Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"Grades tell us little enough, as it is, but if we must use them, the very least we can do is use them to measure academic work and not as a disciplinary threat" - shocked to read of this happening in the US in the 60s. It happens now in Hungary because the schools don't have a disciplinary system with teeth. Likewise in the US, don't they have detention?

"a deschooled society would be a society in which everybody shall have the widest and freest possible choice to learn whatever he wants to learn" - as to 'learning what' the internet has deschooled society, but has also raised questions about the quality of what we we are all free to learn. But what about 'learning how to': resources are required and school has been our traditional way of allocating those resources.

"So the average knowledge job in the American economy today...requires a prior investment like $20,000" - the whole argument conducted without a consideration of the returns on that investment. His economic thinking is frustratingly hit or miss.

"...the serious gambler or swindler or corrupt politician or even the outright thief thinks his gambling or making deals under the table or stealing is his work" - in terms of time or energy it is. Whenever I have considered professional gambling or speculation, I have always been put off by the sheer amount of hard work that success entails...from speculation to trading anything - shades of grey, not black & white.

"...when I talk about "we" being approxiamately scaled versions of one another, I will mean not just all human beings, but all mammals and, to varying degrees, all of life." - in our universe, in all universes?

"Being a famous artist in the Culture meant at best it was accepted you must possess a certain gritty determination; at worst it was generally seen as pointing to a pitiably archaic form of insecurity and a rather childish desire to show off." - does he explore the idea of the art in the Culture elsewhere? Best idea so far.

"In such a world, by making full and wise use of the inexhaustable energy resources of the sun and tides, we may be able to maytain a permanently high material standard of life for all men, without damaging our home planet Earth. That world is not...even within sight." - it is now and we have twice as many people, and they are 20 times richer.

"Schools are theoretically supposed to adjust their priorities to some degree, to take account of the jobs in the job market. But they are always too slow, there is too much time lag" - noticeable in the 1970's, unavoidable in the 2020's.

"[Poverty] is not caused by poor people not having enough schooling and cannot be reduced or done away with by giving them much more schooling" - this is probably true, if you see schooling as primarily about learning things.

"...why should an institution supported by public funds not be open to the public." - because it's primary function is the protection of young people, as in a school of fish.

'[the] first and most important job [of a head of a university] was to get out into the professor markets and hire away from other universities what he called 'stars'. Shades of pro football and show biz" - told you learning things is not the priority function of schools. This is a very bad system for teachers, who are put in the same economic situation as struggling actors, and second rate sportspeople.

"Clearly, we are not going to spend on schooling between a quarter and almost a third of our GNP. We now spend 8%, and there are man signs that this is about the limit of what people are willing to pay" - Norway currently tops the league at 8.5%, but I suppose the figures should be adjusted for the number of students.

"Schools are places people go to find things" - one, not necessarily the most valuable function of schools.

"We have sustained open-ended growth and avoided collapse by invoking continuous cycles of paradigm-shifting innovations such as those associated on the big scale of human history with discoveries of iron, steam, coal, computation, and, most recently, digital information technology." - and the next one is?

"...the amount of energy needed to support an average person living in the United States has risen to an astounding 11,000 watts. This SOCIAL metabolic rate is equivalent to the entire needs of about a dozen elephants" - we need about 2,000 food calories a day, about 90 watts.

"To bow to superior force makes us feel impotent and cowardly for not having had the strength or courage to resist" - Wow, from the sublime to the ridiculous in one page.

"[Nature]...is a great teacher...[she] is impersonal, impartial, and indifferent. She does not get angry, or make judgements; she cannot be wheedled, bullied, of fooled; she does not get angry or disappointed; she does not praise or blame; she does not remember past failures or hold grudges; with her one always gets a fresh start, this time is the one that counts"

"We have to assume, or at least I choose to, that in the long run more choices and fewer constraints, less coercion, less fear, is good for most people" - except we're talking about a special group of people here, children.

"If [A teacher] gives up being a boss, he must find himself to some degree an entertainer. He has no business in the classroom except to think up things for children to do. If they don't want to do any of them, he can hardly help feeling something of a failure." - I'm miles away from Holt philosophically, but I read him because his observations about teaching are so acute.

"Perhaps the most painful tension, particularly for high school students, is that on one hand they want to get out from under all those adults...On the other hand, they find that a world away from adults is no world at all" - because of covid my students have discovered this: I'm curious to know what long term effect, if any, it has on them.

"...in a free society you can find out where the limits are; in a tyranny you can never be sure." - as has been observed about press freedom in Hungary.

"Cities are the crucible of civilization, the hubs of innovation..." etc. - Correlation is not causation, plenty of centres of learning (Cambidge) and centres of wealth generation (Silicon valley) that are outside major cities.

"The distance between A and B is the Behaviour Gap." - There are similarities here, in style, in vocabulary, and in concept with de Bono's Happiness Purpose. I can only assume Holt was an inspiration for de Bono.

" exercise DOES produce weight loss...It's just that the weight is not lost by the simple energy in/energy out equation that most people imagine. It is lost because exercise itself causes our weight setpoint to decrease." - Occam's Razor, why do we need this weight setpoint apart from it being easy to understand from its thermostat metaphor?

"There should be no bread in the house" - this is all getting a bit random

"I can now confess it - another unexpressed, inexpressible, indecent little victory that I was furtively celebrating. I guessed that this morning's business had put Brideshead some considerable way further from his rightful inheritance." - shocking, not until now do I realise that Charles actually coveted Brideshead.

"Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art..." - was Waugh, actually, profoundly anti-English?

"More even of the work of the great architects, I loved buildings that grew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best with each generation, while time curbed the artist's pride and the Philistine's vulgarity, and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman." - me too!

"Like the pigeons of St Mark's, they were everywhere" - when I visited St Mark's Square every ledge and possible perching space was lined with dense thin spikes, driving the pigeons into the square and the massing tourists. It seems quite an apt simile for memory now, but were the spikes there in Waugh's time?

"'The wines were too various', he said: 'it was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault. It was the mixture." - every Hungarian wedding ever.