This is really ignoring how humans function as well as almost all of our history. We might not be killing each other as much, but many groups still do no like the others in the slightest nor show much sign of changing. The only way colonizing Mars achieves peace in the Middle East is if one of the groups leaves Earth.

I've thought the same thing. There shouldn't be a first grade, second grade, etc. but rather several classes that for each topic that a student can progress through individually. Maybe Johnny can't read so good and needs to repeat the first sequence in reading, but is fine in all other aspects or perhaps little Suzy is a math prodigy and can jump ahead a sequence or two but isn't excelling in her other topics so she should just stay put in those.

Such a system sounds far more preferable as it affords students the opportunity to excel in one area while being behind in another without being drug or forced to sit through material that's not at their level. Such a system is going to be more of a logistical problem for teachers and administrators than the current set up, but I think it's a least worth testing out.

Worse still, it's more work that won't improve outcomes as there's a lack of good evidence to support that individualizing learning styles does any good. There are studies that have found negative results.

This is just like the programs to give students a laptop, a tablet, or something else that's supposed to be great for education but won't result in any significant changes. It's made to sound nice and fancy so that schools will spend millions of dollars on it and who would want to question funding something to improve education?

when i said the west, i meant, literally from the west of easter island, which would be what we call the eastern part of the world

sorry if that was misleading

the pacific has a north and a south cyclone of prevailing wind (and also an oceanic gyre if you're just floating with no wind). it's just a matter of what latitude you use for the prevailing direction

thor's journey is awesome, and we do find native american dna at easter island, but the vast majority of the south pacific is austromelanesian. easter island's people came from the west, not from the east

I was a little curious about that as well and one of the linked articles from TFA says that this kid was at MIT at 13. I'll go ahead guess that he's really into and good at microprocessor design. The article I've linked also talks about some of the design decisions for the chip he's making, on which I'd be interested in hearing from someone with a background in the field.

You're probably thinking of Instragram. Facebook is the thing where people send out short-length messages to the rest of the world.

they got to south america

it's just a matter of trusting your life to the winds

Obviously you can't get it exactly the same unless it were a system where everyone learned via video tutorials prepared in advance. Anyone who's been through any amount of schooling had some teachers that were really great and some that were plain shit.

100% perfect isn't going to exist and realistically if you get to 95% it's likely good enough because the remaining 5% is so expensive that it's no longer feasible to try as there's something else that the money could be better spent on.

The Finnish school system is regularly lauded as one of the best and it's done away with much of the pointless crap that the U.S. system indulges, such as constant standardized testing. Obviously it's not as simple as adopting their system exactly as it is without accounting for cultural, geographical, or other differences that might cause issues or skew the results in their favor, but what we're doing now isn't working.

Also, I realize that not everyone is equal and that you can't realistically give everyone an equal start. As you point out, some parents will devote more resources to their children's success than others. The government can't practically enforce mommy and daddy reading a set amount of time to their children every night nor can it control for individuals who have been more successful passing that on to their children, either genetically or in terms of physical assets.

My argument is that it's better to spend the extra money on improving education and the situations of the least fortunate that it is to jail them or deal with the consequences of having an underclass. A few people can still rise from that, and to some degree that'a s great part of the U.S., but most will just be a net drain on society when there's an opportunity for them to be valuable contributors. Just because it's impossible to get everyone to be a net positive, doesn't mean that there isn't a point along the cost-benefit scale where investing more into education and the poor doesn't yield a better outcome for the country as a whole.

Perhaps it's been going on for a lot longer than I would have realized, but I don't think it was always that way. Watch the trailer for something like Alien and tell me that it gives anything about the movie away other than it's set in space and is probably going to be kind of creepy.

Then again, there are examples (NSFW) that prove your point.

The government has no real interest in legislating for privacy because even if they stopped snooping on everyone (which they shouldn't be doing to start with, even though that hasn't stopped them) it would simply be a matter of filing legal paperwork to get any information that they wanted from the corporations who are collecting and storing that data for their own reasons.

If the FCC tried to do this of their own initiative, Congress would shut them down for "overstepping their bounds".

Knowledge is power, especially knowledge of a person's secrets.

I think that the entertainment industry has found out that people don't care about spoilers or that spoiling just enough will actually drive viewership. The Simpsons has become pretty notorious for making advanced announcements of exactly what's going to happen and movie trailers have been giving away practically everything for a while now, but it doesn't seem to have hurt business. I've heard some people suggest that trailers that essentially give away the entire movie are more effective at attracting viewers than those which merely introduce the movie in a more broad manner, but I haven't read any studies to suggest that one approach is more effective than the other, but if it were detrimental to business I have a hard time believing that so many studios would be doing it.

slashdot does have problems. such an anonymous stalking cowards

You sure showed us you're not one of those "creepy socially inept douchebags".

and who here is hiding and hating on whom?

you know this has been an awesome review of my character and my behavior by a random stalking nutcase using this social network to seek justice against me. you are truly a brave warrior

you accuse me of racism which is completely random and unfounded. i am not a racist and i never said a racist thing. show me where i ever said anything racist

should i just go around now calling you a pedophile? same thing