I am Sugavanesh B
Programmer, Movies, Science, Computers, Tamil, Music, Nature, Random musings...
What can teacher unions do to make sure that incompetent teachers are removed and competent teachers are rewarded?
Answer by Anonymous:
I am a teacher.View Answer on Quora
I have been teaching for close to twenty years. I have seen good ones and great ones.
Honestly, those treachers that are there for the money, if there is such a thing, do not survive. They burn out because money is a short term motivator. So, basically bad teachers do not last anyway.
In my area, 50 % of those that become teachers change carreers in less than five years. Those that pass the 5 year threshold are those that are seen as good with the possibility of becoming great teachers.
I have seen time and time again business people applying some type of business model to the education system and from experience it does not work.
Children are humans. They learn differently at different times and they all at some point need to develop a varied range of skills in order to become productive citizens that will hopefully live a prosperous life.
What happens if a student starts taking drugs and does not do his or her homework anymore and starts failing classes? Does the teacher’s pay get docked for that?
What happens if the child’s parents are going through a divorce and their child cannot concentrate and starts to develop nervous ticks at school because of the stress at home? Is that the teacher’s fault?
What happens if a teenage young woman gets pregnant or get an abortion or gets raped and misses school for a prolonged period of time and cannot graduate? Is that also the teacher’s fault?
The teachers deal with a lot more than just the transfer of knowledge. They deal with the whole person and like anything else, we all have our ups and downs. The students are not learning “stuff” they are learning to cope with life in general. Honestly, I simply do not have the magic recipe that guarantees a good future for all the students that I have had the pleasure to teach to.
For most of my teaching years, I have a cupboard at school with snacks and fruits because many of them just do not have a decent breakfast in the morning. How can anyone be able to learn or concentrate if they are hungry? Is that the teacher’s fault too?
I love teaching. I do. I always have and most likely always will.
Before anyone judges teachers from the outside looking in. I challenge any of you to actually go to a school and follow a teacher for a week. It might be a revelation for many of you.
Please note that in high school, we all have to deal with drugs and yes, as you might know, there are drug dealers in the school.
I find it sad that the police officers are basically not interested in cleaning up the schools and clean up the drug issue. According to them, they are small time dealers and the judge will be more annoyed at the police officers for having wasted his or her time for such a small offense. They are minors and the charge will never show on their record anyway. It’s supposedly best to wait until they are of a legal adult age before charging them. ( Yes, I have been told that by a police officer.)
There is bullying and cyber bullying now. Is that the teacher’s fault too? We do what we can but if the bully wants to bully he will. Usually, there is absolutely no discipline at home to stop it. Is that the teacher’s fault also?
Let’s talk about the parents and their role in all of this. Most of them are well aware that they too must do their part. Believe me, many parents help and many actually care about raising their children.
But… there are others that, in my opinion should never have had children. Not only that, some of them should have the medical procedure done in order to prevent or cause any pregnancies. (Tubal ligation for women and vasectomies for men)
Have you ever have had to deal with children telling you that this week they are with mommy number one and daddy number 4 and the following week they are with daddy number one is with mommy number 3? It gets weird.
Just how does a child develop any frame of a value system with his biological parents having so many different “spouses”. Once in high school, just how do you think that that young woman will react to sex and drugs and peer influences.
Sadly, from my experience, the choices made are not the best ones. Is that also the teacher’s fault?
Then there are those that I call the key latch kids. They spend more time with their teachers than with their own parents. By the time their parents get home, the children are ready for bed.
I totally realize that sometimes, some teachers may have some difficult times with a particular group but before anyone states what they consider to be a bad teacher should at least try to follow that person during a week and see just how bad they really are.
All this to state that teaching is difficult to define. Depending in the area, the district, the language and racial issues, one must at least admit that the methods of transfer of knowledge need to be adjusted to the students in that area.
This brings me to standardized testing. The idea is noble but I believe has a major flaw.
Sometimes the learning curve of a student is not in sinc with the standardized learning curve of those tests. Sadly, I see teachers teaching on how to do the standardized test rather than teach the love of the subject at hand.
I find that truly sad.
Where does the love of learning go?
Where does the love of teaching go?
Still, every morning, when I get ready to go to work, I cannot imagine myself doing anything else. That mysterious motivator deep inside me has nothing to do with money. It has everything to do with the love of transfer of knowledge and hoping to make a difference in the life of those around me. Have I succeeded? Honestly, I have no idea but I know that for some of them, a word, an idea or my motto of practicing what I “preach” has had an effect of some of them.
( I’m not religious. I do not preach by the way but it is an English expression that means to lead by example, if I am not mistaking.)
I can say that for a few students, I have made a difference. They told me so. I have no words to express my joy. I see them doing well and I am so proud of them. Some, alas, did not succeed.
Please note, I’ve seen it all. From depression to drug addictions to suicide. There is simply no business model that can cookie cut the “good teacher” model. I have seen many “administrators” come and go thinking they could just treat the school like a business from the patriarchal frame of mind. Honestly, it was kind of fun to watch those crash and burn because they had no clue about our world.
Please edit at will. I know I’m a teacher and I made spelling errors. English is not my first language and I’m doing my best to communicate in the wonderful language of Shakespear.
In Matrix Revolutions, what’s going on when Neo and a sentinel appear to merge?
Answer by Chris Peters:
This scene is a head scratcher - just what exactly is going on here?View Answer on Quora
At first this moment annoyed me in the same way that Neo’s ability to stop the sentinels did - these events are supernatural, something that shouldn’t happen in the “Real World” as we know it.
However, there is a larger significance, hidden layers to the Matrix trilogy that are revealed in these 2 scenes. Philosopher Ken Wilber provided a great theory on the film’s official “philosophers’ audio commentary” for Matrix Revolutions, and given his direct access to the Wachowskis, I suspect he got this information directly from Lana Wachowski.
The Short Answer: This scene is allegorical- the images are not literal. The Matrix universe is themed around 5 colors, Green, Blue, Yellow, Red and White, which represent different levels of our existence. In this scene, yellow represents Spirit, and the sentinels are heavenly warriors, while Neo stands in the Blue world, representing the Body. Neo is at war with his spirit. He cannot win this battle, and his only way out is to rise through the clouds above, transcending the conflict entirely.
Let’s explore these 5 colors, as they explain many mysteries in the films:Green is the color of the Matrix, and represents the Mind.
This is the most obvious and famous color, what Wilber calls “the Green World.” Every scene that takes place inside the Matrix is tinted green. The Matrix takes place in your mind and all the challenges of the Matrix are also challenges of the mind - bending the mind to change the rules. This is why the Matrix is so appealing to us, because of the near limitless freedom it offers. In our minds, we are free to daydream almost any existence.
One interesting detail - when Smith is an Agent, his suit is tinted green. When he is reborn in the 2nd film, Smith’s suit changes solid black. He is no longer an agent of the system and has become corrupted.Blue is the “Real World” of Zion and represents the Body.
You can really see the blue lighting in Zion’s dock and also in the service tunnels. Life in the Real World is harsh and unglamorous. Survival is the primary concern, death and extinction always threaten. Some people didn’t enjoy these scenes like they enjoyed the Matrix itself. In the Real World, excitement seemed to drain from the story. This is by design - real life is nowhere as exciting as the ideas in our heads. However, the Blue World is vitally important to the philosophical ideas these films present. The challenges of the mind are not the same as the challenges of the body. People like Cypher want to “escape” to the Green World because life there is easier. “Ignorance is bliss.”Yellow is the world of the Machines, representing Spirit and even Heaven.
This is by far the most interesting - the Yellow World is that of Spirit. In the Matrix Universe, the Machine City is analogous to Heaven, the Architect analogous to God. A certain kind of God.
In classical Christian philosophy, everything in Heaven is perfect. The Wachowskis stumbled upon a beautiful and useful analogy - perfection is the mind of a Machine. Everything is precisely defined and has a purpose. The dualities of rational-vs-irrational, perfection-vs-imperfection, order-vs-chaos - all are modeled effectively by the architecture of computer systems.
However, perfection has a dark side. Unpurposed or outdated thinking is deleted. There is no room for unconditional love, or existence for the sake of existence. I love how humans are deemed imperfect because of Free Will, not because of our emotions or mortality. The Wachowskis are making a very real statement, Free Will is the enemy of perfection. Try throwing that statement at a die-hard rational empiricist.
Thus the Wachowskis make an interesting God-figure in the Architect. Whereas the Christian God loves his creation, the Architect holds humans in contempt. This is a Gnostic concept of a creator god who is not the true God but made the world as a trap for human beings, blocking us from heaven.The Spirit world exists alongside the Real World. Many times in The Matrix Revolutions, we see the same shot from both perspectives - real and spirit. When Bane/Smith attacks Neo and burns his eyes, Neo gains the ability to see through the Spirit - a sixth sense that is referenced in most cultures, the ability to see beyond the literal, physical world and understand what operates underneath. Eastern religions call it the “third eye.”Exiles have a special affinity for the color yellow. Being banished from the Machine City, never to return except under threat of deletion, yellow is symbol and reminder of Home. The Merovingian has yellow throughout his restaurant, and the Oracle has yellow in the wallpaper of her kitchen (although she is not an exile). When Neo spots Ramakandra for the first time, Rama is standing in front of a yellow background, and when Neo sees the code of Seraph (whose name is a term for angel), it is yellow instead of green - an angel from the Machine City, not the Matrix.Red is the symbol for corruption, evil, and Hell.
In the Matrix Universe, Red is not really a world but a state of corruption and evil. The sentinels glow red from within, and the pods which hold humans trapped within the Matrix are also red. The Merovingian’s club, which is reached by pressing a red “Help” button with the “p” scratched off, is bathed in red.
This presents an interesting possibility with the Red and Blue pills. It might make more sense to have the blue pill free Neo, as this releases him to the blue world. However, the red pill serves this function. Perhaps this is an allusion to the (red) apple of Eden, ie, the fruit of knowledge. Often the “wrong” knowledge can corrupt us - we cannot “unlearn” something that we didn’t want to know.White alludes to purity and the mysterious Source.
Also not quite a world, the color white appears at times when Neo makes a major shift in his growth. Perhaps it represents The Source, something the films rarely explain. Certain characters wear white to suggest their purity, such as Seraph or Switch.Which brings us back to the question…
While the theme for The Matrix was illusion-vs-reality, and the theme for The Matrix Reloaded is Free Will, the clear theme for Matrix Revolutions is a war between man and spirit. The battle in Zion is a literal War with Heaven, while Neo’s journey is a personal struggle within.
So… when Trinity and Neo fly to the Machine City, the Machines they encounter are literally the Armies of God, defending the Gates of Heaven. The yellow ghost of the sentinel is vaguely reminiscent of an angel, a warrior of Spirit. When the sentinel flies through Neo, Spirit is fighting with the Body. Neo cannot win. Neo and Trinity can only escape by rising above the conflict. Above the clouds, the world is bathed in white light, and Trinity has her moment of transcendence, an encounter with the Source. This is unique to her. Neo does not see it even though he is sitting right next to her. Thus Trinity is content when she dies.
If I just proved that P = NP, how do I start taking over the world?
Answer by Tanooj Luthra:
Congratulations on the proof! Now that you’re the first one to prove P = NP here’s what to do to take over the world.View Answer on Quora
First, there is the Millennium Prize for a quick $1,000,000, but that’s not the best first move to make. By accepting the prize you have to publish the proof, essentially revealing your trump card waaay too early.
Instead, the better method to take over the world would be through the application of the P = NP proof. Let’s take a look at what the P = NP question implies. The general class of questions for which some algorithm can provide an answer in polynomial time is P. For some questions, there is no known way to find an answer quickly, but if one is provided with the answer, it may be possible to verify the answer quickly. The class of questions for which an answer can be verified in polynomial time is called NP. The implication of P = NP would mean problems that were previously thought to be extremely hard to calculate can now be done in polynomial time.
Unfortunately with simply a proof, and no indication of how to turn it into a real algorithm it would be hard to take over the world. For the sake of this hypothetical, let’s assume that the P = NP proof can turn into a polynomial time algorithm with a reasonable degree,instead of
.
Now, back to taking over the world.
Some of the most profound implications are in the fields of mathematics, cryptography, artificial intelligence, and even biology.
Starting with cryptography, you would have the ability to crack symmetric algorithms. AES was standardized in 2001, and is one of the most popular algorithms used in symmetric key cryptography, which is used for data transmission in SSL and TLS. It’s considered the “gold standard” encryption technique. And you have rendered it useless. One of the best ways to go exploiting this would be to try and connect to a public wireless connection in a popular area. All banking traffic can be tracked wirelessly being sent all around you. After capturing the packets, you can simply brute force the AES encryption on the SSL, retrieving usernames and passwords for banking, investment, stock trading, and financial accounts. You can then start transferring funds out of their accounts to yours. Hopefully, you’ve set up an offshore account already so you’re not going have to be as accountable for the transferring of money into your own US account.
Continue this until you’re as rich as you want. After a little practice, book a flight to New York, and go visit Goldman Sachs or another such large firm. Chances are these wireless networks are encrypted, but that doesn’t bother you anymore. Start packet sniffing and picking up any and all sensitive information. Now that you’re dealing with multi-million dollar accounts, make sure you spread the transfers to multiple bank accounts of yours, spread out across Swiss and Cayman banks.
So now, you’re rich. And you can stop here if you want. While it’s not necessarily taking over the world status, the world becomes your oyster with $500M+ under your name.
However, while riches are great, taking over the world implies a little bit more power and popularity from the public. One of the other possible fields of exploration is medicine and biotechnology.
Protein structure prediction is one of the more important goals pursued by bioinformatics and highly important in medicine (for example, drug design). Predicting the tertiary structure of RNA molecules is an NP-complete problem (specifically pseudoknot prediction). Fortunately, for you, this won’t be a problem. Several viruses use a pseudoknot structure to form a tRNA-like motif to infiltrate the host cell. For example, influenza. By understanding the possible structures of viruses, you can design anti-viral medication much more effectively and possibly eradicate the common flu.
Using your millions of dollars as starting seed capital, you can start your own bioengineering company to do research into viral structure prediction and end up saving lives across the world.
Until now, you have amassed a large amount of wealth, and started a company which has potentially eradicated influenza, and any other RNA based viruses (SARS, hepatitis C, polio etc…). You’ve saved millions of lives across the world from a lot of diseases. The public knows who you are and your contributions to medicine, biology and anthropology will be bigger than Jonas Salk and Louis Pasteur ever made in the medical biology fields.
Finally, at this point, you can publish your proof to P = NP. The Clay Mathematics Institute will want to award you the Millennium Prize, which you will naturally reject. The additional million dollars is a fraction of a percent of your total wealth, and the boost in respect from the academic world will be much more worth it.
And you’ve taken over the world. Starting with the basic proof, you’ve stolen millions of dollars by breaking encryptions on SSL or finding access to an “encrypted” banking computer. Investing in your own biological research, while using your P = NP application to speed up the analysis of viruses gives you the public acclaim that will come with a multi-billion dollar and life saving company.
What made you work hard to get into IIT?
Answer by N Hari Prasad:
Because I LOVED jumping though HOOPS.View Answer on Quora
Image Source: Message to a Graduate
I don’t know how you define “success in JEE”. I got a rank but chose to join BITS over IIT as i wasn’t getting Computer Science in any old IIT.
Have you ever been a witness to or encountered racism?
Answer by Rory Young:
Here is my first experience of racism.View Answer on Quora
When I was five years old my parents divorced. My mother took me and my much older siblings to the UK and then six months later to white minority ruled Rhodesia, which would become Zimbabwe after achieving majority rule in 1980.
In Zambia I had lived wild and free on the farm running around barefoot and playing with the local black kids. Because my siblings were older and also went to boarding school overseas I hardly ever saw a white kid. When I did get to play with “muzungu” children I found them alien. I loved the workers who looked after me and always joked and made time to chat if I came by.
My parents were not racist and I never experienced any racism and had no idea that it existed or what it was.
In Rhodesia my mother remarried. My new step-father was an officer in the Rhodesian Army. I lived in Salisbury (Harare) and also at Nkomo Barracks, a base about thirty kilometers out of town.
The war between Rhodesia’s minority rule government and the black nationalist guerrilla armies was raging. I was seven by now and had no clue what it was all about, just that people fought and died. My mother was a nurse and when we heard choppers flying in to land at the nearby hospital we knew my mother would come home late or not at all and when she did she would often sit in the garden by herself. Of course I never understood at the time why she was so quiet.
For me it was mostly very exciting because I got to play at the barracks and, really cool for a seven year old, went to school in an army vehicle. Sometimes an armoured truck called a crocodile pictured below and at other times a big green bus.
We always had an escort. Sometimes, when the war situation was worse our transport was part of a military convoy and at other times it was just a soldier in the bus. All the kids were the white children of officers and nco’s.
Whatever the situation, there was always one soldier who was there to protect us. He and the driver were black. It was always the same man but at times there were others who joined him. They were dressed and equipped something like this:
His name was Corporal Moyo. He always sat by the door with his FN assault rifle and I always sat with him. He would let me load and unload one of his magazines or fiddle with some other piece of equipment and we would chat, or he would tell me stories about the bush.
The other children did not talk to him and because I sat with him I was ignored too. That was fine with me. As far as I was concerned I had the coolest seat on the bus. Our protector was my friend.
One day there was shouting from the back of the bus where the bigger kids sat. “Kaffirs! Kaffirs!”.
I had no idea what that meant or what was going on so I jumped up and moved back up the isle. The kids were throwing things out the windows. I was confused so I asked “what are kaffirs”?
Everyone laughed at me and told me to shut up. Then, “that’s a kaffir” one of them said and pointed at Corporal Moyo and they laughed. Corparal Moyo sat facing forward and didn’t respond.
A second later someone shouted “more kaffirs” and as we drove past a black woman they pelted her with banana peels and other rubbish through the windows.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“Shut up you little Kaffir lover” came the reply, “go and sit with your Kaffir friend”.
Bewildered, I went back to Corporal Moyo. I sat down. “Why are they doing that?” I asked.
He said nothing but turned to look at me. He had a look of the utmost sadness
and disappointment on his face. I said nothing more and we carried on with the journey in silence while every time we passed any black people on the road the boys in the back, and some of the girls, would pelt them with anything they could find.
They next day Corporal Moyo was not on the bus. I was scared something was wrong and asked his replacement, “where is Corporal Moyo”?
“DB”, he answered. DB was “Detention Barracks”; army jail.
“Why?”, I asked.
“He got drunk yesterday and hit an officer. He’s going to be court-martialled”.
I never saw Corporal Moyo again. I never forgot him either.
What are some unusual features that would be great to add to a new home under construction?
Answer by Sanjay Sabnani:
I think about this subject a lot and I pin my thoughts so I have them handy:View Answer on Quora
Page on Pinterest
Sunken Living Room- this is my dream for entertaining.
Sunken PreFab Wine Cellar
Hideaway Parking Spot that leads to your underground garage and bunker
Sunken Tub
Backyard Movie Set Up
Fish Tank Bedroom
Halfway Decent Tree House- this will cost nothing if you have your contractor do it while building your house.
Hanging Bed
Multi Purpose Table
Hidden Rooms
Nooks, lots of nooks
I hope some of these things are what you were looking for.
Why can’t the poor be handed out lots of money to make them rich?
Answer by Yishan Wong:
Because money is not wealth.View Answer on Quora
This is a fundamental misunderstanding that many people have about money, and in fact probably stands at the center of why some people are good at making money while others are not, why some people are wealthy and others are not.
(First, set aside the issues of inherited wealth, or “unfairly earned” money. Those are distortive effects, but let’s focus on the dominant factor)
Wealth (“being rich”) means producing things of value. It does not mean “having lots of money.”
The key word there is value. That word is more important than wealth or money, it is the real central factor around which human endeavor and economies revolve. Money and wealth are big words that get a lot of play, but value is a boring word that most people don’t notice. It is actually the important one. Value is what is produced when you do work, mine resources, develop an idea, produce an invention, engage in mutually-beneficial commerce, etc. Value is the “thing” that humans make (out of nothing) by working, creating, trading, etc.
Money, on the other hand, is a store of that value.
Typically, when you create some value, you want to trade it for something else of value so you can live (or play). But value is not always portable or fungible, so money is a technology used to store and transmit value through time and space - if you own a watermelon farm, the value you’ve created is in the form of watermelons.
The reason you can’t fix poverty by redistributing money is that poverty is not a symptom of unequal distribution of money, it is a symptom of unequal distribution of value-creating capability. The communists called it “the means of production” - in their day, it was ownership of factories, farms, shipyards, rental property, etc. The Objectivists call it “the creative power of men’s minds.”
Here’s what happens if you evenly redistribute all money:
Let’s say you do that, and everyone in the world has a million bucks.
The next day, it all ends up in the hands of the (erstwhile) rich again, because the rich control the farms and factories that produce food, clothing, they own all the rental properties, etc. So prices skyrocket (because suddenly everyone can “afford” everything, so demand goes up, which drives up prices), and pretty soon all the people who own the means of production get all the money back because everyone is paying them for the things they need to live.
Of course, the regular guy (or the poor) still get paid a bit of the money for their labor in wages, but the people who own the large centers of production get paid a lot more money because they are producing more stuff that people want, i.e. value.
So “redistribution of wealth” is a tricky thing. Money isn’t wealth, and if you redistribute it, it doesn’t really change anything. You need to redistribute (or even out via other means) ownership of the means of value-creation, which is a far more complicated thing to do - you can’t easily tax a rich guy a portion of his factory (not as easily as you can tax liquid profits in the form of money).
Thus, the real problem you’re looking to solve is “how can I make it so that the poor control a larger proportion of value-creating power?”
