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China Dominates In NSA-Backed Coding Contest
The Narrative Fallacy writes "With about 4,200 people participating in a US National Security Agency-supported international competition on everything from writing algorithms to designing components, 20 of the 70 finalists were from China, 10 from Russia, and 2 from the US. China's showing in the finals was helped by its large number of entrants, 894. India followed at 705, but none of its programmers was a finalist. Russia had 380 participants; the United States, 234; Poland, 214; Egypt, 145; and Ukraine, 128. Participants in the TopCoder Open was open to anyone, from student to professional; the contest proceeded through rounds of elimination that finished this month in Las Vegas. Rob Hughes, president and COO of TopCoder, says the strong finish by programmers from China, Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere is indicative of the importance those countries put on mathematics and science education. 'We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there.'"
'We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there.'
Thats nice, and I believe it's disgusting how athletics are held here, but the public has made it abundantly clear that's they way they want it. I, for one, would like to welcome our new Chinese overlords.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
What's that?
Given that your willing to write off the population of an entire country on your limited anecdotal evidence, I have to wonder whether the people outsourcing the role knew they'd get incompetents, but at least the new incompetents would be cheaper.
Turn your back on learning and embrace anti-intellectualism? Enjoy falling behind.
Unfortunately America is getting screwed from both sides... the Republicans actively oppose education that isn't Jesus-centered, while the Democrats and their "Oh, everyone's a winner" crap make what education we do have a joke and create a disgusting sense of entitlement. I figure once China launches a manned moon mission it'll probably be the kick in the ass America needs to get back in gear, same as when the USSR launched Sputnik. Right now America's stalled but there's still time to reignite the engines.
Most nations don't have long once they stagnate, but America's got a hell of a lot of inertia behind it... I hope we don't throw the chance away.
IMHO it's not that we (yeah, I'm from so called "Eastern Europe") focus on mathematics and hard science, it's just that, from what I see, athletes/etc. are put on a smaller pedestal
(perhaps partly because of economic considerations...celebrities here simply aren't worth that much as a product; means also that for larger percentage of "would-be celebrities" the only future is as a bouncer or whore, etc.)
But they are still put on a pedestal...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Several of the Indians I work with are among the most talented, knowledgeable architects I've ever met.
What's your point?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
What's worse, the quote isn't even true.
We don't do the same thing with athletics here as they do with math and science over there. In fact, they do the same thing with athletics as they do with math and science.
That is, they consider athletics to be important and encourage every child to participate in at least one sport.
We, on the other hand, idolize a very small number of top achievers and encourage every child to watch them on TV.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
"We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there....
The problem is that we are overpaying our teachers.
(but, seriously, we give math and science teachers a starvation wage and provide them with little respect. Meanwhile, we pay football coaches 6 figure salaries and revere them as Gods. Are we really that surprised that we fail at math?)
If you're serious: You're right, we should never tell children when they're wrong. That would never create preening, self-entitled idiots that never learned any actual hard facts and have no idea how to cope with a real world that doesn't care how "traumatic" being told "you're wrong" is.
If you're joking: God, don't scare me like that!
Maybe we should stop running schools like businesses and start running them like schools.
I would rather we start funding them like schools. I would also suggest that we suffer from a quantity vs. quality problem that the quotas in places like California, while good-intentioned, are worsening. Higher education needs to be cheap and available, but highly selective. While I'm being idealistic, I might as well also mention that we need to stop requiring college degrees for basically any middle class job. We've saturated the job market with highly educated people, while simultaneously diminishing the quality of that education. So now, as a society, we're paying inordinate sums for lowest common denominator education, that a large proportion of people don't need and won't ever use.
I think that teachers are a significant part of the problem (somewhere after parents).
The teacher's unions have for many years rejected almost all attempts to reward the objectively successful (rather than the most senior and/or most willing to collect various paper credentials) practitioners of the art while pushing out those that are not successful. They are historically opposed to all standardized student testing - esp. if they are fearful that these results may be used in teacher evaluation. If students testing at the X percentile on a standardized Algebra test at the end of Algebra I end up at the end of Geometry testing at 1.1X in one teacher's class and at 0.9X in another teacher's class in the next classroom, it seems we have a pretty good hint which teacher is better.
The standardized testing should be a significant factor in students' grades to discourage students from "punishing" a teacher they don't like by doing poorly on the standardized tests.
I don't find the arguments about how "teaching to tests" is bad very compelling - esp. in Math and Science. If "teaching to the tests" results in different teaching than "teaching to excel in the material", obviously the tests need to be fixed -- they are testing for something other than that which competence is desired in. Sure, there are some subject areas that don't lend themselves to standardized testing (for example, various performing arts), but these don't seem to be the areas that are resulting in American High School graduates being non-competitive.
Annecdotally, in my personal experience most smart and competent people who flee from the teaching field (usually after having entered it somewhat idealistically) would be excellent teachers but end up being frustrated by not being rewarded for their performance, frustrated by lack of support from parents ("My little Susie would never talk back"), and lack of support from administrators ("If there's a problem with classroom discipline it must be the teacher's problem as Susie's mother has assured me she's an angel").
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Your trolling, right?
Please tell me your trolling.
I'm dating a person working on their major in education (its free, and mostly for giggles),who has to interact with actual k-12 teachers. Reading some of the pop-psych drivel that teachers cough up, I sadly wouldn't doubt it you were serious.
Primary and secondary educations exists to make kids LEARN, not to make them feel good about themselves. When it comes to schooling, I actually don't care how they feel about it, as long as they leave being able to read at a 12th grade level, and know at least some math. Actually, I would like it if they knew something about history as well. If they leave feeling good about themselves, that is great, IF (and only if) they earned it through achievement.
People who do mediocre work should feel mediocre about it. Feeling bad about it forces them to do something about it. Telling them that being a moron is fine, isn't making them want to stop being a moron. Kids should be under some pressure to... you know... better themselves.
As for self-esteem... its a load of new-age crap. Self respect, like all other forms of respect, must be earned. Being proud of yourself for nothing but existing is rather stupid, it motivates nothing but egotism and some idiotic sense of entitlement. Being proud of yourself for doing something, that gives incentive to continue to achieve.
Also, no, they are not innately special. No one is. You are nothing but part of the faceless masses that will be completely forgotten within one generation of your death, this is the definition of not being special. Just because you like yourself, doesn't change this. If you feel good about this, there is something wrong. You only become special when you DO something that the vast majority of anonymous strangers in the world can't do. You don't get to the point where this is possible by sitting on your ass, staring into a mirror, and chanting a mantra about how awesome you are just because you are you.
A quick question; should I be proud of myself for sitting at my desk eating cheetos? Or should I be proud of myself for getting off my ass and doing something interesting? Children are no different.
Really, we need more hard-ass eduction. We should just flunk everyone who can't actually read at their grade level, or perform basic mathematical operations, no questions asked. Continue to flunk them until they pass, turn twenty-one, or realize they should just get their GED and do something that befits their temperament.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Well, you might want to consider there are 1.3 billion Chinese to 300 million Americans. If you're going to consider representation as a percentage of population, Russia's performance, with a population of only 140 million, was a hell of a lot more impressive than China's.
t. Schools are also around to give children confidence, physical fitness, social skills, discipline, etc.
I can see how some of these are important for schools. But we should still never sacrifice pure learning for any of them. Actually, the only one that has an overt place in schools is phys-ed. The rest of them should arise naturally from a learning environment. Confidence is covered the second a kid does an "impossible" problem, or reasons out a consequence on their own. Social skills arise from being stuck in a class room full of children trying to fit in and rise to the top of the social heap. Discipline is, and has, always been integral to ALL hard tasks. You can't tell me that those kids in the 1800's before modern "social education" didn't have it. You teach discipline by being a hard-ass, "you do it until you get it right, if you don't do it bad things happen".
You have obviously never tried to teach a smart child who lacks confidence in their ability because they've never been encouraged.
Not as a profession, though I've had to deal with them, and was one. You lead a child to confidence, you don't teach it. As stated, it comes from that first moment you make them find water on their own (as opposed to leading them to it). I was diagnosed as a "troubled" child as a kid, because of this 90% of my teachers decided they had to hold my hand, and thus I learned nothing, even if I was smart. Then I had a teacher that made me read a ton of books, synthesize the knowledge into a coherent plan (not contained in any of the books), and then design an application for it. It was hard, it was challenging, but I did it. I got an A, and a nice "atta boy!" from my teacher, after that my confidence issues were solved. Again, this is anecdotal, so... But the premise remains, self confidence is earned, all a teacher can do is make a child realize that they deserve it. For characteristics beyond the droll "you exist, and are special!" crap.
The secret to confidence is forcing kids to be surprised with their own abilities, not preaching it at them.
Apparently, you have never known anyone who has withdrawn from school and social life because they were having trouble at home.
This does happen, I agree. But this is not the majority of cases, nor enough of the population to force changes on general curriculum. Smart teachers can pick these kids out, and give them special attention, or call social services if it is bad enough.
This highlights a major problem with the system; aiming for the lowest common denominator. We can help the kids with real problems, AND help the best and brightest excel and become something special. We don't have to drag everyone down to the most level of the most wretched example.
You seem to have no understanding about how developmental psychology or education actually work
Have some understanding, did an undergrad in psychology. Granted my emphasis was pure research, but I did get stuck with some developmental classes (not claiming I'm an expert, just not unfamiliar). Developmental psych is probably one of the weakest areas in psych at the moment, though.
For some reason, you seem to think that our schools should teach average students to feel terrible about themselves because they are average, as if that would somehow motivate them to learn more.
Never said that. Well, if average kids can't read at their grade level, and don't know math at a comparable, then well yes, they should be judged by their higher level peers, and should feel that they can do better. I accept average as the high C to low A level of grades, and this is fine, though there should still be at least some pressure to do better. A percentage of average kids are capable of more, given proper goading.
We should try to make every kid rise to the maximum of their ability. We also, must accept that this level varies.
If you are truly an average student you shouldn't be made to feel bad about it, but y
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey