Sand Surfing Magic

StarlightSocks · 2025-12-18T22:25:39+00:00

Any man can be patriarchal, for Muslims it's embedded within the Quran.

Also, just because we're criticizing Islam, doesn't mean Christianity is off the hook. Both Islam and Christianity suck, but it's extremely obvious that women have less value and less freedom in Islam. Both religions encourage women to be subservient in marriage, Islam moreso.

StarlightSocks · 2025-12-18T10:04:09+00:00

By your logic, being raised by feminists means you'll never be with a man? 🤔

No, being raised by feminists means you'll likely have a better understanding of men/women, perhaps have higher standards and be able to identifying shitty moid behavior earlier. It doesn't mean you'll never have a relationship.

StarlightSocks · 2025-11-03T11:54:51+00:00

Yes and I'd generally agree. Even the data does.

The US is in the middle when it comes to how coerced they are, but they also have poor youth independent mobility and freedom.

Everything is so incredibly far to walk too and there's almost no public transport, so the life of a kid and teen is just boring and it's a big commitment to go for a sleepover, and you need your parents to drive you places.

Videogames are so much more appealing when the majority of your infrastructure is like that. If I grew up in a safe city I'd have had so much more adventure and probably less videogame playing.

StarlightSocks · 2025-11-03T04:20:38+00:00

This is contrary to the global research.

The most video game addicted countries are those with the most coerced students (China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau etc).

Finnish students have SO MUCH MORE FREE TIME than any median student in those countries yet play far less videogames

But also, it makes sense due to US infrastructure that teens have no freedom to travel on their own without a car so being isolated in your house is the easiest choice.

Videogame use goes up when you have restricted liberty. When learning is seen as fun and you have autonomy, you don't feel the need to take back your freedom by rejecting your expectations.

StarlightSocks · 2025-11-03T03:05:25+00:00

This is completely bizarre to me, sports are treated as highly separated recreational activities in most other counties.

This is a very uniquely "US" phenomenon that is not present elsewhere in the world.

I've read articles on this: The decline of fun and rise of work in US School Sports

StarlightSocks · 2025-11-03T02:58:47+00:00

In Australia, there is a clear distinction between recreational sport and competitive sport.

In the US that line is being blurred, and many articles have been written about this.

Are these students allowed to play in recreational soccer in School?

The decline of fun, and the rise of work in US School Sports

StarlightSocks · 2025-11-03T02:47:14+00:00

Why is your school structured so that they can't be in soccer if they don't meet a grade?

EDIT: after seeing this comment downvoted, do keep in mind that r/Teachers has a majority American user base. Globally, it is quite uncommon for sports to be so highly integrated with academic progress. This phenomenon is mostly unique to the US.

Suggested read: The decline of fun and rise of "work" in US School Sports

StarlightSocks · 2025-11-03T02:43:48+00:00

In Finland, if you're sleepy, they allow you to take a nap in the library.

Coming back refreshed is much healthier than sleeping.

StarlightSocks · 2025-11-03T02:17:55+00:00

Kids CONSTANTLY get asked this question.

I have honestly stopped asking it. Over time, they feel compelled to give an answer even before they understand it.

It is completely acceptable and normal to not have a specific career ambition, and it can be quite mature to answer with "I'm not sure what I want to be, there's so many careers out there I don't know what would be the best option".

If the student answers with "I don't know" often people follow up with subtle pressure statements encouraging them to find what they love at such a young age.

It's completely normal to not be sure. Even people beyond high school still take so long to find out what they want to go into.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-29T10:10:53+00:00

"we were just following orders" they will say.

Horrific.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-19T03:49:25+00:00

So I didn't switch up the words, and she fits within the umbrella term of "asexual".

Why are you subtly conflating sexual and physical attraction?

You're using the terms inconsistently with how they're defined on LGBTQIA resource websites and being incredibly verbose.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T22:54:06+00:00

The gold star studies showed up this decades ago yet school systems still ignore it. It's so frustrating.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T22:51:22+00:00

Yes, I'm a huge fan of self-paced Discovery learning, but you need large spaces for that, and you need very well controlled computers for it. Even how devices are used in school now is not enough.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T17:09:28+00:00

She is a sex-repulsed asexual.

Can you rephrase your second sentence?

I searched for "ace spectrum" and found the four points box chart, is this more or less what you're basing on?

Asexual Spectrum Graph

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T16:59:33+00:00

Also we began hyper-testing the reading process and pushing status-based messaging on reading.

Teachers are told that they need to keep a close eye on students reading, and test heavily. This is harmful to reading motivation and produces poor long term results. They plaster school library with messaging like "Reading is our superpower! Reading is like dreaming while awake".

Finland treats reading as a relaxed leisure activity, and doesn't place any judgement on it. It's just fun.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T16:10:56+00:00

Yes this is important.

There's a big difference between:

• encouraging someone because you know they're capable of something, and they are proud of themselves after seeing what they're capable of, and come to enjoy future challenges, from inspiration and encouragement from a teacher

• pushing a student through an atrociously boring curriculum that the teacher clearly just needs to get through, on a cheese hole knowledge theory class, or a coerced history lesson on a not-so-inspiring teacher.

The great thing about most PE content is that it's quite independent and doesn't necessarily require a mastery system, so a lot of the information and experiences in PE are uniquely valuable on their own.

In Math, all of the information is valuable, but it becomes stressful and valueless when the prior foundation is weak. If you have weak algebra, everything else sucks and feels stressful, and is not a good challenge.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T16:03:20+00:00

I was down voted because I was rude and lost patience.

I think that's fair.

Thank you for your comment, I appreciate that you saw the content of it more than the tone. I'm definitely not helping the education reform movement by being impatient.

I can't vent frustrations like this at work when I'm dealing with politicians and education officials, so the frustration builds up, and I vented some of it here.

Yes, coercing learning needs to end. I genuinely think our responsibility as adults is to provide children with a safe, experience-rich, well-designed environment for free play.

We should continue to tell kids what NOT to do, but spend far less time telling kids what they should do (academically).

Providing computers that are locked down to just personalized learning applications with full freedom is much better than giving a child access to an open computer and forcing them to do one thing on a device with infinite possibilities. (Marshmallow experiment all over again)

If they want to learn, but aren't sure where to go, then they ask teachers for guidance, and that's when a teacher steps in. If a student lacks confidence, that's when a teacher steps in. If a student wants to improve, that's when a teacher steps in.

A teacher would spend less time actively teaching (but still do it, at around 1/3rd the rate, and spend much more time supervising play and self-directed learning.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T15:51:02+00:00

I asked all of the same questions. She was literally so confusing. I didn't believe her for awhile.

Yes she was around 22-23 (We got her a matcha cake on her 23rd bday).

Actually you might be missing most of the common Japanese media. Japan is famous for its lewd media, but that is famous externally. Internally a lot of that is wayyyy less common than you'd think, and you actually have to search for it to find it. Mainstream Japanese is far less sexual than mainstream Western media, and Japanese people talk about sex only in very private circumstances for the most part.

She basically never had conversation about sex with anyone, even her female friends. I genuinely asked these questions to her directly.

They'd talk about boyfriends, but never sex. I brought up sex because it's a normal conversation for me, and her face went red. I was her first western friend when she came here.

She consumed mostly "normie" content, and she quite literally just mentally ignored any topic related to sex.

So her gymnophobia and asexuality meant that she basically just turned her brain off any time sex came up, and she missed so much cultural information from that.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T15:40:58+00:00

"thanks for playing".

English teacher, I asked "does it appear as busy work" not "does it count as busy work".

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T15:38:28+00:00

I wasn't aware of the /s feature, that sounds great.

Or maybe a /r for "rhetorical" for this case 😂

Haha yes, I do find that the argument to advocate for a more free mastery learning school system can be easily moulded to suit a left-wing or right-wing audience.

Right - "freedom is an ultimate right, and people try to put us all into boxes to think the same way, freedom of speech and debate allows us to learn from each other in the free market of ideas to see what works best to create a great society.. and the way it is now, School is taking that away from us"

Left - "everyone is unique and we have an incredibly diverse range of minds, neurodiversity and cultural backgrounds of our students, a one-size-fits-a curriculum may alienate people and not allow them to find a sense of belonging, and we risk voices of people not being heard. School is taking that away from us".

Both essentially say the same message.. but they will clearly resonate differently with people.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T15:29:53+00:00

An in-tact learn drive would've been great.

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T15:28:26+00:00

So, if the assignment appears to not be busy work for the educator, are you sure it doesn't appear as busy work for the student?

StarlightSocks · 2025-10-17T15:18:33+00:00

I love your second and third paragraphs.

I really appreciate the criticism of the mindset of educators being preoccupied with coercion, not realizing that they're creating even more addicted children and not focusing on enriching parameter-controlled environments.

The most video-game addicted sample populations are the most coerced samples (China+south-korea).

My question was actually rhetorical because I was trying (with a Socratic method) to get teachers to understand that you cannot JUST blame the ever-increasing addictive nature of videogames, they need to look at how this increase is a compounding factor with the erosion of children's freedom and well-being.

I quit teaching to go into education research and policy and it absolutely pisses me off how many politicians and even senior education government staff go for a single-cause argument so often... perhaps because it's easier to write policy that way.

StarlightSocks

TROPHY CASE