even more quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a new rolling new york times thread

haha it's not a doc, it's a movie. I don't know why I wrote that. influencer culture is the most transparent scam ever.

I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but I feel very :/ about this piece (which is also v relevant to my interests as an NYC public school parent)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/when-the-culture-war-comes-for-the-kids/596668/

man I skimmed to the end of section 2 and was like "how many more words are you going to write to continue buttering yourself up for having the bravery to send your white children to public school"

oh I skimmed to the end and it's some PC gone mad bullshit by then cool

I mean my daughter is only in elementary school but so far at least in our school I have seen very little of the PC gone mad type stuff he claims pervades the system. I do think Carranza is a bit of a fraud fwiw and promotes a lot of new agey bullshit as wokeness, but, again, my daughter is not spending her day in sensitivity training, she learns math and reading and stuff.

My teacher wife occasionally has to attend a nonsensical workshop that I guess is part of the training being referred to in the article. She is generally pretty pro-PC and pro-wokeness but thinks a lot of the training is just ineffective and meaningless and doesn't accomplish what it sets out to do. That's just the nature of massive well-financed bureaucratic urban public school systems though -- lots of opportunities for grift and timewasting.

my daughter... learns math and reading and stuff.

What?! Math and reading, instead of cookery, household management, sewing and embroidery?? It's PC gone mad!

right now there's a lot of handwringing in my neighborhood over Carranza's plan to phase out G&T programs. I actually kind of lean toward phasing them out based on my experiences -- (1) mostly they are gamed by better off (and mostly white and asian) people to separate their kids out from the rabble (2) in my neighborhood, where all the public schools are already strong, it just arbitrarily shuffles some kids around because they got a 98 instead of a 96 on a test they literally took when they were four years old.

but it's def an example that some people read as "the end of meritocracy."

gifted and talented programs, and even attending a regional magnet high school, did relatively little to challenge me and relatively a lot to prevent me from learning any kind of resilience and social skills

I mean idk as someone who through 13 years of public school never struggled academically but often struggled emotionally as an adult I'm kind of leaning towards "school's bad"

in my (extremely personal and unfairly extrapolated) experience g&t classes were like, oh whoa someone in your household has already found the time to teach you to read and also you don't talk pidgin?? congratulations on being chosen as a Smart Kid for the next 12 years! what it is, you see, is that your brain is different. it's a special gift brain. all the other kids have normal brains that don't work as well as yours. [two decades pass] WHY IS EVERYONE A NAZI OH MY GOD I DON'T UNDERSTAND

the only assignments i remember from 1st grade g+t were about Logic, like lil basic syllogisms where you had to spot the error, etc.. i could mock this i guess but it was prob okay stuff. meanwhile my nominal classmates were gluing together loops of cardboard to make chains of red-white-and-blue decoration for the 4th (i remember this because i got momentarily yelled at over the shortness of my chain before the teacher remembered i'd been In Gifted And Talented that day and hadn't been available for this peon work-- she was of course v embarrassed and apologetic). this fragmented memory is not necc representative of the contrast between even my own school's g+t stuff and its regular-track stuff, let alone everybody else's, but it's always kinda stuck with me: aren't you lucky you get taken away and literally taught to think while the others stay behind to worship

I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but I feel very :/ about this piece (which is also v relevant to my interests as an NYC public school parent)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/when-the-culture-war-comes-for-the-kids/596668/

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Monday, September 16, 2019 4:50 PM (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i haven't read this piece (i've seen dozens of people argue that it is extremely bad), but you might find https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/magazine/choosing-a-school-for-my-daughter-in-a-segregated-city.html more useful?

In my junior year of high school I was in two separate programs: for most of the day I was shoved into the trailers where they kept the kids who could do the work but wouldn't because they were surly stoner thugs or whatever, but for an hour a day I got to go upstairs and take a G&T English class. "Go sit in the corner with the other pieces of shit...oh, wait, you're a genius! Come over here for a while, but then it's back to the corner, ape." Awesome.

i fucked up freshman year of high school so badly that i was demoted to regular-track english AND history AND science the next year and holy shit what vast wastes of time for what vast numbers of kids the first two of those were. science was okay.

(i went to a high-end-of-medium-sized public school)

In my elementary school (late '80s-early '90s), only those of us in the G&T English program were allowed to have speaking roles in class plays. ~15 kids out of 100-120 year-in and year-out were the only ones allowed to even try out for parts.
That realization hit me one day as an adult and blew my mind for how fucked up it was.

!

yeah having had experiences in both g&t and non-tracked situations I def feel like there is a "special brain" syndrome that comes with it that sets you up for a lot of social, emotional and even professional struggle. I think it's better to just differentiate instruction if possible and maybe to track some subject areas. I don't think the kid who's already mastered all of algebra I should be stuck sitting through algebra I but I also don't think they need to live in special brain world apart from the mortals.

also that is fucking insane about the school play, jesus

acting obv exactly the kind of thing a kid struggling elsewhere is as likely as anyone else to discover they're good at

That George Packer article is so disappointing. Apparently the "public" school in question--Brooklyn Free School--is an independent school with a sliding scale. If I am interpreting this correctly--he didn't even send his kid to public school!

The best part of gifted childhood is coming out of it realizing you’re just above average and the career options are basically the same while your family expects you to enter the highest ranks of some learned profession

Oh never mind, he went to the Brooklyn New School, which is within the NYC school system. Still!

xp luckily my family already had that disappointment with my brother and expected nothing great from me

Tombot OTM. And that article's performative conservatism-as-wokeness is repellent.

This is related to why I’ve posted unsolicited ENLIST IN THE ARMED FORCES advice approximately 100 times over my ilx career. No better environment to cure an individual of their gifted child neuroses while also providing a chance to understand what practical utility those so-called gifts might actually provide

(that’s my version of conservatism as performative wokeness, I guess)

Eh college was sufficient to disabuse me of the idea that being a gifted child had resulted in me being anything other than an ordinary adult but I see where you’re coming from.

The creepiest thing I can remember from the article (the parts I could read before my brain exploded) was that "opting out of standardised tests was an expression of school community solidarity but I couldn't help but be concerned that now there was no standardised test of whether the school was educating [minority list] properly so we let little [child name] sit the testing despite 95% of parents refusing it and he wasn't bothered at all so I guess that's good?" AARGH also how sensitive his child was for not mentioning that he had a back yard because friendships [with poor people, implied] rest on not saying certain things. What the fuck.
Sorry - just needed to vent.

friendships [with poor people, implied] rest on not saying certain things.

well, I grew up around a shit load of poor kids and, yes, friendships with them did require not saying certain things -- basically just the sorts of things only a stupid asshole would ever say to a friend. but the relative sizes (or the existence) of our backyards never entered into it.

however, I think it is quite possible the kid is a lot more sensible than the dad about that stuff.

This is related to why I’ve posted unsolicited ENLIST IN THE ARMED FORCES advice approximately 100 times over my ilx career. No better environment to cure an individual of their gifted child neuroses while also providing a chance to understand what practical utility those so-called gifts might actually provide

Waiting tables for a couple of years also does this with no chance of getting blown up and an atmosphere permissive to all manner of recreational drugs that a growing person should experiment with.

xp apologies, Aimless, I was just outraged by the article and was gunning for the author

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/13/arts/artport-storage-new-york.html

Whatever is stored here, more is coming, Mr. Sapienza said.

“Every day more art is created, and sold and bought — and needs a place to be stored.”

h

As someone who lives with an artist, I can say Mr Sap is otm

Maybe not sold and bought though lol

I have a closet jammed full of art from high school. It's like nuclear waste, you can't just get rid of it.

as somebody who occasionally makes bad art, i can vouch for one of three methods to clear that out:
1) carry it around with you and give it randomly to new people when you meet them. they'll remember you!
2) trade it with other would be artists. they make bad art too and what looks bad to you may look good to them and vice versa; i've given away stuff that i couldn't bear to look at that people have been over the moon about.
3) if you're having a bad day or mental health lapse, take it outside and break it violently. it will clear your head, i promise!

I had a piece in the house that I had to break yesterday and it was a bummer but also kinda cathartic. Now i can try to make it again, only better this time.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scaachikoul/lauren-duca-book-teen-vogue-how-to-start-a-revolution

“I always say if you're going to buy a pair of boots for the winter, buy winter boots. Don't go out buying a $2,000 pair of Chanel winter boots that look really cool because that's not something you want to be wearing in the snow,”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/climate/sustainable-clothing.html

quiddities and agonies of people who are so rich they are confused about basic and obvious facts of life

that article........ is a lot

jesus christ

these underwears don't feel good to touch should i buy themmmmm

And while jeans tend to come in heavier fabric weights...

... than t-shirts?? This whole article is just bananas and amazing, i think it was written and edited by undercover Martians and is just a front for some kind of invasion

link stopped working. Maybe they realized "this is the stupidest shit ever" and took it down?

no it's live.

On average, each American produces about 75 pounds of textile waste per year.

I guess a few times a year we take a couple of garbage bags worth of clothing to salvation army, and that could easily add up to 75lbs or more, but that's a family of four with two growing kids.