Americans don't do know what America is like, because no one can be bothered to remember what're state jurisdictions and what're federal jurisdictions except when we wish to be obstinate. And then, some states are further federalized themselves, meaning statement you make on policy will differ from county to county.

I'm fairly sure education is one of those state things though, often times county to county.

The general attitude in America towards university professor credentials is "F*cking smartass liberal elites and their 'colleges'."

Anti-intellectualism is a pretty big thing here.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 12th 2018 at 8:01:18 AM

Post of the Day #2332

Posted by Sereg on Thu, 12th Jul '12 1:48:55 PM - Post #247695 in the old thread

Definitely don’t want to bog this down in politics, but I have to clarify for the record that that heavily depends on which America you live in. Higher education has always been a fixture in my life, and considering the backlash against the avowed anti-intellectuals who currently manage the nation’s affairs...

Anyway, in the US, university professors are usually researchers in the field that they teacher, rather than education majors. There's actually a big tension between doing research and teaching, since it's the former that brings in the money for the university. Also, professors are often overworked, so they fob a lot of the teaching duties off on unpaid graduate students.

My college professors were all doctors, with several working toward Ph.D.s, so their schedules featured about two hours each day where they were just doing research and work on said Ph.D.s, which cut into their already loaded schedule of classes and office time.

Once upon a time, this show would have explored those ramifications on a constant basis, but as has been noted many times now, the new writers don't have consequence in mind quite as much as the old team did.

Part of the reason why I've stopped watching Season 8 is because I feel like at this point, the writers are just throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks and ignoring everything else, even those that by logic should be major plot points.

@Tobias I don't deny that teaching is a skill in and of itself. I just think in the case of Twi's school, the idea was that friendship itself as a subject is such an odd thing to teach that there's no precedant for it and as such the best people to try and teach are people who "get" it.

It's kind of an extension to this line the show is trying to walk where they need to include a friendship school, but they also understand that friendship as a thing can't be boiled down into books and standardized tests. The compromise they tried to make is saying that friendship CAN be somewhat taught, but only through unique, unorthodox means by people who are already experts.

The school was apparently thrust upon them. So I'm more sympathetic to them TRYING to make it work.

Edited by GNinja on Nov 12th 2018 at 5:17:57 PM

One of the things I actually like about the school is how it isn't JUST a school about learning how to do social stuff. There's topics related to the actual MAGIC of friendship and the history of it in Equestria.

Was it? Huh. That explains why they only pay lip service to it in like half the season's episodes.

Still did a far better job with it than Twilight's Useless Castle.

Thrust upon who? Are we talking about the characters or the writers?

Jim said on twitter that Hasbro wanted to do a school.

Hasbro wants playsets, so the show crew try to relegate those to two-parters and stuff. Happened with the Crystal Empire, with Cadance (they really wanted a pink alicorn to justify those pink celestia toys), Twilight's Useless Castle, and so on and so on.

If the school was a mandate from the Powers that Be, then kudos for the writers for getting some good material out of it. I'm fairly lukewarm towards the actual school episodes for a variety of reasons, but I've definitely enjoyed the characters — in fact, looking back, I wouldn't have minded less school episodes and more student episodes, if that makes sense. Yona and Smolder were great when used independently rather than as part of the school's background crowd, and I definitely hope we get more of that sort of thing in Season 9.

The school being mandated explains a lot.

It's also a bit amusing that it got plopped down right next to Twilight's other playset castle.

Edited by storyyeller on Nov 12th 2018 at 8:52:25 AM

It truly does. It makes me wonder how many episodes had already been conceived and put into concept before the mandate came down.

A lot of those weird "The teachers learn to stop sucking so hard at friendship while the kids just kinda sit to the side and take notes" episodes would make a lot more sense if they weren't actually meant to be School episodes.

Post of the Day #2333

Posted by Seraphem on Sat, 11th Jan '14 5:00:32 PM - Post #37496 in the new thread

This is why I never participate in RP forums. There's always that one person who treats it like it's real life. Happened at my DND group once, where one guy took his RP so seriously he tried to take out a fellow party member because he was Ultra Lawful Good and the party member had pickpocketed an NPC.

Huh, I stopped R Ping on here because they kept dying.

There is that too. Forum based R Ps always die out.

Speaking of which, I think Sereg ran a pony based RPG here a while back, but it died out pretty quickly.

Edited by storyyeller on Nov 13th 2018 at 11:58:48 AM

I want to hug Limestone. Just wanted to say that. Because she deserves it.

Most forum rpgs have migrated to Discord from what I've seen

I want Limestone to have a kid and name them Keylime.

Can't believe we have a Pie family in the show and not one of them is a delightful pun.

Ponies don't strictly have surnames, so it might not quite work out that way.

Still a cute idea though. (I still remember when everyone collectively headcanoned the Pie sisters as being named after the ghosts in Pac-Man.)

I did run a pony RPG on the forum, and yes, it died quickly. Still had plenty of ideas for it. Pity about that.

Anyway, I got a new job and a broken phone, so internet access has been worse than normal. That's why I've been scarce.

For those wishing for clarification about me and PMMM earlier: It's my favourite piece of fiction, Sayaka is my role model (for what many consider very bad reasons), I consider Kyouko a terrible person that people whitewash, am frustrated by the popularity of the Kyouko/Sayaka pairing which I consider inherently rape apology that is actively causing real world people to get abused (so if I don't protest it, I'd basically be a rapist myself, which I consider completely unacceptable), andthe ending is really specialto me,soI get annoyedby attepts to "explain it away".