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New House of Reps Site on Science, Math, & Tech Education
Michael Lach writes "The U. S. House of Representatives recently lauched a web site documenting recent hearings and noise about K12 science, math and tech education. Interesting comments from all sorts of big-wigs. There's a place for comments--it looks like they might actually do something on this issue at last. "
Perhaps in your math class they will teach the Biblical theory that pi = 3 along with the "theory" that it is an irrational number approximately equal to 3.14159. Then you can have a class debate on this subject and each student can decide for him or her self.
That is ridiculous!!! Algebra is an essential to calculus, much like arithmetic is an essential to algebra. Anyone with half a brain would know that if you know calculus, you know algebra (or at least 8th grade algebra). How horrible is the education system if they make rules about math requirements a person must have, but don't even know what those requirements really encompass.
If we let 6th graders decide if they wanted to attend school or not, we'd see about a 95% dropout rate. Tell me, when you were in 6th grade, would you have rather been learning fractions or playing outside with your friends?
And what happends to all of the "weeded-out losers"? Do they just disappear? Get sent to prison? Work at McDonalds for life? What do we do with all of the unskilled morons then?
paranoid.android
What does my view on the creation of the universe have to do with whether or not I am a Darwinist? What is a Darwinist, anyway? Someone who follows that one dead guy's teachings like a religion, I guess.
:P
Whichever flavor of evolution you like is fine with me. I'm wide open. But if you are going to stand up in a classroom and tell the teacher the world is 4000 years old cause some other bunch of dead guys said so, you fail!
Nope, I don't read much Darwin. I read sci-fi. Religiously
-kabloie
P.S. Teaching about Darwin could easily be done in History, next to Gandhi and Marilyn Monroe, people who have brought change the human view of the world.
P.P.S. Odin was first, of course.
Genesis 1:1 heavens and Earth :)
Basically this was an opening statement, it was a quick synapsis of the whole thing, not part of the order.
1:3 light
1:4 darkness
Both are stated as being basically created at the same time, then seperated. Kinda strange I guess, but this could be seen as the stars forming in the galaxy from the expanse of gasses
1:8 Heaven again!
1:9 Earth again!
No not again, first time. 1:1 was synapsis remember
1:12 plants on the land
1:14 light again! darkness again too!
slight rehash basically you could see the stars now from earth. and the stars where still finding their position in the sky.. things moved pretty fast after the big bang
1:16 god calls the moon a light - heh heh!
Didn't say such thing, said greater light in day lesser light in night, could be talking about star light, or whatever its really not clear, but still there is light comming from the moon, even if it is reflected. Would you say a sunroof was a "light source" I personally would
1:20 finally sea animals, and birds
1:24 beasts of the earth
1:27 man finally
yea.. that pretty much completes the cycle of evolution.. I see no problem here. Just some guy with something to prove.
ahhh....never mind, I'm from Louisiana.
1) sorry, I did ramble on for what should have been a brief example - the point goes on to #2
2) All I originally said was, that if science is not 100% sure, then it should not be "sold" as such. Philosophically speaking, the only way one can be 100% sure of something is with faith. Not science. God, of course, does not corner the market on faith. Folks are perfectly able to have 100% faith in science, but that's when science stops being science and starts being a religion. That's what I object to. I didn't say scientific method was wrong, or that there was a better method. I'm just saying that it has limitations. Less limitations than anything else, but still, has limits.
3) please. non-issue. The point was made above in #2.
4) No, you did not say you want to control minds, but by saying "your ideas are dangerous", and blaming the loss of human lives on them, starts to sound a little like some other friends we've heard of like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot (and quite a few Popes too).
You may be happy to know that I agree 100% on faith=irrational. It's good stuff, you should try it some time, but I see you already have. Best taken in small doses, with salt. Kind of like Tequilla.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Whole language is doodoo!!! You betray a decided, how shall I say..."I'm a teacher!!" subtext. Modern education theory has been shoved into every classroom in the nation. Proponents of "modern educational theory" have been in control of every teachers' union in the country for decades. If local school boards have been horrified by this, and have resisted total implementation of a suspect social (NOT educational) experiment, they are applauded by the people they are supposed to serve. Catering to apathetic slackers (that's a repetitive redundancy)(and that makes a double pair of them...doh!) may not be the teachers' fault, but if the result is social promotion or outcome based success....well, I guess progress from point b to point c is something, but if the goal is to reach, say, point t, we (citizen, parents, taxpayers) should be forgiven if we question the process. Anonymous Bosch
"OK, I'm going to stomp your dishonest ideas once and for all. :-)"
Good -- start right off with an ad hominem attack. Shows scientific thought. That two people disagree does *NOT* mean one is lying, ok?
The original poster is correct, every scientist should accept the possibility that their favorite theories may be refined or overturned. For some theories, the likelihood is small as you say, but it needs to be considered possible if science is to be more than dogma with a high probability of truth. Argue the evidence for evolution as you did quite well with that quote about speciation, but don't make generalizations about the reliability of scientific theory.
"There's a great deal of evidence that the Christian god is fabricated out of whole cloth. Similar evidence exists for every other god described in any human culture. By induction, I can extend that evidence to a tentative statement "There is no god." "
The existence of a god or gods is not a scientific question, unless you can frame it as a hypothesis and test it. Some of the beliefs of some religions may be disputable in this manner. To conclude that bears on the existence of gods is not logically sound. All existing religions could be completely wrong and their could still exist a god. I certainly haven't seen any papers on the subject of gods from any scientific journals.
Like you, I don't happen to think it likely there are gods most religions would recognize as such, but I'd rather not hear people incorrectly claiming that science "disproves the existence of God". Its not true, and besides it gets the rabid creationists even more fired up. The moderate Christian you replied to is not the enemy.
The universe is likely a stranger place than you, or I, or current science can imagine. Try not to assume you know the answers -- science doesn't.
Jim
Yes it would be ok except we would need to teach every religion's theory about the universe. Science would turn into a religion class.
>Can't single kids out for special treatment and all that.
The problem with this is every parent wants it, and the special treatment is more causative of future success than indicative of previous success. If *any* student is pulled out for closer one-on-one work, they will do much better. Allocating those resources only for those already at the top of the class is hardly a good strategy.
But kids definately shouldn't be bored in class. A good teacher can arrange more advanced and independent work by kids who don't need hand-holding in some subject. We would do better to train teachers in keeping all the kids engaged, than to allocate special resources for those already on top.
What tends to happen is the rich parents insist on special treatment for their kids.
In Sweden all kids have gone to public schools for the better part of the century. And those schools were actually pretty good. Lately they have become troubled. We also have private schools now (heavily regulated of course. This IS Sweden after all. :-) But for many years it worked pretty fine.
>Why am *I* paying for other people's education? I'd rather further my own.
So you are greedy. I have no problem with paying taxes for things like education, health care and care of the elderly. If everyone else around you are educated, you will see the difference in economic growth. If two of them start their own companies, you will have more chances to get employed, etc.
Also lets not forget that an education is the best defence against extremism. Someone who has been taught to think critically about things will probably not as easily succumb to ideologies like fundamentalism and fascism.
>As for the other comments about more bums etc.. I doubt it would be a problem. People usually realize that there is no money in having no skills and will take some training and get a job.
You seem to live a very priveledged life. You have obviously never had to deal with longtime unemployment. If they have no skills, how the hell do you think they can afford the time and money to get training?? Also, you don't consider some very basic things about human nature. People who are unemployed for long periods of time usually get very depressed. Depression keeps them from looking for jobs. Some take to alcohol or drugs to relieve the boredom. This further decreases their chances to get jobs, and then crime is one of the few ways one have to survive. Great society!
>Point is, there is work available even for people of little skill. And oppertunities to move up in the world with a little work.
This is only because the American economy is good right now, and has been a very long time. The Swedish economy has gone through some tough times the last couple of years, even if it is booming right now. And believe me, you really feel a chill when you know that lots of people are unemployed, companies are doing bad, no one can afford to help you if you get into trouble...
If times get hard and people get fired left and right a very different picture emerges. The markets are international today, and will be even more. Do you think low skilled Americans who work in, say, textiles will enjoy competing salarye and work-hour wise with a billion Chinese, Indonese and Indians??
If the pampered western world wants to continue to live in prosperity, we must compete with knowledge instead. Therefore, to end mandatory education is about the stupidest thing you can do. It's a one way road to become a third world country.
Cheers,
Lars Westergren
Only if you can roll out that wave of the future to absolutely EVERYONE, regardless of (especially) economic ability.
As citizens, we all have a right to an equal public education whether or not we choose to take it, and if everyone can't home-school or hit the Net, and that's what they need for their equal public education, you've excluded a class of people from a public service, regardless of how well it works for the best and brightest. Not only would that be morally wrong, it would also destroy this country even more than Corporate America has already.
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
The unfortunate reality of public schooling is blatantly obvious. Children are not only NOT taught to think, more importantly they are discouraged from it. Creating free thinkers means that the children will start asking questions that teachers cannot, or are not allowed to answer.
If we teach them to be free thinkers then they might get all sorts of crazy ideas. In all my time at public school, the concept of free thinking was never, ever raised. It's a bit like Dead Poets' Society. Not until my first year in college did any instructors mention the idea of free thinking, and only then because they knew we had never been taught to do it. It takes a long time to unlearn the crap they teach in public schools.
Indeed, with the possible exception of Australia, the United States is the only industrialized nation in which a significant portion of the population considers creationism to be any more credible than a flat earth.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
"useful in any application"? What about extra-solar system navigation?
My oldest child entered high school for the first time recently. And apart from the clusters of parents obviously remembering what was the best years of their lives - the thing that struck me most was that 25 years after I entered high school it was still recognizable. Someone please show me an organization or institution other than a religious one that still looks, works, flows, sounds, appears and is laid out the same way now as it was a quarter century ago. I'm outraged that while the world, business, media and all of the expectations we have of our young people have all been altered into something as different from that 25 years ago as was my generation from the agrarian culture of the last century, still our schools believe and are allowed to function as if they were in some timeless glass bottle.
h er-country, functionally illiterate duds who will be running things in about 15 years.
It's not just the technology, it's the type and use of information that's different, it's a different way of being able to learn - at least anywhere else but school. What is important now is imparting to students the techniques and the desire and understanding of how to learn and where to go to learn it. It's the ability to quickly winnow out what's unimportant and organize a coherent idea. What's not important is the ability to write a term paper from hundreds of 3x5 index cards. On the technology front, I mean, come on, is it that abstract an idea that if you can't afford enough teachers then you group classes via video, etc. even if only in the same building? Why do we still cling to the 183 day school calendar - in rough numbers that's 1,100hrs/year class time and on a per class basis with 6 classes/day equals 183hrs/class/year or about 4.5 work weeks. Or 27 weeks total educational class time/year. Well 96% of us don't harvest crops in the summer. Does anyone wonder why US kids slide further and further back. In many countries school is considered to be a young person's job and the school week is 5.5 to 6 days or 5 days/week with longer days - ~8 hours. Is it not possible to simply extend the school year that way or - horror of horrors, make the same daily/weekly schedule 11 months long?
And who is going to pay for all this 'radical' education? Well you are unless you want to preside over an entire generation of unmotivated, undereducated, disinterested, attention-span challenged,disorganized,job-outsourced-to-some-ot
Just because most people believe that the world was creatred by god does not mean that most people belive in creationism. Most people who take the view that God created the world do so by basically saying that god created the big bang.
Personally I think home schooling is an essentially bad idea. One of the main thing you should learn in school is to interact socially with people and related skills. Everybody who I know who has had home schooling for a signifigant amount of time lacks these skills. Sure they may be academically briliant, but when it comes to interacting with other people they are completely clueless twats.
College algebra is not like HS algebra. It IS a class that is taken after Calc1 and Calc2, Vector Calc, etc.
I can't tell you exactly what the courses consist of, but I believe it is highly theoretical. Mathematics is much more encompassing than what you can do with numbers.
Now whether this is a class that should be required for teaching is another question...
Of course, cutting back on the funding will cut school budgets, and let me tell you, we need all the money we can get. But you do have a good point, so I say go for it.
> People usually realize that there is no money in having no skills and will take some training and get a job.
If they relized that, why would they drop out of school in the first place?
>Before government got involved education was much better
And when exactly was that? Not anytime too recent. Just last week in US History we learned about how New England required schools for towns with populations over 500 (or some number) back in the 1600's. So the government has controlled the education system for a long time.
And a result of that schooling was that New England had one of the highest literacy rates in the world, much more than England or the South since school wasn't mandetory there.
Oh dont' get me started on my typing class last year. I tried to test out of it, but the test was so full of crap about formating that no one but the keyboard teacher cares about, that I failed. So I had to take the class. It was incredibly easy because I already know how to type, but it just wasted a semester that I could have used for something more interested. Not to mention I hated the teacher. And PE is a wasted class too. The only reason I like it is because it's a free 100 to help my GPA. But it's worthless otherwise. I'm so glad I never have to take it again.
When I was in high school, it was apparent to me that one of the big reasons that people didn't do well enough in math or science was standards. The level of math and science understanding that was accepted as good by both the school and the community (ie., knowing enough to get a B in a class) was obviously insufficient. I knew so many people that could get A's in math, but when they were confronted by a real problem that tested understanding, they could hardly make any progress. It was only my own intellectual curiosity that led me to learn math and science decently well. I think that if the bar is raised on what is considered an acceptable level of math and science understanding and the community emphasizes to students that getting to that level is necessary to avoid going through life looking like a moron, things would probably improve.
>This isn't teaching me anything after I learn how to do a few.
Exactly! This is a huge problem. Educators are aware of this problem. You will see it in the literature as the debate between "back to basics" or "list of facts" teaching (what you're complaining about) and more inquiry based teaching methods.
The "back to basics" movement is very political. The reason you still see this sort of trash in our schools is all about politics, not about educators.
There is a book which may interest you called None of the Above by David Owen. It was last printed in 1985 and I believe it is about to be reprinted this month. Fatbrain did not show it, but Amazon is taking orders.
It's a very interesting expose of the SAT and the pseudo-science behind it. I highly recommend it to anyone who is about to take the SAT, LSAT, or any other standardized test.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I can't believe that the current crop of presidential candidates think that Creationism ought to be taught on par with Evolution, if not to the exclusion of Evolution. Some explain that a majority of US residents think creationism should be taught, but this only indicates tat they have not learned the scientific method.
Admittedly, there are some extreme fundementalists who think they can show a scientific basis for creationism, but to do this they deliberately ignore the vast body of evidence pointing the other way. They are also quick to identify the few oddities (such as dinosaur footprints being found along side human footprints) as if a single example would outweugh all the other evidence for creationism (one I was thinking about last night was how the human body plays host to so many other living organisms (e.coli, mitochondria, fungi, viruses, etc., are we to believe that since "we were created in God's image, that God has athlete's foot and depends on mitochondria to convert chemical energy into thermal and kinetic energy?)
One thing I find puzzling is that the creationists aren't equally upset about teaching such absurd "theories" as relativity, gravity, a non-earthcentric universe, but they like to point out that evolution is "just a theory". It demonstrates again a clear misunderstadning of what science is.
Anonymous Secular Humanist
I couldn't follow it blindly. Because they never taught all the possible scenarios. It always worked out that what they demonstrated in class didn't match up to what you encountered in the book. I had to create my own ways of understanding it. This inevitably conflicted with the instructor's way of doing it. And we all know that if you don't do it THEIR way it is INVALID. I hated that sort of bs. That and SHOW YOUR WORK. Dammit if I got the damned right answer maybe I'm good enough I don't need to show my work!! sigh
>No social promotion,no grading on a curve
Every parent is against social promotion until it's _their_ kid. And the problems are not generally low income kids -- social promotion is entrenched by those with the influence and power to keep it that way: the doctor's kid, the lawyer's kid, the football star, etc. All these folk are against social promotion until one of their kids fails. Then the teacher is fired, the student goes on, and the next teacher knows better than to fail someone if they want to keep their job.
As a product of a purely public education and a member of a family comprised largely of teachers, I feel qualified to comment on the state of our educational system.
The only thing that is lacking from our public schools is a motivation to learn. You can not make a pupil learn when they have no desire to. Conversely, nothing can stop a student who wants to learn.
I am a Chemical Engineer. I tested out of college calculus despite the fact that my high school calculus teacher was one of the worst I'd ever had. How? I sought help elsewhere. I got a tutor. I studied the book.
How many of us learned to program in a classroom? Not many I'd guess. Yet, I'd stake the farm on the fact that most of us learned to program faster than we ever learned anything in school. Why? Because we wanted to. It was our own project. We did it by trial-and-error, reading a book, following other people's examples.
It doesn't matter how you teach a child... the only thing that matters is whether or not they want to learn.
-- First post (by a female living in a state that begins with M and does not end in a vowel with a birthday that falls
>Good god. That's about as bad as race norming.
There's ample evidence that SAT scores are racially biased. In fact, there is data showing that asking someone who feels threatened as a race to fill out a racial profile before a test impacts their test score. So there's a documented direct mechanism.
> anybody here ever read "The Bell Curve"? Interesting stuff, and it's massively documented compared to the usual PC attacks on it.
Being documented, by itself, is not enough. And the attacks on it are not generally PC, but rather regard basic data & analysis techniques. The authors live with a delusion that you can take bad data, apply enough math, and get good results.
Stephen J Gould has published a bit on "the bell curve" in particular, though The Mismeasure of Man refuted all of their arguments before they bothered to publish their book. New copies of "The Mismeasure of Man" include his essay speaking directly to "The Bell Curve".
>AFAIK, the major unions all oppose any form of merit pay
I'm not sure that's true. Most merit pay programs that have been proposed have been based on norm reference test score results, which is a Bad Idea (tm), for all the usual reasons that norm referenced tests fail to measure anything useful.
I would be curious to see how the unions would react to a merit scale based on something else (e.g. criterion based testing).
1) Stop studying the problem.
2) Stop pumping money into new buildings.
3) Stop making a bogus Education Masters a requirement.
4) Let communites run their own schools.
5) Pay teachers more.
Holding teacher accountable is dangerous. If you were teaching a bunch of braindead morons you would be held responsible for their lack of intelligence. Hardly fair. You can't always educate pork. Brad
So we should be protected from witnessing prayer in a public place? So then, you would be effectively taking away certain rights to speech. If I am no longer allowed to pray to my God in public...
The issue is not whether you are allowed to pray. This issue is whether you are allowed to force me to pray, and further to use your prayer. You're welcome to pray all you want. You're not welcome to force that view on others. Get the difference into your head.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Why not look at the science of education instead of mouthing off random anecdote-derived theories of what should happen in schools? Cognitive science has a lot to say on the subject of how humans learn and how to use our understanding of human learning in schools.
Take a look, for example, at John T. Butler, Schools for Thought (MIT 1994). Or look at an example of school systems built around cognitive science like the Edison Project.
While I can understand people having very strong feelings about school, I'd ask all of you not to throw your critical thinking abilities and penchant for evidence out the window. There is a reasonable way to approach education!
I can't seem to log in at this new site.
donald.braman@yale.edu
Returning schools to the community will only ensure that poor communities have poor education and rich communities will have variable education.
In most of the nation this is true anyway, even in the states that have large amounts of state control and little community control. If one day we all woke up with schools completely being run by Washington, I would suspect that the same problem would exist.
Out of all the school districts in this country, probably only about 10% will fall into the "good" category. The rest fall into the categories of "well-funded" or "crappy."
The 10% number is likely correct. Although funding is much more equal than one would think. For instance, here in Ohio, a state with a very severe school inquality problem, the schools which spend the most per pupil are not necessarily the best performing. (The top two districts for funding per pupil in Ohio are Cleveland and Dayton, certainly far from being the best performers. Actually, both of them are atrociously inefficient in what they do with money.) The schools that spend the least on students actually fall right into the middle of the pack perfomance wise.
The federal government must set proper standards that are followed by all schools, regardless of where those schools are located. Schools that do not meet the standards must be improved and adequate funding must be provided.
Schools that do not meet standards are rarely given more money, strangely, they are usually denied new grants. That is how the system works here in Ohio.
For instance, schools will be given new grants if they meet proficiency test minimums, and a few other criteria. Richer schools hate the system, because then they have to waste time doing things they can't care less about. Poorer schools have a difficult time meeting the criteria, through no fault of their own, and forgo the grants. Schools in the middle are usually torn between the two areas. The only winners are schools who figure out the system. For instance, there is a school system that has mostly abandoned its own curriculum to teach to the proficiency tests, and make sure that they meet the state mandated criteria. They are very successful in getting the money, but they aren't really all that good.
I would be highly surprised if the federal government could be that successful in establishing school guidelines. Ohio's constitution, written to keep as many things as possible at the local level, has turned into a complex barrier for school funding issues. The federal constitution will do the same. I can't see it succeeding, as is the case with most federal intervention.
I think what they meant was that the wrote a program that divided all numbers from 1-1000 by all other numbers from 1-1000, sorted them, and found the one closest to pi. Personally I don't find the approximation that useful in that it is only accurate to six decimal places and it takes six digits to describe it. You would be equally well off just memorizing pi to six decimal places. You could also use other approximations like the cube root of 31, which is accurate to 3 decimal places, and takes three digits to describe.
The algebra and geometry courses that a math major takes in junior or senior years are very much highly theoretical courses far beyond what everyone (should) be exposed to in high school. I was a math major for a bit (before xfering to CS), and I still remember the beginning of my algebra text: "A group is a k-tuple, consisting of a set of operands and k-1 operators". Considering that there were two solid years of math prereqs before I could even enroll in the class, I don't think that's what the average college of education student is getting when they take "College Algebra".
By the time you get to high school, it's already too late to do much good. A small contingent of "bright" students has basically been self-selected by then. Also keep in mind that the lion's share of these students come from families of educators and engineers, or in general that they have parents that tried to encourage them. Our high school was good, but our elementary science education was almost nonexistent. I remember classes where you weren't assigned a science textbook, you stored it on the shelf, and it never got taken home for any reason. And this is the age at which interest in that sort of thing *starts*. If the kids don't get encouraged at home, and science/tech ed is basically blown off, then forget about it.
my question is this:
how many of you out there learned your skills at a public school?
I. The fact that you can use Roman numerals correctly is a credit to your home-grown math skills. I know plenty of 14-year-olds who couldn't write 1-100 in Roman numerals, no matter how much time you gave. (heck, most adults I've met are the same way...)
II. Congratulations on your schooling. I wish all children were so fortunate.
III. My greatest lament about home schooling is that much of it is religiously funded. All of the home schooled children I have met have had grants to their families from religious organizations for purchase of textbooks and other materials. (one girl, when she was a HS freshman, showed me her biology text, which had an entire chapter on the evils of evolutionism.) While I don't begrudge you (or anyone) the right to believe what you want (even though I disagree with you on the creation thing), I wish it were possible for all persons, regardless of religious affiliation, to get equal financial assistance with home schooling. Someone in this thread I believe suggested vouchers working for home schooling. I believe that is an excellent idea, as long as, as they suggested, the vouchers be dependant on the child's passing equivelency testS. Plural. Every few years, to make sure the kid is still ahead of his "peers". Don't wait until graduation to see if the kid is being screwed over for the cash. And make sure the parent has a HS degree (for teaching an elementary/middle school age kid) or a college degree (for teaching HS age kid). Sure, it doesn't ensure that the parent is capable of teaching, but you have to have *some* measure.
IV. I can think freely, out of the box It appears that, while being independant of government brainwashing, you may not be quite as free from corporate brainwashing. ;)
V. Sleeping 4 am to 10 am? I'm jealous. 6 hours of sleep a night is enough for maintainance, but I need at least 8 or 9 to feel good. (were I Christian, I'd be doomed for my envy of someone I know who requires only 3-4 hours of sleep every 48 hours...think of how much more coding you could do that way...)
VI. You mention being free to focus on what you like. Out of curiousity, what *do* you like? And how far have you gone with it? Chemistry? Physics? Calculus? If you have so much free time, and already program in four languages and seem to enjoy it, spend some of that free time looking into this stuff. You'll probably enjoy it. (though I don't know what your parents' education is like; will they be able to keep up with you when you're working on differential equations at 17?) Philosophy? Economics? Your sig file advocates Libertarianism; how much have you read on it? (not saying anything negative; just wondering how thorough your understanding is) VII. Along similar lines, you claim an ability to think freely and believe what you think is right. You also appear to hold Christian beliefs. How much have you studied other religions, or the history/background of your own? (again, I'm not flaming or even challenging. I'm merely curious as to how much inquiry went into the decision of Christianity as a personal belief system.) Thanks for sharing; I'm someone who got around many of the limitations of the US education system (with more than a little help from my parents) and I'm always interested in hearing from others who have successfully worked around the system.
Yes, that is a plausible compromise between the Bible's decription of creation, and the theories of evolution. Many people I know subscribe to such ideas. The people who are calling themselves "Creationists", and are trying to get Creationism taught in schools along with or instead of Evolution Theory, are saying something completely different. To summarize, from The Creation Research Society (one of the big organizations pushing for creationism education), Creationism consists of the following principles:
* The Bible is the written Word of God. Genesis is simple historical truth, and should be taken literally;
* All basic types of creatures, including man, are direct creations of God. Minor changes within those types might have occured since then;
* Noah's flood was a historic, worldwide event;
* Christ is the savior.
As you can see, this agenda is pretty hard to swallow for anyone non-christian. It is also solidly outside the realm of science, and should not be taught as such, particularly not in the public schools, which are forbidden to endorse one religion over others.
In addition, Creationists generally either assign a specific age to the earth of something between five and six thousand years old, or at least say it's no more than ten thousand years old. This flies in the face of hard observational evidence and theories of not just evolution, but physics, chemistry, astronomy and geology.
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Open mind, insert foot.
That's all that's needed. 1) Hold the children accountable: that is, grade them according to their knowledge. No social promotion,no grading on a curve, no welfare benefits because you screwed around from K-12. 2) Hold the teachers accountable: that is, grade them also according to their results.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I agreed completely with him. Ideas arn't always nice. In fact, I believe that you should be killed for being so stupid (god? Pschaw!). Just because my though isn't nice, PC, or well stated at all doesn't mean that I have *ANY* less right to speak it.
Yes, of course. Such a simple idea. Heck, we might as well divide humanity into clearly labled catagories for these different tasks. Lessee... the educated can be called Alphas, below them the Betas, all the way down to the menial task workers that we can call Deltas...
It'll be a brave new world... *grin*
from the text of this webpage:
so which is it? does the government want to teach our children well so that they can come up with inventions like public key encryption? or would they rather ban this encryption and let other children in other countries work with such things?
this is why our government is useless. they pull in two different directions on every issue. lets make sure we have a strong research capacity, but god forbid they are researching something we dislike.
fucking retards.
My Computer Science class is covered under the Math Department, which means we get diddly squat. It's sorta funny, because everyone of the computers in there has an Ethernet card, yet they aren't networked. And this was the FIRST year of the computer club, I was amazed when I found that out because I had just moved here. So one of the first things we're going to do is network the computers together. At least those computers are running a semi-recent OS, Windows 95. In my Web Design class, there is only one computer with Windows 98, the rest are Windows 3.1. And the one's with Windows 3.1 don't have a browser, so it's a wee bit hard to check your HTML. So we have to code in Notepad, save to disk, then go over to the "powerful" computer (like a P166) and check it out in the browser. It's a huge hassle and it really sucks.
Look around at society. This is exactly what I see. Instead of "aplha" and "beta", etc. labels we have people who make "under 20K", "20-30K", 30-50K", etc.
t'll be a brave new world... *grin*
Already is.
yeah, well, heres the quote from the webpage.
At about the same time, an entirely different scientific discipline yielded an equally unanticipated but important discovery. Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman were engaged in research on computational complexity, a sub-discipline of theoretical computer science. Their pursuit of abstract mathematical concepts led them, however, to the foundation for public key encryption, a mathematics-based methodology that can be used to protect electronic information. Today, many years later, their discovery is felt profoundly, as encryption not only protects from prying eyes the e-mails we send, but also has made the burgeoning realm of electronic commerce viable by ensuring the confidentiality and security of internet-based financial transactions.
Sheesh... I never said this was all "positive" social interaction. What was said is that I learned a lot from it.
In high school you learn that people can be horrible, and hopefully you learn to accept that, and learn how to handle it.
You can not tell me that your life is so hunky dorry now that you never come across cruel and ignorant people.
I did not come across many of them in college... I certainly did in highschool, and I certainly do now.... there are plenty out there!
Stop me if I'm wrong here, I understood the statemnet about newtons theories having almost zero percent chance of being proven wrong. But, then you continued on to say evolution also has about zero percent chance of being proven wrong. :)
HEHEH.. prove it!
Or, at least, every genuine expert in the various branches of the computer industry that I know became experts through experimentation, study of source code, simply trying to do something, and reading books. You can't spoonfeed this stuff.
;)
That said, some of us got our introduction in formal settings, but the substantial learning was self-directed.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
You may be right about your momentum point, I certainly have no references which I can confirm either presentation of his second law, only that most schools teach the law as f=ma, not f=mv'+vm'.
However, there are other points where Newton's laws produce incorrect results. For example, Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation does not produce correct results if the objects are moving toward or away from each other rapidly. It assumes the change in relative location would have an instant effect on the change in force, yet this is not the case. Also, while Newton's laws do explain most features of orbits, they don't predict effects such as the precession of orbits like Mercury's.
The bottom line is, some of Newton's laws of Mechanics have been shown to be not strictly accurate. However, for most conventional applications, they are certainly accurate within the precision required, and are quite useful.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Well thanks for stepping up and admitting that you marked it down.
Where did I call anyone who disagreed with me an idiot? What I called them is irrational. That's not an insulting word, but it is in fact the *most accurate* word that exists for those who believe in creationism.
Irrational is belief without proof. That's almost the same definition that the word 'faith' has. If you have some other definition that you are going by, then you should be aware that your internal dictionary is non-standard!
So, I take it back. It's not that you couldn't handle my opinion, it's just that you didn't UNDERSTAND my opinion.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
If I am not mistaken, there is only one representative in the House that has a science background, and that would be Vern Ehlers from Grand Rapids, MI. I believe he was a physics professor at Calvin College, and from what I have heard he was a good prof.
The ideas are indeed dishonest. They are not truthful. I never said that he was lying, but I did say that he was repeating ideas that are dishonest. I'm sure he believes them, and that's a good reason why the educational system needs to be overhauled. When intelligent people believe things that are wrong, there's a problem.
I agree with your statements about scientific studies of god. There's no evidence to show that god exists, so why fabricate him?
And finally, I wasn't calling his Christian ideas dangerous, but his complete mis-understanding of science and scientific inquiry dangerous. Come on people! We're living in 1999 and science is all around us! It's inexcusable not to have an inkling of how science works.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
People need to pay attention.
People need to ask questions.
Take all the "new" revelations about Waco
in the press lately.
Those of us that are "conspiracy nuts" have
known this for years.
We pay attention.
We ask questions.
Everytime I encounter a Creationist, I see living proof that humankind definitely has a close relationship with small brained tree-swingers and knuckledraggers....
..
Pat Robertson, for example. Or maybe Dan Quailye.
> Weed 'em out earlier is what I think we should do.
Unless you propose exterminating them, too, this doesn't address the issue. They are part of our society & it is very much in our interest to get them into our economy in a productive way. Otherwise we pay for it later when they can't get jobs, etc. Bluntly, aside from it being reprehensible, we can't afford to let huge numbers of our population just slip into ignorance.
Besides, the largest problems faced by our schools are not student disruptions. The problems have much more to do with $20 per student yearly classroom budgets, lack of teacher training, etc.
For example, most states never train their teachers in new curriculum at the time the state adopts new curriculum. The teachers merely get this fat document dropped on their desk, having had almost no part in it development. Frequently they don't have the training to effectively apply that curriculum, or don't get what exactly it's driving at, since they had to part in making it.
We need to invest in such training if we want curriculum documents to be more than door stops.
It's a dumb checklist.
It's the same method used by PHBs to buy software, and hire engineers.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
When my son was half way through 1st grade, she gave him the end of year math test for 2nd graders. He missed one question. By the time he finished 2nd grade, he was doing math coursework from the mid 4th grade level, and his reading level was average for the end of 3rd. Let me point out again that all this was done purely on the teacher's initiative; he tends to finish his assignments early, so she gives him the other work both to keep him busy and to find out just where his level is.
My wife and I have inquired about the possibility of getting him into more advanced math classes, since he obviously has a knack for it and is spinning his wheels in the current class. No can do. His grade is his grade, and he'll learn what his grade learns. Whether or not he already knows it is immaterial. Can't single kids out for special treatment and all that.
He has been 'disciplined' at this same school and threatened with suspension because he likes to wear baseball caps backwards. Why is this a problem? Because according to the school, this constitutes 'gang activity'. I should point out that I live in a fairly wealthy suburb; the closest thing to gangs out here are the local wine tasting clubs.
The point of all this? Schools today are about giving mom and dad a place to store the kids while they pursue their careers. They're about giving in to every political pressure point without thought to the necessity or advisibility of doing so. They're about teaching that conformity is important above all else. They're about making sure that the lowest common denominator is the level to which everyone will aspire. They're about designing their curricula according to the loudest shouts or largest piles of cash. The one thing they most assuredly are not about is educating children.
A state which requires prospective teachers to take geometry and algebra at the college level implicitly expects teacher candidates to be stuck in remedial classes. Given the poor showings of ed-school applicants on all the standardized tests it isn't at all surprising that many of them might need to, but to go from there and say that they have to is shocking. If anything, those applicants who require remediation should not be allowed to enter teachers-ed programs. (BTW, what state is this, and how long ago?)
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
>We've seen how the SAT was renormalized to try to hide the fact that scores have been declining,
Excuse me? What is this?
The SAT is a norm referenced test. It is renormed all the time, not for any political reason, but because it is a norm referenced test.
It's never been much use for comparing trends over time, because of this. Norm referenced tests are not static. They change all the time. The material on them changes, both to preserve the norm (by definition it must do this) and to reflect changes in the national curriculum (as it is perceived by test makers).
Also, takers of the SAT are self-selecting, making it not even remotely appropriate for comparing different years. E.g. more people go to college, so more people take the SAT, and the average score drops (since more people with "average" skills are taking the test).
I suggest we look at more of what the Europeans, and, especially, the Germans do in their school systems. Yes, there is the notion of being kicked out after three strikes, but these school systems also start to specialize curriculums earlier in the educational system (German people, help me out here. It's been a while since high-school german classes!) If a student doesn't do well in a sholastic environment, put them in a more technical curriculum.
In the end, the reason American schools fail, is that we are trying to teach all of the students the same thing, and so must teach the the lowest common denominator. Change that denominator by changing the curriculum, and you will see a different caliber student in no time.
Check out of the links available on the page like http://www.house.gov/science/full_charter_061099.h tm God I hope it is the result of a scanned document.
I think you credit them with more intelligence than they have. I don't think any of them are thinking that far in advance.
I'm curious what evidence you have that educational standards have dropped since the 60's.
"We end up with drones when that is the case. " Yeah, that is the goal of society. My problem is that so many people believe school is something that it is not. Students know school is not about learning. highschool is about getting grades so you can get into college. college is about getting sex and maybe a diploma. Oh, and also good GPA so you can join so you can join some faceless company as a officedrone-firstclass. In america the primary purpose of school is to churn out programmed drones that will work 50hrs week till age 65 and not cause too much problems for the government/society. There is a big misconception that you can teach humans. Humans can not be taught. They have to wanna learn and they have to pursue it. The important thing that school (up till college) tries to teach you is social interaction and how to communicate and how the emoutional. Most also tend to be normalized into whatever the given culture deems as 'good'. Really 'smart' kids, the ones that will make a 'difference' learn things on there own. They read or hack or draw or whatever on their own. I'm not saying there are not mentors or 'teachers' that self-learners use as part of thier learning tools. there most definatly are. school is societies indoctrination and propaganda arm. It is also increasingly the advertising arm of corporate america. Wake-up and start thinking for yourself, BrainBoy
In high school, you learn there is nothing you can do about cruel and ignorant people. School forces you to be around people that you wouldn't choose to be around. Comparitvely, here what I can do about them now being an adult: 1. Not choose to be near them 2. Have them sued for slander and/ or harrasment 3. Have them arrested for assult and battery 4. Shoot them. Being an adult I can own a gun and use it lethally if I think my life is in danger. Some of them aren't appropriate depending on the situation, but there is an optioin available on that list for any situation dealing with criel and ignorant people. There are a few others, but as you can see I couldn't do any of them in high school. Also, I do come across less cruel and ignorant people than I did in school. They are mostly either dead, in jail, have a minimum wage job, and/or can't afford to live where I live.
When I was in 8th grade, my science teacher presented a theory on how a Coke machine worked: inside was a little man whose job was to count the money you put in, get the right can, drop down the can, and give you any change. He then asked us to disprove this, without actually looking inside of a Coke machine. I don't think anyone in the class was able to disprove the hypothesis. (sample argument: "There aren't enough midgets in the world to put into all the Coke machines!" The reply: "the reason you don't see many midgets is BECAUSE they're all inside Coke machines.")
What did this teach us (besides the fact that our science teacher was a wise ass)? We learned that scientific hypothesis are based on OBSERVING phenomena and selecting the theories that best fit the existing data.
Now, I could easily see a science teacher presenting two opposing theories of creation: the one in Genesis, and the evolutionary one. After giving the students ALL of the evidence, let them decide which one works and defend their opinion in a reasoned paper. If they want to believe in Genesis, they're going to have to find a way to explain a lot of data which indicates that it is a poor theory. If Creationists are going to pretend that what they believe in is science, they're going to have to use the scientific method to back up their hypothesis. Likewise, if someone has silly reasons why evolution works, I wouldn't give them a very good grade.
Simply telling a bunch of students "Evolution is true, Creationism is false" just replaces one idol with another. Teaching students WHY Evolution/Big Bang/etc. best fits the data is far more important that rote recitation.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
As a former teacher, I've learned 2 things: 1) You can teach anything to a class of 10 kids. ANYTHING. 2) Class sizes over 30 are all about mob control. It's all you can do to keep 30 kids halfway focused. Teaching doesn't much enter into it at that point. Of course small class sizes means paying more teachers.
"is there any evidence at all that there is definately NO god?" No. Is there any evidence at all that there is definately NO Santa Claus? No, just good evidence that he isn't up at the North Pole, and that heaven isn't up above the clouds, and mummies don't walk around Giza during the full moon, and vampires don't clamber up out of the catacombs in Paris. How can you have definative evidence of the non-existence of something? The scientific method involves finding physical explanation for an observed phenomenon. If there is no phenomenon to observe, i.e. no vampire, no santa claus, no god, then no supposed explanation for the existence of such a being or object can be rational or scientific - the explanation is speculative, a matter of faith. Nothing wrong with religious faith per se, but faith IS an ascientific, irrational mode of thought, and necessarily so. Teach it in church, at home - your spirituality is in pretty sad shape if you can't impart values and beliefs to your own children at home and in the church, and have to resort to destroying the rationality of public school science classes.
...and further to use your prayer.
To use my prayer? What were you thinking?
If I feel that my praying helps me and I use it to further myself in various ways, how is it harming any one else to witness this?
You're not welcome to force that view on others
By praying in front of others I am not forcing them to then pray. You are confused.
Not teaching evolution as a fact is the correct thing to do as is not teaching creation as fact. For neither of them can be substantially proven as fact and both simple beliefs.
Get the difference into your head.
010110000010110101010100011110010111000001100101
Since in many countries outside the US, Darwinist evolution is not accepted any longer...
Unsupported assertion. Documentation, please.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
When it comes to AP and honors classes, of course people in them are going to do well. That is because the people in them are the smartest in the school. But the problem with our schools is that people can actually get a high school diploma with only 1 algebra class in there entire life. You could go all the way to AP Calculus and AP Physics, and you would get the same degree as someone who only got through Algebra I B and Biology B. (B - basic) And since tests such as the ACT and SAT are so easy that almost anyone can get a 19 and 1100, almost anyone can get into most colleges. Once in college you can get a bachelors degree without taking any calculus classes at all. Also, by taking an introductory Biology and maybe a Geology class you can get by without any in depth science courses.
The point of all this is that while you still can learn alot in our school system, it doesnt force you to. You can get a 4-year degree without learning much math or science. This makes a general populace that doesnt have the ability to make educated decisions in most fields of technology.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I think there are several things that the Federal Government should do to improve science and math education. I don't want to take things away from the locals, but I see it like basic research: a long-term investment that will pay off big-time down the road. Some suggestions: 1. Research ways of teaching and learning that work, and diseminate them. Why doesn't the NSF do more of this? 2. Push active, engaging, hands-on, inquiry teaching and learning. Those textbooks make kids sick. 3. Provide money so each school could have a top-notch science teacher to teach part time and to team-teaching and training the rest of the time. They'd be able to help other teachers do better. 4. Open up all the federal labs to teachers in the summer and on occasional internships so teachers learn what real science is and how it's done. 5. Make sure that all those workshops are based on content, not the touchy-feely stuff that is so common. Provide time for teacher training on a regular, frequent basis in the school day. 6. Spend money on hands-on equipment. There are lots of schools with decaying labs and falling-down walls, and many chemistry classrooms that don't even have beakers and thermometers to go around. 7. Pay the good teachers more, and pay the bad teachers less. 8. Research ways of testing students that reflect what real scientists and developers do: collect evidence, make tradeoffs based on evidence, set up experiments and tests, solve problems. Too many decisions are being made on the basis of test scores that are meaningless: kids are tested on the phases of mitosis, but nobody really needs to know what they are. 9. Every kids should have an equal opportunity to an excellent education. There's too many of the haves and have-nots, and it makes a difference. Most inner-city schools don't even have a certified physics teacher.
I agree that comparing SAT scores from year to year is inappropriate. The problem is that school boards, governments, and the press like to do it.
At least once a year, you can find an "SAT average scores are up/down this year" story. Governments and school boards love to use year-to-year comparisons:
1) SAT scores are down. We need more money.
2) SAT scores are up. We're doing a good job.
Would a ten-year downward trend in SAT scores really mean that students were getting stupid? If we assume that today's students are the beneficies of 20 years of progress in education (dangerous assumption), then the trend in SAT scores for the last 20 years should generally be UP. Realistically, the test will be "adjusted" before this trend ever shows up.
We put WAY too much emphasis on this silly, subjective bubble-coloring test.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
The remark about kids being singled out was not my request; it was the response to my request. In my son's school, they have different teachers for different subjects. I figured that since he went to a different class for math anyway, he could go to one commensurate with his abilities. Unfortunately, those classes are populated by grade level (and grade level is determined primarily by age). So for him to be placed in a class according to his ability instead of his age would be considered special treatment. If every parent started asking for this kind of 'special treatment', it could only be a good thing IMO.
Ironically, my son has been placed into the school's gifted program, which does exactly what you appear to be afraid of; that is, they're pulled from their normal classes and given special instruction. I'm leery of this myself (been there done that; in my experience it's as much about social conditioning as intellectual stimulation), but my wife wants to try it and see how things work out. We'll see. I would be quite happy to have things continue the way his 1st & 2nd grade teacher did them (as in your good teacher example), but we've asked around and she appears to be the only one who does such things.
Which in a roundabout way brings me to my point, I guess. If schools are there to educate children, then children should be able to move according to their abilities in a given subject. Unfortunately, most schools seem to want to behave like an assembly line - move everyone through at a constant rate, make sure nobody's different, and define a minimum level of acceptable achievement that's easily measurable. Whether or not a given student is capable of more is irrelevant, and so we find that we're pretty much teaching our kids to strive for mediocrity.
i guess we can assume you didn't get harassed on a daily basis, then. what you may call social skills i call brainwashing and herd mentality. all it takes is one "popular" kid to hate another one, and they're toast. i don't follow that. i don't know where people learn to be so cruel, but i usually start pointing my finger at a) human nature and b) school.
then again, i'm a proud mississippi public school system dropout. saving myself three years i would have wasted in HS and going to college instead was worth INFINITELY more than any so-called social skills i could have potentially developed. personally, i am glad i am not an overtly cruel or herd-minded person.
First of all, the understanding of evolution has gone way beyond what Darwin ever thought of, so labelling it as 'Darwinian evolution' is somewhat bogus.
Science is an attempt, through a rigorous process, to come up with explanations that are consistent with what we observe. In regards to what is called the 'theory of evolution', this theory (actually an entire collection of theories) does a vastly better job of explaining the facts we observe than anything else that has been presented. Evolution is not a 'misguided view of science', as you assert. Instead, it is one of the most comprehensive applications of the scientific method we have. That it disagrees with your view of the universe is not a problem of science; rather it's a problem of your view of the universe.
If you don't like what the theory of eveolution has to say about the history of man, then you are perfectly welcome to construct alternate theories. However, you have to explain all the observed facts. Creationism has attempted to do this, with poor success.
Go ahead - take your shot.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Yes, true, but when science is taught as dogma, pursuit of the truth is also in jeopardy.
A scientist should alway have an open mind that even their most beloved and trusted theories may one day be proven false, or be replaced by another theory. And NO scientist should support any theory for which there is no evidence. (is there any evidence at all that there is definately NO god?).
If you can't disprove His existence, then shut the hell up and leave those of who DO believe alone. And don't blame ALL believers for the few zealots who try to force nonbelievers to believe. Some of us just don't give a rat's ass who doesn't believe.
And yes, I do want my children taught about evolution in school. I just don't want the teacher to say that Darwin's evolution is the only possible explanation, and that it proves that there is no god, because neither of those assertions are true.
On the other hand, I sure as hell don't want my tax dollars going to pay to educate my child for someone else's version of biblical creation. My church is perfectly capable of conveying that story.
So again, I don't understand why honesty can't be brought back into the science classroom (um, class, it's a THEORY - it's the best one we have today, not the only one, just the best one, it may not be true, but "officially" this is what we're going with), and I can't understand why some folks think religion has any business being taught in public schools.
Gosh, I guess I'm just too level-headed to be a true American.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I actually kind of agree with this. But instead of simply letting them walk out of school, you give them a choice: school or work. There's plenty of menial labor that needs to be done. We've got all those thousands of miles of highway that needs the trash picked up. Millions of miles of city streets that need to be swept. And I think you should allow them to go back to school at the beginning of the next school year (or semester - might make more sense that way) than to just kick em out forever.
I think alot of people need time to really appreciate an education. Now we have people who are forced to sit though twelve years of school and get nothing or almost nothing out of it. This way, they have a choice. I'm sure most people would spend that year pushing a damn broom and get the idea really quickly that school is for them.
Ahhhhh! This is more of the problem with education in this country. Returning schools to the community will only ensure that poor communities have poor education and rich communities will have variable education. Are you rich? Well you can afford to move to a school district that will at least have a lot of money for education. Whether the school is any good is a whole separate issue. If you're not rich, then you will have to blame your own tough luck and quit whining. Are you well educated? Well, if you want your children to have a shot at also being well educated, you need to do two things: get rich, and move to a school district that provides good education, with enough funding. Out of all the school districts in this country, probably only about 10% will fall into the "good" category. The rest fall into the categories of "well-funded" or "crappy." The federal government must set proper standards that are followed by all schools, regardless of where those schools are located. Schools that do not meet the standards must be improved and adequate funding must be provided.
To cap my point off, I am confident that if I start a school where students will learn that the Earth is in the midst of a battle between warring alien races, then I will have many many students. But, it should be illegal for me to even start such a school.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
IMHO, education is going in entirely the wrong direction, in a lot of ways.
Firstly, people aren't tape recorders or parrots. So, any system which teaches that way of thinking is inherently flawed. How to test for this? Well, if a computer, using only a fixed database of facts, can score above average in an exam, there's a problem.
The human mind isn't built to store things "precicely", but it IS geared to process that data in creative ways, using lateral thinking. It's also very good at logical thinking, but that's not it's strong point.
When you teach people, and award marks, in a way that tries to make the brain do something it's not built for, you are BOUND to teach less than you could, and retention is BOUND to be poor.
Secondly, people who have exceptional ability in a given area are often neglected, giving rise to bored, aggitated kids, who will undoubtably be disciplined for responding to that neglect, which leads on to a whole cycle of abuse/neglect from teachers, and reactions from the kid. Often, such kids are the ones who do worst at school, and become effectively rejects in society. For the horrible crime of being smart.
Those exceptional kids who aren't neglected are often over-pressured into doing well. Such kids often burn out quickly, and make up a sizable fraction of university suicides.
Average kids are also pressured to "succeed", at any cost (including their own physical and mental health, their social development, their peace of mind, their own likes and dislikes, their friendships and virtually everything else that is important to a kid or for a kid.) Those who rebel will end up without the scraps of paper they need to get a job that pays well enough to cover the rent. Those who don't will probably end up in AA, a psychiatrist's couch. Or both.
It seems to me that an educational system that teaches fundamentally flawed materials and inherently damaging principals has got to need some serious revision.
I doubt either House will ever do anything, any more than the British have. (The best the British have managed, in the past few hundred years, are a few feeble, misguided gestures. GCSE's should be shot, for a start.)
Science needs to be taught in schools in a way that helps kids understand it, not turn half of them into axe-wielding luddite technophones and the other half's brains into blue/green jello. And for chrissakes, can SOMEBODY put a globe in the geograhy classes!! England is NOT off the coast of Florida!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think its high time that we shed our "astigmatic" view of things and really analyse whether it was all a waste ...those 12 years at school ? ...that you already knew all that ? But that wasn't the case ... in fact after sometime even the new things that we learn seem as if we've known them for ages and nothing new was done during the course . There are many subtle points which would take ages to write if i were to cite them here but i think we all understand that without those tweleve years you wouldn't be standin were you are now . You would probably be a typist rather than a linux geek.
...
I don't think so . Haven't you always felt after doing a course that you didn't really learn much that
What we should be discussing here is how can we improve the system further and make it even better for the generations to come so we have fewer comments like these on Slashdot in the years to come . Lets make these discussions productive rather than critising the system.
And if you don't agree with me
Thanks for your time anyway !
The government can do whatever it wants to the school system and it won't make a lick of difference. Allow me to explain. I was raised by two loving parents who took great interest in my education, in an affluent district in the suburbs. I am a sparkling example of the possible success of the public school system; I scored perfect on the SAT's and ACT's, I took college courses in math for two years, etc. And I believe that my success is due not only to inborn ability and good teaching, but also to the devotion of my parents. Why I say the government can't do anything, is, my mother teaches in Detroit. 2nd grade. And most of these kids in the inner city can't even recognize their letters in 2nd grade. Some don't even know colors yet. And it's not because they're necessarily dumb; it's because their parents never spent time with them, never taught them anything they needed to know. What the government needs to do is to fund education for inner-city parents, on parenting. This would raise the education levels of children when they come into school, and therefore raise the effectiveness of the schools. The other thing that government can do is to stop basing funding on standardized tests. Does it make sense to cut funding to a school because its students scored low on their MEAP's? No! Cutting supplies to these schools only lowers their effectiveness. So with the government working the way it currently is, it won't be able to get anything done.
-Neux
"This sentence no verb." -Anonymous
Good scientific practice is to look at and consider all alternatives. Of course, who is to say that a god created the universe and painted a fresco at that point in time to make it look like man evolved from apes?
And did you notice all of the scrambled content, where some idiot had revision marking mode left on when they created the HTML and all the data about the strike-outs was lost in the conversion? And it hasn't been corrected in the month that the page was up; either nobody knows how to fix it, or nobody ever read it. Whatta buncha maroons.
Since in many countries outside the US, Darwinist evolution is not accepted any longer, maybe it would be beneficial for us to understand why. I have seen articles written by Japanese scientists stating this. Maybe it would be beneficial to understand why there are many college educated biologists who cannot accept strict Darwin evolution because it cannot explain what they have seen. The problem is not "creationists", it is biased teaching where theories are presented as facts, and important information is disregarded. This applies to every aspect of education. From history to science. You should take a look at a recent elementary/jr. high level history book. My sisters has about 2 pages on Mariln (?) Monroe, and less than one on George Washington. This problem is especially damaging in the grade school levels where students usually do not do outside research.
You just sound like someone who gives up too easily. If you really are a good programmer, then you almost certainly are capable of understanding the math. I have never met a good programmer who had poor math skills. I have met a few programmers who had trouble with math, and by and large they were terrible programmers with no appreciation for good practices who seemed to produce code almost by accident rather than understanding what was really going on. If you are capable of architecting an object-oriented design for a large program, then you are almost certainly capable of understanding university level mathematics I would think.
Time for home schooling?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
DUDE! You only had school one hour a day?
I guess you got lucky.
8:00 to 3:00 is a long time to waste.
I'm a sophomore in high school in a north Texas suburb and in all AP classes. The sad thing is that the only reason I'm in any of them is because I already know nearly all the material from the private school I went to for a few years in elementary. The main problem I see in the present public education system is that most material is covered too much and too late. At the private school I went to, we were reading many of the books I now have to read of AP English. I think that accelerated AP-style classes should be instituted into elementary and junior highs (those stupid "gifted" classes do no good). I also think skipping grades should be much more common. Also the quality of AP classes are horrible. They are essentially the same as the regular classes, but with more homework. And another big problem I see is the lack of competent math and science teachers. I had a math teacher last year that even admitted to not knowing what she was doing. I have a friend who's teacher told her to stop reading so many books because she was making the other students feel stupid. I think this explains itself. I suppose I could go on about the lack of funding for the fine art programs (all the money goes to the sports teams), et cetera, but I think I made my point. -Simon M. Too Lazy to Log In
And then they blame DOOM and QUAKE as the reasons for things as the littleton massacre. Those things have happened a lot of times before around USA, and nowhere else. In USA the christian teachings are not the base of a society. Do you really know what Christ said or are you just too biased to see beyond the wall around yourself? If christian teachings (not hipocrital zealot teachings) were the base of USA, things like this wouldn't happen.
As for creationism: notice that it's called the "theory of natural selection", the "THEORY of evlotuion". Do I need to explain the difference between scientific theory and scientific law to you?
...free to advocate evolution but not the (self-evident) fact that God created the universe.
All this shows is that you do not know how scientists use the word 'theory'. This invalidates the rest of your argument.
The problem is that it's not self-evident. There lots of indications otherwise.
When the government proposes to prohibit me from praying in a given place, it is establishing a religion: atheism.
I advise you to check a dictionary. A word that expressly means the absence of religion is only defined as a religion by those people who want to impose their religion on others. (Yes, I know that's deliberately provocative.)
The creationist view is a view that belongs only to one particular religion. To give that view a special place is to promote that particular religion, in a place that should be religion-neutral. But it's funny that the fundamentalist Christians are the only people who complain when they aren't allowed to impose their religious views.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
It's sorta like how an employment rate of 100% is actively avoided by the gov't, and considered to be a bad thing.
odysseus complex wrote:
Good scientific practice is to look at and consider all alternatives.
No, that's good philosophy, has nothing at all to do with science. Good science is to follow the scientific method. That is:
* look at and consider all appropriate observational evidence,
* formulate a hypothesis based on the evidence,
* and attempt to disprove the hypothesis by applying more observational evidence to it.
If you fail to disprove it, you show it to your peers, if they fail to disprove it, you can call it a theory. After it's been around a while, you get to teach the theory in science classes.
Creationism, while an important belief for many, just isn't science. It isn't a hypothesis based on observational evidence, it is based on religious faith. There has been no attempt by it's supporters to disprove it scientifically, and when scientists do so, they are ignored or even insulted. It isn't science, it has no place in science class. It is religion, it has no place in an organization (such as a public school) covered by the Establishment Clause of the Bill of Rights.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I also believe that evolution happens in our world. IMO, the evidence is indisputable.
These two beliefs are not in conflict with one another. I believe that evolution is just one process created by the Almighty. Understanding it (His creation) is another step towards ultimate Truth.
Unfortunately, my philosophy gets me reviled by both sides. Nonetheless, I believe that God created a wonderous universe so that Mankind would always have something new to explore and learn about. I don't believe we'll ever "know it all", but it doesn't matter. It's that there is always an unknown out there that can be known that drives us forward. I would think that God wants us to better know His creations.
Does anyone else feel the same way, or am I just an outcast from both sides of the coin?
Not a bad idea... but don't just let the losers go... that would only raise crime and mortality among that age group. What should happen to those who elect to drop out should be some sort of reform program to scare them back into school... show them what their life will be like without an education... working dead-end jobs or turning to crime should not be made an option. Just because a kid doesn't take an interest in his/her future in 6th grade or whatever, doesn't mean he/she can't be made to think about it.
-Neux
"This sentence no verb." -Anonymous
OK, I'm going to stomp your dishonest ideas once and for all. :-)
You say:
-->"A scientist should alway have an open mind that even their most beloved and trusted theories may one day be proven false"
Evolution is a scientific theory. The definition of theory is much stronger in science than it is in conventional use. Newton's theory is used to guide spacecraft to Saturn. The theory works, and is accepted and proven to be a truthful description of how the universe works. There is no way that Newton's theory will ever be falsified. Not even Einstein's theory did that!
Likewise, evolution is a scientific theory, but it has been shown and observed to be a true representation of how life evolved on this planet.
Here's a quote and a reference for you. I expect you to look it up. It says nothing less than evolution has been observed in the laboratory to cause speciation. Evolution is a confirmed theory.
4.11: No one has ever seen one species arise from another. In 1964, Dr. D.J. Reish removed 5 or 6 polychaetes (Nereis acuminata) from Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor, and grew his sample to a size of thousands. In 1986, four pairs from this group were brought to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; the population at Woods Hole thus had gone through two bottlenecks, which are supposed to help drive evolution through genetic drift. In 1977-1978, two new cultures of N. acuminata were gathered from nearby Long Beach and Newport Beach, and grown under the same conditions as the Woods Hole sample. The three populations were later crossed, and it was found that the only crosses that would not produce viable offspring were the crosses involving Woods Hole and the two new cultures. This signifies nothing less than speciation, and all in the laboratory - all observed directly (Weinberg et al., 1992).
-->"there is no evidence. (is there any evidence at all that there is definately NO god?). "
There's a great deal of evidence that the Christian god is fabricated out of whole cloth. Similar evidence exists for every other god described in any human culture. By induction, I can extend that evidence to a tentative statement "There is no god."
-->"If you can't disprove His existence, then shut the hell up and leave those of who DO believe alone."
I will not and cannot shut up. Your ideas are dangerous because anyone who believes your notions of what science is and what a scientific theory consists of is trodding down the path of ignorance. That costs actual human lives!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
[Sadly, I can't seem to log in with this version of Lynx -- ekidder] Anyway. I happen to believe in both evolution and creationism. It's one of those wacky things which fits in well in my mind. 'Big bang' runs pretty well in there, too. I can't really see the mutual exclusivity (is that the right phrase?) between them all. They're all just different parts of the same puzzle. This probably puts me in a position that it disliked by both of the major factions in the war. :) Eric Kidder
Hmm...A 14 year old nerd (?geek?) who programs 4 languages, believes creation and Plate Tectonics (at the same time), plays guitar (in a band), has a girlfriend and still has a few hours of free time a day?
.5 hours, skip what I already know and still get a 99 (out of 99) on standardized tests. I homeschool.
:-)).
Instead of having 8 (something like that) hours of school a day, I get most of my work done in about
It kicks public (and private) schools a$$:
I: I can focus on what I like.
II: I can skip what I already know.
III: I can do it as fast as I like.
IV: I have a huge amount of free time.
V: I can program a few hours a day (and count
that as part of my school).
VI: I don't have to worry about what people think about me (not that I would anyway
VII: I never get in fights.
VIII: I can think freely, out of the box (not how our government wants us to think!!!).
IX: Free Speech!!!
X: Lunch is usually pretty good.
XI: I can go to bed at 4:00.
XII: I can wake up at 10:00.
XIII: I can believe in what I think is right.
These are the reasons that I goto a better school then most of you!!!
That's my 1/50 of $1.00 US
JM
Big Brother is watching, vote Libertarian!!
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
I sincerely hope that you are being sarcastic here. If you are, apply the remarks below to whomever moderated this post up!
First, let's look at the public prayer issue. The restriction on prayer in schools is absurd. When the government proposes to prohibit me from praying in a given place, it is establishing a religion: atheism. This is exactly the kind of thing the founding fathers were trying to prevent. Realize that prayer in public schools doesn't just prohibit teachers leading prayers: it often is interpreted to prohibit students from praying! Not from praying outloud, or leading prayers: simply from PRAYING. This is so unconstitutional that it's unbelievable. Even worse, it is a command to which Christians can respond only with civil disobedience.
As for creationism: notice that it's called the "theory of natural selection", the "THEORY of evlotuion". Do I need to explain the difference between scientific theory and scientific law to you?
You seem to be of the stripe that believes in total freedom to be anything but a Christian. That is, I am free to advocate pedophilia, but not free to advocate monogamy; free to advocate evolution but not the (self-evident) fact that God created the universe.
This is so hypocritical it is sickening. as it so happens, I personally do subscribe tyo neither natural selection nor creationism. I think that "divinely inspired evolution" is the most accurate. However, I strongly uphold the rights of those who beliefve in both creationism and natural selection to be heard in any and every forum. This is freedom.
You want freedom: great! I give it to you freely. But your freedom does not include:
- Making my kids learn lies. (Your kids are your problem)
- Keeping me from speaking my mind.
- Restricting my freedom to indulge my religious conscience except in cases where it substantially and materially harms another human being. Note that emotional trauma caused by realizing that most people are pretty scummy doesn't count as material harm.
You Sir, appear to be a Damned Modern Liberal (no, in this context I'm not cursing -- the damned is literal). You have the freedom to initiate a witch-hunt against anyone who doesn't agree with your opinions. I am a classical Liberal. You have the freedom to say what you like. I have the freedom to call you an idiot. I am now doing so.-- Slashdot sucks.
OK, let's get down to the basics - what portion of time is spent actively learning as compared with other recreational/consumerism activities?
If you gave a teenager the choice between reading a book or playing video games, what would be their response?
Would your kids rather watch Discovery Channel or go out on a field trip in the rain?
Is the role of schools to include social and vocational aspects? If not, then what is the role of teachers as compared with parent?
Would kids prefer to emulate Einstein or Michaal Jordan? Do they know the difference between fame and celebrity?
Given the many leisure activities available to people, what motivating force would encourage them to tackle the hard subjects?
And by the way, these problems are not unique. Even Japan are finding their educational system is starting to creak. It is easy to handle outrages like high school shootings but slow erosion of standards and educational values are much more difficult to solve.
LL
You're talking about unionized bureaucrats, in many cases. Need I say more?
Hmmm. If memory serves, some European nations do something that approaches this.
On the basis of examinations, students can get shunted towards academic pursuits (that is, a funded college education); specialized, vocational training; or possibly entering straight into the workforce... The thing is, they do not seem to share the attitude that everybody can, and probably should, go to at least some academic college if they only try.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
"Newton's theory is used to guide spacecraft to Saturn. The theory works, and is
accepted and proven to be a truthful description of how the universe works. There is no way that
Newton's theory will ever be falsified. Not even Einstein's theory did that! "
come now, come now, Newton's theory doesn't apply on the quantum scale now, does it? There have even been measurements made of spacecraft (travelling BEYOND Saturn *snicker*) showing object accellerating faster than they ought to be. There are some theories for why this is happening, but I think there hasn't been a consensus yet on what's going on. The fact is, we don't know. Nobody is out there looking at these space probes, seeing if there is a tiny propellant leak, or whatever. I'm not saying Newtons theories are false, they're great, and they've proven to be about the most useful tools mankind has ever devised.
Likewise, no human was alive 65 million years ago, to SEE dinosaurs walk the earth. What we accept as truth, is what we rationalize. True, science is the best systematic way to rationalize our reality based on our observations, but the fact is, no matter what is observed, no matter what evidence you have, you can't possibly know any thing 100% for sure. It's a philosophical question, yes, but that is the root of human experience.
And I would likewise tell you that if God himself came down in front of me and said, "Yo, dude, you got a buger hanging out of your nose", I still, scientifically can't say that I 100% believe in God, because it could have been a hallucination, right? Even if I DID have a buger hanging out of my nose.
But spiritually, I DO believe that God exists, because I take that on faith, which is not a rationalization based on the scientific method, nor is it some lame sense of obligation to parents or religious leaders. It is NOT my faith (or anyone's faith) in God that endangers or costs humans their lives, it's when I justify certain actions based on this faith: I must kill you and invade your country because you are infidels. Well, let me tell you, even the officially "atheist" countries out there have killed folks based on ideology, or what usually turns out to be a personal lust for power justified by a framework of rationalizations. Whether this framework of rationalizations is the Catholic religion, or Godless communism, it's still all a sham. Does that make the FAITH wrong? No, it makes the ACTIONS of killing (or whatever you're trying to assert) wrong. Faith isn't the problem, it's human greed, and human selfishness, and these things will never go away, no matter what dictator comes along with weapons of mass destruction, and chemicals and mass hypnosis - humans will always be the way they are, of course until they destroy themselves.
By induction, you extend your evidence to a tentative statement "There is no god". Well, be as tentative as you like. I'm sorry that you can't have 100% faith in the truth of a matter. But when you rely on science, that is going to be the case, 100% of the time, because that's what science is all about, and thankfully, you state it truthfully by saying "tentative statement" (and by saying "by induction" - which is a method that, by nature, cannot 100% prove something, only deduction can).
Personally, I'm more comfortable making the the DEFINATE statement "I believe there IS a God". Existance just feels better for me that way. Not because of my comfort about (how did someone put this a couple of days back?) "being whisked away to some fantasyland after I die". But rather, that there's a reason for it all, that it's not all just some cosmic accident that may as well not have happened at all.
Ideas don't kill people. People kill people. When you start saying that ideas are dangerous (and I know, yes, it was religious people who first made this kind of thing popular), then you start saying you want to control people's minds. I don't know about you, but mind control makes me kind of uncomfortable.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It used to be that a missing a single one could drop you to a 780... Really? That means that I scored 100% of the math questions when I took it! Cool!
Some quick points.
There is no way that Newton's theory will ever be falsified. Not even Einstein's theory did that!
According to Newton's theories (he did have more than one theory, you know), as long as you apply a constant force to an object, its velocity will increase according to the simple equation F=ma, indefinately. Einstein's theories show that to be patently false. Newton's theories of mechanics are known to be incorrect, but are still taught because they are an excellent approximation of what will happen during most student's experiences, they are easier to calculate, and they are easier to comprehend. A good science teacher will make sure students know that they are just approximations.
If you are going to argue loudly on behalf of science, make sure you've got your science straight first.
Your speciation example is much better. It shows that the theories of evolution have continued to hold up under new and different observation, confirming the theory.
Note that no reputable scientist would say "This is the one and only truth of the universe". Scientific theory is merely the best ideas we have right now of how the world works. Theories last until a better idea comes along. Scientifically speaking, Creationism is not a better idea than Evolution, it doesn't hold up to vast amounts of observational evidence in biology, geology, physics and more. While I agree with you here, make sure you don't get too dogmatic about scientific theory, or you are in as bad shape as the Creationists are.
There's a great deal of evidence that the Christian god is fabricated out of whole cloth.
I would be very curious to be shown such evidence. And I mean observational evidence, not historical anecdotes. To my knowledge there is no credible evidence that there is or is not a god, Christian or otherwise. Religious belief must (and should) be based upon faith, not evidence. They shouldn't tell scientists what science is, scientists shouldn't tell them what god is or isn't. It's like comparing apples and oranges.
----
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Open mind, insert foot.
Since it seems worthwhile to offer the perspective from which one posts:
I did well enough in public schools (despite having the aforementioned curse of being smart/neglected/'dealt' with) to win a commission to West Point, which I promptly lost in a year and a half due to an inability to keep my shoes shined, my closet dusted, or my belt buckle clean. I now do web development.
In Oregon, educational quality is of deepest concern to me and to many of my fellow citizens. Oregon has all the telltale signs: the funding inequality, the bad relationship with teachers unions, the axe falling on extra-curriculars, near-condemnable buildings, and all the other trimmings of your average American educational crisis.
I believe there's a break-even amount of funding that will keep schools at the status quo, and as long as Republicans control our Legislature, we will never get that amount; OTOH, my state has thrown money at the problems in all kinds of ways, and it hasn't solved much of anything, which would explain why our Republican Legislature is reluctant to fund our schools.
That is why I suggest a complete public audit for every educational system in our public schools, to at least determine 1) why our $ isn't solving as many problems as we'd like it to and 2) what else is in the way of youth getting quality educations.
I don't have any predispositions about what I think such an audit would find; I just want to know what they come up with.
Were I to walk into a school or a school board meeting myself and start asking hard questions, there are several good reasons why I don't think I'd get honest, satisfactory answers. But I believe in the scariness and intelligence of people who interrogate for a living, and know where to look. An audit would allow all of us to use the same people to set a baseline for the condition of our schools, with real empirical data, so that we'd have a basis in fact.
This would be a more valuable use of the Fed's money, I think. We can't really come together to find good solutions until we're on the same page with regard to how things are.
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
Someone else already posted a link to a religious rebuttal. However take a look at the alt.atheism FAQs and you find that they list this as a red herring argument.
Come on, Creationism is complete hogwash and there are many valid arguments to use against it. Don't be stupid and use a bogus one!
Anonymous because I moderated another post in this discussion..
a well known one
>>There is no way that Newton's theory will ever be falsified. Not even Einstein's theory did that!
>According to Newton's theories (he did have more
>than one theory, you know), as long as you apply
>a constant force to an object, its velocity will
>increase according to the simple equation F=ma,
>indefinately. Einstein's theories show that to be
>patently false. Newton's theories of mechanics are
>known to be incorrect, but are still taught
>because they are an excellent approximation of
>what will happen during most student's
experiences, they are easier to calculate, and
>they are easier to comprehend. A good science
>teacher will make sure students know that they
>are just approximations.
In the first of his famous Cal Tech undergrad
lectures his gives the example (paraphrasing)
"It was once believed that winged angels
pushed the planets across the skies. This
theory has since been MODIFIED. [general laughing]
It turns out the angels must push inwards
and do not have wings."
A theory that is correct 99% of the time is
typically incomplete, not incorrect. You add
a little squiggle at the end of the calculation
(special relativity) and you make it more complete.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I'd like to start by noting that I've gone to a public school since 9th grade, whereas I had previously gone to a private school. Surprisingly, I found the level of education to be better in the public school. (I later discovered that I was in one of the best public schools in the state, which was 30% community funded.) I agree that the only thing that will have a serious impact on education is funding. I live in California where the state has kept funding level constant as the student population grows. Their attempts to give the appearence of educational reform have been to add more testing and programs which are essentially worthless, and get the money for these tests out of the already stretched education budget! If teachers were paid more and had more resources available, you would see a heck of a lot more teachers moving back to education from the private sector, whereas the current trend for teachers is moving to it. The only good teachers out there currently are the ones who actually wanted to teach right from the start. Excepting that minority, the saying, "Those who can, do, and those who can't, teach" is true.
It is also important to offer more freedom to school districts. I would say that most of what I know is self-taught. I never took a class on number theory, computer programming, or networking. I know enough to pass advanced placement exams and get high-tech jobs, though, as I have demonstrated in the last two years. If the state would allocate another section or two for computer-related classes, other students could have this benefit, too. Currently all computer classes are limited to communications and only 10% of students who apply can be accomodated, not due to funding, but due to state requirement. Another interesting dilemma: I got a 5 on the AP economics exam. California will not graduate me unless I spend a semester sitting in a classroom doing a HIGH SCHOOL economics course. If I didn't want to get into MIT I would be home schooling myself...which brings up another point...
At least one person on the boards mentioned that they were homeschooled. I must say that it is a good idea to take at least a few years of high school. If you study only what you want, you will never be well-rounded. You could be the greatest mathematician in the world, but you might not be able to express yourself because you haven't done any composition work. This isn't necessarily bad; in Europe, the prevalent trend is to concentrate more on what one is good at. However, I believe that everyone should have a basic level of general education.
Furthermore, you could have board scores of 1600 and you still couldn't get into most four year institutions, and no matter your qualifications, you would have no documentation.
Well, slight tangent there. I would like to close by noting that a good amount of the power to effect education changes lies in the states, not the federal government. The states provide much of the money in a school's education budget.
As a math major, I'm especially interested in the treatment of the subject in our public schools. What I've noticed is, lots of kids are scared of math. My younger sister is very astute and a quick learner, and understands the application of some advanced mathematics. But if she runs into a fraction, she freezes up and everything is out the window. My point is: teachers need to spend more individual time with students who have trouble with math, especially during elementary school when the basic skills are formed.
-Neux
"This sentence no verb." -Anonymous
Actually, in my Home Economics class in HS, we were taught some very useful techniques for not getting screwed by false advertising, how to be skeptical about wild claims, and how to make sure companies follow through on rebates and warranties, and stuff like that.
This was among the MOST useful information I took with me out of HS. Far more useful than 4 state mandatory years of Phys. Ed. watching the lesbian gym teacher ogle the cheerleader squad.
And don't even get me started on that stupid TYPING class. I spent more time trying to get the paper lined up in the damn crappy typewriter. After I failed that class (for non attendance), and my parents got me my first computer (TI 99/4a) my typing improved so much in one week that I was able to test out of the requirement and not have to re take the class.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Well, actually your previous comment was excellent, and your previous comment has also produced excellent results. Any time we can get moderators throwing away points dragging a down and then up again, the flow of information here gets ahead.
Read "About Science" by Chalmers. You will realize that you are wrong.
Science has nothing to say about considering all alternatives. One alternative is that you and everything else are all figments of my imagination, and I am the only thing in the universe.
One should simply reject that theory out of hand without even considering it, because it is so obviously stupid and wrong.
Furthermore, if god created the universe and made it look like man evolved from apes, then that god is very dishonest indeed. Or do you worship Pan? In that case it would make sense.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It's a small black knife switch. Blasphemer!
assuming you are capable
compare pictures of the reconstructed 747
that was TWA 800, to the plane that crashed
Aviation Week and Space Technology
July 27, 1996
page 27
lower lefthand corner
now all you have to do is find a library
happy hunting
The bible describes creation as:
1. Heavens And Earth --> Big Bang
2. Land --> Formation of continents
3. Plants --> Evolution Step #1
4. Fish --> Evolution Step #2
5. Animals--> Evolution Step #3
6. Man --> Evolution Step #4
He did all this in 7 days..but who is to say that 7 "God" days is not actually hundreds of millions of "man" years?
On top of that if the religeous people here truely don't believe that their all powerfull God could not have created man by planed evolution are surely short changing his abilities. After all he is all knowing and all powerfull.
The point being is that Creationism and Evolutionism are not directly at odds with each other. What is at odds is the conclusion many people get from evolution and that is that we must have come from nothing. However life came from somewhere.. the only answer is spontaneous (ala the belief of most atheists) or from God.
Ex-Nt-User.
PS. I'm actually atheist by belief not because science has proven that God does NOT exist. And to me, religion has certainly not proven he does.
It would be fine, except -ism topics should not be taught in science classes.
Why is it that Christians love to ramble on and on?
I'll address your points concisely:
1) Re: Newtonian mechanics not applying at the quantum level: Duh! But that does not invalidate Newtonian mechanics. The proof is that spacecraft arrive within microseconds of their predicted positions, after years of travel even out to Saturn and beyond. Even a unified theory which is Physics holy grail will not nullify Newtonian mechanics. Such a theory will only further explain what we already know to be a true description of the universe. Bzzt! Try again.
2) Re: Dinosaurs, truth being rationalized, not knowing 100% for sure: Once again, Duh! That's the way that science works. It is not 100% sure. But, compare that to every other system of investigation, including religious dogma. The *results* are what count. Success after success after success in an extremely wide variety of inquiries have increased our understanding. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that we're on to something here with the scientific method. It works better than anything else we've tried. If you can get any closer to 100% knowlege I'd certainly like to hear about it. If your methods are worse than the scientific method then keep them to yourself.
3) Re: you're thankful that I was honest to put a 'tentative' in front of my statement: Have I lied to you? If so, then where. Why are you thankful for one instance of truthfulness when my entire posting was truthful?
4) Re: I want to control people's minds: Where did I say that? Read the alt.atheism FAQ and look up non-sequitur please. Your ideas are dangerous for the reason that they are not truthful, and are irrational. Before you whine about the word "irrational" get out your dictionary. Irrational and faith have nearly the same definition: belief without proof.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It was specifically renormalized and simplified in 1996, in an explicit attempt to get the average scores back towards 500 in each category. For example, they made it vastly easier to get a perfect score in math, in terms of the number of questions that one can miss. It used to be that a missing a single one could drop you to a 780...
There's not much reason to do that unless they either felt the test was fundamentally broken, or they felt that the average score *should* be higher.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Yeah, it depended upon the version of the test. 'suppose the raw scores were sometimes higher than they expected, and thus the bar was sometimes raised a little.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Again, they *have* to do this. Norm referenced tests are all about ranking students. If you fail to renormalize, the curve gets clipped on one end. With many more people taking the SAT, the curve shifts down. You start clipping the bottom. So you change the test to move the average back to 500.
All norm referenced tests do this. This is not political, it is the definition of a norm referenced test.
There's no such thing. This is the reason that there is no such thing as "workfare". Courts have ruled that since welfare is an amendment to the constitution, it is unconstitutional to make people work for it.
Public schools are important for learning social skills and interacting with a wide variety of other people.
I think I got a lot out of that, and even if I may have received a better book education... I would not give up what I gained from being around numerous kids from completely different backgrounds. That was valuable.
I was disapointed in the witness lists. I did not see anyone out side of the education industry. After many years of being a practicing chemical engineer my wife decided to give something back and start teaching middle school math science. With a masters in ChemE you would think that she could get licienced, but not so. It was not the education courses, she was willing and did take those. She did not have the right kind of MATH courses. The state required college algebra and college geometry. Calculas, and engineering ecconomics were not good enough.
I do not see anyone in the witness list to give me hope that the closed education industry will change.
For as long as I've been aware of the news (30+ years) Congress has worried about "declining education" every session. I don't think the situation has changed very much during those decades despite talk and programs.
Starting around 6th grade, kids that don't want to be in school should be allowed to leave so that those who want to be there won't be held back. If a student is a disruption to the learning environment, kick 'em out. If the losers and idiots weren't in the schools, they (the schools) would be great.
We all know Americans can teach... we have some of the best Universities in the world. It is just that after High School all the losers are weeded out. Weed 'em out earlier is what I think we should do.
I stayed on the honor roll through high school by learning the 'feedback baby' method. Figure out what the teachers want you to remember/say/do, and do that. With the other 23 hours of the day you learn about what you like, at your own pace. Nobody 'taught' me creativity, or imagination, or thinking on your feet. College was much the same, except you had to have at least 15 sources cited in your bibliography. (Yeah, I read all those books...) :-)
Public schools have potential, but unfortunately the good teachers are buried in political muck, and the good students drown in the wake of the brown-nosers.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
> Can you imagine if everyone had at least a 4
> year degree? Who would pump the gas? Who would
> swing the hammers? Who would mow the lawns? Who
> would snake the sewers? Who would mop the
> floors? Who would ask, "Would you like fries
> with that?"
We already do all those ourselves, or else automated systems do them.
> High-school educated, dropouts, they all have a > necessary part to play in society.
Remember that society and education and learning are constantly evolving. Nowadays, getting a college degree is equivalent to a high school degree 20-30 years ago. This isn't freakin' China.
I do think though that more education and training should be offloaded to the workplace (actually, it already is - ask most companies which hire college grads). There should be more of a mixture rather than a separation between school activities and coop/work activities. And conversely, more education should be infused in out of school activities. All I ever learned from cub scouts was how to tie a square knot.
Any system of testing that is limited to one country is going to be subject to all sorts of political pressures to distort the data. We've seen how the SAT was renormalized to try to hide the fact that scores have been declining, and now it looks as if the SAT will be modified some more to artificially raise the scores for minority members (easier to do than actually giving the minorities a decent education). But an international standard would be less subject to local politics. Also, what we really should be interested in is how we're doing with respect to the rest of the world; that determines how competitive we can be in business and science. So an ISO 9000 quality measure for schools, or an ISO standard equivalent to the SAT would be a big improvement over the existing SATs and other such examinations.
I read the web site and I saw written nowhere that creationists and other irrational people are a huge threat to education. I agree with them that science education in this country is a mess. The fact that most adults believe that the universe was created by a god is proof of that. One of the critical things that we must do is defend schools against such things as public prayer, religion, and especially creationism. When dogma is taught as science all truth is in jeopardy.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Most large employers now require a college degree as a minimum entry requirement for jobs that you could easily get with a high school diploma in 1970. Back then, if you got through high school a potential boss assumed you could handle enough arithmetic to make change, write well enough to compose a coherent memo or business letter, and know how to set an alarm clock, take a shower, get dressed, and show up for work on time every day. Now it takes a college degree to become a fast-food manager, and if the computerized cash registers crap out, no one in the whole place, not even the "degreed" ones, can give you correct change out of a $20 bill on a $3.81 purchase. Taking 16 years to teach what used to be taught in 12 is silly. Either we're not educating as well as we used to or the average intelligence in this country has declined.
The poster of this article sounded pretty hopeful that this was an indication of vast initiatives to come. I don't believe it. This is little more than a public relations page - there is no obligation for any of your representatives or even their representatives to read the comment board. By posting this forum, they are allowing people like ourselves and also educational apologists to blow off steam and feel as though their government is participatory. That is all this page will probably accomplish.
I sound cynical, I know. But remember, with the way our democracy is currently structured, it is in the best interest of Congress is to make us feel as though problems are being addressed, not to actually address them. Without hot topics like education/affirmative action/taxes/etc., what grounds would most of those schmucks have for requesting reelection? They have to cover the influence of their corporate masters somehow...
If you really want to influence education in America, then fuck websites. Get off your ass and DO something in a poor community. Donate computers! More importantly, donate your time! There are many ways that educated individuals can improve local schools. And don't forget to vote.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Newton stated his theory as "Momentum is conserved." This is correct under the special theory of relativity. The incorrect statement that f=ma was made later. The more accurate statement, of course, is that force is the derivative of momentum, so f=ma+vm'. However we do not normally notice mass changing and so this more accurate statement is usually only paid attention to in special circumstances. (eg You use it when analyzing the motion of rockets.) Incidentally it is impossible in general to state any conservation laws in general relativity unless you have a variety of extra assumptions and make the statements very carefully. The sci.physics FAQ used to have a nice section on this until it caused too many arguments and got taken out. :-( Actually their FAQ at one point was an elaborate troll. They had a collection of statements that were sure to make the naive flame them. Every one was true, but it is amazing how much of a reaction you can get from simple facts like, "If a fat man and a skinny man starting from the same speed glide down a hill on identical bikes, the fat man will reach the bottom first." Well, yes, but a lot of people who *think* that they know physics will argue the point endlessly... Cheers, Ben
A good education doesn't require lots of money. All it takes is good teachers.
To just about as far as is physically measureable, and certainly as far as is useful in any application, pi is equal to 355/113. (and easy to remember. 113 355 is an easy sequence) I wrote a program on my HP calculator fifteen years ago that proved that to me. Calculate it out and you'll see.
An international standard for education...
And designed upon the basis of a test with points and a defined ISO norm for evaluating them !....
Uuuuuuuuuggghhh !!
On a slightly less epidermic tune, the very concept is simply disgusting for me - and, I guess, for most continental Europeans ("continental" because Britain seems to have decided it belongs to the American continent..)
First because many of us tend to think that primary school should learn waaaay more than simply answering tests.
Second, because it appears that 90% of "International" standards are little more than American standards with a different stamp on the paper. No choice. The US set the trend, just as Microsoft before the advent of Alt. OSes : like it or not, you're gonna do it our way, simply because we're the biggest and the most powerful, and if you don't play by our rules you'll have to play alone, while all the others play together with us...
Still, for some reason, it seems that many Europeans would be rather reluctant to give up their educational system and set some american-inspired system instead. We happen to be very attached to our schools, however costly they are.
You may think it's strange. You may think it's arrogant. You may think whatever you want indeed. But please just leave us little eurokids alone. Please !
Thank you.
(Zis was anozer comment fromme ze pricky-arrogant-Froggies-dept.)
When I went to High School we had two ASR-33's (110 baud teletype), a CRT terminal (300 baud) and a TI Silent 700 (300 baud, ten cents an inch for paper). There were a few of us who hung out in the lab. Not many though. The math teacher who taught the computer programming course (BASIC) was nearly fired because he decided that math was more important and refused to be a wrestling coach anymore.
Yikes, ten cents a FOOT for paper. (not that it's central to the comment)
"One alternative is that you and everything else are all figments of my imagination, and I am the only thing in the universe."
:)
Actually, that theory has worked pretty well for me so far.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Just one more piece of proof concerning people who love to spout off irrational ideas. The bible doesn't say that pi = 3. You have to understand the way the hebrew language works to understand what it really says. But just because we translated it wrong, doesn't mean jack.
umm (not a page I would personally recommend but first one I found from searching pi and bible.. but basically explains the problem)
Why on Earth would you need to "write a program" to "prove" that 355/113 is about equal to pi?
Can't you just use the "divide" function on any old ordinary $2 calculator?
Hell, you can just divide it by hand in a few seconds and find out that's it's accurate to 6 decimal places. And the value of pi isn't a theory. It doesn't need to be "proved".
I read the front of this page and that was enough. The government can say whatever they want, it doesn't mean they really care. The biggest tipoff for me was this line: "Education is the key to developing the intellectual capacity of our children -- the next generation of innovators, CONSUMERS and citizens." Yeah, gotta make sure that the kiddies know how to spend all their money on stuff they don't need.
To me there are two big problems with education. Number one is money. If the government was serious about improving education, they wouldn't cut the education budget every year, while raising the budget for the military and the prison system. They need to raise the salaries for teachers so that the educational system can attract people who would be truely good teachers.
Second is teaching kids to think for themselves. Another post mentioned something to this affect. I never learned anything like this in school, all I learned were a few half truths about history and how to do some math problems. We need classes on how to view the media critically, commercials, tv, or anything else that takes your time and or money. But no, not in this country...here we have to go out and buy whatever the commercials tell us to buy.
Until the gov't addresses these issues (or something similar) I won't take them seriously.
Congressmen are finally learning K-12 science? It's about time. There is no limit to what our representatives might learn. They might get a handle on the periodic table, Newton's laws, algebra, the phyla of life, natural selection and more. We must be patient, however.
Personally, I applaud them for acknowledging this shortcoming and taking steps to bridge it. Way to go congress! I'm sure you'll master K-12 science within the next 20 or 25 years. Then there will be no stopping us. U S A! U S A!
I'd say the gub'mint needs some education of its own on web design. That thing is damn ugly!
paranoid.android
I went to public school for about 10 out of my 12 years of elementary education(Other 2.5 was private with better edu but filled with pissy little jerks). I believe it is a very significant reason why I am so very bad in math. My teacher's responses to my questions were often "Too bad soo sad",, actual quote. I never understood math. To me math was completely abstract. However I am rather good at programming, because to me programming is logical. And, fortunately a great deal of programming requires next to nil math. The counselors in high school were likewise worthless. I didn't even know what college really was in junior high and yet they asked me what my major was going to be before I entered high school. There was a severe lack of good guidance and advisement in my experience. I went to community college for 3.5 years and got all the transfer requirements to go to a four year college EXCEPT math. I finally gave up because I just didn't understand it and if I attempted to ask questions I was dealt with in a belittleing(sp?) manner. So now I work in the IT department for the county government which has it's ups and downs. In school people always thought I was the uber geek etc and got straight a's when in reality I did fairly average but since I was somewhat geek like and never spoke they thought I was the A student. Hell I was too busy avoiding all the abusive jerks to ever think seriously about school. I just wanted to get out as quickly as possible. Bottom line: There is not nearly enough in-depth explanation in a one on one basis for students in any subject. There is also very little guidance as to what you are supposed to be doing. If you don't "get it" the first time around particularly in math or science you are passed by and made a fool of if you seem at all confused. It's sad.
I live in Dallas, Tx. Here, our school board meetings are often attended by political activists. These people are more concerned with getting their pictures in the news than with education. I believe that education is starting to become the practice field for aspiring politicians and activists.
These clowns will rant for hours about values, fairness, and budgeting. If you ask one of them how we should teach a child the formula for finding the area of a circle, you'll get a blank stare. That's the problem.
The first priority should be teaching core materials -- math, science, history, and language. If we're not doing that, we're not educating. We're simply creating an institution to hold kids until they're old enough to graduate. Maybe we'll accomplish some social indoctrination along the way. In Texas, that means you should know the score of last night's game even if you don't know the value of pi.
The politics of American schools are becoming truly disgusting. Everyone wants to get their pet "values" put into the curriculum. This way, they gain mindshare with impressionable future voters. Best of all, they can defend their efforts with, "it's for the children."
The best thing "for the children" now would be for schools to drop the fluff and get back to teaching. It should be so simple, but we make it so hard.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
The social interaction I had in public school consisted largely of getting my ass kicked and wishing I could get out of the place. And, apparently, many other people share this. Now, this is quite different than my day-to-day social interaction as a happy corporate perl hacker, actually communicating with people and doing stuff.
But I personally feel motivation is a phony issue. Oftentimes students are not motivated because teachers and schools insist on teaching a narrow, leveled curriculum using antiquated teaching methods. Any interest in school or learning is quickly lost under these circumstances. But you are 100% right when you raise the issue of desire. Kids learn better when they have an interst in the subject being taught. So it does in fact matter VERY much how you teach a child.
Well now... that leaves us standing here staring at a paradox.
There are two choices. Damn the PC-philosophy and teach and grade kids strictly according to ability and piss off every group under the sun or just teach to the lowest common denominator and pass everyone to the next grade until graduation and damn the consequences.
Just because one took algebra/geo/trig etc in high school doesn't mean they don't also take it in college. College alg/geo are pretty normal for your average high school student (because the high school class called "algebra" was, most likely, much less comprehensive than what their college required). So calling college algebra/geometry remedial would imply that a very large number of college students are in "remedial" math, which by definition kinda fails (because remedial implies below average)
Your average slashdot reader probably took calculus in high school (hell, I took it halfway through high school)... but most people don't.
Obviously it's ridiculous that calculus doesn't supercede algebra/geo/whatever in requirements, tho.
You've got part of an idea here... Flesh it out, follow the path back to where it started going downhill.
Education in the US got worse when the government took control over it and created a monopoly. Sure, you can pay to put your kid in private school. But you shouldn't have to pay for everyone else's kids in the public school system in that case. Not to mention those of us who have no kids. Why am *I* paying for other people's education? I'd rather further my own. Since people lose about 30% to taxes (at least that's what comes out of my paycheck) they don't have the cash to put thier kids in private school. And public school is "free". Of course, they are still paying for it, they just don't see it. It's like me telling you that you have to pay me money each year for your childs education AND you have to pay someone else to ACCUALLY educate you kid. Are you going to pay me?? Of course not. So why do you pay the government? If you don't have kids in there, you shouldn't have to pay for it.
Getting the government out just means more freedom for parents to decide how to educate thier kids and it stops stealing the resources they need to pay for that decision. If thier kids don't want to attend a particular school, and they agree, they can let them go to work, or go to a tech school, home school, whatever.
As for the other comments about more bums etc.. I doubt it would be a problem. People usually realize that there is no money in having no skills and will take some training and get a job. Not to mention, the parents still have final say till the kids are 18. Besides, there's always work to be done cleaning all those new schools after the staff and students have left for the day. Or any of the other labor type jobs. And with a little school they could become mechanics or even *gasp* computer help desk etc.. Point is, there is work available even for people of little skill. And oppertunities to move up in the world with a little work. Sure, you don't start out making much, but it's enough to support yourself on. And the taxes would be lower (because they stopped stealing money for education, because as voters you kicked out the people that refused to, RIGHT??) So they would keep more of what they earn.
Before government got involved education was much better. People left school knowing how to read, write, and do basic math. Sure, some people didn't go, and didn't learn it on thier own. Like today, there was work for them to do.
I'm sure many Slashdot readers have satisfying careers now. But many engineers, scientists, programmers and mathematicians are underemployed or unemployed, particularly the older ones. Sooner or later, you and I will join their number. I'm not convinced they're all a bunch of slackers would couldn't keep up and were left behind. Their abilities are being squandered. These were people who didn't need any government program to get them involved in a technical field. They naturally gravitated to it. Congress will not be able to fix the public schools and yet there will still be plenty of technical types coming through as there always has been. There's no shortage today. In a shortage, employers wouldn't be so picky and wages would go way up. They just want to keep the pipeline full.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
In my 8th grade biology class, our teacher taught us 2 theories on the universe: Creationism and Big Bang/Evolutionary. He even had an in class debate on it. Teaching Creationism in school is fine, as long as other theories are taught as well.
Congress is not about to actually allow educational reform. If they did, and the level of education again reached the level it was in the 60's or higher, there is no way that they would stay in office . . . and they know that. For example: would an educated populace put up with a system where congress takes huge bribes from "special interests" to get elected, and then turns around and pays back their "debts" to those "special interests" a thousand-fold with public money? Not likely. An educated population would boot those turkey's out in a heartbeat. Un-educated people are easy to manipulate, and that's a plus for congress that they are not about to lose.
I'm a little concerned about how much affect congress initiatives on this subject will really have. When I went to high school we got our first set of computers (late 80's - PS/2's), and nobody really used 'em except us geeks during lunch. They've got to make sure the teachers are there and money is there. Science is much more complicated. Most science graduates go into industry, cause that's where the money is.
-- Moondog
The FEDs should stay of public education. They have nothing buy screw it up. The USA had the best education system in the world before the FEDs got involved. Now we have one of the worst. Return schools to the community where they belong.