SirEattonHogg: craxyd Smartest
Funniest
2012-05-24 12:45:48 PM


For what, working a gas station or driving a cab? If there's a language that should be stressed in a program like this, I'd say it should be Chinese

Nonsense. Gas station or a cab? Have you ever worked for the military, a multinational corporation, as an expat living overseas? Or even picked up an issue of the Economist or Wall Street Journal? I'm guessing by your answer, clearly "no".

Arabic, Chinese, Russian are all important in the future. I took Chinese.

No espanol?

The best thing my mother could've done when I was growing up (In south america) was to force me to watch cartoons in english, and she hardly speaks the language!

I'm now fluent in Spanish and English (with no accent).

Seriously, force your kids to watch Disney channel or something on SAP. You'll see how they'll pick up spanish easily in no time.

Lor M. Ipsum: Harv72b: Good for them for trying, though--if successful it absolutely will give their students a leg up in the adult job market, assuming they continue their studies beyond elementary school.

Even if they do not continue their studies, just being exposed to learning another language at that age will help them to learn and understand a variety of concepts. For example, practicing computer science is heavily dependent on being able to learn, evaluate, and build upon programming languages.

Maybe so, but that's a skill that can be picked up at any time. Many of the people who work for me graduated from DeVry and we're building many of the avionics systems in modern airplanes.

ferretman: Maybe the NY schools should concentrate on actually teaching their students....so they can have a greater than 50% graduation rate.

teaching languages is teaching, last I checked.

¡Ojalá! How will the kids be able to order a free pizza in Spanish?

Lor M. Ipsum: Harv72b: Good for them for trying, though--if successful it absolutely will give their students a leg up in the adult job market, assuming they continue their studies beyond elementary school.

Even if they do not continue their studies, just being exposed to learning another language at that age will help them to learn and understand a variety of concepts. For example, practicing computer science is heavily dependent on being able to learn, evaluate, and build upon programming languages.

i thought "practicing" computer science was dependent on being queer.

BR549: /just can't trust someone who wipes with their hand and not paper

There's a way to do it without using your hand?

SirEattonHogg: craxyd Smartest
Funniest
2012-05-24 12:45:48 PM


For what, working a gas station or driving a cab? If there's a language that should be stressed in a program like this, I'd say it should be Chinese

Nonsense. Gas station or a cab? Have you ever worked for the military, a multinational corporation, as an expat living overseas? Or even picked up an issue of the Economist or Wall Street Journal? I'm guessing by your answer, clearly "no".

Arabic, Chinese, Russian are all important in the future. I took Chinese.


I was referring to where I see them in my everyday life.
When I was in the Army, I was in Armor which didn't have many open doors for extra training and cool opportunities except for deploying to the Litterbox. Things may be different now but the overall attitude in the 90s was, "You're 19 Kilo. You don't need to learn cool things as far as the Dept of the Army is concerned." Got that straight from one of the NCOs in my platoon.
Part of my issues with the program is that in elementary school, kids are still learning how to put together a straight sentence in English. The structure of some other languages are not like ours. Middle school / junior high, sure. As an elective course. Not elementary .
Working overseas, I can see the advantages. I'll confess that while I was stationed in Germany, my immersion into the language was enough to read a menu, order drinks and decipher the train schedule.
As for reading the Economist or Wall Street Journal? Nope.

FloydA: SDRR: kingoomieiii: "She proposed this to the parent association. They were very supportive,"

And this is all you should need to read to shut the hell up, sharia-fearing xenophobes sane people..

Not really. Anyone who is afraid that Sharia law will be instituted in the United States cannot be counted among the sane.
Seriously, if you are afraid that the US is going to institute Sharia law, you are mentally ill and need psychiatric help. I'm not
saying that just to be mean, I am making an informal diagnosis. Although I am not a mental health professional, the idea that
Sharia law is coming to the US is such a bat-poop-crazy paranoid notion that I feel confident that anyone who actually fears
it is clinically insane.

Hey, it's not unreasonable. They just got the name wrong.
1) Would replace secular law with religious
2) Obligatory prayer
3) Women get screwed when it comes to rights
4) Extremely unaccepting of homosexuals
5) Teetotalling

Sound like any American political groups we know? Though, there's a certain half-funny-yet-still-sickening irony that the ones so terrified about sharia-law are the ones who'd just as soon enact their own version.

meanmutton: What would you call it if someone planned a protest in the US where he was going to burn a copy of the Koran, was arrested upon arrival at the airport purely because he was going to engage in this protest, and then forced to leave the state without being allowed to protest as planned?

I wouldn't know where to get a Koran to burn, but I'd be interested in going to this place where Korans are not allowed to be burned and burn one.

Maybe a Bible, a Torah, and Cliff's Notes of The Illiad just for good measure.

Every once in a while, I forget how much I loathe the Post for its anti-education/educator bias--and then I'm reminded by something like this.

/former NYC public school teacher.
//was once called out by the Post by name.
///took it as a badge of honor.

Well, I guess that's better than making the kids take semen tasting tests.

craxyd: Harv72b: Beginning next semester, all 200 second- through fifth-graders at PS 368 in Hamilton Heights will be taught the language twice a week for 45 minutes

I know kids have an easier time learning languages than adults, but I don't know that even over 4 school years that's enough time to develop more than a halting speaking ability in Arabic. The basic Arabic course at the Defense Language Institute lasts for 63 weeks of immersive, 5 days-a-week, 8 hours-a-day training, and even that doesn't really create a fluent speaker (and most students end up having to repeat at least one section of the course, while many don't even graduate).

Good for them for trying, though--if successful it absolutely will give their students a leg up in the adult job market, assuming they continue their studies beyond elementary school.


For what, working a gas station or driving a cab? If there's a language that should be stressed in a program like this, I'd say it should be Chinese

This just in:

The children who are 6 now aren't going to be adults in today's world, but in the world of the future, sometimes as far away as 20 years. If we prepare children for the world of TODAY, then we're doing them (and us) a disservice.

mdeesnuts: meanmutton: What would you call it if someone planned a protest in the US where he was going to burn a copy of the Koran, was arrested upon arrival at the airport purely because he was going to engage in this protest, and then forced to leave the state without being allowed to protest as planned?

I wouldn't know where to get a Koran to burn, but I'd be interested in going to this place where Korans are not allowed to be burned and burn one.

Maybe a Bible, a Torah, and Cliff's Notes of The Illiad just for good measure.

We had Poetry Week in my HS, years ago, and we were all encouraged to bring in our favorite poems to read. I was allowed to read from the Illiad for FAR too long before somebody stopped me.

ProfessorOhki: FloydA: SDRR: kingoomieiii: "She proposed this to the parent association. They were very supportive,"

And this is all you should need to read to shut the hell up, sharia-fearing xenophobes sane people..

Not really. Anyone who is afraid that Sharia law will be instituted in the United States cannot be counted among the sane.
Seriously, if you are afraid that the US is going to institute Sharia law, you are mentally ill and need psychiatric help. I'm not
saying that just to be mean, I am making an informal diagnosis. Although I am not a mental health professional, the idea that
Sharia law is coming to the US is such a bat-poop-crazy paranoid notion that I feel confident that anyone who actually fears
it is clinically insane.

Hey, it's not unreasonable. They just got the name wrong.
1) Would replace secular law with religious
2) Obligatory prayer
3) Women get screwed when it comes to rights
4) Extremely unaccepting of homosexuals
5) Teetotalling

Sound like any American political groups we know? Though, there's a certain half-funny-yet-still-sickening irony that the ones so terrified about sharia-law are the ones who'd just as soon enact their own version.

Would the name be -

?

BeesNuts: craxyd: Harv72b: Beginning next semester, all 200 second- through fifth-graders at PS 368 in Hamilton Heights will be taught the language twice a week for 45 minutes

I know kids have an easier time learning languages than adults, but I don't know that even over 4 school years that's enough time to develop more than a halting speaking ability in Arabic. The basic Arabic course at the Defense Language Institute lasts for 63 weeks of immersive, 5 days-a-week, 8 hours-a-day training, and even that doesn't really create a fluent speaker (and most students end up having to repeat at least one section of the course, while many don't even graduate).

Good for them for trying, though--if successful it absolutely will give their students a leg up in the adult job market, assuming they continue their studies beyond elementary school.


For what, working a gas station or driving a cab? If there's a language that should be stressed in a program like this, I'd say it should be Chinese

This just in:

The children who are 6 now aren't going to be adults in today's world, but in the world of the future, sometimes as far away as 20 years. If we prepare children for the world of TODAY, then we're doing them (and us) a disservice.

yes, we should be teaching them how to pilot flying cars.

Pants full of macaroni!!: A list of English words that came to us from those evil and wicked Muzzies.

Languages mix. That's so crazy. Did you also know the followers of kiddie diddling Mo' also kept most of the sciences alive during the dark ages? It's almost like they were a western world power at some point in history. Fascinating

Well, this is great. The kids will be able to speak Arabic, but still can't tell the difference between precipitate or supernatant. They won't be able to balance their checkbooks. And for the kids in the South, they won't be able to speak Spanish, which is becoming more the norm than English or Arabic.

How about this. Allow the parents to pick what courses their kids take. If the parents can't do that, have them take life skills courses (plumbing, construction management, engine repair).

freewill: craxyd: As for reading the Economist or Wall Street Journal? Nope.

I think his point was to suggest that dismissing Arabic as an irrelevant language hinges on a fairly outdated view of what's going on in business, and that this is obvious from reading any current finance or economics material.

That said, I thought I read an article a while ago that pointed out that while lots of jobs find Spanish desirable, it's common enough now that the pay differential is squat. He's right: Chinese, Russian, Arabic, even German and Japanese are much better choices if you want to make the effort pay.


Start burning treehuggers at the stake so the U.S. can get to our own oil and the need to learn Arabic falls down a few rungs.
Russian, Chinese and Japanese, I'm in full agreement. Someone has to be able to talk with Rooty-Poot. Other than manufacturing equipment, H&K, Walther, BMW, Mercedes and some of the finest beer in all of explored space, what does Germany do for the world anymore? Not trying to be snarky with that last bit... I honestly don't know.

SirEattonHogg: kingoomieiii Smartest
Funniest
2012-05-24 12:00:25 PM


"She proposed this to the parent association. They were very supportive,"

And this is all you should need to read to shut the hell up, sharia-fearing xenophobes.

Well, i'm no fan of the sharia (having studied it briefly in comparative law), but that said... this is a cool idea and what's not to like?

Parents can choose to send their kid there, its a tricky enough language that its probably good for a child's memorization and other "brain" skills, and maybe one out of a hundred of those kids can take their arabic further and go into the spook business, military intel or the oil biz. I mean we're stuck with the middle east for a few more decades, right? Until we develop those alternative fuel cars...

Odd you'd go for the sharia angle, particularly b/c anybody studying Choice of Law in US courts would laugh at the practical possible implications.

However, as to languages, I would wish I knew the following in order:
1) Chinese (whatever prominent dialect for impending global convergence)
2) Spanish (I know a little, and is geographically worthwhile in Americas & Europe)
3) Arabic/Hebrew (WTF is going on there, useful to know first hand)
4) French (For the food and the poontang)
5) Czech (for the cheap beer and poontang)
6) German/Italian/Greek/Latin (for the literature)
7) Swahili/Klingon/Latin (for the lulz)

SoundOfOneHandWanking: BR549: /just can't trust someone who wipes with their hand and not paper

There's a way to do it without using your hand?

Dyson makes a fine line of products aptly suited to the task.

Bondith: One reason Principal Nicky Kram Rosen selected Arabic - as opposed to more common offerings, such as Spanish or French - is because it will help the school obtain a prestigious International Baccalaureate standing.

I tutored a couple of kids taking IB Chemistry. I was not impressed. A lot of the material being taught bore little resemblance to university or real-world chemistry. They expressed all concentrations as moles per cubic decimetres, which is a unit that was in vogue for about a year and a half in the early 90s before everyone realised it was stupid and went back to mol/L. Somehow IB never got the memo.

The overall impression I got was that IB is that douchebag at the party who wants to sound smart, so he uses a bunch of big words incorrectly.

/agrees with whoever said kids could pass just by gargling
//works for Hebrew too
///"You fluent?" "No, just congested"

A cubic decimeter is exactly a liter. The terms are equivalent.

Serious Post on Serious Thread: However, as to languages, I would wish I knew the following in order:
1) Chinese (whatever prominent dialect for impending global convergence)
2) Spanish (I know a little, and is geographically worthwhile in Americas & Europe)
3) Arabic/Hebrew (WTF is going on there, useful to know first hand)
4) French (For the food and the poontang)
5) Czech (for the cheap beer and poontang)
6) German/Italian/Greek/Latin (for the literature)
7) Swahili/Klingon/Latin (for the lulz)


7) ^Mando'a

FTFY

Also, has anyone ever determined what is the most shameful news source on the intertubes?

Daily Fail vs. NYPoopst would seem to lead the contenders.

Check the source, folks. The Post often provides Daily Mail-grade derp and fearmongering.

FloydA: SDRR: kingoomieiii: "She proposed this to the parent association. They were very supportive,"

And this is all you should need to read to shut the hell up, sharia-fearing xenophobes sane people..

Not really. Anyone who is afraid that Sharia law will be instituted in the United States cannot be counted among the sane.
Seriously, if you are afraid that the US is going to institute Sharia law, you are mentally ill and need psychiatric help. I'm not
saying that just to be mean, I am making an informal diagnosis. Although I am not a mental health professional, the idea that
Sharia law is coming to the US is such a bat-poop-crazy paranoid notion that I feel confident that anyone who actually fears
it is clinically insane.

So you think that it isn't possible for a bunch of laws to be passed which demands compliance with a religious lifestyle? Sure we may not get a literal religious court that operates in parallel with the current system, but if the laws don't specifically demand obedience to a specific religion, the court system is very rare to declare them unconstitutional.

We can have Sharia law... if these idiots keep using religious rationale for the laws they do propose. We just don't have a.concise and scary term for it when it is the Christians doing it.

I fear religious law because it seems like the US is trending towards a position where if it passes past the presidential veto, it's constitutional.

craxyd: Serious Post on Serious Thread: However, as to languages, I would wish I knew the following in order:
1) Chinese (whatever prominent dialect for impending global convergence)
2) Spanish (I know a little, and is geographically worthwhile in Americas & Europe)
3) Arabic/Hebrew (WTF is going on there, useful to know first hand)
4) French (For the food and the poontang)
5) Czech (for the cheap beer and poontang)
6) German/Italian/Greek/Latin (for the literature)
7) Swahili/Klingon/Latin (for the lulz)


7) ^Mando'a

FTFY

8) Esperanto (so I could understand that weird obscure Shatner movie I saw once)

kim jong-un: FloydA: SDRR: kingoomieiii: "She proposed this to the parent association. They were very supportive,"

And this is all you should need to read to shut the hell up, sharia-fearing xenophobes sane people..

Not really. Anyone who is afraid that Sharia law will be instituted in the United States cannot be counted among the sane.
Seriously, if you are afraid that the US is going to institute Sharia law, you are mentally ill and need psychiatric help. I'm not
saying that just to be mean, I am making an informal diagnosis. Although I am not a mental health professional, the idea that
Sharia law is coming to the US is such a bat-poop-crazy paranoid notion that I feel confident that anyone who actually fears
it is clinically insane.

So you think that it isn't possible for a bunch of laws to be passed which demands compliance with a religious lifestyle? Sure we may not get a literal religious court that operates in parallel with the current system, but if the laws don't specifically demand obedience to a specific religion, the court system is very rare to declare them unconstitutional.

We can have Sharia law... if these idiots keep using religious rationale for the laws they do propose. We just don't have a.concise and scary term for it when it is the Christians doing it.

I fear religious law because it seems like the US is trending towards a position where if it passes past the presidential veto, it's constitutional.

Know how I know you never went to law school?
(Hint: 1A + Marbury v Madison = Unbunch yr knickers)

Also:

Crewmannumber6: Pants full of macaroni!!: A list of English words that came to us from those evil and wicked Muzzies.

assassin
[i1140.photobucket.com image 610x320]
Really?

HASHISH FTW!

chuckufarlie: BeesNuts: craxyd: Harv72b: Beginning next semester, all 200 second- through fifth-graders at PS 368 in Hamilton Heights will be taught the language twice a week for 45 minutes

I know kids have an easier time learning languages than adults, but I don't know that even over 4 school years that's enough time to develop more than a halting speaking ability in Arabic. The basic Arabic course at the Defense Language Institute lasts for 63 weeks of immersive, 5 days-a-week, 8 hours-a-day training, and even that doesn't really create a fluent speaker (and most students end up having to repeat at least one section of the course, while many don't even graduate).

Good for them for trying, though--if successful it absolutely will give their students a leg up in the adult job market, assuming they continue their studies beyond elementary school.


For what, working a gas station or driving a cab? If there's a language that should be stressed in a program like this, I'd say it should be Chinese

This just in:

The children who are 6 now aren't going to be adults in today's world, but in the world of the future, sometimes as far away as 20 years. If we prepare children for the world of TODAY, then we're doing them (and us) a disservice.

yes, we should be teaching them how to pilot flying cars.

Or... you know... how to use computers, interact with a global community and understand how to think and how to analyze new information.

Alternatively, we can teach them how to cure diseases with leaches or how to make papyrus at home. If we're traveling into poor-attempts-at-humor-through-hyperbole territory, that is.

Taking cabs in NYC just got easier for these kids.

AUAIOMRN: "Arabic has been identified as a critical-need language," she said, citing students' future "career trajectories.''

"It means they can spin the globe and decide where they want to work and live."

Riiiiggghtttt.... I took French for 6 years and learned nothing but basic vocabulary. Somehow I doubt 90 minutes a week is going to have any influence on where these kids work and live.

Agreed regarding these kids, but you were spinning your wheels. I studied Japanese for two years with plenty of people who went from zero to fairly conversational. Of course, it was an hour a day five days a week, but the real learning takes place at home if you care.

It's better than learning all that STEM stuff that US employers claim we are lacking. Let's teach them useless skills instead. Let's add mandatory bagpipes.

Teaching Arabic is great. Making it mandatory is totally bat shiat farked up. I suppose the first thing they will teach them is "jihad". Arabic will only be an important language until the oil dries up or we find and alternative.

Harv72b: I know kids have an easier time learning languages than adults, but I don't know that even over 4 school years that's enough time to develop more than a halting speaking ability in Arabic.

It's the same way they teach Spanish in elementary schools everywhere I've been. You leave sixth grade knowing how to count to twenty, identify colors, and sing two songs. But you also learn some things about different cultures, and it makes the transition into a real Spanish class less scary.

\It is weird that we don't spend a little more time on languages earlier. The fellow 16 year olds I met in Germany were already fluent in English and several years into a third language. Sure, they need it more in Europe, but the world isn't so big any more, even for us Americans.

As someone who spent a few years of elementary school in the Florida Keys, I have had the unfortunate experience of being force fed a language I had zero interest in or could see no use for at the time (all students studied Spanish daily).

These kids aren't going to really enjoy learning Arabic if they can't see a purpose for it. If they don't have anyone else to use it with outside of school, if they aren't going home to Arabic-speaking relatives, if they aren't dreaming of a career in the Arabic-speaking world, these classes will be a bigger torment than a pull-up test to a fat kid.

Are the parents agreeing to learn it with their kids? My sister married into a Hispanic family and had her first kid, and is determined to master Spanish as they raise him bilingual. If these parents are 'supportive' but have no interest in participating in the learning process, they can go to hell.

As far as I can possibly imagine, the only language you might get kids today excited about learning is Japanese, and that's just for the cartoons (yes, I'm old enough to stop differentiating different kinds of animation and call them all cartoons). Otherwise, they need to be hearing this language BEYOND the classroom, or they'll hate every minute of it.

Proteios1: . Let's teach them useless skills instead.

Care to explain how learning foreign languages is useless?

Settle down, people.

It's not like the kids are going to have to kill gays or force rape victims to marry their rapists. No Arab culture is being taught! It's just the language.

Sheesh.

WhyteRaven74: Proteios1: . Let's teach them useless skills instead.

Care to explain how learning foreign languages is useless?

Learning a foreign language is great for development and building all kinds of thinking skills. But you can't so easily convince a kid that Arabic is cool or interesting. It's barely a major language, and they'd be better served studying French, Spanish, Mandarin, or Hindi.

freewill: craxyd: As for reading the Economist or Wall Street Journal? Nope.

I think his point was to suggest that dismissing Arabic as an irrelevant language hinges on a fairly outdated view of what's going on in business, and that this is obvious from reading any current finance or economics material.

Once the oil runs out, no one will ever care about Arabic again.

Pantubo: Settle down, people.

It's not like the kids are going to have to kill gays or force rape victims to marry their rapists. No Arab culture is being taught! It's just the language.

Sheesh.

While I agree with your overall sentiment, your wording is inviting a crapload of disagreement. If you've ever actually studied a foreign language, you'd know that language study goes hand-in-hand with cultural study.

I have never--EVER--observed a language course that did NOT include studying the culture. Maybe a pack of flashcards or Rosetta Stone will do that for you, but in a classroom setting...no.

LMark: I tutored a couple of kids taking IB Chemistry. I was not impressed. A lot of the material being taught bore little resemblance to university or real-world chemistry. They expressed all concentrations as moles per cubic decimetres, which is a unit that was in vogue for about a year and a half in the early 90s before everyone realised it was stupid and went back to mol/L. Somehow IB never got the memo.

The overall impression I got was that IB is that douchebag at the party who wants to sound smart, so he uses a bunch of big words incorrectly.

/agrees with whoever said kids could pass just by gargling
//works for Hebrew too
///"You fluent?" "No, just congested"

A cubic decimeter is exactly a liter. The terms are equivalent.

You can express torque/work in units of dyne-micrometers, too. I don't know why you'd want to.