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Stuff you just can't make up

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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Dilandu   » Sun Aug 16, 2020 7:23 am

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How low the mighty had fallen...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... umiliation

The US proposal of new sanctions against Iran was not even vetoed. It was ignored even by US close allies.
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Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Daryl   » Sun Aug 16, 2020 7:48 am

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What US close allies?
Since Trump they have all taken a step back.
Dilandu wrote:How low the mighty had fallen...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... umiliation

The US proposal of new sanctions against Iran was not even vetoed. It was ignored even by US close allies.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Michael Everett   » Sun Aug 16, 2020 8:52 am

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It would seem that racism is rising in the UK.
There are movements to begin instituting educational paths purely for specific ethnic minorities with a university specifically for Black Students being the first step.

A Guardian story on it found here.

Yep, voluntary segregation is potentially on its way and will lead to further racial differences as different sub-cultures will have reduced interactions with other sub-cultures, thus preventing them from understanding the differences and how to overcome/bypass them.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by The E   » Sun Aug 16, 2020 10:50 am

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Michael Everett wrote:It would seem that racism is rising in the UK.
There are movements to begin instituting educational paths purely for specific ethnic minorities with a university specifically for Black Students being the first step.

A Guardian story on it found here.

Yep, voluntary segregation is potentially on its way and will lead to further racial differences as different sub-cultures will have reduced interactions with other sub-cultures, thus preventing them from understanding the differences and how to overcome/bypass them.


Did you read the article before you started clutching your pearls?

Please explain how designing courses and curricula that prominently feature post-colonial teachings and approaches is bad.

EDIT:

It's curious to me that you mention this now of all times, right when the UK is having a major crisis of confidence in its education systems as the current crop of students face quite a massive amount of discrimination in the wake of the COVID screwups. If you were talking about an environment that was completely and provably fair to everyone in it and that treated students only according to their academic success or failure, then you might have a point. But the reality is that that is just not the case, provably so.

Your whining about this is lagely equivalent to the "why can't we have a straight pride" bs some people like to spew: It's ahistoric, counterfactual idiocy that can only come from a deeply seated ignorance of the actual situations LGBTQIA+ people (or, in this case, students from a minority background) face even after the formal abolishment of open discrimination.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by The E   » Mon Aug 17, 2020 4:55 am

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Related to the above, because this is very definitely stuff you can't make up:

Apparently, UK schools are currently operating on a system where student grades are reassigned based on past data about grades from that school. For example, if a school has never handed out top grades to a student before, any student that qualifies for that grade will have their result downgraded.

This is, of course, a completely fair and unbiased process that ensures that everyone will get the grade they actually deserve without fault or favour.

By which I mean, obviously, that this reinforces systemic discrimination against people from poorer or more diverse backgrounds; There are cases where people can't move on to higher education because the algorithm decided that they needed to drop several grades down in order to fit the historic model.

When I did my Abitur (back in 2000), the process for final grading was based on the final exams (which were graded by the teacher that taught the course and then examined by another teacher from a different school for verification) and a weighted average of grades I had earned over previous years. The process was fair and transparent; it is still done that way these days. It would be interesting to know just how the UK ended up with a system as completely ass-backwards as the one they're using....
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Joat42   » Mon Aug 17, 2020 6:09 am

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The E wrote:Related to the above, because this is very definitely stuff you can't make up:

Apparently, UK schools are currently operating on a system where student grades are reassigned based on past data about grades from that school. For example, if a school has never handed out top grades to a student before, any student that qualifies for that grade will have their result downgraded.

Sweden used to do something like that. A student could have aced all the tests and had full attendance but couldn't get a top-grade because there we no top-grades left since the grades given must fit the available slots in a bell curve based on previous years standardized tests for the school in question.

Many people found this type of grading to be very unfair and teachers started setting the grades regardless of what established rules from the Educational Department said which in the end forced the department to reform the rules. I've had teachers tell me that the grade I got was something that they weren't actually allowed to give me because they already had filled that grade-slot.

I do wonder if the practice originated from some stupid ideas about education proposed in the 70's.

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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by munroburton   » Mon Aug 17, 2020 11:31 am

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The E wrote:Related to the above, because this is very definitely stuff you can't make up:

Apparently, UK schools are currently operating on a system where student grades are reassigned based on past data about grades from that school. For example, if a school has never handed out top grades to a student before, any student that qualifies for that grade will have their result downgraded.

This is, of course, a completely fair and unbiased process that ensures that everyone will get the grade they actually deserve without fault or favour.

By which I mean, obviously, that this reinforces systemic discrimination against people from poorer or more diverse backgrounds; There are cases where people can't move on to higher education because the algorithm decided that they needed to drop several grades down in order to fit the historic model.

When I did my Abitur (back in 2000), the process for final grading was based on the final exams (which were graded by the teacher that taught the course and then examined by another teacher from a different school for verification) and a weighted average of grades I had earned over previous years. The process was fair and transparent; it is still done that way these days. It would be interesting to know just how the UK ended up with a system as completely ass-backwards as the one they're using....


Yep. It's been filling the news for the past two weeks.

As of this afternoon, all the governments in the UK have abandoned that system and are using teacher estimates.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by isaac_newton   » Mon Aug 17, 2020 12:26 pm

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munroburton wrote:
The E wrote:Related to the above, because this is very definitely stuff you can't make up:

Apparently, UK schools are currently operating on a system where student grades are reassigned based on past data about grades from that school. For example, if a school has never handed out top grades to a student before, any student that qualifies for that grade will have their result downgraded.

This is, of course, a completely fair and unbiased process that ensures that everyone will get the grade they actually deserve without fault or favour.

By which I mean, obviously, that this reinforces systemic discrimination against people from poorer or more diverse backgrounds; There are cases where people can't move on to higher education because the algorithm decided that they needed to drop several grades down in order to fit the historic model.

When I did my Abitur (back in 2000), the process for final grading was based on the final exams (which were graded by the teacher that taught the course and then examined by another teacher from a different school for verification) and a weighted average of grades I had earned over previous years. The process was fair and transparent; it is still done that way these days. It would be interesting to know just how the UK ended up with a system as completely ass-backwards as the one they're using....


Yep. It's been filling the news for the past two weeks.

As of this afternoon, all the governments in the UK have abandoned that system and are using teacher estimates.


to be fair - it is mainly this year.

having said that - our imbecile government of incompetent bastards have failed once again, causing totally unnecessary 'world beating' levels of stress to our children.

A crap algorithm was developed, by the quango responsible for exam standardisation [OfQual], but seemingly not back tested.

The methodology was not open for reviewal

The Royal Statistical Society way back offered to provide serious help. This was rejected because OfQual tried to force the leading staticians to sign really tight Non Disclosure Articles that last for 5 years!!!!

People predicted before hand from what they knew that exactly this chaos would arise, and those vile, necrotic, slimy, pustulent, gormless bunch of useless shysters & cretins in the Department of Education and OfQual and the PMs office just pressed on regardless.

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Annachie   » Thu Aug 20, 2020 12:27 am

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President calls for a ban on Goodyear tyres, clearly not knowing how many tyres Goodyear makes for the US military, or for that matter, the President's limo's.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Daryl   » Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:39 am

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That was because they (like most employers) don't allow employees in work time to be politically active, or to wear politically charged clothing. Like those red MAGA caps.
I wonder how employees at Trump's hotels and such would go wearing a "Biden for President" button?


Annachie wrote:President calls for a ban on Goodyear tyres, clearly not knowing how many tyres Goodyear makes for the US military, or for that matter, the President's limo's.
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