#education system sucks

[despairdesolationdeath]

Grown ass professors be beefing with students half their age and having a quarter of their qualification for the sake of entertainment.

[whatskraken]

I can tell we’re entering a new world of techno-class divide. From a day-to-day function it’s not going to be great for those without access to ai technology, but for folks like CEOs and long-term academics who still struggle with opening a PDF, I think it’s high time for a reckoning.

As a Millennial professor myself, I saw how pandemic razed the gap between teachers who were already using baseline technology and those who refused to integrate their syllabi into Moodle/Canvas/Blackboard.

Now the emails and discussions and emergency town hall meetings and all this crazy fearmongering about how students are going to use Ai to bypass the traditional learning models? GOOD!

TBH if your assessment tools are based on projects & assignments that Ai can complete, then they weren’t really all that practical an assessment tool for at least 30 years since Google was invented. And as a professor, if you can’t identify the “Ai voice” in writing, then I’m also curious if you’ve been suffering from homogenous academic language brain rot.

Ai makes logical connections, but as of yet it doesn’t do a great job of synthesizing ideas. All the ai models I’ve used also have a big barriers up in their algorithm making it clear that their generative-language is NOT representative of your opinions. They’re programmed to acknowledge (and often try to actively steer clear of) giving you feedback that could be considered “bias.” So I find that encouraging self-analysis and emphasis on using personal voice (in a “professional” and academic manner) helps students feel more comfortable sharing their own words.

I do teach under a “reverse learning model,” which means my entire pedagogical ethos encourages self-exploration and skill-mastery over lecture & tutorial.

So if a student is so inclined to use Ai to aid them in completing the project, I love that! While we’re still in the position that Ai isn’t “perfect,” we should help guide how to integrate them into our practices. This is no different than how a math teacher doesn’t ignore that calculators exist. There are so many better and interesting ways to mobilize students in the liberal arts to “show their work,” and actually engage with the content you’re asking them to learn.

Obviously this whole discussion is much broader and complicated, but I’ll say that from the inside: we’re at a moment of reckoning with the state of academia in the US. College has become a product, not a process. Degrees mean nothing because “if everyone’s special, no one’s special.” There is no such thing as job security, there is not such thing as a “career path” anymore. Just go out and do cool shit.

Anyways Ai rules and College Drools.

Love,

Your actual college professor.

[bucky-barnes-supremacy]

My math final destroyed me to my core, the final boss(physics) is yet to defeat, I still think (in my defence I've lost all ability to think) that I can do better on physics. The urge to kill myself is at it's highest but it'll pass just like me barely passing this grade

[reasonsforhope]

"Research on a police diversion program implemented in 2014 shows a striking 91% reduction in in-school arrests over less than 10 years.

Across the United States, arrest rates for young people under age 18 have been declining for decades. However, the proportion of youth arrests associated with school incidents has increased.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, K–12 schools referred nearly 230,000 students to law enforcement during the school year that began in 2017. These referrals and the 54,321 reported school-based arrests that same year were mostly for minor misbehavior like marijuana possession, as opposed to more serious offenses like bringing a gun to school.

School-based arrests are one part of the school-to-prison pipeline, through which students—especially Black and Latine students and those with disabilities—are pushed out of their schools and into the legal system.

Getting caught up in the legal system has been linked to negative health, social, and academic outcomes, as well as increased risk for future arrest.

Given these negative consequences, public agencies in states like Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania have looked for ways to arrest fewer young people in schools. Philadelphia, in particular, has pioneered a successful effort to divert youth from the legal system.

Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program

In Philadelphia, police department leaders recognized that the city’s school district was its largest source of referrals for youth arrests. To address this issue, then–Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel developed and implemented a school-based, pre-arrest diversion initiative in partnership with the school district and the city’s department of human services. The program is called the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program, and it officially launched in May 2014.

Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker named Bethel as her new police commissioner on Nov. 22, 2023.

Since the diversion program began, when police are called to schools in the city for offenses like marijuana possession or disorderly conduct, they cannot arrest the student involved if that student has no pending court case or history of adjudication. In juvenile court, an adjudication is similar to a conviction in criminal court.

Instead of being arrested, the diverted student remains in school, and school personnel decide how to respond to their behavior. For example, they might speak with the student, schedule a meeting with a parent, or suspend the student.

A social worker from the city also contacts the student’s family to arrange a home visit, where they assess youth and family needs. Then, the social worker makes referrals to no-cost community-based services. The student and their family choose whether to attend.

Our team—the Juvenile Justice Research and Reform Lab at Drexel University—evaluated the effectiveness of the diversion program as independent researchers not affiliated with the police department or school district. We published four research articles describing various ways the diversion program affected students, schools, and costs to the city.

Arrests Dropped

In our evaluation of the diversion program’s first five years, we reported that the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia decreased by 84%: from nearly 1,600 in the school year beginning in 2013 to just 251 arrests in the school year beginning in 2018.

Since then, school district data indicates the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia has continued to decline—dropping to just 147 arrests in the school year that began in 2022. That’s a 91% reduction from the year before the program started.

We also investigated the number of serious behavioral incidents recorded in the school district in the program’s first five years. Those fell as well, suggesting that the diversion program effectively reduced school-based arrests without compromising school safety.

Additionally, data showed that city social workers successfully contacted the families of 74% of students diverted through the program during its first five years. Nearly 90% of these families accepted at least one referral to community-based programming, which includes services like academic support, job skill development, and behavioral health counseling...

Long-Term Outcomes

To evaluate a longer follow-up period, we compared the 427 students diverted in the program’s first year to the group of 531 students arrested before the program began. Results showed arrested students were significantly more likely to be arrested again in the following five years...

Finally, a cost-benefit analysis revealed that the program saves taxpayers millions of dollars.

Based on its success in Philadelphia, several other cities and counties across Pennsylvania have begun replicating the Police School Diversion Program. These efforts could further contribute to a nationwide movement to safely keep kids in their communities and out of the legal system."

-via Yes! Magazine, December 5, 2023

[thevoidstaredback]

One of my favorite things about writing that my teachers never told me is separating single-character dialogue into different paragraphs. Like, when a character is giving a speech or monologuing, instead of having one huge paragraph that hurts to look at, you can make it into smaller ones. It's just like doing normal paragraphs, except these ones start with quotation marks.

Let's say you introduce the character at the beginning of their monologue, and they start talking, "So, you write the dialogue as normal. Except, they're talking for a long time, and they aren't going to be stopping anytime soon." One solution is to add a break somewhere in there to describe an action, but sometimes that just throws off the whole flow. "Adding a break in the middle of the dialogue also makes the paragraph a bit longer than before, and sometimes you don't want that. Reading huge paragraphs is hard for people, myself included, so what you can do to make it shorter is this.

"Notice how the last one doesn't end with a quotation mark? It drops right off after the period. But, this one did start with a quotation mark. This is just to signal that the same character is still talking.

"And the paragraphs don't have to be huge, like our-" or at least my, "-teachers all said. They can be one sentence long and it still works! Why? Because it's exactly like writing an essay. When you have a new topic, to start a new paragraph. And when the character is done talking, you close it all of with quotation marks." Just like normal.

I don't know if this'll help anyone, or if anyone even cares, but it was a lifesaver when I learned this, so I figured I'd share.

I do suck at explaining things, though, so I don't actually know how helpful this'll be to anyone. It makes sense it my head, so we'll take the W

[solreefs]

“oh I never learned about colonialism and racism :( american education system bad :( I’m so helpless” read James Loewen. please read anything by James Loewen. especially Lies My Teacher Told Me. it is literally about the fallacies promoted by American history textbooks and gives you lots of things to do more research into. there is an easier to read edition (young readers’ edition, but anyone can read it! the intro is very clear about that!). there are audiobooks. there are pdfs. you can get his books from the library probably, Lies especially is widely circulated!

Loewen is far from the only author to write about this. but he is an excellent starting point and is specifically writing for people wanting to learn about history beyond what textbooks teach.

kill the American exceptionalism in your brain.

[ginnyw-potter]

THIS MAN TALKED ABOUT IMMIGRANTS EATING PETS

NOT TO MENTION THAT BIT ABOUT ABORTION

HOW CAN PEOPLE BE SO STUPID TO VOTE THAT MAN

[cursedwithcaution]

i wish all [people who shit on americans for the systemic oppression we experience regarding healthcare and other human rights] a very [understanding that most americans are victims of the system and can’t even protest oppression without being met with police violence]

[mxmorbidmidnight]

between bullying, disability burnout, constant accidents (ie, being accidentally body slammed by almost full grown men), excessive stress, more bullying, horrific and large scale junk food consumption during exam seasons and overall shit fuckery, School is managing to single handedly SLAUGHTER my health. god someone send healing potions. the weakness in my dragon hide is EDUCATIOn. GOOD LORD!

[spaghett-onaplate]

depression is really weird actually wdym i spent 2.5 years of my life in bed

[gayvampyr]

i hate the idea/trope that poor kids who do well in school don’t need any support when it comes to college, or that they all get full-ride scholarships. i don’t do well in school now that i’m in uni but i was a straight-A student throughout all of middle & high school and i got 1 (one) scholarship for $500/semester, which is less than 5% of my tuition. i didn’t have the opportunities or knowledge a lot of the other wealthier kids had, whose parents and grandparents and siblings had gone to college too. like we don’t all end up getting exactly the help we need, and i know the poor kids who weren’t straight-A students had an even harder time getting into college, if they did at all. it’s rough out here for all of us. the only sure-fire way a kid could get guaranteed financial assistance was if they had knowledge of the system and the time and money to pursue them. it sucks

[despairdesolationdeath]

Bitches take on 7 minor projects, 3 certification courses, the most complex of electives and 4 recently picked-up hobbies and then expect beauty sleep, mental stability and good GPA all in one semester.

It's me. I am bitches

[kachimera]

Seeing ppl here brag about how they use generative AI to cheat on their university work and its like. You're not learning anything. Why are you even there if you're not gonna do anything. You dont even have to be here.

Look the education system is unfair n shitty and often chews and spits it's students, and yea it's riddled with ableism specially for mental illness that wont let you work on homeworks like adhd for example, but the solution is not giving ppl degrees for doing nothing. Its like the ppl who buy diplomas for social clout n prestige instead of proof that you know about about an specific career. It makes the whole thing pointless. You just got a degree on how to write prompts on chatgtp.

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

a quick reminder to everyone

I have SEVERE LEARNING DISABILITIES

I am literally disabled because of my learning disabilities, I have faced literal descrimnation because of it.

everytime you call us retarded or a retard you are ACTIVLY upholding the systems in which I am trapped in.

I take more offence in being called a retard than anything due to the literal DECADES of systematic abuse and descrimnation from the medical system, every single government resource, and almost all school alternatives.

fuck you greatly if you use these words against us, I have to live in a country where they hate people like me and would rather us dead than to do literally anything to help people like us.

call us what you will, but I will never call anyone retarded because it’s a basic decency reserved for everyone.

I’m a very happy retard, fuck your ableism!

I will happily live and love and learn even if THE LITERAL GOVERNMENT doesn’t want me too.

(yeah being a mid supports autistic with other learning disabilities and disabilities in general that made me unable to attend a school just means I deserve to die. 100% legit I deal with this literally all the time always fuck the Australian government)

so again fuck you all greatly, for using a literal slur against me one that has been used against me since I was a baby.

fuck you all, genuinely.

did I forfeit my rights to be treated as a human being the moment I had a bit of trouble learning things? Because if I did I’d like to break someone’s teeth with a brick.

Edit: the language and lines between what the fuck developmental disabilities and intellectual disability are is confusing as fuck.

I have gotten very confused between the 2 because they are grouped together half the time.

My apologies to everyone for being utterly confused where I fall because it is extremely confusing to figure out, and internationally it varies wildly according to my brief reading.

I did not mean to be mean or anything I just was genuinely going off what I’ve been told most my life lol.

Shout out to my developmentally disabled brethren you are loved

[hum-suffer]

Im gonna have an academic comeback because fuck this education system, that's why. I'm gonna make sure that I excel for myself, not others, and that i become a part of this system and turn it inside out from its goddamn intestines so that the future generations don't have to stay up at 1:26 am reading about their exams.

[urmumsgyatt]

me who’s expected to study all the content i learnt in all of my classes the entire year in the span of 4 weeks before my exams: is it too late to drop out