Prometheus 6

We are at our best when we have a strong sense of purpose. When my consciousness is doing its proper Work, grasping some of the immense complexity of the universe, and calculating how to increase its deftness - its energy flows into my subconscious and arouses all the forces of the subconscious mind.

When conscious purpose fails, everything else slowly breaks down.

This anglospheric would-be hegemon is on its last legs. As goes the oil, and the unjust, impractical, and just plain stoopid predatory war for oil appropriation, so goes the anglospheric cultural paradigm and good riddence I say. The system of *schooling* that the oil-glutted anglospheric hegemon spawned - has outlived its usefulness. It's time to go back to the drawing boards.

I'm a throw out some dots for your connective feedback P6.

Hiphop culture is a genuine developmental culture self-arising within the interpersonal communion of *blackness*.

Open source cultureis a genuine developmental culture self-arising within the interpersonal communion of *nerdiness*.

Structurally, functionally, and psychologically, these two subcultures are strikingly similar and differ primarily in their subject matters and implementing toolsets. Both are powerful movements which have been co-opted to some extent by the hegemon. Both are influential and capable of reversing hegemonic incursion if each learns to control the integrity and commercial potential of its respective cultural intellectual properties.

Here's the third dot in which the fusion of cultural worlds could occur. Matter of fact, the use of enabling technologies to improve access to effective curricular materials would almost ensure that fusion took place. Technologies, for example, such as those we employ for all this slashdotted shadetree philosophizing.....,

I was tracked in Jr. High school, but I was tracked in the "academically gifted" category. I found out in High School that the "academically gifted" class meant nothing.

I went to a engineering and science oriented high school. I spent 1 1/2 years catching up before I hit my stride. Despite the urgings of my counselors and a couple of teachers, one a self proclaimed redneck pig farmer, I stayed in the advanced college prep course and it paid off.

The teachers praised the advanced college prep and college prep tracks and had high expectations of us. They expected us to be tomorrows leaders. They held low expectations of the technical track students and let us and the tech track students know it. I knew it was wrong then, and that belief has gotten stronger as I have aged.

Having written that, if the parents haven't done what they could to get their kids to get into the higher classes and get the system changed, then the parents failed their kids.

Shame on the parents.

I admit I find it annoying (if not totally unexpected) that the students are the ones that got the ball rolling.

HELLO!!!!!!!!!!
The same thing is happening in Baltimore.
The "kids" are putting up one helluva fuss over school funding.

I admit I find it annoying (if not totally unexpected) that the students are the ones that got the ball rolling.

For all the wrong reasons.., and in the wrong ways - unless there was a solutions proposal that went unmentioned in the article.

Any stigma associated with a demonstrated lack of "love of learning" is strictly on Y.O.U.

You don't get to be both, socially preoccupied, and, academically high-achieving - unless you're truly exceptional. Once again, it's a question of conscious purpose. What conscious purpose is served by protesting the fact that by existing standards, you're an academic scrub, if you do nothing concrete to either elevate your game in terms of the existing academic standard, or, replace that system of development and measurement with something more effective?

The kids know what they need.

You remember that "Follow the Youth" nonsense nationalists were talking a little while back. They ALMOST hit it. If they had gone with "Support the Youth," I'd have lent them my full set of rhetorical skills.

Because in my lifetime, the important shit always got started around the young immortals.

So what precisely is it that they need?

What conscious purpose is served by protesting the fact that by existing standards, you're an academic scrub, if you do nothing concrete to either elevate your game in terms of the existing academic standard, or, replace that system of development and measurement with something more effective?

Just bears repeating.

But they are trying to replace the system with something more effective. They just don't know what that would be.

Youth as default early adopters of technology is for the good.

Youth as default early twisters of technological application, perhaps less so...,

i.e., if I saw more neuronal rather than hormonal use of xanga, the utes would get far more respect from me...,

Such as it is, I have to bring hiphop cultural production into a technology learning environment in order to put butts in seats and stimulate a love of technology learning, i.e., I have to subvert the popular cultural impulses in order to drive the constructive acquisition of subject matter expertise....,

pity, I didn't give a damn for popular culture back in my day, the power of technology and the love of power were self-evident motives unto themselves...,

So what precisely is it that they need?

In the narrow terms of this article, they need an education that will prepare them to deal in this society.

A little more broadly, they need to be recognized.

But they are trying to replace the system with something more effective. They just don't know what that would be.

Gotcha, it remains a subconscious work-in-progress.

in that case, their elders are due for an even more lenient pass as far as being end-products of a flawed system, perhaps nostalgic about that system and thus less able to discern those flaws in retrospect, and in scant few instances early adopters of jack-else that requires a significant investment in effort and attention?

In the narrow terms of this article, they need an education that will prepare them to deal in this society.

If this society knew how to deal, we wouldn't be looking down the barrels of an apocalyptic shotgun right now. In it's aggregate mass, society is too arrogant, lazy, and inflexible to change much of anything.

I'll agree with you that the inchoate urges of these youths need to be recognized, but perhaps even more urgently, some exemplary new models need to be articulated, scrutinized, and locally deployed.

Hey, I haven't given the parents grief; that was Darkstar, and even that was limited.

Yep, I gave the parents grief.

Why are their children fighting and not the parents?

A lot of folks just feel that's the way it is.

I don't think the kids are fighting for their future. I think their trying to get more comfortable right now. But that's pretty much what I accuse everyone of...