This seems to be changing a bit. I have two children in a US public elementary school. The teachers use various apps to have children review mathematics facts. The apps allow children to move at their own pace and also incorporates some spaced repetition. (Though teachers seem to pick whatever app they like and the apps are of varying quality.)
I really hope you're correct. It feels a lot like the debate between phonics and whole language to me, where how we teach makes it difficult for the average student to learn. People here are discussing Bloom's Taxonomy and higher levels of learning, but many students struggle with even the most basic concepts.
Agreed, I've also been waiting to see a system with spaced repetition (to help memorize and retain) + dependency graph (to choose what new topics to present). Not sure what the AI value add would be?
I have two children and I was glad that teachers are willing to use new tools (I never asked if they were forced to use them, but I assume not because each teacher seems to use different websites). I'm sure some kids still get bored, but they can let the ones who enjoy math practice at their own pace and provide special guidance to them while still spending the majority of their time helping those who need it.
Thank you for making the point about accreditation, it's sort of a pet peeve of mine. I taught "intro to C++" last year at the Harrisburg campus of PSU. The students were a mix of non-CS majors who didn't know what a file was, a handful of students who already knew how to program and a bunch in the middle.
Re: accreditation... the admin is very reluctant to change anything about the courses. Even specific textbooks had to be recommended (I was warned for suggesting in the syllabus that the textbook wasn't needed).
Seemed a little more strict than teaching mathematics, which I did in graduate school.
Re: kids these days... a significant portion didn't understand the concept of a file. I blame apps and the cloud (funny because I now work in cloud storage). I ended up writing my own pre-cursor doc to the "missing semester". It was challenge to get a student from not understanding the filesystem to having some sort of understanding of linear search and pointers. (If you're interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jar1r0l5vdgspcl/basics.pdf?dl=0)
I tried to stress, especially to the non-majors, that this "missing" stuff was perhaps the most important thing they could learn. That, and how to properly google/search for things. I would experiment and try to re-word homework questions so that interesting StackOverflow answers appeared in search results.
C++ needs a “missing semester” around tooling. Most material I see focus on the core language but leave out setting up build systems, package management, clang tidy, testing etc.
Yeah, the whole aspect of teaching C++ to beginners is fraught with tooling issues. That school is moving to Python (years after main campus switched)... but I'm not sure how I feel about that since I spent a lot of time talking about memory layout.
I ended up suggesting those who don't know how to setup a tool chain use VS Code. Not out of any particular affinity for it, but because of the good documentation covering Windows, Linux and macOS.
Though I hate Chegg and the like with a passion, since this sort of thing takes a lot of work (over the course of teaching same class a few times) and then w/ Chegg you immediately find the answers.
> "The rise of precision scheduled railroading has resulted in resource and staffing cuts; to compensate railroad companies have enacted strict attendance policies for employees. These policies eliminate any free time which workers have, requiring them to be effectively on-call for weeks at a time. Workers have complained of increased levels of stress and fatigue."
My brother went to a recruiting drive last year for railroad engineer job openings (coincidentally along the Pittsburgh-Harrisburg corridor). He said they started the meeting by kicking out anyone who was even ten seconds late. The job description only got worse from there. I could see how the pay and benefits would be worth it for some small slice of the population... but you have zero outside life.
Working on the railroads is one of those professions in the US traditionally done by slaves or near-slaves. Just like agricultural work, food service, cleaning, and household help.
I don't know, I've worked countless 60-70 hour weeks at a restaurant... some days both opening and closing the place... and food service just doesn't seem comparable.
Perhaps fishing or working on a boat is similar, but many of those jobs allow for weeks or even months off at a time.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's hard to even watch old episodes of The Simpsons without explaining to my children why the multitude of lazy "gay jokes" aren't funny.
> Rules are made to cause trouble for the average law-abiding citizen, but have almost no effect on actual criminals.
I'll bite, how do you think the justice system should work?
Laws and their corresponding punishments are deterrents. And judges have flexibility in applying them to handle issues of accidental vs. intentional rule violation.
> how do you think the justice system should work?
I don't know, and I am not saying we should turn the country into North Korea or China with full government control, that's far worse.
> And judges have flexibility in applying them
They can only apply them to those caught, and that's the problem here. Only a very small percentage of those violating the sanctions are actually caught at all in the first place.
I would disagree that there's a problem here. As mentioned much better in other replies, there's a global supply chain and these are commodity parts. This is on the order of jaywalking or going 2mph the speed limit on the highway.
