I loath certification. I will say that up front. I do not believe in the process. I do not believe in the top down mentality behind it. I am a proponent of interest based self directed learning. However to that end developing reputation is also important and whether you are one that believes in taking classes and getting “certified” by some kind of academic authority or whether you believe in self directed learning and developing a portfolio of your works reputation is still the basis of both stratagies; it’s simply used differently. This is where maidsafe comes in. On maidsafe not only we’ll have access to all the informatoin and educational materials the internet can provide but also access (hopefully) to a reputation building system which can be used to certify and authenticate we know what we’re talking about AND to validate our works as we produce them. So that people don’t get locked into the “educational” deadlock they’ve been in for decades now. They can study online, learn the skills, demonstrate their knowledge to their peers online or at sheduled meetups and be validated or they can simply produce works which again would validate that they know what they claim to know. If you claim to know woodworking skills and can demonstrate you can build all kinds of stuff then it doesn’t really matter if you have a piece of paper or not saying you went and took several classes to get those skills or if you simply studied on your own. If you have the skills and can prove you have them then that’s what matters. Conversely if you can’t prove you have the skills, or prove you don’t have them by producing bad works then it doesn’t matter if you DO have the diploma or not because your producing bad products and services. Ever considered how things would work out if we say rated our doctor’s performance? What about your lawyer? What about teachers? People with obvious certification but who don’t obviously perform to the satisfaction and standards expected of them. What if skills were peer reviewed instead of certified by an authority? Just like code is peer reviewed when it’s submitted to github. No one asks where a programmer gets his training, all they care about is can the programmer code or not?
Maybe you could post as a reply to this post (with paragraphs)
I thought @Blindsite2k was talking about maidsafe as a platform for certifying all sorts of educational achievement, not certification of SAFE expertise specifically. The question would be what makes SAFE a superior platform to the web for the sort of thing folks like Udacity.com or Kahn Academy are trying to do. [edit: or even more traditional distance learning like universities’ online programs] If they or someone like them were to build applications on SAFE, how would it make their mission easier?
Off the top of my head? The reputation system that is likely to be built into maidsafe would certify people know what they know and could validate skills and works as I was describing there. Also more data storage for educational materials. You could host tons of lectures and educational videos which could be loaded instantly. You could host archived historical videos and media, public domain works, podcasts, educational materials in different formats, the list goes on. Although I think the university as we know it is a thing of the past. As I said I’m not a supporter of top down acedmic authority.
What’s the point of gaining educational achievement save to gain reputation? And what’s the point of having that reputation if it doesn’t result in good works? The assumption is that if you have good education achievements you will produce good works but I’d say that’s a false assumption that needs to be challenged, and challenged quite regularly in fact. Moreover these so called educational acheivements are far too standardized and top down. I’d say your ability to produce works and do the job is far more important than whether you got a diploma from some institution. And moreover this is exactly my point: To have skills peer reviewed rather than certified by a central institution of one kind or another.
Note: I would like to point out for the sake of clarity that above when I refer to “educational achievement” I am referring to certification. Not to actual learning or simply gaining an education. Gaining an education of any kind and pursuing your passions is always of value.
I think I would prefer my surgeon or airline pilot to be certified to be honest. I’d also prefer kids to get a proper education in a school, rather than at home, to prevent the kind of illiteracy and lack of social mixing which is common with this method - another area we disagree on. I don’t see all this propaganda stuff you talk about or what the “top down” education problems etc are, or what the alternative is…“bottom up?” Peer review is fine for adults and it exists already, as does all the educational stuff on the internet. The only way Maidsafe would help really is by giving access to many more people. .
Certification is a basic starting point to demonstrate you have the relevant knowledge in order to practise in your chosen field. Everything else you mention such as peer review and reputation comes with demonstrating the acquired knowledge and skills after getting a proper education…
Certification is important and some people definitely need certifying…in more ways than one.
[quote=“Blindsite2k, post:5, topic:1468”]
Note: I would like to point out for the sake of clarity that above when I refer to “educational achievement” I am referring to certification.[/quote] “Certification” is, to put it simply, when someone else, usually an organization, vouches for you. It’s easy to piggyback that off of systematic education, but the two are far from the same thing. Perhaps if you offered a case study it would be clear what if any role SAFE would have in this aside from just being a new medium for the same old things.
The way I see this from MaidSafe perspective is that MaidSafe will technically certify an app. So not privacy leaking, not leaking security, memory, stealing credentials etc. as well as begin open sourced, Qa certified etc. So essentially an app is SAFE to use in terms of maintaining Privacy, Security and Freedom
I do not see MaidSafe making decisions on how ‘good’ or ‘evil’ an app is. That is up to others AFAIK. So not whether its easy to use hard to use, makes sense etc.
Certified to be honest? Are you serious? If they weren’t honest they’d lose business fast, like after the first couple dealings and probably get sued in the process. You don’t get granted a reputation for being honest by some institution and moreover I would never trust such a titlte in the first place as it was probably bought instead of earned.
First what gives you the right to decide what mode of education ANYONE chooses to adopt? Second your assumption that homeschoolers and unschoolers are illiterate is false. We live in a literate society, do you not think that a child would want to read in order to interact with society at some point? Perhaps in order to use the internet or to read for pleasure or to do research? I also find your statement rather ironic given the levels of illiteracy resulting from the public school system. Lack of “social mixing?” Again what are you smoking? Unschoolers get out and interact with people all the time. Have you never heard of a mentor? Or getting out to go to the library or various social groups? Try doing some actual research before you jump to all these conclusions.
http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/earl_stevens.html
http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html
http://www.modernalternativemama.com/blog/2012/10/19/10-myths-about-unschooling/
I think you’re missing my point entirely here. 1. Why is peer review only for adults? Do you not think a child could learn using the same model of self directed learning an adult could? 2. As for certification do you not understand that I oppose centralized authorities having control over educational “certification” and reputational validation, especially when it is equired at exorbatant costs. The point here is to create a reputation system that allows people to develop reputation for their aquired knowledge, skills and works that is decentralized and not controlled by any one entity. Similar to how we created Diaspora, or Friendica so that we could free social media from the control of social media giants like facebook and we are creating maidsafe to decentralize the internet so that our freedom of speech, our data storage and our communications won’t be under the control of giant corporations, web hosting services and ISPs.
Sorry these two lines maid my brain hurt because of the logic error. Say I’m interested in something and therefore I study it. I don’t care about proving it to you or not. I just learn it. So say I become an amazing artist and create awesome drawings and present them to an art gallery. Is that not a form of reputation building? That’s demonstrating a skill and my knowledge. Say I become a carpenter and build some furniture. Is THAT not demonstrating a skill? Yet you assert the starting point is getting certified by some authority BEFORE one can start demonstrating one’s abilities. I’m sorry but no, learning the skill and demonstrating the skill comes BEFORE the reputation (certification) not after. And assuming the only way to get an “education” is to go through the school system is a false assumption indeed if not outright bigoted.
Seriously? It’s pretty blatant but then a fish doesn’t really know it’s wet now does it.
http://www.sntp.net/education/leipzig_connection.htm
http://jeffryfisher.net/Statesman/Education/Propaganda.htm
Can you give me a diploma? No. You can vouch for me as an individual which gives me reputation however you cannot give me a certificate which only a centralized educationa institution can bestow. No in that capacity certification and vouching are not the same. People don’t spend thousands of dollars to go to college and university, they don’t go into DEBT for something that can be equivicably granted to them by their peers. Furthermore you can have the knowledge, you can even demonstrate having the knowledge to other people, but if you don’t get certified by some institution you aren’t recognized. I could learn everything there could be about theraputic massage, I could demonstrate that skill by practicing on others and by taking tests even, I could heal a lot of people, but unless I get certified by some institution, not just my peers, then I can’t officially hold the title of being called “certified.” So no in this day and age being cerified is not the same as simply being vouched for. If that were the case it wouldn’t be illegal to practice medicine if you weren’t certified by an institution, you could be certified by those who you gave good service to or who knew you had the medical skills.
Good to know but not quite what we’re talking about here man. This is more in lines of how maidsafe could be used in terms of being used to creating and promoting educational systems. Using the reputation system to validate knowledge and skills, disseminate knowledge, network people together to exchange information, that kind of thing.
Are you serious in misconstruing what I said so ridiculously, just to construct a straw man to knock down? I also at no point claimed the right to decide what mode of education anyone chooses to adopt - you really are consistently, extremely dishonest in your arguments.
Really…lol, that takes the biscuit given the spelling in your posts - home schooled?.
You advise me to do some research, then post links to various whacko religious web sites - this does not constitute research, it is rather propaganda - now that is ironic.
The vast majority of home schooling occurs for religious reasons, as the links you posted highlight - “The Foundation for Truth in Reality”…lol
Seriously every viewpoint you have expressed is entirely consistent with the Republican Tea Party, in fact they are probably more akin to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It is true that some kids excel at things like spelling bees and the like, but scientific knowledge is usually sadly lacking; nobody’s going to win a Science prize making a diorama of Jesus riding a dinosaur now are they?
Because the peer of a 7 year old child would be another 7 year old child - so it’s the Dumb and Dumber model you are advocating?
No I don’t and I think you are probably referring to the disgusting “Alpha Courses” used to indoctrinate children into religion by having every single subject slip in Jesus somewhere.
What logic error? You just decide to completely ignore the inconvenient examples of a surgeon and airline pilot then because you realise that’s where your argument fails completely?
Anyway, going off topic now, and although I enjoy stomping all over bad memes, with you it’s becoming a never ending game of whack a mole.
Dishonest in my arguments? You use that phrase a lot but aren’t very clear what you mean. However that aside after rereading I will admit that I misunderstood what you said “…certified to be honest.” I apologize. I overreacted in that case.
No public schooled for the most part.
Whacko religious websites? I posted an unschooling documentary and in no way was the family in it overly religious. They might have had some faith of some kind of another I don’t know, a lot of people do, but it wasn’t overt or affecting their children’s education or the documentury. The next video was a kid giving a TED talk about his unschooling experiences and again had no religious overtones. The next two links clearly explain what unschooling or self directed learning is and again have no religious content whatsoever. The next link debunks several of the popular myths, some of the myths you yourself have cited, about unschoolers. Again no religious content. The next link about the leipzig connection has absolutely NO religious content whatsoever and is concerned with HISTORY. The following video of psychology & indoctrination for the distruction of critical thinking is largely history with some allusions to things that are happening in the current school system. In fact the most religious thing said in that video is where they cite the fact that the school system is based on the assumption a child has no soul and is just an empty vessel to pour information into which is in fact true, the school system is built that way with that assumption, see the leipzig connection for more historical details on the connection between schools, psychology and social engineering. And finally the last link is a video that shows how the American common core system is propagandizing children. There are many other examples but I was just doing a quick search and grabbed something handy. I’ll admit the video does seem to be done by infowars so there might be some mild influence by the Christian right on THAT one in the tone but the info seems to be good and even so there are many more examples where that came from. I would hardly call the video, nor youtube in general “religious whackjobs.”
Dude next time you want to object to something I post be specific. Actually prove to me you’ve read the article or watched the video because otherwise you come across as someone who is just spouting bullshit. Please quote to me the line in the article that is so very “religious.”
Oh how so, as I mentioned the links I posted never mentioned religion. Furthermore where are you getting this notion that the “majority” of homeschoolers and unschoolers are for religious reasons? There are many reasons one would homeschool or unschool. Perhaps one doesn’t want to social engineer their child, perhaps the school system is hostile towards their child, maybe they don’t want to get their kid vaccinated, maybe they want to try and give their kid a better education or perhaps it’s something as simple as there being a teacher’s strike on.
You do this a lot don’t you? Republican this, tea party that, Jesus dinosaur mania. You have constantly brought up Jesus and religion and tried to discredit me based on someone ELSE’S beliefs. Have I brought up God once? No. Have I mentioned Jesus once? No. In fact I distinctly mentioned that I myself an not inclined towards zoriastrian religions. So **** off with the religious assumption crap. You obviously do not know me and are hard of hearing. Seriously does it really matter if some of my views are in alignment with some political party? Wow some political party agrees with me. OMG it’s amazing! Do I really give a flying ****? No! I’m not even ******* American, I do not believe in the shambles of the democratic system and I wouldn’t be voting in your god awful fascist phoney elections if I could.
Really @Al_Kafir what is your point by going on about political parties? I might not be of the Republican Tea Party or give a rats ass about political parties in general but this is the internet and your bound to run into some tea bags at some point. Are you going to refuse to discuss an issue just because someone has an opposing political/philisophic point of view from yours? What happens when maidsafe is launched? It’ll be launched for everyone. Which is kind of my point. I made this thread so we could discuss solutions not so I could lock horns with you. If you think I’m a nut job then I REALLY don’t care. Go play with your statist friends that want to socially engineer the world. I don’t care. If you’re willing to have a civilized conversation and discuss things I’m open but I really do not care if you approve of me or not.
Why would you assume a 7 year old would be peered by another 7 year old? No. A learner would be peered by other learners and educators. Really I do not understand this mentality of yours. First off do you have someone of equivalent or lesser education check the code of a program for example? No. When someone submits code to github then the community reviews the code and those with superior knowledge spot the mistakes, and if it were a learning environment would alert the student to their mistakes. Why is age even relevent here? If you have two people learning to read, a child and an adult, they both need to go through much of the same process. Granted they might be interested in different subject matter but they still both have to learn and master the same skills. So why would they not be learning and being reviewed together? Conversely You might have a child that’s quite intelligent and masters the material extremely fast and is up there with people twice his age studying phsysics or calculus or something. Why does age matter so much to you? Your peers are your fellow learners, which is to say those in the community of educating themselves. So someone with a grade 5 reading level submits a paper and someone else with maybe another grade 5 point out some spelling mistakes, then a grade 6 or 7 come along and point out some grammar and punctuation errors, then some grade 10s come along and read it over and leave a comment or suggestion. Whatever. Or let’s make it easier, say you’re doing math, that’s pretty binary you either get it right or wrong. So it would be even easier for fellow learners to check your work. Science? Say you go out into the world and make an observation and post about it and people refer you to other research and from there you develop an interest, develop hypothosises and do experiments which are then reviewed by the community and so forth. Why is age so important here? The scientific method isn’t the most complicated concept in the world and what would get a child more interested in science than actually doing it and making discoveries on their own? In the same way fellow programmers are one’s peers to review code, in the same way fellow scientists are one’s peers to review data, so to are fellow learners to review knowledge. Just because you have more knowledge doesn’t make you not my peer or of a separate community. Those with knowledge give it to those without it.
Well then you are wrong since there have been and are children who do exactly that, and quite successfully I might add. And no I was not referring to any such indoctrination material, I’ve never even heard of “Alpha Courses.” Seriously what is it with you and thinking everything is about religion?
I agree we are going off topic. And quite frankly this whole topic was meant to discuss solutions not bash each others educational philosophy.
Look, you gave links to 4 websites and 5 videos - do you really expect me to view them all? OK, just from the links I did view; the “sntp” site has the “Foundation for Truth in Reality” banner at the top of the page - clearly showing who its alligned with (along with a “say no to Psychiatry” banner too.) The “Modern Mama” site has “biblical thoughts” as the 1st category in its list and the “holtgws” site gives links to a “Catholic discovers unschooling” on the main page. I think that this is enough to demonstrate exactly what I said - that the main supporters of home schooling are religious groups.
The Jeffrey Fisher and “sntp” links also appear to be random web pages that one wouldn’t really come across doing any serious research into education - they are fringe interest ideas really - "put the psyche back into psychology"etc.
PS. Peer definition:
Peer may refer to:
People who are equal in such respects as age, education or social class, group, colleague, etc., as in peer group. - any clearer now?
If you plan to comment on their content or credibility then yes. Otherwise keep your mouth shut.
Did I say the site wasn’t religious? No. I said the ARTICLE wasn’t religious, the CONTENT. I don’t give a flying **** about the website. Yes there are Christian homeschoolers and unschoolers. What’s your point? Was the article itself in anyway shape or form overtly religious or require one to be religious in any way to relate to it? No. You could be of any faith, or none at all, and apply it. How do you define “serious research into education”? Honestly judging people and dismissing them without actually listening to what they have to say is a way of life for you isn’t it? Incidently those using cryptocurrency, relatively speaking, and who are interested in privacy, security and encryption are a fringe group. Granted it could grow but as it stands right now those interested in maidsafe, or even anonymous web browsing apps such as tor, are somewhat of a minority. And also these same individualistic whackjobs you so despise, yes even so the ones that homeschool their kids and keep them out of the system, yes those ones, they’re the ones that will likely be adopting maidsafe first.
So how would you define github where programmers of all varying skill level come together to contribute code? How do you explain the scientific community where scientists correct and critique each other’s work. Obviously one scientist must be more skilled than another, have more knowledge than another, or be able to spot mistakes that another did not in order to do that. How do you explain collaborative community projects like wikipedia then? Obviously not all have the same knowledge but all have some. What about projects like Duolingo which do more or less exactly what I’m talking about: have fellow learners checking on what others are learning.
You also might want to give this link a read.
No actually, had enough of your twaddle and shifting sands arguments.
Hmmm… at least it’s certified…and the circular argument is now complete…lol
“Note that all courses are credited towards partner district graduation requirements and certified by the PIAA and NCAA.”
It is also quite rude to spend 5 minutes locating 9 links, that you haven’t even read, then tell me I have to spend a couple of hours reading/watching them in order to be qualified to express a view.
The fact and irony that the first websites you yourself come across (to refute my point that most people do homeschooling for religious reasons), are themselves supported by religious groups seems to have evaded you.
I agree that there are many reasons for homeschooling, but again, this is a different point and in no way negates my point.
Try paying attention next time. I in fact HAVE read, and watched, all of that material. That’s how I knew what to go get for you. I just didn’t go into in depth research getting NEW material I hadn’t read before or that was perhaps more specific to YOUR case. As I said I grabbed what was handy, what came to mind and what I quickly off the top of my head knew what to search for. Perhaps instead of making assumptions you should try paying attention what I actually write and asking a few questions instead.
It’s rude to assume that I hadn’t watched or read the material in question. Just because you’re too lazy to actually read or watch the material doesn’t mean I am. Again if you’re too lazy to watch it or read it then keep your mouth shut. And I repeat I DID view all of that. YOU apparently did not so I stand by my original statement that you do not have a right to express an opinion on something you did not view.
Yes more centralized reputation. Which is what I propose we get rid of.
Also I was hoping you’d pick up on the fact that students are educating each other and learning on their own. I was using this as an example of a more peer oriented form of education rather than a top down mentality. But I guess that kind of slipped your mind. Did you watch the video included in the article?
Ok, you started this thread stating how much you loathed certification and advocated homeschooling and “unschooling” - I pointed out the problems with these methods. I gave the examples of a surgeon and a pilot, as vocations where lack of certification would not work (you ignored my point), I asked you again to defend your position on these examples and you ignored me again.
In regard to unschooling, you asked me why peer review would not work for children - I answered that it was because in regard to this kind of education, the peer of a 7 year old would be another 7 year old. As you didn’t seem to grasp what “peer” meant, I gave you the definition.
You then changed tack and started talking about illiterate adults being unschooled alongside children (thereby making them peers - but no longer anything to do with the concept of unschooling).
You then continued in your confusion to ask me how I would define scientists and other adults who check each others work - (my answer is peers, but again, nothing to do with your argument about children being unschooled or peering each other).
You have now given me a link advocating open source learning for adolescents,using mentors and facilitators and ran in collaboration with and certified by the education authorities: This is a million miles from where you started and is not something I have any problems with. If you could tell me why you are asking me to watch the video and in what way, shape or form it supports your original position, then I will gladly do so - otherwise I do not see the point.