The crap they're teaching your kids!

[Dandontdare]

Wit great respect DanDD, unless the person in question doesn't have English as a first language you have to expect a certain level of familiarity with the common names of the limited numbers of cute mammals in your own country... and thus my not-yet-3-year-old son would find that joke funny. Not hilarious (sorry, Jim), but he'd certainly understand that a cow wasn't the same as a porpoise. In fact, I think I'll try him out tomorrow. I might get bemusement, but I'm damn sure he knows roughly what a cow and a porpoise look like. Lord knows he's quick enough to take me to task on the chimp/monkey divide.

Hell, I'll be the first to bemoan the lack of vocabulary amongst a lot of people these days (and often do - and don't get me started about not knowing where things are on a map of the fucking world!) but my objection was purely about the semantics of the joke and JC's assertion that you don't need to know the word to make it work.

Jokes are weird and powerful things. I'm fascinated by how a specific series of words can lead your brain down a logical path that if done correctly, ultimately ends with an uncontrollable eruption of emotion. That's a bizarre and powerful thing if you think about it. It's why some people can't tell jokes and some can - the order of the words, the way one bit of information directly follows the last, the stresses and pauses, these are often as important as the gist of the story and the punchline.

one of my favourites, easily ruined by bad telling (and best if read aloud):
A mouse walks into a music shop and hops up on the counter.
The mouse says "I'd like a mouse organ please"
Shopkeeper says "you what?"
Mouse says "I'd like a mouse organ please"
Shopkeeper says "that's funny, I had a mouse in here yesterday asking for a mouse organ"
"Ah yes," says the mouse, "that'd be our Monica"

I should add that the "uncontrollable eruption of emotion" that joke elicits has often been a desire to punch me!

[Peter Wolf]

I was unhappy and slightly stressed and unfulfilled and tired at work so i looked at the picture and saw 2 cows.

[Roger Godpleton]

I think this year's Thin Ice Awards are already a done deal.


On a serious note I think the board elders have to meet to devise a strategy for when TS eventually goes bad.

[Peter Wolf]

Jesus, I thought I was a bit warped, what the hell have they done to that poor cow's digestive tract to propel it with such force from the pelagic deeps. They must have been feeding it spacedust and diet-cola the evil little preverts. At least the unfortunate beast was allowed to keep it's bell, which by the way will be even more effective underwater as sound travels more efficiently in a liquid. A fully grown dolphin or porpoise can kill a sea cucumber at thirty metres underwater simply by directing a concentrated barrage of squeaks and clicks.

It would have been funny if someone else had photoshopped a Great White shark behind the cow and the porpoise.

[ThryllSeekyr]

It's why some people can't tell jokes and some can - the order of the words, the way one bit of information directly follows the last, the stresses and pauses, these are often as important as the gist of the story and the punchline.

I think it's a good joke and it's written down it's really up to the person reading it. Their interpetation of it. Nothing else really matters. Unless the joke is being spoken. Then it would need to be good and it's oral delivery would matter alot.

With good a comedian sometimes the material doesn't even really need to be god at all, if delivery is perfect.

Partically, if they have a good reputation in this area.

It's like admiring Picasso's art work. I really think that sometimes just his name/reputation is what  makes it worthwhile.

This sometimes works the otherway round. Some unknown artist with a bad rep, but really great art being judged on their repsution.

Something I noticed while playing  SPORE ands using it's Object/creature Editors. ALot peopl will only rate up the work of a person whom has being doing great work from the very start.

There are a few exceptions to this rule of course.  

Here's joke I remember from my school days. Although it's more of a riddle.

Your at the zoo and next to the Camel enclosure reading the sign  which says,

'Beware,,, This Camel Spits',,

 and you are!

It's suddenly dawned on me that you might not get this, I'm not sure if I have worded it correctly.

Anyway, work that one out if you haven't heard it already.

On a serious note I think the board elders have to meet to devise a strategy for when TS eventually goes bad.

I think I am already there!

It would have been funny if someone else had photoshopped a Great White shark behind the cow and the porpoise.

Yeah, I would love to mess around with that picture.

[House of Usher]

Jokes are weird and powerful things. I'm fascinated by how a specific series of words can lead your brain down a logical path that if done correctly, ultimately ends with an uncontrollable eruption of emotion. That's a bizarre and powerful thing if you think about it. It's why some people can't tell jokes and some can - the order of the words, the way one bit of information directly follows the last, the stresses and pauses, these are often as important as the gist of the story and the punchline.

Awesome! You, Sir, are a poet. And it was lovely to be reminded of the 'mouse organ' joke.

[Dandontdare]

shucks, thanks

And to drag things vaguely back to the topic, we had many great theatre trips from school, including Derek Jacobi in both the Tempest and King Lear, Robert Lindsay as Hamlet and Derek Griffiths (!) in Gogol's Government Inspector, but one that stuck in my mind was Macbeth at the Contact (University) theatre in Manchester around 83. The witches were young, sexy and resembled a kind of goth Bananarama. They delivered their lines to Macbeth while writhing around him and caressing him seductively. As we were on the front row, it was clear that the young lead genuinely appreciated their efforts and no amount of tugging his tunic down could hide his obvious excitement for the rest of the scene. We also saw a version of the Elephant Man there that included full male and female nudity. You'd never get away with school trips like that these days!

However, though I consider myself to have had a very good education (private grammar) it was just as much an exam factory as today - we were taught how to pass O levels, moved on quickly from one topic to the next, learned 'lists' of relevant facts (eg 10 reasons why Cortes beat the Aztecs), so I think some contributors to this debate have a rather rosy nostalgic view of education in times past. The main difference is we actually had to learn everything to regurgitate in the exams, whilst with course work you only need to have a present understanding of it. I think this is how many people operate these days - why learn lots of facts and knowl;edge when you can instantly google or wiki what you need? The internet has made people very lazy about committing knowledge to memory. Or maybe we're just dinosaurs and the youth of today have evolved different and superior 21st century thinking models...... Nah, they're just lazy gits!

[Bouwel]

10 reasons why Cortes beat the Aztecs

I'm intrigued: What are the ten reasons?

-Bouwel-

[SuperSurfer]

What's this, they are actually teaching Spakespeare to kids at school now?!!

No wonder everything is going into a downward spiral!

[Dandontdare]

10 reasons why Cortes beat the Aztecs

I'm intrigued: What are the ten reasons?

-Bouwel-

I can't remember them all, but the major ones I think were superior technology and tactics, assisted by introduced diseases like cholera that were spreading like plague through Aztec civilization. The ones that stick in my mind however are the lesser and more bizarre contributing factors - such as the Aztecs had never seen horses and were freaked out by these 4 legged creatures with men's torsos growing from their backs, or that the king's team had just lost a significant sporting contest (a kind of basketball or pelota I think) and this was a terrible omen that demoralised them. It was an impressive (and horrible) achievement that a couple of hundred men could destroy an entire civilization

[TordelBack]

The big one missing from your list is Cortes' vast numbers of local allies - as many as a quarter of a million according to one theory, but certainly more than 100K - who were very keen to see the dominant and otherwise unassailable Aztec civilisation take a kicking.    Between the Spanish-introduced smallpox epidemic in densely populated Tenochtitlan itself (again somewhere between a quarter and a half of the population died in one season), and the damage to the capital during the initial massacre, the Aztecs were vulnerable for the first time in ages.   In one view the arrival of the Spanish was the catalyst for what was really a local power struggle.  Not that it did any of the other tribes any good in the long run.

The whole 'they thought the Spanish were gods' thing has been challenged as a post-colonial invention, but I'm sure there's a grain of truth in there.

[House of Usher]

diseases like cholera that were spreading like plague through Aztec civilization

So a plague, then, in other words?  

I'm fascinated by this stuff about the Aztecs. We never did anything like that at my school.

Telling your account of Macbeth to the missus, she reminded me of a version we saw in Swansea starring and produced by Paul Darrow in the early '90s. The worst Shakespeare production either of us has ever seen! Paul Darrow's grinning, grimacing and mugging to the audience was ghastly, and the 3 teenage witches (in rags and Tina Turner wigs) were like something out of a sixth form play.  remember that because I traced the letters spelling 'sixth form play' on my partner's leg with my finger while we were watching it. At the interval we debating cutting our losses and asking for our money back, but decided it was too entertaining in its awfullness not to see second half. When the curtain went up after the interval it was noticeable that a small number of patrons had indeed left the theatre.

Do we have a rosy and nostalgic view of past education? I just think we learned stuff in those days, and I'm not so sure the kids do now, on the basis of seeing the ones I teach and what is now promoted as best practice in teacher training. Nowadays 'rote learning' (10 reasons why Cortes beat the Aztecs) is thoroughly disapproved of. And when we start exam revision the students tell me "I can't do this; how am I supposed to remember all this stuff". Why? Because rote learning is anathema. If we were doing rote learning on a day the inspectors dropped in to observe it would adversely impact on the college's quality standards rating.

I chose the state comprehensive I went to in 1983 on the basis that it was the nearest one to my house and was in walking distance any day I left early enough not to have to catch the bus or late enough that I'd missed the bus. How we were taught was very much up to individual teachers. My English teacher took the approach of getting us to read aloud in class, explaining meaning and putting things in context, encouraging us to enjoy the books, putting responsibility for revision firmly with the pupils, and leaving the exam grades in the lap of the gods. A contrasting approach was that of my history teacher. On reflection, she was not a good teacher. She taught us 20th century history in its entirety, just to pass O-level or CSE. She made the subject seem enormous and unknowable. So when it came to revision, though I tried to memorize everything, I felt I had to prioritize and concentrate on WWI, WWII, the Russian Revolution, the League of Nations, Mussolini, Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, Stalin, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Communist revolution in China and the Korean War. There wasn't adequate revision time or room in my head for the Wall Street Crash, the Depression, the Sick Chicken Case, Potsdam, Yalta, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War, though I made revision notes on these things too. My history teacher's preferred teaching method was dictation. In O-level history I spent 2 years taking dictation of copious pages of notes, with a knowledge test every few weeks. Rote learning was important, but we did it ourselves. The teacher didn't give us lists of facts to remember because she presented it as if every word she said was equally and vitally important, so we had to make our own lists of key points to memorize.

The main difference is we actually had to learn everything to regurgitate in the exams, whilst with course work you only need to have a present understanding of it.

Exactly so. No-one is expected to have to or be able to remember anything these days. In an education driven by 'learning outcomes' the emphasis is always on skills, not knowledge. The assessment question is no longer "do you know...?" - nowadays it's "can you...?" Now it's not about knowing it's about doing. In my day you first had to know before you could do.

[TordelBack]

.. the Sick Chicken Case...

Give an account of 'the Sick Chicken case', including WTF it is/was, and list factors leading to my having no idea what you're talking about (10 marks).

[House of Usher]

Give an account of 'the Sick Chicken case', including WTF it is/was, and list factors leading to my having no idea what you're talking about (10 marks).

Exactly! What is the point of troubling British schoolchildren with something so obscure? My friends and I immediately saw the absurdity of being expected to engage with it. I looked up 'sick chicken case' on wikipedia, but unfortunately wikipedia says 'no'. But Google provides another route back to wikipedia, which gets you this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schechter_v._United_States

The following offers more clarity, though:

http://www.bookrags.com/history/america ... ub129.html

[House of Usher]

Sorry, not more clarity. I meant less.

The point being, my history teacher wasn't very discriminating when it came to deciding what was important for us to know and what wasn't. She was an equally poor judge of what was interesting for us and what wasn't. I don't think she cared about the latter: it wasn't about finding it interesting. It was about covering everything or she hadn't done her job properly.