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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."
That's what happens when the most important part of your 'academic' life is the Football team.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
but I'm not sure what this article is talking about. :-(
Direct away from face when opening.
The falling average science test scores among high school students, announced Wednesday, appeared certain to increase anxiety about American academic competitiveness and to add new urgency to calls from President George W. Bush
Yes, if anyone can save science education in the US it's going to be Dubya.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Despite the fact that our universities are filled with foreign nationals, as there simply aren't enough smart Americans to fill them, and as the rest of the world laughs at us for stupid things we do academically (like not adapting to the metric system, or teaching people interesting math or science), we can all take comfort in the fact that No Child Is Left Behind.
Except for all those poor kids, I guess, but who's counting?
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
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.
...I think there's a big problem with apathy. Most students just don't care about learning. There's a few of us that take honors/ap classes and go to good universities, but the majority are just going through the motions to get out of high school. 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.
The blame really belongs with the parents, of course. My parents are why I worked to get into the computer science program at UCI.
Michael Padilla, a professor at the University of Georgia who is president of the National Science Teachers Association, said that the problem is not that universities are failing to train sufficient numbers of science majors or that too few opt for classroom careers, but that about a third of those who accept teaching jobs abandon the profession within five years.
Wow! I've just finished my first year as a teacher. Only four more to go before I'm filled with apathy and burned out on my chosen profession. I can't wait.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Makes sense. After all, science plays no prominent role in hip-hop "culture," sports "culture," or Hollywood "culture." When you have a whole generation which idolizes only members of those three groups, what else should one expect?
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
The cause is no child left behind and like action. As someone who is a senior in high school, I've watched as literally half of my science classmates had no business in my level of courses. Parents believe that their children should be able to do the top level no matter what and many times this is not the case. Worse, schools believe if a child accels at one subject then they should be in equal level classes for the rest.
The effect of this is that students potentials are limited. There are a few people in my classes who know absolutely nothing about the material at hand, and no matter how many times it is presented to them cannot grasp it. This is an honors (we don't have AP) level physics class. They slow the progression of the class, and in doing so limit people like me who grasp the concepts easily. People don't realize how it only takes a few lower people to ruin the atmosphere in a classroom. When parents strive to place their kids in classes above their abilities, they are not just jeopardizing their own child's learning, but the learning of everyone who is brought down by them. No teacher wants to fail a student, and many won't. They instead slow the class to the pace of the slowest kid. This is clearly acceptable in remedial classes, but in an accelerated class it should not happen. There should be a curriculum to follow and if someone is holding back the class, they should be let go.
Sadly the present state of education in America is to help the remedial students while squashing the advanced students' potentials. No child left behind and naive parents who believe their child is better than everyone else are two of the most detrimental things to the education system today. Schools need to stand up and say no to both of these if they want students to reach their potentials today. Fail a girl who cannot grasp a physics class she doesn't belong in if she cannot handle it. There is no other way to show that some people do not belong in advanced classes, and when they're placed in them ruin the environment.
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.
Yes, but the study was only given to high school seniors..
I am a high school sophmore and generally I consider myself well versed in most sciences (except more than intermediate physics, but I am taking physics courses next year) and to have rather well developed scientific reasoning ability. I have several friends, however, who are seniors, they are also almost invariably lazy. With this on-set of senioritis and the way curriculum/graduation requirements shake out many of them cop-out and take basic earth sciences, meteorology or anatomy, for example. While these sciences aren't unimportant they are a) semester courses (here at least), b) not given as much importance (and therefore the teachers hired to teach them aren't as good), and c) need less traditional scientific reasoning than the required sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, etc.)
I am not saying that senioritis (and the thereafter self-incurred lack of reasoning neccesity) is the only cause of this lack of reasoning ability, but I think it may be a major factor. Especially depending when the test was given, I know that once my friends have gotten their college acceptence letters they work just hard enough to meet the requirements for the mid-term grade reports for their college, not to achieve their potential.
One issue, however, may be my frame of refrence.. I go to a "Math and Science Academy" school-within-a-school magnet program and mosts of my friends do as well. I know that occassionly when my "Magnet Molecular Biology" teacher got bored and lazy (granted he is busy, he just got married last summer and is moving to Poland at the end of this school year, so its partialy a function of a lack of planning time) and gave the class a lab or worksheet from the core biology curriculim I was shocked (and frankly appalled) at how easy and simple they were.
Well, it doesn't surprise me a bit. My nephew who is just 10 is obsessed with sports to the point of taping the NFL draft proceedings...several hours worth. Beyond that I have a friend whose daughter was failing math in high-school. She was already an accomplished equestrian and was trying out for the cheerleading squad. The mother actually encouraged her to drop riding in favor of cheerleading. I told her that in the first place there was no olympic medal for cheerleading and in the second place these are both EXTRA-curricular activities. Now to add insult to injury, I was driving on I-40 and saw a very large official road sign proclaiming the the town was the home of what's-her-face American Idol 2005. This sign wasn't small. It was HUGE and I'm sure it cost the taxpayers money. Hell, even people with stars on Hollywood Blvd have to pay for it themselves. And why don't we have big audacious signs proclaiming the home town of Jonas Salk or William Shockley or people who actually accomplish something intelligent?
The bottom line in this country is it's all about image and popularity. I'm reminded of an episode of the original Connections series where James Burke explains why the British blew a golden opportunity to dominate the new chemical industries because the Germans let people into universities on merit whereas in England you got accepted to a university based on your family background. Nowadays the tables have turned. Merit doesn't get you very far but if you're the star running back on some podunk high-school football team, you get a full scholarship to USC even though you can't even read your own letter of acceptance (that's a "Friday Night Lights" reference, btw). What this translates to is an inflation of the value of a college degree. A bachelor's degree doesn't carry as much weight as it used to when they're given away.
What does this tell us? If you believe in supply and demand, this tells us that there are MORE than enough top quality scientists being produced and that science education is not lagging in the least and that science knowledge is a commodity. This article is a bunch of hand-wringing over nothing.
If "The Right" wanted to shift public opinion to their side through the manipulation of the educational curriculum, they could simply mandate the teaching of basic economics (and perhaps some actual history that teaches more than just "white people oppressed everyone").
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Rather than using the word to describe the process for evaluating empirical knowledge, we need to redefine "science" to mean the process for watching TV, playing videogames, getting high, and meeting up at the shopping mall food court... then we will have the very creme of the crop here in the good ol' USA.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Intelligent Design is a symptom, not the cause.
Vandemar.org
So where does this idea come from that high school science is only good for a career in science?!
It teaches you to think, to handle numbers, to comprehend difficult texts, to have a method to what you're doing, to understand how things work, etc etc etc. It's important for everybody.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Use standardized tests as your criterion, and you will develop... students with a high ability to score well on standardized tests.
If you want the ability to reason scientifically, you will need to do something different.
Unfortunately, the ability to reason scientifically is closely correlated with the ability to reason, the ability to challenge authority, and the ability to insist that 2 and 2 make 4... whether or not that happen to be the official test answer.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I was raised in your stereotypical conservative, evangelical Christian home. I was homeschooled through middleschool. I watched Kent Hovind videos in youth group. I went to church camps. After high school, I went to a conservative Christian leadership camp that included lectures from Duane Gish.
I also graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics. (That's a lifetime 4.0 GPA.) I just finished the first year of my Master's applied physics program in semiconductor microelectronics, and am doing an internship at AMD. I don't think I'm a genius, but I'm good at this stuff, and am told so by my classmates and professors.
To accomplish all this, there was no shift away from my upbringing. I didn't have to learn new ways of thinking. There were no shackles of dogma to throw off. I didn't have to learn that Science Isn't The Bad Guy, because I was never taught that it was. None of the creationist stuff I was taught growing up affected my scientific reasoning skills--even the arguments I've since decided are complete drivel.
I agree that there's a veritable crap-ton of idiotic drivel being shoveled out by people arguing for creationism. That stuff is accepted by people who don't know better, and it's accepted because they don't have the time or skills to trace through the logic carefully and recognize the mistakes. But the existence of the drivel doesn't cause the lack of skill--it's the other way around!
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 :
If you dare to suggest that Linux is only for people willing to spend time learning an OS then you are an Elitist.
The same is true in schools. No kids left behind CANNOT work unless you are willing to lower the passing grade so people with IQ's in the double digits can pass.
Linux is a center of excellence. Windows is no user left behind.
But saying this is elitist, your an asshole for suggesting some people just aren't smart enough to graduate. In holland we had a system for this. It seperarted schools into theory and trade. Kids who didn't want/couldn't study theory could learn a trade instead. This went so well that trade schools were actually rated higher then theory schools. Higher Trade School was a lot thougher then Higher Administrative School. The same was true for mid level and lower level. Basically you could go from MTS to HAVO but not from MAVO to MTS.
But no, we had to make everyone the same and so tradeschools were cancelled. Dropout rates have never been higher as the kids who could get rid of their energy in practice now are forced to spend all their time in theory. Those kids that get their diploma find they haven't learned anything usefull and business can no longer get qualified personel.
But hey, no kid is left behind. Well except for the dropouts. And the kids who wanted to learn a trade. But who cares about them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
This is the sort of thing you get when conjectures such as "intelligent design" is pushed as science by people who don't even know what science is, and teachers who are bound up in their religion so much they have to give "intelligent design" a fair hearing in science class - when it's not even science.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The most egregious stoners I met in high school often turned out to be bi-polar.
The problem is that Americans have a culture that celebrates ignorance and vilifies intelligence of any kind. I make it a point to slap anyone so profoundly stupid and intolerant that they use the phrase "ivory tower" -- a situation which, fortunately, has yet to arise. Thank god/cthulhu/fsm that I live in Canada, where we at least pay lip service to book-learnin'.
Seriously though -- considr that the US has an illiterate president. What kind of message does that send? He's the LEADER of the nation. And guess what -- people follow where he leads. In fact, it's estimated that as many as 10% of Harvard graduates are functionally illiterate, which is about what you'd expect from a school whose entrance criteria are primarily based on wealth and the prestige of an applicant's family, rather than any actual intellectual merit.
I am a Canadian citizen, immigrated to Canada when I was 10.
Now, even thou the article is focusing on American education, I just thought I bring Canadian and Chinese education into the mix.
First 10 years of my life, I went to school in China. In kindergarden, addition and subtraction were briefly introduced to us. We were easily able to do one digit addition/subtraction, however some parents like mine pushed us to do more, so as a result, on the first day of school in grade 1, I was able to do two digit addition and subtraction already.
School in China was hard, since the starting of grade one I had to do homework constantly from after school (around 5pm) to 8, or 9 PM. On the weekends most kids were sent to private lessons for various kinds of things like piano, English (you dont start learning English in school until grade 5, but parents send grade 1 kids to English lessons so that they can have a head start), or just for core classes like Math or Chinese.
In elementary school, there are two exams, one is midterm and the other is final. These were basicly your report cards, everything you do in the year basicly prepares you for these tests. Much is dependant on the result of your final exam each grade. I remember my teacher saying "if you got below a 90 on the final exam, it would be the equivilant of failing." She wasn't exatrating either, middle school in China accepts students based on their final exam mark in grade 6. If you did not get a good mark on that exam, too bad, you will have to go to a crappy middle school. To people living in Canada or the US, they would probably say "so what, it's just middle school." It's much more than that, if you were in a bad middle school, high school wont even take a look at your application despite your mark. Universities will do the same to bad high schools. So it was made very clear to us when we were in grade 1, that if you were to do bad on the final exam in grade 6, your whole life is ruined.
Then I moved to Canada.
Everything changed. I was living in Vancouver at the time. (I had to take a 45 min bus to my school, because all the schools near my house were "over populated", but thats another issue)I walked in a Canadian classroom for the first time and found out these kids were doing two digit addition and subtraction, the same ones I knew how to do when I started elementary school in China. All of the sudden, I became a "genius". But soon I discovered that being a genius in a Canadian school isn't all that great. you see, in China your popularity depends a lot on your marks, just like in Canada and the US, but in an opposite way. If you had the best marks in the class, everyone will want to be your friend. If you were failing, you would be that "failure", or loner that everybody stays away from. In Canada however, I found out the hard way that if you were getting good marks for classes like Math, the chances are you will be pretty unpopular.
I had another thing to discover in Canada, when I went into high school I found myself hang around people who are "gifted". I found out that kids in Canada take a test in grade 3 and 6 to see if they have a high than averge IQ. They are put into the same class and were taught harder things than the normal kids.
Now, why did I write all that? It is to give you a bit of info before I present my opinion about why the quality of education here is not as good as it could be.
First, a lot of kids in Canada and the US have this weird ideology that if they arn't born smart, there is no way in the world for them to become smarter. I was considered a genius by kids in my class when I came to Canada, but they didn't say that because they knew about all the homework I did in grade 1 in China, they said it because they thought I was born smart since I was Asian or something. They refuse to work harder to achieve things because they believe that there is no point because they are not smart to start with.
On the other side, you had many of these gif
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?
I'm a middle-aged nerd from Texas with a Master of Science in Physics.
I substitute taught a couple of years in several local ISDs while writing my thesis.
Here's the scoop. Few folk with that majored, or minored in Natural Sciences, or Mathematics, or who have earned advanced degrees said disciplines, are interested in the low pay and benefits that go with teaching in public high schools in Texas. They are still less interested in jumping through the bureaucratic hoops of the Texas Education Agency (TEA), and other red tape gauchos that currently inundate the public school systems of Texas.
There are jobs that are very much less frustrating, and are an infinitely better deal on both personal, and professional levels than teaching in public high schools. With a major, minor, or advanced degree in math, and the physical sciences a person has put forth a great deal of effort, and spent much time on his/her degree. Persons that have earned such degrees have little tolerance for the intellectual laziness, and a slacker attitude. The bottom line is that 'teaching' is not an attractive career for such a person.
This being the case the persons that end up teaching the hard sciences, and mathematics in H.S. are not the brights candles on the tree, or are making, well some times, a valiant effort to teach a subject outside their mastery.
I can recall at least a half-dozen times that I went into a Jr. High math class and went through a cold turkey, non-rehearsed lecture on some aspect of intro. to algebra turned around to see students with looks of amazement on their faces. The reason for the looks was that that 'got' what I was lecturing on. Their regular teacher had gone over the material the day before to their utter confusion. In each case their teacher did not have even a reasonable math background, but had taken the job because of pay incentives for teaching math. They were regurgitating the material from the textbook. They didn't understand the material themselves.
This is why there is such problems with math and science education at the H.S. level in the U.S.
STB
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
Americans put sports first, and guess what? America produces some of the world's best atheletes, while having to recruit its scientists from countries where the intellectually-gifted weren't pummeled half death on a daily basis.
It's all about who you encourage and who you disparage. When take an illiterate coke-snorting fuck-up who has had everything in life handed to him on a silver platter, and make him the leader of the entire country, it sends a clear message that trying hard in school is a waste of time.
Now, let's pretend that you actually know something about science: what predictions does creationism make? Oh, that's right, none. None at all. Unless you count the predictions that the world will end soon, which keeps not happening. In fact, nearly every predictiont that creationists and ID-advocates make FAILS to realize. That makes it an interesting philosophical idea at best, or a huge load of bullshit at worst.
But prove me wrong: make a prediction about the distribution of the cosmic background radiation using the bible, and have the WMAP satellite test it. Then we'll compare your predictions with the big-bang+inflation theory predictions, and see who actually knows something about science.
Face it -- whether or not god exists, every single piece of measurable evidence implies that the universe proceeds in a manner that does not require godly intervention. I would ultimately say that such a universe is far more impressive than the broken crap-shack universe that you obviously believe in, one that breaks down constantly and requires continual divine intervention. If the universe needed constant tinkering, wouldn't that make god an enormous fuck-up? Why couldn't he get it right the first time?
I recommend this book, for your "actual history" fix.
Quite humorous. Let us examine perhaps the first historical assertion made by Mr. Chomsky: "The fall of Granada in 1492, ending eight centuries of Moorish sovereignty, allowed the Spanish Inquisition to extend its barbaric sway."
What Mr. Chomsky forgets to mention is that the Moors were Muslim soldiers who had conquered and ruled most of Spain by force (link: "In 711 AD, the Moors invaded Visigoth Christian Spain. Under their leader, a Berber general named Tariq ibn-Ziyad, they brought most of Spain under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign."). Their defeat ("loss of sovereignty") was a victory for the forces of anti-colonialism, and if Mr. Chomsky was truly anti-colonial instead of anti-Western, he would have hailed the reconquest of Grenada with exuberance.
Thanks the the American public "education" "system," the typical, illiterate American would be completely unaware of Mr. Chomsky's lies of omission or his peculiar framing of the situation, and due to their gullibility would accept his dubious statements at face value. On the other hand, had Americans been taught actual history (instead of the politically motivated drivel exemplified by Mr. Chomsky's work), as well as some critical thinking skills, as I orignially suggested, they would have been capable of thinking for themselves and most would have rejected Mr. Chomsky's peculiar interpretation of the events. Of course, as things stand at the moment, the typical, illiterate American cannot locate Europe on a map, let alone Spain; to expect the typical American to have any knowledge of the history of Spain, or of the Islamic Conquests of every civilization except for China (though they did try during the Tang dynasty) and some parts of Northern Europe would extremely unreasonable.
P.S. The rest of the "book" you linked to is fully of such historical distoritions, lies by omission, pseudo-philosophy, peculiar unsubstantiated assertions, and name dropping, all without any semblance of historical context whatsoever. I truly hope you did not "learn" "history" from it.
P.P.S. Ever hears of Battle of Tours, arguably the most important event in history? No? I wonder why. What about the Siege of Vienna. Still no? I really wonder why...
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
This means I'll be still making good money when I'm 50 because there won't be any "fresh blood" to replace me with. Let 'em wash the dishes and dream about Hollywood and hip-hop.
I think it is a step towards the right direction. It is great to see different people with different culture living in the same society. I love how many people who were born in Canada, despite their racial backgrounds, can come out and say "I am proud that we have people all around the world living here". From the racial aspect, Canada most definitly ahead of the world.
Despite the sucess, I dont think we as Canadians should elude ourselves the problems that are present in a multicultural society. There are often clashes between groups of people (Natives, people of Quebec, etc), but with time and good policies, Canada will be a great example to the world about how different people can live together.
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.
By and large, I agree with the previous poster. But on one point, I cannot:
"I view bad teachers as another challenge to be overcome; a truly good student will persevere no matter the quality of the teacher."
This is simply not true. Some kids will persevere, many will not.
There have been psychological studies that have used children previously identified through intelligence testing and catagorized them by their exceptional strengths: creative, analytical, etc. In the study I read, the groups of students were placed into classrooms with a teacher that taught the cirriculum with a particular emphasis on one perspective: creative, analytical, etc.
The kids whose exceptional strength matched the one emphasized by the teacher did best.
It is unfortunate that the education system in the USA emphasizes the analytical and memorization talents. A lot of kids' talents are never recognized or encouraged. Many subsequently come to feel that they are failures because they don't excel in sports or academics.
Life is like an egg better scrambled than fried. -- Ken Sawatari