Sensible Erection | Is School too Easy? Ask the kids.

Tuesday, 10 July 2012

quote [ American progress says its analysis found that the popular images of students overburdened with work and keeping "the hours of a corporate lawyer in order to finish their school projects and homework assignments" are quite simply off base. ]

My boys are 12 and 10 and I am always amazed at what they do not know.

Schools are funded based on test scores. So the schools that want money do nothing but prepare the kids to do well on the test.

I love my kids; they are being set up to fail.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/07/pdf/state_of_education.pdf

And thanks again. Cheers all.

[by RedRiverRat@9:48pmGMT] [+8 Interesting]

Comments

zenviper said @ 10:16pm GMT on 10th Jul
Agree 100%

I could learn everything I was taught by teachers prior to college over the course of 2-3 years.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 10:30pm GMT on 10th Jul
But could you have learned all that stuff over the course of 2-3 pre-college years?

zenviper said @ 10:37pm GMT on 10th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
Yes.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 1:07am GMT on 11th Jul
Could everyone else?

zenviper said @ 5:04am GMT on 11th Jul
Yep. I am not smart, I just worked really hard.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 5:23am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
How would you have decided which topics to study if you were teaching yourself (again, pre-college) without guidance?

arrowhen said @ 10:25am GMT on 11th Jul
When I was in high school, I was required to take algebra and geometry.

Algebra was fun, because every equation was like solving a mystery, a logic puzzle which was only vaguely connected to "math" because the answer was a number.

Geometry, on the other hand, was a torturous chore, because even the absolute basics involved imagining things like lines that went on forever or planes that only had two dimensions when any idiot understood that the actual universe had three. When you asked how the bizarre, uninuitive realm of geometry bore any relation to the actual universe that you lived in, you were told simply that "this is stuff you need to know to get into college."

When you've already spent your whole life being told by your parents that "college is for rich kids", and the last couple of years being told by high schoold guidance counselors that "college is for kids with better grades than you", it's hard to understand why you need to continue giving a fuck about high school geometry, even though twelve years later it'll help you understand the basic trigonometry you'll need to learn in order to program the silly videogame you're working on when you're not busy busting ass at your shitty job.

If there was some kind of map that displayed all human knowledge and said, "If you want to do X, you'll need to learn Y", that would be awesome. So far, though, I haven't run across one.

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:08pm GMT on 11th Jul
That's funny. I hate algebra and loved geometry (billiards stuff).

Our high school offered algebra I and II/geometry/trigonometry/calculous

I was pissed because if I had known I'd need calculous for physics, I'f have totally been into it.

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:09pm GMT on 11th Jul
Disclaimer:

Algebra teacher sucked.
Geometry/trig/calc fine.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 6:31pm GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Informative]
That's tragic. You should have had an awesome math teacher like me.

I think I'd probably respond to complaints that the real world is 3-dimensional with something like "That's true, but in most practical cases any 3-dimensional object can be split up into 2-dimensional cross-sections, and if you can analyze the 2-dimensional cross-sections, you can learn a lot about the object as a whole. In fact, that's really what a big chunk of calculus is all about, as you'll learn in a few years."

theolypse said @ 10:04pm GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Informative]
So you really just want a tech tree.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 10:08pm GMT on 11th Jul
Easy; just map out prerequisites from a course catalog. :-)

YOU HAVE RESEARCHED ALGEBRA

bruceski said @ 10:32pm GMT on 10th Jul
I'm not saying you're wrong, but would the prior-to-college you agree on that 2-3 years? Everything's easy once you know it.

pre-college zenviper said @ 10:36pm GMT on 10th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
*looks up from video game*
*puts down bong*

uh....what?

zenviper said @ 10:39pm GMT on 10th Jul
Yes.

The only thing I probably would have to omit from that time was all of the great literature I read. Although, the significant majority of my peers didn't bother reading any of them, and yet they still managed to 'pass'.

willrogers said @ 10:55pm GMT on 10th Jul
You really don't think there's some aspect of a hindsight bias here and that you're remembering things different than you actually experienced them and/or are biased in your evaluation of how you would do if 12 years of school were condensed into two or three?

zenviper said @ 11:14pm GMT on 10th Jul
The only thing that I really think would be a challenge are the social interactions... but assuming that the school system were to radically change, it doesn't necessarily mean that I wouldn't still have equivalent interactions, or perhaps even better ones.

I know it seems like a rather pompous statement, but I had somewhat of a unique youth: Due to a lot of other factors in my life, I bounced around schools a lot prior to highschool and missed a lot of courses. Sometimes at new schools they would put me in special ed, but would generally move me out after a few months of my complaining. During this period I averaged mostly Cs and Ds ....

I went to a pretty good prep school for highschool. I averaged Bs, Cs and didnt really try until Junior year when I realized I had to apply to college and upgraded to As and Bs mostly. Regardless, I didn't learn much aside from rudimentary Physics and English... still, even though I loved to read, I struggled with writing because I missed the basics of Grammar in primary school. My math skills only went to the very basics of Trig, and I was terrible at algebra, which would haunt me in college.

I went to college for computer engineering, which includes calculus 1,2 and Organic Chemistry in the first year curriculum... I felt pretty fucked.. but I was able to backtrack and learn everything I needed to get by with the help of text books and some smart classmates. I understood that things were different at this point - If I didn't make grades, I wouldn't graduate, and I wouldn't have a future.

It certainly was anything but easy, but I was able to turn from pretty much straight Cs and Ds to straight As by the time I graduated. I had to pull some late and occasionally sleepless nights, but I don't regret how I went about things, and so far it has worked out for me.

Long story short - I have had to learn significant amounts of material in a very short time and was able to do it. Maybe a 7 year old couldn't... I don't know enough about the cognitive ability of someone that young, but I definitely know that from 13-17 I could have learned a whole lot more than I did.

lalanda said @ 11:44pm GMT on 10th Jul
Haven't you just said that you were able to learn what you should have learned in high school while you were at university?

Isn't that what the others are pointing out, i.e. that university students could learn high school curricula quickly, but 15-year-olds could not?

zenviper said @ 11:56pm GMT on 10th Jul
no.

And if so, then why bother?

zenviper said @ 12:01am GMT on 11th Jul
I think incentive has a lot more to do with it than age.

kichijoii said @ 12:54am GMT on 12th Jul
Typically, incentives change with age.

wangcan0 said @ 12:33am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Interesting]
First, congratulations on constructing an education out of odds and ends in time to not flunk out of college. That's a serious feat, and not a few of my friends from Freshman year didn't do as well as you did. You are to be applauded.

However, I disagree with your premise that anyone can get a basic education in three years prior to entering college. I know I couldn't -- and I would argue that you didn't, either.

First, learning to read and write takes more practice than anything else. I read voraciously as a child, and it seems like you did, too. In addition to that, I had an English teacher that expected 8th graders to turn out a one-page type-written short story with a plot on a daily basis -- my writing improved dramatically (and I learned to touch type).

Algebra, which you admit troubled you, is much the same -- you get better by using it. I had five years of practice before I hit college, and there were still concepts that took a semester to finish percolating through my skull.

That said, somewhere in the replies to your comment, somebody suggested three years of classroom education interspersed with 9 years of free-form discovery. I'm all for giving kids a taste of the hard stuff early, and then giving them all the time they need to grow into it.

Somebody needs to crack the whip so the lazy little fuckers don't just read Startide Rising three times in a row, though . . .

arrowhen said @ 11:06am GMT on 11th Jul
I learned more about stellar astronomy by reading Heechee Rendezvous in the back of my high school Astronomy class than I did in my high school Astronomy class (which I was only eligible to take, by the way, by deliberately failing high school Biology.)

kichijoii said @ 1:14am GMT on 12th Jul
I, too, would learn more from a book than from a class if I only read the book and didn't pay attention to the class.

mechanical contrivance said @ 2:08am GMT on 12th Jul
The content of the books matters a great deal. The worst is when you have a bad professor, and the professor is the one who wrote the textbook.

arrowhen said @ 11:46pm GMT on 10th Jul
Lindergarten education to college freshman education in three years seems a little unlikely. BUT, three years of "formal" education spread out over the ages of five to 18, with the remainder set aside for unstructured free time, with access to a decent library, wikipedia, and adult mentorship, and you'd probably enter college better educated than most 30 year olds.

arrowhen said @ 11:56pm GMT on 10th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
You'd probably also learn to spell Kindergarten.

CapnSilver said @ 1:16pm GMT on 11th Jul
You should have gone to college at age 8 then.

afrasr said @ 10:35pm GMT on 10th Jul

Watch and rage..

afrasr said @ 10:37pm GMT on 10th Jul
Also

puravida said @ 3:32am GMT on 12th Jul
Cool =)

Did you see the RSA Animate video I posted on the bottom?

I need to read up more on this Sir Ken Robinson guy, good stuff

sanepride said @ 10:38pm GMT on 10th Jul
Unionized teachers raged plenty at that movie.

Ronin.ca said @ 10:40pm GMT on 10th Jul
And most of us ununionised people with educational backgrounds.. and most education profs... and most real experts.

lalanda said @ 11:48pm GMT on 10th Jul
What did they disagree with?

(I have no agenda, just no idea.)

sanepride said @ 12:45am GMT on 11th Jul
Here's a sampling of criticisms from the NEA.

More from Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT (who is actually featured in the movie, somewhat unflatteringly).

kimbo said @ 5:18am GMT on 12th Jul
Here's a review which clearly articulates the film's problems...

King of the Hill said @ 1:02am GMT on 11th Jul
Yes... Because Michelle Rhee came in and challenged the status quo. It is really that simple.

willrogers said @ 3:14am GMT on 11th Jul
Kind of like when any new boss comes in and fucks over the employees because they don't give a shit what happens to anyone beneath them on the totem pole. That kind of crap tends to piss people off.

Also, the "gains" from her changes to the school system were likely the result of rampant cheating and corruption, not genuine improvement in student learning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Rhee#Test_erasures

More importantly, most charter schools don't actually perform better than traditional public schools.

Some fact-checking is in order, and the place to start is with the film’s quiet acknowledgment that only one in five charter schools is able to get the “amazing results” that it celebrates. Nothing more is said about this astonishing statistic. It is drawn from a national study of charter schools by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond (the wife of Hanushek). Known as the CREDO study, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that
17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school. The proportion of charters that get amazing results is far smaller than 17 percent.

bruceski said @ 3:33am GMT on 11th Jul
It's not an issue for the study you cited, but be careful how you measure those. There was some gronking up here in Portland a few years ago because an editorial did a story on the low number of students graduating from charter schools, when most of those schools weren't accredited to issue degrees. They take the kid, work with them for a few years, and squirt them back into the standard school system for graduation. If you just look at where HS degrees are issued from those don't show up.

Right after that editorial came out I did some volunteer work with one of the few charter schools that WAS accredited up here, they work with underperforming kids and figure out ways for them to learn. The principal was not a happy camper.

Navier-Strokes said @ 4:41am GMT on 11th Jul
Clicky

"The Credo study has been criticised for not comparing the results of children who have won charter-school lotteries with those who have not—a natural experiment in which the only difference between winners and losers should be the schooling they receive. Such studies suggest that charters are better. For example, a lottery study in New York City found that by eighth grade (around 13), charter-school pupils were 30 points ahead in maths.

However, recent work by Mathematica, an independent policy group, suggests that the Credo study is sound. The bigger problem is that its findings have been misinterpreted. First, the children who most need charters have been served well. Credo finds that students in poverty and English language learners fare better in charters. And a national “meta-analysis” of research, done last year for the Centre on Reinventing Public Education in Seattle, found charters were better at teaching elementary-school reading and mathematics, and middle-school mathematics. High-school charters, though, fared worse. Another recent study in Massachusetts for the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that urban charter schools are shown to be effective for minorities, poor students and low achievers.

Second, charter school performance is not so “mixed” if you look at the data on a state-by-state basis, rather than across the country as a whole. States with reading and maths gains that were significantly higher for charter-school students than in traditional schools included Arkansas, Colorado (Denver), Illinois (Chicago), Louisiana and Missouri.

Credo thinks that the variation in quality can be traced to the governing legislation behind the schools. Margaret Raymond, director of Credo, points to Arizona’s terrible results in 2009, which were the result of lax screening of those who were allowed to set up charter schools, and no serious reviews thereafter. Ohio, where most charters are worse than the traditional schools, gained a reputation as the “Wild West” of charter schools because it exercised almost no oversight.

Massachusetts, meanwhile, has had excellent results and is strict about the schools it allows to operate; the state will step in and close an underperforming school at short notice. Caps on the number of charters in a state drag down performance as much as lax oversight, because they cramp the diversification of the market and discourage investment. Bad laws make bad charter schools."

Also, please close your links correctly.

willrogers said @ 9:22am GMT on 11th Jul
If you actually look at the CREDO study, the effect sizes for the differences between the results when comparing students of similar socioeconomic statuses (e.g. low-income kids from the same neighborhoods who would have otherwise attended the same public schools) are tiny, something like 0.02 standard deviations.

So, while those differences are statistically significant, they aren't large enough to warrant the expense and effort of setting up charter schools. It's like running a 5-minute mile to burn 10 extra calories.

mrcucumber said @ 1:34pm GMT on 11th Jul
I have a bit of experience, albeit peripherally, on the subject of charter schools and how they compare to public schools.

I'll read the article you posted but charter schools are light years ahead of U.S. public schools. The whole paradigm of education needs to change, and individual schools searching for answers is better than just throwing money and parents at the problem of dismal public education. I've interviewed kids and educators in charter (high)schools in NYC and found the differences to be huge.

watch Waiting for Superman if you have netflix.

mrcucumber said @ 2:07pm GMT on 11th Jul
Never mind. Don't watch the movie.

I don't deny parent involvement or socioeconomic conditions of the students have an effect, but the actual way in which students are taught and tested is something that needs to be re-evaluated. Test scores don't show this since the tests are standardized to reflect the public school education and curriculum - not alternative methods. I didn't get this from the movie but from the teachers and administrators I interviewed at charter High Schools, not middle or grade schools.

willrogers said @ 9:43am GMT on 11th Jul
Also, if the successful charter schools like those in Massachusetts are successful because they are so highly regulated and the government is so involved, then why establish charter schools at all? Why not put that same effort and funds towards fixing public schools?

The whole charter school issue is just like other important social issues that people choose the less effective, though salient, but cognitively easier task(s), rather than actual solutions, like reforming the way we look at education (e.g. teachers amount to only about 10-20% of the variability in outcomes and outside of school factors amount to over 50% of variability, so we need to focus on what kids are doing when they aren't in school), how we train teachers (e.g. finding some way to deal with the Pygmalion effect, especially since it has been shown to have a racial bias component), how we fund schools (paying teachers for performance has been shown not to work), how we teach certain subjects (e.g. teaching foreign language courses starting in preschool to take advantage of developmental critical periods), what community resources are available (everything from well-funded libraries to educational extracurricular activities in schools to getting parents involved at school and continuing that involvement at home), etc.

We see the same thing in the criminal justice system. Rather than reducing poverty, improving the social safety net, making prisons into places of actual reform (e.g. education, job skills training, anger management programs and other psychosocial counseling, real substance abuse treatment, etc.), ending the drug war, improving community resources (especially community mental health programs), and other real solutions, we just end up getting expensive, feel-good band-aids like zero tolerance drug policies and the drug war, gun regulations, three strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences, the death penalty, and inhuman prisons.

Navier-Strokes said @ 5:09pm GMT on 11th Jul
I obtained that link because it was posted on the front page for the CREDO study website. If you don't like the findings, take it up with the CREDO people. who did the studies on the actual direct results. You brought them up, I just clarified their findings.

Also, if the successful charter schools like those in Massachusetts are successful because they are so highly regulated and the government is so involved, then why establish charter schools at all? Why not put that same effort and funds towards fixing public schools?

Again, from my article:
"Another recent study in Massachusetts for the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that urban charter schools are shown to be effective for minorities, poor students and low achievers."
They work for some people.

"Massachusetts, meanwhile, has had excellent results and is strict about the schools it allows to operate; the state will step in and close an underperforming school at short notice."
They only step in when the school isn't performing.

The article doesn't not mention if it is cheaper or more expensive to either
a) maintain and regulate a public school, or
b) regulate a charter school

There may well be other ways to improve how kids learn outside the school system (i.e. parents getting involved), but the school system can only directly impact what happens at the school, so they can only improve where they have an input.

Grubsteak said @ 10:39pm GMT on 10th Jul [Score:5]
...Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a preteen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

John Taylor Gatto

Cakkafracle said @ 11:50pm GMT on 10th Jul
And don't forget to spank them once in a while!

cb361 said @ 7:49am GMT on 11th Jul
Particularly when they're into their twenties.

theolypse said @ 10:01pm GMT on 11th Jul
And someone else's.

GordonGuano said @ 3:04am GMT on 11th Jul
"There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person."

-Adrian Veidt

Rapscallion said @ 10:57pm GMT on 10th Jul
This is why it makes me crazy to watch all the attention focused on national elections! Local elections are far more important people!

dietcoke said @ 11:13pm GMT on 10th Jul
Public school is a waste of time.
Example my youngest son. He spent 1 month in first grade, I kept getting calls on how he was "acting out" when in reality he had taken his workbooks home and done ALL the problems and exercises and finished the entire school year of work in one vacation session. I asked if the work was correct (it was) so then public school in all its greatness said I could either pay for extra education (ONLY the retarded and slow get free extra educational teachers in the USA the gifted have to fund their own extra learning) or I could allow them to put him into second grade.
We opted to put him in second grade, after 2 months in second grade they again said he was causing problems because he Again had finished the entire years worth of work and yes it was indeed all correct.
I began to wonder how lazy parents are that do not teach their kids at home and rely on schools to teach everything?
Then I was told that I HAD to pay for an extra teacher to teach him in a gifted class.
We said the hell with public school and enrolled him in private school where the gifted are cherished and the dumb and slow are expelled.
Public school welcomes the ones that will never become anything but fast food workers and cleaners and is disgusted with ones who can and do wish to learn.
Yes public school is indeed far to easy, the no child left behind method has caused the ones worthy of educating to be held back.

zenviper said @ 11:18pm GMT on 10th Jul
Glad you were able to find an avenue that worked for you. Public school caters to the lowest common denominator, and occasionally ends up serving only as daycare for working parents.

Still, having gone to my share of public and private schools, I know there are some very good public schools out there, and some not so great private schools.....

bruceski said @ 11:44pm GMT on 10th Jul
Yeah, I grew up in Los Alamos (national laboratory), so we had a town full of well-educated people who wanted the same support for their kids. My public schools were AWESOME!

It's not really a perfect statistic but it's the one I have on hand (saved the newspaper photo), my graduating year had 14 National Merit Finalists (score well on PSAT for semifinalist, then there's an essay, grades, and SAT scores to be a finalist). Out of about 200-250 in the senior class. The entire Albuquerque school system that year had 6.

chold_numa said @ 12:04am GMT on 11th Jul
That really is a perfect storm of an incredible number of fortuitous circumstances. Relatively rich demographic (scientists, researchers, etc in that period of time), who have stable jobs, are educated, presumably value education, are able to provide a stable home environment (with parents able to tutor/help their children), and (if the basic building blocks of intelligence are inherited) children with the ability to excel in school.

A private school is able to filter out children who might damage their statistics, whereas a public school cannot. It amounts to class warfare (rich against the poor). There's nothing wrong with the public school system that funding, smaller class sizes, stable home environments, and increased parental participation can't fix. It's a tall order though.

bruceski said @ 12:46am GMT on 11th Jul
Agreed. I have been very lucky growing up.

chold_numa said @ 3:35am GMT on 11th Jul
Certainly sounds like it. I'm more than a bit jealous!

That said, I think it illustrates that factors external to the school system are just as important, if not more so. Fiddling around with the system alone won't fix the problem.

iosef said @ 5:21pm GMT on 11th Jul
True re: good public schools and bad private schools. Kids that are talented relative to their classmates (or teachers) will always be bored. This problem is alleviated somewhat by offering classes for more the more advanced / intellectually curious kids, but many districts are too small or too underfunded to do this realistically.

lilmookieesquire said @ 11:25pm GMT on 10th Jul
I don't know what "public schools" you are referring to.
The "public school" I went to had 1/3rd of its students go to ivy league.
Given that it was... oh... free (thank you tax payers)... I think that was a pretty good deal.

schatten00777 said @ 11:33pm GMT on 10th Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
I can think of two huge problems with American education off the top of my head. The first is tying school funding to local taxes. This creates way too much variation in school quality. The second is teaching to the test. If a child finds the curriculum too easy, the obvious solution is to advance them a grade. But doing so reduces the chances of a passing grade on tests that funding is based on. So there is no incentive for the school to help that child, and a big incentive to limit their progress.

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:03am GMT on 11th Jul
Our Jr. High dealt with it by having AP classes. (I was put into honors algebra in the 7th grade based of a placement test I took as opposed to pre-algrebra class)

Our high school dealt with it by offering to enroll poor performing students into things like cooking schools (that might capture their interest) or advanced students into Jr. College courses where they could take more challenging classes (compared to public high-school classes).

schatten00777 said @ 2:36am GMT on 11th Jul
AP classes are great, and so is early college enrollment. Vocational school sounds like a good idea, but there's evidence of racial and wealth discrimination in who gets pushed to go there during high school. There are some really good public schools out there with some great programs, but unfortunately not every school has the resources and funding to provide a decent education.

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:51am GMT on 11th Jul
It's true about funding, but I find that there's great political motivation in some areas to make that a self fulfilling prophecy.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 6:58am GMT on 13th Jul
It varies widely from state to state, from district to district within a state, and to some extent even from school to school within a district. The vast majority of the time I spent in public school (K-12 all in one district in southern California) was fantastic, largely due, I realize in retrospect, to having a lot of teachers that really cared about their students and a pair of parents that knew how to communicate effectively with both teachers and administrators. I'm sorry your experience with public school wasn't as great.

Regarding your specific problem, though...

Public school welcomes the ones that will never become anything but fast food workers and cleaners and is disgusted with ones who can and do wish to learn.

That genuinely is directly due to the so-called "No Child Left Behind" nonsense. The system currently in place (at least as of 5 years ago when I last studied it) grades schools based on student achievement on standardized tests, categorized into "advanced," "proficient," "basic," "below basic," and "far below basic."

The problem is that NCLB's scoring system produces the result that moving a "below basic" student to "basic" is a big points gain, but moving a "proficient" student to "advanced" is a small points gain, and if a student is already "advanced," further improvement doesn't give the school any points.

A lot of students don't care about learning and just want to do whatever it takes to get more points. Is it any wonder that schools do the same? NCLB needs to be scrapped entirely. Grading schools is a foolish idea.

lilmookieesquire said @ 11:35pm GMT on 10th Jul [Score:2]
Um. Am I the only one here that doesn't think school is just about academics?

There's social skills... making life-long friends... being exposed to all kinds of people and cultures... getting used to a mind numbing routine aka "work" schedules... learning appropriate behavior...

A lot of people seem to view school's sole value as academics in the same way some people view a job's worth or college education by the salary they get.

At the end of the day, life isn't about money. Life is about experiences/people/social circles/interests... S/O, friends, family and whatnot.

It's always been my view that school is meant to expose people to a variety of interests so you can find out what you like (and what you don't like)

I guess an underlying example would be Steve Jobs talk about Macs and his calligraphy class?

Cakkafracle said @ 11:55pm GMT on 10th Jul
you are living in a dream world, sugar.
If schooling teaches kids how to socialize, integrate, and appreciate aesthetics, it's purely by accident, rest assured.

They are training kids to live in a 9-5 environment, obeying 'bosses' and toeing the line... get too far ahead OR behind, and you are not part of the group anymore.

nothing like sanctioned mediocrity to breed a new generation of good workers.

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:00am GMT on 11th Jul
"Living in a dream world" = "getting used to a mind numbing routine aka "work" schedules" = "learning appropriate behavior".

Did you bother to read what I wrote?

My point is that life isn't about work.

Life is what (and who) you do outside of work.

tom the fish said @ 12:09am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:2]
And still I haven't met the person who didn't first ask me what I do, meaning how do I make my money.

TimmoW said @ 12:17am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:2]
This is why I ask people what they do when they're not at work, or alternatively, what they're passionate about. Sure, some people really love their jobs, but a majority just use an alright job to pay the bills so they can live the rest of their life.

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:20am GMT on 11th Jul
To be fair, there's a very large overlap.

Especially in Japan I think work has to do a lot with your social life (the drinking, the friends, the extra-work-responsibility) as well as an income that dictates what kind of social life and luxuries you might be able to afford (trips and whatnot).

And that's an excellent point.

bruceski said @ 12:50am GMT on 11th Jul
And to flip that, when somebody asks you what you do your first thought is how you make your money.

arrowhen said @ 3:25am GMT on 11th Jul
Uh, that's your first thought because when people ask you that, that's what they MEAN. They're not trying to find out that you collect vintage 1950s wood-burning kits or that you sip Merlot with all the windows open every time there's a summer thunderstorm, they're trying to find out how much money you make, to determine whether they can feel superior to you on that basis or whether they need to keep digging to find some other way in which you're not as good as them.

Naruki said @ 3:45am GMT on 11th Jul
Try asking them not the same question: who do you do?

bruceski said @ 3:57am GMT on 11th Jul
Wow, really? And all this time I've been hearing "small talk's a bitch, are you interested in anything I find interesting?"

arrowhen said @ 5:10am GMT on 11th Jul
Seriously? "What do you do?" is pretty much the DEFINITION of small talk, and I've never once found myself in a conversation where it meant anything other than "...for a living?"

Hell, even when I did say things like "drink beer and argue on the internet" or "daydream about physics", or whatever, people would usually just laugh nervously and say, "no, I mean for a living!"

bruceski said @ 5:23am GMT on 11th Jul
*shrug* I don't get out much, my ideal evening is a good book and something watchable on TV, so it may just be a matter of small sample size. The folks I do meet are a pretty eclectic social circle, happy to start talking about whatever it is they love to do whether or not it's what they get paid for.

puravida said @ 5:06am GMT on 11th Jul
Not always. I don't mean that when I ask that question.

I love my work. So when I ask people what they do, I (hope) I'm asking them what's important to them. They do it 40+ hours a week, don't they? Even if they don't love their work, then they can tell me what they hate doing which can be just as interesting.

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think the question HAS to have shallow motivations

arrowhen said @ 7:31am GMT on 11th Jul
I don't have 40+ hours a week to do what's important to me because I have to work and sleep to survive.

zarathustra said @ 6:28am GMT on 11th Jul
I tell them that I was able to retire at 30 and now I entertain the wives of those who still have to work. Not true, but it will teach them not to ask rude questions.

cb361 said @ 7:56am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
You spake thus?

monday said @ 9:47pm GMT on 11th Jul
I'm always interested to find out how in the hell other people are making money to live on. Always looking for a better idea than mine, which are frankly not working well enough.

EPT said @ 10:44am GMT on 13th Jul
Meh, it's a standard conversational gambit. Though I admit, I am thoroughly suprised that they don't bother to find out your name first.

arrowhen said @ 12:23am GMT on 11th Jul
I didn't have a non-white classmate until 7th grade, I'd *kill* for a job with a schedule as stable and predictable as my school schedule was, and most of the social lessons I learned were things like "get things wrong on purpose so kids don't beat you up for being too smart" and "don't ask too many questions or the teacher will get annoyed and make you do extra work."

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:42am GMT on 11th Jul
That applies to a lot of jobs I hear about. :p

bruceski said @ 12:51am GMT on 11th Jul
The main lesson I remember from school is "even when surrounded by smart kids the fat nerd gets pelted by eggs." That wasn't a fun day.

arrowhen said @ 3:50am GMT on 11th Jul
Are you kidding? I *loved* Free Egg Day!

lalanda said @ 7:01am GMT on 11th Jul
Racist.

arrowhen said @ 11:13am GMT on 11th Jul
I was a racist, as an adult, for many years before my practical, real life experience working around people of other races finally taught me that we (white people who had shitty jobs) were just like everyone else (other people who had shitty jobs).

sanepride said @ 2:59am GMT on 11th Jul
Very nice thoughts.
Yes, this is what school and life in general should be about. I can certainly look back at my humble public school education and say that it did serve this purpose to a large degree.
But of course this isn't necessarily a stated mission and intention of school. You throw a bunch of kids together with a common purpose and socialization will happen, for better or for worse. But this is a different, incidental kind of learning that what is on the actual curriculum.

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:49am GMT on 11th Jul
I guess my point is that, at least from an "adjusting to society" and
"people skills" point of view, public schools have advantages over homeschooling and perhaps some private schools (in terms of diversity).

That said, cram schools/home-tutoring/homework-time can (and should?) be used to make up the slack.

Naruki said @ 3:43am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
Spoken like a 4-digit salaryman. :-p

IronMahatma said @ 12:22am GMT on 11th Jul
Public schools are like public restrooms...

IronMahatma said @ 12:22am GMT on 11th Jul
... you get in, you get out, you get on with your life.

IronMahatma said @ 12:27am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:3 Funny]
... they're great when you're in a bind, but you should do your real business at home.

DuncmanG said @ 12:30am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
... don't sit directly on the seat.

bruceski said @ 12:52am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
...no matter what folks pretend, people inside are having sex.

arrowhen said @ 12:53am GMT on 11th Jul
They're a great place to get a blowjob as long as you don't get caught?

DuncmanG said @ 1:06am GMT on 11th Jul
... full of shit and disease but you can still learn a thing or two if you read what's on the wall.

Ankylosaur said @ 1:12am GMT on 11th Jul
DODGE BALLS!

mechanical contrivance said @ 3:01am GMT on 11th Jul
... there's always an old man masturbating with the stall door open.

sanepride said @ 3:03am GMT on 11th Jul
Neglect them and they stink to high heaven.

KingPellinore said @ 12:39pm GMT on 11th Jul
I was molested in both of them.

snowfox said @ 7:52am GMT on 12th Jul
... a great place to do drugs.

structured_spirits said @ 1:21am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
"they are being set up to fail. "

yes they are. It's done for a purpose.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 1:35am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:3 Underrated]
I had an excellent experience as a student in public schools. I enjoyed most of it and learned a lot, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm sorry some of you weren't as fortunate as I was.

That being said, there's a lot of room for improvement, especially since things seem to have gotten significantly worse in the last decade or so (I graduated in 1999). The biggest single thing we could do is quadruple the salary budget: double the number of teachers to half class size, and double the salary of every teacher to attract the best and the brightest to the profession. I know too many people who could have been excellent teachers but went into other careers because they couldn't deal with the low pay (and low respect) of teaching.

jutetrea said @ 2:16am GMT on 11th Jul
High School was fantastic for many reasons. I think its completely different now (I graduated in '93) and I am not looking forward to my 5 yr old hitting public high school.

We're in FL now, so we'll probably put him in private school. Boston suburb high schools were great, Tampa high schools are scary.

He'll be going to a Charter school this year for kindergarten, with the hope that they'll eventually build a charter high school.

The biggest positive influences I remember (back in the day) were my parents and their confidence in me, and those teachers that REALLY cared.

bruceski said @ 3:22am GMT on 11th Jul
ooo, a charter kindergarten. He can be eating paste and learning the alphabet at a 3rd grade level!

willrogers said @ 9:51am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
You do understand that you're part of the problem, right?

Parents like you who would actually be involved in your kids' educations and therefore do the most to improve public school education just abandon public schools, which is what makes them "scary." If the other parents don't care enough or simply can't get involved (e.g. poverty, lack of education, mental health issues, substance abuse problems, etc.), then their kids are going to do worse and the schools will just descend into warehousing kids until they graduate or are expelled because all the wealthy parents have moved their kids to private schools and the remaining involved parents are too few to get anything done.

You see the same phenomena with suburban flight.

mrcucumber said @ 1:19pm GMT on 11th Jul
You do understand that the problem is bigger than just parent involvement?

Barnabas_Truman said @ 6:36pm GMT on 11th Jul
A lot of the problems that are bigger than just parent involvement could be fixed by more parent involvement.

mrcucumber said @ 8:50pm GMT on 11th Jul
Parents don't change the curriculum/methods, or how effectively the money is spent, or hiring or training teachers. Parents have a huge impact, but there are other things wrong that good parenting can't change. If it's a shitty school, with no money, few teachers and fewer that care, or a curriculum that is outdated or even wrong, good parents who involve themselves in their child's education won't change the outcome of their kids education in the long run - unless of course they 'home school.' Considering most inner city kids' parents are working two jobs, I wonder how parental involvement is going to make or break their child's education. It stresses the kid, parent, and creates disenfranchised youth.

Don't get me wrong. I don't underestimate the power of parents. I had a pair that understood the value of both responsibility and accountability, and they made sure that I understood it too.

We can blame the lack of proper parenting all we want, but public school education needs a different paradigm. It's plainly failing when compared to the rest of the world - or at least from the metrics I've been exposed to.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 9:08pm GMT on 11th Jul
Good parenting can and often should include regularly communicating with teachers, administrators, and the school board. If you think your children aren't getting an adequate education from a school, demand improvement.

kichijoii said @ 1:19am GMT on 12th Jul
Its kind of a bind, though. How many of our own kids should we sacrifice until public school improves? Also, there is no guarantee that it will improve at all, or ever. Parents want the best they can afford for their kids NOW. We will have to leave it to government to get its ass in gear and increase funding, which will probably happen when it feels its done embarrassing itself in front of the rest of the world.

Menchi said @ 3:49am GMT on 11th Jul
Invest in *education*? Are you insane? You know how many missiles we could buy with that kind of money?

happiest_sadist said @ 5:05am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
Almost two!

kichijoii said @ 1:21am GMT on 12th Jul
Why educate millions of my own people when I can kill thousands of someone else's people?

eIfish said @ 8:22am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:2 Insightful]
Something most people don't consider when they say "double the wages to attract the best and brightest" is that it has to go hand-in-hand with sacking the least and dullest, or overpaying the least and dullest for decades until they retire or die.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 6:38pm GMT on 11th Jul
I think the real problem with the "competitive salary" attitude, at least when applied at the upper management level, is that it doesn't necessarily attract the best and the brightest--it attracts those that think money is the most important thing, and they're going to run the organization in accordance with that.

v21 said @ 10:23pm GMT on 12th Jul
You don't pay high salaries to lure people in, you pay reasonable salaries to not put people off.

The respect given is just as important. Harder to turn around, though.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 11:33pm GMT on 12th Jul
Yeah, ultimately that's what's needed for teaching--and for a lot of other necessary but unpopular jobs as well.

sua_sponte said @ 2:30am GMT on 11th Jul
Tell them every time they get less than an A they get fucked in the face by William Shatner.

One or two doses of Shatnerian man-chowder and even the slowest student will be MIT material.

lilmookieesquire said @ 2:58am GMT on 11th Jul
Or a redshirt.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 3:17am GMT on 11th Jul
~~redshirt~~ Orion slavegirl.

GordonGuano said @ 3:19am GMT on 11th Jul
One size fits all, standardized education is just one of the many ways a certain major political party in America is making it a new Third World nation. (With, it must be admitted, often the help a another certain major political party.) But then, if education was fixed, we might not need so many prisons.

cb361 said @ 8:21am GMT on 11th Jul
Clearly we all need much longer lifespans, and a much lower reproductive rate.

Then, the relatively small number of students can all receive a much more personal education from the best and the brightest in our society.

Also, I want a unicorn.

arrowhen said @ 10:55am GMT on 11th Jul
+1 everything you want is easily achievable except for the stupid unicorns, which I suspect you only mentioned as comedic contrast against your other easily achievable goals.

cb361 said @ 12:47pm GMT on 11th Jul
Well, since I've turned us all in Eldar, I should be asking for the white elf-horse of Glorfindel.

danshyu said @ 3:40am GMT on 11th Jul
Tiger mom, we need you now!

puravida said @ 4:08am GMT on 11th Jul [Score:3 Underrated]

gunthar said @ 4:37am GMT on 11th Jul
lol what

When I was in school a few years ago we'd typically have 5-6 hours of homework. It could have been because it was a charter public school in a very wealthy area, or because I don't know. Either way I wish I would've learned shit in school instead of doing ridiculous amounts of busywork.

CapnSilver said @ 1:23pm GMT on 11th Jul
There's a number of people here I'd challenge to do some academic reading on education. There's an actual evidence base out there.

KingPellinore said @ 2:35pm GMT on 11th Jul
School am too easy. Me no stuff good alreddy.

kichijoii said @ 1:24am GMT on 12th Jul
I'm finishing my undergraduate from a UC and I feel that I accomplished more in my spare time. Everything revolves around occasional multiple choice exams which test for attending class or reading books, rather than real understanding or application of the material. I learned more from the classes that used essay exams, but only a bit (not including what extra I learned out of personal interest).

maximumtodd said @ 6:28am GMT on 12th Jul
Khaaaan!

bbqkink said @ 6:11pm GMT on 12th Jul [Score:1 Funny]

zarathustra said @ 2:38am GMT on 13th Jul
Just my two cents, but I think half the problem is teachers with degrees in education who don't know shit about the subject they are supposed to teach.

mechanical contrivance said @ 4:12am GMT on 13th Jul
Just as bad are teachers that know the material very well, but can't teach it.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 5:09am GMT on 13th Jul
That hasn't been my experience (in the four years I spent teaching high school math). I did notice a few (very few) teachers who were in the wrong subject--e.g. one who had a social studies credential but was teaching prealgebra because that's where the jobs were--but I would say that the most significant portion of the problem is administrators who don't know much about math and science and lawmakers with no understanding of education whatsoever.