Keep your opinions to yourself sir!

[jamesbrown]

Having taught in several universities, the idea that they (the institutions, the staff, the students) are more lefty or woke today than they were several decades years ago is stupid. They've always been dominated by, er, young people, who tend to be more left leaning and academics are mostly a bunch of lefties too and they always have been.

[SueEllen]

Thing is in universities you only hear the vocal minority, everyone else is busy getting on with their lives.

[OwlHoot]

Catch-22. The person leading the discussion has a limited and not-fully informed view of the world, plus the usual prejudices of the modern Left (I know many teachers, they are almost all cast from the same mould). As a proto-Neanderthal grammar school pupil myself, I was involved in many discussions and debates, but I was taught by teachers who had been out in the real world (almost all would have done National Service at the very least) and were working to a much looser curriculum that they could deliver in any way they thought best.

Yes, there was rote learning but only of the basic mechanics of words and arithmetic which were then used to understand deeper subjects. They did no harm since they were not the end objective unlike, say, schools ipre-1939. Mr Gradgrind was redundant a long time ago.

So yes, I admit my views are almost certainly well out of date in the modern world; but I suggest I had a far better and wider education than any current 20-year old.

The snag is there are so many career opportunities for bright and/or competent people these days, especially women, that were not available say 50 or more years ago that teaching as a profession no longer has the cachet or talent pool to draw on that it once did.

So, on average, teachers these days are probably are not as competent as they once were, although no doubt some are and of course there were some pretty dire teachers in the past as well.

Maybe advances in AI and VR will soon lead to a resurgence of better quality "cyber assisted" teaching.

[NigelJK]

Are you genuinely this thick? How many calories does a field of wheat provide? How many cows/sheep can be supported on that field? Cow many calories do you get from a cow.

So you don't have any then? Thouth so. Repeating the food industry mantra about Calories just shows how far from the tree you have fallen.

See if you can guess which nutrient, the lack of which will kill you quickest, is?

[d000hg]

So you don't have any then? ?

Do you have scientific studies that show fire is hot, trapping you hand in a car door hurts?

The "show me proof" line is one of the most basic troll lines, come on at least make an effort.

[NigelJK]

Asserting your opinion as truth is also a troll tactic.

To my knowledge the only peer reviewed experiment on nutrition was conducted at the outbreak of WWII. It proved, in mice, that deprived of each of Carbs, Fat and Proteins. The mice deprived of Carbs and Proteins died a lot quicker than those deprived of Fat.

Setting fire to foodstuff to give the calories is an outdated approach to nutrition.

[d000hg]

Asserting your opinion as truth is also a troll tactic.

It's the accepted truth of the entire farming community for centuries. A farmer doesn't look to theoretical studies, he knows how many tons of wheat he can harvest from his land and he knows how many sheep/cows/goats he can support on it. Find yourself an almanac.

If you want something that is accepted science, well ask yourself if the food chain is lossless? Nope, entropy. If it's not lossless, then every level in the food chain means your return is smaller - a cow eats as much food as 20 people but only provides enough food to feed 10 (or whatever).
This is why your silly "show me a peer reviewed study on the very specific question I ask" shows a fundamental lack of scientific understanding. From first principles some things are self-evident. We don't have studies "if I throw rocks in the air will they come back down" because we already answered it.

Boring now. Go get yourself some chickens for your garden and do some empirical research. Come back in a couple of years.

[malvolio]

It's the accepted truth of the entire farming community for centuries. A farmer doesn't look to theoretical studies, he knows how many tons of wheat he can harvest from his land and he knows how many sheep/cows/goats he can support on it. Find yourself an almanac.

If you want something that is accepted science, well ask yourself if the food chain is lossless? Nope, entropy. If it's not lossless, then every level in the food chain means your return is smaller - a cow eats as much food as 20 people but only provides enough food to feed 10 (or whatever).
This is why your silly "show me a peer reviewed study on the very specific question I ask" shows a fundamental lack of scientific understanding. From first principles some things are self-evident. We don't have studies "if I throw rocks in the air will they come back down" because we already answered it.

Boring now. Go get yourself some chickens for your garden and do some empirical research. Come back in a couple of years.

Yes, but up until about 400 years ago it was merely an observation, nobody knew why. And even now, it is only just beginning to gain a demonstrable scientific explanation.

The chain is observation, theory, experimentation, hypothesis, demonstration, proof, fact. Your chosen argument is actually still at the observation stage.

HTH. BIDI...

[d000hg]

Yes, but up until about 400 years ago it was merely an observation, nobody knew why. And even now, it is only just beginning to gain a demonstrable scientific explanation.

The chain is observation, theory, experimentation, hypothesis, demonstration, proof, fact. Your chosen argument is actually still at the observation stage.

HTH. BIDI...

You can't 'prove' many real life things in the formal sense. You can only draw empirical conclusions. Every cow you investigate will produce less food than it consumes because cows are not 100% efficient but you can't write a formal proof of a cow.
This is the sort of reasoning people use when they say "evolution is just a theory", or "you've never seen a black hole so you can't prove they are real".
It's great for trolls and deniers who don't understand science but it doesn't help a great deal.

[malvolio]

You can't 'prove' many real life things in the formal sense. You can only draw empirical conclusions. Every cow you investigate will produce less food than it consumes because cows are not 100% efficient but you can't write a formal proof of a cow.
This is the sort of reasoning people use when they say "evolution is just a theory", or "you've never seen a black hole so you can't prove they are real".
It's great for trolls and deniers who don't understand science but it doesn't help a great deal.

You think I was being serious? There is always fun to be had with semantics.

But yes, you can prove things. That chain of actions I posted cna and will lead to an inescapable truth. It works for Chemistry and macro-physics, for example, but it doesn't work for Biology because you always run into something that doesn't apparently really make sense or micro-physics because we don't yet have the tools to turn theory into hypothesis at that level.