Add NCLB into the mix, and teachers may be denied the opportunity to prepare smart kids while too busy pandering to those performing below the acceptable standard.
I haven't dug into the details of NCLB, I'm more staring at it like a wreck on the freeway... as I understand it, NCLB standards have ratcheted up to critical mass where more schools are failing than passing now. It's nice to set arbitrary standards for your kids and threaten them with a big whip if they fail, but, at some point, you've got to acknowledge that the whip isn't working.
Odd, Intro to EE is usually a fairly simple course that covers solving DC lumped parameter circuits, along with some minimal transient analysis, and possibly some very basic steady state AC analysis using phasors.
That's the one.
I'm guessing that either that course was strangely designed and did not cover those topics, or it was poorly taught, because anybody who can handle other mechanical engineering courses should be able to handle the version of Intro to EE that I took.
The fact that he currently does fluid dynamics is proof of this, since DC steady state circuits are exactly equivalent to a model of pressure and flow in a closed loop system involving an incompressible fluid which involves only linear relationships between pressure and flow.
It was known as a weed-out course at the time. I had a similar problem with Chem101, it was a pre-med weedout, I was pretty much a whiz at chemistry and multiple choice tests, but I couldn't get over 80% on those Chem101 tests to save my life - tricks within tricks, I pulled out a C and was done with it - but the grade didn't reflect my understanding of the material at all.
And, I did my Masters' in 2.5 instead of 2, and it never caused a minute's problem for me... but if a school has a name as a slow place to do something, it might creep into the perception landscape more than individual records do.
Surprisingly, 20 years after the fact, nobody even asks for proof of my Masters' anymore.
The secret to passing any difficult class is knowing the material before you go in. If you don't know it and expect to learn it during a single semester along with 5 other challenging classes, plus a social life... A good adviser will put you in one challenging class per semester. Or, if you're a business major, then it's easier due to the total lack of challenging classes.
I sometimes wonder if I'm the stupid one for sticking with it, when I could have just said, "Fuck it," and coasted through a business major without even trying like several of my peers ended up doing.
How comfortable are you repeating the phrase "you want fries with that?" several hundred times a day? Not so much? Then you did the right thing.
In some areas (mostly Civil), engineers have the EIT / PE exams. I've never needed them, so it's basically impossible for me to sit for the PE because I don't work with any PEs in my jobs. In some ways, I'd like for there to be a PE license for software, but see a recent/. thread about how much sense software exams actually make.
Architecture already does this (the 5 year program), and of course, there's Med School. Thing is, if you can take your STEM major over here in 4 years, or over there in 5, who's going to opt for the 5 year program? What will the outside world think if it took you 25% longer to reach the same goal? I know the good answers: oh, he will have a more thorough understanding of the fundamentals, yadda, yadda.... now, what will really be said: he couldn't hack it in 4, he lacks drive I want someone who took stimulants and got it done in 3...
I was working as an engineer with a Masters' and about 8 years in the field, the company was hitting some hard times and I was looking around at what I could do. There was a post-doc position in a sister organization that I talked about doing temporarily... thing was, it only paid 1/3 what I was making as an engineer, and these guys were 3 to 5 years past getting their PhD. I'm not too good to work for less money, but I did have a mortgage to pay and that just wasn't going to cut it.
Similar story for an ME I knew, he had a post-doc doppelganger at his old job, ME had a wife, new baby, house, etc. Postdoc had a bicycle, judging from his website he liked his bicycle a lot.
Limit of the sum of a Physics Major as GPA goes to 0 equals and Engineering Major.
And pre-med dropouts become science teachers. The difference between a successful Physics Major and a successful Engineering Major is that the Engineer gets to choose where they live and what they work on. Most successful Physics Majors I know are scrabbling around the planet trying to get a decent post anywhere that will have them.
My high school's salutatorian took all the AP science and math classes (in fact, I think he took all the available AP classes, including English and history), aced them all. He majored in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Intro to Electrical Engineering did him in, failed 3x. He interned at NASA, worked on Hypersonic engine design and currently does fluid dynamics.
There is something arbitrary in the process, I'm surprised he didn't find a way around a simple problem like failing intro to EE, but it got him - I suspect he might have been trying to get away from his live-in girlfriend and the EE class made it easy to do, but I'm sure if he could have aced it, he would have.
In my day (late 80s) we took classes in Fortran and Pascal... then they made you do semester long projects in C - no pre-requisite C class, hell I don't think they even offered a C class. Reasoning was, if you knew Pascal, C was pretty close and you should be able to figure it out.
At 11% on the survey, I'd mark that as a success of C - no reason to ask questions, they have all been answered already.
The critical review you get by publishing in mass media is more complete and honest than what you get in a peer reviewed scientific publication. Why publish in a scientific journal just to say you did it? The peer review and publishing process has ceased to be intellectually valuable and completely fails to separate lies from truth.
Uh, I don't think so. Have you gone through peer review in a scientific journal? The process is long and can last 6 months or even a year. It is very thorough as there is always something that can be improved in a paper.
In my experience, in niche fields, it is a very political process wherein the reviewers are often personally acquainted with the reviewees because there is simply noone else qualified to do the review. Like all good legal-political encounters, the use of maximal permissible delay is a passive-aggressive tactic most often used for anything but the purpose of thoroughness.
The critical review you get by publishing in mass media is more complete and honest than what you get in a peer reviewed scientific publication. Why publish in a scientific journal just to say you did it? The peer review and publishing process has ceased to be intellectually valuable and completely fails to separate lies from truth.
Except, neither Spock nor data were on the Autism spectrum. Spock was perpetually trying to purge his emotions (and mostly succeeding) and Data never had any from the start. Autistic individuals I know have plenty of emotions...
A 90+ crone that lived next to my place of business would occasionally have, or feign, bouts of Tourettes. Funny thing about her was that "Pussy Galore" was one of her most common phrases...
Including things where the "crazy self-promoting dickhead trying to get some publicity for himself with his stupid theory" turned out to be right...
The sad thing is, for every "crazy self-promoting dickhead" who gets it right... they will spawn dozens more taking shots in the dark at the next target. The next one to actually hit something correctly will be labeled genius and spawn a new generation.
We went to the physician for our kids' annual checkup, ages 4 and 6. We take them together to get it out of the way in one exposure to the waiting room instead of two. While in the examination room, one of our kids had a bad case of bored wiggles (granted, it was a really bad case.) Without asking us or discussing it at all, the pediatrician wrote us a referral to what people in town call the "Ritalin clinic," you go there to get your ADHD diagnosis and associated 'scripts and I believe they have a 99% "yes" rating for parents coming in with referrals.
We didn't go, we are managing our kids without the drugs. We haven't gone through 4 years of "trying to get the meds balanced," we have gone through 4 years of trying to get our kids balanced. We don't have bi-monthly visits to the doctor to check for signs of liver damage, we don't get wigged out if a script is running out or we forgot our pills... in short, we're not pumping thousands of dollars a year into the medico-pharma complex to get some false reassurance that we're doing everything we can to "manage" our children.
I know some kids who meds have clearly helped, but for every one of those, I know at least 2 more who meds have clearly done absolutely nothing for, and I can't see any evidence that the "practicing physicians" are doing anything other than "well, this pill has had the best success rate for my patients in your condition (oh, and the junkets to Cancun sponsored by the manufacturer don't hurt), let's give this a try for six weeks and you tell me if it works..."
Its just plain nuts to pretend a link doesn't exist... , the important bit is 'what is the effect', 'how do we mitigate it', and 'how certain are we of the linkage'. The rest is for dingbats.
Arguably, without ASD, the world wouldn't have computer chips, video games, satellites, etc... so, ASD caused video games, and maybe ASD individuals like to play video games more than non-ASD individuals. Would ASD'ers integrate with "regular" society better if they played less video games? Perhaps. What seems to be happening in the last 25 years from my perspective is that "regular" society is learning to integrate better with ASD'ers, in part by playing more video games.
I would however wish that I'd become more self-aware earlier in life. I would have screwed around fewer people with my selfish and obsessive behavior - myself included. I would have had more success earlier in my career if I'd better understood how to present my ideas to people.
Many people don't become self-aware enough to make this observation by age 65... be glad you got here before you died, and try to help a few other people cross over if you can.
The problem with Autism is that it is a 1% condition - you, and all your friends an acquaintances can take daily baths in organophosphate pesticides and it none of you ever developed Autism, but... in that 1% of the population that is vulnerable, if they were exposed at age 18 months, they develop the condition in spades (or not, that was just one study in Italy that found a pesticide link...)
It is very simple conclusion to blame the parents, that's why they came up with the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis in the 1950s. The effort and devotion I have seen in many parents of Autistic children completely refutes this easy explanation.
But, if you only see them in passing in the grocery store, it's certainly easy enough to hold your nose at a high angle and think to yourself "my children never acted like that, my friends children never acted like that, we taught them how to behave, why can't she?"
Problem with corporal punishment is that it is usually delivered in a state of hate and rage, giving the whole method a bad rap. I have also noticed, with my kids at least, that physical pain, or the threat of it, is a small motivator compared to the things that really matter to them.
I lived in Texas for a couple of years, and the thing that amazed me about the extra conservative conservatives I met there was how they publicly expressed a set of values that they themselves could not live up to. It's nice to aspire to improve yourself, but wishing for your children to be "better people" than you or your parents ever were doesn't make it so, belt or no belt.
80 years old - dry skin? Are you sure that a capacitive touch screen will work as well for her as it does for you? Might want to try one out before committing.
Slashdot Mirror
Add NCLB into the mix, and teachers may be denied the opportunity to prepare smart kids while too busy pandering to those performing below the acceptable standard.
I haven't dug into the details of NCLB, I'm more staring at it like a wreck on the freeway... as I understand it, NCLB standards have ratcheted up to critical mass where more schools are failing than passing now. It's nice to set arbitrary standards for your kids and threaten them with a big whip if they fail, but, at some point, you've got to acknowledge that the whip isn't working.
Odd, Intro to EE is usually a fairly simple course that covers solving DC lumped parameter circuits, along with some minimal transient analysis, and possibly some very basic steady state AC analysis using phasors.
That's the one.
I'm guessing that either that course was strangely designed and did not cover those topics, or it was poorly taught, because anybody who can handle other mechanical engineering courses should be able to handle the version of Intro to EE that I took.
The fact that he currently does fluid dynamics is proof of this, since DC steady state circuits are exactly equivalent to a model of pressure and flow in a closed loop system involving an incompressible fluid which involves only linear relationships between pressure and flow.
It was known as a weed-out course at the time. I had a similar problem with Chem101, it was a pre-med weedout, I was pretty much a whiz at chemistry and multiple choice tests, but I couldn't get over 80% on those Chem101 tests to save my life - tricks within tricks, I pulled out a C and was done with it - but the grade didn't reflect my understanding of the material at all.
And, I did my Masters' in 2.5 instead of 2, and it never caused a minute's problem for me... but if a school has a name as a slow place to do something, it might creep into the perception landscape more than individual records do.
Surprisingly, 20 years after the fact, nobody even asks for proof of my Masters' anymore.
The secret to passing any difficult class is knowing the material before you go in. If you don't know it and expect to learn it during a single semester along with 5 other challenging classes, plus a social life... A good adviser will put you in one challenging class per semester. Or, if you're a business major, then it's easier due to the total lack of challenging classes.
I sometimes wonder if I'm the stupid one for sticking with it, when I could have just said, "Fuck it," and coasted through a business major without even trying like several of my peers ended up doing.
How comfortable are you repeating the phrase "you want fries with that?" several hundred times a day? Not so much? Then you did the right thing.
In some areas (mostly Civil), engineers have the EIT / PE exams. I've never needed them, so it's basically impossible for me to sit for the PE because I don't work with any PEs in my jobs. In some ways, I'd like for there to be a PE license for software, but see a recent /. thread about how much sense software exams actually make.
Architecture already does this (the 5 year program), and of course, there's Med School. Thing is, if you can take your STEM major over here in 4 years, or over there in 5, who's going to opt for the 5 year program? What will the outside world think if it took you 25% longer to reach the same goal? I know the good answers: oh, he will have a more thorough understanding of the fundamentals, yadda, yadda.... now, what will really be said: he couldn't hack it in 4, he lacks drive I want someone who took stimulants and got it done in 3...
I was working as an engineer with a Masters' and about 8 years in the field, the company was hitting some hard times and I was looking around at what I could do. There was a post-doc position in a sister organization that I talked about doing temporarily... thing was, it only paid 1/3 what I was making as an engineer, and these guys were 3 to 5 years past getting their PhD. I'm not too good to work for less money, but I did have a mortgage to pay and that just wasn't going to cut it.
Similar story for an ME I knew, he had a post-doc doppelganger at his old job, ME had a wife, new baby, house, etc. Postdoc had a bicycle, judging from his website he liked his bicycle a lot.
Limit of the sum of a Physics Major as GPA goes to 0 equals and Engineering Major.
And pre-med dropouts become science teachers. The difference between a successful Physics Major and a successful Engineering Major is that the Engineer gets to choose where they live and what they work on. Most successful Physics Majors I know are scrabbling around the planet trying to get a decent post anywhere that will have them.
My high school's salutatorian took all the AP science and math classes (in fact, I think he took all the available AP classes, including English and history), aced them all. He majored in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Intro to Electrical Engineering did him in, failed 3x. He interned at NASA, worked on Hypersonic engine design and currently does fluid dynamics.
There is something arbitrary in the process, I'm surprised he didn't find a way around a simple problem like failing intro to EE, but it got him - I suspect he might have been trying to get away from his live-in girlfriend and the EE class made it easy to do, but I'm sure if he could have aced it, he would have.
Engish iz ezier, much.
Yeah, because there's obviously another explanation for this.
In my day (late 80s) we took classes in Fortran and Pascal... then they made you do semester long projects in C - no pre-requisite C class, hell I don't think they even offered a C class. Reasoning was, if you knew Pascal, C was pretty close and you should be able to figure it out.
At 11% on the survey, I'd mark that as a success of C - no reason to ask questions, they have all been answered already.
Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Uh, I don't think so. Have you gone through peer review in a scientific journal? The process is long and can last 6 months or even a year. It is very thorough as there is always something that can be improved in a paper.
In my experience, in niche fields, it is a very political process wherein the reviewers are often personally acquainted with the reviewees because there is simply noone else qualified to do the review. Like all good legal-political encounters, the use of maximal permissible delay is a passive-aggressive tactic most often used for anything but the purpose of thoroughness.
Here's one argument:
The critical review you get by publishing in mass media is more complete and honest than what you get in a peer reviewed scientific publication. Why publish in a scientific journal just to say you did it? The peer review and publishing process has ceased to be intellectually valuable and completely fails to separate lies from truth.
See: SCIgen, especially the List of works with notable acceptance.
Except, neither Spock nor data were on the Autism spectrum. Spock was perpetually trying to purge his emotions (and mostly succeeding) and Data never had any from the start. Autistic individuals I know have plenty of emotions...
A 90+ crone that lived next to my place of business would occasionally have, or feign, bouts of Tourettes. Funny thing about her was that "Pussy Galore" was one of her most common phrases...
Including things where the "crazy self-promoting dickhead trying to get some publicity for himself with his stupid theory" turned out to be right...
The sad thing is, for every "crazy self-promoting dickhead" who gets it right... they will spawn dozens more taking shots in the dark at the next target. The next one to actually hit something correctly will be labeled genius and spawn a new generation.
Said politely: this is the scientific method.
You don't see many people blaming their chlamydia infection on aluminium pots, because it's well established what causes that disease!
I know what they said causes chlamydia, but the way it ran through my dorm-floor in college, you'd swear it transmitted via toilet seats.
We went to the physician for our kids' annual checkup, ages 4 and 6. We take them together to get it out of the way in one exposure to the waiting room instead of two. While in the examination room, one of our kids had a bad case of bored wiggles (granted, it was a really bad case.) Without asking us or discussing it at all, the pediatrician wrote us a referral to what people in town call the "Ritalin clinic," you go there to get your ADHD diagnosis and associated 'scripts and I believe they have a 99% "yes" rating for parents coming in with referrals.
We didn't go, we are managing our kids without the drugs. We haven't gone through 4 years of "trying to get the meds balanced," we have gone through 4 years of trying to get our kids balanced. We don't have bi-monthly visits to the doctor to check for signs of liver damage, we don't get wigged out if a script is running out or we forgot our pills... in short, we're not pumping thousands of dollars a year into the medico-pharma complex to get some false reassurance that we're doing everything we can to "manage" our children.
I know some kids who meds have clearly helped, but for every one of those, I know at least 2 more who meds have clearly done absolutely nothing for, and I can't see any evidence that the "practicing physicians" are doing anything other than "well, this pill has had the best success rate for my patients in your condition (oh, and the junkets to Cancun sponsored by the manufacturer don't hurt), let's give this a try for six weeks and you tell me if it works..."
Its just plain nuts to pretend a link doesn't exist ... , the important bit is 'what is the effect', 'how do we mitigate it', and 'how certain are we of the linkage'. The rest is for dingbats.
Arguably, without ASD, the world wouldn't have computer chips, video games, satellites, etc... so, ASD caused video games, and maybe ASD individuals like to play video games more than non-ASD individuals. Would ASD'ers integrate with "regular" society better if they played less video games? Perhaps. What seems to be happening in the last 25 years from my perspective is that "regular" society is learning to integrate better with ASD'ers, in part by playing more video games.
I would however wish that I'd become more self-aware earlier in life. I would have screwed around fewer people with my selfish and obsessive behavior - myself included. I would have had more success earlier in my career if I'd better understood how to present my ideas to people.
Many people don't become self-aware enough to make this observation by age 65... be glad you got here before you died, and try to help a few other people cross over if you can.
The problem with Autism is that it is a 1% condition - you, and all your friends an acquaintances can take daily baths in organophosphate pesticides and it none of you ever developed Autism, but... in that 1% of the population that is vulnerable, if they were exposed at age 18 months, they develop the condition in spades (or not, that was just one study in Italy that found a pesticide link...)
It is very simple conclusion to blame the parents, that's why they came up with the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis in the 1950s. The effort and devotion I have seen in many parents of Autistic children completely refutes this easy explanation.
But, if you only see them in passing in the grocery store, it's certainly easy enough to hold your nose at a high angle and think to yourself "my children never acted like that, my friends children never acted like that, we taught them how to behave, why can't she?"
Problem with corporal punishment is that it is usually delivered in a state of hate and rage, giving the whole method a bad rap. I have also noticed, with my kids at least, that physical pain, or the threat of it, is a small motivator compared to the things that really matter to them.
I lived in Texas for a couple of years, and the thing that amazed me about the extra conservative conservatives I met there was how they publicly expressed a set of values that they themselves could not live up to. It's nice to aspire to improve yourself, but wishing for your children to be "better people" than you or your parents ever were doesn't make it so, belt or no belt.
80 years old - dry skin? Are you sure that a capacitive touch screen will work as well for her as it does for you? Might want to try one out before committing.