This is just wrong.

[Danish rage]

Well. In 89 i was 9 years old. I lived in a crappy part of town and went to a school with a shitload of Arabs. I remember this clearly because my dad went abeshit about it.

At some point it was time to learn about seasons, spring, fall, summer, winter, you know.
And what do they do, present me for a sheet of paper on the subject in arab. IM FUCKING DANISH!

Point is, we don´t pay our teatchers enough or respect the work they do, and we get shitty teatchers in return.

I will completely ignore the underlying tone of Microsoft hate.

 

[Ramin 123]

That's a shitty teacher, to put it mildly. They were pushing Mario Paint at my school when it came out, to help creativity and make games "useful".

How about buying paintbrushes, *****?

And what's wrong with teaching using a cheap digital publishing program? There is an insane market for that kind of thing these days.

Yes but they should be learning things not looking at a fucking advertisement masked as homework. I mean come on...Microsoft teaching my kid (not that I'll have any as I wish not to curse the world with such a thing)is just ludicrous.

 

[MonocleClaire]

What the fuck? What if the kid doesn't have a Kinect?

 

[Daverson]

Doesn't beat the kid who got suspended for wearing a "Pepsi" shirt on his schools "Coca-Cola Day" =p

You Americans, you're bizarre education system amuses me. The only lies we were taught in Primary School (I believe you may call this "Grade school", which also seems odd, as surely all schools give grades?) were about that Jesus fellow. (though, we did once have a substitute who taught us that "0.9 + 0.1 = 0.10"...)

 

[superbatranger]

From an educational standpoint, what good would any of this do?

 

[Weaver]

OP: That right there is an advertising supplement for "TIME For Kids" Magazine. Specifically that magazine is designed for children to read, and published by TIME, inc. It is one big ad, in a for profit magazine. I really doubt the teacher assigned it as official homework, if at all. I also really doubt the school pays for enough subscriptions or a class room to have a supplement book for each kid.

I think it far more likely you brother picked it up from one of the couple of copies of the magazine they get, and you figured it would be neat to tack on that story.

Do you live in Bellevue, Seattle or Redmond? I was there last week and it scared the shit out of me how much Microsoft nearly literally owns the entire area.

The Nintendo campus right across the street is close to the same size as the Microsoft campus in Redmond.

The NOA warehouse in North Bend could cover both of those campuses.

Microsoft hardly has a presence in Seattle.

I do contract work for NOA that takes me up in that area at least once a month. Unless they are rolling up signs as I roll into town you are exaggerating quite a bit.

NoA doesn't even compared to Microsoft in size. Their three main buildings (with a fourth in planning) host just over 1000 employees. Microsoft has 127 buildings in redmond which hold about 45,000 employees, they have their own transportation system for microsoft employees, have half the rooms in three hotels in redmond/bellevue on constant reserve along with several rooms in restaurants in the area.

When windows phone 7 launched they closed down the streets and had a god damn parade, and I'm not even close to kidding.

Spoiler

I used to live in Waterloo Ontario, where RIM is based. There were RIM buildings everywhere, but the city would never let them close down the streets to have a parade for a phone launch.

 

[Ashcrexl]

the advertisement is fine, we're living in a capitalistic society after all, so microsoft is in the clear. but the teacher is at fault here. there doesnt seem to be any educational value in this "homework" assignment at all. that's the issue i have. plus the puzzles are insultingly easy for any 9-10 year old.

 

[JaffaFrost]

Well, I'm not surprised, Microsoft are just money making machines..
I guess it's wrong, but you kinda get used to it

 

[manaman]

snip

Spoiler

I used to live in Waterloo Ontario, where RIM is based. There were RIM buildings everywhere, but the city would never let them close down the streets to have a parade for a phone launch.

I have no idea the size of their other facilities in the area. I only know that the couple of buildings across the road from the NOA campus compare in size to buildings on the NOA side.

That's not much of a parade, but if you want to pretend that is a major road they are marching down go right on ahead. It looks more like a road through their campus, which in all likely hood they own, and the city only has an easement to if it is a thru street.

Yeah, I looked it up, they marched around the campus.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

That's a shitty teacher, to put it mildly. They were pushing Mario Paint at my school when it came out, to help creativity and make games "useful".

How about buying paintbrushes, *****?

And what's wrong with teaching using a cheap digital publishing program? There is an insane market for that kind of thing these days.

Yes but they should be learning things not looking at a fucking advertisement masked as homework. I mean come on...Microsoft teaching my kid (not that I'll have any as I wish not to curse the world with such a thing)is just ludicrous.

I was responding to his criticism of using Mario Paint, I didn't make any comment on the Kinect homework because without actually seeing it, I can't tell if the homework is literally reading an advertisement or if it's commentary on it.

 

[Kurokami]

Why's homework wrong?

It's a way to take what little social life kids have left away. School is already a full-time job, and then they're being forced to fritter away the rest of their time on busywork

If homework takes you so long I'm surprised you're passing the tests. Either way, some people don't have it as easy as you claim it to be for you and need to do homework.

PS: I don't do homework either, but I'm smart enough to know it wasn't invented as some kind of payback by educators, especially when THEY have to mark it. If anyone's to be pittied for homework, it's the teachers, not the students.

 

[Julianking93]

Hm. Can't say I'm surprised, to be honest.

At least they're advertising games in a positive light.

When I was in school, we had to do a paper arguing why gaming is bad.

We didn't have a choice as to what side we wanted to be on. We had to say gaming was a horrible form of media that is bad for children.

I refused. Got an F. Then told the teacher to go fuck herself.

 

[badgersprite]

I don't really think it's wrong, per se. When I was a kid, I had to do projects about advertising for things too, regardless of what they were. It was usually food, I think. It's just a brain exercise, and it is a skillset to think about, say, how things look, packaging, slogans. It doesn't actually make you like the product more. If anything, it makes you think about the marketing tricks people pull on you.

That was my experience, anyway.

 

[ultrachicken]

epic snip

Classwork does very little, if anything, to help kids manage time. With classwork, they have an allotted time period during which they do nothing but the work. Homework is done on the kids' own time. They have to learn habits that will allow them to manage the workload on their own. In the early years of education, the parents mostly do this for them, but that helps set up their habits for HS.

Repetition will only help students learn if the kid invests themselves in their work. It seems to me like you were just doing the bare minimum because you thought you were too cool to do the work. No amount of work or teachers can educate a kid who refuses to learn. You ever heard the phrase, "you only get out of school what you put in?" There's truth to that. The students have to be held accountable for when they just refuse to learn.

Tests are not a practical means of measuring knowledge of anything but the test-taker's ability to study and do well under pressure.

Frankly, if your treatment of non-school hours as a holy time that is to be protected at all costs became the norm, then students would face a massive challenge when they enter college/work. The point of school is to prepare you for the real world, not just to teach the core courses.

 

[MrGalactus]

Yes it is wrong. It's like the educational books and things with Shreck and Buzz Lightyear in them. It's disgusting.

 

[CobraX]

Welcome to the United corporations of America.

That is wrong, but that is your capitalist society in action.

At the very least they should advertise a game with some kind of value.
I'll just be on my way now.

 

[MrJohnson]

OP: That right there is an advertising supplement for "TIME For Kids" Magazine. Specifically that magazine is designed for children to read, and published by TIME, inc. It is one big ad, in a for profit magazine. I really doubt the teacher assigned it as official homework, if at all. I also really doubt the school pays for enough subscriptions or a class room to have a supplement book for each kid.

I think it far more likely you brother picked it up from one of the couple of copies of the magazine they get, and you figured it would be neat to tack on that story.

Do you live in Bellevue, Seattle or Redmond? I was there last week and it scared the shit out of me how much Microsoft nearly literally owns the entire area.

The Nintendo campus right across the street is close to the same size as the Microsoft campus in Redmond.

The NOA warehouse in North Bend could cover both of those campuses.

Microsoft hardly has a presence in Seattle.

I do contract work for NOA that takes me up in that area at least once a month. Unless they are rolling up signs as I roll into town you are exaggerating quite a bit.

This, 10x this.

 

[Wharrgarble]

We're going to be seeing a lot more of this in the future if state funding to schools keeps getting cut at the rate that it is. Advertising is a great way to reach a target audience, and a school that is suffering financially is going to jump on any chance to get extra help to keep themselves running.

It's depressing, it really is. Imagine, pencils with phone numbers stamped on them for students to call to order a subscription for People Magazine.

 

[Lem0nade Inlay]

That is wrong! It's terrible how that can be considered homework, it's a fucking advertisement. You should complain to the school, I'd like to see how they justify it...

 

[TheWwwizard]

Yes this is just wrong I believe the title of the thread summed it up pretty well.
Schools should not be allowed to advertise it's one of the things I think should be VERY illegal. *sigh* but for now if you are pissed off by it just tell your parents to file a complaint with the school about that shit.