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Science Ability Down in U.S. High Schools
An anonymous reader writes "According to the International Herald Tribune, a nationwide test has shown that the ability to reason scientifically is less well developed across the board for high schoolers. Fourth graders, ironically, are actually better at reasoning in the sciences now than they were ten years ago." From the article: "The drop in science proficiency appeared to reflect a broader trend in which some academic gains made in elementary grades and middle school have been seen to fade during the high school years. The science results come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a comprehensive examination administered in early 2005 by the Department of Education to more than 300,000 students in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and on U.S. military bases around the world."
Most high school seniors are lazy and blow off thier senior year. Add to that the fact that most of them don't care about tests that don't affect your grade, and you get those results. In my HS when we were given "extra" tests, a lot of my classmates would skip class or just fill in bubbles.
Why was my comment modded troll? Is it at all suprising that people are less interested in science and teaching when a man like Bush is in charge? This administration expresses active hatred for scientific knowledge. You may be interested to know that I'm an American and a physics teacher, but I work abroad and have no intentions of ever trying to teach in America after I had a friend fired in New York for mentioning the existence of evolution in a class.
-Grey
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The fact that I was on "independent study" for many classes all the way through high school, because the school was unwilling to hire more AP teachers seems like a pretty good indicator.
The funny thing about the school I went to (Dauphin County Technical School, dcts.org) is that the number of special education teachers is almost equal to the number of normal teachers. But the number of AP teachers has been at 2 for many many years.
Is this some ironic example of the lack of science reasoning or something?
You don't like sports, fine, I get that. But to think that somehow liking sports is inversely proportional to academic ability is just stupid. In fact, I argue that sports are part of being a well-rounded individual.
The truth is that kids are doing worse because parents are worse. They're too afraid to discipline their kids and insist they work hard. They're too afraid to take away privileges if their kids screw up. They're to afraid to be seen as "controlling bastards" by their spoiled, screaming children. They want to be their buddies instead of parents.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
By the time my sister started school, the teachers I had began to retire and a new wave fresh out of college were brought in. With them, they brought all these great new ideas on how to teach. In elementary school, I remember doing weekly tests on arithmetic tables, going up to the chalkboard to do math in front of the class, various scientific "experiments" (watching plants grow over a course of a semester and measuring it's change in height), etc. My sister never did any of that stuff. They did math in groups to "promote teamwork" and that resulted in the one or two strongest people in each group doing all of the work while everyone else goofed around and never really learned anything.
My freshman year of high school, I experienced my first wave of the changes. While the government mandates special education be provided for the learning disabled kids, it didn't mandate anything for the more advanced kids. The school had just built a new addition which meant diverting budget funds away from education and into repayment of bonds. They've since built 2 more additions when they would have been much better served by simply building an entirely new school since a new school would have cost approximately half of what they've spent expanding the current one three times (the entire expense being about 5 times the full yearly budget). All because they expected a large influx of kids coming up based on demographic changes (about 15% more than my class). Well, sure enough, this year's senior class has about 20% more students than mine (120 vs 145) and starting next year, the classes shrink again. The problem could have been solved by using the rooms more efficiently (at any given time, a large number of classrooms are empty with just a teacher sitting in them during one of their 40% of the work day break periods), but why do that when you can throw money at the problem?
The school budget for next year just went up for election... $1.2 million increase on a $28 million budget. If you pass it, you're looking at a $29.2 million budget and if you turn it down, you're looking at a $29.2 million contingency budget. It's the same budget whether it passes or fails. Looking at the numbers, they want to spend more money on two new buses ($220k) than they will spend on new books ($165k) for the entire district (K-12). Teacher salaries make up the lion share of the budget followed by teacher benefits and building maintenance/bond payments. The school mailed letters to everyone in the district during the winter bragging about how they were going to save electricity by reducing light usage and turning down the heat (because cold students learn better?). Why, it would save thousands of dollars!
Anyway, before I ramble on too long about all the problems between the "new and improved" teaching methods which promote self esteem and teaming instead of learning and how they squander millions on building new additions and remodeling sports fields every few years, lets look at the results. Remember how I said I managed a restaurant? Well, back ten years ago, people new how to make change in their heads, new general problem solving that they might encounter (what do I do when a fire starts on the grill), etc. These days, kids (we're talking 16-20, including people with diplomas and one who was valedictorian from my school a few years ago) just flat can't make change without using a calculator, don't know what to do when they encounter minor problems (some don't even know how to open cans without an electric can opener while others can't figure out how to refill hand towels in the bathroom), they don't even know how t
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
I think your speed of light is about 10^7 times to slow.
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This is however not that big a deal. Yes some kids will learn they have what it takes to become doctors or engineers (first is theory, second is trade) and other will learn they are barely fit for special needs schools (retards)
But the largest group will fall somewhere in between and will just go to the school that fits the proffesion they want to be in the future.
Trade schools are by no means lightweight. They just focus more on practice but in a way this forces kids to learn the theory in fewer hours.
In practice it seemed to me that kids who knew what they wanted to be ended up getting the education they needed while kids with no future plan could go get the type of education that fitted best with their personality.
Yes it does sounds like your father in law benefitted from being forced into theory BUT the sad daily effect is that while forcing everyone to learn theory may work for the rare exception for a lot of kids it means they cannot keep up or dropout.
Saying everyone should study social sciences to be a fully rounded human being sounds nasty. As if somehow you can't be a proper member of society unless you can quote shakespeare. That sounds Elitist to me. Not accepting that people want to do different things with their lives.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.