I am myself and myself is bad at fitting in

graphito@sopuli.xyzmod to Memes@sopuli.xyz – 837 points –
i.imgur.com

Idk how to embed audio to Lemmy but imagine it playing on the background lol

Lazlo bayne - I'm no superman

full version with credits

97

If only they made the hole square....

Can you guess which hole these shapes go through?

https://youtu.be/rZ3ETK7-ZM8?si=DnO-aRAHvHUpSEOk

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/rZ3ETK7-ZM8?si=DnO-aRAHvHUpSEOk

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

You know, I really want to see things from piped over them...

But every time I try to watch, I get either an endlessly spinning broken circle, or "error: sign in to prove you aren't a bot" and I'm not gonna jump through hoops when a non-hoopy alternative is just.... Don't use the service.

Yeah this bot annoys me. Because it never works ¯_(ツ)_/¯

If it's because I'm using Firefox mobile, then that's even more stupid, considering Lemmy harps on about not using a chromium browser.

That's optimization for you. Just a 27% increase in size would allow a whole lot of more shapes, but think of the economy!

We don't want squares in society. Your free to make your own hole as long as you don't modify the walls or use the hole.

Just be yourself by changing everything about yourself until society approves or you will be ejected.

I recently made a comment bitching about how I didn't have time to enjoy my life because of the 9-5 grind and one of the replies I got basically amounted to this and "get screened for depression". No shit I'm depressed, I'm not compatible with the world I live in.

In the UK if you need an anti depressant, they will be prescribed after a ten minute conversation. On the other hand if you want to treat the underlying condition that is causing the depression you have a very steep hill to climb. For example, it is estimated that around 30% of male prisoners have ADHD. Lately I have stopped thinking of the UK as an ethical society.

Yeah, I could probably get something prescribed but I'm not really interested in slapping a bandaid on a larger issue. It's just frustrating that I'm not even able to vent without some asshole dismissing my perspective.

Best I could do is a home made Ai therapist. I'm not rich enough to buy emotional and psycological support.

Wait until you learn about the job market

The difference is that jobs and places to work are extremely diverse. It's not always easy but you can find something that at least is a tolerable way to make a living. For most folks there are lots of options. With the education system... if you don't fit into that cookie-cutter hole, there are no alternatives except don't go, which is straight up illegal in a lot of places until your 18.

I think most education systems actually work the other way around, the hole's there, but the teachers will hammer students into the "right" shape

This is such a bullshit moral for stories, and it's so overused that it boggles my brain. It's just an outright lie - accepting oneself will NOT magically solve all of one's problems, that's not how reality works.

I think that there’s a comfy middle ground between giving into every horrible trait you have to the detriment of everyone around you, and molding yourself into a character just to please everyone around you.

Learning how to “Be yourself” just means learning how to take your core personality and cultivate it into being your own person that also knows how to get along well with society at large.

This is definitely true. My litmus test is simply empathy. If I were them, would I want to have a stranger (me) do this thing I'm about to do? If the answer is no, then I don't do it.

I think it's simpler than that. If you need to pretend to be a different person so others will accept you, then you'll spend your life pretending to be something you're not. If you just be yourself, then anyone who accepts you is accepting the real you rather than a false front you put on.

Note that there's a difference between pretending to be what you're not vs changing yourself into something different.

It will not solve all your problems, but it might solve some.

Pretending to be someone you're really not, unless there's a very good reason for it, usually leads to more harm than good

Recently I saw someone complaining that he’ll always be a virgin and will never get laid. In my advice I recommended making changes to improve himself, like being kind and generous, learning to be better socially, and taking up hobbies that involve being around people.

He said I was telling him to “fake himself.”

All of the “just be yourself” and “you’re perfect just the way you are” platitudes are meant to improve confidence, but unfortunately it means some people genuinely don’t think they need to fix things. That they are just, like, owed success from society or something.

Obviously there are aspects that you don’t need to change, like you don’t have to pretend to like things you don’t, and you don’t have to try to change your orientation or identity, but if you’re an asshole you should try to not be an asshole. If you smell bad you should shower. If you suffer from social anxiety there are both medical and practical ways to address that.

No one is perfect. We can all stand to improve things about ourselves and thus progress towards whatever goals we may have. And the more we lie about not needing to change, or indeed not being able to change, the more we let people wallow in self-pity. I don’t have data to back this up, but I suspect this sort of thinking leads in part to the wave of loneliness and incel-ness we see in our society today.

"Be yourself" + "Give yourself time to grow" + "You can be anything you set your mind to" are not contradictory and indeed need to all be taken together. I suppose a less kind to put it is "Authentically and gradually shape yourself into a person of your own choosing. We are all going to presume you'll pick well in either a prosocial or profitable sense. If you don't shape yourself well then it will be unpleasant for everyone especially you."

Yeah and if you're someone like me you shouldn't accept yourself.

I'm actual human garbage.

My point is that coming to terms with who you are isn't the destination, but the first step in a road of self improvement.

You're only garbage if you stop there. Do better, one little bit at a time.

"Your true self is a circle. You only think you're a triangle."

So... which education system would that be?

I acknowledge that online the assumption is whenever you see memes like these it's always about the US, but maybe having that assumption is me internalizing that weirdness?

All of them.

Oh, ok. So no problem, then.

I mean, if all of them are like that then it's a fundamental, intrinsic problem of growing up and learning things and there's nothing to be done. No point complaining.

But I don't think you mean that, to be perfectly honest.

Not true. The state of the art of education is in a certain place where education systems that are doing the best anyone is doing are still doing so with ableist discrimination forward. Those looking to the "most successful" education systems will be imitating these practices as well. The current best is far from the best it could be though, and things could be changed radically to remove that ableist discrimination.

Oh, that one is unexpected. You've managed to blend both "if it's not perfect it's just as bad as ours" and "nobody has ever done it right" in a single argument.

That's kind of impressive, actually.

Again, who are we talking about and what problems are we identifying? Because I find it hard to believe that in a whole-ass planet where hundreds of countries and private institutions have their own distinct take on how to do this (never mind all the ones that came before the current ones) this is simultaneously simply impossible to get right but also so easy that it can be condensed in a one panel comic strip-slash-one paragraph social media post.

I definitely never said that there aren't education systems that are better than other education systems because none are perfect, or implied that at all.

And the mistake you've made here is assuming that conceptually, something not being done correctly anywhere currently means it's impossible. That idea basically negates the idea of human progress. There are lots of things currently being done that, in the past, were tried and failed simultaneously by many institutions across the planet before it was solved and the solution proliferated.

Education that is applied equitably to people who have different needs is a problem that, if solved in the theoretical realm (still doubt), definitely hasn't been solved at the implementation step widely anywhere. I don't think you could name a single country where education outcomes are equitable for ND people with respect to their NT counterparts with similar base capabilities. But it's definitely possible.

No, I'm not saying things can't be improved, I'm saying that the blanket statements being thrown around are reductive and ethnocentric.

The idea that your state of the issue is the high bar for it is reductive and ethnocentric. The idea that your activism or proposal is the cutting edge and will set the solution set to proliferate is reductive and ethnocentric. This is a common pattern in western, and especially US activism, and it can get really annoying.

It's fine to want to make things better, but some care to acknowledge that not everybody is in the same place structurally and not every solution may be universal seems prudent and when that framing isn't top of mind for people I tend to notice.

Can you name an education system globally that has solved the problems of diverse needs in education, and especially the type of neurodiverse needs that these types of memes generally reference? Because I do agree that activism that ignores diverse needs across a cultural and national axis is a problem, but it's only a problem that applies here if there's a place on Earth where this doesn't apply.

I used to have a sort of wishful thinking-esque belief that there were better places for the education of neurodivergent children. When I was much younger I thought it must be one of the other local districts near me. Then I thought maybe another US state or western country. Then I finally tried to think globally. But I've yet to hear a description, in all of that desperate searching, of a widespread approach to education that actually addresses these problems or even considers them problems. I'm open to being wrong though. Can you show me one? Can you point at even one? Because if my cultural bias has blanked one out I really want to know which.

"Solved"? What is "solved" in that scenario? Neurodivergent kids not having to deal with being neurodivergent?

I can point at different approaches to the issue in different places and take notice of different outcomes, but even now, having kids around me who do need support due to specific issues that I won't share here, and having received that support in different ways in different countries... I don't even know what the "solved" status is.

I want them to be happy and get better at the things where getting better is an option, and I want them to be accepted and supported on the things where it's not. There's a reason why those kids are being supported by professionals and not just going with whatever my best guess is, and I'm certainly not assuming that our local answer is either the best or the worst, or even that there is a single, blanket right answer, for that matter.

The ethnocentrism is an issue in general, not just in this issue, but I disagree that it's only a problem if there is a marvellous utopia where the problem is fully resolved. Maybe that assumption is part of the ethnocentrism problem itself, I don't know.

Systemic ableism is the problem, not "having to deal with being neurodivergent". Otherwise there would be no "solved" state. Though a solved state is pretty easy to get a decent definition of: A state wherein neurodivergent people have a equal outcomes in each area with respect to their neurotypical counterparts with the same base aptitude in the same subject matter, regardless of the differences in the path needed to realize whatever that aptitude is.

Now, that said, that only describes something that is lacking. I haven't even heard of an education system that doesn't specifically punish neurodivergent behavior, which, worse than something that is missing everywhere, is a negative that is present everywhere. So let's call eliminating this a compromise solve.

As far as the ethnocentrism argument and it only being relevant if it's solved somewhere, well, I guess the poor construction of that would be: "The ethnocentrism argument is only valid if there is an example of the problem being completely solved." which I guess you sort or addressed effectively and I may have sloppily implied by accident. What I really was trying to say though, was, "The ethnocentrism argument only applies to this specific observation if you have an example of a school system to which the observation does not apply." which I still stand by and still doubt you have such an example.

I disagree with that last characterization. I think the ethnocentrism only applies if there is an example to which that observation applies less than to the reference example.

Because that was my original question, if you go back to that: which system is the cartoon supposed to depict?

Because if the answer is "all of them", then there is no way to define a gradient that we want to be moving towards. The movement is going to be relative to a starting point. So I don't feel I have a onus to prove that there is a system to which the (very generic and simplistic) observation doesn't apply. My point stands if it doesn't apply to all systems equally or to the same degree.

The way we do education is based on fundamentally flawed concepts, from the grading systems we use to the clear design towards specifically (neuro)typical and more privileged children. This is just true everywhere. Childhood psychology/developmental psychology and education are pretty complicated and poorly understood by most of the public, even educators. And obviously significant social biases also play a part in the education system.

Rich kids without ADHD generally do far better in school and get into far better colleges or professions initially than poor kids or kids with ADHD... there are exceptions, but for the most part, almost all of the kids that fail school either have some form of disability (often times an undiagnosed disorder) or are underprivileged in some way (like being poor). Generally those kids would excel in a better environment, hell usually the "gifted" classes are primarily neurodivergent kids in elementary/middle school (or equivalents).

This is just repeating what I originally said, but hear me out. Who is "we"?

I mean, this very nice lady even says at around the 35 minute mark that "there are plenty of schools that don't grade their students and have great college acceptance rates", which makes me think she thinks her "we" may not be your "we". She definitely doesn't seem to think that "we" is "all of them".

So who is "we"?

"We" is most of the schools in a majority of education systems in the world. At least, a majority of kids in most education systems are subject to this kind of education. Especially in the western world and East Asia where education is widespread and well-established, and where typical grading is seen as god.

Yeeeah, I'm not gonna cut through the ethnocentrism here, am I? Because that sure sounds like it means "the US and all the places I kind of assume work just like the US but don't actually know in any detail". Which is the exact type of discourse I was calling out at the top of this thing. If I'm honest, the implicit assumption you're making that the countries that don't work just like what you know don't do so because education there isn't "widespread and well-established" is kind of icky, depending on how much benefit of the doubt one gives to your "western world" blanket.

To be clear, I don't have a particularly conservative take on this issue and I certainly have objections to the current state of the education system(s) I know. But they're not the same ones you mean, not for the same reasons and certainly the concepts, issues and solutions the nice lady in the video is calling out would not really apply.

Sorry but do you know nothing of schooling in Japan, South Korea, or China? Or Germany or anywhere else in Europe? Would you be so kind as to point out a country where the part about education primarily rewarding being neurotypical, encouraging perfectionism/performance/competition over learning/personal success (and usually rewarding being privileged but not always) doesn't apply? Where would you say has an "equal" or "fair" education system? The education systems don't have to work the same way to have very similar and related fundamental flaws.

When I say "western world" I am using the common definition that includes South America and Eastern Europe. I suppose a better grouping to use would be primarily countries with a "medium, high, or very high" development index, considering those countries are likely to have a decently high rate of education with at least a somewhat consistent and functional education system. Considering that even includes war-torn theocratic dictatorships, I'd say it's a pretty lenient metric.

I have, in fact, gone through the school system in some of the places you mention, yeah. Had people with very specific special needs close to me go through several of them, too. Had people close to me be teachers in some of them for decades as well. Some of them provided better support than others, most had some type of system that was definitely focused on specific support based on individual needs. Some have changed during my lifetime, because there are different opinions on what achieves that better.

And here's the rub, I'm still not an expert. I still wouldn't make sweeping generalizations about it. I absolutely don't claim to have all the answers or see obvious flaws with obvious solutions. Certainly not assume the examples I know are close enough to every other country to not make a difference.

But hey, that's just me.

Considering you're both American and a native English speaker, I somehow doubt that you have gone through primary or secondary schooling in East Asia, let alone anywhere outside of North America... regardless of that, it is very justified to make such generalizations considering how a majority of education is organized – most have very similar structures and are scaled-grading based with the objective to get a "passing grade" and often times those who get the highest grades get the most opportunities immediately post-education (generally college or better entry into jobs). Teaching is usually not one-on-one, and classes are mostly targetted towards neurotypical children.

Additionally, regardless of what country you go, it is a fact that the government and culture is extremely ableist, and likely has some form of rampant classism (although this is less universal than ableism). Systematic and cultural biases like that undeniably seep into the education system in every country. Your assumptions that education systems being ableist are probably not the default or widespread phenomenon really hinge on "being well-informed on the complexities of childhood/education psychology" and "proper disability awareness and accomodation" being one of the default states. It's not, and in reality it takes significant amounts of resources and scientific approaches being pooled into specifically accomodating for neurodivergent and/or disabled and underprivileged children.

I am neither American nor a native English speaker, but thanks, I'm gonna take that as a compliment. The rest of my point stands.

I don't think non-Americans would primarily be talking about specific American cities, things they experienced in America, primarily American cultural icons, and American politics while also calling American Democrats "leftists" among other American-centric ideas, but I suppose anything's possible isn't it. But that's just from a few seconds of scrolling.

Not that you can't know anything about other education systems because of that – I just find it hard to believe.

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Thats why it feels like youre being chiseled out by the education system

Teachers are on the other side with hammers trying to force everyone through.

There are several hole shapes but not infinite and no guarantee that an individual person will be suited to a hole at all.

Why homeschool education is best education.

Teehee, come at me with the downvotes, drones.

In some specific cases it might be, but a lot of parents are doing it for the wrong reasons, and I'm not sure I've ever met a homeschooled kid that didn't seem a bit off socially.

Well keep in mind that homeschooling doesn't exclude extracurriculars. In my town, almost on a daily basis there's some sort of child learning activities, museums, planetariums, gardening, nature exploring etc.. These activities are done with other homeschooled children and children going on field trips.

I've been thinking about it long and hard, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm a lousy teacher, and on the other hand, I've faced a rather limited pool of tutors 😓

Actually, hiring is hell, almost like the "dating" market. Only this time, it's not even your own life at stake.

My wife isn't a certified teacher, she just goes online and finds educational resources and prints them out. My daughter is learning at the 4th grade level. She's only 5 years old.

Before my wife and I had kids we had this discussion about public education, private institutions, and home schooling. If private institutions were affordable, we will go that route, if not, then home schooling. I told her public education is not on the table, ever. It is an institution that keeps the minds of children dull, lethargic, and incapable of advancing because the curriculum provided is static, all children work at the same pace.

When I was a child, my teacher in 2nd grade told my mother I had ADHD. That at first, I was an excellent student, I did all my work, then all of a sudden I had a change in behavior. Come to find out, I was bored. The pace of learning was too slow in the classroom. And thank fk my mom didn't put me on any meds. My wife was the same way in high school... she was skipping school so much she was about to get expelled but she explained to the dean that all her homework was completed, all got good grades and she always came to school to take quizzes and tests and those scores were never below a B+. And that anytime she got anything less than an A she would do extra credit work to make up for it. They allowed her to continue her high school education and she graduated as one of the valedictorians, meaning a perfect 4.0 GPA.

All I'm saying is, public education gives you the bare minimum to become a wage slave. The institution is outdated, plain and simple.

While this all seems reasonable I would like to point out a couple things. First that ADHD is a real thing that people struggle with, and many are not diagnosed until after they finish school (or not at all in some cases). So yeah sometimes their are spurious diagnosis given by teachers (who aren't even qualified to give a diagnosis btw), but on the whole it's under diagnosed.

I also think it's good to point out that in a good education system you should have things like ability sets and G&T programs. When I went to school they had sets in secondary education at least, but not in primary education for some reason. Little funding for G&T programs as well. This doesn't make the greatest amount of sense, especially for people like you and your wife.

Public schooling helps kids acquire social skills and learn how to interact with others, like not calling people you've never met "drones"

I went to public school, I explained that public school for me was too slow, as too with my wife. Why would I limit my children? And homeschooling doesn't interfere with social skills.