Should NS be a core part of American learning?

[Makko Oko]

Ladies and gents, I have here the most philosophical (and probably the dumbest) question to ever be asked on this very forum. Should NationStates (or even NSG itself) become a part of the American public school system? Should NSG be mandatory reading and participation? Why or why not? We all know that we say dumb things (myself included), and I do think there is a lot of diversity and learning potential on this site. Everybody learns from one another, and kids would get to learn healthy debate without breaking into fisticuffs. Therefore, I think that NSG should be mandatory reading, and playing NS itself should be mandatory to help nurture kids' imaginations. I am not leaning either way for mandatory participation in NSG.

~ Enjoy this dumb question and a merry early Christmas for all who celebrate!

[Rusozak]

Hell no! You really want children to be exposed to the dumb shit takes of NSG?

[Makko Oko]

Hell no! You really want children to be exposed to the dumb shit takes of NSG?

Can't be any worse than other social medias, but also just a dumb joke. Really kids should not be exposed to any social media until they can prove that they will not fall for fake news, mass hysteria etc.

[Stellar Colonies]

Outsourcing education to corporations isn’t enough, now it’s to other countries like Australia.

[Eahland]

Hell no! You really want children to be exposed to the dumb shit takes of NSG?

Most of them are children. Like half of this forum is in high school, including several of the posters who are just bad take factories.

[Makko Oko]

Outsourcing education to corporations isn’t enough, now it’s to other countries like Australia.

Now we will outsource it to people like the glorious Max Berry!

[Socialistic Britain]

Outsourcing education to corporations isn’t enough, now it’s to other countries like Australia.

Now we will outsource it to people like the glorious Max Berry!

Ah yes, max berry
Our favourite Australian man, who strangely smells of berries

[Second Dimetrodon Empire]

Gameside? Maybe, hence the school class regions.

Forumside? Hell no.

[True Europa State]

It depends.

On one hand, there are parts of NS that could be very beneficial. At least in base NS, with the issue answering, it teaches kids about the diversity of options that a government can take when faced with an issue, and it really teaches them the consequences of their decisions, trying to increase military spending but utterly tanking civil rights, perhaps. Not only that, but the forums could also be useful because it shows kids each perspective on a given issue, from how NSG-ers interact with one another, and how everybody has a differing opinion on any topic.

On the other hand, the kids are exposed to the forums, and chats with public strangers. Slightly concerning.

[Floofybit]

Yes. Especially if they add bias to make my posts look better.

[Tinhampton]

As a non-American, I do not feel qualified to pass comment on this situation. Now if you were to ask me whether NationStates should be a part of the English curriculum, then no: the National Curriculum is a dead letter in most schools *gestures towards academisation,* I don't believe there's a mandate to learn any specific content in the humanities subjects (at least in Key Stage 3) other than that Holocaust education must be delivered in History even then, the vast majority of schools in any given geographical area worldwide don't operate class regions, the sheer scale of the onboarding would leave many teachers poorly prepared, and I frankly have no idea how NS is going to cope with the vast supermajority of its playerbase being English teens, tweens and custodians anyway... other than maybe moving update times to 8am and 8pm GMT/BST.

[Infected Mushroom]

Yes. This way they can also participate in my hypotheticals and learn how to think critically.

[Quasi-Stellar Star Civilizations]

Maybe if Max Barry creates another site, like "NationStates: Education Edition" or something. Otherwise, absolutely not.
NSG is, frankly, a hellhole of constant arguments on race to technology, and everything in between. NSG is not for those under 13 simply because of this fact.
That said, NS should stay as it is currently, though maybe the mods increase the age limit...

[Inner Albania]

Not really. NationStates shouldn't be a core part of American learning.

[Murnik]

There is a School/Education (?) feature for NationStates that isn't widely known. Still - I wouldn't recommend NS to be used in schools is because NS can't handle a lot of people in their servers (i.e. Christmas incident and Drewpocalypse). The only thing NS should be in is colleges because of how political it is.

[Ethel mermania]

There are some schools that I think did use the site as a teaching tool. Site admin or moderation would know more than I

[Safiloa]

I used NS to teach Civics to 7 graders at a Catholic school. They even created a wiki page for their country as their end project.

[Cloud-Cuckoo-Land]

Ladies and gents, I have here the most philosophical (and probably the dumbest) question to ever be asked on this very forum. Should NationStates (or even NSG itself) become a part of the American public school system? Should NSG be mandatory reading and participation? Why or why not? We all know that we say dumb things (myself included), and I do think there is a lot of diversity and learning potential on this site. Everybody learns from one another, and kids would get to learn healthy debate without breaking into fisticuffs. Therefore, I think that NSG should be mandatory reading, and playing NS itself should be mandatory to help nurture kids' imaginations. I am not leaning either way for mandatory participation in NSG.

~ Enjoy this dumb question and a merry early Christmas for all who celebrate!

No, it shouldn't. It should be made available to people over 18, actually, because there's plenty of Russian trolls who post outrageously absurd rants and propaganda that is meant to divide the Western society. It's been plaguing the Internet since 2014 Crimea annexation by Russia, and "woke" people fight "alt-righters" and vice versa, denying each other the right to exist and reach out to each other. This results in violent and antisocial behaviour from both of them. All because of systemic cultivation of social division and information bubbles.

Communist apologists and denialists of Holodomor, capitalists who remove posts about African children mining diamonds with their bare hands, Chinese apologists denying people making affordable pants for export while mutilating their hands with barely functional sewing machines and lasers which burn "designer holes" in them (workers frequently burn their hands, because they are forced to work fast and carelessly) exist, people mocking some Chinese tik-toker and construction worker exposing unacceptable protection helmets provided to them being ridiculed as someone who wants to sell useless bicycle helmets on AliExpress, capitalists who claim they have better working conditions which justifies their products' higher price while the same junk gets made in the same factories in China or Indonesia and all they are paying for is a brand logo sewn on an article of clothing, etc...

The propaganda itself isn't really the problem. The fact that most groups/regions here are led by people suffering from cluster B personality disorders (especially NPD) is. Children are very vulnerable to those people, and unfortunately, social media tends to attract and reward people who are thriving narcissists. Normal people with normal lives don't have as much time and energy to maintain group cohesiveness as narcissists do. And what better person to brainwash than a defensless child who suffers from Dunning-Kruger effect?

They are experts at suppressing opinions which contradict their agenda. All while they claim they love democracy and value everyone's opinion. Yeah, totally. Maybe in their heads. Everyone who believes them lives in... actual Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Our Cloud-Cuckoo-Landers are better.

[Federal Republic of Serov]

We don’t need an army of woke communist teenagers thank you very much.

[Second Dimetrodon Empire]

We don’t need an army of woke communist teenagers thank you very much.

That's going to happen anyway, whether NS is used or not.

[The German Crown]

I just have to approve it I'm doing it right now!!!

[Federal Republic of Serov]

That's going to happen anyway, whether NS is used or not.

There would certainly be a lot more of them due to this site’s far-left bias.

[Second Dimetrodon Empire]

That's going to happen anyway, whether NS is used or not.

There would certainly be a lot more of them due to this site’s far-left bias.

No there wouldn't, since leftists are on plenty of other social media platforms, and this site is not biased towards the far-left either. We have many capitalist users here.

Just because most don't entertain the bullshit claim that Trump is the rightful winner in 2020 (or blindly fight on the right-wing culture war) does not make this site far-left.

[Bradfordville]

What exactly would children learn from NS? That civil, reasonable debate can be traded for snark and confrontatation? That they can strawman people's beliefs if they can't argue against their real beliefs?

Maybe they can learn about sinostatism from Neko-Koku, your friendly neighborhood racist. Or is he gone again?

[Second Dimetrodon Empire]

Maybe they can learn about sinostatism from Neko-Koku, your friendly neighborhood racist. Or is he gone again?

Neko-Koku is in the boneyard as "disgraced."

Looks like the mods took care of him.