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Scientific Elites vs. Illiterates
Rackemup writes "An article at Technology Review examines how it's possible for the same education system to produce both scientific elites and illiterates. While the article is kind of hard on current Elementary school teachers (whom the author says are hostile towards the scientific studies because becoming an Elementary teacher is the only way to graduate from college without needing to take a single science course), he does raise the issue that if we gave these teaching positions the pay-level and respect they deserve it would be much easier to attract Doctoral-level people to fill them."
So what has changed in the last few thousand years?
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
You can try to keep genius down, but you wont.
Improve public education all you want- the bell curve will always be there with a few at both ends. And the big middle has never been that smart, never will be.
Don't fight it, count on it.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
"He does raise the issue that if we gave these teaching positions the pay-level and respect they deserve it would be much easier to attract Doctoral-level people to fill them."
My city of Cincinnati is far too busy building stadiums.
The problem is worse than the pay. My friend got a bachelor's in physics and taught high school. He tried to teach well, and a lot of the students appreciated it, but the parents complained about low scores because of colleges, and the administration just panders them, going over the teacher's head to change grades. The pressure of college and scholarship and the lack of highly motivated teachers is part of the problem, and I think higher pay would really solve it. Just to mention, my friend quit after a year to get his PhD, just to avoid the high school system
In the past (>20 years ago), most high-paying fields were difficult for women to get into. So lots of really smart women ended up teaching elementary school, even though the pay was pathetic.
Nowadays, teachers get paid a bit better, but still not nearly enough compared to other fields like law, medicine, or software. Some smart people go into teaching anyway because they're really dedicated, but they're a minority.
I just don't get how our system is supposed to work. We are cutting funding to education (or at least not expanding it to meet demand), we are cutting back on wellfare, and we are doing everything we can to automate low skill tasks.
So basically you have to have a job to live. But the low skill jobs are being automated because it's cheaper than paying you. So you can either go on wellfare or you can try to get an education to get a better job up the food chain. In order to get the eduation, you apparently have to have money (or at the least live in an area where there is money so that the schools have decent funding). And I'm guessing that if this is a situation you find yourself in you probably don't live in a rich suburb.
I'm sorry that all the rich people aren't filthy rich enough yet, but for god's sake, why don't we fund a decent education system. I think it's reasonable to set standards that insure the school system doesn't waste its time on people who don't care. But at the same time, people who want to learn should not have to pay a dime for it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Isn't there a simple answer? Americans are more efficient than other countries in allowing personal decisions even at a young age on future career plans - so those who are destined for scientific careers can go at it gung ho from first grade, and the others can basically ignore it and leave that science stuff to the science geeks. Maybe the balance should be a bit different - on the other hand overall the balance is determined pretty well by market forces (how well are scientists paid, exactly?) - so maybe our system is just fine....
Energy: time to change the picture.
attracts many people who are pretty dumb. My theory is that someone
who enters college and is terrified of math and sciences reasons that
an elementary school teacher doesn't need much more than an elementary
school understanding of these topics. For elementary school, that
might well be OK. I don't really see the point of having M.Sc. and
Ph.D. level teachers in elementary school.
At high school, and maybe junior high, having this level of expertise
is wonderful. I was fortunate enough to go to a high school where my
math, chemistry, biology and physics teachers all had advanced
degrees and were dedicated, wonderful teachers. (The two are, of
course, not correlated).
At any level, the only criteria for teaching qualifications should be: ability to
teach, love of teaching, and mastery of the subject matter.
I think that there may be some truth to the idea that the system is flawed, but IMO the deeper flaws aren't where Goodstein thinks they are. The problem isn't that the system is focused too much on finding the scientists and ignoring others. The problem is that most science courses focus on science as knowlege, rather than science as process. The reason that people don't care about science and don't know how to apply it in their everyday lives is because they've been taught that science is about learning answers from scientists. If they were taught instead that science is about searching for answers to problems, they'd find it a much more attractive and practical subject.
Actually, though, I'm not at all surprised that Goodstein didn't notice that as a problem. Anyone who's seen The Mechanical Universe knows that it's about filling people's heads with facts, not about searching for knowledge. At least as a lecturer (and I had Goodstein for one term of introductory Physics as an undergrad) he's another one causing the problems.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Or at least the author loses abunch of credibility with a general statement like this: because becoming an Elementary teacher is the only way to graduate from college without needing to take a single science course
I must admin I thought /. was misquoting when I first read that but it is in the article. This is a very generalized statement. The school I went to and most liberal arts school I've ever heard of makes all students take basic courses which include science. My beautiful and wonderful fiance' was an Elementary Ed major, in her major she was required to take a class for teaching science to children-- all elementary ed majors were because they would probably end up teaching it. The secondary ed people were the ones who could get out of it because in middle school and high school there is more specialization.
I'd love to see a little more proof besides just an overgenralized statement. I think the reason we have scientific illiterates is the same reason why we have illiterates in any given field-- because some people play the system, know the right people or have the right parents or the athletic scholarships all of which allow them to buy their way through school.
The Anti-Blog
I don't agree with the article that teaching high school is a job for PhDs. You don't get one of those unless you've made an original contribution to the science. These people are qualified researchers, and their time ought to be spent on adding to our body of knowledge. For this they require spare time and facilities that high schools simply can't provide. But there's absolutely no reason why people with master's (or even bachelor's) degrees can't do the job of passing on the knowledge that's already been acquired. Nothing on the high school level is beyond their abilities.
And the brethren went away edified.
Making science mandatory will not solve the problem. Even when science has been 'brought to the masses' the 'masses' (whomever) ignored it. Most people are uninterested in science. Remember ol' Arthur C Clarke's quote about sufficiently advanced science being magic? Well this is true NOW for more and more US citizens, which is why, I think, we're seeing more and more 'mysticism' cropping up (think New Agers). Scientist's have managed to garner the position of 'wizard' in our society, and as such must learn to respect, use and hopefully not abuse it!
America doesn't produce a lot of scientific elites among Americans. There is significant portions of PhD students are from foriegn countries.
This is even worse, the whole education systems are not really producing. I have the feeling, the situation of scientific illiterates are getting worse (compare to before). There weren't many teachers with well training to teach science before, yet the situation now is worse than ever.
So, pay better to teachers could help, but there may be other reasons that students know less science. It is highly possible that developing a career in science does not get you as good life as you get an MBA. When everyone tells you that you just need to be able to ride certain wave of the rising bubble in the economy to get rich, you don't care what you should have learnt.
A sig is redundant.
Give the teachers more money, but gimme my rebate check.
Am I the only one that can see the inherit contradiction there?
All children love to learn, its in their make-up, its who we as a race do extremely well. The problem is we all don't learn the same way. we need to find a way to teach children individually.
You should see the look on peoples face when I tell them I would support a 50 cent gas tax, if 49 cents went to education, and 1 cent went into overhead to suport the implimentation of the tax.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
-- Shamus
"Bleah!" -- overheard at a press conference
Look at Iowa. They are near the bottom for per pupil spending, and also near the top on achievment.
In my experience, people who study science are much more broadly educated than people who don't (which seems obvious). But physics majors I've known have non-science interests (frequently music, interestingly) at a much higher rate than English majors have science-related interests. (Actually, have you ever noticed that many non-scientists consider technical stuff to be beneath them?)
As for myself, I studied biology, physics, and electrical engineering as an undergrad; I'm getting an MD and a PhD in neuroscience. As an undergrad, I took classes in history, political science, writing, and American literature. By coincidence, I was also heavily concentrated as an undergrad in theatre arts, so I do happen to know a little Shakespeare. And I still maintain an interest in almost all of those things, and regularly read about them.
But I don't consider myself unusualy well-rounded among others in science I encounter; on the contrary, I'm frequently impressed by the other interesting things that they do.
Happy Premise #3: Even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won't.
"The United States by any conceivable measure has the finest scientists in the world."
Well DUH! Because many of the best scientific minds from around the world come here because most of the MONEY and RESOURCES are here. If there's no money to do your research, there's no research.
If you want to attract the best employees to your company, you need to provide the BEST incomes, the BEST benefits, and the BEST work environments. Compare this theory with what our public school teachers get and you will see why the overall quality of teachers is so low. The starting pay is LOWER than an equally-educated person can get an office job. School levies get voted down when they look for pay increases for the teachers, often times because teaching is seen as a cushie job that gets a lot of time off. Subtract off of their salaries the monies that many teachers spend out of their own pockets to buy supplies for their rooms, as the schools cannot afford to buy it for them.
Damnit, teachers should be some of the highest-paid professionals in the nation and not some of the lowest!
No, I'm not a teacher. I'm not even related to one, unless you count my psycho mother-in-law. Did I mention the poor quality of teachers?
I know a few experts in science and mathematics who have mentioned to me that they would be more than happy to teach middle school and high school; however the requirement by my state that all teachers have a teaching certificate keeps them out of the field.
IMHO, there is no reason a person who has spend 40 years of their life teaching calculus and higher mathematics should be forced to take child psychology courses and sensitivity training in order to prove to a state agency that they can teach. Retired programmers and electrical engineers have an expertise in their fields that I'm sure more than a few of them would be glad to pass along, even on a part time basis, but the requirement of a teacher certificate--and the hasssle and expense required to obtain one once you have already graduated--precludes them from this sort of activity. Activity that a few professionals I know would be happy to do on a volunteer basis.
Low pay is absolutely a factor in keeping people out of teaching. But the certification process (and the unions that create and support them) are creating unnecessary barriers to the field of teaching that is lowering its quality as well. These barriers are keeping older professionals from entering the field in deference to providing more opportunity to younger teachers who choose to get a teaching certificate along with their four year degree. Frankly, I would have preferred to take a course in calculus from a mathematician or biology from a retired M.D. than from a newly graduated layman.
-Stridar
I dunno why you hold that view...
As an example from my history (bad argument, to extrapolate from a single case to a trend, but it's an illustration and not a generalization)
Took physics: Relativistic, Quantum, Statistical, Mechanical, Electrical. Sucked at most of them
Took math: Multivariate calculus, statistics, differential equations, etc. Sucked at most of them.
Took liberal arts: Philosophy of Science (reductionist thought, atomic thought, etc), Art History, Japanese, Creative writing, Ethics in Science, American History of the firs Settlers, Survey of Chinese Culture, Chinese Literature and Culture, etc.
Given how long people live, how much leisure time there is, how much the world is expected to change within someone's lifetime, now, why *shouldn't* we expect people to be brought up well rounded in everything? Why not give non-science majors backgrounds in mechanical, electrical, and statistical physics? Yeah, it's hard... but pretty soon that should become commonplace and then we can all reserve quantum, string, and unified physics for the physics majors...
I'm have a good 50, 60 years ahead of me. Why should I be ignorant of culture and literature and philosophy?
My neighbor, similarly, should have a grounding the in the science, computing, and maths that will shape his life too.
GPL Deconstructed
Of course, I should have suspected from the way the article is written... this guy taught my Mechanical Physics course!
Not only that, he's famous for his Mechanical Universe text/videos =)
GPL Deconstructed
David Goodstein almost certainly knows a fair bit of Shakespeare. From my interactions with him back when I was a TA in his Physics 1 class at Caltech, he's a pretty well rounded guy. I doubt that the accusations you are levelling are founded at all.
More to the point, Goodstein's point is that nobody is well rounded enough in *science* any more, and that (whether you agree or not) that is nowadays perhaps the most important subject for a well-rounded person to have some basic grasp of.
-Rob
I don't think you understand something about bell curves and similarly guassian distributions...
Yah, there's gonna be the big pile of average in the middle... but we can also ensure that the average distribution is centered on a higher value than the present system allows!
By increasing education, you raise the low, middle *and* high. We can't change the shape of the distribution, but we can certainly recenter it!
GPL Deconstructed
When I was in school one of my roommates was a physics major, and he was the exact opposite of what the article describes. He'd only take hardcore math and physics classes but did everything he could to avoid anything else (he wrote maybe one three-page paper in his whole undergraduate career). As a result, he had difficulty communicating (he could barely put together a coherent paragraph).
What's my point? It's that most of the time, college is no longer where folks go to broaden their minds. Instead, they go there to hyper-focus on their chosen field. The core requirements of most universities encourage this - there are always 'cheats' like an easy Human Sexuality class taking the place of real science course that let people avoid taking classes that would require them to broaden their perspectives (and possibly threaten their GPA's for grad school).
The article made me think back to one of the engineering physics courses I took in college. I'd sometimes get in a few minutes early and catch the previous class leaving, which was the A&S Intro to Physics class. I would sit down and watch as a few students milled around afterward, talking excitedly to the professors. Around them were the remnants of whatever demonstration took place that day, usually some combination or dry ice, lasers, and pneumatics. Pretty cool looking stuff, I could see why this excited some of the A&S students there.
Then the front of the room would begin to rotate (the physics lecture halls had a turntable so the professors could prepare behind the scenes) and my professor would slide into view. He would have about half of the chalkboard filled with equations and be hurriedly working on filling in the other half.
That to me is the wall of science. You can come up with all the cool analogies and demonstrations you want and get people excited, but dig into it at all and it becomes a lot harder. Yet you really can't understand science unless you understand the math that backs it up. I don't know what the authors of that article expect, but I don't think they're being very realistic
because science is boring to non-scientists. Most of us couldn't give a ripe shit about science.
Honestly, it's a little disingenuous to whine about the state of science education in America -- the same complaint can be made about literature.
Get over it -- science nerds are just like any other type of nerd. Nerds live in a Nerd Ghetto, surrounded by AOL Barbarians. Quit your whining, pick up a stick and make a few rounds around the walls unhooking grappling hooks and pushing seige ladders away from the wall and into the moat.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
My other bone to pick is that not everyone needs to be a Ph.D. in science (I say this being a student of electrical engineering). I started out as a Physics major. I switched to engineering because it's more commercially viable. Certainly pure sciences are valuable (I'm considering getting my Masters in Physics), but we don't need everyone in the world to be a Physicist going around with an elitist attitude. In fact, I'm glad that there are carpenters and plumbers and landscapers and other people with little or no science education. A lot of those people don't want science degrees because it doesn't interest them. Just like professional carpentry or plumbing or landscaping don't interest me. Diversity is not a bad thing.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Witness some of the complete witlessness of what people *think* is true.
Stars in other galaxies can have influence upon our lives.
John Edwards talks to the dead.
Fire, Earth, Air and Water are elements(in addition to the periodic table elements)
A heavy object will fall faster than a light one.
The earth is 6000 years old.
People don't know how the world works and sadly a lot can't be bothered to find out. And even sadder, you've got people who want to foist their ignorance on the rest of us as fact.
Washington state just authorized a college offering a degree in astrology. I kid you not. I took a community college course in parapsychology my senior year of high school. Encouragingly enough, the UW didn't award me credit for the class when I transfered there.
Check out how prevalent Urban Legends are and how easily people believe them, not to mention how difficult it is to shake people free of their belief.
Conclusion: People are stupid. Avoid contact with them at all costs.
Unless they're cute and good in bed.
American teachers already make *a lot* compared to other places I've seen. I have my own experience of going through school in a communist (and very poor) country, about 12 years ago. Teachers were severely underpaid and equipment was very scarce. Today, there's more equipment and teachers are paid a little better. Still, the average student then was by far better educated than the average student graduating today from the same school system.
The reason? Respect. Back then teachers were seen like very important members of society; parents treated them with utmost respect, and children looked up to them and wanted to be like them. And they did a terrific job. Nowadays all everyone can think about is money, and the respect of the masses has shifted towards more money-oriented professions. Teachers are treated like dirt by pretty much everybody, no one wants to become a teacher anymore, and the education level has declined sharply. It's not always about the money...
I agree - In my opinion, by the time someone reaches high school, they either are interested in science & maths, or they aren't.
For me though, my love of math's and science came about because my father got me interested in it from an early age, and I do wonder whether or not I would have discovered it to the same extent if I had been left to my own devices. I somehow get a feeling that I wouldn't have...
Now on to your other point, there is no reason for everyone to know everything about physics, but they should know the basics of how the universe works and what science is about. The people making public policy decisions about science do not typically come from a scientific background. Shouldn't they at least know how progress is made in science, what the purpose of science is, and be able to distinguish between popular "scientific" fads and real science? I remember when the SSC was killed, one senator was pleased that no more money would be spent on "an esoteric toy for a small group of scientific ellites." Had she actually taken a modern physics class, she would have known how much our current economy (and entire society) depends on the discoveries made from earlier "esoteric toys." That's why people who claim to be educated should be educated in science.
Most elementary school teaching (hell, from what I've seen in some college undergrads, all the way through high school) is just babysitting. If the 6 hours a day spent in the school playpen was actually dedicated to learning, we'd all be geniuses.
As it is, most kids just want to be entertained. A few would like to learn everything they can. A a small number just want to make a ruckus. The teacher will spend half her time keeping the first group busy, a little bit of her time marvelling at the second group, and the rest of his time trying to not be shot by the latter. Meanwhile they've got parents screaming at them to teach their dumbass kids who won't sit still for 10 minutes to be great literary masters for a pauper salary and without raising their voices. If there is a problem it's the teacher's fault. And if they ever try to shield their faces when little Johny spits at it, the parents will raise hell in court.
The only sane thing to do is give up on teaching and be what you really are...a child care manager. And that doesn't take a PhD. Just nerves of steel and a penchant for pain.
Besides, elementary school is as much about developing character as instilling knowledge, and I don't see a PhD being a credential for developing character in children (it wouldn't hurt, it just doesn't help.)
The other problem is that anyone dedicated enough to one subject to get a PhD will go insane in the topsy-turvey land of pre-college school. You don't cover one subject to understanding. You constantly jump from one to another, always disoriented. (why the hell do they have 50min classes in the US anyway?) A high school science teacher has to teach chemistry, then physics and then possibly biology. And if they try to teach with any depth, they'll immediately loose most of the class.
PhDs in classrooms == bad idea.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Freaked out by violence, threats, and weapons in the schools, most big city high schools have backed off from the entire enterprise of education and have devolved into holding cells for teens who are increasingly violent in their protests against these institutions.
No one with a Ph.d is going to want to walk into a big city school and listen to the trash talk and threats from the students and the mindless drivel coming from the adminstration. Its a crappy job.
I also know a bit about what goes on at the secondary level because in the 1980s I made an educational TV series, The Mechanical Universe, that's still widely used in U.S. colleges and high schools.
widely used in colleges?! hell, i've been out of college for 8 years and i still watch all 26 episodes twice a year... ya think it would have sunk in by now...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The major cause is the majority of the population
considers science difficult and mysterious.
Youngs are especially told this.
I was raised to percieve science as masculine and
exciting.
-- $SIGNATURE
At least I hope you're joking!
We can certainly decrease the variance to some extent, but there has to be a point of diminishing returns...
At that point I think we'll still be stuck with a distribution (gaussian, bell, whatever), with a low, median, and high value.
So how do we modify variance? There isn't a very good concept of quality control or quality assurance in our education system, is there? Throwing kids back a grade, holding them extra, etc, doesn't work to well.
Then there's the fact that different communities, regions, locales, etc, hold different values and standards...
Given we can't in good conscience homogenize our population (ethically, practically, or realistically), and we can't prune or stratify it for similar reasons... What can we do?
GPL Deconstructed
At one point in my career I worked for several organizations on public education advocacy issues. Since I was the resident geek at these places, my boss at the time assigned me the unenviable task of researching the relationship between education spending and test scores. He hoped to convince the legislature that increased spending on public education would result in an improvement in public education.
I looked at the average per-pupil expenditures for the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. I looked at the average scores on SAT, ACT, NAEP, and other nationwide tests. What did I find?
No correlation whatsoever.
I told my boss. He referred to the statistics and asked me to find three states --three states-- that I could plot on a graph to show that more money resulted in higher test scores. He didn't want me to show causation; just correlation. And not even solid correlation. Any positive correlation was fine for his purposes.
I couldn't.
There were not (as of three years ago) three states out of 53 jurisdictions where there was a correlative, let alone causal, relationship between spending and test scores.
Don't get me wrong; I support well-funded public schools and well-paid teachers, even if it means my tax dollars are being used.
But there is no substantive evidence that more funding than currently available will result in a superior education.
What's the solution? David Goodstein is right when he suggests that well educated teachers are required and that the teaching profession needs more respect. But that's only treating a symptom, not a root cause.
The way I see it, there are four problems:
What can we do about these problems? Get involved. Volunteer at a local school. Serve on a school site council. Run for the school board. Offer workshops for teachers. Tutor students. When the opportunity presents itself, vote in favor of reforms (no, that doesn't include school vouchers). There are many more ways, of course; you're smart (or you wouldn't be reading Slashdot!), You figure 'em out.
MacOS, Windows, BeOS, GNOME, KDE: they're all just Xerox copies
In the USA people value making money more than being
education. Education is a means to money.
In many other cultural traditions- east Asian,
south Asian, Jewish, etc., education is
valued in its own right.
I don't know if I totally agree with the writers outlook on elementary teachers avoiding the sciences - many of my favourite teachers in elementary school were strongly versed in the sciences.
However, I am Canadian, and I do not know if the rules for elementary teachers are different here.
Still, it does not surprise me in the least. In the course of my life I have run into only *five* people who were not Science Professors (or my parents) who truly understand critical thinking and Science.
I am still shocked by that.
The scientific method is not that hard to grasp - I got it in grade 8. Thats when I realized that it was a powerful tool for testing falsehood. I have been using it ever since.
Carl Sagan condensed these tools further into the following rules from the Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
If you are one of the few who understands these rules and applies them then you understand what I mean. I would dearly love to see the population at large appreciate science more, but as it is which gets more viewing? The Learning Channel or Fox?
The sad truth is not the teachers - but the population at large. Some people just don't want or care to know the answers, they just don't have the fundamental curiosity.
Maybe the article is correct. Children do have the fundamental curiosity - and that would be the best time to teach them.
Still - culturally we are left with statements like this from our leaders:
"Why should we subsidize intelectual curiosity?"
-- Ronald Regan
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Then we need to address both issues, not ignore one because we ignore the other!
Science is not boring to non-scientists... Where science is defined as:
The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
People aspire to science when they think they have the market cornered and start to daytrade... they assume scientific principles and knowledge and understanding, even if lacking the training normally ascribed to scientists.
People aspire to science when they think they have the local traffic patterns down, and learn to drive within those conditions.
People aspire to science when they play with their cooking, crafting new forms of joy and pleasure with their food.
People aspire to science when they think they've figured out men, or women, or boys, or girls, or whatever. They have models, and theories, and examples, and laws, and hypotheses, proofs, and experiments.
People aspire to science when they use their own computers, figuring out what causes it to lock, to crash, to stall, to slow down, to pause, and avoid those conditions.
It isn't science people are bored with... it's the lectures, the classes, the teachers, the expectation of science, without the understanding of what science is!
GPL Deconstructed
I agree with the two other people who (as of this time) have replied to you saying that a course in teaching science to elementary school kids is nothing like a real science course. Well, I suppose it could be, but in most cases I would guess that it's not. I once taught a class called "Math for Elementary School Teachers" or something like that. The actual mathematical content was a joke. The class was essentially an extended propaganda session in which the students read the latest curriculum standards from some group of "math education reformers". I had to read it as well, and it was extremely painful. I'm sure that your lovely and talented fiance has an excellent grasp of scientific principles, but I wouldn't be so quick to credit it to that class that she took.
-- $SIGNATURE
See this link for why science is not dull:h ol d=0&commentsort=3&mode=thread&pid=2211170#2211339
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20827&thres
You've described two things in your post: Why science is cool (the measurable, demonstrable things) and why science is hard (the explanation, the theory, the model)
Duh, it's harder. It's because you don't know it. Just like (as an example) Japanese is hard if you don't know it, or cooking tender pot roasts, or building a deck and patio, or laying a brick walkway.
Those skills are learned, and take patience, and practice, and effort.
People figure out how to cook gourmet meals. They learn the construction trade, they manage to speak Japanese. Why would it be impossible for them to understand lasers, and cavitation, and sublimation, vapor pressure, evaporation, Van Der Waals radii, or accretion disks, event horizons, etc?
GPL Deconstructed
Professor Goodstein happens to be very active with the Caltech drama club and the Pasadena Playhouse. (Or at least he was when I was there a few years back.)
I actually saw him performing Shakespeare.
I attended Caltech, where Professor Goodstein taught freshman physics. He was one of those rarities: a tenured professor that still loved to teach. I believe that he is honestly motivated by reaching out to people and watching the spark of knowledge kindle.
At that time, he was also active with the L.A. county school system, trying to improve science education for the entire system. (And that's in addition to being Vice-Provost.)
You might consider learning something about an individual before you stereotype them.
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
Then you should be polite. Check out the current User Friendly for details.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"Let me see if I've got this right. You want me to go into that room with all those kids and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning."
"Not only that, I'm to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, behaviorally modify disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse and T-shirt messages."
"I am to fight the war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for guns and raise their self-esteem. I'm to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship, and fair play, how and where to register to vote, how to balance checkbook and how to apply for a job."
"I am to check their heads occasionally for lice, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of potential anti-social behavior, offer advice, write letters of recommendation for student employment and scholarships, encourage respect for the cultural diversity of others and, oh yeah, always make sure that I give the girls in my class 50 percent of my attention."
"I'm required by my contract to be working on my own time summer and evenings at my own expense toward advance certification and a master's degree; and after school, I am to attend committee and faculty meetings and participate in staff development training to maintain my employment status."
"I am to be a paragon of virtue larger than life, such that my very presence will awe my students into being obedient and respectful of authority. I am to pledge allegiance to supporting family values, a return to the basics, and to my current administration. I am to incorporate technology into the learning, and monitor all Web sites while providing a personal relationship with each student."
"I am to decide who might be potentially dangerous and/or liable to commit crimes in school or who is possibly being abused, and I can be sent to jail for not mentioning these suspicions."
"I am to make sure all students pass the state and federally mandated testing and all classes, whether or not they attend school on a regular basis or complete any of the work assigned. Plus, I am expected to make sure that all of the students with handicaps are guaranteed a free and equal education, regardless of their mental or physical handicap."
"I am to communicate frequently with each student's parent by letter, phone, newsletter and grade card. I'm to do all of this with just a piece of chalk, a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a 45 minute more-or-less plan time and a big smile, all on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps in many states."
"And you want me to do all of this and expect me not to pray?"
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Ok, ok... I don't mean to accuse him of anything. I don't know the guy, and in response to the poster who was a TA with him, my apologies to him and you for suggesting he was a one tracked robot. I know those of you who are cultured are proud of it... I speak (fluently) three languages, can understand another three, and consider myself an armchair philosopher (I'll graduate, however, with my degree in C.E. and Economics). Obviously, we like to think we're the best group of people out there... and there may be some truth to that, but overall, I was just asking everyone to look honestly at themselves and see what they know of other fields.
One correction: "What did he take in the liberal arts field?" was supposed to read "What did we take"... I didn't mean to attack him... mea culpa.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
A better example would perhaps be Arizona. Arizona ranks near the bottom of per-pupil spending, and has equivalent results -- near the bottom. Arizona living expenses are average for the U.S. -- less expensive than NYC or the Bay Area, more expensive than places like Iowa.
Money isn't everything. But saying that Iowa spends less per-capita than New York City is ridiculous. You can buy a 4 bedroom house for $50,000 in Iowa. The equivalent monthly payments in NYC would rent a closet, maybe.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
That's why - there's lots of smart people out there but most of them learn very quickly from a very early age that the mainstream is pure shit and so are the people in it. It's only in the geek fields, the hard sciences in particular that are beholden to funding that the really smart people give much of a shit at all and actively seek approval and mainstream recognition.
The problem is not science education which frankly most people, even bright young people care about. It's that young scientists, those in physics, math, chem and engineering in particular who get pissed off and disillusioned later in life because no matter how much they achieve the dumbbot who used to swirl his head in the toilet or burn off her hair with a Bunsen burner still hates them, is probably their boss and is more successful anyhow. Teachers are angry because of the lousy teachers that give the good ones a bad rep. Plain and simple.
and this non-sentunce is ungramtikal and filled with bad spelled words, but I bet you understand what I am commmunicatin!
Yes, I understand you, and now I understand you to be a moron. That's undoubtedly an unfair assessment, but it's a view you cultivate in that last sentence.
Richard Feynman was scientist and a teacher of science. He used communication skills well - while his science would not have been different without them, his impact would.
Another side of the coin would be Wolfgang Goethe, most heralded and remembered as a poet, but whose work in the area of science was significant as well. To Goethe, literature and science were part of the same whole.
Most people, obviously, aren't Goethe or Feynman. And perhaps I shouldn't bite on trolling like this. But studying literature isn't any more useless than studying calculus - no subject is inherently valuable. What use you make of either one is what's important.
Bringing this back on-topic, my wife is an elementary school teacher. She has an engineering degree and a degree in education. Parents of the children she has taught over the past four years tell me she's great, and I'm not surprised.
The engineering degree doesn't make her a good teacher. The education degree doesn't make her a good teacher. She has math and science aptitude, as well as a passion for reading and history, and those things help. But what helps most of all is that she cares about the kids, and she does what she can to help them individually - to understand their interests, skills, and weaknesses enough to tailor the presentation of the material so they can absorb it.
Those soft skills are what have a "vast impact" on the society around us, because they're what connect those kids with the subjects they're supposed to be learning. Science is useful, and it's one of many things she wishes to teach, but IMO, her "liberal arts" skills are what ensure that the science gets learned.
However, it's still possible to directly compare public school and private school costs. Just don't include the religious (church-subsidized) schools. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, non-religious private schools actually spent *MORE* per-pupil in 1996 (the last year I have statistics for) than public schools did. Given that Catholic schools and non-religious private schools have similar student bodies and facilities, it's reasonable to expect that Catholic schools, once you add in the subsidies, have similar costs -- i.e., more expensive than the public schools.
In other words, Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar. But you already knew that, right?
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Erm, excuse-me, but where the heck did you pull that out from? My mom is a primary school teacher, in a country where the government gives this kind of orders to schools (let's all be an utopian crowd and hope children will pull grammar rules out of their rear end!), and the result is a freaking disaster. My mom sometimes get 10 or 11 years old kids that can barely read, write or count, because so far what they've done is mostly draw and sing and play with so-called educational tools. Because she believes in her job, she works herself thin to help EACH of them catch up. And the kids love her, and the parents love her, but her school is giving her a HARD time because she goes against the (lefty) government's will. She's going to have to step down, because she's in no physical and mental shape to continue.
Now don't take me wrong. It IS necessary to give kids a chance to do their own things, to learn their way, etc. But to expect them to learn arbitrary things such as grammar and arithmetic without actively teaching them, well, excuse-me, but this is bullshit. A teacher is here to 1) teach the kids the arbitrary stuff, 2) give them the taste to explore their own fields of interest (which my mother makes sure to do). Without BOTH those points, elementary school education is crap.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
I read the article.
I then laughed.
I then cried, as I realized that the misguided views show there are by far the majority opinion of the "elites" in the University system.
Goldstein has no clue as to what it means to be an Elementary teacher, nor even a clue as to what we should be trying to aim for in our Elementary system. He's looking at it from the Ivory Tower, where all 1st graders are simply younger versions of the grad students he sees; they don't know as much, but you should obviously be able to teach them the same way.
Bullshit.
And to all the people above who post that anyone with "field" experience in a discipline should be able to go right into a teaching position without finishing a teaching certificate: knowing the subject material has very little to do with knowning how to teach the subject material.
I don't know what schools Goldstein looks at, but the vast majority of schools providing teaching certificates require several basic-level science courses to get a degree. In PA where I grew up near one of the big "teacher's colleges", a typical Elementary Education teacher would take a Biology and Physics class (about at the same level as advanced AP Physics), which should impart a really good understanding of what science is about, if not a real breadth or depth of scientific knowledge.
In reality, the type of people who have long industry experience, or many advanced degrees you would NEVER want in an Elementary teaching position. The job requirements are completely different. Being smart isn't enough: you need the proper training.
Being a Elementary teacher is primarily socio-psychological: you're attempting to impart some basic knowledge of how things work, and how to function in a society. Without a foundation of solid skills and (rather rote) knowledge to build on, there isn't any hope of producing a free-thinking, creative, explorative mind. Middle-school and high-school is where we need to focus on taking the student on new paths and move away from rote-learning. Elementary school is for making you a basically-functional citizen.
Final lesson: never let the PhDs run primary or secondary education. They have their own agenda, and have no clue as to what they're really dealing with.
If you want my opinion, the vast majority of primary and secondary school teachers are doing a good job. Sure, there are a minority of bad teachers, but the major problems don't lie with the teachers: they lie with the school boards, the administrators, and ultimately, the parents. Fix the things wrong there first, then worry about the teachers.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I don't think so, having taken his classes.
He's trying to be generous, helpful, and altruistic here!
He teaches at a school that accepts 220 students a year undergrad, maybe 200 a year grad! He's not going to get more work, or more quality, or more anything by fostering more science (except perhaps fame and reknown as the person who pushed it out)...
Even granting that amount of gain onto Prof. Goodstein, the good for society and for each individual involved more than compensates for the gain he himself gains.
As an analogy:
The guy inventing and pushing PGP for privacy and security is being self serving in trying to push the technology (so that he can gain both privacy and security in his online transactions). Granted. Fine. But what about the gain everyone else gains as well?
Don't dismiss Prof. Goodstein's motives just because he gets something out of it; it's the value of what everyone else gets out of it that makes the big difference.
GPL Deconstructed
If you are going to use per-pupil numbers, you must use the local cost of living to adjust them if you wish to compare them. I would gladly go to work teaching in Iowa for $40,000/year -- that would put me in the top 10% of the population there. Teaching in the Bay Area for $40,000/year, on the other hand... what, you want me to take vows of poverty?
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Sure, why not? Kids are stupid because most people treat them like kids.
Case in point. My daughter turns four in September. She'll be starting JK. She can read, she can count (including by basic multiples,) she can identify and differentiate between such things as similies and metaphors. She can use computers better than half the people in my office. We take her to the park, and somebody says "How old is she?" We tell them, and they say "oh, so is MY daughter!" who is invariably some blank eyed kid sucking on a pacifier.
The difference? My child wasn't raised by Jerry Springer and Maury Povich. My child didn't go 'potty,' didn't want a 'baba.' My child used the toilet, and asked for a bottle. Guess what? Treat your kids like adults, and you get adults. Treat them like retarted babies, you get retarded babies.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
This sort of grade inflation is happening almost everywhere. One of the things high-quality teachers such as your friend can do is devise a grading system that allows students to know how they are truly doing, but still maps into the inflated grades parents and administrators insist on. Sure, unmotivated students won't care that they only need to make (say) 60 out of 100 for an "A". But the motivated ones will compete for the higher score, and thus will learn more than they would if the teacher simply dumbed down the classes and his/her own grading system.
And if they haven't learned the lesson already, those students will learn the difference between real learning and accomplishment, and grades. A pity that many of them will continue to focus on the latter.
One simple example; in this city as part of the treatment process the tap water passes through six feet of sand. Many people won't drink this water until they've passed it through a filter of a couple of inches of small stones, then somehow it is safer. For some reason "they" (technical or qualifed medical people of any type) can't be trusted to provide safe water (or medicine or whatever) "for the children". A survey of bottled water in Australia a few years ago found surprising amounts of biological material, far more than you would find in any town with an adequate water supply.
A more divisive example; the debate over genetic modification of crops - it is assumed by many that they can be geneticly modified by eating these crops. Any technical argument for or against is ignored in favour of the emotive argument, fed by moralistic disater movies that tell us "Don't mess with mother nature." The ironic thing is that the people who will rush out to trample a crop that may be a secretly modified test crop eat "natural" vegetables, grown indoors to keep the insects off, and grown hydroponically in a cocktail of chemical fertilizers, because somehow that is trendier than growing them in the ground and using less fertilizer. This perception has scuttled projects like one to produce vaccines from geneticly engineered bananas. Somehow, growing your medicine is less desirable than the enormous number of pharmacuetical plants that would be required to match what you do with such a crop. Being able to breed food crops have a high yeild and require less nutrients is also a good thing. Many will argue that these crops will never get to the nations that need them, but that's a way to feel better about opposing something that could help millions.
A lot of the "folklore" that people believe is of very recent origin. My grandmother was in her thirties before the term "Ley Line" was thought of, and that was used to describe the sites of old road. The zinc=virility thing comes from the story of Cassanova (not the most reliable of info!) eating lots of oysters. Oysters are filter feeders and pick up a lot of heavy metals such as zinc in areas where mining and industry puts it in the water. Therfore, with a dab of fiction and a stroke of sympathetic magic, zinc=virility. Zinc is important for other reasons, but it comes in every green plant.
Herbs: Many are useful and have been known about for some time, but a lot of people believe (by the magical law of sympathy perhaps?) that all herbs are good, and many are superior to medical technology. I suppose that I'm lucky that I know that there is a lot of flora that will kill things that try to eat it, or sting and scratch things that get close to it. Natural != good. Strychnine is natural.
Well, I think pay could make teaching more
attractive. To put my estimate on numbers,
I think that if teachers in schools earned
$100K per year there'd be a significant
increase of people striving to be teachers.
You make that number $70K and you get a small
extra trickle of teachers. At current levels
you get a drying supply.
Overall, social elites would have to do more than
pay teachers more. Politicians would have to
influence Hollywood to make science cool. Then
I think a certain code of professionalism and
pride in one's work would grow among teachers,
because they'd be paid well and duly admired.
Within a generation we could have good schools.
This is only a general rule and of course varies tremendously in individuals, but I have seen it borne out well during the fifteen years I've been thinking about it. Science and engineering types are well aware of literature, art, music. Many work consciously to improve their appreciation of same. But very few of my English Lit friends read Scientific American, much less Q.E.D.. Their eyes glaze over at even the most elementary science or technical discussion.
Look at it this way: When I was in college, as a physics major, I had to take
Note that the school differentiate among philosophy, social science, and humanities. But for non-tech majors, all of physics, chemistry, biology, mech engineering, chem engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, computer science, continuous mathematics, and discrete mathematics were lumped together as the undifferentiated blob "math/sci". And fuzzies only had to take a total of two math/sci courses.
Techies are more well-rounded because the current system forces them to be. And I like it. Don't compromise the techies; force the fuzzies to the same depth and breadth in the sciences as we were expected to have in the humanities.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
He's suggesting that people need to know enough about science and the scientific method to understand the world we live in. That doesn't have to be insane physics; "physics for poets" would be fine. And it's not just physics: It's also biology, chemistry, CS, etc. So people have enough background to understand basically what the dispute is when they pick up a newspaper and read about the debate over federal funding for stem-cell experimentation.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
It's as simple as that.
For all the talk that is done, when you get right down to it all people care about is who is going to win the football game on sunday.
I guess I could gripe about this for a long time, but still it just boils down to a true lack of value given to intelligence and willingness to learn.
We only need to look at our current President as a shining example of this character flaw in our nation.
I would like to point out that teachers in private ( especially Catholic ) schools often earn much less then their equiv. public schools. They also tend to have class sizes that are much greater.
When I was a kid in an elementry (Catholic) school, classes averaged 40 students per teacher. Later on, I went to a boarding school (high-school) that cost about $2500/student, at the same time the state of California was spending about $3000 per student for you to send your kids to gettho high.
Both of these schools were WAY above the state average when it came to student rankings. And way below it when it came to cost/student
Public schools are not accountable to education, but politics - we should shut them down, people would better spend their own money.
Homeschooling parents qualified as teachers produce students who average only 10-20 percentile points above State school. Untrained home schoolers average around 30 percentile points. That should tell you something important about teacher training...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Well, goody for it. Home schooling moves the bell curve up 30 percentile points, and I'm sure even that can be readily improved upon.
What's wrong with making the next generation's ``dummies'' better than today's ``average'' student, and the average drudge better then most of today's ``advanced'' students?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The same trained teacher can produce students 10-20 percentile points up the ladder if they turn to home schooling.
This tells you that the system as implemented is broken
The average untrained home-schooling parent produces students 30 or more percentile points better than the State average (ie 20+-10 percentile points better than the homeschooling trained teacher).
This tells you that the training to suit you for the system is also broken.
Full disclosure: I install systems for schools, TAFEs (vocational colleges) and universities. My wife has teacher training. My mother was a teacher. I home school.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There is a direct positive correlation in every measured case between the onset of compulsory schooling and prison populations. In short words, when you force people to go to school, you make more prisoners.
Why?
Two reasons. First, in school you get to practice for prison - you know, rank-and-file stuff, everything run by the bell, authority vested in officialdom and grudgingly delegated to the goody-two-shoes and special favourites. Students exchange bad habits, bad information and bad diseases just like inmates.
Second, consider the tactics used by many icecream and candy sellers when hiring staff. They require the new employee to eat themselves sick on the product, after which there is little temptation to snack on the job. So with school, you are required to immerse yourself in schoolwork, and unless you're lucky enough to have a personal interest in it (and sometimes even then) you pretty soon choke on the style-monotonous diet.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
True, elevating the status of the teaching profession will attract better and more qualified teachers. But have you heard the cliche, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink!"? Providing great teachers will help the kids who want to learn. Of course, the kids who want to learn have many places to get information today, namely the library, internet and cable channels like TLC and Discovery.
But the root problem is that most kids don't want to learn. They're more concerned about their clothes, hair and coolness factor than acids, bases and ph levels. "What do I need to know that for?", is the battle cry I've heard so many times from young and old who choose to live a life of ignorance. They then proceed to tell you how they don't care to know this or that detail because it is a waste of time and they'll never need to use the information. To these people, scientific knowledge is an affliction which fills their precious memory cells with
"useless" information. These cells might otherwise be more valuable by containing information on which hollywood actor is doing which actress this week.
You won't make science interesting to these kids until you can relate it to their base drives: food, fashion, sex and the quest for being cool. Relate Newton's laws of motion to how women's breasts move, both with and without a bra, and you'll have a standing room audience for your class. Speak about the aphrodisiac qualities of chocolate, while relating it to dopamine and pleasure centers in the brain and you'll have students begging to take your class. Show them a probability distribution that shows their chance of having a nice salary and pretty wife based on their years of education completed and you'll keep them in school far better than any other method.
If none of that works, skip the Phd's -- hire strippers.
Sex, Cars or Computers? or Should We Be Together? - you choose
Or people of his caliber would be of no benefit to the Educational System in the US. He would be forced to use poorly written books. Teaching will be focused on just what will be on the skills assessment test. He will work for a system that is a complete bureaucracy and would have no say. The problem is the system. We need open competition in schools competing for your child. Why do we allow this huge monopoly? Why do they not teach things such as money management? Stock market? Business finance? How to write and carry out a business plan?
Get a free ipod.
If you use a derogatory term like "fuzzy" to refer to someone who majored in a non-scientific discipline, it sounds like you've made a decision that you'll never change, no matter how many scientifically adept "fuzzies" you run into.
What you're describing is home education, or at least very small classes, something that State teachers often dream passionately of having.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
But hey, that's just me.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
1. Teachers get little money.
2. Teachers get little respect.
3. Management is overbearing.
4. Too few good teachers. (See #1, #2, and #3)
5. Tasks such as photocopying, grading, seting up outings, etc. take far too much time from teachers.
6. Students are grouped by age; not grades, intelligence(s), or interests.
7. Teaching to the middle, or teaching to the bottom. (See #5)
8. Skipping or failing a grade is nearly impossible. (Solved by #5)
9. Curriculum relies on massive amounts of memorization, repetition, and redundancy between successive classes.
10. Limited classic curriculum; informal logic and foreign languages are supposed to be very good in k-4, or so. (High School Philosophy or Economics wouldn't be so bad...)
11. A hostile student environment; the reverse-social-Darwinism of "jocks" and "nerds."
I knew a guy that actually started out as a music major and eventually switched to become a hardcore scientific programming geek because of a Physics of sound class.
I still kick myself for not taking the Theory of Explosives class [it had a lab!] in college.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
After about 10 years of programming, I burned out and went into teaching. I worked for a local public school system teaching adult literacy and GED for high school dropouts.
My pay cut was about 70%. I loved the work for the first couple of years, but I found I had to keep consulting on the side to keep the mortgage paid. This affected my teaching badly, and the circumstances became a downward spiral - less energy for teaching and time for preparation made me a worse teacher, and that made me enjoy it less (and I'm sure my students weren't thrilled either) - by the time I burned out again I was working three jobs to compensate for the low pay. I taught for about four years, right in the range of the typical 3-5 year burnout rate for teachers.
It didn't take long for me to get back into software after that. If I could have made half to two-thirds of what I was earning as a programmer, I might very well have stuck with teaching, but the economics just weren't there to support it. I have no doubt that my teaching was more important work than my programming, but in the end it was too hard for me to live on the very low pay and the utter absence of benefits (35 hours a week, no contract, considered part-time by the school department and barred from joining the union).
I suppose a real revolutionary would have sold the house and trimmed it all down enough to fit the teacher pay, but I'm not that spiritually evolved yet. Teachers shouldn't have to be revolutionaries, anyway.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
An outline of the causes of the problem:
The government education system was established specifically to destroy the ability of students to think. It is designed to instill the habit of receiving "wisdom" uncritically and regurgitating it on demand.
The roots of the US government school system go back to a heirarchical system devised by the Prussians after their defeat at the Battle of Jena. This system divided students into an elite, to be trained to set policy (about 0.5% of the population) a class destined to implement policy (about 3%) and the remainder, destined to obey their betters.
Currently, the students which pursue an undergraduate degree in education, as a _group_, are the academically weakest on campus.
The faculty teaching these programs are the least qualified.
The credentials required to teach in government school are earned through the study of various superstitions and fads, and the credential has no value at all outside of the government school system.
Intelligent, passionate teachers who take on the challenge of teaching in the government school system are thrust into a hierarchy which fights the concept of rewarding competence, and which is seniority based. Therefore the more intelligent and capable tend to leave for greener pastures at a higher rate than the incompetent and lazy. Therefore the percentage of intelligent and energetic teachers falls as seniority increases. The incompetent are running the hierarchy, and do so to protect their perks, against demands for accountability, or the threat of differentiation by merit.
The NEA is the largest contributor to the Democratic party, and uses its power, in part, to fight the rise of such threats to their interests as charter schools, private schools, and home schooling, each of which glaringly outperforms the government school system.
The victims are the "students" languishing in the government's clutches unlucky enough to lack support, outside of the "schools", for intelligent thought.
What plane was that? Or are you just exaggerating and pulling numbers out of the air? If you are referring to the B-2 bomber, the costs are much less than that as is shown by this document. Also, the per plane cost includes all costs associated with the program. R&D, base construction, training, spare parts, etc. It does not cost the Air Force $2 billion to build a new B-2. In fact, several years ago I ran across an article in the Federal Computer News that in actual raw materials, fabrication, labor, & other production costs, a B-2 is only about 10-20% more expensive to build than a B1-B. However, since we spent nearly $30 billion in R&D before a plane ever rolled off the assembly line and that they need special hangers/bunkers and can't just sit outside in like the B1-Bs or B-52s do, the per unit cost of the program is very high. In fact, the fewer we build, the price per plane goes up!
As far as why do politicians vote for things that some of the military branches don't want, it can all be boiled down to jobs. If a defense contractor is in a congressman's district, he will likely vote for it.
You are also wrong that we are spending to much on defense. It's one of the few items that the Constitution explicitly grants funding for and it amounts to only about 16% of the Federal Budget and 3% of the GDP. The only time we spent less on the military in the last century was during the Great Depression and the pre-WWI isolationism period. Just a few highlights from here and here
IMHO, we spend far too much money on useless activities such as high school, college, and professional sports. Municipalities seem to have no problem coming up with the tax dollars for a sports facility for the benefit of a private corporation, but balk at improving educational facilities. Intramural sports and/or physical education classes to insure that the entire student body gets some form of exercise is fine. Spending a ton of money on facilities, coaches, equipment, etc. so a few individuals can play a game while also letting their education slide is a hideous waste [even given minimum grade requirements, we all _know_ this still happens]. It seems are priorities are on entertainment and entitlements rather than strategic things like education, infrastructure, and defense.
Fucked up priorities.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Why are you comparing public schools to private schools?
How much does it cost to attend the average public university? That tells you something useful.
The 1999-2000 average total annual cost to attend a public university was $10,458.
So what was your point again?
This is simply a poor confusion of words.
>If...all teachers are equal.
Why is this the case? What is the argument for this? It seems that the you tacitly assume the fact that all these teachers are all necessery means they are all equal. This is simply a misunderstanding of the usage. The janitor is just as necessery for running the economy as the research scientist but this does not make them *equal.*
The standard for measuring relative worth in this context is something like rarity of skills...or ease of replacing those skills. This standard agrees with our usage by saying even tho both janitors and research scientists are necessery for the economy to run the rarity of the research scientist and the extensive training required make the research scientist worth more (job wise not as a human being) than the janitor.
Using this standard it is easy to see that a gym teacher is worth less than a science teacher. Any bum off the street can teach gym (just tell them the rules for volleyball or whatever...and don't tell me the 4 years of recreation major in college is necessery for this) meaning that the gym teacher is less rare and easier to replace. Given the paucity of science teachers this seems to be true of them as well.
>All teachers are underpaid, whether they teach calculus, pre-algebra, AP Chemistry, American Lit, or Spanish 1.
WTF does this mean??? What standard is used to determine they are underpaid? Everyone could use extra money...how do you determine if they are underpaid? Do they work disproportionatly hard for the amount of money they make? Certainly not. They do have abreviated days and summer vacations (I don't deny that teaching a class is hard but so are most jobs). Even if this was the case this isn't a good definition of underpaid, under this definition I am underpaid for writing this post (I worked to put it up and never was compensated making me more underpaid than the teachers). Perhaps you would try to ammend this definition by saying the amount of social good teachers do is great compared to the pay they get.
What leads us to believe that the amount of social good teachers do is great? Yes they are *necessery* to educate our children but so is the person who manufactures school desks. Like above necessity is not to be confused with worth.
Perhaps what is meant is that teachers are underpaid because they are giving up greater other benifits to come teach our children. This however ignores the fact that teachers *choose* to do this. They get some benifit (unless you honestly believe teachers are all in this as some sort of great self-sacrifice...and meeting would be teachers I am sure this is not the case) to themselves out of teaching the children (otherwise they would simply have taken the higher paying jobs). Just like the ski instructure who takes less pay for other benifits the fact that teachers are paid less than those with similar credentials doesn't provide proof that they are underpaid.
The claim that the position of teacher should pay more is an entierly differnt claim. One I agree with but not because of some judgemental claim that teachers are underpaid but because a higher salary would bring better teachers (the present teachers may not 'deserve' to get more). Moreover pay hikes certainly need not be even distributed...I am confident that the required level of sports knowledge can be maintained at the current gym teacher salary
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
The whole point of the article was about eliminating or reducing elitism by trying to bring "the rest of us" up closer to the level of scientists. It's not about being elite. It's about making the playing field even. Trying thinking and you won't mistake people who do so for being elitists.
Why bother.
Maybe I took it a bit too seriously, it's just that I've heard it used rather viciously before.
Doctoral-level education is overkill. Requring that teachers be able to pass the College Board's Advanced Placement Exam in physics is probably good enough. That exam, after all, is intended for bright high school students. Teachers at the middle school level and above should be able to pass it.
High school physics should be Newtonian and experimental. The classic PSSC Physics still gets good reviews.
I can't say I agree with your view =)
I have actually taken classes by Prof Goodstein, and my take on the article isn't the same as yours. First I've got to be precise about this: Prof Goodstein wants to redefine the entire notion of scientists. We'll call the current system products Leets and Goodstein's scientists Commons.
He wants everyone to have a grounding in science, because everyone has an interest whether they believe, understand, or like it, or not. To give examples of scientific thinking (without adequate scientific understanding):
Research, analysis, and prediction of the stock market, and the related activity of day trading. If that's not 'scientific'... It's not science, but it's definitely some of the very same procedures, methods, and goals.
Understanding and taking advantage of traffic patterns in your daily commute. Noting congestion spots and times, as well as avoiding them, predicting them, and minimizing them. The quest for minimized travel time is also scientific, even if it isn't science in the traditional sense.
Cooking. Not just following a textbook, but creating new flavors, textures, experiences, and meals from ideas, thoughts, and inspiration. Experimentation with new foodstuffs, new procedures, new equipment, again, not science, but can be very scientific.
Gardening. Not plant, water, feed, but the art of timing, seasons, and weather, as well as location, soil types, mineral supplements, shade requirements, insects, animals, etc. This can be very much science, as well as scientific...
My point is that scientific thinking is applicable in everyday life situations, and science is just the classroom method by which this thought is taught and understood. If you can figure out and understand how to measure and prove gravity, you should also be able to figure out how to maximize the growth potential of you favorite tomato plants, and if you can minimize your drivetime on your daily commute, then you should also be able to figure out and understand the whys and hows of meterology.
Your argument of 'roles' and 'inate interest and ability' applies to the old school Leet scientists that Prof Goodstein wants to make the exception, not the rule; the article specifically mentions that schools should not act as filters for the chosen few, the Leet, but as hotbeds to raise the scientific average! The few, the Leet, will *still* manage to find their way into the Caltechs and MITs and Stanfords, but everyone else can benefit from faster commutes, more profitable day trade speculation, etc.
GPL Deconstructed
There's certainly merit to the suggestion that science could be better taught at the university level. Much of what I've seen in physics education is simple sink-or-swim: there are lectures, and there are homework problems, and it's up to the students to learn to think like a physicist. Some do. The vast majority get fed up, frustrated, and quit.
Which is not to say there aren't those who've dedicated themselves to science education and who do a good job. But many faculty in the older generation seem to honestly believe that calculating the answers to physics problems (while a conveniently measurable skill) has anything to do with passing on the mental tools that physicists use to understand the world. I've often thought the sciences could learn a lot from the arts (and literature) where an essentially intuitive skill is passed on even when we don't have language to talk about it directly.
Hey,
the science major today should be what classical Greek and Latin were in the 19th century, and the liberal-arts major was in the 20th: the union card required to enter the professional world.
Oh, I disagree. I find that engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people.
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
My son's school in Maryland (USA) stopped assigning math homework in the 1st grade because parents complained. The teachers did not like this, but stopped teaching it because of the parental pressure.
This is stupid and crazy and an example where teachers are not the problem, but rather, the fact that public education is taught to the least common denominator.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
...reasons for mistrusting information supposedly produced by the scientific method...
...hybrid crops are often credited with producing huge agricultural benefits but there isn't a single scientific paper which can be used to verify this.
Read that again. What your desciribng here is the problem, but your dressing it up as the reason.
To be fair, I probably should have avoided a term that can seem derogatory out of the context in which I came to learn it.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I disagree strongly. First, since the breadth of human knowledge far exceeds the capacity of any one person, there will always be specialization. People will focus by nature. Over time, this will lead to people with similar interests gravitating toward each other, communicating most especially with each other, and so on. Eventually, you end up right back at departments. If disciplines are inevitable, why not stick with those that have arisen naturally and have already proven profoundly useful?
Second, I think people in different disciplines, by nature of their "isolated" education, think differently
All the energy lives at the interface of the disciplines, but you can't have interfaces without boundaries.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
When my parents (one a mathematician, the other a historian) attended Keele University in the UK, it had a unique approach to teaching its undergraduates. Everyone did the same first year, and it contained a brief course from pretty much every department in the university. As a result, everyone had some exposure to degree-level mathematics, English, history, and so on. For the remaining three years (unusually for the time, Keele ran a four year course) people studied two principal subjects and a third subsidiary. For example, my father studied maths and physics, with subsidiary French.
Something that has always impressed me is how well-informed my parents and their friends from university always seem to be. They are all both literate and numerate, aware of issues from many fields, and generally interesting people. When friends visit for dinner, the conversation might go from a scientific development in the news last week to a philosophical book someone read recently to the state of the environment and contemporary politics, to... The unusual thing is that no one "expert" on each field is explaining all the time; everyone understands the ideas in question.
It's really too bad that we specialise so early in the UK these days. Most people take a broad range of GCSEs at 16, but then drop to specialising in perhaps 3 or 4 subjects (usually related) if they continue to A levels at 18, and a single subject at degree level and beyond. Fortunately, the powers-that-be seem to be wise to this, and the system is evolving, slowly but surely, toward keeping a broader approach later (but still specialising enough to be useful in the end). There's hope for us yet. :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yeah, a PhD doesn't guarantee good teaching, but it does at least guarantee competence.
Competence in one very specific area. I knew a PhD who could tell you all you wanted to know about physical vapor deposition, but ask him to find the position of a ball dropped from a roof (typical physics question) and he didn't even know where to start.
On the other hand, my high school physics teacher could answer almost any question you threw at him. If he didn't know, he'd look it up and get back to you. Wanna know what his qualifications were? He was an EMT who got tired of dealing with highway fatalities all the time.
More than anything else, teachers need to be able to relate to the people they are teaching. If they cannot communicate with their students, then any level of competence is not going to help. Teachers need to be able to present the information in a way that their pupils can digest. I have often found that the most brilliant practitioners are the worst teachers because they assume that their students are on their level.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
"if children learn to speak from their parents, then why do parents always say things like "Gooogooo. Baabaadddaaaaa. Ptttttpppaa Goooaaciiiiii!" to their kids? "
They are using the vowels sounds, and emphasing those sounds which are the most important in understanding speech. Quite clever really.
Phil
...reinforce the elite/idiot problem. The fact is, that until people all have the same brains and the same learning ability we will always have elites/ignorant. Just like there will always be rich and poor.
In most of the United States the only way you can graduate from college without taking a single science course is to major in elementary education.
Well, here in Florida the requirements for an elementary school teacher (K-3) are listed
here. In summary...
STA 1060C Basic Statistics using MS Excel or
STA 2014C Principles of Statistics
AST 2002 Astronomy or
GEO 1200 Physical Geography or
GLY 1030 Geology and its Applications
BSC 1005L Biological Principles Laboratory or
GEO 1200L Physical Geography Laboratory or
PSC 1121L Physical Science Laboratory
Granted, this cirriculum will not produce someone who is going to develop a cure for cancer, but it does introduce them to the scientific principles. Remember, the goal for teaching teachers is teaching them HOW to teach, not necessarily what to teach.
By the way, my wife is currently taking this program and is being told by the advisor that she needs to complete up to Calc 3, Physics (with calculus), and Chemistry 2 if she is going to meet the department's requirements. I've seen business majors get away with less.
And do we really want to train all of our kids to be engineers and scientists? That would be a hellish world, indeed.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Who do you know that works for the government and makes lots of money? They do exist, but for 99% of these jobs, people could be making far more in the private sector.
And, teachers work for the very worst (in terms of wages) type of government ... local government.
That wouldn't explain the often lower salaries at private schools ... except that parents then have to pay for school twice (since vouchers are unconstitutional and all).
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
What proportion of students in 1900 dropped out before 8th grade?
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
I realized after posting this that all the points I intended to make didn't actually get made :).
First of all, expanding funding for education is something I think should go well beyond grade school and high school, but that college educations should also be taken care of. Also, any sort of continuing education, job re-training, etc, should be funded.
As for determining the commitment of students, what I would propose is having schools that provide different tiers of education to different skill levels and require minimal GPA's to remain in particular level. Thus, a very gifted child could excel to their potential and a non-gifted child could fall back to a level where they can get the support they need. And let's be clear on this, I mean actual support to try to move all kids ahead, not just maintain status quo.
Furthermore, if we had a decent publicly funded medical system, we wouldn't have to use schools as treatment facilities for troubled children. They could seek real counseling from qualified mental health professionals. But that's an entirely different tirade.
Also, I agree with people's statements that big money isn't the answer, but how about we start with just reasonable distribution of the money that is available? You've got schools that can barely afford building upkeep let alone skilled instructors, and you've got school districts who can afford sprawling campuses in the best parts of town. When I think of more money, admittedly I'm thinking of those schools falling apart at the seams from lack of funding.
Also, I agree that one of the biggest problems that funding isn't going to solve is this country's general lack of respect for education. Smart==elite and elite is above other people which is frowned on by our society of equality. At least that's my best guess as to why that mentality exists.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
There actually is a reason for this difficulty - it provides the proper setting for people to learn whether they really do or don't want to do this.
The curve handles the grade thing, and provides room for the really bright people to spread their wings. That's what university science is about - finding the one or two percent who have what it takes to really be good scientists. It's not foolproof, but it's the best we've got.
Science is very very hard. There is no way around that. I have never had much difficulty with English classes, but have always struggled in science and math. I am a Physics major. Maybe I should have gone into English, but since there was some chance I might be able to do science I tried it. This is some tough stuff.
So don't come down on science departments too hard - most of them think they don't teach nearly enough. They are fighting poor high school training, student fear of the subject, apathy, and many who are there only as a requirement as will the minimum needed to pass. That's a frustrating combination. They are teaching for majors, and usually in intro classes one student in 20 is a possible major. It is those people they are targeting.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
"Choice." That is what you get when you have the choie between Windows, Macintosh, Sun, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. Microsoft, however dominant, can't (yet anyway) force you to pay them anything. Wheras a failed public school system can and does compel both payment and attendance.
Many theories have been buited here about how to fix things. But it all begins with choice. As the poster I am responding to points out, even the public funding issue is orthogonal to the matter of choice. If you are not able to take the funding for education (or keep it in the first place, for you more-radical libertarians) and use it as you see fit, how are any of the fixes proposed here going to happen?
We have more freedom to choose a phone company than we have to shoose a school. Only the Post Office has as strong a government backed monopoly, and even the Post Office cannot compel you to pay for both a stamp and an alternative delivery service.
Open schools to choice and watch how fast things will improve. The best ideas will win. One size will no longer be made to fit all. And the answer for people unsatisfied with their school, for whatever reason, will be simple: try another school that caters to your needs.
The whole answer isn't "Choice." But no other answer works without it.
I wrote parts of this stuff
IHBT, but...
> All Germany has ever produced is hatred, oppression, war and genocide.
> Name me one positive thing a German ever has done.
Well, geez, what nationality was Albert Einstein? Oh, never mind.
Try this on for size:
"All (insert country here) has ever produced is hatred, oppression, war and genocide.
Name me one positive thing a (insert country personal identifier here) ever has done." Now, just about the only country that doesn't fit this formula is Canada, because they're frankly not very good at war. The U.S., Russia, China, The U.K., Japan and a myriad of others all certainly do fit well.
So, shoo, troll, don't bother us.
Virg
I've often considered giving teaching a try, and the one thing which has consistantly held me back is that pesky salary thing. It's just not worth it at this point in my life to take a 50%-70% salary cut.
I think I'd really enjoy teaching, and perhaps more importantly, I think I'd be very good at it. I have a BSEE, with almost 10 years of industry experience, plus uncounted hours spent studying science and physics and building robots in my basement. I've spent time tutoring math and physics, and have always had positive responses from my students. I'm just not ready to lose my house, car, and lifestyle in order to be abused by students (and their parents) who didn't get a proper background to support a high school level science class.
Plus, don't forget that in addition to the huge salary cut I'd have to take, I'd also have to take some additional classes (no big deal), and then pay for the privilige of being allowed to teach for free for a year, in order to complete my teaching certificate.
So. While I'm waiting for society to wise up and make it easier for engineers or other scientists to even consider teaching, I indulge my wish to be involved in molding young minds by volunteering for FIRST Robotics Competition teams, and email mentoring of high school students.
Help find a cure for Gidget.
>Techies are more well-rounded because the current system forces them to be. And I like it.
That's good.
However think about this- many 'fuzzies' never have to do any technical courses at all.
On the other hand, technical people get failed if they don't pass certain 'fuzzy' courses.
Is that right? Should really deeply techy people be denied their chosen careers because they lack talents in an area they in the end don't need?
Should fuzzies? No. But because fuzzies tend to dominate the teaching professions we get sick mess ups like that. (Do I sound bitter? Perhaps, OTOH I managed to scrape enough fuzzies; but it was an issue.)
Personally if it was me, I'd dump all the lessons onto the internet, give each student a computer and make them self pace, and even self choose courses. The teachers can wander around and help them if they get stuck. I think kids will tend to race through subjects that interest them, and crawl through the others. But I also think that kids will do better, and tend to reach the end of a trail and then come back and do better on the others, and will learn more overall.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Long live David Goodstein! Professor, if you're reading this, thanks for a great series on elementary physics!
The point that was made is not that religion is truthful in its content. The point is that it is a very powerful tool for socialization and ensuring the future of our civilization by preserving the quality of our citizens.
Religion is a con, plain and simple. Anyone who says that they know and understand the mind and will of God is a fool at best. Especially since the supposed source of this insight, the bible, is hardly what I would call an authoritative source. The mythology of the Jews is no more convincing to me than that of the Greeks and Romans. Even so, that does not mean that the con is without merit. Religion has always been a form of mind control whereby those who are unable to think for themselves and understand right from wrong are kept from causing too much trouble. At least in peace time. In war time religion is used to direct and focus the wrath of a nation towards the destruction of its enemies. In the case of child rearing, religion is used to instill the kind of virtues and qualities that make for a more peaceful and productive society.
This is all very dishonest of course, but just how else do you keep the rabble from making rubble of your nation or society? Lock them up? How do you justify the incarceration of someone based on the trouble they are expected to cause, rather than the trouble they have caused?
So the question of religion in schools has nothing to do with whether one religion is more valid than another, they're all BS. Or with the separation of church and state since that policy simply means that the church and state don't control one another. It has to do with whether or not our society benefits from having its less intelligent members be brainwashed so as to keep them in line.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
> ...while teacher's (my father teaches at a local high school)
> are almost always required...
I hope he doesn't teach English. "Teachers" shouldn't have an apostrophe.
Virg
> When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, "To know one's self."
> And what was easy, "To advise another."
Who gives a thit what Thales thaid? Tell uth what Thupport thaid!
Virg
Parents of public school kids run the gamut from "cares a lot about the child's education" to "doesn't care about the child's education." The set of all parents who homeschool their kids filters out the "doesn't care" end of that scale.
A parent's care for their child's education is no simple factor in this system. Having a care doesn't necessarily mean they are capable of helping, and I've personally seen more than a typical number of situations where it was this very care that caused the learning deficit.
You are comparing [apples, oranges] to beef.
The source of the implications raised by the article can be traced by simply asking: "are these people indeed receiving education from the same place, or simply going to the same buildings?"
I can speak from personal experience and say I educated myself, regardless of what government-owned structure I was legally required to walk into every weekday. I don't imply that I'm the quintessential case here, but consider: Is it logical to reason that those that are more apt to learn also have the extra initiative to learn on their own, while those future illiterates do not?
I think if parents play a role in this, the time period to consider is the infancy of the child in question, not his/her school-faring years.
(SLAP!) That's "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", dammit! And is "doctorite" the stuff that makes doctors weak?
Virg
> It is a sad commentary on our society that we place such a high value on athletes, actors, and others, who collectively contribute very little to the moral fabric of our society (and many who significantly detract from it), and yet place such a low value on our teachers.
...our society would be full of uneducated menaces (ahem, like it is today...)
...and would be coming apart at the seams (like it is today...)
...and we would lose our culture and identity (ahem, surprise, surpise, which we are...)
You sound like you're from the older generation, with the usual "These kids today!" rhetoric. Societies from the dawn of time have placed high value on celebrities and entertainers, and (historically speaking) a low value on teachers. Even the vaunted Greeks, who are generally considered to have placed high value on learning, celebrated their actors, and relegated teaching duties to slaves. And for every Socrates, we have an Albert Einstein who brought science to the masses.
>
"Uneducated menaces"? Your elitism astounds me. Firstly, your assumption that everyone who isn't as well educated as you is a "menace" merely shows your lack of contact with the general public, and not only are crime rates lower per capita today than ever before in history, the average high school dropout today has a better educational background than the average person in the U.S. one hundred years ago. Did you forget that more than half of the population back then was functionally illiterate? That number is somewhat lower these days.
>
My guess is that you feel this way because fewer people today subscribe to your moral code than did when you were younger, but then fifty years ago it was acceptable to prevent someone from sitting on a particular park bench because of the color of their skin, which I find appalling. Or did you gloss over that part of your rosy past as well?
>
I think you mean "losing your culture and identity". We're not losing our collective identity, we're changing it because attitudes about what society is are changing. You can weep about how great community and patriotism was "back when", but these days the whole idea of community is different and culture needs to change to allow for this.
> For the most part, teachers are under-paid, under-trained, and have their hands tied with outdated technology and miniscule budgets...(snip)..., and waste money as if it were free.
Hate to point it out, but a lot of the waste is in the schools' own bureaucracies.
> Yeah, we can blame it on the government, but we just watch it happen and get on with our lives, too busy coding to care.
Perhaps you do, but I have been actively working for changes in the governments of every place I've lived to change what's wrong with the educational system.
> Shame on us. Shame on all of us.
Shame on you, sir or madam, for thinking you can speak for me. You sound like a rather jaded and bitter old man/woman, longing for a past that never really existed. I for one am happy with how far we've come.
Virg
Yes, but you inherit a bunch of medical problems that will cause more to be put into medi-cal programs.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hollywood would have to do a whole lot better
than that. Science is not about whiz kids doing
stuff that amuses the viewer. Hollywood would
need to make it clear in its movies that man's
only reason for existence as a sentient creature
is to understand the world. The rest of society
exists to support the work of knwoledge gatherers.
If Hollywood can carry that message effectively
then research and schooling will both pick up.
Incidentally, teachers I've had have had a lot of luck with actually including pop topics as part of their workload.
... our curriculuum are being written too often by either neophytes or PhDs and not people who understand pop culture -- the kids sure do though ...
Telling students that they have to watch the MTV music awards and report who certain awards were given to as well as why they think those awards weren't given to the other nominees may not sound like schoolwork, but it encourages basic-level research, scheduling and critical thinking.
Why don't we use baseball stats as an elementary part of teaching math? Why don't we use dieting (popular among teenagers, especially girls) as a reason for studying biology and anatomy? etc.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
You nitwit, AE didn't invent the atom bomb. His great contribution to science was his ideas, which others then (and still do) convert into stuff. Also, last I checked, "Jewish" was a religious designation. Your statement implies that there can be no such thing as a German Jew, which point many German Jews will find offensive. And last, but not least, the atomic bomb wasn't used in a racist attack on the Japanese, it was used in a nationalist attack on the Japanese, as a scare tactic for the Soviet Union. The reason it wasn't used on the Germans was that by the time they were ready for prime time, the war in Europe was done.
Virg
P.S. A. Einstein did most of his writings while working in a Viennese patent office, not in the U.S., and was already a revered scientist by the time he came to America. You should check your facts before you use them.
P.P.S. Your advocacy of the extermination of the German people is different from Hitler's advocacy of the extermination of the Jews in what way, exactly?
...and genocide is genocide, even if the ones you would kill are repugnant to you. You sound like a racist of the lowest stripe, to lump all Germans (and indeed all Teutonic people) in with white supremacists. Secondly, you've got a lot of nerve talking about how the Germans will sink to mass murder again if unchecked, while at the same time you push for exactly the act for which you damn them. Apparently it is you who is blind to history, because you don't realize that your argument is disturbingly close to the very argument Hitler himself used to justify the Holocaust in the first place. His argument was, to wit, "we need to eliminate the Jewish threat to our well being, because if we don't they'll run us all into servitude and death, just like they've done all through history." Your argument requires only that I replace "Jewish" with "German", and if that doesn't disturb you then I must assume that you are not to be reasoned with.
Virg