Maxims, rules of thumb and other observations on human cognition and sociocultural affectations

This will be added to on an irregular basis...
  • What is said to humans directly is received with skepticism and considered with dubiousness while that which is heard in passing, especially that which most conforms to their mentality or prejudices, is readily believed.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive latency between exposure to new information or experiences and the ability to think dispassionately and intellectually about it.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive spectrum starting with the moment of exposure to new information or experiences and ending with some point at which the thing is effectively "in the past" for them.
  • This cognitive spectrum is linked to the emotional process often referred to as shock, anger, denial and acceptance.
  • The more and faster information or experiences are presented to people and the closer the quarters and the lesser the distance between people, the more their early reactions in the passionate emotional stage are reflected back to them in the manner of responses to those reactions from others in light of those responses.
  • The more outrages which are suffered without sufficient time to allow emotional bleed-off, the farther the bar for subsequent reaction and outrage are pushed, and the more further events must progress before reaction and outrage.
  • It is possible for serious detriments to eventually sit below this threshold for long enough for their damaging effects to build and multiply until their entire society undergoes some reactive convulsion.
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Teacher is the weakest link...

Teacher lets Morningside students vote out classmate, 5 : St. Lucie County : TCPalm

Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son's kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class.

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn't like about Barton's 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.

When I was in grade school, similar things were done to me. Contrary to belief, most teachers are not the kind, driven, and dedicated people they would like the public to believe.

Think about your own kids and the moments they tried your patience the most. Now multiply that moment by twenty kids and one hundred eighty days. Dedicated? Driven? Caring? If you believe that, you need more psychiatric help than this teacher.

I consistently scored extremely high on aptitude and IQ tests. I was consistently ridiculed by fellow students when I answered questions put to the class, showing that not only had I paid attention, I knew more than the teachers quite frequently. This only more ticked off the teachers who when not joining in actively with torment, did nothing to stop other students.

School for me was hell and many of my teachers are 100% guilty of aiding and abetting the cruelty of other kids.

America, you need to get the rose colored glasses off and understand that society cannot raise your kids for you. You're not doing so hot a job now, TV is an obvious bad choice unless the last thirty years has taught you nothing, and the Internet is just a hundred million times worse as it is slowly becoming a battleground between the forces of censorship and control on the one side, and the say anything to get a rise out of people on the other.

I didn't have autism. I had intelligence which might as well be the glare off a wolf's teeth to a sheep. It frightens people who breeze through life in charge for no other reason than someone more powerful was stupid enough to put them there. It threatens them. (It is one of the worst kept secrets that the majority of public school teachers hail from the bottom 25% of college graduates.)

If you teach your kids here and there to be smart, they are in for hell. So I can understand your subconscious drive to not make your kids more than strictly just under average. I can also understand that you as the electorate, as the populace from which the power of government flows can demand better.

You know, when I was kid, the popular psychology idea regarding bullying was that the victims brought it on themselves by fighting back and should be punished if necessary to discourage them from doing anything but silently accepting the abuse and that eventually the bullies would get bored and stop. This was of course utter lunacy and it led to a lot of miserable kids back then.

Now, they try to say they are against bullying, but you see if you pay attention that it is a lot of empty slogans and bullshit, but you're buying it. You're changing the news channel and saying to yourself, "they're finally doing something." Well, they're not and never did.

Only you the people can change this. Not the choice of who gets in the White House, not the winner of Dancing with the Stars, not the American Federation of Teachers. Only you.

Remember, the people in charge of the educational establishment are the same people who tell you with a straight face that setting standards and expecting children to be taught to be able to reach them is on par with a moon made of cheese. How is that any different from having expectations on your kids' behavior and intelligence and holding them to it, punishing them when they do decidedly dumb things you warned them not to? Do you think you're a moron to expect better of your own kids?

Well, the people in charge of the system are a self-serving lot, defending their own interests, and those interests do not include being held to any standards of performance in their job which is to raise your kids for over one thousand hours a year. Do you still think that standards are for the ignorant?

Just think about that and this story I linked to, the next time you reflexively agree that teachers are overworked, underpaid, and doing a thankless job. If it is thankless, it might be because their establishment has successfully held off being kept to the sort of workplace performance checking that you and ever other person lives up to every day on your job. If it is underpaid, it is only in comparison to American police officers and certainly not the average middle class American whose pay is outpaced by the average teacher's salary. If they are overworked, it is only because they have decided to take a job that they had no intention of meeting the requirements of.

Let me ask you this... in your private sector job... are you nearly immune to risk of firing, making above the median wage, and getting blindly reflexive praise from your employer's business partners?

I didn't think so.