Discover Top Posts Tagged with #intelligent discourse

Religion and politics are hot button no-no conversations in the general public because it is very hard to have intelligent discourse on those subjects, when the only thing the people want to discuss is who is right and who is wrong. If all you came to do was be right and talk about why you're right and other people are wrong, then I don't even know why you wanted to solicit other people's perspectives on the matter. It just doesn't make sense to me.

#religion #politics #persepctive #intelligent discourse #discussion #education

[12:49:50 AM] Grumpy Kat: i'm hilarious [12:50:46 AM] Fun Ghoul: i'm more hilarious tbh [12:50:59 AM] Grumpy Kat: nah [12:51:29 AM] Fun Ghoul: bruh [12:51:36 AM] Grumpy Kat: NAH [12:52:58 AM] Fun Ghoul: BRUH [12:53:29 AM] Grumpy Kat: n ah [12:54:04 AM] Fun Ghoul: b ruh [12:54:11 AM] Grumpy Kat: n AH

#outoftune #peenweechester #intelligent discourse

can I just be self indulgent for a second and say how much I fucking love my friends and coworkers?

just got back from spending four hours at a bar discussing: poverty, homelessness, welfare, feminism, poly-amorous relationships (in the context of negotiating them on a personal level, but also from a cultural standpoint of the evolution of relationships in general), LGBT activism in music, the Millennial generation and its clash with the "old economy," and more

with two newspaper journalists, a designer, the designer's best friend who is also my most recent ex, and another friend who is also friends with one of the journalists

it's worlds better than the alcoholic brogrammers that I was hanging out with this time last year, let me tell you

#friends #intelligent discourse #reasons my life is awesome

kate: axel has yaoi hands, pass it on kate: axel IS yaoi hands, says zoe

#Intelligent Discourse

Spring Break is the End of Senior Year

Let's face it. Seniors are not incredibly motivated people once they've been accepted to college. They procrastinate more then usual, which is to say an ungodly amount considering the procrastinating in the years before. They skip class, they BS papers, they lie, they cheat, and they spark note pretty much any book they are "required" to read. That lack of motivation is not

The issue with senior year is that it's a strange transition between a scheduled life where most of your time is spent on things outside of your control to a new life where your attendance isn't required.

For me the change really set in Sunday, when I realized that if I skipped school Monday I wouldn't feel the slightest bit bad about it because for all cases and purposes I was done with high school. The only classes that I feel any real attachment to is to AP Physics and AP Psychology, and AP Macro, but that's just because those classes are interesting.

People often make the argument that because college's look at final transcripts we should still work at school during our second semester, but the only things that colleges really seem to care about by know is if you fail a class, and for most of us not failing a class is mindless. Most college's care more about an individuals SATs and ACTs and our extracurricular activities. The environment we are in seems to encourage our lazy desire to no longer care.

Sad as this all is, I don't think we should lose hope for seniors and their lack of desire to work at school anymore. Public schools should take advantage of this frame of mind instead of discouraging it. Make seniors plan, start, and complete a single project on something they are very interested, over the course of the second semester along with their classes.

My reasoning for this is based off of Google's work ethic of 80/20 (visit http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/jobs/21pre.html to read more). The concept of 80/20 is pretty simple, do scheduled work 80% of the time, and the other 20% you spend your time on something you are interested in that could be used to benefit the company. The best part? Most of Google's innovations have occurred during that period of self motivated, self assigned work.

Seniors are at a point in their lives where they should have some idea of what they want to do with themselves. They may not know specifically what they want to major in but that doesn't matter. Giving senior's a chance to exercise their desire to make something of their own might be an opportunity to teach them some important lessons before they are pushed out into the real world, or at least academia. My Eagle project taught me a lot about how the world works, and I have a feeling that a project worthy of an entire semester of work would do the same.

The senior thesis is not a new idea. It is commonly used, although not a national program, and is often restricted to honors programs in schools. Moreover, many senior thesis are subject specific or "all encompassing". Both of those things are restrictions, and that defeats the purpose that I believe that a senior thesis should be attempting to achieve. A senior thesis should be able to be about pretty much anything, so long as it has arguably scientific value. A senior thesis should be a chance for a student to prove their mastery, a display of true understanding and the ability to apply what they have learned. If students don't find an opportunity like that both liberating and engaging then there are greater issues with our generation than I care to realize.

Attempting to engage students is incredibly important, a concept unfortunately lost on most schools and many teachers. Public school's need to start innovating, and soon, because even if the problem of disinterest is caused by the students, it can be fixed by the system. Otherwise our future students will likely be left in the dust by the rest of the world.