64 Comments
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Mark Halverson's avatar

Thanks. I needed an EMC (Early Morning Chuckle)

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Linda Blatnik's avatar

chickle is chick + chuckle?

or just a mistake?

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Mark Halverson's avatar

Fingers flashing’ way too fast!

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Linda Blatnik's avatar

You made a new word

and I chick, had a chuckle

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Robin Wilding's avatar

ooh yes, EMCs are the perfect way to start a day! (it's why I release them in the morning)

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Brooke Craig's avatar

Speaking as a high school mathematics teacher…I think the purpose info education is to teach you how to think critically and how to be a better human. I could care less if anyone knows the quadratic formula but hopefully they know how to recognize patterns, analyze data, and be able to explain their reasoning. So in my mind, yeah, you actually did learn something.

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Very beautifully said Brooke. I hope you know that this was just me taking the piss comedically; school is super important of course, and teachers are an incredible breed of humans. Also anyone who can do math impresses the hell out of me.

But the recorder and rope are dumb and I'll die on that hill 😆

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Brooke Craig's avatar

Thanks, Robin! And yes, I realize you’re taking the piss 🙂. I’ve read enough of your work to know. I completely agree on the recorder - my elementary school was great with teaching us to actually read music but I don’t remember having to play the recorder. I think my daughter had to, though, but never at home!! And the rope - yeah, never had to do that either. My high school didn’t make us take a gym class, which is shocking considering I grew up in Oklahoma, where everything is about football.

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Fran Johns's avatar

Let's hear it for the teachers. Mine included the good, the bad and the wonderful, and all together they taught me to think -- so I could read & learn my way into a career as a writer that never made me rich but surely made for a rewarding life. (None of my teachers got rich by teaching either . . . maybe there's a message here)

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RNDM31's avatar

This. All this.

Basic education fundamentally isn't about teaching you "useful skills" - which is almost entirely contextual anyway though I doubt anyone would claim numeracy and literacy aren't - but *cultivating the mind* and prepare you a mental toolbox for understanding the world and processing and absorbing new information and learning with.

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Robot Bender's avatar

Back in the day, schooling was a bit more practicality oriented. Not to say there wasn't plenty of bullshit taught. (Looking at you, parochial school).

I actually did use some of that ruler and protractor work as a student pilot in the ancient days before electronics. It's good to know how to use a paper map (another lost skill) and a protractor to figure out where the hell you're going when the batteries in your electronic navigation handheld die. 😆 Or at least where your crash site will be.

My Dad (RIP) went to something called a technical high school where they taught actual skills like carpentry, tool and die making, and making things with molten metal(!)*. It was sort of like a technical junior college and a high school from what he told me. Might be good to go back to that kind of high school education.

*I still have a set of solid brass bookends he made. Mounted on handles, they'd make great maces. 😆

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Robin Wilding's avatar

We have technical high schools up here too, or we did in my time anyway. Very useful for people who are inclined that way. It'll be interesting to see how schooling changes as ai changes the job landscape.

😆😆😆 brass bookend maces

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Sean McCoy Writes's avatar

Climbing the rope, I still flinch whenever I see one on TV.

One time in 2nd or 3rd grade, one of the kids suddenly shot up one rope, did a hand over hand across the I Beam and shimmied down the other rope. It is the only time I have seen anyone climb a rope in person, and the 1st time I heard a teacher swear.

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Was this kid checked for meth or PCP? 😆 Otherwise it sounds impossible.

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Sean McCoy Writes's avatar

Well, it was Wyoming in the middle 1970s, it was a different time. 🤣

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Mcdude's avatar

Thanks for the humor. Always appreciate it. 😂

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heydave56's avatar

I find that water buffalo are typically in angry mode. Maybe they know something.

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Robin Wilding's avatar

😆😆 Maybe they do.

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Robot Bender's avatar

We're just now catching up to them.

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Sylvia's avatar

Unfortunately, the public education system is mostly designed by politicians who are mostly financially supported by the billionaire class who mostly want to train minions to build and sell the stuff that is making their billions. They don't want people to get smart enough to realize that they are being screwed and to figure out how overthrow the system. It took me a long time to figure that out!

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Well said. I wonder if it will change when the beep boops are doing all the jobs.

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Laura's avatar

Good to know I'm not the only one who found school utterly ridiculous. As a lefty I was particularly frustrated by those chairs with the tiny desk attached on one side- the WRONG side. Also,did not learn real French until I was old enough to go to bars.

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Ooph you poor soul. Thankfully, those were mostly gone by my time. I had to use them once or twice and I would've lost my shit having to do that all the time.

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Cheri Collins's avatar

💯%!!! Those fucking ropes! I hated them so much! And, ALL of the other topics you mentioned. I have often used the information about the battles of Assyrian kings in my everyday life. . . Snort 🤣! Robin, you are the best, and you give me joy to offset the otherwise horrible news. ❤️

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Robin Wilding's avatar

I'm with you on the ropes. Whenever I see one I want to light a match under them haha.

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Amber's avatar

What's more fucked up is my girlfriend is working on getting her HiSet and she is learning about shit that I never heard of before and I am in Uni..

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Robin Wilding's avatar

That's wild!

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Mark Hayes's avatar

Don't EVEN get me started on Algebra...

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Linda Blatnik's avatar

geometry, trig, logic,

statistics, physics?

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Linda Blatnik's avatar

I'm left handed too. Who needs school when you use both sides of your brain ( unlike righty) ?

Who needs school when your bilateral brain can solve all your problems, others problems, whip up a dress for the dance, make dinner for 12 and get everybody else to clean up?

Wait, wait. If I didn't go to school, would I have to spend all my time with my

parents 🫤 ? Never mind.

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Robin Wilding's avatar

😆 I love how you resolved that on your own there

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Burt Arthur's avatar

What schools should teach is HOW TO THINK and HOW TO LEARN. Teaching us all that other stuff is, or should be, the way they teach us those first two most important lessons.

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Nicely said Burt.

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David Perlmutter's avatar

I did have at least one French instructor who explained some Quebecois slang to me....

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Sweet. That would've been helpful in the curriculum so we could understand Quebecois in the slightest haha

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Drokthwart 🇨🇦💪's avatar

Yeah, well ... I'm freezing sliced, boiled beets.

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Kathy Minicozzi's avatar

And basketball ... I became a singer, then a writer, for f...'s sake! I didn't need to know how to run around bouncing a big ball and trying to throw it into a net held up on a high board!

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