Posts by Maria Gray3

I don't know, maybe I'm just talking about unicorns here. In my experience, people who are together—or even those who aren't—always have their disagreements and doubts, but that doesn't stop them from reaching an agreement. Maybe I’ve lived my life in some rosy bubble thinking all families were perfectly stable, but I really don't see the point in signing a kid up for religious ed, or any other school or extracurricular activity, through some community center without actually talking to the child first about what they might actually want or be interested in.

Maybe the kid already goes to church with their mom and isn't feeling it, or maybe they go with their mom and actually love it, or maybe they weren't really raised with much emphasis on faith so they'd rather just play soccer with the guys from school during that time. There could be a hundred other reasons. But a six-year-old is articulate enough to have an opinion, and it seems reasonable to consult them before the mom, dad, and some coordinator at the center decide everything without asking, just because the parents want to force their own way. I'm not saying this applies to the woman who asked or her ex-husband, but I think it's perfectly fine to ask her if she and the dad have actually sat down with the kid to see if they're actually on board with this religious class or not.

Larry Walker24 said:Go ahead, ask a six-year-old what religion class even is—not whether they want to go, but what it *is*—and then tell me how that goes.

Why would you even ask them that? 🤔 They can't really explain the curriculum or what they'd be learning there, so why bother asking if they want to attend?

Susan James said:Please, go back and reread what I wrote.
The child needs to learn something regarding religious education. So, they either attend church regularly with their mother (while the father is clearly very much against it, from what I can tell) or they hear all about it from a friend at school who does attend.
Someone who is strictly against it might have already told the child, or if they haven't, they will eventually explain that it isn't a good environment.

During their divorce, they should have established a formal joint custody plan (or whatever mediation process they used depending on which branch of the Democratic Party they were following), and religion likely would have been part of that discussion, especially since the father is explicitly opposed (unless the caseworker missed it during the initial talks).
It’s much better for them to find a neutral party to help them reach an agreement now, rather than having a bitter argument right when they're dropping the child off for the weekend.
Even if the school only requires consent from one parent (which I'm pretty sure is the case), in this specific situation, regardless of how the child feels, you have one parent who is fundamentally against it. If the child is enrolled against his wishes, it could cause real issues for the kid down the road, no matter how much they might personally want to go.

From the school's perspective, it would be much easier if they required consent from both parents to avoid these headaches, instead of leaving it up to the parents to fight it out at home or at the center before the child hands in their permission slip.

I still don't see how any of that relates to my pretty simple question: did the mother, who's all for it, and the father, who's totally against it, ever actually talk to the child about religion or ask for their input?

It seems like a better way to handle things than just waiting to fight and calling social services, since they can always do that anyway. Maybe it's better to start including the child in decisions that affect them instead of just constantly sniping at each other. 🤷

Susan James said:How do you even bring up the topic of religious education with a preschooler? I was thinking about asking my little one if they’d want to take those classes once they start elementary school, but I'm honestly not sure how to frame it. It feels like such a big question for someone who is still busy mastering finger painting! Any advice on how to approach this gently?
What else is he supposed to know? Unless, of course, one of his best friends is heading that way too.
If a parent—say, a mom—isn't able to make it to church every single Sunday with their child, I think it’s really important for her to sit down with the dad and explain that she’s still actively raising the little one with those core values in mind. It might help to frame religious education classes as a great way to supplement what they're learning at home, rather than just another chore. It’s all about keeping that spiritual foundation strong together.

Honestly, I think it would be a really smart move if they handled this through the Coast Guard by using a mediation process instead.

I’m guessing the school is asking for dual parental consent because they got burned before. It sounds like they probably dealt with a situation where only one parent gave permission without looping the other one in, and then that parent ended up being used as leverage in a courtroom battle against the other. Typical legal headache!
That can be a really tricky area to navigate. When things get split up like that, communication tends to go all over the place, which makes everything much more complicated. Honestly, I can see why a school would want to steer clear of that mess; they usually try to play it safe by requiring double consent just to cover all their bases.

We both signed off on the photography release back when all those new CCPA regulations first kicked in.

I don't really get why you wouldn't ask a six-year-old if they want to attend religious classes. It’s like asking if they want to do ballet or learn Italian; you're probably going to push them into it or tell them no regardless. My own parents—mom was religious, dad was an atheist—asked me about twenty years ago, so it seems strange to me that people today would rather fight it out through the Coast Guard than just see what the kid actually thinks or feels about it.

Peter Harris80 said:Do both parents need to sign the consent form? Does any regulation actually state that both parents must agree on an elective? Or is one signature enough if it's based on the child's best interests?

The father claims that for religious education, both parents must agree. Especially if they are divorced.
He is strictly against it, while I would prefer the child to attend. What am I supposed to do in front of the school? I'd rather not involve the local police unless absolutely necessary. And I definitely don't want the school forcing my hand.

Before you two keep arguing over what should happen with religious ed, did either of you even bother asking the kid what they actually want? 🤔

Atticus 👍

Reading good books does wonders for learning a language—whether it's a second one or even just improving your own. 😍

nimblelynx7 said:No, he's a teacher. He’s automatically immune to being called an "educated idiot." To him, he's some untouchable authority figure because everyone else is just a clueless amateur.

The title of "educated idiot" is reserved for the engineers and technicians—the ones actually responsible for ensuring the teacher even has a computer or electricity at home and school. But who cares? It's the 21st century. None of that matters to him because he couldn't tell you the color of Anna Karenina's dress, he hasn't a clue what the GDP of Uzbekistan is, and he knows nothing about who died at Thermopylae.

People just want their kids to have practical, useful knowledge for daily life, not to be participants in a wild goose chase. Everything else is just hypocrisy and passing the buck. Those illiterate posts happen after 11 to 17 years of schooling, whether they are on Facebook or not.

So what, we should just bring back Home Ec, then throw in carpentry, masonry, drywalling, auto mechanics, and construction? I guess those would be way more "useful" for daily life than physics, biology, English, art, music, or history. 🤔

Generally speaking, could you tell me which specific elementary school subjects actually teach these "useful" skills, and what those skills even are? Or maybe those subjects just don't exist in the current curriculum?

Edit: urbantinker8, I honestly admire anyone who hasn't lost all hope if they truly believe this. It’s kind of depressing to read, frankly. Some discussions on this sub are just as infuriating as reading the comments on the New York Times (and the NYT really gets under my skin 😁). It’s just this mindset that keeps America from ever moving past a backwards mentality. First, parents start panicking about physics, math, and computer science, and now everyone wants their kid to be a tiny robot technician, a little coder, or a junior engineer—as if we’re just trying to fill labor shortages, yay. But then we act like hicks and primitives by ignoring an entire spectrum of other knowledge, labeling it useless, outdated, or stupid. We ignore the fact that kids need to learn how to think. How to turn thoughts into sentences. We forget that you can't just feed a kid formulas and a mountain of math problems and expect them to become a mathematician. We overlook the fact that besides memorizing data—which isn't useless, obviously—other subjects teach kids how to think, connect dots, express themselves, argue, and explain. We forget that a kid might not care about STEM at all and might actually want to be a professor, a musician, a dancer, or a preschool teacher. We're talking about third graders here, hey. And this guy is acting all high and mighty about raising a little irac when his kid probably doesn't even know how to wipe themselves properly and has no clue where their life is even headed.

In my first year of college, we were part of an experimental group that switched entirely to multiple-choice exams because oral exams were supposedly too subjective—even though essay questions are just as subjective. I studied law. Just imagine the mind behind a system where a future lawyer spends a whole year saying absolutely nothing to a professor and just circles bubbles next to A, B, C, or D. I guess that's what it takes so fools won't complain about professors being biased, or how some "special snowflake" wrote one thing when they meant another. 😢

I just wanted to say how much I sympathize with anyone working in education if this represents the average parent’s mindset when dealing with teachers. 😢

I always figured that in my own job, I’d have to put up with nonsense without any real way to call people out on it. If that’s how things look in schools, I feel for you and the kids you're teaching. Treating them like precious little snowflakes isn't actually doing anyone any favors.

It’s a sad reality that everyone calls for school reform to move away from rote memorization, yet parents seem to want exactly that—little programmed, high-achieving robots. They just want tiny little worker bees who can memorize formulas, specifically in STEM fields because that's where the money and prestige are now, all while stripping away any sense of creativity or breadth. They'll just end up being the ones posting illiterate comments on Facebook with a disclaimer like, "don't mind my grammar." It's pathetic.

I guess there isn't much to say here. Maybe just silence. Maria Gray3 says:
Let me put it this way: the problem here is that you've got this philosophy professor who’s such an idiot he refuses to step outside his own little bubble. He won't even try to wrap his head around concepts like limits or delta t—stuff his students deal with every single day and things that actually demystify those philosophical dead ends.

By the way, maybe we should revisit that whole thing about the total idiots.
Is it just me, or does it feel like I’m just repeating the exact same lecture to every new group of students, from my very first day on the job all the way until I finally retire?

So what, he's an idiot just because he's teaching kids about the history of philosophical thought? I guess maybe you aren't interested in the logic and reasoning that led to Achilles and the tortoise, or any of those other philosophical concepts and ideas that eventually fell out of favor. Why give kids nothing but final, correct answers to memorize? It seems like it might be more fun, or even more stimulating, to teach them how to actually think—so they can figure out for themselves why Achilles eventually catches the tortoise.

Especially when we're talking about elementary school reading lists. You have no clue what your kid will actually do for a living one day, so I guess it’s a bit misplaced to push them for straight A's in English while you're sweating over a mediocre grade in American literature. They're only in third grade. Not to mention, a third grader barely knows enough to pull a grade higher than a failing one anyway. At the end of the day, being able to navigate life is a skill they'll probably need even if they end up working in Ireland.

I'm also not sure if you actually know what a specialist is. As I see it, a specialist is someone who only knows one narrow thing and can't connect it to anything else. So, I guess a philosophy professor wouldn't necessarily be a specialist if they can link their work to other fields and actually stay curious about things outside of their own bubble.

Maybe take a quick stroll over to the natural science subforum and see what the heavy hitters are up to. It’s rare to find anyone there who actually gives a damn about other subjects; honestly, I guess it’s almost a chore for them to even read anything that isn't strictly natural science. You should check out that thread about whether the moon still exists when nobody is looking. There’s a whole lot of "deep" philosophical nonsense written on it.

I haven't seen much from that user lately. I guess they just moved on. Maria Gray3 says:
Please don't trivialize the whole thing with that kind of nonsense.

Here we go again. This is exactly why kids need to read the classics—so they actually have the tools to explain why they think something is nonsense. You haven't really shown any capacity for that in this debate, so I guess you might be depriving your kid of that chance. Maybe it would be better for their development if you just told them, "Look, I don't expect straight A's, so you don't necessarily need an A in literature, but I do think you should read the story and be able to articulate why you didn't like it." That way, they might learn how to take responsibility even when they aren't feeling it, realize they have a right to an opinion, and figure out how to turn that opinion into a coherent argument they can actually stand behind.

I honestly don't get why calling the comparison "nonsense" is an issue. It’s actually a pretty solid point. Are we talking about boring, outdated required reading that nobody actually wants to touch? Or maybe old, dusty music that nobody listens to anymore? I guess you could ask how many people actually learned anything from Judith? Probably just as many as those who learned from Carmen. Why should we leave the choice of classic literature up to a bunch of average kids and their average parents? If someone can choose to skip the old stuff and listen to Beyoncé instead, why shouldn't they do the same with books?

brightheron64 said:Let me clarify things here, because the real issue is that we’re dealing with an absolute idiot of a philosophy professor who refuses to step outside the narrow confines of his own field... he makes zero effort to grasp fundamental concepts like limits or delta t—concepts that his students have to wrestle with on a daily basis, and which are exactly what's needed right now to demystify these little logical dead ends...

By the way, shall we take another look at that whole saga regarding those absolute idiots...
Is it just me, or does it feel like I’m teaching the exact same lesson to every single new group of students, year after year, from my very first day on the job all the way until I finally hit retirement...

Please, don't trivialize such a profound story with that kind of nonsense...

Since I have a few kids of my own running around, I feel like I’ve earned the right to speak up about the school reading list—not only am I intimately familiar with the classics we all had to suffer through, but I also noticed that remarkably few of the titles have actually changed since I was sitting in those desks myself...

So, you're asking me to explain why they all vanished... if you really want me to dive into that whole mystery, I suppose I could try, though it’s a bit of a rabbit hole to fall down... Loda's courier It seems like you might have hit send a little too early, but I am sitting here ready and waiting to help you transform your content... whenever you are ready to share the text, just let me know... Divine dust...Are they just not classic enough? It feels like they’re bordering on being too banal...

Take a look at this... Divine dust... It really stands as one of the most accomplished pieces of prose in all of American literature... Source: Miroslav Krleža Lexicographical Institute

So, if that’s how it works, why on earth shouldn't I be allowed to give my own child the freedom to choose for themselves...

Look, I honestly have no clue which books "deserve" to be on a syllabus and which don't; I'm certainly not an expert qualified to make that call. It's the same with math—I haven't the slightest idea when a kid should start learning fractions, whether they're being taught too early or too late. I assume some experts in their field handled that and decided what goes into the curriculum based on their professional knowledge. You can always recommend *A Farewell to Arms* to your kid if you think it would be enriching, just like you can give them extra math problems if you think they've mastered fractions better than the rest of the class. But the idea that a child shouldn't have to read the assigned book, or shouldn't have to learn fractions because they aren't "in the mood"—or because you're certain your daughter will end up in a STEM field or becoming an English professor—is just a silly way to deprive a kid of an education.

Quincy:

I don't really have much to say about this. I guess it's just one of those things, maybe. kaže: Spot on. 👍 I guess I'm just wondering how my sixteen-year-old daughter would actually react if some guy like Werther started chasing after her. 🤔 After all that, he probably wouldn't even have the energy to end it all, let alone find a way into her heart. I don't really see the issue with updating literature to fit modern times, especially when you're young. Once you finally get your head straight after those messy teenage years, you can just go back and read the classics on your own terms. There's no need to force it—just dive into the original Judith or Romeo and Juliet whenever you feel like tackling the challenge. Just as a parallel: Kane Some people call it the absolute peak—the greatest movie ever made. I guess you have to reach a certain age to finally get it, if you ever do. It’s just realizing that things like Transformers, Spiderman, and Harry Potter are nothing more than cinematic junk compared to Kane. Here's another case study from someone who's actually been through it: Imagine being a student at MIT, but even though you’re pulling eight hours of math and five hours of physics a week—subjects you actually picked because you enjoy them—you still end up stuck in a philosophy class due to some scheduling mess at the school. Now you've got a professor lecturing you on Zeno's paradoxes and those old Greek theories of knowledge, like: I guess the arrow is actually just sitting still within a sequence of points. Maybe. Or. Achilles is never going to outpace a turtle, I guess. 😵🤣 Well, damn it all to hell...

I don't really get this latest point. I know plenty of people who take pride in not being narrow-minded idiots—people who actually enjoy both coding and philosophy. In my experience, the truly intelligent people I know tend to have a wide range of interests, and any system that tries to box them in just isn't built for them.

You really dodged that question regarding the Persephone post quite skillfully. Since you wouldn't give me a straight answer, I'll ask it myself: if you think it’s fine for kids to read the Prince's diaries just because they want to, would you also be okay with them being forced to listen to Mozart in music class? I mean, nobody listens to Mozart anymore—it's boring. Why not let them listen to Ian Jurčević instead? I guess I wonder if forcing all that outdated, uninteresting stuff on them just ends up making them hate music altogether.

You keep bringing up Judith and the original Romeo and Juliet, but that’s not what your kid was actually assigned. She was given a tiny little story specifically tailored for her age group, and when she didn't care for it, you basically told her it was fine to skip out. This has nothing to do with whether freshmen are mature enough for Judith. Your daughter is plenty capable of handling the White Stag, yet you let her dictate how she should be raised and taught—to both you and her teacher. I guess it’s just a shame.

Hey everyone.

I have a quick question, so please let me know what you think when you get a chance. 😁

Can a single motion for foreclosure on a property list multiple debtors, or does it have to be one debtor per filing?

To be specific, there's a mortgage on an entire property co-owned by two people. If I need to start the foreclosure process, can I just list both owners in one motion right away?

Thanks in advance. 🙂

Kyle Carter2 said:I couldn't care less about your opinion, and I have zero intention of digging through a dictionary for terms like takbir, avaj, or shahada—words that probably wouldn't make sense to 98.7% of Americans anyway.

You don't really need a foreign language dictionary. Just stick to American 😉

Otherwise, I'm not sure if you guys noticed, but just a bit higher up under Information technology, there's an Overclocking subforum. Here’s an example of the kind of post people actually read over there:

I've got an E6500 2.93ghz stock, so I can hit 3.6ghz stably for an hour on Prime without even touching the voltage. There's a massive performance jump; my card is a GTX550Ti gigabit dual fan. For instance, at stock settings in bc2, GPU usage is around 40%, but with overclocking, it stays constant at about 90%. I'd probably pick up a cooler, maybe a TX3 EVO, and the motherboard is this: http://www.msi.com/product/mb/G41TM-P31.html Core voltage is sitting at 1.2750, hasn't been touched. I know the board isn't anything special, but honestly, it's not worth upgrading the whole rig just for the dual channel support, though moving to a new platform feels like too much work. So, I'm thinking of getting a cooler and some fans for the northbridge and RAM if needed, since bumping the frequency heats everything up. I haven't found a way to set it 1:1 so the RAM stays at 620mhz instead of 850mhz like it is now.
I'll post pictures of the temps in the next thread.

Now, unlike those specific words Kyle brought up—which we've already established are part of the American language—this post (along with plenty of others on that subforum) is packed with terms that are basically a foreign language to most of us.

So, before you go complaining to any sensitive Canadians speaking American, why don't you head up to the overclockers and tell them they're breaking forum rules because Kyle can't understand them? I'm expecting detailed breakdowns of what all these "unintelligible" words mean or their American translations, and maybe even a renaming of the subforum to something more "relatable."

Melissa Gonzalez2 said:You're basically signing a contract saying you won't take the fall for a kid's bullshit...

Right, because if an eighteen-year-old chokes on their own vomit after drinking cheap wine at a prom you were supposed to be supervising, I guess your biggest concern would just be whether or not you signed that liability waiver. 👍

Kimberly Robinson2 said:The kid went and handed his cash back to the teacher. Since he’s got a massive mouth—he talks until he's blue in the face 😁—he doesn't even realize what he actually said, but somehow he managed to land himself an in-person meeting with her this Monday....🤣

So, until then, I'm flying blind.

As for those field trips, movies, theater stuff—yeah, they know how to write an essay. When they were out in Smalltown, USA, they had to write about bread making, but honestly, what they saw there! 😲 And of course, he wrote it all wrong, because I didn't see what they saw, and since I helped him a little with the writing, it wasn't exactly perfect....

They also had one day where they just sat there watching some cartoon movie, whatever. The assignment was to retell the story. But since he couldn't care less about cartoons, he didn't remember anything and didn't write the damn thing. All that was left in his notebook was the title. And then came the reprimand from her about missing homework. So, I wrote her a little note on a piece of paper explaining that he didn't remember what he watched. She shot back at me, asking how that was possible, saying he was supposed to write about a happy family. At which point I wrote: First off, he doesn't have a family, and secondly, we aren't exactly "happy" during a crisis like this—not that we're complaining, we aren't starving, thank God, but still. Going through the motions of describing some made-up nonsense about blah blah happiness and big families... I just don't see the point of that topic.

Naturally, I got called in for a talk...😂

And sure enough, I told her all of that right to her face—that my kid can't describe something (he was supposed to compare the cartoon to his home life) because we aren't all living in some rosy wonderland when reality is clearly different! Besides, he's too young to have such a wild imagination that he'd just invent things that don't exist.

It really gets to me, how they patronize them! They try to shield them from the reality of this world, acting like everything is perfect. Sure, there are beautiful things, but there's plenty of ugly stuff too. Not long ago, the neighbors' gorgeous cat passed away. My boy was outside and came running in terrified, yelling that something happened at the neighbor's house. I ran outside and heard these horrific screams coming from the hallway....😲 It was gut-wrenching. I know two girls (14 and 17) live in the apartment above ours with their parents, and now I can't stop wondering what might have happened to them. The screaming wouldn't stop—just: Noooooooo, nooooooo, I can't do thiiiiiiis, nooooooooooooooo... my blood turned to ice for those few seconds while I stood there by the door. I rang the bell. Nothing. Rang it again. The younger girl comes to the door and I ask if something happened, if they need help. She just says, our cat died....😲 And then the dad shows up, grabs the girl by the shoulder (they're decent people normally), and I tell him I'm sorry, but I ran out because I heard the screaming and wanted to help if I could. You know what he tells me? That it's none of my business!! 😲 Then he slams the door in my face.

Makes me wonder: next time I hear screaming, am I going to jump in?
Will anyone else jump in? (the neighbors heard it too)
Will my own child jump in and call for help?
And what if next time things are much worse and nobody reacts at all?

And here's the kicker: it was the 17-year-old girl screaming. Look, I get it, losing a pet is awful. I understand. But clearly, she's been raised under a glass dome where the world is just sunshine and rainbows. Totally isolated from real situations. What happens when actual tragedy hits one of them? Will they just break? Because they won't know how to handle reality.

That's why the school system irritates me so much... everything is colorful, smiling, wonderful, and fair, while everything else is hidden behind the curtain. They protect kids from things, and it isn't doing them any favors. I show my kids the real stuff—news clips of disasters, funerals, floods, wildfires..... because that's what's actually happening around us!

Sure, go ahead and let a ten-year-old watch some snuff film just so they can "understand" how cruel and horrific the world is. I guess that makes sense. 🙄

You're overreacting. Your first post actually made sense and I got where you were coming from, but as this thread goes on, you’re starting to sound like a total drama queen. Honestly, sending a letter to the teacher just to complain about how miserable you all are—and how your kids won't write an essay about a "happy family"—is a bit much. Writing essays serves a real educational purpose; it teaches kids penmanship, how to structure their thoughts, and basic grammar. It’s probably easier to teach them those skills through something they actually enjoy, like a cartoon they just watched. I guess you're just turning something totally harmless and standard into this huge ordeal to show everyone how much you're struggling.

Give me a break. I think it’s fine to teach kids that the world isn't just sunshine and rainbows—it isn't. But there's a difference between being realistic and shoving your own misery down their throats. Telling a kid how gross and awful everything is, or complaining about having no family or how unhappy you are during a crisis... I don't know, it just seems a bit much. Instead of all that negativity, maybe you could have helped them write an essay about a happy family by focusing on the good things that actually make your family special (and I'm sure you have some).

Facing a kid with the harsh realities of life is necessary, I guess, but it’s brutal. You have to be careful; maybe we should hold back on our own tendency to vent just so we can raise someone who actually enters the world feeling optimistic and happy.

To the ladies on this thread claiming that teaching just boils down to sipping coffee in the lounge and taking field trips—honestly, that’s total nonsense. I highly doubt any of them have ever tried taking twenty kids to a museum, a movie theater, or a play. You've got some who are well-behaved, some who aren't, and some who are just straight-up feral. You've got the quiet ones and the loud ones. I guess you're constantly on edge, worrying about someone bolting into traffic or tripping and breaking their nose. It's a mess.

What a fantastic way to spend an afternoon. I guess you could have been reading a book, taking a nap, or just sleeping with your husband instead. 😍