The Leewit @ghost_bird@witches.town

@danielemereb I don't know that it's impossible, but I think you're right that it's harder.
A friend of a friend teaches in a non-traditional school where everything is voluntary, and it works in part because they mostly take the children of Quakers, who have been brought up in that kind of environment. They said if they get a pupil who's been in the regular system they generally take several months to settle down and start learning.

@Sparrow That's all practical enough. But then we get to hall passes and the dynamics of the classroom and all the underlying assumptions about what a school is and how it works.

@Luk3r93 He's a mid-boss at best. But he definitely needs to be in there.

@kara Same, tbh.

OH at work: "Could we not make the college a department instead of an institution?"

I think the new org structure is taking its toll on the programmers.

@Luk3r93 I'd be up for a modern-day GTA/Far Cry/Just Cause-style open world about that. Maybe with nazi-punching timed events too?

@kara Because (I think I'd argue) anything deeper would start to be a critique of school as an institution. Though I also don't like it much these days because I've learned to distrust charisma.

@kara ("Dead Poets Society" is the example I didn't quite manage to think of before I tooted.)

@kara Or at best it's the charismatic leader who "inspires" their students without empowering them. Because empowered students are a threat to discipline.

What we don't do, generally, is talk about school as an authoritarian environment and what happens to well intentioned people in a system that values the maintenance of order and the status quo. You get a culture where it's much easier to be a petty tyrant and to enforce the system's expectations than it is to "make a difference". You get, in short, something that looks a lot like what cops do.

Decent people recognise teachers are in an impossible position, politically speaking. And so we make sure to praise the "good ones" who "made a difference" and we stay mostly quiet about the bullies and the ones who tried to feel us up. Because who gains if we start trashing teachers?
But.

@rhiannonrevolts I'd been meaning to put a copy on my recipe blog anyway, but that's good to know.

Archives at The Toast seem to be going offline , so I scraped Lisa Yelsey’s recipe for chocolate babka from the Wayback Machine. It's good and pretty easy:
http://samsfoodnotes.tumblr.com/post/171445694147/chocolate-cinnamon-pecan-babka

@Belchion You were sealioning in a distinctly insensitive way. In particular, you were treating prejudice against immigrants as an abstract technical question because you never bothered to think that this was something that affects the lives of real people. And now you're butthurt because people didn't give you the respect you apparently believe you deserve.
I mention this because you don't seem like an actively evil person, and I think a bit of reflection on what happened might do you some good.

@repeatedvs *sending strength and sympathy*

@fluttergirly Everyone knows you can’t, though.

@guerrillarain Bohemian Rhapsody, and I’m not even sorry.