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Sputnik Moment Or No, Science Fairs Are Lagging
An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times is running a story about the response from some high school science teachers to Obama's State of the Union address. It's nice that he wants to celebrate science fair winners, they say, but his obsession with standardized math and reading test scores means they have no time to teach students the fundamentals of how to do science. 'I have so many state standards I have to teach concept-wise, it takes time away from what I find most valuable, which is to have them inquire about the world,' said one teacher."
I'm a judge at one of the major Canadian Science Fairs and we've been given direction that we can't criticize and only good comments are allowed. Some of the projects are absolute CRAP for the age level... thrown together overnight... judges should be able to say "Your project is CRAP... prepare for a job at Burger King"
Sometimes justified criticism is just the right thing to do. So why don't you go ahead and level it when it is deserved? If a kid comes up with a shitty project, tell that kid the truth. Point out exactly how it's shitty. The science fair organizer might not like that, but fuck them. They're part of the problem if they're not willing to accept that not everything is positive.
Back when I was a kid, you could legitimately blow some shit up with your Jr. Scientist kit. Enthusiast experimenting books from Dad's era suggest using hydrogen cyanide kill the bugs for your bug collection. Stop pussifying science, and maybe kids will be interested again! I'm seeking funding for the Greyfox Science Kit, which will include a 2 inch "supermagnet", samples of lithium and sodium metal, a burner you can hook up to your gas line, a 1 watt laser and... what's that? I'm being the first lawsuit has already been filed...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The whining science teachers are implying that they used to do it better.
Unless I'm so old that my memory is failing, my high school science courses sucked. I learned more from those glossy Time-Life (if that was the name then) books than I ever did in class. I generally read the book they gave us during the first few classes and then stared out the window for the rest of the year. I can still hear my biology teacher reciting his outline of the species in a particularly dull monotone.
It's no wonder that idiot politicians get away with saying the things they do. In a scientifically literate society, any politician who mutters that evolution is just a theory would be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail.
The reason that we're falling behind in science is that we, as a nation, don't value scientists anymore. It's hard to learn science and be good at it. I'm in my mid-50's, worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years but have been out of work for 3 of the last 6 years. I'd doing a post-doc now. That means about a 1/3 salary. It would sound like whining but I have tons of friends in the same situation. Ivy League PhD's, out of work or "consulting". Good careers for a while, then all the jobs go off to China. The STEM crap is just a ruse to get more people to go to school for 9 years post high school and work for 80K if they're lucky. And then be out of it permanently at 45.
You can make a lot more money doing something else. You should only do it if you love it. Science is the new Art History.
I got into the best magnet high schools in my city, but chose to go to the best Catholic high school in the city (which due to an endowment, was free). One reason was we did not have to take state exams. As the school was very selective, and as students scored high on the SATs and got into Ivy league schools, the school felt no need to partake in state tests (the normal Catholic high schools in the city did though). Thus we got a chance to really learn. I know many graduates who say they learned more in our high school then they did in college, and for me this is has often been the case.
While I am egalitarian, even for those who are less so, it is incredibly wasteful, for US productivity, to have the top 1% of students, which I always was on these state exams, have to do the kind of rote, teach for the test learning that the bottom 1% of students on the test take. We can be self-directed and go on a Deweyite learning curve where we would really be learning, and advancing at our own speed, not going along with everyone else and doing this rote for the test memorization.
The real truth is the Bolshevik revolution is what made schools in the US great in the 1950s and 1960s for engineering. The Russians engineers I met who came out of the USSR school systems are the sharpest I've ever met. But beyond that, advances like Sputnik scared the US in terms of falling behind the USSR educationally, so US schools had to revamp to make sure they were staying competitive to the USSR. Not that the USSR was a big threat to the US - the US GNP dwarfed Russia's in 1917, and continued to do so. But now that such threats have abided, all of these things - teach-for-the-test, closing schools, these charter schools which will soon be on a profit model and are being pushed for by the US's billionaires and the like can all come about. There are no threats to the US so dumbing down the sheeple and pouring Glenn Beck and fundamentalist religion in their minds is seen as a better course by the elites - or else they might get smart and start causing trouble like in Egypt.
Quite the opposite. Is not just that they don't do enough teaching the right thing, but that in good numbers they teach the wrong one. Before putting teachers to teach science, be sure that they understand it. That would be a sputnik moment.
Standardization is the thief of creativity and creativity robs standardization.
It seems that no one is ever happy. The countries with high graduation rates and high standardization like South Korea have a low dropout rate. However the annual standardized test in South Korea always coincides with massstudent suicides.
Education is the USA is moving to a point where there is no depth, no love of learning, and no respect for the transormative power of education. Much of this is a direct result of standardized tests and limited teacher autonomy and resources. The weekly cycle of cover the standard: Powerpoint Lecture -> Read the Chapter -> Do your worksheet -> Scantron on Friday. move on to next state standard then rinse and repeat crushes any love of learning.
I would rather see a USA where we foster a love of learning, go deep on interesting topics then work on them in a meaningful project based way rather than the drive-by, inch-deep mile wide education system that we have become. If we work in a meaningful way the questions about math and science will come and apply to a realworld situation instead of being taught in abstract isolation.
When the USA can not longer produce innovators with a love for learning and/or attract innovators from foreign countries, we will become the low-cost labor market for those who do innovate. I implore everyone who reads this to help stop this madness. When George W. Bush was in office, he had a plan to take the Perkins-IV funding and shift it away from career and technical learning programs (nursing, welding, computer programming, cad, autobody) and shift that money to fund more standardized testing. If that would have happened, programs would have ceased to exist and dropout rates would have soared even higher.
Before our time, when our parents were children, the world was at war with itself. Great technologies were developed with significance so broad, the greatest minds of the planet trembled at the wake of their unfolding. Each and every action performed by the simplest individual was a thread sewn into the fabric of this country. Each forward notion was a declaration of intend for a better tomorrow, a promise they made hand in hand that the world they saw on the brink of annihilation would some day be preserved for their children, and their children's children. There was a pride and a hope, and through this there was no time to consider the derivative effects of how we would factor together as a society. How could they have known what was to be? On the edge of destruction their thoughts were of the present.
In the future, their progeny yields the shining beacon of their ultimate savior, prolific technology that has changed everyone's life on the planet. But through this ubiquity the change has become a constant. Our grandparent's hopes and dreams are our faded concrete walkways and crumbling bridges. Our pride is worn with the wind and faded with the sun. Our goals no longer are how to stay alive, but now simply how to stay atop the throne the rest of the world approaches. Our goals, our national fate, our fears as a nation of people. A nation so scattered with opinion that it is a raft adrift the sea, each paddle pushing outwards from the center.
But when you ask the single oarsman how his sons and daughters are, you may find that he has not consigned the fate of his children's knowledge to the government. You may find that he is proud enough to ensure his children learn. The maths, the sciences, the dramas and comedies. The satires so that they too can someday ignore the beating of the drum on a march through the shanty towns of our idyllic past. For this oarsman knows that the success of he and his is not the duty of a corrupt far away bureaucracy, but safe within the confines of the home has has created.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
In their never ending quest to Make The World A Better Place, the do-gooders continue to dig us into an ever-deeper hole Because It's For The Children.
One of the biggest problems with big government solutions to everything is the difficulty involved in making changes as needed. Every decision requires congressional approval, every decision becomes political and once the decision is made nobody has a choice. Public education is a classic example of how such a system loses focus on it's primary reason for existence, i.e. educating children. I instead it becomes a vessel for social engineering experiments and and the political interests of the teacher's unions and politicians du jour.. The children themselves have essentially no representation as the various powers that be fight to further their agendas.
The worst part is that you can't buy or legislate the single biggest predictor of academic success: parental involvement. No amount of money, no law, no program can motivate parents to get more deeply involved in their kid's education. You can not change parents that want to dump their kids and attendant responsibilities onto the school districts.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
It seems like if the students really understood these "fundamentals" or whatever they are, then they could trounce the standardized tests. As I understand it, the primary problem with all this standardization n' stuff is the extra paperwork and funding hooks that are attached to it.
A lot of kids will refuse to perform for reasons outside of school, regardless of how wonderful teachers are. I'm guessing that in many cases meeting funding-driven performance targets boils down to attempting to trick these students into learning the material.
Back in the day --- which, old as I am, wasn't all that long ago -- the role of the teacher was to explain concepts and teach. The homework, the rote exercises, the role of counselor, the teaching of discipline and social skills, was left to the parent. Add to this that kids have no voices in government, corporations see them as an access valve to parents' money and government sees them not as potential leaders but as a liability, it's no wonder that teachers end up underpaid, overworked, and asked to do much more than is appropriate.
Politically, there are a few obstacles:
There is a lot of pressure for the status quo. An easy tactic to maintain the status quo is to counter a request for change by saying that no problem actually exists. If someone says that the richest country in the world is not maintaining a lead or is trailing in education, someone counters that the statistics are skewed or the data is being misinterpreted or that there's nothing wrong with the status quo. Not taking any side, but we see the same with global warming and deficits and gun control and tax reform.
Education has no quick payoff. Investments in education will pay off in ten years or more. Politicians care about the next election cycle and not the long term benefit to the country. It's thus easier to push money to a new baseball stadium or to build a billion dollar fence or fight the evil file sharers than it is to fund meaningful education. Hell, it's easier to pull money from education than it is to maintain the status quo.
Children have little voice in Congress. They can't vote. They can't contribute to re-election funds. They usually can't/don't write letters to their representatives. They have little direct spending power.
If these issues are important to you, maybe the approach is to enlist the teenagers and the twenty-somethings who still remember their primary education to improve the situation. Maybe parents can also be convinced. I don't know if anyone else cares,
Concepts about methods of scientific testing can be taught in a couple of lessons. The basic concepts like postulating and testing theories, repeatability, precision vs. accuracy, double blind studies, etc. are not difficult, so to say there's not enough time to teach them is a just lame excuse. The real reason for declining participation in science fairs is given later in the article: "One obvious reason for flagging interest in science fairs is competing demands for high school students' extracurricular attention." Nothing the president or dept of education does will change that.
This is a pretty misleading story. This isn't a new problem. The Obama Administration hasn't introduced any new federal test score standards or anything like that. The biggest federal law mandating a focus on test scores is the No Child Left Behind Act, proposed by Bush (although passed nearly unanimously by the House and Senate), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_child_left_behind.
On the other hand, Obama has actually long sought to reform the NCLB: http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Obama_Child_Left_Behind/
While admittedly the reforms he is proposing do not perhaps go far enough, or even address some of what I consider the fundamental flaws of the program as a whole, it's obvious to everyone (even many of the people who voted for the NCLB) that it's not really working, and the proposed reforms do genuinely seem like improvements of some kind, even if they're not all they could be. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/01/AR2010020101129.html
There are lots of teachers unemployed right now and not enough funding. Class room sizes are almost doubling due to budget cuts and school closures. Our nation is only going to suffer unless we invest in education again.
Teachers have such large classes now they simply spend too much time trying to manage all the children.
I have judged my city's (> 500,000 people, South) science fair for the last several years. It has been about 10 years since I graduated from high school, and I had participated every year in my county (~ 1 million people, not culturally Southern) science fair back then. I remember vividly, back then, having kids with amazing projects that were worthy of MS-level theses. One year, for example, someone found a new Group Theory result (with oversight by a college professor), for example. Many others did medical studies, had detailed demonstrations of traffic pattern simulations, and so on.
Fast forward to me judging the high school science fair here, and I'm appalled at what the "best" these kids could muster is. Most kids couldn't even design a simple experiment. For example, one girl was measuring the conductivity of a solution and varying the temperature, but her "data" consisted of her saying that the conductivity went down as the temperature went down. There was no actual data. The best projects were judged "best" by me by at least having some kind of quantitative data, using proper controls, and having some understanding of the implications of the work. Nothing blew me away, and I had to wonder where the mentor involvement was because it seemed like these kids did everything on their own.
Hi, it's great to see the discussion here. (Always an honor to get Slashdotted)! I will say that the heroism of the science teachers I interviewed gave me hope. I'd love it if some of you would also post comments on the "reader comment" section of the story on the Times' Web site...it's here: http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/us/05science.html
thanks!
Amy Harmon
I have five children and came from a family with seven children. Most of us were enthusiastic about science. One became a scientist. I have attended, and participated in a lot of science fairs. I have seen almost no value to the fairs. Occasionally there were one or two students that did anything resembling science. Many students were there because someone made them. Other students enjoy the fairs because they get to do a craft, rather than learn basic math and science. From talking to the high school students I know, about 1% have the basic math, science, reasoning, communication, and organizational skills to do anything resembling basic science. For all but the exceptional students, teaching the basics (the skills needed to pass the standardized tests) is what is required.
Teaching the basics isn't as "fun" as a science fair, but it is what is needed.
The first thing we need to do to fix science education in this country is to pay math and science teachers more than the other teachers. Not only is it harder to get a science or math degree than it is to be a history major, but there are many more job opportunities for science and math majors beyond teaching. They are a more valuable commodity and should be treated as such.
My middle school kid is involved in this:
https://www.ecybermission.com
I like it.
Real science can be tedious. Your competitors are less resource-limited. It's best to lie about your results. You'll be judged on presentation rather than rigor. Even if you win, the rewards suck compared to alternative endeavors.
DOING the American people proud and making everything as expensive as can be ....GO GO GO 20 more years and a pea will have more value
My daddy mixed up potassium perchlorate and sulfur. He wrapped it up in tin foil (that's hat materiel for you Slashdot folks), and hit it with a sledge hammer. Boom! Wake the neighbors, call the cops! When I was older, I did some experiments in our backyard with aluminum powder and sulfur. It sent up a mushroom cloud, which drifted over to our neighbors house. I skedaddled inside the house and put on a innocent smile on my face. You'd get arrested these days for doing stuff like that.
Well, at least I didn't do the Nuclear Boy Scout stuff . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
'I have so many state standards I have to teach concept-wise, it takes time away from what I find most valuable, which is to have them inquire about the world,' said one teacher."
They're doing it wrong. It should be "How do I teach the students to inquire about the world and still meet the state standards?". When you have a well designed curriculum, that's what happens. A side effect is that the you don't need endless practice tests to pass the state tests, at worst, you just loose a day when the students take those tests.
Harvard study: Hey, maybe we’re placing too much emphasis on a college education
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/02/harvard-study-hey-maybe-were-placing-too-much-emphasis-on-a-college-education/
http://educationresearchreport.blogspot.com/2011/02/we-place-far-too-much-emphasis-on.html
No future.
While being able to read and count *is* important, if all we do is rehash what we have now, we become stagnant then die.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article brings up several good points.
One aspect touched on is the problem of time resources, both for students and teachers.
The schools around here are not doing science fairs, but are doing more "team competition" stuff such as Aca Deca, Science Bowl or Robotics. This meets several needs: one teacher can advise 20 students on a common project as opposed to on 20 separate projects; it provides an opportunity for resume building on the students' part, either as a "president of the robotics club" or as "member of the Robotics Team".. it makes it more "team sports" oriented which is a familiar model for the school, for the local press, and it also is "everyone's a winner for participating" friendly, for those that have that philosophy.
the other thing is that to be competitive at the high school level in science fairs requires a lot of time and generally a multi year effort, and certainly not "start the project in November". In middle school, there's generally more participation over a wider spectrum of quality, so someone who starts a project in November and shows in March both a) stands a chance of winning; and b) if they don't win, there's lots of other people with comparable sophistication in their projects in the fair. A person getting a late start at the high school level is going to show up and get blown out of the water by projects that would often do well as a Master's thesis or Doctoral dissertation.
Unlike a team sport or a group activity (drama, choir, scouting, etc) which meets regularly and so can be scheduled around, science projects are more individual and require a lot more discipline on the part of the student to allocate enough time among all the competing demands. And frankly, the regularly scheduled activities tend to get the time at the expense of the more ad-hoc scheduled one. The other factor is that if you are participating in a group or team activity, the coach or leader, as well as the peers, will tend to make you put a priority on that activity, and if extra practices are needed or you have to go to a competition, that gets priority. This tends to select only for students who don't participate in other activities AND who are incredibly self directed, which is a very small percentage of the high school population (all that resume building, you know.. schedule those activities)
Add to this the rarity of science fair winning being a sure path to admission at a highly (or not so highly) selective college. The counselors, the articles the parents read about "how to get your kid admitted to Harvard", etc ALL stress "well rounded individual, lots of activities, team sports, leadership"... this is not the life planning path that is consistent with science fair success.
Now, it *is* true that you can do well. My daughter did well in middle school science fair going on to win at the state level, but when she got to high school, the support from the school evaporated, there's no advancement path, and even though she had ideas on what to do for projects, etc. there wasn't a clear path forward to success (so few high school students do projects in the county, the county fair winners don't go to ISEF, which is the big banana in the science fair world.).. "county science fair winner" in a not very well known county is not a big plus on the resume. OTOH, on the basis (partially) of her middle school win, she was able to apply for a summer program during high school, and that worked out pretty well, both in terms of the content and in terms of the resume recognition for the awards garnered from work in the program.
Maybe robotics teams and programs like Univ of Calif COSMOS are what are replacing the science fair pipeline to STEM careers.
The problem is the teachers as much as the tests. If the teachers were any good, the standardized tests who have never come about to "fix" the teacher's inability to teach. I went to an engineering school. Education majors were just one step above communication majors. If an engineering student couldn't cut it, they would change their major to math education or some similar degree. Education is basically a liberal arts degree. You can't have people who can't do STEM themselves trying to teach inspire others to pursue STEM careers.
Enquiring about the world comes naturally to chiildren -- it's not a skill that needs to be taught. However the intellectual tools that enable this inquiring to be fruitful, such as math or even just reading, do need to be taught. The earlier and the more comfortable children are with these tools, the less frustrated they get with their own natural curiosity and the more they will open up and not shut these inquiries down. I've been to science fairs at my daughter's elementary schools and most of the "projects" from 1st-4th grade don't have much to do with science or the scientific method. Yet they get praise anyway, which I think is very misleading for the children and can end up in frustration later on when the standards will be hire. Algebraic, geometric, abstraction and reasoning, reading should be rigorously practiced early on and will pay off later.
I remember vividly being the only 4th grader to get excited when the teacher told us were were doing science that day. Every other boy was more interested in sports. (I don't recall what the girls were into other than gossip and tattling on whatever mischief the boys were getting into). Point is that our priorities have gone south. IMHO, schools should slash their athletic budgets by 50% and "redistribute" that money to science programs. And not this touchy-feely ecology crap. I'm talking real, practical science and engineering. BTW, the U.S. spends more money per student than every other country in the world and yet we're slipping further and further behind. Throwing money at the problem isn't going to solve it. Sh*tcanning lousy tenured teachers needs to be possible and straightforward.
Maybe it's because I grew up in another era, but I remember that the zeitgeist here in the US during the 60s/70s was all about Science. Your highest aspirations always involved pursuing some kind of career in Science, and if not that, to at least approach life in a rational, objective, semi-scientific manner.
Now it seems like it's all about emotions and chest-thumping. Maybe it's just Devlotuion in action. Don't say we weren't warned!
On a more serious note: I was a science-fair geek, and although I can look back now and see how crappy my work was, it was a very cool and enlightening experience. I remember military recruiters would show up at these fairs, and unless your research had something to do with blowing something up (I wrote computer programs for field biology) they sorta overlooked you.
Fun times. This article is probably just another signpost on the road to our demise.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
From my experience, most teachers were uncaring and pompous petty authoritarians. The higher you go in the education system, the worse this seemed to be. Greed and incompetence are the top hallmarks of modern education
This sort of problem is one of the reasons I hold the radical view that the federal government should not be involved in education (beyond some basic standards saying what an eighth-grade diploma or high school diploma consists of.) It's too far away from the issue and there's way too much involved; the ONLY way that the feds can get any information is to reduce it to a basic level. Which means "one size (doesn't) fit all" education, and we all know that means rote, rote, rote.
Here's my idea: Trust the teachers. Sure, make it so you can swap your kids around a bit easier, but give the teachers the authority to go with their responsibility. Every teacher I know bemoans the amount of time spent teaching to the test. My friend the English teacher would love to be allowed to teach novels before spring. My SiL would like to tailor her education to the wide variety of elementary students she has. My BiL would like to be able to spend time explaining why an education is important because of the students he has from a culture that doesn't value education at all. But with one test after another, they have to spend all of their time trying to meet the deadlines.
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
I have helped organize and judge science fairs at my kids' school. I've moved on, and my younger son doesn't participate any more, because we do cool stuff instead. Built an arc light. Had a mythbusters-themed birthday party with liquid nitrogen fun and thermite. All the while learning how the stuff worked. We take apart things and try (emphasis on try) to put them back together.
In elemantary school, when little science is being taught in school, and the scientific method isn't at all, it ends up falling on the parent to emphasize the paper aspect of the science: a hypothesis, collecting data, recording data, control groups, etc., and if the parent isn't a scientist, or inclined that way, its just not going to go well. Frankly, at that age, important as process is to real science, it's terribly boring (and often it's boring at any age.)
I personally think that a maker faire with a long lead time and a strong effort to get parents involved with their kids would be much more meaningful to many of these kids, and likely incent the kids to further pursue these activities more than the science fair from our collective youths.
The number of days the kids at my son's school spend preparing for standardized tests is... ZERO.
No, really. The tests are so simple that they are literally considered a time-waster and a free day off by the staff. They cover everything already and more in the course of normal classes. The issue here isn't that the teachers are spending time teaching the wrong stuff, it's that the parents are idiots who aren't teaching anything at home. So what you end up with are two schools: The ones with decent test scores and grades where the tests are largely ignored and the others where schools serve as remedial classes to teach the basics. Often over and over again in a futile attempt to save and teach every last child. My son's school holds back idiots. There is no conveyor system between grades. The parents figure out right quick that it's their job to get a tutor if there's a problem.
There is a great shortage of decent teachers in the U.S. right now. If you are stuck in a situation having to teach as the OP described, then you need to move to a school where they don't have to waste time preparing for these standardized tests.
The government's solution to this should be even simpler. Any child who cannot pass (IIRC, it's something like 61%?) these tests is held back a year without exception. If that means we have a bunch of 20 year old seniors in high school in some districts, then so be it. Obviously, if it's just one area, remedial class in summer would suffice. Note - they do this is Japan and other nations already. You pass or you are held back. Add some teeth to it and watch the parents and teachers get involved again.
I would argue that if a young person knows a great deal about part of a field, it is usually a sign that he or she can learn about other parts of it quite easily.
So cut out the "standardized" and "curriculum". Make the curriculum more like a menu. Some teachers have really heavy science backgrounds themselves and feel like giving a more theoretical and personally involved teaching about the principles of science - whilst others may not have a science background, or don't want to/can't put in the resources to tailor a "curiousity course", so let them present the factbooks and use multiple-choice tests.
I guess there is a desire for some kind of "progress measure", so create a scale when you create the module, and then standardize scores later.
In their never ending quest to Make The World A Better Place, the do-gooders continue to dig us into an ever-deeper hole Because It's For The Children.
One of the biggest problems with big government solutions to everything is the difficulty involved in making changes as needed. Every decision requires congressional approval, every decision becomes political and once the decision is made nobody has a choice. Public education is a classic example of how such a system loses focus on it's primary reason for existence, i.e. educating children. I instead it becomes a vessel for social engineering experiments and and the political interests of the teacher's unions and politicians du jour.. The children themselves have essentially no representation as the various powers that be fight to further their agendas.
The worst part is that you can't buy or legislate the single biggest predictor of academic success: parental involvement. No amount of money, no law, no program can motivate parents to get more deeply involved in their kid's education. You can not change parents that want to dump their kids and attendant responsibilities onto the school districts.
What do gooders are you referring to? I'm pretty sure that liberals and conservatives (instead of the non-descriptive do-gooders title) both have forced their various agendas on to public education. You then go on to blame the parents, and yet, control of their child's education has been removed from them. Fifty years ago, local school boards managed their schools. Yes, they had agendas, but they were local agendas. Not some state or federal system. The local system was not perfect, but to improve it, it got replaced with today's administration from afar. If you want parents to take more responsibility for their child's education, then you also need to give them more authority.
Of course doing this means that in some places kids will not be taught about evolution, birth control or whatever. It might even mean that some kids won't be academically ready to go to college. That was the system that was in place that educated a nation that was able to send a man to the moon. Education, then was a limited resource, just like oil is today. Back then, you got an education to move ahead of the pack. Today, you need an education just to maintain your place in the pack.
But, I digress. What do-gooders are you referring to and what agendas have they forced?
In 1957, a major effort, organized by MIT, was made to revise the teaching of high school physics. This resulted in the PSSC Physics curriculum. Top physicists were involved, including Hans Bethe and I.I. Rabi, both Nobel prize winners who'd worked on the atomic bomb program.
That program focused on experiments, collecting data, analyzing it, and comparing it with theory. Here's some of the lab equipment. It's not elaborate; the original equipment was mostly wooden.
This was acknowledged to be a very good curriculum, but a lot of work for teachers. Schools seemed to have backed away from it by the early 1970s.
That seems to be where things took a wrong turn.
I am a scientist. I can teach a clever kid the math and science he needs when he goes to college. I can not teach a kid who has been through a boring, unrealistic grind to like science!
The biggest hurdle to be a scientist is wanting to be one.
Shop classes, fun labs, creative exploration of whatever areas are locally appropriate... I don't care if a physics major comes in having been excited by agriculture science, I want kids who are excited and creative!
That said, we have a glut of scientists in almost every field right now. The labor market has been getting progressively worse for 30 years. If we're going to use these new scientists, uh, usefully, we need to find a way to stimulate the recovery of corporate basic research labs. They used to employ hundreds of professional scientists, now they employ a handful and the country relies on amateur scientists (students) to do the heavy lifting. It's not the most efficient situation. Maybe pharma and geology are the only exceptions.
1.) Use the technical resources that are available
a.) Stop BUYING textbooks and use HTML
b.) Stop using Schools (buildings) and just have major tests and socialization in regular locations
2.) Stop *overestimating* the value of one per child computer technology in education
a.) It's a distraction
b.) If it were of real educational value it would be working by now
c.) The money is better spent on ubiquitous lab materials for hands on experience
3.)Teach critical thinking skills starting from K
a.)you can't have analytical people unless you teach them to think and rethink
4.)Get rid of generalists in primary and secondary education
a.) Math teachers who can't do math ruin it for kids
b.) Science...same thing
When kids are able to leave junior high without understanding fractions there's a problem
5.) Stop using schools to warehouse kids while parents are working.
a.) The education system needs to stop trying to be all things to everyone because this makes it nothing to anyone
b.) focus on the basic skills and dump the extracurricular nonsense.
c.) Sell the real estate and send the kids home to learn with specific goals
d.) Schedule socialization for students at shared local facilities
e.) Schedule field trips for students like tours.
f.) There's a global computer network. Textbooks and schools/warehouses are obsolete.
g.) Reduces bullying and focuses on positive socialization.
We're not in a wagon train anymore. People/society need to get out of the one room schoolhouse and *with* the program.
It would have been hysterical if you'd made a project of game theory, risk matrix rewards, etc to show that his projet would win. Risk/effort grids, the ignorance/malice ethical problem payoff grids, etc.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I don't know why we're trying to relive the worst era in math education in America. Pretty much right after Sputnik launched, American textbooks went from pretty good to awful. Go to an antique store and try to find the best and worst math textbooks. I guarantee you that every single good math textbook you find will be either pre-Sputnik, or after 1980.
Spunik was very helpful in some aspects of American science, but math education, unquestionably, is not a good place to relive Sputnik.
As always, the government meddling in people's lives only ends up screwing up something that people worked hard for to create in the first place.
What? You didn't know that education existed LONG before department of education came into being?
This is the problem I see with so many people today, the discouraging thing is that it is so prevalent everywhere, even /. is now sick with it - allowing and even requiring that government takes care of things.
Does this ever work out well? What about long term? Any subject at all?
So when government creates department of education, I automatically assume that it will hurt the education.
When government creates department of energy, I automatically assume that there will be more problems - more monopolies and various subsidies coming to some businesses that are basically investing not into energy research but into their ties with government, and that's why this department is created. This department ends up subsidizing certain companies, who grow beyond belief, while other companies in the field are destroyed, diminished, become outcasts for various reasons - from fiscal to regulatory.
This is the same with all government endeavors. When gov't creates a program or a department or passes a law, all you have to do is to look at it in reverse to understand what kind of problem will be created due to the intrusion.
"No child left behind"? - OK, so no child will be learning anything anymore.
"Fair housing act"? - OK, so there will be a housing bubble, many people who could otherwise afford housing will be competing in inflationary conditions against the people who will be subsidized, while the mortgage industry (getting 0-1% interest rates) will be slowly leading to a crash in the housing market, all while the securitization of loans pushed by HUD combined with FDIC will cause a real problem in the derivatives market. The subprime mortgages that never existed before in the market will be created by the market as a response to the government agenda. The whole thing will blow and eventually people who could otherwise own houses will end up homeless.
Fed with the mandate of stable prices? - OK, so then the 20th century will be marked with extraordinary inflation, while the 19th century without such forces had deflationary tendencies, and the dollar was strengthening while prices were gradually falling. But once the Fed is created the gov't gets its wish of counterfeiting bank notes and then it can grow without any limits or boundaries and eventually crash the economy, which will cause flight of capital and production and even a possible hyper-inflationary situation where prices skyrocket, just explode and then not only the prices are not stable, but there is nothing even to buy with existing dollars as a result of that fiasco.
"Patriot Act" - OK, well this will be the most blatantly unpatriotic law ever, that will kick the Constitution in the head repeatedly and cause huge losses in the Freedoms of the people.
"Social Security/EI/Medicare" - OK, this one will be a pyramid, that will drain the economy and people of their savings, not allowing people to save and invest on their own. Eventually all of this will crash under its own weight and then the question will be simple: why would any young person stay in the country to continue paying for the benefits of the old, who have already gotten more than they put in, even though the young never voted for it and never will see any benefits themselves?
By the way, SS was found unconstitutional on a number of occasions by the lower level courts based on the fact that it was partially funded by payroll taxes, and it is unconstitutional to tax one person directly to give benefits to another. The lower level courts saw through this unconstitutionality, even though the argument from the gov't was: no, these are not related. We just happened to pass the payroll tax at the same time while passing the idea of SS benefits, but they are not related, they are not a
You can't handle the truth.
After a short stint in the field of science education, I've realized that many of the science teachers and most parents I met do not understand science. I believe that this is why our children are falling behind in science. The non-science graduate teacher teaches kids that there are 6 magical steps to the scientific method and that if they follow these steps, no matter how inane the results, then the kids have performed SCIENCE!!!WOW MAGIC!!!!
When I helped judge science fair projects, I saw that most of the winning entrants scored highest on presentation, not on actual science. And on the bottom scoring end there were kids who actually did real science, but couldn't present it very well. That's kind of how it works in the field of science too. Companies make this work by having teams that collaborate and work on projects together and a lot of times this approach actually works. The way science fairs are done now, the kid who spells all the words correctly or labels the steps of the scientific method but doesn't actually experiment on anything ranks higher than the kid who does a real experiment but doesn't explain it very well. This only serves to reward only presentation and steers inquisitive kids away from science. I think the best hope for real science in elementary schools is for more collaboration in science fairs, that way you learn about teamwork and the experience actually mirrors the real world's expectations of good science.
The unchecked influx of Mexicans, Gypsies, and blacks into the system will obviously depress the interest in math and science.
These new students are into such cerebral interests as music video, sports, and hanging out at malls when the first two are not available.
In China or India, if you are an engineer, you are going to be the chick magnet of the party. In the U.S., my experience is that if you tell people you are an engineer, people call you names like "geek" or "nerd." Nobody calls a lawyer or doctor a "geek" or "nerd." Thus, for a kid looking for a career, forget about math and science, it's embarrassing. For a teenager, forget it, girls will not like you. For an adult, forget it, it's hard work for not enough money. This "It's hip to be stupid" thing used to be just the scourge of African Americans, but it has spread into the popular culture and it's going to sink our boat if we don't find a way to honor hard work and intelligence again.
Currently hooked on AMP
I'm with you brother. From a long academic prep time I was about to enter the Pharma biotech industry when the recession hit. Searching has been somewhat fruitless so I'm about to take an academic staff position for not all that much money (but possibly more stable than say Pfizer who elevates "dick" in more ways than one). The trouble is with the "postdoc" designation which is flat out undignified -- apprentice -- as if you of all people needed more training!
Luck.
but in Georgia they don't even start that low.
Google your favorite state, most publish the information I used teacher pay scale georgia 2010
Recent items I recall from reading about education has been, spending 60 million to build a high school in one city near me, when extravagance would have been half that, but I guess we needed it to look good. Having a school system where the number of non teachers on the payroll exceeds, well the number of teachers. Watching a major standardized test cheating scandal basically have some punishments muted all in the name of PC or fairness. Yet people under estimate the costs for fundamentals, like the fact Georgia spends over forty million a year on textbooks.
Funding priorities are definitely skewed but its rare that parents organize and try to get school boards to do anything. Everyone usually sends their kids to the best school in the district, its always "that other " school that is bad. It just works this way.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I understand that science means progress, but teaching it might be a waste of time. Why does anyone think that my first sentance is self-contradictory? I digress: teaching science means you are teaching students about how the world works, how to think critically and logically, usually there is some math involved which doesn't just show them about math, but why you do math: to figure things out, and not just monetary things, but rates of change and quantities and variance. Why is teaching them any of this a waste of time then? Because American society at large, gives science a pass. The kids that do that sort of thing wind up being subordinates of the kids who went to business school. They are employees, rather than employers. The kids who do science are blue collar, just like the janitor. The kids who do science are outsourced by those kids who have white collars. "Science is important" we are told. But its a lie. Science is important up to the point where the kids wearing white collars think that someone in a foreign country can do half as good a job, but critically at 1/3 the price. Then the local kids with the white collars, unemploy the local science kids, and employ the foreign science kids. Follow the bouncing ball. "Science is important", up to the point where shareholders decide to outsource. There are basically zero fundamental research labs in the US, everyone lower on the 'Science' rung has been outsourced. Business has been 'leveraging' science in the US for 25 years. You can replace the word 'leveraging' with 'pegging' and it amounts to the same thing. Now US productivity, innovation, and employment is starting to free fall. The US government is in debt; at the municipal, state and federal levels at unprecidented rates. Unemployment is high (and hasn't started dropping). There has been a fundamental shift, this isn't a cyclical thing anymore. In the US, I see 9% unemployment as a lower bound. Where is the upper bound? 18%? 25%? Science!
0) Failure in school is constant and brutal to self-esteem - always evaluated and never taught how to deal with failure. A few meaningless phrases at best which have no follow through. To compensate sometimes people do moronic policies like "never say negative things about failure" when actual TRAINING by child psychologists is needed. Teachers should take a whole 4 credit course on the topic. The child's emotional mindset is the biggest factor above all else; genetics has almost nothing to do with it (sorry ignorant parents but your child isn't "special" unless they are autistic...)
1) Science fair projects involve TIME and MONEY outside of school. I've gone to inner city schools where half were below the poverty line. One of my friends had to care for the whole family as the oldest boy (his father died in front of him in a camp in Laos.) He turned out well considering how bad his life was. Not all are so lucky. His homework was non-existent and school had to provide his pencils and paper. HE WAS SMART and mature for his age but only a C-B student; not his fault.
2) Disturbed kids are sometimes born that way, but most the time its their home life; the only thing you can do is fix their parents or move them to another home. A state orphanage would even be better; I've grown up with a few of these kids as well. The schools don't have psychologists and while they should it couldn't fix a large range of environmental problems. Three gradeschool kids I knew are in prison now; it was no surprise they were foobar back then - beyond teacher help, they needed padded rooms or something. Today they'd have been in the criminal system for assaulting teachers before 10 years of age - somehow I don't think that would have helped them; but not doing that in my day didn't help them either.
3) I have family who've had to live through this movement of our Republicans trying to embrace the education issue making it a partisan political football that used to be just given over to the other side. Since this battle for votes began on the issue its WORSENED education in the USA as ignorant political slogans and ignorant parents herd to whatever sounds good to their ignorant minds. You are not a dental expert because you have been to the dentist anymore than you are an expert at education because you've been educated. Worthless statistics and foolish analogies always become the foundation of politicization of issues. You can't measure a quality education in a quantitative way such that political policies can be debated (leaving aside the fact that there is no civil debate in the USA anymore.) "Juking" the stats is the name of the political game and everybody does it. When you base things on simplistic metrics you encourage hacking of those metrics. Furthermore, the other issue is "cutting edge" crap - the USA was ahead of the world but the world has recovered from WW2 and the 3rd world is improving at FASTER rates than the 1st world ever did. See GapMinder.org and learn something about it. You can't be on top when everybody else gets to the summit as well; there isn't much more to climb and even if you reach the peak of human capacity the gap will NOT be as large as it was in the past.
Lots of issues involved here. Plus a lot of people only see education as JOBs - which warps the whole thing into industry looking for new cogs for the corporate machine and not actual thinkers--- unless you are elite and can afford to send your brat to a private school which teaches management or marketing -- "practical" school is job skills training to way too many people and that is NOT the biggest benefit it has provided but its where we are heading. I expect to see private/charter schools by walmart or mcdonald's within my lifetime with single minded goals (it won't be quite that simple but the influence will become noticeable enough.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Unless a student sees it being popular amongst the cool kid crowd... Well, you see where this is going. The anti-intellectualism movement; follow it on Twitter! tag it on Facebook! Look for the special announcement on American Idol today!
One part of the problem is the fetish of metrics. Percentage of population this, this many students that, etc. The other is society valuing... scratch that.... worshiping entertainment and stimulation
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Further, I noticed that among the other kids, the ones who aspired to be teachers weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, by and large. The smart ones all dreamed of being leaders in their fields, and worked and learned accordingly. Nor did most of the ones who planned to be teachers have the outstanding social and leadership skills the good teachers had. I could go on, but evidently this doesn't attract the right sort so easily, but the type of person who likes having a bunch of kids to push around, and to be listened to even when they have little worthwhile to say.
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Now we have a teacher's union, ensuring that when people get laid off, it's the newest ones, not the worst ones. That's gotta help (NOT). Add in the particular political slant the union pushes (one of the functions of teaching is to create the kind of citizens you want later) -- can't be good for anybody. For those as old as me, look at the line the unions push, and look how the votes go these days -- bingo.
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I'd even bet some of the people who responded negatively to the first post here have been so brainwashed by that very situation they don't realize it. Look, sometimes you gotta tell people they are not measuring up; and even if you pick words carefully, it's not a joyful thing to hear or to say if it gets across. We need more "that's not even wrong" out there, some people are so far back they need to know they're not even in the running to be fully there at anything ever, and if they don't lift their sights -- they never will be. A shock is more often than not the least painful way to get that across -- a short sharp pain beats a life of dissatisfaction in my book -- particularly when that dissatisfaction is two way -- no one likes you either, but of course, only says so "nicely". Hit me, but don't water torture me, alright? I'll heal quick enough, maybe even learn to do some hitting myself, and have a happy life thereafter (which I have).
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
With increasing wealth disparity no matter how small your chances to get to the top, it still makes sense to try. Unless you are a talented entrepreneur or top 1% in ability to begin with a college education is a prerequisite. The majority of people might not need a college education, but the majority of people will get it up the ass from globalization going forward (austerity ahoy). You don't want to be among the majority ...
They get those skills at home between ages 0 and 5 years.
Two mornings each week, I volunteer to teach physics to local 12 & 13 year old kids.
They're homeschooled kids; we meet at one of their homes for 4 hours a week. I'm teaching the science class that I wish I'd received when I was in 8th grade.
3 months of Newtonian physics, then a month on wave mechanics (made a glass wave tank!), we're now finishing thermodynamics and will soon start E&M. Heavy on experiments: bicycle wheel gyroscope, conservation of momentum when throwing a football while standing on a skateboard, entropy & heat of crystallization using Sodium Acetate. We use the physics apparatus that I've collected over the years ... some professional equipment and a lot of homebrew demos. An oscilloscope that cost $25 at a yardsale.
This past Tuesday, we measured the distance to the sun by comparing the warmth of sunlight on the kids hands to the warmth from a 100 watt incandescent lamp. By adjusting the distance from hand to lamp, they found the distance from the light where it was "just about as warm as sunlight". Then they looked up the solar luminosity and used the inverse square law to deteremine the astronomical unit. Got it to with 30 percent of the canonical value. (of course, Slashdot people will see the circular reasoning here, but letting the kids figure that out is part of the fun).
No tests - it's immediately apparent when someone doesn't get something, and when to take a different approach. Occasional homework (always an experiment: for instance, determine the vertical distance (in meters) from the sidewalk outside your house to your bed. Knowing your mass in Kg and the gravitational constant, find the amount of work it takes to walk into your house and go to bed. Notice that there's no "right" answer to this question, and it's unlikely that two kids will get the same answer)
Parents often bring muffins & goodies; the kids are curious, enthusiastic, and motivated. Best part: I take home a broad smile ... it's the high point of my week.
A friend of mine - a PhD chemical engineer - volunteers at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Another friend works as a docent at a nearby bird sanctuary.
All of us are busy, yet each of has something to contribute. Mix your interests with enthusiasm, toss in some creativity, then get out there and volunteer. You'll never know how much fun it'll be!
-Cliff on a sunny Saturday morning in Oakland, California
Wouldn't the purpose of the "sputnik moment" be to change the anti-science environment in this country.\? As such wouldn't it be better to judge its effect after the moment, rather than noting declines occurring before?
Support SETI@home
There should be a constitutional 500K to 1M maximum limit to any litigation in law.
That would clear out all the ambulance chasers, copyright lawyers, etc., and make
it O.K. to do a chemistry experiment in school again.
This same problem was what kept US companies, like Cessna and Piper, from making
airplanes for decades. When Clinton put a cap on liability, suddenly the US had
small aircraft companies manufacturing again.
If there were a way to get rid of the "litigation industry" in the US, everyone would be better off.
The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Book_of_Chemistry_Experiments , an amazing book now considered dangerous. The book was apparently removed from most public libraries. I think you can find a pdf via the wiki p links though - it is an amazing book.
Check out Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. Also check out Theo Gray's Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home - But Probably Shouldn't.
While unfortunately I didn't have this book as a kid, I had some others that were similarly "dangerous", along with a chemistry set with most of the necessary chemicals. I made gunpowder once to prove to myself I could do it.
In high school chemistry the teacher would let some of us do our own experiments in the lab, before school, during lunch, and afterwards. To see if it was there a friend and I went to the library and looked in an encyclopaedia for the nitroglycerin entry and from there we thought we could make some. And we did. When we did we'd fill those small paint jars modelers use, then we'd go out into some woods and throw them around. We only did it a couple of tymes before stopping. The first tyme it was a kick, the second tyme though was "We already did this".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Instead of publicly funding institutionalized warehousing of children/students
why not get rid of the centralized public school buildings system all together.
There is no necessity for these big human warehouses. If people want
daycare, they should pay for their own daycare.
Education can be done at home with an internet connection and
standard, secure, self paced, curriculum. Testing and socialization should
be done in shared, controlled facilities. Bookwork at home.
This would reduce costs and improve long term outcomes.
There are no threats to the US so dumbing down the sheeple and pouring Glenn Beck and fundamentalist religion in their minds is seen as a better course by the elites
For-profit or non-profit, private schools are not dumbing down people. You yourself point out how it was for you in a private Catholic school. Allowing school choice will allow more low income parents to send their children to good private schools. Or public magnate schools.
The truth is the post sounds like a rant.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You have to ask, why do we resort to standardized tests to "bust" bad teachers? Because the better alternatives were shut off.
It's almost impossible to fire a bad teacher nowadays. School principals should have the power to discipline and dismiss bad teachers at their own discretion. Teachers may rant and rail that this will lead to favoritism and other bad -isms, but it's better than using a dry, standardized test designed by some committee thousands of miles away.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
"The real truth is the Bolshevik revolution is what made schools in the US great in the 1950s and 1960s for engineering."
I think it also created a more egalitarian society in the US as well. Because the US had to compete for average standard of living as well.
So your so busy teaching basic math skills that a child SHOULD possess by the time they reach your grade that you can't entertain their curiosity into concepts that undoubtedly require basic math and reading skills to comprehend? Hmmm... Maybe the blame is misplaced. I think that's part of the problem. You can't skip the basics and go straight to science...or you end up with things like intelligent design filling in for analytical and critical thinking.
nowadays. School principals should have the power to discipline and dismiss bad teachers at their own discretion. Teachers may rant and rail that this will lead to favoritism and other bad -isms, but it's better than using a dry, standardized test designed by some committee thousands of miles away.
Neither one are any good, either making it hard to fire bad teachers or allowing principles to fire teachers on their own discretion. What's needed is a middle path, somewhere between the two extremes. What's to stop a principle from firing a teacher when there's a disagreement between them? Or do you think PHBs don't do that? Principles, and schoolboards, have to held accountable as much as teachers do. And that can be hard, how much money was spent on the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial? I don't like the feds handing out edicts states have to meet but there needs to be some sort of agreement between the states.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Never make the assumption that what motivates you motivates others. The students I help may still fail their class and fail the tests. This means they will have to retake the class. And continue to take math until they pass the tests. And they don't like math. Yet this doesn't motivate them to learn math.
This is indeed the heart of the problem. We make no serious effort to motivate students. We simply assume that they are motivated.
OK, there are many ways to motivate students. Reluctantly I will disregard the "sheer terror" method, because it interferes with concentration. :-) We're left with social status and parental pressure.
Parental pressure means you focus on the family. Take a student's class rank, as a percentile, and pay that many dollars to the family every week. I'm sure there are other ways. When educational success affects the parents (near-term, not many years away) you get the parents to care. Even if dad is just looking for drug money, he's going to care.
Social status works too, especially for the older kids. It's best to grant power. For example, you could require that the average class rank of a sports team (weighted by in-game time) always be above the average of the people who wanted to be on the team. You could require each prom couple has an average that exceeds that of the whole student body, ensuring that the top students can pair with anybody while the bottom students can only pair with top students. (nerds get the hotties) You could subject low-performing students to daily drug tests. You could allow top-performing students to skip class, sit in the wrong class, wander the halls, order pizza delivery, and leave early. Low-performing students could face a dress code involving grey Mao suits, while high-performing students can show up in thongs. You could adjust state law to let the top students drive cars at age 14 while making the bottom students wait until age 25. You could adjust state law to let top students have beer during lunch.
Right now, there is nothing to make parents care. Right now, students only care about winning the social war. Take advantage of what really motivates people, and education will happen.
Simply reward/punish the parents.
The easy way is money based on class rank. Even if mom just wants to buy crack, she will care.
When I was a teen I had a basement "laboratory" where I kept chemistry sets, electronics etc. I built amplifiers, radios, computing circuits, etc. The majority of these items are no longer sold for liability reasons.
You're trying to get smart people to be teachers. They are smart enough to know that a nice salary can disappear at a political whim. A temporary bonus won't do, and neither will a salary that smells like a temporary bonus. Things become almost believable if the state constitution says that math/science teacher salaries will average 2x the other teacher salaries.
There is also the shit work environment. Teachers need combat pay. At my workplace, nobody assaults me. So really, 2x probably isn't enough. 3x is more like it.
OK, once we prepare all these young scientists, what are they going to do, besides work at Home Depot and Mcdonalds?
Do we need a superabundance of engineering and scientific talent to salve our national pride, or can we actually point to lucrative careers after all the effing work of learning? Get back to me when American scientific talent can hitch its hopes to careers and causes.
To win:
There is nothing in here involving statistics. There is no experiment. There is no mystery being probed. There is no science.
The USSR Sputnik and US Explorer programs were part of the International Geophysical Year, 1957-58.
All the research parties knew well in advance and coordinated their efforts for a global snapshot of geophysical exploration toward Earth Science.
The US media and US Executive Office holders since, have attempted to roll this into the guise of "Cold War" psychology of a "Pearl Harbor" which no evidence supports.
Obama's "Sputnik Moment" is SHIT, the same as he.
-308
My junior high school math teacher was the one who introduced me to computers. The guidance counsellors had me slated for factory (assembly line) work. This teacher spent 2400 of his own money to buy two TRS-80 model 1 computers. Then he worked after school to teach us programming. It was completely unstructured, but it was FANTASTIC! We were able to learn at our own pace, and students helped each other learn the ins and outs of the machines. After two years I had to move onto high school where the computer labs were more structured. I enjoyed high school computer lab/course, but we were already beyond what it was teaching. Most of my classmates from junior high and myself were actually teaching the teacher and other students. We were WAY ahead of our time and I owe a great deal of gratitude to that math teacher. I am a computer specialist now, making over 80000 a year. If I had listened to the school counsellors, I would be unemployed now. My point, (sorry to have rambled so) is that sometimes unstructured learning is the best education one can get. Another point (in my opinion) is that teachers should be able to recover the cost of equipment and time they spend on unstructured learning. It can be the most fun, and greatest learning experience available. Teachers should be able to at least write off on their taxes the extra cost/hours under a federal law. Then maybe under state law award bonuses to these type of teachers and students. As a side note, and something to think about, my fellow students and myself were tricked into the after hours computer training. The teacher announced that there would be a pizza party after school for those interested in learning something very advanced and difficult. He didn't say what it was, but all I really was interested in was the free pizza. After the first day he organised us kids on bringing in pop and chips to consume as we learned. So we provided the food and fun from that point out, and we worked as a team to bring in the refreshments and who had time at the keyboard on the two machines. Man a great time had by all then. It was the greatest/fastest/most accelerated learning experience in my entire life. If only college was like that.
Cue the wayback machine to 1984ish. I'm either a 9th or 10th grader (sorry, started taking acid back then, memory's a little hazy on dates), I got into the science fair, because it was a way to get out of class and get my hands on a computer to use. TRS-80 Model III. See, back then, I was awestruck about computers. I did everything possible to get computer time. I took typing and office classes, I skipped class.
anyways, I didn't have a plan, so I took some source code for some figuring out rocket projectory or something, took who ever's name off of it (sorry dude, i was a stupid kid), put mine on it, and went back to playing video games on the computer.
Well, come science fair day, I get asked a bunch of questions about the program. Like what algorith i used, where it was in the source code and a bunch of other questions that I probably didn't fool anyone with made up crap.
Moral of the story? You do crap work, you'll get caught. Next time you steal someone elses work, study it, learn it, make it your own.
Be seeing you...
Harvard study: Hey, maybe we’re placing too much emphasis on a college education http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/02/harvard-study-hey-maybe-were-placing-too-much-emphasis-on-a-college-education/
And where are these people supposed to work? McDonald's flipping burgers? TFA does mention apprenticeships but how many of those are there? And without exposure to different professions how is a person supposed to know what they will like?
http://educationresearchreport.blogspot.com/2011/02/we-place-far-too-much-emphasis-on.html
That one doesn't name occupations either, only that some "will only require an associate's degree or a post-secondary occupational credential." Why do I ask? Because what are the pay for these occupations? Do they allow advancements? Are the workers easily replaceable by immigrants? And finally can they be outsourced?
Should there be a Law?
Whoo... Nitrating Glycerin's not really what I would call something to do in a High School chem lab. It's really easy for even the pros to blow themselves up doing it.
Yea, a bathtub's better.
Actually the lab had a refrigerator/freezer where we mixed everything. Those bottles we filled we then packed into an ice filled cooler. Except when we took them out of the cooler to throw we kept them cold. And we didn't hold the jars long.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
20 cents for one radish seed?
That's what genetic engineering is about. Patent the seeds then charge every farmer to use seeds. If farmers don't use your seeds, or saves seeds, then they get sued.
Fact is is that there is not a shortage of food. The problem is what is done with it as well as distribution. In the US more corn is grown to feed cattle, who naturally eat grass not corn, than what people eat. Other animals raised for food require more land for growing their own feedstock. Then there are problems with food distribution and storage. Food grains rotting due to poor storage in Punjab. Empty stomachs, rotting food stocks. Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm presently about to finish my bachelor's degree in physics, having planned to continue on to a PhD and then pursue a job in academia. My high school teachers, and even my professors now, actively encourage me and my classmates to do this. Evidently, the latter are either unaware of the current ridiculously high (# of physics PhDs)-to-(# of jobs in academia for physics PhDs) ratio, or they're propagating it deviously to keep up the cheap labor available to tenured professors in the form of pitifully-paid post-docs. I'm going to steer clear of the professorship route because America isn't capable of supporting the current number of continuously produced doctorates, and those who do obtain a doctorate end up facing hesitation from employers in industry due to being "over-qualified."
Instead, though I grew up with fanciful pipe dreams of being a scientist, paid to inquire about the universe, yada yada yada, I'm going to go into a career that will actually guarantee a reasonable level of job security, probably in the financial sector.
My point is that all of this talk about how America isn't producing enough scientifically motivated students seems outweighed by the fact that there are newly minted physics PhDs discovering they can't stay in academia, and being hard-pressed to find good work in industry, end up at starting positions at companies where their CS-major buddies from back in college are now years ahead of you financially and socially... if they're lucky.
Just as was the post I replied to. Hey that was yours.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
1. We don't have year round school. I grew up hearing a lot of techer complains, one of them being that kids loose so much on summer vacation. Everyone else works 12 months out of the year, why shouldn't teachers? You'll have higher pay and kids won't come back in September with an empty and unused brain.
2. Our nation is content to "get by." From Social Security to highways, we're a nation that loves to squeak by. National defense gets a bigger slice of the federal pie because defense spending creates millions of civilian jobs and is an important progressive foreign policy tool.
3. Fear. Who want's to take the risk that goes with dangerous subjects like chemistry, or shop class?
4. Politics. We've always had some kind of set cirrculum. Standarized tests are what is currently en vogue. Europeans have all kinds of standardized tests. A few European nations don't bother education kids past the age of 14 - your butt is shipped off to an apperticeship or trade school. Oh, and they're kicking our butts.
5. Institutional bitching. Another frequent complaint from my childhood was "oh Fairfax county gets all the grants because they hire people to write grants." Bullshit. My high school's drafting teacher was nearly fired for writing his own grant to modernize his classroom after being refused formal permission by the school board several times. Maybe your school sucks because the institution wants it to suck. Maybe your teachers expect everything handed to them by the system. Either way, it's a corporate attitude that has to end.
6. Lowest common denominator. Rember the "bell curve?" Well it's the product of a system that on the one hand needs a child's butt in the classroom to obtain funding, and on the other hand is pressured to move that child through the system regardless of how well that child performs in the classroom. It created a system that neither motivates the child or compells the teacher to reach out to the child that isn't skilled at rote learning.
7. Unrealistic expectations. Standardized tests grew out of a desire to obtain accountability over how taxpayer dollars are spent on compulsory education. Teaching is the only profession where accountability is treated as an insult to the profession. You shouldn't expect better schools or better pay when the taxpayer has little motivation to give you the funding.
8. Politicans. Our leaders enjoy nearly unlimited power over out lives because we are poorly educated. Starting in the 19th century, compulsory schooling was invented to train kids from the farm to work in factories. This created the "factory school model," and it's largely the same model we use in modern schools. The biggest change being the inclusion of teams in the classroom. So it's the "cubicle school model." The desired result is the same: an adult who has a bare minimum of skills needed to be a compliant worker, tax payer, and voter.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
We don't need to beat the Russians into space anymore. It's not 1957. We need as much interest and capability in engineering, technology, and math as we do in science.
When I helped run the local elementary school science fair, I encouraged engineering projects. I find it depressing the number of kids who do dull, boring projects and get good marks because they followed the scientific method. Those kids are ones who will be turned off to all science and engineering related fields.
A kid who builds a radio or does a math proof is just as deserving, if not more.
A kid who admits to being able to do the work will get beat up during lunch, gym, recess, or the bus ride.
To fix education, you must change the social environment.
Work that actually teaches is only useful for those who actually care to learn.
Essentially all students are motivated by social power, the vast majority of students are motivated by money (cold hard cash this week, not some savings bond), and essentially all students become motivated if the parent becomes motivated. As for the parent, again it is money.
Pay students based on performance. Pay parents based on performance. Give other rewards related to school activities, exemptions from rules, and so on.
Please look into Modeling Physics. It is a research-based physics curriculum that originated at Arizona State University. There are now extensions to chemistry, mathematics, and biology.
It is a strongly constructivist approach to teaching physics, where observations and laboratory experiments (including all phases of experimental design and analysis) lead to mathematical and other models of the phenomena under study. From what I have read of PSSC, some of the positive aspects of PSSC are present in Modeling today.
In fact, one of my favorite uses of WD40 is as a solvent, to clean and remove real lubricants from places that they aren't desirable.
I'd like to point out something... You said that you enjoyed Science when you were a kid? What about your classmates?
I loved science when I was in school, but I observed that I was a small minority in that respect. I'd point out that your students not sharing the passion you had for science when you were their age, does not necessarily say anything about today's youth. Personally, I don't think the kids have changed that much in the last 20-60 years. Sure, you might have been behaved... But I remember all kinds of stuff from when I was young. Lots of things we didn't take seriously then, that I would probably take more seriously now (E.g. I remember once making plans to lead a revolt and overthrow the facility at my elementary school...)
This article, along with something I heard someone say while playing CoD:Black Ops on Xbox Live leads me to believe we are well on our way to having the predicted future depicted in the movie "Idiocracy" come to fruition. A future where everyone is dumb, lazy, and over occupied with entertainment to care that they are too dumb and lazy to notice the world falling apart around them. I'm not sure what or when it started but it seems that kids today are FERVENTLY against being smart. This has got to be one of the major problems behind the lack of enthusiasm and grades, etc. we are seeing in math and science. The thing the kid (I'm assuming high school age from his deeper range of voice tones compared to the higher pitched tones from obviously younger kids) said over the voice com on Xbox was, "I'm glad he quit that faggy science sh**." They apparently have a kinect which picks up ENTIRE CONVERSATIONS your opponents have going on in the room. They were discussing another one of their peers in choosing classes for something (maybe college in the fall?). This made me immediately think to myself, "when did kids start thinking this way and how can we change it?" Does anyone have any ideas because this needs to change soon if we don't want to become a nation of mindless, adult aged kids going to China, India, and Japan for all of our technology and innovation in the not too distant future.
--- Nothing is secure.
I am a judge where I grew up. I know all the schools in the county. I was shocked to find out that even at the magnet school for science and technology that the science classes were being taught mostly by liberal arts teachers. That is, social studies and english teachers. They told me to be honest with my comments. No PC here. I was. When I saw crap I commented as to why it was wrong and how to find out how to do it right. So many were being led into just wrong thinking. Then once in a while I would come across a true gem. Someone that is truly a scientist. Makes it all worth while. I haven't seen one for about 3 years. This year is coming right up.
The goal was no child left behind. I've know many good teachers (both when I was in school and as friends who became teachers) and most really love to teach the students that want to learn, however, it's often those same teachers that don't want to teach the students on the other tail of the distribution. There are some that do both, but they often aren't the "star" teachers that people point to (aka, the Mr Escalantes of the world) as there are only 24 hours in the day, tradeoffs need to be made.
The goal of teaching isn't to have all the same teachers, but as a tax payer, it's to make sure that a reasonable public education is available to all. In that light, the teacher that pulls both tails of the distribution is much more valuble than one that just tugs on one end (e.g., the gifted and talented and/or the struggling english learner). But in reality, you need a variety of teachers to pull all parts of the distribution.
How do we make sure our schools are pulling all ends of the distribution? Measure it. Note that the standardized tests that people demonify aren't designed to measure the students (i.e., students aren't "graded" on the test, and the score doesn't even show up on any personal record), but to measure the distribution of students at a school to see if the teachers are doing a good job with all the students. Sadly, a large number of school districts and their teachers have decided to "game" the test and teach to it and convince potential low scorers to be absent and to bribe potential high scorers to be there in order try to skew their distribution higher.
Maybe if the standardized test is a poor measure of school progress because too many schools are gaming the system (not unlike the SAT or similar tests for individuals), another mechanism needs to be devised, but just lauding schools for spitting out high-achievers is just rewarding them for one side of the distribution. For a public institution like a school, they need to be held to a higher standard of efficiency.
Imagine if for instance if a casino were to advertize 40% of slot machine winners averaged 200% return on their money, but didn't have to say what the average return was? I don't think many would think that is fair advertising, but when a school says 40% of their students go to college, many parents somehow turn of that same critical thinking part of their brain. What about the other 60%? Shouldn't we try to measure it before we fund/patronize that enterprise?
All I hear is a bunch of crappy teachers crying about how they can't manage to do their jobs. If they were doing their jobs properly, there would not be a problem.
Here are some hints for you: Start failing and holding back students. Start requiring progress. Stop teaching to the lowest common denominator. Start imposing real discipline in the schools. Stop putting so much emphasis on social crap, political correctness, and sports. Teach the kids to think instead of teaching them to bow down before the PC down-offend-anyone alter. Stop letting the stupid death cult of christianity to dictate curriculum.
It has to deal with it because the pressure drives the suicide rate. The more pressure the more people are stressed too much. Duh.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Just as was the post I replied to.. Oh, that was yours.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Your looping....(Recursion?)
I think the phrase you're looking for is, 'I know but what , so there N'ya!'
not much left to see... walmart... MS take over of CS... :-(
thanx for the info
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Wealthiest guy I know barely got through a fundamentalist Christian high-school. He had me type up a term paper for him that read like, "Cars. Cars are fast. I like cars. Some cars are red." He asked me to increase the font to 20points so that it would fill three pages. I wept. He got an apprenticeship as an electrician, and then went on to get a contractor's license. The jerk (he is a jerk actually) is rolling in money.
There are two ways to make money in this world. Do things other people can't, or do things other people won't. The first category usually requires a college degree. The second category usually doesn't.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Yea, I'd love to have had parents like that. Then again, a few weeks ago I told my sister and brother-in-law I wish I had had their daughter's advantages. Six years old now she'd already started learning, in alphabetical order, American Sign Language, French, Irish, and Norwegian. She's in 1st grade in a Chinese immersion school. Now that may be too much pressure but she seems to like it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Wealthiest guy I know barely got through a fundamentalist Christian high-school. He had me type up a term paper for him that read like, "Cars. Cars are fast. I like cars. Some cars are red." He asked me to increase the font to 20points so that it would fill three pages. I wept. He got an apprenticeship as an electrician, and then went on to get a contractor's license. The jerk (he is a jerk actually) is rolling in money.
One, even though it wasn't a college degree or education he still received training, that is what apprenticeships are about. They are useful in other fields too, carpentry and plumbing for instance, but many positions are needed? One for every one hundred people? I doubt it. Construction can pay very well but when the economy depends on it things aren't good.
There are two ways to make money in this world. Do things other people can't, or do things other people won't. The first category usually requires a college degree. The second category usually doesn't.
Yet people still complain that immigrants, legal and illegal, are taking those jobs in the second category, as well as the first. Even there though, how many people are needed?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Your byline says nothing about dropping from 10 feet. It specifically says "10,000 feet". Since you're that stupid, or just trolling, this is my last reply on this subject.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I had a similar experience - my 5th grade science fair project was a simplified college physics lab (my dad was a professor - he set me up with an astronomy prof) using spectrographic analysis and some math to determine whether or not there was a supermassive black hole at the center of the Andromeda galaxy. I basically had to learn algebra to use Newton's gravitational equation. I didn't even get "honorable mention" but some asinine project about nail polish won. What was awesome, though, is my teacher and classmates were just as bullshit about it as I was. They knew I was capable of doing it.
Wealthiest guy I know barely got through a fundamentalist Christian high-school. He had me type up a term paper for him that read like, "Cars. Cars are fast. I like cars. Some cars are red." He asked me to increase the font to 20points so that it would fill three pages. I wept. He got an apprenticeship as an electrician, and then went on to get a contractor's license. The jerk (he is a jerk actually) is rolling in money.
One, even though it wasn't a college degree or education he still received training, that is what apprenticeships are about. They are useful in other fields too, carpentry and plumbing for instance, but many positions are needed? One for every one hundred people? I doubt it. Construction can pay very well but when the economy depends on it things aren't good.
WHAT? How many software engineers are needed? How many managers? How many people with doctorates in History? "How many positions are needed?", is a ridiculous question, because it is orthogonal to the question at hand which centers around if a degree is necessary. The point is that there are a LOT of ways to make money that don't derive from a college degree. My own profession required a degree, and I got one, but it is simple snobbery to imply that everyone needs one.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
How many software engineers are needed? How many managers? How many people with doctorates in History? "How many positions are needed?", is a ridiculous question, because it is orthogonal to the question at hand which centers around if a degree is necessary. The point is that there are a LOT of ways to make money that don't derive from a college degree.
You say there are a lot but you fail to list them or say how many there are, either in absolute numbers or as a percentage of the population. You evade the question saying "it is orthogonal to the question at hand which centers around if a degree is necessary". If you want to go down that road, no degree is needed as there are no necessities. Living itself is not necessary. No farmers needed. No sanitation workers needed.
My own profession required a degree, and I got one, but it is simple snobbery to imply that everyone needs one.
Just as snobbish as it is to imply I said everyone needs a college degree. All I asked was how many, though I did leave out "many" in my question, positions there are that pay well that do not need a degree. I even pointed out an apprenticeship can help with some but again how many positions are there that do not need at least that? Heck, I'll even make it easier and reduce education and training to a 2 year degree, an associate degree, as well as apprenticeships. My sister got an associate in nursing and she'd worked as a nurse for more than 20 years. A friend who got her associate degree worked as a paralegal. But I go back and ask how many well paying positions are there that only need 2 years education beyond high school or an apprenticeship? I contend there are not many careers that pay well that all that's needed for is a high school diploma.
And by that I mean allowing the person to get married and have a family, buy a house, save money for retirement, and not have to depend on Social Security, Medicare, or their children. Yes those are matters of personal responsibility. Make sure that each spouse is able to make their own way in the world before getting married. Make sure there is enough income so one person can be a stay-at-home parent before having children. Or have each parent work part-time, on different schedules so a babysitter or childcare isn't needed on a continuing basis. Maybe have a babysitter watch babies and young children once a week, for an evening out, but not much more than that. Start a college savings plan for each child, in case they decide they want to go to college.
They may not want to, but college is important to some. I know, it was important to me. And to my sisters. I came from low income parents, my dad enlisted and retired from the US Air Force and my mom worked part-time while raising 3 children and attending a technical school to become a lab tech for hospitals. She even took us to work sometimes to save money. She worked in a restaurant and would sit us in one of the booths. I rarely saw my father but my mother raised my sisters and I to be responsible and to believe we can do almost anything we set our minds to. So by the tyme I was a teen I was already working odd jobs, lawn or yard care, babysitting, or whatever I could find where people needed help. When I was able to, old enough, I applied for and got a job working in a restaurant after school. In 9th or 10th grade I decided I wanted to go to college and was leaning towards Computer Engineering. When it finally came to it, in 12th grade, I was torn between that and a marine science degree. Then like my older sister who joined the Army, and not having money to pay for college, I enlisted in the Army as well to save money to go to college when I got out. My younger sister skipped that and went straight to college, working her way through.
An accident delayed if not derailed my goal of getting at least a Masters if not a Professional or PhD degree. Now life itself is a struggle. But getting a degree is still important to me.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?