My great grandmother passed about 2 months ago, so I understand Sarah. It is hard, but you will come out of it a stronger person. There is no use beating yourself up over it. There's no point. I hope you are well, best wishes Sarah.
The thread on torture - barbaric - is actually a fun discussion but it does worry me that so many people have blinders on and are equally convinced that other people have blinders on. How is this country supposed to be cohesive when we all are just basically floored by the flat-out idiocy of those on the other side? The unwillingness to give even an inch to any position other than our own? and the fact that this point of view is equally prominent between both sides?
Get local civic groups involved, use the press to raise a huge public stink. The ACLU provides free legal representation. Maybe a discrimination case as the two were treated differently. But before doing that you could attempt to get the charges withdrawn by dealing with the school and the other party's family.
I don't know what to tell your nephew. You want him to stand up for himself but recognize the unfair disadvantage he's at.
Also I'm not sure a minor can legally be charged with aggravated assault. That's a felony.
jla-x, this is totally fucked up, and doesn't surprise me one bit. i've almost always had issues with the police. i remember being 12, sitting in a military police station, being accused of robbing a home of several 20 dollar, silver certificates, having never been in the home, ever. turns out, the kid staying there for the summer, a nephew or something, stole them and blamed me. never got an apology from the cops.
jla-x, I'm glad your other sister is a lawyer. And stories like that are why I am probably not sending my kid to "school". The teachers and administrators are bullies, they would rather call the cops than think. Our public schools are terrible places.
jia-x They would have tossed me in Jail a long time ago...If they played by today's rules. I got into trouble all the time just for my Smile. I always had a smile on my face and people miss read it. I was once dragged up a flight of stairs from the school lunch room to the principal's office. Someone had unscrewed the lid of a salt shaker and when another student turned it upside down, the salt came pouring out. I was singled out because I had a smile on my face. Every time I ask him what I did wrong he just said, "You know what you did wrong." Then a teacher walked into his office and said you have the wrong student. This was only one of my miss adventures. I actually changed high schools my last year because I was promised by the administration I would not graduate. Not that I was a kid tearing shit up. I was just questioning authority.
<hashtag> NotAllPublicSchools, tint. My son's public school is awesome, and it's one of several awesome schools in our district and region.
jla-x, I'm sorry. It's incredibly frustrating how common responses to things like this are way out of scale with the circumstances. A playground scuffle is *not* reason for the police to be involved. Are the other kid's parents are driving it?
We took my MIL to a full tme care facility on Friday as she fell on Thursday and we could not get her up. It's been pretty much awful dealing with this, although it has brought us all together emotionally in a good way. I do wish suicide for those near death wasn't so controversial. I doubt any person would *choose* to live under the circumstances that so many face at the end of life - an earlier and more peaceful, controllable, and dignified exit seems like such a better choice.
I'm thinking maybe professional practice courses should be taught more than just one semester... and if you enroll in IDP, that money you pay goes for continuing ed in professional practice at your local AIA chapter.
Donna, in my opinion, ALL public schools are still based on industrial models and use punishment, reward, and competition as primary motivating forces and are therefore breeding grounds for bullying and intolerance. Maybe I'm not seeing it right, but it seems schools are one of the most violent places a kid can be. Students aren't meant to be in school all day in my opinion.
A former employee of mine just started a classroomless school. They aren't serving my kid's age yet, but I would love to send her there, and then supplement with private lessons. My kid is only 2.
I agree that kids aren't meant to be "in school" all day, meaning in a classroom sitting still. I do wish my son's school had incorporated more outdoor recess time into their day, though as they get older it's less necessary - the majority of 6th graders now are doing after-school sports so they are getting physical activity into their day anyway. I'm a big believer in unstructured play as a learning experience.
But those approaches are unrelated to punishment, reward, competition, violence, and bullying. My son's school is the IB program, which is about student-driven inquiry and emphasizes tolerance and understanding across all cultures (lots of right-wingers dislike IB because it does not teach American Exceptionalism - it teaches that all cultures have value).
But this isn't an anomaly; IB is becoming more and more mainstream among public schools. Traverse City, Michigan now has two IB elementary schools, and I have heard of other public school systems going all-IB. There is no way for bullying and intolerance to thrive in an IB program - since 2nd grade my son has been saying, as have other students, that you just can't be mean to each other in his school. It's hard to believe but true: there is just very little mean-spiritedness and virtually no teasing one another based on difference in his entire K-8 public school. There are some girl cliques that do typical tween girl stuff like subtle power politics, but I've seen many girls just step out of that system and refuse to engage it - which is pretty sophisticated behavior for a 10 year old.
Also, no grades: they get a rank in each subject of Meeting Expectations, Not Meeting Expectations, or Exceeding Expectations.
A friend of mine was literally just talking to me about how he hates school because he isn't good at it. I told him you don't have to be a genius to do good in school, just turn in every graded assignment and study hard for tests. I asked him if he did all of his homework and he said no. In my mind I was thinking "exactly". The problem isn't always the school system, although I agree there needs to be education reforms. My opinion is that the problem is in work ethic. Laziness breeds bad education, and an overall worse standard of living, especially in a world that is hurtling towards the majority of people having a college education.
And Non Sequitur, *that* is the issue we still, as a country, haven't figured out how to admit to ourselves so we can fix it: poverty leads to terrible school environments, full stop. It's not about race or location or curriculum or teachers' unions: it's been shown over and over and over that kids from impoverished families have terrible school outcomes. Poverty leads to instability leads to social chaos.
I like IB programs too, and it sounds like you have a great school for your kid. There is an IB program in a school here that I am familiar with and it is great, it is a private school and expensive. Some public schools are doing a great job, no doubt, but if I could deezign a school, I would stray from the model completely, start a new paradigm.
CDarch, maybe it isn't laziness, just what is laziness? Sounds like your friend lacks motivation, I would investigate the root of that.
perhaps laziness is lack of self-motivation or discipline? surely at some point a person should be held responsible for their own decisions rather than expecting someone else to coach them in the right direction?
though i also think nobody is going to make it on there own, and everyone needs a bit of help and guidance too.
that 'sign for the firm' really is weird. i think the broader issue is that in this environment we want to make licensure easier. assuming it's a fairly young person who recently passed the ARE, they're in over their head. it's seems too likely that the boss will just kick them out if they ask for better compensation and greater control, and pick up a bim-wit or cad monkey or other production staff (whatever we're called now) content to work 60 hours a week for $40k a year.
they aren't paid to be a good architect, they're paid to be a rubber stamp. in a highly competitive industry, that rubber stamp might not have any value anymore.
i would comment there, but i don't think i have anything useful to add for the person asking, except to get out of the profession. sometimes i wish i was more optimistic.
Yes, people can and should be held responsible for their own decisions. But here is a touchstone for me in understanding the challenges of systemic poverty: when people were moved into public housing in Philly in the 90s they had to go through a course that taught them maintenance things. And I'm not talking about how to relight the pilot light on your furnace, it was things like "If you don't wipe up crumbs on your counter, you're more likely to attract cockroaches" and "If the washing machine leaks on the floor, you have to dry up all of the water". These are what people with a typical US middle class upbringing would not even think of as "life skills", but just as common sense. But even those "common sense" things need to be taught, and many occupants of public housing had simply never been raised in a household that would teach them these things.
It's not that they're stupid, it's that they don't know what they don't know. In the '30s doctors told people all about the benefits of smoking, and it was understood as common knowledge. If you've never been told that the damage of smoking outweighs the benefit, how would you know? If you've never been taught how to drive a stick shift, how would you know?
So you make life decisions based on what you know. For a tween boy I knew of in Philly (he was a friend of mine's Little Brother), his fount of life knowledge was his mom, who taught him how to graffiti train cars.
We can't assume that other people know or base any of their decisions on any knowledge that we think they "must" know. That's a mistaken assumption.
The criminalization of poverty is big business. Keeping people poor means keeping them living at the fringes of society where they are highly susceptible to running afoul of the rules simply because of economics. So jay walking, unregistered vehicle, open container, public urination, loitering, etc. become sources of revenue for municipalities strapped for cash by crashed pump and dump economies, bad economic polices, austerity budgets, not to mention the private corporate prison complex that profits from locking people up, the civilian military complex supplying weapons of war to police, and so on.
Meanwhile Jamie Diamond is building another megamansion in the Hamptons next to all his criminal accomplices.
the stamping drawings thread is getting interesting. I hope the OP keeps contributing. I feel like these issues will come up more as our field gets more global.
I just randomly got a thread update email from archinect and thought I would pop-in to see if this was still active; amazing to see the same group of people still posting here after all these years. Greetings from a used-to-be-much-more-frequent-poster (although mostly in the name that arch. building thread). Cheers.
came across this guy today...makes some nice architectural videos. There are about thirty of them. enjoy and consider it an end of the year present and no non of them involve torture...well maybe architectural torture for those of us always seeking out the next great project. fotp@predok.com.br
Comsidering how the anonymous nature of the net allows hidden alter-egos to flower, curt is probably a total jerk in real life. That's why I use my real name here - I wouldn't want anyone to get the impression that I'm actually a nice guy.
Just found out that John Pawson is not an architect. Some British government nanny board called up a magazine who referred to Pawson as an architect (he has never revered to himself that way) and demanded they stop. Seems he worked with a Japanese architect and had some formal training but never got his license. He creates beautiful, sensitive, minimalist modern architecture but can't be called an architect. Seems he is a really down to earth person with no ego who is happy to be called a designer. He has project architects in his firm that report to him. Go figure.
Volunteer, this was RIBA not AIA? I hope. Pawson's work is beautiful.
I just read a job posting for some sort of facilities planner at a university or somesuch that requested that applicants have "an architect's license issued by the American Institute of Architects". I slapped my head in disbelief.
Donna, It was the ARB (Architects Registration Board) of the UK. I believe they are affiliated with the RIBA, so this is strictly a UK embarrassment. Pawson has a good-sized office in London.
Thread Central
Aw, Sarah, I'm so sorry.
The thread on torture - barbaric - is actually a fun discussion but it does worry me that so many people have blinders on and are equally convinced that other people have blinders on. How is this country supposed to be cohesive when we all are just basically floored by the flat-out idiocy of those on the other side? The unwillingness to give even an inch to any position other than our own? and the fact that this point of view is equally prominent between both sides?
so sorry sarah. my condolences.
Get local civic groups involved, use the press to raise a huge public stink. The ACLU provides free legal representation. Maybe a discrimination case as the two were treated differently. But before doing that you could attempt to get the charges withdrawn by dealing with the school and the other party's family.
I don't know what to tell your nephew. You want him to stand up for himself but recognize the unfair disadvantage he's at.
Also I'm not sure a minor can legally be charged with aggravated assault. That's a felony.
jla-x, this is totally fucked up, and doesn't surprise me one bit. i've almost always had issues with the police. i remember being 12, sitting in a military police station, being accused of robbing a home of several 20 dollar, silver certificates, having never been in the home, ever. turns out, the kid staying there for the summer, a nephew or something, stole them and blamed me. never got an apology from the cops.
jla-x, I'm glad your other sister is a lawyer. And stories like that are why I am probably not sending my kid to "school". The teachers and administrators are bullies, they would rather call the cops than think. Our public schools are terrible places.
jia-x They would have tossed me in Jail a long time ago...If they played by today's rules. I got into trouble all the time just for my Smile. I always had a smile on my face and people miss read it. I was once dragged up a flight of stairs from the school lunch room to the principal's office. Someone had unscrewed the lid of a salt shaker and when another student turned it upside down, the salt came pouring out. I was singled out because I had a smile on my face. Every time I ask him what I did wrong he just said, "You know what you did wrong." Then a teacher walked into his office and said you have the wrong student. This was only one of my miss adventures. I actually changed high schools my last year because I was promised by the administration I would not graduate. Not that I was a kid tearing shit up. I was just questioning authority.
<hashtag> NotAllPublicSchools, tint. My son's public school is awesome, and it's one of several awesome schools in our district and region.
jla-x, I'm sorry. It's incredibly frustrating how common responses to things like this are way out of scale with the circumstances. A playground scuffle is *not* reason for the police to be involved. Are the other kid's parents are driving it?
We took my MIL to a full tme care facility on Friday as she fell on Thursday and we could not get her up. It's been pretty much awful dealing with this, although it has brought us all together emotionally in a good way. I do wish suicide for those near death wasn't so controversial. I doubt any person would *choose* to live under the circumstances that so many face at the end of life - an earlier and more peaceful, controllable, and dignified exit seems like such a better choice.
They want to keep you alive so they can keep charging for the services required. U$A!
WTF
^ No confidence or no self-respect? Certainly no experience.
I'm thinking maybe professional practice courses should be taught more than just one semester... and if you enroll in IDP, that money you pay goes for continuing ed in professional practice at your local AIA chapter.
Donna, in my opinion, ALL public schools are still based on industrial models and use punishment, reward, and competition as primary motivating forces and are therefore breeding grounds for bullying and intolerance. Maybe I'm not seeing it right, but it seems schools are one of the most violent places a kid can be. Students aren't meant to be in school all day in my opinion.
A former employee of mine just started a classroomless school. They aren't serving my kid's age yet, but I would love to send her there, and then supplement with private lessons. My kid is only 2.
My wife runs a pre-school programme in the most impoverished neighbourhood in my city... The stories... jebus.
I agree that kids aren't meant to be "in school" all day, meaning in a classroom sitting still. I do wish my son's school had incorporated more outdoor recess time into their day, though as they get older it's less necessary - the majority of 6th graders now are doing after-school sports so they are getting physical activity into their day anyway. I'm a big believer in unstructured play as a learning experience.
But those approaches are unrelated to punishment, reward, competition, violence, and bullying. My son's school is the IB program, which is about student-driven inquiry and emphasizes tolerance and understanding across all cultures (lots of right-wingers dislike IB because it does not teach American Exceptionalism - it teaches that all cultures have value).
But this isn't an anomaly; IB is becoming more and more mainstream among public schools. Traverse City, Michigan now has two IB elementary schools, and I have heard of other public school systems going all-IB. There is no way for bullying and intolerance to thrive in an IB program - since 2nd grade my son has been saying, as have other students, that you just can't be mean to each other in his school. It's hard to believe but true: there is just very little mean-spiritedness and virtually no teasing one another based on difference in his entire K-8 public school. There are some girl cliques that do typical tween girl stuff like subtle power politics, but I've seen many girls just step out of that system and refuse to engage it - which is pretty sophisticated behavior for a 10 year old.
Also, no grades: they get a rank in each subject of Meeting Expectations, Not Meeting Expectations, or Exceeding Expectations.
And Non Sequitur, *that* is the issue we still, as a country, haven't figured out how to admit to ourselves so we can fix it: poverty leads to terrible school environments, full stop. It's not about race or location or curriculum or teachers' unions: it's been shown over and over and over that kids from impoverished families have terrible school outcomes. Poverty leads to instability leads to social chaos.
I like IB programs too, and it sounds like you have a great school for your kid. There is an IB program in a school here that I am familiar with and it is great, it is a private school and expensive. Some public schools are doing a great job, no doubt, but if I could deezign a school, I would stray from the model completely, start a new paradigm.
CDarch, maybe it isn't laziness, just what is laziness? Sounds like your friend lacks motivation, I would investigate the root of that.
perhaps laziness is lack of self-motivation or discipline? surely at some point a person should be held responsible for their own decisions rather than expecting someone else to coach them in the right direction?
though i also think nobody is going to make it on there own, and everyone needs a bit of help and guidance too.
that 'sign for the firm' really is weird. i think the broader issue is that in this environment we want to make licensure easier. assuming it's a fairly young person who recently passed the ARE, they're in over their head. it's seems too likely that the boss will just kick them out if they ask for better compensation and greater control, and pick up a bim-wit or cad monkey or other production staff (whatever we're called now) content to work 60 hours a week for $40k a year.
they aren't paid to be a good architect, they're paid to be a rubber stamp. in a highly competitive industry, that rubber stamp might not have any value anymore.
i would comment there, but i don't think i have anything useful to add for the person asking, except to get out of the profession. sometimes i wish i was more optimistic.
Yes, people can and should be held responsible for their own decisions. But here is a touchstone for me in understanding the challenges of systemic poverty: when people were moved into public housing in Philly in the 90s they had to go through a course that taught them maintenance things. And I'm not talking about how to relight the pilot light on your furnace, it was things like "If you don't wipe up crumbs on your counter, you're more likely to attract cockroaches" and "If the washing machine leaks on the floor, you have to dry up all of the water". These are what people with a typical US middle class upbringing would not even think of as "life skills", but just as common sense. But even those "common sense" things need to be taught, and many occupants of public housing had simply never been raised in a household that would teach them these things.
It's not that they're stupid, it's that they don't know what they don't know. In the '30s doctors told people all about the benefits of smoking, and it was understood as common knowledge. If you've never been told that the damage of smoking outweighs the benefit, how would you know? If you've never been taught how to drive a stick shift, how would you know?
So you make life decisions based on what you know. For a tween boy I knew of in Philly (he was a friend of mine's Little Brother), his fount of life knowledge was his mom, who taught him how to graffiti train cars.
We can't assume that other people know or base any of their decisions on any knowledge that we think they "must" know. That's a mistaken assumption.
i thought we were talking about CD.Arch's friend. i certainly don't disagree with anything you wrote, or tint's philosophy on education.
Sorry, curt - I was taking on the more general version of the common comment "Why don't those people take responsibility for themselves?"
The criminalization of poverty is big business. Keeping people poor means keeping them living at the fringes of society where they are highly susceptible to running afoul of the rules simply because of economics. So jay walking, unregistered vehicle, open container, public urination, loitering, etc. become sources of revenue for municipalities strapped for cash by crashed pump and dump economies, bad economic polices, austerity budgets, not to mention the private corporate prison complex that profits from locking people up, the civilian military complex supplying weapons of war to police, and so on.
Meanwhile Jamie Diamond is building another megamansion in the Hamptons next to all his criminal accomplices.
the stamping drawings thread is getting interesting. I hope the OP keeps contributing. I feel like these issues will come up more as our field gets more global.
Well done, curt.
I just randomly got a thread update email from archinect and thought I would pop-in to see if this was still active; amazing to see the same group of people still posting here after all these years. Greetings from a used-to-be-much-more-frequent-poster (although mostly in the name that arch. building thread). Cheers.
came across this guy today...makes some nice architectural videos. There are about thirty of them. enjoy and consider it an end of the year present and no non of them involve torture...well maybe architectural torture for those of us always seeking out the next great project. fotp@predok.com.br
enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy
foto@predok.com.br
oops...oops...
The two year old, $1 billion Barclays Center in Brooklyn has roof leaks.
phuyake! - you going to start that thread back up again? tough since it's pretty easy to look up images originating on the internets...
curtkram, I am constantly amazed at your ability to calmly and logically engage people with whom you disagree.
Oh, and hi phuyake! Nice to see you. We have a podcast now, Archinect Sessions.
donna,
it's a phase. i'm sure i'll outgrow it.
Comsidering how the anonymous nature of the net allows hidden alter-egos to flower, curt is probably a total jerk in real life. That's why I use my real name here - I wouldn't want anyone to get the impression that I'm actually a nice guy.
i don't think i've ever claimed to be anything more than a complete asshole
http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/nfl/colts/2014/12/15/indysportsday-colts-andrew-luck-trash-talk/20435387/
That architect-to-be Andrew Luck is a class act, to be sure.
Just as I suspected, curt's planting landmines.
registered architects now free to work between US, Canada, and Mexico:
http://www.dezeen.com/2014/12/16/united-states-canada-and-mexico-to-recognise-each-others-architects/
Also on Archinect 2 weeks ago:
NCARB announces reciprocity program across the US, Canada and Mexico
http://archinect.com/news/article/115137911/ncarb-announces-reciprocity-program-across-the-us-canada-and-mexico
I read that as "registered architects now to work for free between US, Canada, and Mexico"
Just found out that John Pawson is not an architect. Some British government nanny board called up a magazine who referred to Pawson as an architect (he has never revered to himself that way) and demanded they stop. Seems he worked with a Japanese architect and had some formal training but never got his license. He creates beautiful, sensitive, minimalist modern architecture but can't be called an architect. Seems he is a really down to earth person with no ego who is happy to be called a designer. He has project architects in his firm that report to him. Go figure.
If he does great work and they force people to call him a designer, they devalue their own profession. Typical small-minded turf war crap.
Volunteer, this was RIBA not AIA? I hope. Pawson's work is beautiful.
I just read a job posting for some sort of facilities planner at a university or somesuch that requested that applicants have "an architect's license issued by the American Institute of Architects". I slapped my head in disbelief.
Donna, It was the ARB (Architects Registration Board) of the UK. I believe they are affiliated with the RIBA, so this is strictly a UK embarrassment. Pawson has a good-sized office in London.
i think we should give the term 'designer' more prestige than 'architect.' that would solve a lot of problems.
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