Meditations

[The Abacus]

If school wasn't giving to 9-years-old children 20 pages of book, about happy little stork! Or five pages about happy little penguins!

I... don't understand what you are trying to say...

[Redafro]

Now I'm all for Occam's Razor (the rule that the simplest answer is usually the best), but it doesn't really define what "simplest" is. When I try to figure out why someone did something, I can come up with a dozen simple reasons and then I'll find out that the truth is just another simple reason I didn't consider.

I don't think that is quite what Occam's Razor is actually. As you've said, what is simplest? Simplest could be "because God did it." Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation: "The razor states that one should proceed to simpler theories until simplicity can be traded for greater explanatory power." It is that later half that gets forgotten oh so often. I think it is better to think of the Razor as "creating theories that fit all the categories of the problem." If you answer more than the categories of the problem, you violate it one way, but if you oversimplify, something I believe we do VERY often, you violate it the other way.

[borys610]

That 9-years-old children were given books, that were insulting their intelligence.

[Vurn]

In my family everybody reads books, so I'm doing so, also.
But I live in a country, where 9smth%(97 as I remember) of people isn't reading any books. They often are even afraid of reading.
Maybe that's because they were forced to read in school, and that's some kind of rebellion? But they are adults now!
After all I think that if school wasn't treating children like idiots, people would be reading. If school wasn't giving to 9-years-old children 20 pages of book, about happy little stork! Or five pages about happy little penguins!

god, the grammar

[Sublevel 114]

^I understand everything he wrote. :p

And:

[Raxas]

How dare some people not be native English speakers.

[borys610]

As Vurn is not native speaker too, I have to say, that it is my fault, and he isn't grammar nazi, if other people really have problems with understanding the text.

[The Abacus]

if other people really have problems with understanding the text.

It was only the two sentences I quoted that I didn't understand. Don't blame yourself for having bad grammar – spelling and grammar are very easy to mess up when in a foreign language.

[The Kakama]

As Vurn is not native speaker too, I have to say, that it is my fault, and he isn't grammar nazi, if other people really have problems with understanding the text.

That's okay, you have to remember English is not the sole language of the world (although it helps a lot if you do know how to speak/write fluently in it).

In my family everybody reads books, so I'm doing so, also.
But I live in a country, where 9smth%(97 as I remember) of people isn't reading any books. They often are even afraid of reading.
Maybe that's because they were forced to read in school, and that's some kind of rebellion? But they are adults now!
After all I think that if school wasn't treating children like idiots, people would be reading. If school wasn't giving to 9-years-old children 20 pages of book, about happy little stork! Or five pages about happy little penguins!

I'm afraid there just aren't a lot of effective ways to encourage kids to read, especially if they aren't good in language. As an example, we have a NILAM program by schools, which awards points to kids for reading books, where 1 point=1 book. The problem is how to prove the kids actually read the books because some of them are obviously going to lie about their actual number. So, they give this book, and kids have to write the book title, book publisher, author, number of pages, synopsis etc. in the book.
All this teaches kids is to copy all that from the first and last pages of the book. And it's going to be a lot easier to do the synopsis for a simple book, so the bulk of their points are going to come from your 5-20 page books.

[The Abacus]

In my family everybody reads books, so I'm doing so, also.
But I live in a country, where 9smth%(97 as I remember) of people isn't reading any books. They often are even afraid of reading.
Maybe that's because they were forced to read in school, and that's some kind of rebellion? But they are adults now!
After all I think that if school wasn't treating children like idiots, people would be reading. If school wasn't giving to 9-years-old children 20 pages of book, about happy little stork! Or five pages about happy little penguins!

I'm afraid there just aren't a lot of effective ways to encourage kids to read, especially if they aren't good in language. As an example, we have a NILAM program by schools, which awards points to kids for reading books, where 1 point=1 book. The problem is how to prove the kids actually read the books because some of them are obviously going to lie about their actual number. So, they give this book, and kids have to write the book title, book publisher, author, number of pages, synopsis etc. in the book.
All this teaches kids is to copy all that from the first and last pages of the book. And it's going to be a lot easier to do the synopsis for a simple book, so the bulk of their points are going to come from your 5-20 page books.

I assume not a lot is said on the middle of the book