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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."
Recently, I remembered doing lab experiments in middle school and high school. I remember that if we ever got results that differed from those necessary to support the theory we were experimenting with, we were told we did the experiment wrong and either downgraded or told to redo it.
Not that we always did the experiments carefully or properly, but it is a little bit ironic to have something like that in a science class. Shoving the popularly accepted theories in our faces was the primary goal and teaching us to think and reason scientifically was a distant second.
The biggest problem with Science starts with grade schools. In most schools today the amount of hoops you have to go through to make the class interesting. Over the top safety concerns and budget cuts have really restricted the ability to provide interesting presentations and interactive experimentation. Sometimes "think of the children" tends to result in children that can't think.
I spoke with my oldest daughters teacher about the experiments they would be doing this year, sadly they cant even make a potato battery or pickle light due to the threat of fire or something goofy. I actually got reprimanded by the teacher last year for showing my daughter some kitchen experiments that she proceeded to bring up in class, since the students were wanting to see them. Now instead of shattering a hot dog with liquid nitrogen kids get to do things like a baking soda submarine...wheeeee! No wonder the students dont care and the teachers are bored out their minds.
I spoke with my oldest daughters teacher about the experiments they would be doing this year, sadly they cant even make a potato battery or pickle light due to the threat of fire or something goofy.
No kidding! In my school we have a model steam engine that I used several times as a how-does-this-machine-work kind of lesson. I let all the kids (about 12-13yrs) poke at it and try and play with it to make it go. As they had never seen such old technology they had lots of fun trying to figure it out.
However I got reprimanded by the school for allowing the kids to handle the engine. According to health and safety it can only be used behind a thick safety screen -- incase it explodes or whatever. Now I'll never use it again, because behind the screen it's a boring, lifeless demo.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I also blame a lack of competitive spirit--it gets beaten out of us so nobody can be made to feel bad, the same reason my school no longer does anything to honor academic excellence like it does for sports.
Here's my idea: at the end of every year, hold a public assembly where the bottom 25% of students are called up in front of the entire school and laughed at. Let's call it a "social experiment."
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
So while tech school was supposed to be lower it actually rated slightly higher. They certainly had a better change of getting a job.
This whole system was changed and the two schools merged. The amount of practice hours was reduced forcing the kids who don't want to be in school to be in school. This leads to lots of dropouts and the kids that stick with it learn no usefull trade.
Dropouts, useless school diploma's lack of skilled workers. Great. All because all those poor tradeskill kids were not learning about arts or biology or french.
It was an experiment and it failed completly. It sounds a lot like the american "no kid left behind" idea. Stop social experiments with our schools.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Greenspun further describes the typical scienst in his article :
Omnes stulti sunt.
Assuming the above is accurate and not hyperbole, it sounds like a slam-dunk case of wrongful termination, even if he had a *bad* lawyer, and your friend might even come through with quite a bit of cash. It's too bad you're accommodating those who would cheapen scientific education here in the US by not fighting their culture of fear.
As a junior in high school (New Jersey), I entirely concur with your opinion. We have honors, IB, & AP courses and all are filled with students that don't want to be there. In Theory of Knowledge (a required IB course) the first day of school the teacher asked my class why we chose IB. Three students out of thirty (myself included in that three) said something other than my parents made me take it. Parents pushing their kids into classes they ought not to be in, and the school being unable to stop them is the root of the problem. What in society makes parents do this I am not sure, but if it is not fixed this country is absolutely screwed. Next year there are 7 students that wish to take Further Mathematics (post-Calculus course) and Physics C. The school made it considerably difficult in approving these two courses to run, and even now it's not 100%. My school at least has no interest in those above average, because hey - they're already passsing the standarized tests. The system is broken.
Interesting point, but I think it depends on the demographic. I saw myself in HS several people (who at this point have grown out of their drug abuse issues and are successful) who fit your description.
However i also saw plenty of kids who weren't academically inclined at all (through both apathy and ability, or maybe the former resulted from the latter) that did nothing but drink and smoke for four years or more. I pin that on plain vanilla shallowness, or hedonism or whatever you care to call it.
It seems also like there was a division between the stoners and binge drinkers. I do know a few very intelligent people who, if not qualifying as stoners, smoked pretty regularly back then. Try as I may I can't think of ANY kids that spent the weekends blind drunk that have gone on to be productive. I realize it's just an anecote, but it's an interesting thought.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I am not sure that there is an actual correlation between decreasing scientific ability and the unquestioning surrender of civil rights, but since both are occuring simultaneously in the USA, well, perhaps this needs to be studied.
Lets face it the last several years the country has been clouded by a culture of stupidity. And it is no wonder that children's ability to understand sciance is good at young age but drops off sharply at high school because high school is where children are exposed to the 'adult' culture and politics.
... no, the duty and repsonsibility of being as stupid as possible.
... larry the cable guy.
... it is mediocrity at every level of culture ... just like the comedians are not very funny, the younger actors are not especially good at acting, the movie directors suck at directing, the newscasters do no serious journalism, the popular writers cant write very well, the policy makers make terrible foreign policy etc. Mediocrity is being worshipped and talent, intelligence, etc. are being punished.
Lets face it everyone knows how stupidity penetrated politics, I dont have to spell it out. But from there it spread out and went everywhere. All of a sudden anyone remotely intelligent on TV was deemed to be part of the "old liberal media" even if they were not liberal at all.
Every one on television and in popular culture was pressured to show and give credit to the point of view of stupidity and complete idiocy or they risked being labeled part of the old liberal media. Half wits that specialized in entertaining complete uneducated idiots (like the various radio talk show hosts) were elevated to respected status. Don't get me started on bill oreilly.
And the most offensive thing is that stupidity invaded popular culture under the disguise of religion. Every complete moron that went on TV perpetuating some lowest common denominator 'theory' awlays said that he was taking directions from jesus himself and therefore one could not use logical arguments against him because that made one a godless liberal elitist that disrespects ordinary americans. As if believing in God gave everyone the right
One wonders how we never saw an intelligent promoter of Christianity on TV. I know they exist, because I have read their writings, but for some reason when you turn on your television set all you see is some half wit foaming at the mouth bible thumping neo fascist.
And dont get me started about popular culture. We worship dumb bimbos that act like sluts but assure everyone that they are good christians. Oh and where we once had comics that made us think now we have
Its not even only stupidity
Meanwhile university professors are eyed with a lot of suspicion, there are organizations being started for the purpose of spying on proffessors and reporting the "dangerous ones", think-tanks have sprung up so that no journalist ever has to ask the opinion of a university proffessor if they need an "expert".
Some kids are born smarter and some arent. But in order to learn one need not only be smart one need to want to learn. When stupidity is being worshipped and intelligent or otherwise talented people are simply embarassed of their talent, then fewer and fewer kids will want to learn.
About 4 years ago I left a great job at Sun to become a high school mathematics teacher. At the end of this school year, I'm leaving education. I now have a great contempt for the union, my school's management, and the district offices - the amount of low-level corruption and abuse of power I've seen is truly shocking.
I've had to do a lot of personal reflection lately - and I've realized that part of why I came to loggerheads with my administrative team is due to differing beliefs: I got into this racket believing that schools should provide the best possible education for each student. Management believes that schools should provide the bare minimum (10th grade students should be able to do algebra at a certain level, possess a certain vocabulary, be able to parse sentences at a specific level of difficulty...)
I'm not sure who's correct anymore. Is school a place to challenge each student to achieve their best, or is that a role for parents? Is school just a place to make sure that students have a minimal set of skills that will enable them to live in society? (both is the idealist answer - it's what every politician/superintendent espouses, but at the end of the day, I believe they want the minimal skills option...)
Thoughts?
It's an odd coincidence you should mention this, these actions have come to bite me horribly just a few days ago.
It's the time of year where I do AS level examinations (A British 16/17 year old set of exams) and as they approached I thought about why I was learning an entire years of maths work in a few days, or more importantly, why I had been comatose for the last year in lessons.
Up to the age of sixteen in the UK schooling is compulsory, and even in a "grammar" (think "allegedly" top 10%) school we can only move as fast as the slowest pupil. This was especially bad in mathematics classes. Last year and the year before we studied simple concepts, some which were new to me and which I was happy to learn, for a while. Repetitive exercises of applying a single formula to about three hundred questions for hours upon end, and I couldn't do it. I found it horrific and painful to my mind, such boring simple waste of time. In the end I learnt to multitask and made my mind focus on something else while my hand roughly filled in the questions on homework excercises.
Roll on this year, I had lost all passion for school mathematics long ago, but I choose to study it anyway as only A level candidates and above are allowed to take the course. Brilliant I assume. Unfortunately, the work may have gotten harder eventually, but I just slept through lessons. Not because I'm arrogant and could simply pass at a whim, it's just the most hated possible method of learning I have.
Fast forward in time to mock examinations. What do I get for my maths? Twenty-three percent. Five days intense study of my own textbook and online after school, I get an A in those papers, with the exam about a day away. That was dangerous. I know it's my fault for zoning and not doing any work for such a long period, and not checking my own progress, however, due to tending to all the stupidest people, I did find it painful to continue any sort of work. Before it's suggested, no, school systems only allow one way of working, and it's going to be damn sure to be Their Way.
In comparison, lets take physics. I love physics as a subject as it teaches the nature of the universe and all other sciences are based on it. To me it represents a set of "Core Truths" if you will. The school also has the most enthusiastic hyperactive physics teacher I have ever seen and this bode well for me and about five other geeks. She let us skip a lot of the course since we already knew it, for example a third of a physics AS course is simple mechanics when, as we're all also doing maths, we could comprehend much more difficult scenarios, and let us do what we wanted, as long as we produce something at the end. She's used the textbook maybe, once, or twice in her lessons as far as I can remember and gives as much variety as possible in teaching methods.
That's brilliant for a kid like me. A real problem for a lot of intelligent people I believe is simple boredom. The work's easy, so we don't work. We fall behind. We no longer care. We do badly in exams. We think it's unfair. We know it's our fault but we were driven to it.
The system here does pander to the middle intelligence child with good memory. Memory is all you need to pass a test here, no thinking involved. I guarantee it! It occurs to the point that intelligent children are penalised often for being intelligent and answering questions correctly. Here's a following example based on when my school taught IT:
I walk into the IT room for a lesson after having been ill for about two weeks, and apparently we have a test. They don't mean much so I take it and I answer as best as I can from general knowledge. One of the questions was, "How does a scanner send an image to a computer?". I ponder for a second and think. In the end I put down something along the lines of "Normally a xenon, or a flurescant lamp is transported underneath the paper to cause contrast which is picked up by CCDs which break down the results into a binary RGB colour scheme that is then digitised and transport
Here's where most of my point was:
I think I should rephrase the last part a bit. The last sentence probably made you think I was saying, "I was able to keep good reasoning skills in spite of being taught drivel." That wasn't what I meant.
My point was, I wasn't taught poor reasoning skills! My point was, I never "grew out of" fundamentalism, and I didn't have to learn new ways of thinking. My point was, I was taught to be rigorously analytical by creationists. There was never any point that my creationist views interfered with my scientific reasoning skills. There is no inconsistency between being an IDer and acing that standardized test.
Now, I do think there's a lot of very bad creationist arguments, and that your average layperson doesn't realize how bad they are because they lack the training, and they don't spend the time and effort required. But I also think your little thesis in the grandparent post exemplifies pretty much the same sort of sloppy reasoning. The "unthoughtful, knee-jerk crap" was the idea that the efforts of ID & creationist groups are responsible for the decline of science ability in current teens. It has only the thinnest veneer of rationale.
I can't tell you how many 12-18yr olds I have heard rant about how their classmates are so stupid for believing that dinosaurs existed because their parents taught them the world is only 6000 years old.
I don't believe you. At all. I don't think you're lying, but I think there's about a 98% chance that your memory is, *ahem*, confused. I'm sure you've heard many teens rant about evolution, or radiometric dating, or the Big Bang, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but I don't believe you've heard them rant about the existence of dinosaurs. It just didn't happen. Maybe one or two, but I doubt even that many. "Dinosaurs don't exist" is about as far from the modern creationist movement as the Flat Earth Society.
How they rant about how stupid their teachers are and how they lie and are sinners because they teach biology instead of pure fundamentalist creationism.
Really? Did they say that, or did they say, "because they teach evolution"? Do you understand why changing words for greater rhetorical effect makes it difficult for me to take you seriously?
So its not just kneejerk, it really does happen that way out there.
See what I said about "my point" up above. Even if your alleged teens said exactly what you seem to think, it wouldn't matter, and it would be irrelevant to the superficiality of your argument.
I'm not sure why you see this as an attack on religion...it isn't. It is an attack on teaching poor reasoning skills that largely are continued on through fundamentalist beliefs.
I'm not sure why you think I see this as an attack on religion. I didn't say that I do. I didn't imply that I do. I don't.
I'm sure many fundamentalists have poor reasoning skills. What I do doubt is that the average is much worse than the general population, if at all. (And incidentally, I still consider myself a fundamentalist--but I rarely use the term, since hardly anyone has quite the same definition.)
At my school, the smart kids (who weren't challenged enough with academics) got in to arts (marching band, concert band, choir, show choir, theatre, etc.). Drugs really were for the losers. My school was exceptional and well-known for those programs, though. Were you at one of those schools which closed arts programs in favor of athletics, or were drugs just "popular"?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Only when teachers are accorded the same salary and respect -- and subject to the same rigorous standards -- as lawyers, doctors, and other trained professonals, will your hope be realized.
Ironically, the teachers are partly to blame for this with their aggressive unionization and staunch opposition to merit or skill based pay in favor of seniority and tenure. The problem is further aggravated by the unions making it nearly impossible to fire any teacher, however incompetent, short of criminal conviction for especially egregious conduct.
You seem to be harping on IQ as if it was not important, but that's not the case at all. I score fairly high in IQ tests, around 130-140, and I'll be working with people and we are learning the same thing and they just don't 'get it'. It takes them forever to learn it. On the other hand, I have some relatives that are so smart that it blows my mind how quickly they pick things up.
;) ) before the industrial revolution.
One of these poeple got two degrees in largely unrelated subjects, mathematics and law, in less time than I got one. He can count things at least upto 100 at a glance, and is otherwise the most well-adjusted person I know. He passed the law exam at the 99 percentile and basically didn't ever study at all, preferring instead to whack people at lacrosse. Now he works in an assembly plant by choice and is happy doing that. Another has a tested score of over 170. He got one of the first perfect scores on ASVAB, which is still extremely rare to this day. He's a law professor now in his huge house. I studied and practiced programming for 10 years and after a few weeks of idle reading he could talk with me about it essentially at my level.
I also lived in China for a year, where my brother's chinese friend was one of those left behind by the system. He was very smart, but he was going to be a ditch-digger since it was already to late for him. He blew up his finger making a firecracker because there was no way to do anything challenging (ie he was bored so got into trouble). Even if he had turned a complete 180 he would still have been locked outside the door in the morning because he was the 'failure'.
And here's my point. I've seen a whole spectrum and you know what? You can work hard and succeed in either system... but how smart you are makes a massive difference in how hard you need to work and how successful you can be. It's not largely irrelevant like your posts seem to imply. And this is my cultural bias speaking, but the other thing is that I just don't like the Chinese system. I don't like how it rewards hard-working mediocrity as if people are ants and should be. I don't like how it rewards memorization and information over generation and concepts. Who the hell cares if you can do arithmetic by hand? That's what computers are for. That's why we invented them.
And if you think of the darwinian aspect, you can't inherently pass on knowledge to your kids -- they have to learn it all over again from scratch just like you did -- but you can pass on gene. A society that rewards intelligence over knowledge and hard work 'should' get smarter and smarter over time.
China was always had top technology (at least in the field of warfare
You've never heard of the Mayans I guess, or maybe that's why you add your qualifier.
I agree with everything you say, except for the basic premise that this is the reason that our education is bad. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:
1) As a Russian who also moved to Canada, I agree with a lot of what you say. As I graduate from the University of Waterloo this summer, I still don't think I ever worked as hard at any level of schhol as I did in grade 1 in Russia. I moved 3/4 through grade 1, but continued to study math with my parents until grade 5, which lasted me through most of highschool.
2) Education as it is structured in Russia and China is aimed at allowing the elite to develop as fast and as well as humanly possible. This, however is not necessarily a good thing. As you mentioned, those who do badly in school are looked upon as "failures". This is not particularly fair to these children, especially since we need many more construction/office/sales people than university professors.
3) Education where classes are not separated by ability is always a compromise: if you set the difficulty level at the average student, the bright ones will be bored with school. If you set the level to cater to bright students, most of the class will struggle, which is unnecessary when many of these students will not need strong math/science skills in their future vocations. In short, American/Canadian system leaves the kids with a worse education, but it also leaves them with a higher self esteem and in the end turns out happier people.
4) There are several ways to solve this problem.
a) One is external to education system: if somehow we can make science cool, then the kids will want to learn, while at the same time not hurting their self esteem if they don't do too well - you can be good at science, or basketball, or music, and any one of these will make you "cool".
b) Another way to solve this problem is to separate the classes by ability. This way the "gifted" students will have work set at their level. This can be done either by some sort of testing as it is now, or it can be done as in Germany, where the school at some point splits up into several streams - one for students who want to go to university and one for ones who do not.
5) From what I saw at UW, which is the best school in canada in terms of computer science education, and one of the best in north america, the truly bright kids do alright for themselves even with the bad education throughout highschool. They keep their minds sharp with hobbies, and are still able to do well in university and jobs. We have a *lot* of extremely hard working chinese students, many from china, but I would not say that they dominate here in terms of marks, so all is not so bad.
At the end of the day, I don't believe it's fair to children to tie their self esteem and popularity to their marks anymore than it's fair to tie them to their success in sports - we just don't need *that* many university professors. Yes, the ability to think critically should be encouraged, but it's not as cut and dry as "make school 8 times harder". Yes, for most of university i've felt that school would be a lot more fun for me if it was catered to a group of about 30 students or so from my year that took advanced math courses, theortical computer science courses etc. At the same time, the students themselves and their parents bear some responsibility for developing their talents, and trying to cater to the elite will create a society of people with inferiority complexes.
Note from TFA, for example, that the issues cited by the article were,
and
Speaking as a physics teacher, I fully agree with that assessment. Young teachers who are motivated and talented hit brick walls like "I can't actually afford to buy a house" or "the administration cares more about paperwork than learning." As result, they leave the profession before they ever develop their teaching effectively.
By contrast, young teachers who stick around for five years or more will often be those whose strengths are paperwork rather than teaching.
In other words, the bureaucracy functions unconsciously as a filter that weeds out teaching talent and maintains mediocrity.*
I should note that the article is incomplete, in that it focuses only on teachers -- much of the problem also lies with students and parents. But almost none of the problem can be properly blamed on "Intellgent Design."
* Since I've been around for 14 years, one might suspect me of being mediocre. I hope that "determined" is a better description...
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.