SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A school board in South Carolina has launched a pilot program to get rid of snow days and instead have students work from home when the weather turns treacherous. Beyond depriving schoolkids of the joys of weather-enforced truancy, the plan will exacerbate the region's digital divide for student who don't have internet access at home.
Anderson County School District Five will be the first region to participate in the pilot program this upcoming school year. In the past, Anderson County had makeup days tacked on to the end of the school year in lieu of days missed due to bad weather, but most kids ended up just skipping them, according to a local news report.
Students from grades 3 through 12 in the school board are already given Chromebooks to use at home, so in the event of a snow day or other inclement weather that causes a shutdown, kids will be expected to log on from home, communicate with teachers, and complete assignments.
Source: MotherBoard
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Sunday August 05 2018, @12:06AM (3 children)
-- Dennis Leary
People that whine about even more tax dollars being used for poor people, are often the same people that don't bat an eye about dishonorable and abhorrent Americans (and foreign interests) that are being personally enriched to ridiculous degrees so that America can have the largest military on Earth. The biggest abuser, and the men with guns demanding your taxes, is the military industrial complex. It doesn't even really provide for that much GDP, with the income inequality being what it is between employers and workers. Of course, the soldiers themselves barely get paid shit and go to war with paid mercenaries (by the same government) affording the body armor instead.
War is sexy though. Big ol' fucking erections. A real national security threat like malnourished and under educated children all over America? NAH! Fuck that. They had it on themselves. I ain't paying no taxes to make sure we don't have fucking mentally challenged morons making up our population in 25 years, no siree. A billion dollar cruise missile? Let me get my wallet.
Seriously. Stop being a fucking idiot. Some things simply must be done, and complaining that have you to pay for it is counterproductive and stupid. If you had any real gripes based on principles, then attack the military industrial complex. It's a military budget that is chock full of privatized profits and socialized losses, and not nearly enough intelligence or ROI. Just even a moderate cut back in that budget, and we could afford multiple chrome books each, actual adequate supplies for teachers, and fucking Uber's to get kids to school.
Public education is not some socialist pinko-commie conspiracy to achieve the totalitarian state whilst simultaneously effecting taxation without representation.
Stop being an asshole. The kids are quite literally worth your future, even if you don't have kids yourself.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @12:39AM
Chromebooks and other proprietary devices are hardly necessary for education. If computers are needed at all, they should all run only Free Software. But, outside of teaching Computer Science, these devices will just serve a distraction and will not somehow improve the quality of the education being offered.
This is just a handout to large corporations, much like with the textbook situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06 2018, @12:06AM
No, cunt, the only asshole is you. Children are not in fact someone’s future if they don’t have kids. You want kids? You pay for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06 2018, @02:37PM
"My future" is a dirt nap, sooner or later. Kids around will not change that and there are enough people younger than me that I don't feel the need to worry about new babies being made. So no, they're not worth "my future."
They may be worth the future of the species, but first show me why I should care about that, either.
But even were I interested in the future of humanity or thought my own personal future relied on people getting it on in 2018, that does not stop me from seeing that lots of tech companies get big payouts for selling schools that every kid should be given a computing platform at no cost to them. And that the "learning" that goes on in such environments in markedly poorer compared to paying a teacher to come up with lesson plans and actually teach students using a dumb whiteboard and paper handouts. (Especially as opposed to being a hand-holder and slave to a state-mandated core curriculum set and not going past that.)
The point is... will engaging in the process actually get students to learn more and better by taking snow days away and replacing them with online lessons? Is the number of days tacked on that the kids missed actually vital instructional time that was missed? Or is this just a way to fatten up the masses and result in a higher tax return for no meaningful educational return?
I now return to my self-introspected naval gazing.