Malik Greatly Disapproves. Again.

[loyalrebel]

[It's been a while since Malik's spoken up on the network but this is something drastic to him and it needs addressing.]

It has been recently brought to my attention that the education system of modern times is sorely lacking in a number of regards.

I was told that beyond the basics of reading and mathematics anything else was not important and was not even taught, and this desperately needs to be rectified.

We may be learning magic and other such things from our overlays, but there are areas that are horrifically left by the wayside in this arms race we have entered in to.

I may not know much about history as it is from most of your perspectives but there has to be educators among us or at least those who will be willing to step up and help the children among us not return home uneducated louts who respond to the idea of mathematics or reading with "why should I care?" or "it is too difficult".

[He's not sorry Phillip. This is probably your fault kid.]

Comments

[loyalrebel]

Can you reliably keep a balanced ledger? Can you navigate a foreign city with only a map?

[fridgeninja]

Yes, and yes.

[loyalrebel]

Congratulations, you never need to learn anything else ever again and will never want to understand the basics of any other discipline than you already know.

Go forth and father many fat babies.

[fridgeninja]

That isn't exactly what I meant. For one thing, I'm still planning on college. it just isn't my top priority at the moment.

[loyalrebel]

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

You either care or you do not, flopping about in indecision over your future leads to misery.

[fridgeninja]

It isn't a matter of indecision. In Japan, I'll need to take tests to qualify for college. I'm a year of preparation away from that, and we can't get the specific study materials in Liminal Space. In the meantime, I've almost finished school at home, I did well in my classes, and there are things to learn here that I wouldn't be able to learn there. So, while we're Travelers, it makes sense to focus on things only Travelers can learn. It's not a matter of thinking I know everything at all.

[loyalrebel]

So to you it is more important to learn how to wield magic and whatever other unnatural things get shoved in our heads than to keep up on mathematics?

[fridgeninja]

Calculus hasn't been vital to a Jaunt so far.

[senpaidol]

If I have enough money to care about the first one, I have enough money to pay an accountant.

[Rise this is what happened to Gary Coleman.]

[claudiometer]

Sure, if you want to end up broke because they mismanaged it, either accidentally or deliberately.

[senpaidol]

W-well, I mean, I've got things I'm good at, and other people have things they're good at. Why shouldn't we all just work to our strengths?

[claudiometer]

In theory, there's nothing wrong with that. In practice, having enough of an idea of how the thing works to save yourself from being ripped off is priceless.

[senpaidol]

Mrn. Why can't I just do what I'm good at and trust people?

[claudiometer]

To some extent you can, but if you don't know anything about your weak areas, how will you know you're trusting the right people? It just has to be enough to go 'hey better-qualified friend, this feels shifty.'

[senpaidol]

[Mental sigh.]

Well, I dunno if I'll have time for much of my last two years of high school when I get home, but I guess it couldn't hurt to pick up more basic stuff here...

Hey, do any of the people volunteering as teachers know how to Interface?

[claudiometer]

Well, there you go. All the more reason to fill in some of that gap now.

...I wonder if Interface would work for this kind of thing, or if you'd just have a head full of info and no clear idea of what to do with it. If it worked, though, it'd be a good way to get around the 'we're split up and half not ourselves more often than not' problem.

[senpaidol]

If I can learn math as fast as I learned how to Interface or Assist, I'll learn the hell out of math.