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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."
"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.
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.
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Yes, but there's nothing wrong with aiming to improve what that middle ground knows. Because the "average" is not a stupid person, just a disinterested person. And knowing how things work is interesting enough on its own merits to even people well-below average. The only reason people don't want to know is they believe a lie, that it's somehow beyond their capacity to understand.
No, this guy's right. The biggest reason for the decline in what the average person learns out of high school in this country is the decline in qualified teachers.
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.
-- Shamus
"Bleah!" -- overheard at a press conference
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
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.
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.
That's very true.
That's also very true. BUT wishful thinking is not sufficient. My mom happens to be a primary school teacher (outside the US, BTW), so she gets to teach kids the most important basics (read, write, count). She gets definite instructions along the line of what you're suggesting -- adapt to each child, etc.
Except there are other 20 children in her class.
Well, she's tried. Bottom line: the kids learn well. They love her. Their parents love her.
But she's stepping down after only 5 years of it, because she's worked herself thin, and she's in too bad shape to continue.
So, yes, we need to find a way to teach children individually. But that's not by just telling the teachers to do so, obviously. Problem is: is it possible to fund enough teachers for all the kids? If not, then what can we do? Will it be sufficient if the parents actively take part in their kids' education, like other Slashdotters are suggesting?
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
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)
The problem is that Education is a soft science, and actually does not have a practical scientific base. Which education systems produce the best results and why? Ask that question, and you get a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
You could ask the question of Linux distributions, and eventually you would get answers depending on the user experience and the intended application, and the operational enviroment. You could determine what the best practices are. You could get expert answers that work every time.
You cannot do that in education. For example you could try to teach writing. But even today, the writers on the best seller lists do not study writing for four years of college, etc. They just sit down and write, and they figure out on their own how other writers did what they did. The teach themselves. The best way to ruin a writing career is to have a college education in it.
There are many other fields which are similar to this. Even in the Tech Review article, it sounds like what happens is that the teachers spark the kids interest, and then the kids really teach themselves at a rate that far outstrips the books.
Part of this problem is the very education system that produced these teachers. How many people here said "To heck with that subject! I will never use that!"? Plenty.
The problem is that if you have a data vacuum in something, it is very easy to fill it in with junk. Does anyone here know what happens when you process with junk data? Garbage in = garbage out. (and then you get folks like GWB)
Also, if you have a data vacuum, it is very easy to try to excuse this away, to try to justify this ignorance. "It was just a stupid subject anyhow. It was not cool." and then you have greased skids to a hostile attitude.
Real expertise in education would have a fix for this type of thing. A teacher would know how to get themselves effectively educated in science, or any other subject of choice. And could do this for the students as well. The you wouldn't have parents and administrators trying to fix and cheat the scores
Don't hold you breath waiting.
- - -
Radio Free Nation
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"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
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"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
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.
True, but it is generally accepted that children usually adapt the attitudes of those around them
while they are impressionable.
Yes American students perform worse on tests the children of other countries, but those countries have the some exact (well not exact) problems as us.
It's not about the Test scores, (any one will tell you they're not valid indicators of intelligence) but the fear of science itself.I mean just look at the debate going on with stem cell research. Not one piece of science has ever been brought into this debate.Some people are just afraid of science. This continues with computers. The rate at which people are getting signed up for the Internet who haven't before as greatly slowed, as people who are almost afraid of the technology.
They have kept students learning at a high level through good pay for teachers, extra school, more money for school, and a thousand other things.Teachers are better today then they were 50 years ago because of the development of better teacher methods. As anyone who has taken an intro college class knows, the professor can know every on the topic, but unless they know how to communicate that, they are worthless as teachers. Elementary, middle, and high school teachers take hundreds of hours of classes whose only point is to teach them how to communicate information.
Very true, and that is the point. Their spending so much time learning how to communicate things they're not learning what they need to be communicating.
It is one thing not to know but another to be afraid. One thing hit upon in the article is that people become under the impression that they are not able to learn the hard sciences. In elementary school, you don't necessarily need a teacher who has all of the answer but at least has the ability to look for them. So that when a child asks a question the teacher can go well I don't know, but lets find out. And then turn to a resource perhaps the 'Internet')than will allow the teacher to explain (simply) the answer to the student's question and furthermore to teach the student how to learn on their own.
Those who control the future, conquer the past.
Those who control the past, conquer the future.
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.
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
I'm sorry, but there's nothing 'Insightful' about claiming that teachers are the true and evil problem with the American education system today. As stated before, there are so many factors that go into America's educational decline, no one candidate can be blamed.
Yes, I'll agree, there probably are teachers that do not perform to standard. There are policemen that also don't. And doctors. And lawyers. And anything else that you can think of. But to carte blanche claim that teachers are the root problem is not only stupid and immature, it's also irresponsible.
What about the decline of family and social structure in America in the last fifty years? What about the incredible amount of personal freedom and power children have today (read the cover story from the 6 Aug 2001 issue of Time). How about the comparitivly low salaries that high school and elementary teachers compared with other professionals with similar educations?
No, Rimbo, the problem is not teachers. The problems is people like you that refuse to accept responsibility for their own children, for failing to nurture and guide them, and then to quickly turn to the school teachers and blame them.
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
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
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.
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.
Fifth, This whole separation of church and state thing. NEVER was today's situation meant to happen and our founding fathers are rolling over in thier graves. We should all be ashamed of ourselves for letting it come to this point. If you dig around, and find statistics, You will find that most of the bad features of America started right when God was removed from schools. Crime rate, Abortion, Murder, Premarital sex, The inability of the average person to keep their promises on anything. Think about it. The reason is so simple. Nobody feels like they are responsible to anyone, not even God.
Which leads us to Six. What is being taught in schools is so terribly inacurate. The driving force for most of early American history is the belief in God. Telling the American story without mentioning God is like trying to explain how a nuclear reactor works without explaining what fission is. "Oh well these rod thingies get hot and- Why? Well they just do. Trust me, I work for the govornment."
Speaking as someone who is rather fond of "This whole separation of church and state thing", I disagree. First, some of us are not Christians. Does this mean our children should be forced to learn your religion? Or perhaps "special shcools" are in order? Maybe they should just shuffle their feet and look vaguely uncomfortable everytime someone mentions religion. Heh, I was a teacher for a year. Do Wiccan teachers get to lead the children in Sabbats and Esabbats, or do only Christian teachers get to provide religous guidence to children? Public schools get paid for out of public money, and if they expouse your religious views over mine, they are creating a sitution of favoritism. Certainly you have the right (which you excercised) to teach your children your own views in your own way, but critisising the public system for trying to be as fair as possible is un reasonable. Imagine you lived in Salt Lake City where the majority of the population is Mormon. Would you want "God" to be in the schools there? Someone else's God? (I'm not knocking Mormons here, just using that as an example, since there are relativly few places in this country where "standard" Protesant Christian views are not dominant.)
As to your statement about about the the relationship of relgion to history, and the founding fathers.. I have to both agree and disagree with you. First, you are right that the history of this nation cannot be taught without mentioning God. Yes, here I am talking about the Christian God, his preceived will has been a dominatin force in outr nation's history. One point I disagree on is your implication that this has always, or even often, been a good thing. Christian sentiment in this country has been responsible for amonst other things in our history: Prohibition, the Red Scare, the Salem Witch Trials (No, I am not a rabid Wiccan who thinks that Witch trial were either common or even successful in US History, but Salem was a stand out), Slavery (Yes it was also important in abolitionist circles, I'll get to that), the near eradication of the native population of this contient, and more than one war. On the other hand it has also been responsible for the progressive movement (Which had its good and bad points, but was generally positive), abolitionism, recent movements toward Civil Rights for various respressed people, and various antiwar movements. Hardly a perfect record. I might also add that this country is far less violent than it typically has been in it's history, and you are attempting to compare today's modern "degeneration" to the imagined perfections of the late forties and the fifties. Even if they had been as beautiful as pop culture portrays them, they were an aberation in American history. And I rather doubt that too many black southerners who were alive then would pain the picture that Ozy and Harriet did.
As to the founding fathers, some 25% of the them were probably Deists, who really didn't have much to sasy on the subject of religion in the first place. As a rule, whenever people bring up the "intent" of the founding fathers, early Americanists kinda laugh. The truth is that only a small fraction of them left enough info about themselves to really get an idea what their "intent" was, and the of those that did, much of it is contradictory. The famous Jeffersonian "All men are created equal" from a slave owner is just one example. Most writings of his indicate that Jefferson KNEW slavery was wrong, but could not see a reasonable way out. The founding fathers were men of great courage certainly, but still, alas, human, and full of contradiction. While some may be turning over in their graves from the removal of Christianity from public schools, most are probably resting as well as their own deeds will allow them.
Why yes, I do have a BA in history that I hardly ever get to drag out.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
It tells you no such thing. 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. The filter that selects your "experiment group" (homeschool families) out of the general population also selects for other factors that tend to influence a child's rate of learning. You are comparing apples to oranges.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
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.
> 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