@RadvylfPrograms Well update, this was a lot less fun than I thought it'd be.

o no

Apparently he (likely deliberately) misinterpreted every sentence of my reply as some sort of insult directed at him or his competence, and spent roughly ten minutes incoherently yelling at me and refusing to listen to my clarifications

._.

tell him Ginger from CGSE says "screw you" /s

Well, I did the closest thing to that possible, and emailed the school principal

I didn't directly ask for anything to happen to him (it was more of asking "can you get an assistant principal or school counselor to mediate any future discussions I have with this egotistic idiot"), and did my best to contextualize what he did in the nicest way possible, but I'm hoping he'll read between the lines and notice that maybe this wasn't a one-off and that this guy isn't a very good teacher.

I wouldn't bet on it

What I'm more concerned about is that since he gave me a failing grade this will cause my grade for this semester to average out to below a 90 unless I can figure out how to add 4 points onto it

@Ginger Well he's already probably not on the best terms with our (black) principal after using a racial slur four times in class

What makes 86 so much worse than 90?

@RadvylfPrograms I revoke my /s.

@pxeger The fact that I no longer am on the honor roll, it drops my GPA below a 4.0, and one or both of those things makes it so I can't apply for certain scholarships and stuff

I see

This isn't college, my grades actually matter right now

I don't understand the US school system

Ah

¯\_(ಠ_ಠ)_/¯

^^^

@RadvylfPrograms wait you arent in college?

10th grade :p

i am about to go in 10th grade ..

(1st june)

Is 10th grade the last year of high school?

yeah

No, there's 11th then 12th here

then you enter pre university (11th and 12th) here

Oh

@RadvylfPrograms my school doesnt have 11th and 12th :/\/

Many schools in the UK don't do year 12 and 13; you have to go to a 6th form college for that

How many different high school systems do we have in this chat right now?

Texas here

England

(which doesn't have anything actually called "high school")

((except in Leicestershire))

@Romanp India

Homeschool

homeschool?

yes. Online classes. Heading to college in the fall, though

Semester ends in around three weeks though (but my graduation day is pretty arbitrary)

Online classes? Maybe "homeschool" doesn't mean the same thing to you and me

To me, homeschooling means your parents entirely control your education

^

Although Roman's probably using a more legal definition of the term

Where even though some online course is being used it's not generating actual high school transcripts

and it often has particular connotations of rebelliousness (by the parents)

My usual assumption when I hear "homeschool" is "your parents are in a cult" lol

pasteMC: Embed ngn/k. Links: k.wasm :P

Online classes, but me/my parents picks providers or independent study. This year, I have mostly been working though.

@RadvylfPrograms Our beginning to homeschool lowered our cultishness level.

Which cult?

@RadvylfPrograms Mine weren't (and still aren't)

@pxeger I believe there's no such thing as a cult.

That's the kind of thing a cult member would say

I don't think so. Cult members tend to be obsessed with denying that their group is a cult.

IMO a cult is just a religion that manipulates its members, plenty of examples.

Cults aren't necessarily religious

@pxeger Which is not mutually exclusive with them signing you up for some classes from an established source. I took a bunch of community college classes for high school credit, for example. My mom said she wasn't about to build a chemistry lab in the backyard. ^_^

If we continue this discussion it should probably be in another room

@Adám In what sense were you previously cultish then?

^^

@pxeger You can say something resembles something you don't think exists

← 62 messages moved from The Nineteenth Byte

Unfortunate room title

This is a room now?

@DLosc What would you prefer?

@pxeger We were sending our kids to a religious school that dictated certain aspects of the lives of the students and their families.

I'd prefer for the homeschooling discussion not to be lumped in with the cults discussion. But I guess that horse has already left the barn.

But we're discussing the intersection.

Do you want two separate rooms then?

@Adám really the union

room topic changed to Cults and/or home-schooling: (no tags)

Lol

"Homeschooling is sometimes associated with cults but not always. Also, what even is a cult?" /hj

Since leaving the school, all that influence went away.

Fair enough

@DLosc Every group of people (family, company, club, organisation, country, etc.) is on the cultish spectrum by way of having rules, people in charge, and consequences for disobeying the rules.

E.g. the group called USA has an almost untouchable leader, and will go as far as killing its own members for breaking some specific rules.

In the group which is my family, the parents are in charge, and kids can lose privileges or even get "time out" for disobedience.

I've heard of this cult called homo sapiens which seems to have constant infighting and everyone there seems to believe killing is "immoral"

@Adám In some ways, yes, though the usual definition of the term is more specific.

In a sports game, players can be temporarily (or even permanently) kicked out by the all-powerful judge.

@pxeger Plenty of humans think that killing is OK under certain circumstances.

But the human species isn't really a single group.

@Adám Not sure about "untouchable," unless you're simply referring to the fact that the president has a lot of security to prevent people from assassinating them. They can be replaced every four years if enough people agree; people make fun of them on television with impunity; and other parts of the government can go against their wishes or even vote to remove them.

@DLosc I did say "almost", but you get my point.

You could then argue that the USA gets replaced with a different cult every 4-8 years

I think the point is that "I believe there's no such thing as a cult." was basically right

Oh no, now we're in the "I believe there's no such thing as a cult" cult

No, but we're in SE, where e.g. the leadership (which isn't chosen by the members) can "just" remove members' privileges.

Interesting. The Wikipedia article agrees that there are multiple definitions of the word "cult" and that the exact meaning of the term is controversial.

SE Chat is a bit cultish as well, with lots of rules on how you have to behave, Mods and ROs, temporary or permanent banishment for disobedience, etc.

Uh oh, a mod…

There's clearly a 3-tier power hierarchy in here.

@DLosc you’re always going to have that. Nearly every word has different meanings for different people

@pxeger I don't, however, believe that if a term is fuzzy and means different things to different people, it has no meaning or "there's no such thing."

^

My point is that it is a continuum, with no cut-off wherebeyond you can say that a group is "a cult".

Maybe they meant that there is no absolute cult or something? Only culty organizations?

Okay that makes sense

yes, exactly. One group can be more cultish than another.

Much like there's no such thing as "warm", only things that are warmer than others.

I would say it's a continuum with no clear cutoff, but some groups definitely qualify and other groups definitely don't.

And there's a gray area in the middle.

Just like homeschooling /s

@DLosc some groups may definitely qualify by your definition of cult but not mine

Everyone’s gray area cutoff will also be at different places

Although i guess there are things that basically every sane person can agree on

Agreed, but even with two groups for which we all agree that they definitely are NOT cults, we can possibly agree which one of them is more cultish.

Sure

@user Where you define "sane" as someone who agrees?

Nope

I have no way to define sane :(

Maybe we could get every sane person’s opinion on it…

E.g. I guess we all agree that neither USA nor Switzerland is a cult, but that USA is more cultish than Switzerland.

@user Oh no, what have you done‽

I mean, I don't know enough about Swiss culture to have an opinion on it.

@Adám I’m gonna disagree with that (not because I'm playing devil’s advocate or know about switzerland but because i know nothing about it)

Fair enough.

I'm thinking now about the older definition of "cult," i.e. the worship of a particular god or veneration of a particular saint. There's a sense of "deep devotion to someone or something" about the concept. And it occurs to me that devotion can be seen as appropriate or inappropriate depending on whether someone thinks the object of your devotion is worthy of devotion. So to that extent, the (modern, pejorative) sense of "cult" is subjective.