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How Do You Fix Education?
TaeKwonDood writes "Carl Wieman is the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Physics but what he cares most about is fixing science education. The real issue is, can someone who went through 20 years of science education as a student, lived his life in academia since then and even got a Nobel prize get a fair shake from bureaucrats who like education the way it is — flawed and therefore always needing more money?"
Get the parents more involved. For kids, school should be akin to their 9-5 job. In order to excel they need to put the time in at home, and the only people that can help instill that discipline are the parents.
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How can education be fixed when their is a war on critical thinking? Its better for those in power to rule by sound bites, innuendos, and accusations that appear credible enough to be believed.
Becuase to fix education is to admit that some kids are either smarter or work harder than others. Some are going to be left behind, and others will go on and learn to their full potential, but law makers can't tell that to parents. My mother has taught for about 30 years, and in her words, the problem is almost never the students, it's the parents.
A US$3,000.00 per student/per year federal voucher will fix education very quickly.
ever truly fix education?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
"from bureaucrats who like education the way it is ".. really? do they? I have yet to meet one that does. However there seems to be a lot of argueing going on about what paperwork needs to be filed to get it changed, how that will documented, judged and administrated. Seriously one of the first things that needs to be done is to pay teachers a living wage so we can attract better talent to change the way the teaching is done. Don't get me wrong there are some GREAT teachers out there, who god bless them manage to hang in there despite everything. But take a look at the budget someday and ask yourself if schools are really getting a fair shake. You can change anything you want but unless teachers can be paid competative wages with other avenues they could take their talents to are our kids getting the best?
I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
Look it up if you have to. Failing that, how about some sort of cost-benefit analysis of the time spent in yr average public school (hint: most ppl I know agree that over 2/3 of school time is wasted.)
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Unfortunately, the only real answer is home schooling and DIY.
I have real chemistry sets, physics toys, bio lab instructables, legos for prototype construction, Linux for software devel, PIC set for embedded work, and much more.
SciAm back in the day had a build-yourself bubble chamber and linear accelerator, and it worked. Boys Life, the boy scouting magazine, back in the day had instructions how to build your own fireworks including colors and shaping of charge.
When it comes down to it, we have gotten afraid to do anything because of "DANGER". That includes teaching. Anyways, what real criterion are required to really teach someone? If we look at the ancient Greeks, it was the motivation of the learner and not of a forced teaching.
John Taylor Gatto has a book about this very topic. Go look it up on Google.
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get a fair shake from bureaucrats who like education the way it is -- flawed and therefore always needing more money?
I know I'll be in the minority here on slashdot for saying this, but society isn't divided into us (virtuous, intelligent, benevolent, and wise) and them (stupid, malicious, dishonest, and greedy). I think there are very few bureaucrats twirling their moustaches and gleefully chortling over the failures of the modern educational system. One of the symptoms of the failure of education is lack of critical thinking and objective reasoning, and one of the hallmarks of that is the kneejerk reaction that every bureaucrat is by nature evil and dishonest.
The bureaucrats like things the way they are because it leaves things in a crisis mode that they benefit from. The solution is to break apart the government's de facto monopoly on education K-12 so that there is a competitive marketplace for education.
Academic surveys have shown time and again that the majority of the people who are drawn to education are the bottom of the barrel of college students. Most of them are education majors, and they consistently tend to score in the bottom 5 of all majors with SAT and GPA scores from their high schools. If you want to fix that, and get higher quality educators, you are going to have to allow the market to create the incentives needed to make people of that level of intellect and talent desired to go into this profession.
The fucking article is about college level education.
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Very nicely constructed post to show how no one reads the articles.
Anybody who says "more funding" without saying what it would be spent on is part of the problem.
Want to fix education? Budget administration and recreation separately from the educational costs. Have the Education budget pay for teachers, facilities and supplies. Have the administration budget pay for principals, school boards, and secretaries. Have the recreation budget pay for athletics. Then people will know where the money is going.
Hopefully that leads to more centralization. Localities don't need control. Curriculum doesn't need to be micromanaged. Just because busybody parents want to have a huge say doesn't mean they should have it. Making those decisions thousands of times instead of 50 times, or even once is massively, massively wasteful.
Lastly, stop building new schools to replace perfectly functional old buildings. Yes, procuring federal funding for a new school building will win you votes in a US House election, but it's still stupid. The building doesn't teach your child anything. Unless it's a health hazard, suck it up and live with your 25 year old building. Do a little remodeling during the summer months.
1:Smaller class sizes!
2:Less memorization, more critical thinking and analysis.
3:Less passive listening and watching, more discussion and experiment (think Socarates).
None of these need tons of computers or facilities or whatever. What they do need are more teachers, and less burnout.
Learning, of any kind, needs to be a life long passion or it won't be successful. That won't happen if kids are forced to learn stuff when they don't want to. Forcing kids to learn to read too early and you teach them that reading is a drag. My one son was self motivated to learn to read at age 5 and the other at age 9. Both are now avid readers, reading far more than the average school kid.
Science is all about hypothesizing and critical thinking: something that is severely lacking in society in general and is definitely missing in schools. Instead the kids are encouraged to just "get with the program", be politically correct and make the least work for the teachers.
My kids love to experiment with stuff. Experiments often don't work which triggers thinking and learning. School "science" experiments on the other hand are canned activities which are generally guaranteed to work with no thinking required. Where's the science in that?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I had the privilege of taking a quantum mechanics course from Carl Weiman 2 years ago while he was teaching at the University of Colorado. It was by far the best college course I've taken, he had the perfect mix of well versed lecturing with "clicker" quizzes throughout the class, homework that was appropriate for the material, and tests which rewarded understanding of the material and not memorization.
The best part really was that by the end of the course, he gave his lecture on Bose Einstein Condensate which he won the Nobel prize for, and all the students could understand what he was talking about from learning things throughout the semester, it was incredibly rewarding.
Compare that to my next physics courses which were basically applied calculus, except they left out the important part of what the **** any of it meant and how it applied to... anything really. His course overshadowed the rest of my physics courses and in the end, because of the huge disparity in teaching styles, made the rest of my studies quite grating and rather uninteresting.
one of the hallmarks of that is the kneejerk reaction that every bureaucrat is by nature evil and dishonest.
I had a conversation with an insurance lobbyist on a flight to Boston a couple years ago. She has a lot of dealings with state and federal senators and congresscritters, so I asked her what were the things she discovered in her interactions with them that came as a surprise. Three of them were:
The first one is relevant here, but the last one has been on my mind since then. Slashpac, anyone?
I think the biggest thing that can be done to "fix" education would be to make it the primary focus of schools! I'm all for extra curricular activities, but it seems that in many places in the US, those are treated as far, far, more important that actual learning. Sports is a great example of how the focus in schools has been taken off of education.
Another thing would be to stop trying to make everyone equal, and allow faster students to excel instead of teaching to the lowest common denominator.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
It's that kids don't care. The vast majority of kids don't really care about science, it's neither fun nor interesting to them.
And to make it worse, even if they're interested in science, once they realize that it involves that oh-so-dreaded subject, MATH, then you're sure to run off most of the rest.
In fact, one of the largest criticisms of math courses (which is, in some respects, quite true) is that the majority of people who learn it will never use 99% of what they learn in there.
Hmm... maybe they should teach math and science together. Get the kids excited about a thing, then teach them the math behind it. Hmmm....
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
to do Physics right, you need calculus. Which most kids don't get until senior year in high school if at all. That's why I thought it came last. I suppose you could do it out of order for different levels of students(does this still exist?).
There is this silly competition mentality in higher ed--competing for being bigger and badder. Everything is becoming so "corporate" in culture.
There is an unhealthy arena of competition for grants and research funding that puts the focus on the research track instead of education. The competition manifests itself by the universities pushing a "brand name" and trying to become larger.
In the end, the university becomes an entity who doesn't care about the student but rather its reputation and rankings in magazines.
This is kind of a problem that stems from the new breed of philanthropy that really isn't philanthropy--it's advertising and marketing for the donors. The development departments are getting suckered into making these silly deals with donors (especially corporate donors) that places the focus on promotional consideration for the donor rather than the spirit of the cause.
Small schools with low ratios from teacher to student are probably the best way to go to maximize your exposure in the apprentice model.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I went to public schools with kids who had marginal skills at reading and math. Rather than passing them along and bogging down the education of kids doing well, don't pass them until they're actually meeting standards. Note, I am NOT talking about burning time on standardized testing. I'm talking about teachers being given more leverage to hold slow kids back. I think this is a big motivator for a kid to do better (as well as a confidence builder the second time around). This is based on my anecdotal knowledge, not science so I could be very wrong here.
If kids can't cut it after say 2 or 3 grades being held back, give them some some early out like a GED program say after the 10th grade. It's sad to see high school kids who can barely read because our education system isn't strict enough about standards.
I think by enforcing performance for passing, you'll also be able to increase the level of work being done at higher grades.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
>Do things right at school, and perhaps there won't be any need to get the parents involved.
This simply is not possible.
I used to be a huge proponent of "teacher accountability" until I shared a 7 hour plane ride with a teacher friend of mine.
She explained the obvious to me.
All students require motivation to learn. Most students are not self-motivated. Teachers lack the authority to instill motivation in their students through punitive means, and there are very few inspirational teachers. Thus for most students, their primary motivator is their parents.
You can have the most intelligent teacher on the planet combined with the most patient, compassionate teacher on the planet - Albert Einstein crossed with Mother Theresa - and it won't matter a whit if the student is not motivated to learn.
Some very few students are self-motivated. But by and large students require external motivation, and the only people with the authority to do that are parents. The days of teachers beating students into their studies are long gone. But not so for Mom and Dad.
The single-most important thing to "Fix Education" is to increase parental involvement and stop the mentality that school is a place where you "send" your kids "to be educated". Too many people have come to view the educational system as a "service" - a place where you pay your taxes and then send your kids to be educated, with the whole burden of the process on the system. In fact, the system is merely the water - they can't force the kids to drink it. Only Mom and Dad have that power.
Unless you are extremely lucky and find the rare self-motivated student you simply cannot remove parents from a successful edcuation.
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I've found that there's a fundamental conflict in place. The improve something you generally need some way to measure the improvement. Without measurement, either slack and/or bad processes will creep into the picture.
However, the easier it is to objectively measure a skill, the more likely that skill is to be offshored or automated. Repetitious and well-documented (commodity) skills drift away from the US work-force to machines or 3rd-world labor.
If we use subjective approaches in order to stay ahead of the automation/offshore curve, then bias sneaks in, resulting in inconsistencies and political squabbles.
These two contradictory forces push and pull against each other: measurement against flexibility. I don't think there's any easy fix. Staying on the cutting edge requires risk and experimentation. Education is no different. Do we want measurable cookie-cutter skills that are likely to become obsolete, adaptability that is slippery to measure and manage, or something in-between?
Table-ized A.I.
How about stop passing failing students? When was the last time you heard of a kid being held back to repeat a grade?
The Initiative is already being rolled out. I'm at one of the first-round target schools in a department that won CWSEI funding, and have been involved in several of the curriculum-revision committees.
...kinda lame so far, but if you've got good ideas that fit within our ridiculous budget, I promise I'll try 'em out!
CWSEI is focused on undergraduate science education, both for science students and non-science students. The general plans is:
1. Articulate what we want students to learn
2. Figure out what they're actually learning
3. Fix things
4. Share everything that works with other department/schools
Step 1 has been pretty easy for the courses I've been involved with revising, although it can get pretty funny to see different schools of thought battling it out over what matters most (facts? ability to apply in novel situations? general "science" mindset? problem-solving?)
Step 2 is a bit of a nightmare, but is necessary to figure out if you're actually being effective or not (Step 2 & 3 are iterative until satisfactory, then progress to Step 4). How do you effectively test comprehension vs test taking-ability vs fact retention? It's a bit easier to fix the "Did we teach them or did they already know?" by doing before-and-after tests, but that still doesn't eliminate the keeners going out and self-teaching (no bad prof has ever defeated my desire to learn!)
Step 3 is also a challenge -- in big classes (Natural Disasters can have up to 400 students) it's almost impossible to have one-on-one interactions, they're undergrads so presumably parental-involvement isn't key for learning, the TA-hours to do good grading of neat projects is prohibitive, etc. This is where tech solutions come in: if everyone takes immediate multiple-choice quizzes throughout via clickers, or has to talk with their neighbours to decide on an answer, then we've got them interacting/thinking/talking inside class hours.
For Step 4, what works? U Colorado's physics department was where Carl started this idea, so they've got some pretty cool toys that help students practice concepts they heard in lecture even outside of lab sections. As for my department, no solutions yet...
Let the poor get even poorer education, let the poorest be locked out of education entirely, let the rich monopolize the best resources, let the wealth gap grow even more obscenely.
Sorry, "the free market", which never really existed in the first place, is not a panacea for social ills, and in the case of services labelled "public necessity" will exacerbate them.
For a real world example of what privatization of schools will do, see: the current US broadband market.
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From the article:
This assumes that "complex problem solving skills" are something that can be effectively "taught". My anecdotal experience is that by the time students arrive at university, their possession (or lack) of "complex problem solving skills" is already largely fixed, and isn't likely to change significantly.
Hopefully we can keep this from devolving into a flame war, but if you're interested do search for John Stossel's "Stupid in America". Private schools in the heart of Chicago catering to poor black students spend about a third per student compared to private schools and produce standardized test scores that compare favorably with white suburban schools. Being cheap and producing results, even poor families are willing to sacrifice that second tv and fast food meals to send their kids there. Charity will also go a lot further and be better funded with the knowledge that government isn't taking care of it. Gates by himself is already giving nearly enough to k-12 to provide free education at 1/3 current costs to every family below the poverty line, and that's just one guy.
And if you think the telecom industry is an example of the free market, I can understand your confusion. Telecom more closely resembles mercantilism than capitalism.
ITT wee hav da bess sisstem n da unyvers, I do ok.
Ave Molech Setting
Clearly the problem is under-funding and too little involvement of the federal government in schools, leading to under-performing students.
We need to create a full cabinet-level Department of Education, give it control of school curriculum, and load it up with money to fund endless studies of how to improve American education.
Oh, wait...
Rewards work also, no doubt.
But there is only one thing that kept me in line academically as a kid, and that was fear of my father's foot in my ass.
See for me, I could blow off rewards. Oh yes, it would be nice to get $5 for A's on my report card, but I don't really /need/ the $5 for anything. Oh it might be nice to watch a movie, but I could just as easily watch it on the internet. Leaving class might be nice, but where would I go? The only consistent motivator for me was FEAR of PUNISHMENT.
But that is merely a personal anecdote. I readily admit that motivation can be both positive and negative. But either way, I still beleive the most motivating influence on students is usually their parents. In my experience, teachers are usually either non-empowered or un-inspired to motivate.
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There's the big misconception. Understanding art, literature, design, history, communications and yes interpretive dance IS in itself a core skill set. Unless you rigorously train all aspects of your mind, you will be deficient. Science and engineering start with ideas...hell the word Eureka was coined from a scientific discovery...ideas start in the creative center of your brain.
You cheat yourself and disrespect science when you treat the liberal arts as nothing more than a hobby.
Some of the most exciting science and math discoveries were made because people had trained themselves to think outside the box. That's what studying the liberal arts does for you.
Too late? Most people do not really form their identities until their mid-20s. University is the PERFECT time to hone social skills (or learn the basics...either way).
Bonus: Understanding liberal arts will help you get laid. That alone should be enough for the /. crowd to line up for art appreciation classes.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Well, the best part of free markets is the ability to choose your school out of at least two or three. While we don't necessarily need free markets or vouchers, the good part that is common with those approaches is the availability of more than one school choice, versus a single "monopoly" school choice that is hard to change without moving to a new school district.
/., whenever there is only a single choice, as in Comcast for cable... ("it's the worst cable company ever!"), or one Internet provider being available, you get terrible service, product, and value. But there is no alternative! So service stays miserable, until an alternate choice appears... then all the choices improve! It's a miracle of having independent choices.
As we all know on
The main thing is to allow parents a choice between at least two schools for their children. They can even all be public schools.
MIT had a study which examined the quality of public education when parent's had more or less choice of the school that their children went to. This was determined by measuring what a parent needed to do to change schools (moving, changing residence, alternate schooling, etc.) They found that school quality correlated very closely to the ability of the parents to switch schools. This was for *all* schools with parental choice and was true despite the poverty or affluence of the school districts.
What it shows is that when schools have to compete with each other for students, all the competing schools improve.
As such at college level there needs to be a way to separate the cream of the crop from the rest of the class.
The simple fact is, we are not created equal nor do we apply ourselves equally regardless of our ability.
Yet education is beset with claims of racism should one group do poorly compared to another regardless of the subject. As such schools have to dumb it down because if they did separate someone would take offense, even if they were not directly affected. Too many people are of the belief that they have the right to not be offended and that means not being called sub par compared to their fellows.
So how do you fix it? Take politics out of education. Take favoritism other than by demonstrated ability out of college. This might mean having two types of degrees for the same course. You could award a minor bonus to gpa for taking and succeeding at the harder level or grant more hours or even shorten the length of the classes.
One last area, reduce the effect of tenure even it means getting rid of it. It allows some real idiots to persist simply because they "have done their time". Professors who pontificate about politics instead of the subject at hand, provided they even bother to show for the course.
Still to fix college your going to have to fix public schools too.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Think I'm kidding? My Mom taught in public schools for 24 years, my Dad was a Professor for 30. When I graduated High School (1974) every teacher had a degree in what they taught and a minor in "Education". The NEA lobby got every state to require an "Education" degree to be allowed to teach. Now we have big "Education" Departments at Universities turning out people that might (and I do mean might) know how to teach but the students are lucky if the teacher has a minor in what they teach. See the problem? It applies to every subject, not just the Sciences.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Let the poor get even poorer education, let the poorest be locked out of education entirely, let the rich monopolize the best resources, let the wealth gap grow even more obscenely.
That's an extremely narrow-minded assumption of what competition in education would do. The government currently has a monopoly on education; how is this different than a corporation having a monopoly? Because the government can be "supervised" by "the public"? Puh-lease.
I suggest you read Chapter 10 of Healing Our World .
Competition would breed various forms of education, creating niches where there currently are none. (If the government is giving away education--even if it's crappy--there's no incentive for profit-based solutions.) In the absence of government-provided education, free alternative methods such as television-based, commercial-financed education would be available to anyone with a TV. Who knows what else a free market in education would produce; information is increasingly getting cheaper due to the advances in technology and the growth of the Internet further driving down the costs of potential alternative education services and methods.
The worst thing about government-provided education is its one-size-fits-all approach. It's a pity that the government mandates what can be taught and how it can be taught; I and many others I know barely graduated because government schooling simply wasn't the best method for us.
Truckin like the Doo-Dah man...
How to fix education in 4 easy steps
1. Make going to school non-compulsory
Kids that don't want to be in school, who have parents that don't care if they are in school, do not need to go to school. They are nothing but a distraction for the kids who want to learn. Any teacher will tell you one disruptive student will ruin the class for everyone. Public schools in the U.S. force kids who have no discipline go to school, then they are surprised when they don't listen to the teachers. The kids know the teachers can nothing to discipline them, the kids know their parents will do nothing to discipline them. I fail to see the disincentive to goof off in class here, and so do the kids, so they will goof off. Schools do not need these children and in public schools, not only do they have to go, but the public schools want them to go so that make that ever important buck from the federal and state government, education be damned. I personally know more than one teacher who cannot kick a particular kid out of their class because the school administrators tell them they can't.
2. Privatize
There is a ratio of teachers to administrators in all schools, public or private. An administrator would be like a vice principal, guidance councilor, text book researcher, sensitivity director. In a private school, the ratio is about 1:7 in public schools it's almost 1:1. Meaning for every teacher there is an administrator. And every time someone says "there's something wrong with our schools" they just tac on more administrators in a blind attempt to "fix" the problem. Administrators fix nothing, ever. Which leads me to..
3. Do away with tenure and teachers unions
The idea that teachers unions somehow are for kids has got to be the biggest lie I've ever heard. Teachers unions are for, teachers. Some people didn't know this, but if you've worked in the LAUSD for more than 3 years you cannot be fired for anything short of molesting a child, it's called tenure. Tenure is for, teachers. There is no way you can argue that keeping poor teachers (tenure) or keeping teachers that have broken the rules (teachers unions) somehow helps the kids. With these two "protective" organization are in place it takes an act of god to get rid of poor teachers. There are no teacher's unions in private schools and the level of education you get in a private school by far exceeds that in a public school. Without tenure, without teacher's unions. So at the very least it's proof that excellence does not require tenure or unions. And there is a strong argument that they do more harm than good.
4. Allow parents to take their kids out of failing schools.
I think it's a travesty that the government is going to force parents to place kids into school that they know are going to be a bad influence on the child. Parents should be able to send their child to whatever school that is reasonably in their area. It's so bad that people actually buy houses in order to get their kids sent to a particular school, and I guess for those who can't afford to move or afford a private school... to bad? That's just wrong. If we are going to be forced to pay for schools we should at least be able to select which one we're going to send our kids too, or at least let us get our money back so we can send them to a private school. The only obstacle that stops this 'voucher' system is the teachers unions. I would love to hear how the lack of a voucher system helps kids, because I'm pretty sure it only helps teachers at failing schools.
I have no belief that any of these things will change, teachers unions are far to powerful. It a huge union with almost limitless money, but it's a self perpetuating bureaucracy with the honest belief that teachers should be paid more than any other profession in the world. More than doctors, lawyers etc.. no matter how much anyone else thinks teachers deserve.
The usage of the word education has evolved to mean a mechanical process whereby an institution can add knowledge and wisdom to an individual, like QuickLube changing your oil.
Teachers are taught that they can "motivate" students, that is, make them want something the institution wants them to want.
It is all part of the scientific pretensions of the academic "Education departments".
Let us replace this false belief in institutional "education" with the original concept of "learning".
It used to be that a person with knowledge and wisdom was called "learned".
Teachers should be thought of as helpers who assist those who want to learn, rather that god like knowledge creators who apply some "educational" algorithm.
Teachers should stop trying to teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig. Instead, they should assist those with the desire and ability to learn.
Perhaps the best example of this is mathematics. Many (perhaps most) people lack the ability to do mathematics beyond what can be done by a calculator. Instead of egalitarian, futile attempts to turn these people into Eulers, teachers should focus on those with actual math ability. Civilization only needs a few people with the ability to do mathematics, the rest are incapable of it.
The wealth gap in the US is small enough that the richest quintile only outspend the poorest quintile by about 2.1 to 1. That's not really an obscene difference. Link.
"The days of teachers beating students into their studies are long gone. But not so for Mom and Dad."
Try taking a paddle to Junior in some states... it's an instant trip to jail for Dad, and a legal nightmare with "children's advocate groups" and the state's department of social services bringing down lawyers on the parents. You don't even need real proof to arrest a parent for abuse anymore, just an accusation. It's getting to the point that corporal punishment of any kind, no matter how appropriate, is being banned "for the children".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"Meanwhile, we can still do a better job of teaching science (mostly in making kids interested in science). Perhaps the only way to get the parents involved is to teach this generation that science isn't jsut a waste of time, so that they encourage thier kids in turn."
While I'm all for improving science and math education, I have a problem with a push to get more kids on a math and science track by fiat. I've come to the opinion that in any population, only X number of kids are going to be interested in those fields. People act as if we just improved the classes, science and math interest would suddenly take off among kids, and especially among minorities and girls. And I just don't think that's true. I think kids that are are naturally interested pretty much know it, even if their curriculum isn't first class. I just don't think that if we put a Jaime Escalante in every class, suddenly everyone would be interested in calculus. I think that's a fantasy, a pipe dream. Some kids are interested in math and science as a career, and some kids aren't... most kids, actually. I think we could get some more involved, but not the numbers that education reformers claim.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"There's the big misconception. Understanding art, literature, design, history, communications and yes interpretive dance IS in itself a core skill set."
More than that, even if you're a mathematician/scientist/engineer, if you don't have a strong, broad understanding of literature, history, and philosophy, I don't see how you can call yourself educated.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
> ..you're a failure if you don't go to college.
College isn't the only place to learn, probably not even be the best place. But expecting to survive in the Information Age with a junior high education (as the idiot I was aiming the flamethrower at was claiming) is just daft.
> The world needs ditch diggers too... and stockboys, coffee makers, and retail clerks.
It does today... but for how much longer? A person coming of age in the next few years will probably live to see many of those positions obsoleted. Not even many actual ditchdiggers today, lots of backhoe operators but not a lot of guys with shovels. Tomorrow it will be one guy supervising a bunch of semi intelligent automated equipment. That one guy will be the one holding the blueprints and making the big picture decisions the machines won't be quite smart enough to be trusted with. Bob the Builder in live action.. and with that nightmare thought I'll stop.
Democrat delenda est
"In the 1960s, we used to have parades that celebrated astronauts. Let me say this again - we had PARADES... for... ROCKET SCIENTISTS... To become one was something that was considered the height of a child's aspirations. No wonder we were sending people to the moon with a pocket calculator and a roll of duct tape."
We never had parades for "rocket scientists".
We had parades for astronauts, people that "rocket scientists" claimed weren't even neccessary for the space program. Werner Von Braun and his team initially wanted an unmanned program, and when we decided to send men up, the rocket scientists didn't want to give them any control at all... they wanted all operations to be done remotely from the ground. They viewed the men in the capsules as less than worthless.
The public saw it differently. The astronauts were really war heroes... Cold War heroes. So quit pretending there was ever a time when scientists were envied and lauded above all others. From the 30's onward, scientists were portrayed as Mad scientists more often than not. This era of respect for science you paint never existed. People have always been awed by scientific achievements, but were deeply suspicious of scientists themselves.
This Utopian era of love for scientists you describe never existed. America has always had a love/hate relationship with science.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
But also sorta wrong. Such people exist - Myra Hindley was a notorious example. The James Bulger case shows it needn't only be adults. However, the total number of such people probably averages out to one in a hundred million. In comparison, current estimates place the number of domestic sexual child abuse cases at one in every thousand. On the whole, the former - whilst it exists - simply isn't worth putting much time and effort into. Maybe some, but look at the relative payoff. For the same effort, you will prevent and/or solve a lot more actual crime dealing with the latter. Maybe not a hundred thousand times a much, but even if it was ten times as much, that would be an infinitely better use of resources.
According to the UN, slavery in America is still a major plague, and with American attitudes of treating the victims far worse than the abusers, this isn't a problem that's going to go away. Reports that, in some States, police collude with organized crime gangs to facilitate such an evil trade do not bode well. Even if the reports exaggerate, America has had that problem before. That's the sole reason the sole-called "Untouchables" were considered exceptional. Depressing, isn't it, when you have to celebrate when police are doing their job rather than polluting society?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The grandparent wrote:
To which you replied:
The grandparent wasn't "sorta right," he was right, and you said as much in the rest of the paragraph. The whole point of saying "to a first approximation" is when you want to address the 99.999999% of the cases and neglect the 0.000001% that are exceptions. To a very good first approximation, kidnapping child molesters do not exist. If you went around introducing yourself to random people at breakneck speed, say one person every three seconds, ten hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for the rest of your life you still probably would never meet one.
To a first approximation they do not exist.
--MarkusQ
Erm, Nokia ring a bell? (pun intended)
This whole "engaging the kids" meme avoids the fact that there is only one acceptable outcome--study, learn, don't take the easy way out, etc. We are trying to SELL them on the idea, not involve them in the process of decision-making. That's inherently dishonest, because we're only pretending to give their preferences (which consist of sleeping, video games, and manga) equal weight in deciding what their priorities should be.
Basically I think we're too nice to our kids. I'm not saying we should beat them (much), but I remember a conversation I had with a doctor I worked with (parents were Chinese) whose siblings also all had professional degrees. On a basic level, the kids all had the feeling that if they didn't do well in school their parents wouldn't love them anymore. It was never stated, but the feeling was there. Could I do that? No. But that inability translates into, if not academic mediocrity, then definitely a mentality that makes excellence a hypothetical option for my kids. They do well enough to get by, but there is no drive. I basically feel that I've let them down by being too nice.
to be one of the central points of his argument.
Excuse me while I actually discuss a topic related to the article it self, yes shame on me.
He essentially claims that students, based on cognitive research , fail to gain "expert" status over material and the ability to self analyze one's thought process concerning a matter of average complexity.
I learned this first hand when i was in the second grade trying to get a hold on division and multiplication. It turns out that study and practice makes you better.
This principle applies to college courses as well. The preview for my engineering undergrad stressed that practice and thoughtful study was the key to success. 2 hours devoted for every hour in class was the rule of thumb.
Now, maybe this is simply because I attend a Tier 1 university (I can say with certainty, from experience, that my friends at lesser schools rarely even buy their textbooks or bother to study while passing) but studying is where you develop this "expert" status.
The only part of this article that has any bearing on the university as I see it is that professors have increasingly demanding positions as the grant getters. The increasing demands on the professors to take part in time consuming research can certainly degrade the quality of teaching to a degree. How far this goes is mostly dependent on the professor himself and is hard to gauge.
Reforming junior high and grade school is a whole different beast. I couldnt imagine even trying to go into the horror that the system is.
The problem with the US broadband market is that competition isn't free enough - especially because you seem to have pathetic DSL offerings, due to poor legislation on copper access.
Here in Sweden (although we still have access problems due to the state-owned Telia still dominating copper access) we have seen much healthier DSL competition, due to freer competition in copper-access to homes.
This in turn helps keep cable and fiber offerings honest. In the last few years, the addition of fast 3G connections has also intensified the competition.
Interestingly, Sweden also has a rather innovative system for increasing competition and choice in education. However, it is important not to overestimate the gains that can be had from more choice in education. Indeed - people seriously overestimate the effectiveness of virtually all possible educational reforms in rich countries. But that's a topic for another day.
Imagine if the government created a 'food administration' to ensure that the people in a city had adequate food to eat, and that this organization centrally controlled the distribution of food into the city. This would turn all supermarkets and restaurants into points of service for them. The result would be horrendous. Restaurants would start serving the same menus, and the quality would lower to the 'minimal acceptable standard'. So, why do we try to do the same thing for schools and expect that it will work? Why is it that parents have to move to a new house to send their kids to a good school? Why is it that parents have so little say about how the school operates? Perhaps this explains why so many parents aren't as involved - because their involvement doesn't matter? (From personal experience, my mother, who was a school teacher at a different school, was completely unable to change things at my brother's school, despite a very determined effort.) If the government sent someone to your house M-F, and you were expected to hand over your TV for 7 hours so that they could mess around with it, would you be as accepting of the situation? Aren't our children more valuable than our TVs?
In my town, they fixed things up a little (much after I left, and long after I was a paper boy). The paper boy/girl still delivers the papers, but they don't collect the money anymore. It's really too much to expect a 12 year old kid to go around collecting money from people. It works out fine when the people are home, and when they pay. However, when the people just aren't at home at any reasonable hours, and the the kid has to become a bill collector, it can get to be a pretty bad job. Especially when the kid's pay comes out of a chunk of that money.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Where I grew up, the paper truck dropped off the stack and the carrier was to wrap and tie or bag the paper for delivery. I usually helped my friend who did deliver and he paid me and there was no driving, it was biked across the neighborhood and that was your route. No more than 30 homes.
Now forward that about 30 years, I happen to work with some pretty successful and wealthy people that came from nothing and got their start on a responsible paper route.
I've always said that pressure creates diamonds and if I read your response correctly, you are suggesting that pressure shouldn't even be applied. You never know what people are made of until you ask them to do something.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Education is based in a Victorian era copy of a flawed greco-roman model. Easy to say but what does that mean?
Our education models are not about learning, but creating students with a homogeneous comparative experience. If you really want them to learn you simply provide them with resources and incentives.
That's it.
A good analysis is from this former NY teacher, John Taylor Gatto. He put his book online. It's a good read to find out how *DEEP* these hierarchical ideas go. Underground History of American Education.
There was a recent TED presentation I remember where the speaker stated flatly that higher education was specifically tuned at making academic administrators, but perhaps not much good at other things.
Having just achieved my bachelors and even considering a master's (not in science granted but) I find the education wasn't so much about the knowledge but also about the opportunity to interact with the knowledgeable. What they have given is of dubious value at best but what you tease from them with your own questions is invaluable. How they went about becoming a "professional" was of interest as well. Using your time in any program as a launching point for what you want to do seems to me the true way to use this education system.
As to what should replace it. You need to decide on the principles of what you want to achieve. The rest will flow.
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me