I'd be interested to see outcomes for girls who are redshirted. I get that this article is specifically looking at outcomes of boys and addressing an identified issue with boys' performances with respect to girls but I'd imagine that a fair proportion of girls would also benefit from starting a year later.
It seems to me that if the outcome of redshirting all boys is that girls are disadvantaged then we'll be having this conversation again in a few years trying to fix the problem we've created.
The root cause of the problem is, of course, that we have a very structured education system that can't easily cater for individual students' optimal rate of learning. Students that aren't keeping up are faced with being held back an entire year with very real social implications.
It would be great to see a renewed focus on extra support for students who are falling behind.
I'd be interested to compare the outcomes of this supposed gender gap in education prior to the adoption of the existing teaching structures and pedagogy used today.
Specifically, going back to the way in which things were taught around 1966.
Starting with Sputnik education was changed broadly given a blank check and given carte blanche to reduce hiring standards of education in attempts to increase Engineers but the resulting outcomes have only seemingly made everything continually worse since that time period. This has caused numerous problems of corruption and ruin that drive these chaotic problems forward no matter what you do.
Instead of guessing at a pie in the sky thing on what you don't know, its more rational to go back to what previously worked with higher outcomes.
Eliminate Paulo Freire based pedagogy, hold teachers accountable, pay the good teachers more, fire the bad ones (no more lemon walk in Waiting for Superman), eliminate unnecessary torture, and return to teaching by a first principled approach instead of following a "Lying to children" approach which is the by-rote teaching used today. You'll see a huge change when you actually go back to teaching instead of torture. You do those things, and you'll see dramatic improvement.
The pedagogy used today is based more in Chinese thought reform and torture (under Mao) than anything else. Very few people have actually studied torture, and as a result those people are blind unable to recognize it, and it has been used everywhere to manipulate and control. Once you know how it works you see it in everything today.
You think the dramatic increase in school violence and shootings on the rise might point to targeted unending psychological stress/trauma being inflicted on children at vulnerable stages of development? You think people just bully out of the fun of things, its induced through clever techniques indirectly by teachers and they don't even know it because they are just parroting a technique without understanding the origin which was torture.
The hot potato for example isolates the victim, asks a opinion based question, and upon expressing disapproval of the teacher works simultaneously on the the person called out, but also on the approval seeking students who then do the bullying later. Its really quite clever but diabolical push pull intended to manipulate the student towards a collectivist thought/narrative. Teachers use this often mixing equally facts one should know with fictional narrative, which are indirectly sourced from the published books. No child would notice, even an inattentive adult might miss it (when they've had the training to recognize it).
Torture is the intentional infliction of such stress in sufficient exposure to bring about physiological impacts. Reduction of reasoning capability, Involuntary Hypnosis, PTSD, disassociation, or a semi-lucid psychosis seeking annihilation (capable of planning). These are the symptoms of exposure to torture.
The things that describe it in a way that you can recognize it were known about back in the 1950s and were unacceptable for PoWs, let alone sending your children off to such reeducation camps. If you teach someone that a lie is truth through torture, they'll just mimic it moving forward blind to the consequences. That goes equally for both teachers and students.
Its a sad state of affairs.
If you want to know more, you can read an overview by Joost Meerloo (Rape of the Mind), or the actual case studies from returning PoWs written up by Robert Lifton. Robert Cialdini covers all the psychological blindspots the techniques use except distorted reflected appraisal. This is how thought reform, cult programming, and indoctrination work.
Teach yourself, Reduce to first principles, recognize, and act.
You'll be horrified when you compare these things objectively and come to the realization that you've been forcing your children to attend a surrogate that claims education but is actually regular torture since before they could think.
Its quite likely they've turned out less than their potential because of that betrayal and the result of that damaging process.
>> You think the dramatic increase in school violence and shootings on the rise might point to targeted unending psychological stress/trauma being inflicted on children at vulnerable stages of development?
Actually, I think that it might point to the widespread availability of semi-automatic firearms.
>> You think people just bully out of the fun of things, its induced through clever techniques indirectly by teachers and they don't even know it because they are just parroting a technique without understanding the origin which was torture.
I can guarantee you that bullying was around before 1966. I have a very clear memory of sitting on a bully's back during the cold weather on 1960-1961 getting some revenge.
> I can guarantee you that bullying was around before 1966.
Sure, but it wasn't nearly as prevalent, exposure was limited, and the school's zero tolerance policies towards violence back then wouldn't get you (the victim) immediately expelled when that bully and his many friends lied.
You also didn't have all the other torturous exposures.
I will admit to a conspiratorial bias, but I curb it by asking basic feasibility questions, one of which I'll now ask you: how many people would need to be involved, and to what degree? If the education system is torturing children, doesn't that require a large degree of cooperation from many teachers? Why would these teachers willingly torture children?
I'll play devil's advocate. There could be many explanations: maybe the teachers don't consider it torture and they're true believers. Personally, I remember growing up sometimes teachers would start complaining about having to cover certain topics in specific ways that were mandated by the department of education, and being forced to stick to a strict curriculum that was sent down by faceless figures. If teachers aren't empowered to push back and execute on their conception of the best possible lesson plan, and any complaint puts their future pension at risk, they might just gradually lose interest in being an exceptional teacher while continuing to show up for the paycheck. This is a common occurrence in other domains, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's true about some teachers. Reflecting back on some of my most exceptional teachers, they would often invest a lot of their own money, extra time, and resources in order to give students the best possible educational experience.
There is also a bit of diffusion of responsibility. Maybe no single act can be interpreted as particularly tortuous, so it's easily excused by the person doing it. But taken collectively, it adds up into a harmful outcome.
This might vary depending on where you were educated, but a lot of my education growing up was lacking in epistemic exploration. We were often just fed a ton of facts by authority figures and expected to memorize and recite them at will, without diving into how those things were known or exploring concepts of epistemic uncertainty and the framing of historical contexts. Oftentimes this would result in people memorizing a bunch of facts for a test, after which the information was discarded, because there was no effort put into integrating newly acquired knowledge. One example for me was imaginary numbers in an early pre-calculus course, where we learned that these things existed and the basic rules for how they functioned, but it wasn't until many years later that I finally got to see how this concept could be applied and used.
At a guess, at least 25% of any given year, given the sequential nature of education as a sieve. Knowingly or Unknowingly. The people that pass end up being selected for compliance, blindness, or deceit with the gifted/intelligent being weeded out or destroyed.
> Doesn't that require a large degree of cooperation.
Not when following a structured separation of objectionable concerns which the Stasi and Nazi's used quite effectively.
If you train the teachers to use pedagogy which has been obscured but is based in torture to teach material, and the material is carefully selected (the textbooks), you get these emergently and its just chalked up to having difficulty learning the material (blaming the student) when the difficulty is in overcoming the torture not the material.
The "Lying to Children" paradigm mirrors somewhat in structure to gnosticism. Students are taught initially flawed systems that are useless in practice which include both true and false elements that are learned to unconsious competence. They are then at the next iteration forced to learn new things and unlearn other things they were taught as true, and this creates an inconsistent state that imparts torture along with the other techniques, and this progresses in each iteration until you get to college growing as you do into gnosis but never quite as useful as if you followed a first-principled approach. The torture degrades the students abilities, and you can't ever really unlearn something that has been learned to such competency; it always adds some amount of interference/confusion later.
There are also stages at which point induced failures can occur also as a function of structure. The Algebra->Geometry->Trigonometry sequence so common today as an example to gatekeep mathematic based structures and the PTSD inherent in students that fall victim to this. The gimmick relies on a undisclosed change in pass criteria between classes so you don't find out you have a problem until Trigonometry, but because you passed an intermediate unrelated class you can't go backwards. The change is in grading on whether the process was followed but the answer still incorrect. Those students that would follow the flawed process that was taught would pass initially, but then fail in Trigonometry when the correct answer was needed. This sequence was forced and adopted in the 90s at the request of the NEA. Similar other sequences have been adopted later on in college bottleneck/weed out courses for required GE (i.e. Economics, Physics, Ethnic Studies (Maoism/DEI)). The student is not sophisticated or reasoning enough at this point to mount any kind of effective defense, and the teacher suggests that if you can't do the material you should perhaps look at other professions which don't use math.
It burns the bridges. This works because the systems are structured so that both; the student must overcome the torture, and the teacher must provide perfect instruction/effort, for a pass to occur. This inherently selects for only the blind (that can look at everything in isolation), and the corrupt/deceitful. Any student with intelligence/creativity would be destroyed under such circular and arbitrary trauma loops. Obviously the environment is a spectrum, but structure allows a few bad actors to influence the whole.
> Why would these teachers willingly torture children.
The point is the teachers aren't willingly doing it, they simply don't know any better. They believe what they are trained to do blindly parroting the techniques they were taught.
The centralized nature of the structures involved with the inability to fire except for gross misconduct ensures that many competent teachers will be driven out through social coercion, because they make all the other teachers look bad.
There is a natural pull to negative production value, and the ongoing educational requirements sponsored from NEA and the publishing industry (which seem to be in lock step), guarantee this happens emergently with plausible but incorrect reasons for why its not the material but the student.
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The people who train and sponsor the majority of teachers, and who control the publishers/administration are the ones doing this.
This is all very vague and abstract. Can you provide some concrete examples? The only somewhat concrete example you gave is that students are graded in process in early math courses and then graded on results in later math courses. Any other examples? And how is this “torturous”?
Fair enough. Lets start with a definition of what is torturous. I tried to condense it but there is a lot of background details/material that matter.
To recognize torture and torturous processes you need a definition that is objectively measurable (i.e. is it there or not).
The subject matter on torture for thought reform (not information extraction) is often broken down into three subgroups, and with sufficient exposure anyone breaks.
Those subgroups are: Elements, Structuring, and Clustering.
Elements include topological (interaction) or environmental based isolation, cognitive dissonance, a lack of agency to remove oneself, and coercion/compulsion with real or perceived loss or the threat thereof.
Structures are often circular, with periods of strictness followed by leniency; requiring the participant to engage in their own torture, these are often structured to elicit a response, such as harassment, invectives, false accusations or claims, etc, baiting the person to respond to set the record straight, which are then used to repeat the trauma loop and cause further confusion and suffering turning the victims psyche back on itself, eventually making them believe its all their fault.
Clustering relates to things that increase susceptibility, how much exposure one has to repeated stimuli associated with torture within a short time, blindspots, as well as other processes which naturally make one more susceptible like narco-analysis/synthesis where barbituates were used (in the 50s), or rather today the more modern addiction/dopamine triggers from operant conditioned stimuli (via cell phone/social media/audio or ui triggers).
Psychological blindspots in clustering cause you to fight your own psychology these can be incredibly subtle. Cialdini's book on Influence covers all the known blindspots except distorted reflected appraisal which is the same underlying mechanism for how we adopt culture from our parents/community during development, where that is reflected; the malign version is distorted and it increases as you become more isolated. Reflected appraisal operates primarily through communication, and intentional distortions would be gaslighting. The more isolated the person the more effective this technique is.
Some of the elements are related, generally speaking at a bare minimum at least two elements (coercion/compulsion with loss coupled with any other in whole or part) are needed coupled with or without structuring or clustering.
The more you have the more severe it is.
These defined elements combined with structure or clustering indicate torturous processes being present.
Unironically, you will find these things not only in education, but literally almost everywhere these days. Its primarily used to impose cost on others, like circular CSR/AI driven doom loops (when you've paid and still have a problem) etc.
Incidentally, I'll also mention, a useful takeaway from Lifton's case studies includes a strong argument for developing faith-based belief systems. The victims who had strong faith-based beliefs were significantly more resilient both under and following torture than all others. Its dark reading matter, but critical for recognizing and acting to reduce exposure when its inflicted on you.
In my opinion, nothing is more evil than destroying a mind, but you need to know how it works to defend yourself.
--- Examples to follow
For the direct examples, I'd suggest reading the case studies documented by Robert Lifton following the return of PoWs after the Korean Conflict (under Mao) he covers the actual torture process in full detail, and describes the natural physiological response to extreme stress under such conditions.
The thousand yard stare for example related to disassociation/escape might easily be mistaken in children as just zoning out on their phones or in front of a TV, and the seemingly irrational (but quite rational) need to pretend to be sick to avoid going to school.
The physiological responses generally range with exposure starting with reduced cognition (rational thought), involuntary hypnosis, through to psychological break (two types, disassociation/nonresponsive & semi-lucid psychosis seeking annihilation). The latter psychosis aligns quite closely with all school shooters.
Joost Meerloo covers a broad overview of torture from the Nazi's through to Mao in his book called "Rape of the Mind", also written 1950s. These are sound academic references.
The former author started with "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism", and then moved on towards cult programming/deprogramming (indoctrination), and overall its the same process, they are both acclaimed professionals and the material has only gotten more sophisticated since then.
Now to modern examples:
The hot potato is a concrete example in education where the teacher isolates a student to answer a question publicly in front of their peers. These questions often mix fact questions and opinion together in a session. The student is nervous and anxious because if they answer incorrectly the approval seeking people in the peer group will bully them later, whether that's outright bullying, or shunning makes little difference, it all comes down to whether the teacher expresses disapproval of their answer, and this aligns perfectly with the domestic versions of the reeducation camps under Mao.
Another concrete example is the structure of the infamous three question test commonly found in physics college weedout courses circa 2000-~2014.
To break it down, you paid upfront, and you lose time/money when you don't pass, and passing is arbitrary and separate from knowing the material. The only two parties involved are the student and professor. They will say you can go to the Chair/Dean/Board of Trustees, but this is a lie. The centralized forever job structure fails to common corruption issues. There is no duty to investigate complaints, and there is a longstanding bias against creating a hostile work environment. These people are often teachers themselves, who close rank preventing any external resolution. Even court cases get dismissed on the tax-payer dime.
The questions are structured to be causally dependent on the previous question instead of independent.
This means that the answer to question 1 is used in the calculation of 2, and in 3. Get the first one wrong, and its a domino, and the percentages whether they are graded on bell or not, favor perfect or fail.
A gimmick is often used in the form of significant digits which is not disclosed in class and the significant digit process is formally described as only rounding once at the end to reduce the propagation of error at each step, but following this principle provided in a causally dependent set of questions propagates the error. Doing it the right scientific way also fails. A third undisclosed process is provided to students whom the professor deems worthy to become an engineer.
Another way is in structuring coursework with so much graded busy work that its impossible to pass ot along with other scheduled classes. It becomes clear after the withdraw deadline which all classes have scheduled before or right at the first exam.
If the units for a class are 12 units for full time student status. Thats 3.3 hours per unit expected for a 40 hour work week (including lecture). In reality this ranges depending on the professor and class. I've seen multiple instances where a 4 unit class ends up being 9 hours per unit despite the curricula being quite manageable. GE Anthropology was the worst offender, Calculus 2 was a nominal second 8.5/unit (not Calc 1 or 3 which averaged 4), Oral Communications (6.8).
If you spend 36 hours on 1 class, and your other classes cummulatively require another 28-30 hours, and these run 18 weeks, do you know any working professional that can sustain 70+ hour work weeks that long on top of the other shennanigans? The colleges still get your federal money even if you withdraw.
Back to the physics, a two exam test following this means you can only get the last question wrong on one of the two tests to pass the class. You either get a perfect or you fail. The professor at the time was bragging to other colleagues in the cafeteria about how they got the idea from an NEA sponsored workshop aimed at reducing their workload and were able to teach more classes as a result.
The same can be said of published material where you aren't taught what you need to know to answer the exam because they intentionally mismatch material (i.e. they say there's a lecture and you find out the professor has referred you to Khan Academy with a mismatched textbook; and with dark patterns from Pearson built into the autograder he's set up so he can teach 15 sections across the county and pool his office hours virtually for all those sections.
With the autograder, its a bit more subtle, if you get a correct answer it moves on to the next question, if you get a wrong answer, you are prompted in bright red alerts that you got it wrong and must click to accept this (Cialdini blindspots). This happens a few times in a row in a timed test where they bonk you on the head every time you get it wrong, and the interactions delay you further, any student shuts down.
The material published is often also contradictory, like about how all parties involved are both right (economics) despite the question and broader material (not the textbook) saying its mutually exclusive and one is clearly wrong but you can't tell. A test requires properties of determinism where there is one single correct answer that is being tested; but if you have material that provides no signal, and you have multiple seemingly correct answers, you fail because you can't mindread. Many professional certifications as well use this to fail people.
Sorry, but all I see here related to school are two ideas, namely that being put on the spot is uncomfortable and that college courses are too difficult, the latter perhaps part of an intentional scheme to make money. Neither of these comes anywhere close to what I would consider torture.
The statements you made are quite reductionist and dismissive based in fallacy.
You provide no definition for your use of an inherently relative and ambiguous word that lacks a distinct meaning on its own.
Sorry, but it seems you didn't really want to have a rational conversation after all, and may have been just eliciting a response from me for some other purpose. Its disappointing when people engage in discussions and then act in bad faith to muddy the water.
You disagree that these examples, which include the prescriptive properties established by experts on the subject matter to define torture are what you would consider torture, a contradiction of established facts, and you don't define what you mean.
At the point where you start contradicting yourself, or worse, are reasoning circularly (rational discourse requires metaphysical objectivity/identity) there really isn't anything of value that can be had. Such examples include harassment and bullying if you missed it.
It does a disservice to the victims when the water seems to get purposefully muddied towards noise.
Here are three different victims, the more you dig the more bodies you find, more than ever make national news:
Make sure to read the article before commenting because this proposed practice is specifically to close the gender gap in which girls are ahead. Parents specifically try to get their sons redshirted for the advantage it confers. The proposed policy would make it available to everyone regardless of their birthday. I think any national policy would realistically make it available to girls as well because the optics of boys only is bad. But the option would be there for the benefit of boys.
I point this out because "being held back" is seen as a bad thing but starting school later actually gives you a leg up.
> The older students consistently scored higher on tests... The findings were true for children of all backgrounds, but especially for boys and for children from low-income families.
If redshirting benefits both boys and girls, it seems unfair to only offer it to boys, even if the boys benefit more than girls.
I think we should move beyond the semi-rigid alignment of age and “grade”. Let people move at different rates in different areas. We should normalize a 12yo and 16yo of the same abilities in the same classes.
We do everyone a massive disservice under the current system. The worst off get passed along without help and those with the most potential cannot realize it without “heroic effort” from the parents demanding attention from the system at every turn.
Someone who struggles with basic reading comprehension needs to address that before moving on to anything more demanding.
People always say that but men still get most engineering degrees especially in the more traditional fields like ME and EE. So what if girls grades in high school are marginally higher
It seems to me that if the outcome of redshirting all boys is that girls are disadvantaged then we'll be having this conversation again in a few years trying to fix the problem we've created.
The root cause of the problem is, of course, that we have a very structured education system that can't easily cater for individual students' optimal rate of learning. Students that aren't keeping up are faced with being held back an entire year with very real social implications.
It would be great to see a renewed focus on extra support for students who are falling behind.