I don't see acting as a vocation possibility on this kid's horizon!

*promote *quality teenage fail [my mom's favorite line was "What's wrong with your eyes?"]

@PlayhousePals & @oritteropo
Nope, that's my own creation. I attended a Photoshop seminar last year (as part of an advanced vocational education course), but me and one of my classmates already knew how to use Photoshop, so we kept challenging each other to create strange and funny images throughout the seminar. You can admire our creations here: https://imgur.com/a/NFavi (but please don't share them, they probably violate a ton of copyrights ).
My profile pic is part of the first image. Our homework was to photoshop a small group of meerkats into a desert. I added a few more - and five pop culture easter eggs.

I got an Engineering degree (well, Computer Science, so kinda "Engineering lite") from a traditional 4-year (state) university. And I think it was not a complete waste of my time, but a 50-75% waste.

What I expected / wanted to get out of my degree was a foundation of knowledge and training in order to get a job in my chosen area of specialization (computer programming). My degree gave me that, sorta, but in an incredibly inefficient way. I took a bunch of classes that were in NO WAY relevant. Even classes in my major were very hit or miss; I had ONE class that was centered around working with a team and producing a software project over the course of a year / two semesters that stands out as the only class I think was 100% worthwhile.

Overall, the 4.5 years worth of classes that I took could easily have been condensed into "just the relevant stuff" and fit into a 2 year curriculum. Universities say that they want to produce "well rounded citizens", but they actually want to produce well rounded University coffers.

It IS true that a degree can be a significant barrier to entry for a lot of jobs, so in that sense getting a degree can be "worth it". But I tend to think that in the vast majority of cases that is just employers playing things safe and traditional rather than being a truly necessary requirement for the jobs they want to fill.


High School is the perfect time to "broaden horizons" and expose people to a little bit of everything. I'm all for University-level education trending in a vocational/technical direction like this with much more emphasis on specialization, and where not all degrees/programs require a cookie-cutter 4 years to complete. If you pick the wrong specialization and "waste" 1-2 years learning something that you don't end up actually wanting to do for employment, you could still take a mulligan and start over learning something else in less time than it would take to get a single degree from a 4 year University. More non-traditional students, more specialization, more focus. I wish these guys well and hope that they make some waves.

So basically this is a technical/vocational school.

It's great that they're embracing the constructivist/constructionist approach to education (i.e. experiential learning through project-based education) but they aren't fulfilling the most important role that universities in the U.S. serve--providing a well-rounded liberal arts education that ensures students have a decent foundation in a bit of everything (arts, literature, maths, sciences, and physical education). University differs from a vocational school in that it isn't supposed to be preparing you for a particular job--it's preparing you to be a (hopefully) better human being.

I'd also be concerned about the fact that the people who attend this school only ever interact with other techies. Another big part of the university experience is to bring you in contact with people of incredibly diverse backgrounds, interests, opinions, and ideas. This experience hopefully gets you to question your own beliefs and ideals and expand both your social circle and your mind.

That all said, college isn't for everybody and I have friends without college degrees (in the tech industry) who do just fine. If you know you really want to be a programmer and you just want to get out there and start making stuff then a program like this might be good for you.

insane, back when I was in highschool there was no cops/guards/etc

We even had a smoking section, and guns could be brought on campus.

For smoking section you just needed a letter from parents that they knew you smoked. and on recess the smokers all hung out there.

To bring gun to school, it was during any hunting season. You had to have note from parents that they know. The gun had to be visible, either gun rack in back window of truck or in passenger seat. Rifles and Shotguns only no pistols.

You had to have your Hunter's Safety Course card, Your Hunting License both on you to give copies at office.

You had to leave your vehicle keys with the front office and submit to random vehicle search of the hunter's vehicles only.

So while everyone could go to their cars at recess, or if you had extra empty elective, some of us juniors would drive up to Hardees before lunch and grab fast food then be back before 4th period started, but the hunters had to leave their keys with front office and they could not retrieve them until end of school.

So much more freedom.

Smoking was banned on campus for students only my 10th grade year, but Teachers had the smoking lounge in building. There was a teacher's lounge on each hall, the back hall F where weight lifting, welding, home ec, and vocational classes were was where the teacher's smoking lounge was. Most students friendly with teachers could sneak in there and smoke anyhow.

crazy times.

I had a 84 Camaro and kept a flare gun under seat my dad owned a boat and had couple extra flare guns. So I had that for some crazy reason thinking if someone attacked me, at point blank range I'd put on a huge firework show


Then there was the stereotypes that were proven right not wrong.

The jocks hung out together, the headbangers/smokers hung out together, the nerds, the band folks like me as my senior year I was drum major
and the blacks stayed together all in separate cliques at lunch and recess and before/after school.

stereotypes even went further.

the only highschool girls with babies (during time I was there I stress) were black girls, they had to build a daycare from the old mechanic shop behind the highschool for them. And even though this was the early 90s in the south, you'd hear over the Intercom every 6 months "All Black female students to gym at this time please" where they'd get lectured on abstinence, or condom use, and std's and such.

the only time rest of the student body went through that was in 10th grade they'd take the boys one day, and girls the next day.

We had a blast though as the guys, the protection/std talk was given by one of the football coaches, and during the talk with the guys and showing various "shock images" of std's on penis on the TV, when he got to the "sex ed" portion, he flipped in a Nina Hartley porn intro where a nude Nina Hartley showed the correct way to place a condom on. haha was hilarious looking back before "political correctness" went out of control.

I loved highschool and college.

Graduated high school in 94, got associates in 96, took year off then got bachelors in computer science in 99.

But 89-94 (our highschool here in the deep south is 8th through 12th) most are 9-12, but not here. It's still 8-12th here. So it's nothing seeing 12th graders dating 8th graders. Freaky yea, but not unusual.


If you got into a fight, if a coach was around he'd let the fight finish, unless it got a bit too over the top then they'd break it up. You didn't get suspended, you lost recess privileges usually 3 days plus the starter of the fight got 10 licks of the paddle in principle office, the other only got 1 to 3, or if person was just dominated and got ass kicked you just got detention.


Kids didn't act up at all most times. And the reason was Corporal Punishment. Not private paddling either.


Once I was having a bad day, me and "highschool" sweetheart were having a bit of a spat. We sat next to each other so we were bickering a bit during class. Teacher had yelled at me to shut up and do the work. I sighed "Leave me the fuck alone"

bad move.

She called me to front of class and I got 5 licks of paddle in front of everyone. They'd stick finger in your belt loop and yank it up tight to put that extra sting on it. Embarrassing as hell! Even female older teachers who didn't paddle hard, it was just too embarrassing to get paddled, so kids behaved.


And of course if you refused paddling which you could but you'd take a zero for the day's work. few of those in a semester and no matter how hard you worked you were flunking that semester.


But the system worked.

It wasn't until they went crazy insane on political correctness, stopping corporal punishment, and putting cops/rent a cops/guards in schools and after the No Child Left Behind was signed into law, they severely dumbed down kids forcing the smartest to learn at the slowest kids pace. Doc's prescribing SSRI's like candy to kids in MASSIVE quantities, that schools in today's culture are crazy.

Do you think Maru's owner gets enough views to make a living from the ad revenue on these vids? I'd imagine they must be close, if anyone can do it.

Back when I was a kid starting to think about what to do, profession-wise, it was all about "new media". No-one quite seemed to know what that actually meant, but I'm pretty sure even the most visionary vocational guidance councelor never suggested to anyone that a career of filming a cat getting into cardboard containers might be worth considering. And yet...

Imagine going back into art and media schools in the 90's to show the teachers what their new field is going to turn into!

I disagree. You can't show up at Uni at 18 expecting to do medicine without having spent the preceding years learning biology, and probably maths as well. Of course, it's true that this knowledge is eventually eclipsed, but I don't think you can look at the cap stone and dismiss all the stones at the bottom as unnecessary.

That said, I do think there is too much focus on Uni as the sort of aspiration for everybody. Vocational routes have been looked down upon for much too long. The stigma is real. Every politician will applaud apprenticeships as a vital and honoured progression route...but how many will be happy with their kids dropping out at 16 to do one?

the situation in st louis did not just pop up out of thin air overnight.the tensions between the poor community (mostly black) and the police has been a festering pressure cooker for almost 15 years.

a particularly venal chapter in the st louis police archives is the RNC of 2008,for anybody to absorb some context on the militarization of a police force.

the tinder has been accumulating just waiting for the match.
mike brown WAS that match.
this is not new nor original.
it has happened before.

and as @lantern53 has pointed out:it is the chain of command that sets the tone of how that police force performs their duties.so if those in charge are authoritarian douche nozzles,that attitude tends to trickle down to the everyday cop on the street.

cops by their very nature are authoritarian due to their vocational choice.they respect the chain of command and the authority it represents.to follow orders is to be a "good" cop.

so i do not understand the ridicule that lantern is receiving.he is offering his perspective AS an actual police officer.i am not suggesting that he is right NOR that his opinion somehow exonerates the st louis cop JUST because he is a cop but rather we should listen to someone who actual IS a cop.

there is absolutely ZERO evidence that lantern is a bad cop.we simply do not know how well,or poorly,lantern is at his job.

there IS evidence,however,that lantern tends be a tad racist,authoritarian and contradictory.lantern may be a poor debater but that does not make him a bad cop.

though his defense of zimmerman does reveal an extremely poor judge of character.(seriously lantern?that dude is a full fledged cunt).

but i get it @VoodooV,
lantern is easy pickings.
a right wing authoritarian conservative commenting on a mostly secular left site?
its like shooting fish in a barrel.

sometimes lantern brings it on himself...i know.
his poor debating skills coupled with an almost embarrassing understanding of history and government makes him catnip to someone like you.

its
just
so
easy

i disagree with lantern,pretty much always and i agree that sometimes his biased rhetoric should be taken to task,if only to clear up the bullshit.

but you take it to whole new levels voodoo.
you follow him from thread to thread and chastise and belittle him and THEN act all hurt and shocked when he lashes out at you!

seriously?thats like poking a grizzly bear in the face and then crying when it rips half your face off.

you use the exact same tactics choggie used,but at least he was entertaining.

you are just a bully.
a hypocritical,sanctimonious bully.hiding behind the skirts of others who may find lanterns comments distasteful (which they certainly can be).this is a cowards path and just like all bullies,you rely on the silence of others to continue your persecution of someone who does not have the support of an entire site.

i find your lack of humanity disturbing.
and i will not be silent.
your actions do not deserve respect but rather ridicule.

I guess I must be out of the loop as far as how the Republicans see things. This is just me talking. I am bi-vocational. I work as a substance abuse and marital counselor and I also own my own business, These are just things I have thought through, not been told about.

I am wondering if there will be enough money to fund the ACA without the employer mandate.

I am wondering if there isn't going to be civil disobedience on a massive scale with our young people who don't yet have insurance but now must buy it.

I read the article from Forbes and also the one from Reuters on a Google search because I was having so much trouble trying to navigate the healthcare.gov website. After repeated unsuccessful attempts and some strange pages popping up I began to think it was more than just overloaded servers causing the problem.

Until you mentioned the Republicans wanting to delay the mandate for a political advantage in 2014 I hadn't really given it much thought. Honestly, I really don't care why the Republicans want to delay the mandate. You wrote that there is absolutely no reason that the current admin may want to delay. I thought of a few scenarios that might end up being good reasons to delay it.

And just an FYI, I need to sign up for this. So the delay is hurting me. I'm not for delaying it. But the delay for me isn't coming from the the Tea Party. It's coming from the freaking website.

And you "clearly" have never been on the receiving end of a scumbag smirking at his sentence (I hope you never are). You say; "The judicial system (of a proper nation) is not about what people WANT." The system is rightly impartial, but once found guilty, sentencing is defined to reflect the gravity of the crime, and in that sense it is ALL about what people want. You disparage the term "revenge" as if it were wrong to seek it, want it, or require it. Well, what you call revenge, many call fair and right reparation. Oh, and yes, I did understand the recidivism rate thank you. I would point out that many re-offend to get back to their responsibility free lifestyle. As for the rate? I would turn it around and say 20% re-offending is pretty, pretty, pretty bad. It is simple, the time should fit the crime. Prison should deter - if not, what is it for? Is its purpose to make people believe that "society is to blame, not the criminals?" Sadly it is the wishy washy bleeding hearts that have turned criminal behavior into a vocation with the promise of a holiday camp, free meals, and training if caught.

I think programming would be a good thing to teach elementary aged kids, but not as a means toward making them programmers or software engineers. Rather it should be a tool used to teach general problem solving techniques. I haven't used any seriously, but I have seen some clever learning 'languages' that involve dragging and dropping images of procedures or actions, and then connecting them up to make a program that does something.(Scratch, I believe is a popular example). I think this is good stuff. Kids that find it particularly satisfying, should be given the option to move on to more traditional programming languages and follow that course of study.

Personally, I love programming. I get a huge kick out of it, and even when it's going badly, I'm still enjoying myself despite the frustration. I think of it as "building machines out of ideas," which is awesome. This is hardly true of everyone (even among many of my former Computer Engineering classmates who were just there because it's a solid-choice, job-prospect wise), and I definitely don't think it should be pushed as some sort of curriculum requirement.

Probably like most people in the field, I started out when I was 11 or 12 wanting to write video games, so taught myself C and assembler(which was necessary at the time). The desire to write video games faded before too long, but my love of programming continued on. This was all extra-curricicular, though, and actually in many ways was detrimental to my other studies, which I found tremendously boring. Had I been given the option earlier to follow a CS/SE/CE type curriculum primarily, I probably would have had a much happier early-schooling experience.

I understand schools in the UK tend to follow a more vocational educational arc, whereby you specialize earlier. I find the pigeonholing nature of that a little concerning (so far as I understand it), but it's better than everybody getting the same bland, little-bit-of-everything approach US public schools use.

>> ^L0cky:

>> ^bmacs27:
Like Switzerland, right?
>> ^L0cky:
That's not an idealism, that's pretty much most of Europe.


Hence why I said most.


Which is what I figured, however, if you take a look at the noise in the numbers, Switzerland is within noise of Iceland, Germany, Austria, France, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Would you still call it most?

For every enthusiast per capita the US has like this guy, Switzerland has one with half as many guns. Does it really make a difference? Is Europe really that different?

Frankly, I come from the North East. I still feel an attachment to the revolution, and if you think about, it wasn't that long ago. The minutemen weren't paranoid, they were prudent. And they were packing cannon, the nuclear arms of their day. While I think it's worth carefully considering where lines are drawn, e.g. "small" arms, I think most criticism of gun ownership is alarmist, and heavily influenced by confirmation bias and sensationalist media. Sure they're dangerous. But so are lots of things. Accepting a dangerous world is the cost of living in a free society.

I'm sympathetic to the view that "well regulated militias" should probably keep large stores of arms away from their residences, and certainly children. However, we have no strong evidence this guy has kids around. I guess we can quibble about fire, however there is not particularly much in the way of ammunition present. Remember, guns don't kill people. Bullets kill people. Personally, I suspect this guy is a gun salesman. That would explain the quantity of guns, and the relative lack of ammunition. Further, it would explain the youtube video that appears to be an advertisement for a gun cabinet. I don't begrudge this guy his vocation.

>> ^KnivesOut:

Again, I don't necessarily think you're a sexist or a misogynist. I think you may be suffering from the same "boys club" attitude that many of the engineers I've worked with operate under. I just want you to introspect a little and consider the possibility.

Possibly. I'd like to think I don't suffer from that, although in reality, I cannot ignore the fact that we are all a product of the society we grew up in. In my defence, it is something I've thought about and I feel I'm open to the possibility of being wrong.

>> ^KnivesOut:

For the sake of argument, what if we replaced the masculine/feminine terms in your question with racial ones:
"why do we need to promote any career/vocation that is traditionally single [race] dominated to the other [race], e.g. [some profession] to [blacks], [some other profession] to [whites]?"
I'm drawing no conclusions about the importance or the value of one profession over the other, merely putting it into racial terms instead of sexual ones. To me, it feels just as icky.

I understand the ick factor there. But isn't there a difference between assuming a racial bias and a gender or even cultural bias? (bias is really the wrong word here, but I'm struggling to come up with a better one). I don't believe we can ignore the fact that different genders or cultures show aptitudes for different things (I believe culture is more important than race in determining this, in fact, I generally believe race to be largely irrelevant).

I guess my idea is to be "post-feminist/racist". I'd hope that we can accept individuals on their merits.

>> ^KnivesOut:

I believe that sexism is still widely accepted in our society, to a much higher degree than racial intolerance, or even tolerance of "alternate lifestyles". It's insidious, and it crosses the entirety of our society (sexism in every racial community.) Women still get paid less for the same work, they still have a harder time getting promotions (and then still make less money.) Women are even very sexist against each-other (you should see the looks my wife gets when she tells other mothers at school functions that she's finishing a compsci degree.)


This I agree with. Look at the current crop of games from E3. I utterly dislike the idea that anyone is judged in a career on anything other than their merits.

>> ^KnivesOut:

Maybe I'm overly touchy about it, and for that I apologize.


You probably shouldn't. In general, I am a cantankerous, grumpy bastard who's entirely too sure of the correctness of his own opinions.

I like you and your opinions (in general) so lets get that out of the way. This isn't personal. My wife is studying computer science and puts up with the kind of latent sexism that I believe your statements represent (so maybe it is a bit personal, but it isn't meant to be a personal attack against you.)

I just enjoy a good debate. <== bold font of peace
Again, I don't necessarily think you're a sexist or a misogynist. I think you may be suffering from the same "boys club" attitude that many of the engineers I've worked with operate under. I just want you to introspect a little and consider the possibility.

For the sake of argument, what if we replaced the masculine/feminine terms in your question with racial ones:

"why do we need to promote any career/vocation that is traditionally single [race] dominated to the other [race], e.g. [some profession] to [blacks], [some other profession] to [whites]?"

I'm drawing no conclusions about the importance or the value of one profession over the other, merely putting it into racial terms instead of sexual ones. To me, it feels just as icky.

I believe that sexism is still widely accepted in our society, to a much higher degree than racial intolerance, or even tolerance of "alternate lifestyles". It's insidious, and it crosses the entirety of our society (sexism in every racial community.) Women still get paid less for the same work, they still have a harder time getting promotions (and then still make less money.) Women are even very sexist against each-other (you should see the looks my wife gets when she tells other mothers at school functions that she's finishing a compsci degree.)

Maybe I'm overly touchy about it, and for that I apologize.
In reply to this comment by ChaosEngine:
In reply to this comment by KnivesOut:
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/ChaosEngine" title="member since November 9th, 2009" class="profilelink">ChaosEngine you said "why do we need to promote any career/vocation that is traditionally single gender dominated to the other gender, e.g. nursing to males, engineering to females?"

Was that your question that I was supposed to answer? My answer is: that's a sexist question.

I know you fucking love bold type, so I thought that might help to get through.


I resisted for a few days but I eventually gave in and read your reply. I could escalate this little feud with a few more petty insults, but fuck it, it's late, I'm tired and having read some of your other posts, I don't think you're actually a bad guy.

That said, I believe you're wrong here. It's not a sexist question. One could imply a sexist answer from it, but that was not the spirit in which it was intended. Hell, it wasn't even rhetorical. It was genuinely meant to provoke a discussion around what careers and vocations appeal to genders and what are the ramifications of that. The fact that there are less women in science does not mean that women are less intelligent than men, as much as the fact that there are less men in nursing does not mean that mean are less caring.

My question was (and still is) about whether we need a "programme" to change this. What are the benefits of this versus an "organic" approach of just letting people do what they want or are good at?

If you really feel the need to establish my sexist/non sexist credentials, maybe you should read some of my earlier posts on the subject. Hell, ask bareboards, I've had a lot of interesting discussions on this.

Anyway, consider this a virtual olive branch. I truly have better things to do with my time than fight you over this, but I don't appreciate being labelled something I'm not.

Oh, and bold type is fucking awesome :