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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 15, 2021 20:44:51 GMT -5
I think Hal's right on point... IMO, school should help kids learn how to learn, and to think, while exposing them to basic knowledge to help them see where their passion is. That said, there are some fundamentals I wish there was more focus on.
My kids (who get all As) STILL in College/10th/7th grade, do basic math counting on their fingers, and can't spell at all. Is this the teachers fault, or just a factor of our modern conviences? Not sure, but it bugs me every time.
I also would like it to be a choice that some kids are, in fact, better than others. My college age kid cannot handle any sort of adversity or trouble, and I blame that on our 'everyone wins' society. She wasn't into sports (her activities were Band and Drama), so she doesn't know how to lose. My other two at least play sports, so they know a bit about losing and being disappointed.
I digress, though.
I'm really happy the teacher is talking about current events (since the History teacher is too focused on teaching the AP test to even mention it)... now that I've given it some thought I think that's the most important thing... kids SHOULD be talking about what's happening, and putting it in historical context. I'm sure that's really difficult without talking politics, which I"m sure isn't allowed anymore. If a comic book property helps that, so much the better.
Also, I'd just like to say I appreciate you guys that are teachers very much, it's a thankless job that we do nothing buy make harder and don't pay nearly enough.
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Crimebuster
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Making comics!
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Post by Crimebuster on Jan 15, 2021 21:15:42 GMT -5
I haven't seen the show myself, but it's not an adaptation of the Watchmen comic. It's a sequel that takes place 30 years later and uses the Watchmen universe as a framework to discuss racism, populist fascism, and the role of the police. It uses the Tulsa massacre as a starting point. So in this case, they couldn't really read the comic as it's a different story.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 15, 2021 23:19:55 GMT -5
I think Hal's right on point... IMO, school should help kids learn how to learn, and to think, while exposing them to basic knowledge to help them see where their passion is. That said, there are some fundamentals I wish there was more focus on. My kids (who get all As) STILL in College/10th/7th grade, do basic math counting on their fingers, and can't spell at all. Is this the teachers fault, or just a factor of our modern conviences? Not sure, but it bugs me every time. I also would like it to be a choice that some kids are, in fact, better than others. My college age kid cannot handle any sort of adversity or trouble, and I blame that on our 'everyone wins' society. She wasn't into sports (her activities were Band and Drama), so she doesn't know how to lose. My other two at least play sports, so they know a bit about losing and being disappointed. I digress, though. I'm really happy the teacher is talking about current events (since the History teacher is too focused on teaching the AP test to even mention it)... now that I've given it some thought I think that's the most important thing... kids SHOULD be talking about what's happening, and putting it in historical context. I'm sure that's really difficult without talking politics, which I"m sure isn't allowed anymore. If a comic book property helps that, so much the better. Also, I'd just like to say I appreciate you guys that are teachers very much, it's a thankless job that we do nothing buy make harder and don't pay nearly enough. I would say a little from Column A and a little from Column B, in regards your first point. Back in my day, after we climbed uphill through 30 feet of snow, both ways, killing ten polar bears and skinning them as we went, we had calculators available to us for math. However, my math teachers would not let us use them for class or tests, until I got into things like physics, where we were applying mathematical formulas to a physics problem. We had to learn to work out a math problem. In English classes, we did a lot of writing, from book reports, to papers and essays and research papers for history classes and one thing we learned was how to use the reference desk of a library and find good sources. My naval training was similar, as Supply Corps School was 6 months of cramming the entire US Navy Supply system into our heads (we likened it to trying to take a drink of water from a fire hydrant). We quickly learned how to navigate the reference manuals and other resources (which were available to us on tests) to find the information we needed quickly, rather than try to memorize all of the minutiae. Then, we did numerous practical examples of the types of day-to-day work we would oversee, to gain some experience in it, especially since we would be doing more auditing of the work, rather than performing it. College had been the same, because I had learned to think through problems, understand the context of the material, and identify quickly what was important information and what was just window dressing. I had friends and neighbors pulling all-nighters, while I was in bed by 11 and well rested for exams. Since I wasn't in engineering, I dealt more in theory and basically treated it like a newspaper article: who, what, where, when, why and how and then move on to the next question. My answers were succinct but could support their thesis with examples and information, while some of my classmates were trying to write War and Peace to try to hide the fact that they didn't really know the question. One of the things I have seen, from my brief post-Naval career interest in teaching (was going to have to jump through too many hoops to get certified and wasn't looking to incur more debt, plus wasn't thrilled by the courses I did take) and in 20 years as a bookseller, working with teachers, is that they have lost a lot of the activities that previously taught students how to think through and solve a problem and apply learning. I think a lot of it is geared around expectations from the business and corporate world, where the 80s and 90s led a big push in trying to quantify everything, to better predict trends and be able to show success or failure. The problem with that concept is that they try to apply metrics to things that are of a subjective nature and apply only to specific models, with narrow parameters. Thus, school has become more about quantifying performance, rather than qualifying it. The emphasis on standardized test is part of this, coupled by the fact that initiatives like the No Child Left Behind laws have then forced underperforming schools into using programs created by firms that create reference books for standardized tests (and administer them, in some cases) providing them with built in clients. Such firms are heavy lobbyists of the Department of Education. Meanwhile, the arts are all but abandoned and mathematics becomes more about working equations than solving problems by applying mathematics, or even logic. My father was a teacher for over 35 years and taught science for a good part of it. He always made his students (myself included) first read the material, then discussed it in class, then perform experiments or similar activities to apply the material, then test it. In each method, he addressed different learning styles and reinforced what was being learned. His students, after his death, remarked that his class was one of the few where they felt they really learned something practical and useful. Had he been teaching for another ten years or so, more of his class time would have been interrupted by additional testing requirements. One year, long after he was retired, some friends and former colleagues of his visited with us, and the wife, who was still involved part time, remarked about how they basically lost most of the spring semester to standardized test prep and execution and then spent the following fall semester playing catch up. This was in a deeply rural school district, with generational learning issues and low resources, as Illinois' educational budget is dominated by the Chicago schools. Modern conveniences are good about identifying sources of information, but not as good about qualifying the information and not particularly great about context or application. This was an area that schools at least used to address. From my perspective, the lack of respect and resources given to the educational profession is directly correlated with many of the issues of modern society. Good pay and benefits, community support and resources gets you good teachers and better learning. Doing it on the cheap gives you what we grapple with, every day.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 15, 2021 23:30:16 GMT -5
I haven't seen the show myself, but it's not an adaptation of the Watchmen comic. It's a sequel that takes place 30 years later and uses the Watchmen universe as a framework to discuss racism, populist fascism, and the role of the police. It uses the Tulsa massacre as a starting point. So in this case, they couldn't really read the comic as it's a different story. Ahhhh.. I had no idea. That makes alot more sense!
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 16, 2021 5:28:41 GMT -5
I haven't seen the show myself, but it's not an adaptation of the Watchmen comic. It's a sequel that takes place 30 years later and uses the Watchmen universe as a framework to discuss racism, populist fascism, and the role of the police. It uses the Tulsa massacre as a starting point. So in this case, they couldn't really read the comic as it's a different story. Ahhhh.. I had no idea. That makes alot more sense! Yeah, I didn't realize you knew absolutely nothing about the show (I figured that most folks, esp. comics fans, at least knew the basics about it even without watching because for a while it seemed like everyone was talking about it, esp. the opening sequence in Tusla in 1921). And yeah, as Crimebuster noted, it's heavily focused on the racism, fascism, policing (the latter two aspects intertwined with the first) but also American imperialism (again, something that's deeply intertwined with racism). And yes, it's sort of sequel to the comic series, but also a prequel. I'd almost say it's like a framing device that focuses on events both after and before the time-frame (1940s through mid-1980s) covered in the original series. It's well worth watching. I posted a bunch of my thoughts on the series elsewhere last summer, although don't go to that link if you don't want it completely spoiled.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,597
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Post by Confessor on Jan 16, 2021 6:38:53 GMT -5
Between DC/Warner's poor treatment of Alan Moore and their unseemly flogging of a dead horse with regards to the franchise, and director Damon Lindelof's use of tiresomely virtue signalling themes and his frankly shitty "f*ck Alan Moore" quote, I won't watch the HBO Watchmen series on principle.
There! I said it.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 16, 2021 8:26:03 GMT -5
Between DC/Warner's poor treatment of Alan Moore and their unseemly flogging of a dead horse with regards to the franchise, and director Damon Lindelof's use of tiresomely virtue signalling themes and his frankly shitty "f*ck Alan Moore" quote, I won't watch the HBO Watchmen series on principle. There! I said it. Pretty much the same here. I have skipped anything Watchmen related because of the continued middle finger to Moore and Gibbons and the general bungling of the themes in the Snyder film.
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Post by junkmonkey on Jan 16, 2021 15:30:00 GMT -5
I didn't realise that about the show either and have only read the original.
On the more general theme of Education I have three kids - One in Art College (well she would be if it wasn't for the Covid), one in high school, and one in his last year of primary.
I have no idea what I want them to learn. When I was a kid (I'm 50 years older than my youngest) the world was an incredibly different place. For example Mine was one of the first years at high school school to get taught any kind of computing skills - we queued up to type in our line by line code into a teletype machine connected to the local council's mainframe several miles away. These days my kids do remote learning using their school's laptops. I grew up in a much more stable world (and a much more sexually divided one, girls weren't allowed to do metalwork, I couldn't do 'Home Economics' - I asked they said no.) So many of the jobs and ways of making a living these days just plain didn't exist and probably were in-conceived of outside the pages of science fiction books when I was a kid. We were trained and prepared for a workplace that just doesn't exist any more. Who knows what jobs, and ways of making a living we can't currently conceive, of are going to be normal when my kids are adults.
I guess what I need my kids to learn before they are let loose on the world is how to sort bullshit from reality. Logic, basic scientific principles and methodology, how to type, the basics of at least one language other than English, and how to draw from life not just tracing and copying - looking, seeing, sorting, and making decisions.
When my daughter was swithering about whether she should go to art school or not I thought about this a lot and told her that the one constant through all of human evolution is that we've always had artists. From 40,000 years ago, from the first cave wall art we know of to the present day we've always needed painters.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jan 16, 2021 16:48:35 GMT -5
Between DC/Warner's poor treatment of Alan Moore and their unseemly flogging of a dead horse with regards to the franchise, and director Damon Lindelof's use of tiresomely virtue signalling themes and his frankly shitty "f*ck Alan Moore" quote, I won't watch the HBO Watchmen series on principle. There! I said it. The director wrote a very lengthy twitter post about a year or two ago. In it he said how he loved and wanted to stay true to the source but add his own inspirations/ideas. Basically it's pure fan-fiction when you think about it
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I actually liked the Watchmen movie, but it's far from perfect. I've always found Watchmen and V For Vendetta difficult to read for reasons that I'm not entirely sure why, but I do respect them
To be totally honest though, I'd take Rick Veitch's The One any day over Watchmen
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 16, 2021 20:40:36 GMT -5
I've never been a huge fan of Watchmen myself. I appreciate it's importance, but I enjoyed V for Vendetta far more. HBO Max is one streaming service more than I'm willing to pay for, but perhaps I'll watch it at some point once the DVD set makes the library.
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,922
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Post by Crimebuster on Jan 17, 2021 14:08:48 GMT -5
I've never been a huge fan of Watchmen myself. I appreciate it's importance, but I enjoyed V for Vendetta far more. HBO Max is one streaming service more than I'm willing to pay for, but perhaps I'll watch it at some point once the DVD set makes the library. By all accounts it's excellent. Watchmen was nominated for an absurd 26 Emmys and won 11, including best Limited Series, and Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor in a limited series or movie made for television. It received four other acting nominations as well.
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Post by kirby101 on Jan 17, 2021 16:15:35 GMT -5
I am a fan of the GN and the movie and I also thought the HBO series was excellent.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 18, 2021 23:23:42 GMT -5
I’m reading the Busiek/Perez run of the Avengers and notice that Captain America went through a period where he didn’t have his shield, he has some energy device that turned into a shield. That was a crappy time. Cap without a shield looks visually boring.
There I said it.
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Post by badwolf on Jan 19, 2021 11:08:45 GMT -5
I’m reading the Busiek/Perez run of the Avengers and notice that Captain America went through a period where he didn’t have his shield, he has some energy device that turned into a shield. That was a crappy time. Cap without a shield looks visually boring. There I said it. I forgot about that. Yeah, gotta have the real shield. It's a good run though.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2021 16:58:54 GMT -5
I imagine a new reader looking for material they saw on tv or movies stuff like Cap without his shield or Superman having electric powers could be confusing
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