Saturday, September 08, 2018

Education

As it came up in a recent comment thread, I will note that I have written many times about education. The search box at the top will bring up some interesting posts. The short version is that I mistrust both the conservative and liberal myths about education and how to fix it.

Here's some related fun.


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4 comments:

  1. Texan992:08 PM

    My 93-year-old mother-in-law has reached the point that being put into a wheelchair and moved around so that she's not staring at the same wall all day makes her actually motion-sick. She experiences it as a physical therapist flinging her around abruptly at unreasonable speeds, leaving her exhausted and overloaded with sensory input. Maybe we all start writing these querulous snippets about the speed of modern life when we reach middle age and start slowing down personally.

    I do enjoy an extended conversation, nevertheless. I admit that I recoil in shock when a houseguest or dinner guest sits down at the table for a meal and spends the whole time engrossed in an iPhone. And these are people my age! I'm going along with all kinds of newfangled whoop-de-doo, but a nose in an iPhone at dinner makes me get all "these kids today."

    Curiously, at the same time, it seems that as I age I get less and less patient about conversations with people who speak slowly. I have to resist the urge to let my mind wander while I wait for the next word to pop out. I instantly delete those intensely annoying social-media memes that dribble out a paragraph by slowing fading in and out to show one phrase at a time s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y. I can barely stand to listen to a podcast, preferring a transcript. These are things that I experience as moving more slowly than I remember them moving in my youth.

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  2. Douglas23:08 PM


    Speaking of annoyance at listening to those speaking slowly, I love the feature of youtube under the gear at the lower right of a video where you can make the video play at 1.5× or 2× speed without changing the pitch. I'd much rather read a transcript when available, but this makes videos more tolerable.

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  3. Texan993:52 PM

    Yes, audible books let you do that, too. I don't use it for fiction, but some lectures need it.

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  4. Donna B.3:54 PM

    I've preferred transcripts for so long that I remember paying for them.

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