Radio Silence rant

Okay so we all remember that one tumblr post in Radio Silence in which a user talked about how privileged and rude Aled was for criticizing the education system and not wanting to go to university

This post - and I know it's not real, I know the person who wrote it doesn't exist - makes me so mad every. Single. Time.

Like have you ever thought about the fact that some people are simply not made for university, some people are just fucking miserable when they're - yk - stuck in university, i mean having the privilege of being able to choose if you want to go to university also means having the privilege of being able to not go

Also just because you have the privilege of being able to go to university doesn't mean you can't criticize a system that is so obviously shit, like i'm sorry, but even as someone who actually kinda enjoys university i 100% think that we not only have the right, but also responsibility to criticize when we see deficiencies or problems in the education system

And what kind of weird whataboutism is this "You don’t want to go to university, because you know it would make you miserable and think that the education system is deeply flawed? Well what about people that can't go to university at all, you privileged prick? How dare you not want to be miserable for at least the next 3 years of your life!!!!" Like i'm sorry but that’s so idiotic i can't even

Just because you CAN go to university doesn't mean you have to, the privilege is that you have the choice, that it's your decision

[adragonsfriend]

I think one of the reasons lit crit gets such a bad wrap is that in school kids are usually introduced to it long before they’re introduced to craft-based writing (especially craft-based creative writing). My first real creative writing classes wildly changed the way I thought about analysing other people’s writing.

“The curtains are blue probably cuz the author liked blue”

Cool maybe but have you ever thought about how the author chose to mention the curtains were a color in the first place when they could’ve said a texture or a fabric type instead? Or that there were curtains at all? Or that mentioning curtains implies the room has big windows? And what big windows implies about the general architecture of the larger building? And what the architecture of the building and the curtains vs blinds choice implies about the class and culture of the people in the room? Or the way access to dyes has affected people’s perceptions of colors in different periods of history and how readers in the authors time might’ve had perceptions you don’t?

Understanding authorial agency is the lynch pin in understanding why lit crit is the way it is, and it’s really hard to get that when you’re a kid who’s writing boring essays because adults tell you to, or even an adult whose main writing activity is work emails.

[callese]

[voidwhalebone]

it really does feel like a lot of the "well the american education system is bad" essentially boils down to "i was never spoonfed information about this topic so i will just wait and not do anything about it until i am"

[planet4546b]

It’s simple. Using chatgpt for class assignments is fine because cheating in any way and for any reason for any level of school is fine always. And calling people who do it stupid makes you look like a fool 😁

[frosting-surfeit]

Please never make fun of ignorant people, please just educate them. Please just teach if you can, otherwise let them be, do not make fun of them. that leads to nothing. Absolutely nothing.

As someone whos been on the receiving end, multiple times, because i said some deeply unspeakably embarrassing things, it only makes you feel like youre lower than dirt.

[superchat]

cannot get over how dumb the "education is training you to be a mindless work slave"

i think its mostly there to teach you critical thinking

[lesbiansanemi]

Those posts that are like “Americans don’t know geography and are so stupid and self centered” that are then filled with Americans being like “WELL ACTUALLY ITS BECAUSE THEY DONT TEACH US IN SCHOOL THATS NOT OUR FAULT” make me roll my eyes because like. If you don’t know basic geography because, supposedly, you never ONCE had a class that taught it at all, you should probably get on that. If you can whine on tumblr you can learn where other countries are and a little bit about them

But also as a certified American, I distinctly remember in my freshman year world geography class (a REQUIREMENT class we needed to graduate) there were ppl who dead ass could not even identify the state we actively lived in let alone countries on another continent and also completely avoided actually learning these things so maybe Americans are just fucking stupid and self centered

[xx-meat-clown-xx]

its so fucking hard to advocate for teachers' unions and improving their working conditions etc. when every time i see a group of teachers talking online they immediately prove all of my negative preconceptions about teaching as an occupation and they're sobbing about the stupid autistic kids who aren't even REALLY autistic they know because they just KNOW guys.

NO they didn't read the DSM entry but they just KNOW like these kids all have NO PATTERN RECOGNITION which is an AUTISTIC TRAIT.

you guys im very smart and should be trusted with the welfare of disabled children

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Rikki Schlott

Published: Aug 4, 2023

Florida State University criminology professor Eric Stewart was a guru of the claim that “systemic racism” infests America’s police and American society.

Now he’s out of a job on account of “extreme negligence” in his research.

The academic was fired after almost 20 years of his data — including figures used in an explosive study, which claimed the legacy of lynchings made whites perceive blacks as criminals, and that the problem was worse among conservatives — were found to be in question.

College authorities said he was being fired for “incompetence” and “false results.”

Among the studies he has had to retract were claims that whites wanted longer sentences for blacks and Latinos.

To date, six of Stewart’s articles published in major academic journals like Criminology and Law and Society Review between 2003 and 2019 have been fully retracted after allegations the professor’s data was fake or so badly flawed it should not have been published.

The professor’s termination came four years after his former graduate student Justin Pickett blew the whistle on his research.

Pickett said they had worked together in 2011 researching whether the public was demanding longer sentences for black and Hispanic criminals as those minority populations grew, with the paper claiming they did. But Stewart had fiddled the sample size to deliver that result when the real research did not, Pickett said.

When the investigation into Stewart began in 2020, he claimed he was the victim and that Pickett “essentially lynched me and my academic character.”

After sixteen years as a professor of criminology at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Provost James Clark formally notified Stewart he was being terminated in a July 13 letter.

“I do not see how you can teach our students to be ethical researchers or how the results of future research projects conducted by you could be deemed as trustworthy,” Clark wrote to Stewart, who has been absent from his role since March.

Clark said as well as the six officially retracted studies, other work by Stewart was “in doubt.”

The retracted studies looked into contentious social issues, like whether the public perceives black and Latino people as threats and the role of racial discrimination in America’s criminal justice system.

One 2019 study, which has been retracted, suggested historical lynchings make white people today perceive black people as threats.

Stewart floated the idea “that this effect will be greater among whites… where socioeconomic disadvantage and political conservatism are greater.” 

Another retracted 2018 study suggested that white Americans view black and Latino people as “criminal threats,” and suggested that perceived threat could lead to “state-spon.sored social control.”

And in a third, Stewart claimed Americans wanted tougher sentences for Latinos because their community was increasing in numbers and becoming more economically successful.

[ Some of Stewart’s research’s flawed data exaggerated the role race plays in the criminal justice system. ]

“Latino population growth and perceived Latino criminal and economic threat significantly predict punitive Latino sentiment,” he concluded in the 2015 study, which has now been retracted.

Stewart’s research also delved into the relationship between incarceration and divorce, street violence, the impact of tough neighborhoods on adolescents, whether street gardens reduce crime, and how race impacts student discipline in schools.

But the disgraced professor was able to rise to prominence as an influencer in his field despite his studies from as early as 2003 now being retracted.

Stewart was a widely-cited scholar, with north of 8,500 citations by other researchers, according to Google Scholar — a measure of his clout as an academic.

He was vice president and fellow at the American Society of Criminology, who honored him as one of four highly distinguished criminologists in 2017.

He was also a W.E.B. DuBois fellow at the National Institute of Justice.

The professor received north of $3.5 million in grant support from major organizations and taxpayer-funded entities, according to his resume.

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, the National Science Foundation, which is an arm of the federal government, and the National Institute of Justice, which is run by the Department of Justice, have all funneled money into research Stewart presided over.

The National Institute of Mental Health, a branch of the NIH, poured $3.2 million into research on how African Americans transition into adulthood.

Stewart presided over that initiative as co-principal investigator from 2007 to 2012.

Meanwhile, he reportedly raked in a $190,000 annual salary at FSU, a public university.

While there he served on the school’s diversity, promotion and tenure committees, giving him a say over who got ahead on campus.

He even passed judgment on students accused of cheating and academic dishonesty themselves, as a member of FSU’s Academic Honor Policy Hearing Committee.

The fired professor, 51, graduated from Fort Valley State University and earned his Ph.D. from Iowa State University in 2000.

==

Academic fraud has direct consequences. Aside from improperly obtaining funding, this kind of corruption directly influences society.

The riots had a body count and caused $2b damage, including to minority-owned businesses, many of which ultimately just closed.

Of course, the problem is that the exposure of this fraud won't stop those citing or using his work, since it's been accepted based on "faith" - "even if he got it wrong, I know it's true in my heart."