lol, modern education

[bam!]

http://blog.swiftkickonline.com/2010/07 ... peech.html

[seremtan]

lol, told

[arjaya]

Read about this a couple of months ago

For those who can't be bothered to read.

[arjaya]

It's a pretty good speech but flawed in places. She implores everyone to stand up and think for themselves, which is great if everyone can make the correct moral decisions in life.

Personally I think she needs a good Boning.

[fKd]

Personally I think she needs a good Boning.

lolz

[menkent]

what a trite little bint.

[plained]

the pattern of the more you know the less youre inclined to learn

[bitWISE]

what a trite little bint.

Yea. I agree with her message but she sounds a bit self righteous at times.

[GONNAFISTYA]

what a trite little bint.

Yea. I agree with her message but she sounds a bit self righteous at times.

Holy dog shit you're a spectacular retard.

She's the valedictorian. Every valedictorian speech in history is self-righteous, even the ones bashing the education system they mastered. She was admitting that she isn't the smartest person she knows because she realized she didn't actually learn anything besides how to do well on tests. She was being humble.

Anti-intellectual much?

[Underpants?]

I didn't get a "lol, modern education," out of the video. More like "wow." This was an amazing speech, from a painfully self-aware, intelligent and amazingly socially conscious young person. Kind of gives me a little hope for our future. Fuck, for the first time in my life I'm considering sending a link to everyone in my address book.

[bam!]

use teh facebookeh

[bitWISE]

Holy dog shit you're a spectacular retard.

She's the valedictorian. Every valedictorian speech in history is self-righteous, even the ones bashing the education system they mastered. She was admitting that she isn't the smartest person she knows because she realized she didn't actually learn anything besides how to do well on tests. She was being humble.

Anti-intellectual much?

She sounds to me like she is the first person in the world to figure this out. She talks about how she is the enlightened one and feels sorry for her fellow students and those to come, who have no idea what is going on. If she wasn't spending all her time being such a "smart" idiot, she would have realized that all those kids not taking school seriously had already had the epiphany she clearly missed out on.

And she is portraying it with such doom and gloom. Nothing prevented her from taking up her own interests and hobbies outside of school - from teaching herself. Nothing forced her to be so consumed with basic schooling. Perhaps she should write a speech blaming her parents or her own lack of curiosity and ambition. I get frustrated by people like this who think school teaches you everything and take no time to learn things on their own.

We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise.

Really? No you wont. You'll go join frats/sororities and spend the next four years at community college getting wasted, having tons of sex, and wearing sweats and flip-flops in public. The few of you who manage to graduate will have trouble landing jobs in your field; either because you picked a bullshit major or because like the girl who gave this speech you didn't bother making your own extra efforts.

[DooMer]

Try hards were the WORST

[U4EA]

We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise.

Really? No you wont. You'll go join frats/sororities and spend the next four years at community college getting wasted, having tons of sex, and wearing sweats and flip-flops in public. The few of you who manage to graduate will have trouble landing jobs in your field; either because you picked a bullshit major or because like the girl who gave this speech you didn't bother making your own extra efforts.

I'm not quite sure when I became such a cynic, but I have to agree with bitWISE on this. The speech is too idealistic and one valedictorian isn't going to make much of a difference when it comes to the system at large.

[seremtan]

well absolutely. as that eminent western philosopher and sage homer simpson once said, "trying is the first step toward failure"

[Dr_Watson]

So she worked hard to get what she wanted only to realize it's not what she wanted. So she's now bitter that she got conned. Ok, welcome to humanity; now be prepared for your next goal to not fulfill your expectations. Pretty typical youthful idealism and rebellion.

It also looks like she did get something out of her education since she can obviously write well with proper grammar, punctuation, and above average vocabulary. She also seems better prepared than her peers to find quality higher education that will actually help her grow intellectually rather than informational.

She's going to look back on that speech as a bit of a face-palm when she's 30.

[Eraser]

I'm not quite sure when I became such a cynic, but I have to agree with bitWISE on this. The speech is too idealistic and one valedictorian isn't going to make much of a difference when it comes to the system at large.

Her speech won't make a single difference, probably, but shit man, if everyone thought like that nothing would fucking happen in this world. If Nelson Mandela thought "what difference could a single person make", do you think South Africa would be released from the "white" tyrannical grip?

(addendum: this post is in it's entirety not aimed at U4EA but basically anyone that's criticizing her)

This girl is absolutely right in her reflections. The educational systems, not just in America, but Europe and elsewhere in this world probably as well, is flawed. If she's not allowed to say it, if saying it makes her a "try hard" and "trite little bint" then fucking hell we'd better all shut up right now and say nothing other than "Yes Master, of course Master".

It's actually the types that go "naive idealism" are the ones that are brainwashed most. I felt exactly the same way as she did when I received my papers from college. I learned nothing useful there. I just got the paper because I knew it would land me a job. A good portion of teachers there would punish outside-the-box thinking, because it didn't fit their cookie-cutter lesson material. They all had a severe case of narrow tunnel vision. One solution was the best and anything deviating from that was wrong.

It's funny how a retard that speaks up about his WoW fetish is commended for putting his balls on the line while when someone makes a smart, well thought through statement, she's a self-righteous bitch. She won't face-palm herself when she's 30. She's most likely an entrepreneur or innovator by that time. She has the skill, the ability to look at things from a different perspective. She can take a full, complete and critical look at systems that she is part of herself and reflect upon that. It's a valued skill, even in business life. Maybe not when you're going to get a job for the tax collectors, but when setting up your own company doing innovative new things, it's exactly this kind of skill that's needed.

Does anyone think Steve Jobs could make Apple into what it is today by just following the herd and not being critical about existing systems?

[seremtan]

that's what i said, only i said it pithily with more sarcasm

[DooMer]

Whoa now, I'm agreeing with her. Try hards are the worst because they don't get it.

I think my school experience was a bit different though. My teachers were pretty good about answering questions and explaining shit. I wouldn't mind seeing examples of what she's talking about. Are there room for opinion in Math, Science, History, etc? Unless she's just referring to how important they are? She isn't one of those fucking young earth people is she?

[seremtan]

if i understand her correctly (and i do) she's talking about education which is designed around passing tests, which involves cramming in every scrap of information into your brain, regurgitating on to the page during the test itself, then forgetting it all, since the whole point of the test was merely to provide a piece of paper that allows you to move along the conveyor belt

tl;dr - education is all about our new god, 'the economy', rather than about actually learning about the world

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

tl;dr - education is all about our new god, 'the economy', rather than about actually learning about the world

indeed

[Eraser]

Are there room for opinion in Math, Science, History, etc? Unless she's just referring to how important they are? She isn't one of those fucking young earth people is she?

Well, like seremtan said, it's slightly besides her point but it is closely related to it.
For my own experience, I wasn't talking about primary or secondary school. Learning basic math and algebra isn't something that requires lateral thinking or personal interpretation. Having said that, there still is room for opinion, especially in science. As soon as people start accepting that current (scientific) knowledge is always right, no more scientific advances would be made.

In college, however, it was different. I followed a software engineering study and my gf studied as nurse, at two different schools and we both have the same experience. The thing is that most teachers try to spoon feed you the stuff they got in their textbooks word for word. Rather than challenging you to think about topics yourself and make your own analysis and come up with your own solutions, they force you to think in patterns that are "correct" according to their textbooks. Once you try and deviate from those patterns, it is automatically deemed incorrect.

If people would never deviate from the set patterns, no great scientific discoveries would ever be made. Do you think Galileo would claim the earth rotated around the sun if he didn't dare to deviate from the set - and in this case: holy - patterns?

[menkent]

i think you know fuck-all about educational methods and science. her speech won't change anything because she's a self-righteous eighteen-year-old.

[bam!]

In college, however, it was different. I followed a software engineering study and my gf studied as nurse, at two different schools and we both have the same experience.

huh?

[Eraser]

What's so hard to understand about that, Einstein?