Has it occurred to you that these two things are related? That perhaps your demand for "discipline" is exactly what is pushing schools to become prison pipelines more than places for developing critical thinking skills?

What do you define as "professionalism"? Teachers of old that often were not credentialed to teach the subjects they were assigned to teach, and could be verbally abusive if not even physically abusive (hitting with rulers or spanking was at one time common!) to enforce "discipline"? Maybe the concept of professionalism in a classroom is shifting, and that's a good thing.

The horror to learn that teachers are humans, and humans have names!

Did your class never have a pet turtle or anything? What if the dog is there as a therapy dog, or an assistance dog for a disabled teacher and/or student in the classroom, should the students never learn the dog's name and pretend it doesn't exist?

I'm going to go out on a limb here, based on you saying "my wife" later in the post, that most likely you identify as a man. Would you enjoy being called "she" or "ma'am"? Even if you would laugh it off and say hey, it's a mistake, no worries, it's still something you'd correct, right?, and not simply let them keep calling you ma'am? Let's say your name is Mike but someone every day called you Joe or Sally, would you just say "hey, they decided that's what they want to call me, fine", or would you insist that they use Mike? If the other person started screaming back at you saying "YOU LOOK LIKE A SALLY TO ME SO I'M GOING TO KEEP CALLING YOU SALLY, NOT YOUR SUPER SPECIAL MIKE NAME", they'd be kind of an asshole, right?

Asking people to use a particular pronoun when addressing them is not different from asking folks to use a preferred name or nickname. It's a courtesy to another human being, to show respect. You were just ranting about "professionalism", it's professional to show respect and teach students to show respect for others by using preferred names and pronouns when speaking to adults. Why is this such a problem? How does that interfere with education in any way?

Is the rigor different, or are kids simply learning different things than 30 years ago because the world has changed? So 30 years ago was 1994. The Internet was young and not really known to the general public. Windows 3.1 days, Windows 95 wasn't out yet, so home PCs were still not as user friendly and not as widespread. Netscape Navigator, one of the first browsers to get wide use, didn't come out until the end of 1994.

It should be pretty obvious that students today are growing up in a far different world that requires different skills. A lot more emphasis on things that are useful for computer tasks for example; computer literacy, programming which means far more emphasis on certain kinds of math and logic beyond the class education of geometry and basic algebra. I know there was a freakout with Common Core, but a lot of the changes in math for example are exactly designed for this purpose, the old curriculum methods of teaching arithmetic and algebra do not teach the skills needed to keep up with modern science and engineering especially computer science which require more abstract algebra methods to recognize patterns in operations not just numbers. With access to Wikipedia, maybe students don't need to memorize random factoids as much as know how to use them, so need to develop critical thinking skills. With computerized forms everywhere, maybe the need to learn handwriting is diminished; not to say it isn't still important to learn a bit, but cursive is outdated and even hand printing is not very necessary in many professional spaces, it's almost more important to know how to use common UI paradigms, swipe typing on a virtual keyboard, or learning a real keyboard for more complex professional tasks.

This is of course a complex topic that is still in the process of being debated and worked out because of how rapidly technology has changed. But this should illustrate that what you consider "rigor" may not necessarily apply anymore for kids trying to keep up in a 21st-century computer-dominated global economy. Shouldn't be surprised educational curriculum looks different and doesn't cover the exact same list of topics you saw 30 years ago.

How do you come to the conclusion those degrees were a waste of time? Because you personally didn't want to study those topics? That's fine. Not everyone needs to be an expert on the same things. It's better when we all specialize differently and then collaborate.

Ah I see why you think it was a waste of time now. You don't really understand why many people become teachers, often at cost of huge pay cuts (diminished life time earnings compared to going into corporate jobs) and long work hours while school is in session.

I have the feeling you wouldn't like it if other folks judged you and heaped scorn on you for having these strong beliefs about education; why do you want to do it to others?

also, what is "optimal"? work efficiency and profits? perhaps that shouldn't be the major driver of economic and social decisions. perhaps we need "optimal" participation in democracy, which can only occur when folks have enough time off from labor to learn new things (maybe a take a class at the community college!), discuss ideas with their neighbors, try out prototypes or new ideas with colleagues, and then gather to share what they've learned, debate, deliberate, vote, and other hallmarks of democracy

it's incredible how much the requirements for democracy get left out of all the planning for a country that supposedly prides itself on being a free democracy...

so essentially: "the people abusing us won't like it if we say no, so we should just say yes"

I know folks think they're making "smart" economic arguments with this drivel, but all you're doing is reinforcing private corporate control of your life, against the very ideas that would free you to live your own life more. There is no freedom without economic freedom which includes the ability to say NO. Yes of course companies hate this -- they maximize their profit when they are maximizing ripping you off (by paying lower wages than you deserve, making you work longer hours than you have to, etc.). Stop accepting it. Stop rationalizing it.

Hang on, folks here don't get to spew their crap about how Firefox doesn't do what they want, after for YEARS, folks here complained endlessly that firefox was "too slow", and didn't support feature X or feature Y. The refrain I saw for years was to "just switch to Chrome, it's faster". I even suggested a few times that maybe folks ought to work with Firefox to improve it rather than switch to a corporate-owned browser that doesn't believe the word "privacy" exists, but was always shrugged off. It's competition! It's faster!

Well, here's the consequences of that. Congratulations. You told everyone to switch to Chrome because it was faster. Firefox implemented several projects to improve speed and stability. It overhauled the API system that was frankly broken and made it more compatible with the Chrome one that everyone loved so much. Since folks kept complementing Chrome on its speed and minimization, Firefox devs decided hey I guess we need to do that too. Firefox did everything folks asked for. Folks wanted Chrome because it was faster. Well Firefox did all of that and honestly in my experience is faster and better at resources than Chrome.

But folks still aren't happy. Pretty sure you never will be. It's just constant complaints. I guess y'all will complain until all open source browsers are dead and Google rules the internet.

Little bit of a contradiction here. If I am the product, then I paid with my private information and attention (for ads). Just because government currency didn't directly exchange hands doesn't mean I didn't pay anything, or that they aren't providing me some kind of service for that barter. Stop giving corporations excuses to get away with whatever they want.

Because I asked questions about why we should rush impact studies, or why there's such a rush to give money and bailouts to the nuclear industry instead of renewables? You are a perfect example of the fuckers who gave us a planet dying from pollution and climate change, because you refuse to think for yourself about the consequences of short-term profit motives.

There's already been several nuclear disasters, Fukushima the most recent large one that literally made a city uninhabitable. So how exactly is that "fake news" when it literally happened?

There is huge concern in the US as most of the US reactors are ancient and should be decommissioned, the longer they are open the more likely an accident is to occur. And unlike Fukushima, which was along a huge ocean, US reactors are along rivers, many of which are used for agriculture and drinking water. Even if the reactor doesn't melt down, spent fuel is being kept in storage tanks along those rivers and there is huge concern of leaks that can really decimate entire regions of the country. There is a huge disaster looming that no one is addressing, except for the environmentalists that you are putting down.

Where exactly is the contradiction here? "Environmentalists that oppose coal also oppose gas as both contribute to pollution and climate change! ... News at 11". Gas is NOT a replacement for coal even though the gas lobby of course would love for you to think that. Gas extraction, fracking, and pipelines are destroying communities, ruining drinking water, and burning gas still contributes to climate change and air pollution. It shouldn't be considered any sort of long-term solution, yet politicians are digging in to support the fracking industry. Environmentalists of course oppose this and ask: why not more renewable energy?

Nothing is perfect, the laws of physics say so. Environmentalists understand that. The thing is, in comparison, solar is much better than fossil fuel usage -- and wind, hydroelectric, geothermal are even better than photovoltaics.

But you do bring up a good point -- keeping up manufacturing at today's levels is unsustainable. This is why environmentalists also call for a reduction in waste -- reduce, reuse, recycle. Keep our impact and carbon footprint as low as possible, and we're not going to be able to do that if we're stuck on fossil fuels for energy.

Again, environmentalists are very aware of trade-offs and costs. An ecological economics that factors this in is one that says society needs to develop energy efficiency and reduce waste, meaning we only build as much as we absolutely need for a good life putting people first instead of business profits, but that sort of economics is very incompatible with the capitalist model of production that says "build as much as you can all the time to sell on the market!". Some people have brain meltdowns when you question the basic tenets of capitalism, but that's the real stance of wanting good stuff without paying for it. You are paying for it, in human costs of pollution and effective slavery, as well as climate change. So what sort of future do you want?

This is a very strange paragraph to me: it sounds like a solar success story! You can SAVE 30% if not more with a few panels, and very likely have net zero usage if you really invested. How is that not a win to generate all of the energy you need right on the premises via renewable sources instead of supporting polluting fossil fuels or dangerous nuclear? Why tie yourself to the whims of your power company's investments and prices?

For comparison, you don't think a 30% reduction is much. Would you also roll your eyes if the power company told you they'd reduce your bill by 30%, or the state reduced your taxes by 30%? I'm genuinely intrigued by why such an improvement isn't a big deal to you, assumingly just because it's solar.

You seem to think people want to slow it down for fun but there are many legitimate concerns.

If the designs are so safe, why isn't it already standardized? or is it because sufficient protections depend greatly on environmental and other factors?

Why does it need to be fast, and how do you define "fast" anyway? A mess up of nuclear can result in VERY large consequences (see Fukushima as a recent example). Large consequences I think deserve extra time and thorough review, not a rushed job.

If it's so safe, why do they need indemnity? What do you define as "frivolous"?

Why do you want to rush review of lawsuits? Complaints need to be fully explored because the stakes are big here. As I said earlier, the consequences are sufficiently large that it seems fair to me that it takes time to thoroughly investigate. Business profits don't trump my right to a livable environment.

Either breeder reactors work or they don't. If we still need this, then it's a clear sign that the "promise" of nuclear you hailed has failed and is still saddling us with nuclear waste for thousands of years. If Yucca is needed, then we need to develop new technologies and not pretend this is any kind of long-term solution.

I've seen estimates that especially if the whole world switches to heavily lean on nuclear, we can only expect about 100 years of fuel at most -- and already nuclear is actually very expensive and only made "cheap" by heavy government subsidy (for example my state is preparing a bailout package of BILLIONS of dollars to nuclear to keep their plants profitable and operating). And it may not even be that long if we don't get the message that we need SUSTAINABLE development which very likely means rethinking how civilization and society functions to get our energy usage down -- we shouldn't be planning on continuing this path or even increasing global energy use at this point. After 100 years, we'll be right back at this same juncture, facing an energy crisis.

So why not plan for a long-term sustainable future by investing those billions of research dollars and subsidies into renewables: solar (not just photovoltaics either), wind, hydroelectric, geothermal? Those would be massively useful investments that would keep civilization going into the forseeable future indefinitely, particularly if coupled with a society-wide effort to reduce consumption of energy and products. It's the only real solution we have, everything else is a bandaid that kicks the can down the road in one form or another to our kids.

I was referring to quantity more so than ready-made. Depending what you need, it's sometimes difficult to find a non-ridiculous quantity for a reasonable price. It used to also be harder to do so under food stamps (there were many restrictions on what sorts of things you could buy, most fresh vegetables didn't even count) but they now cover a much greater range of things.

So you're saying "that's not REAL capitalism!"? :-) funny that many don't let socialists get away with making that same argument.

Can you point to a time when we *didn't* have cronyism? Because the last time we had such concentrated wealth and lack of regulation and oversight was the Gilded Age, the height of cronyism and poverty. If you're referring to economic prosperity since the world wars, that comes partly from being the major economic power left standing as well as FDR's New Deal and progressive reform that actually took very strong cues from Socialist Party demands (the Socialist Party was actually winning seats in Congress and state legislatures as a third party and that was enough to scare the establishment into giving into some of the demands). So in modern US history we've actually done the best with progressive/socialist reform and the worst under deregulated "free market" capitalism (that quickly becomes cronyism).

So why is it so wrong to point out we've never had real full socialism either and should give it a chance? Socialism is about economic democracy instead of the economic dictatorship of CEOs under capitalism, what's so wrong about democracy?

Wait a minute, is it that the current way works can never change, or that new ideas do work and change the system? That seems pretty contradictory there.

At one time we lived under monarchies and feudalism. We moved to constitutional monarchies and mercantilism. We then moved to republics and capitalism. Is it really so hard to imagine that there is a next step in human social evolution after what we have today? So hard to admit that we are nowhere near perfect yet? And yes, we will probably move toward "democracy and socialism" next because each step has been about expanding rights to more and more people. People of the future will look back on the poverty and environmental destruction under capitalism and the "right to private property" and shake their heads just as we do to the "divine right" of kings before us.

The gun is called "poverty, starvation, and death".

Yes, people will take out loans and go to university when they are told that is the only way to find a "good job" and provide for themselves and their families. That is what business leaders and politicians constantly drone on and on about. Right now they're pushing "everyone needs to learn coding to get a job". It's the same pattern.

You describe an extremely unforgiving and authoritarian system if there is absolutely no help for "being stupid". Do you think an 18 year old fresh out of high school should know as much as you and make every decision absolutely perfectly for the rest of their lives? Did *you* make all of the best decisions at 18? It's not like we're cyborgs and can simply upload all of human knowledge to high school graduates on their day of graduate. People will make always continue to make bad decisions, but that doesn't make them bad people or even stupid. Maybe they just haven't learned yet, the world is complicated and often unpredictable, and they will learn for the future from the experience. In fact making mistakes is pretty much the only real way to learn and master anything. They deserve help and education and sympathy, not scorn and anger and callousness. We all do.

It's easy to confuse the two, and certainly they're related, but it's not as simple as that either. Private ownership of resources and the means of production gives one a vast amount of economic power the larger a business grows, and at some point that economic power is enough to project political power as well. The ruling class becomes all about pleasing the private corporate owners, partly because they might personally profit from such arrangements, but also because of a concern that the private owner will hurt the economy and community or even nation as a whole if they don't get what they want. How many times do football teams threaten to leave if they don't get a publicly-funded stadium built? How many times does Harley Davidson or other companies threaten layoffs and to go to other countries if we don't give them free money in the form of tax cuts? How many times have the banks insisted they need a bailout or they will let the mortgage market take down the world economy? Capitalists essentially hold the rest of us for ransom with their economic power.

Hang on here, has it occurred to you that capitalism has caused this? I think you're conflating two different groups of people here. The poor can't afford BMWs or overseas vacations. Most grocery store meals are designed with "the family of four" in mind and so depending on what you eat when you are out (and how many leftovers you bring home for tomorrow) it can be cheaper to eat out than cook at home and be wasteful. Most people don't buy phones but rather lease/rent them, and you get automatic upgrades every year or two, so it's entirely possible for someone to have the latest phone and still be paying only $20 per month or so, and it's not exactly easy to find a job without a phone number and internet access (for many people, their phone *is* their way of accessing the web and email too, they don't own high-powered desktop rigs) so it's a necessary expense.

The expensive lifestyle problems are the rich being wasteful, which capitalism encourages because you have to always buy to make more and more profit. For the poor, they are expected to take on more and more bills and debt in order to keep up with the middle class and have even a chance at getting a job and avoiding poverty/homelessness. The poor cannot win that race long term, and we're seeing that in statistics as more and more people drop out of the workforce, are forced out of their homes, declare bankrupcty, all while wealth inequality skyrockets.

This is all capitalism. It all stems from the wealthy using their economic power to extort money out of the poor. It creates a dog-eat-dog culture of consumerism and struggle. The only way to fix it is some form of socialism, where we take the economic decision-making away from the backroom deals of wealthy CEOs. Economic decisions make be made openly, publicly, democratically, everyone must be given a vote, that is the only way to level the playing field.

You're confusing a free market with capitalism, which is not the same thing. It's also a very common mistake to make given the propaganda in the US that intentionally wants us to associate "freedom" with capitalism.

Capitalism simply means private ownership and control of resources -- land, natural resources, and modern industrial means of production. Private ownership means generally speaking a person (a dictator or monarch) or a small board of directors (an oligarchy) make all the decisions about the use of resources and production. On the surface, this seems like a very fair thing -- you own it, why shouldn't you get to decide? -- but the problem with this line of thought is the scale we're talking. When a capitalist decides to clear cut a forest, that forest is now gone and even if he sells the land later, no other person gets to use that forest ever again. What if someone else wanted to create a park? Too late, capitalist decided already. What if a majority of people in the area wanted a park instead of a clear cut field? What if that forest and all those tree roots helped soak up water and prevent flooding, but now without it, surrounding neighborhoods easily flood? What if that forest held a rare species of tree or animal that could have lead to a medical discovery? Even if we needed to cut the trees down for firewood or paper or whatever, maybe we would have preferred to the wood go to local community members and not sold in China or wherever? Too late, capitalist already decided.

That's the problem with private ownership of resources and production. Most if not all resource use decisions actually impact all of us, at least community-wide if not planet-wide (as climate change is producing). And yet we are allowing monarchs and oligarchs make those decisions for our communities and nations without any input. Is that fair and just for someone else to decide things that impact your family and community without you having any say in the process whatsoever? I understand you might not always get what you want, but right now you don't even have a vote. A CEO decides and that's it, can legally do what they want (within broad confines of regulation that politicians continually cut and weaken) and completely ignore you and your family and your community. If it makes your house flood more, they don't care. If it causes environmental damage that gives you and your family lung cancer, they don't care. You don't have any say.

Socialism is the idea that resources and production should be publicly-owned and democratically managed. That's really all it is. Because of certain historical events people confuse socialism with authoritarian takeovers of those countries, but again, like the free market and capitalism, they are not the same thing. All we're talking about it more democracy, that you and your family and your community should have a vote and decide how those resources are used and that it should not be left to private decision-making behind closed doors by people who don't necessarily live in your community or even country.

Note also, as a common misconception, that socialist theory typically distinguishes between "private property", which is private ownership of natural resources and industrial means of production, and "personal property" which is your family home. Socialists don't generally care about your family home or your toothbrush or your clothes or your car, do whatever you want at home when you're not bothering anyone. No one is going to take your house. It's about democratizing economic decisions for the big industrial questions that affect all of us, it's about making sure no one businessperson CEO can force their economic vision on you and the community, you have to all agree together democratically. You get more individual freedoms and more say-so under a democratic system -- both political and economic democracy -- than you do under any form of authoritarian rule.

You can and certainly should have a free market under socialist conditions as communities compete with each other in arts, sciences, technology, but the key idea is that we democratically make decisions which helps ensure the maximum number of people are taken care of and not left behind by that competition. It's a bit of a checks-and-balances situation, assuming you can maintain a fair democratic system. And note that I'm using "democracy" is a more general sense, most community decisions should be made in local direct democracy assemblies I think, but we'll likely always have a need for some level of representation as those communities negotiate and communicate. The point is more to make things as democratic as possible by default.

corporatism is all about shifting costs to the public and creating a bullshit concept that companies are somehow outside of morality and ethics. They want to be outside of morality and ethics but that doesn't mean we have to let them.

That's really a feature of capitalism. To generate more private wealth and money, you literally have to charge more than it is worth. You have to charge more than you pay your workers, meaning your workers produced extra that you then kept for yourself. That is essentially shifting the costs -- the "downside" -- to the workers and communities you extra resources from, in order to produce more for yourself privately.

Socialism meanwhile is about recognizing that since all of us contributed, we all deserve a share of the profits. When it comes to community decisions, the community should benefit, not any one private individual.

Two things.

One, I'll grant you it has raised some out of poverty -- and to very high wealth in fact! -- but the other side of the coin is that many more have fallen deeper into poverty and debt, stuck in a cycle that is nearly impossible to break without help from others. Our economic system is heavily weighted against the poor. We tell the poor they have to pay higher interest rates -- pay more money!! -- because they are poor and private companies with no public oversight decide "credit scores", what kind of sense does that make? I know, you'll say "but the capitalists are taking a risk and deserve more!" but that's exactly the point, capitalism is making some rich at the expense of many others who pay more and fall more into poverty and debt.

Second, even if what you say is true about capitalism (and I have my extreme doubts, see above), that's a very relative statement you're trying to make sound absolutist. Before capitalism we had mercantilism which was seen as improvement on feudal economics which was seen as an improvement on past systems. Why can't capitalism itself be flawed and similarly need replaced by some system -- let's call it socialism -- to help *even more* people? Until we have 0% homelessness, 0% poverty, our job is not done and we should not settle if we want to claim we are a civilized society.