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keisans-bold

Wait, what?
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Next?

1 min read
Besides learning more about getting better with Type 1 hinting, and doing accents and development on the fonts I have, I'm bored. Photoshop and Illustrator are so restricting with its lack of restrictions. Therefore I'm looking for collaborators for a cool project. I don't know what that project will be, but I'm looking for people to do it, and I'm fairly certain it will be awesome. If you have any project you want a crazy person working on, I may well be your man.
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Education

5 min read
In the world of education, there has been quite a stir for the past few years over 'education reform'. This reform is widely ill-conceived and has many contradictory voices from multiple facets of the education professions. 'More computers,' 'less computers,' 'ipads,' 'no tests,' 'no homework,' 'more homework,' 'longer school year,' 'much more funding,' and many other ideas have all been pitched to the public as means of improving performance (metrics) in schools. I am not posting this to give the answer to all of these problems, I am here to posit that as a culture we may be asking some of the wrong questions, and that by with a change in perspective an answer may become more evident.

To begin, we need to go back to the very beginning of the modern school system, and briefly examine the beginnings of the grading system. Before the modern classroom, students were taught by a mentor in their field, aspiring smiths were taught by apprenticing with a master smith, farmers by farmers, and the wealthiest would be able to hire a tutor to school in philosophy and the arts. During this period success or failure was largely a concrete, you either were able to perform a task, or not. Early failures were given to inexperience, and progressive failure was often seen as the mark of a poor teacher. No teacher would dare to teach more than five or six students for fear of any one lacking the individual attention they deserved. This individual approach would soon be tossed to make way for the industrial revolution. The demand for skilled labor suddenly outpaced what any tutor could possibly produce. Soon enough teachers were not regarded for their skills, but the number of students they could accommodate. The most obvious solution was to standardize education, anyone who fell behind was not a failure of the teacher to teach, but a failure of the student to learn. Grades became the de-facto state, and the quality of each individual's education quickly declined.

There have been several vast improvements since, but unfortunately going through their history is widely outside the scope of this essay. That being said, at almost no point in the history of modern education (since the industrial revolution) has the establishment in charge asked the students what they wanted to learn about. This seems like a triviality, that most (especially teens) will be stricken with apathy, leading nowhere productive. The concept of the modern apathy, however, relies on the fallacy that students do not want to learn. Even the students who are largely disruptive, and rude have a deep desire for better understanding, and for learning. The problems in the current system emerge mostly when we express what is being taught as learning for the sake of learning. To paraphrase the great Ken Robinson, if an alien were to come down to earth and try to figure out the purpose of education, it would seem as if the epitome of human life would be to become a college professor. That is to say, only those on the track to academia are most suited to reap the rewards of the current educational system. To a professor, the vast majority of the position is learning for the sake of learning. Though I have tremendous respect for those who are in academia, it is not a path that is suited for anywhere near the majority of students. Because they don't see a point to what they're doing, a student will simply not do it (I mean when was the last time you even looked at the quadratic formula?). Context needs to be provided for information to become relevant. If I were to have a high school course called 'intro to game design,' I could easily teach a tremendous number of students some of the great works of literature, as it has context within their interests. The same thing goes for a course called 'dances of the world,' in which students learn sociology and anthropology using dance as a vehicle. Ultimately the curriculum has not inherently changed, the lessons being taught are in literature, math, history, science, and language, all that has changed is that students are suddenly challenged to learn more, to expand and explore their interests, and to work collaboratively in multiple learning environments.

I understand that most of what I'm saying is mostly a pipe dream, or utter nonsense that would cost more than a fortune to implement effectively, but small solutions come from changing the question from 'how can we raise test scores' to 'how can the students better learn the materials.' The answer will never be as simple as 'give every student a laptop' or 'increase the amount of class time' as once again, these plans lose sight of context. The answer is a lot closer to 'train teachers to more effectively use computers in the classroom,' and 'increase the amount of time spent on the arts and fields outside of the core curriculum.' I don't have all the answers, or really any of the answers for what it's worth. I can, however, say with confidence that if we keep asking the same questions, we cannot move toward any new answers.

Also, apprehensive, totally one of the best mood icon things.
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Failure

1 min read
Today at 14:38, my beloved computer's logic board died. It was a good computer, loved by the community, and at large. Many days it served me well above the capacity for which it was designed. My computer was a great friend and companion, and it will be sorely missed.

Translation: I no longer have a computer that works more than 80% of the time. I'm going to take longer than normal to reply to messages, if at all. Please don't take offense to this. My life is kinda going to hell in a hand-basket, so please forgive me or not replying promptly, or if I say something stupid.
Also, I won't be posting anything for a fair while. I know I haven't posted anything in a fair while anyways, but shove it, I was working on it (but now it's kinda in limbo).

Thank you so much for your understanding.
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Website

1 min read
My site is officially up and running. (I know, I've been working on it forever). Anyways, I just found the time to finish up what needed finishing, and now I'm onto filling out my portfolio with awesome stuff. In any case, thanks to anyone who helped, and to everyone who now goes there, and especially to anyone who links back ;P

www.thenewaesthetic.com

-Ryan
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Next? by keisans-bold, journal

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