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We sorely need educational reform, and here's why. I'm going to focus on tertiary education. Protip for europeans: college = university (ages ~18-22 for most)
1. A very large portion of those going to college need to take out loans. The free, or close to free, credit offered to university students only allows universities to increase prices and does nothing to actually alleviate pricing.
2. Some people can't go to college simply because they can't afford it, or are limited in their choice due to finances (for example, a student may have to attend a local university that does not offer the subject of the student's choice, like aerospace engineering)
3. Too many people are going to college, which dilutes the value of the degree by itself. This has caused the prestige/selectivity frenzy that we have seen in the past several decades (especially the last two), where everyone wants to go to the top 20 or so universities in the country.
4. The college admissions process is not meritocratic in the least. Money can also buy a lot of things that give huge advantages - in some cases, money can be used outright to purchase admission (though the language is vague and euphemistic)
I think we can all agree that these are problems. But can we agree on a solution? Here's what I propose:
1. Guarantee acceptance to a school within the student's state (or a neighboring state if the degree is not offered in the home state) with full funding to the top 10% of students as determined by the following metric: HS GPA * new standardized test score. HS GPA is determined by homework/project/quiz results but also a standardized year-end exam of the material covered by the subject
1.5. The next twenty percent of students are charged a rate tied to inflation and dependent on parents' financial situation, similar to how the FAFSA EFC is calculated. The poorest students would have to pay a little bit, but it would be an amount covered through half-time work. The students not in the top 30% are able to attend community college classes, where they can earn certificates or, if they perform very well, transfer in to a college.
2. High School lasts from the age of 16-20 with the option to drop out or complete the degree early. There's no reason that intro to sociology, psychology, economics, Calc1-4, Linear Algebra, intro CS, etc. can't be taught in high school. In fact, since these classes tend to be huge lectures in college, it may be better. Use online classes (similar to Stanford's online HS) to teach classes that aren't popular enough to have a dedicated teacher.
3. The new standardized test will test proficiency in three subjects to be chosen by the student, along with math, writing, and critical reading. Different programs will have different independent requirements (for example, an anthropology program may not care very much about a math score).
What do you all think? Is it possible to solve the USA's educational problems?
 
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I think there needs to be a fundamental reworking of how kids are taught, starting from the minute they enter school.
1.) Kids spend WAY too much time on their asses. Even in Aristotle's time they knew that gymnastics was necessary for a good education. Keep kids active for more of the day and try to keep them doing some kind of a sport for their entire life.
2.) Kids need to be taught the fundamentals of language (not just the English language, but of how to read, write, and how to form an idea and to prove it) as soon as they can. Too many students these days cannot write a good paper. It's pathetic watching kids have trouble to formulate well thought out sentences that are concise and express their thoughts as accurately as possible.
3.) Stop wasting years on science and history early on. They teach the same science/history from 2nd grade to 5th/6th grade in New York. There's really no reason to waste time just teaching kids basic facts about history or science concepts that they really can't understand at that point. Some exposure is good, but I think it's better to expose them to it in the form of reading. Spending years on history just to teach kids the same basic information when they can't understand the fundamentals of it (they can't understand war, government, economics, social organization really until they're older) is asinine.
I think that if those 3 things were done from an early standpoint we'd be in a much better position than we're in right now, but I agree with a lot of what you said about later years in high school. I think that the change needs to be made earlier though; kids need to be interested in learning. If you look at a lot of the smart guys on Teamliquid, you'll see that they spend time doing "intellectual" stuff. A lot of us don't watch a ton of TV or play a lot of "mindless" videogames. In America there's a huge anti-intellectual movement where people just do dumb stuff all the time and kids don't enjoy doing intellectual things (ie. a lot of kids don't read outside of school, you're a nerd if you watch documentaries on science/physics, etc.).
I also think that we need to stop testing for "ability." The SAT doesn't claim to be a test that gauges anything other than a student's "ability to reason," which it doesn't even do effectively. There are a bunch of ridiculously written questions that don't apply to anything you do in college (or high school) that they try to make as unbiased as possible to account for all minority groups. I think that fundamentally the issue lies in the fact that school just isn't vigorous enough in the United States. We spend a lot of time doing stuff that makes us dumber, and a lot of people don't really care. If more people spent time reading good literature and pursuing interests that lead them to gaining some form of intelligence (whether it be learning a language, playing an instrument, playing a competitive sport, etc.), I think that the US could have a bunch of really bright students who are excited about what they're learning and have some sort of passion that drives them to keep learning.
Moving onto later stages of education though, you focus more on the logistics of how to make it work. I think that you're oversimplifying a colossal issue. I think that your 1st idea is very good. I think that there should probably be some kind of tier ranking and do this for most levels of students (for instance a university like UVA may be higher up on the rankings than a small state school like SUNY Purchase).
The ones that rank higher would get into more selective schools and would get access to cheaper tuition for each tier. The top tier student may get access to $20k/year tuition for the top school, $15k/year for the second tier, $10k/year for the third tier, $5k/year for the 4th tier, and the second tier student might get $20k/year for the second tier, $15k/year for the third tier, $10k/year for the 4th tier, and on and on with financial aid options as well to assist qualifying students.
I guess I'm taking a different approach to it than you are, but I think that your option does have more practical legitimacy. I don't really believe that the US' problems will ever be fixed though; we have too large of a base of poorly educated workers and a highly bureaucratic system that favors wealth over true success.
Interesting topic though, definitely a cool idea to talk about. I guess going to college has given you time to reflect on how shitty our education system is?
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On April 21 2014 09:45 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
I think there needs to be a fundamental reworking of how kids are taught, starting from the minute they enter school.
1.) Kids spend WAY too much time on their asses. Even in Aristotle's time they knew that gymnastics was necessary for a good education. Keep kids active for more of the day and try to keep them doing some kind of a sport for their entire life.
2.) Kids need to be taught the fundamentals of language (not just the English language, but of how to read, write, and how to form an idea and to prove it) as soon as they can. Too many students these days cannot write a good paper. It's pathetic watching kids have trouble to formulate well thought out sentences that are concise and express their thoughts as accurately as possible.
3.) Stop wasting years on science and history early on. They teach the same science/history from 2nd grade to 5th/6th grade in New York. There's really no reason to waste time just teaching kids basic facts about history or science concepts that they really can't understand at that point. Some exposure is good, but I think it's better to expose them to it in the form of reading. Spending years on history just to teach kids the same basic information when they can't understand the fundamentals of it (they can't understand war, government, economics, social organization really until they're older) is asinine.
I think that if those 3 things were done from an early standpoint we'd be in a much better position than we're in right now, but I agree with a lot of what you said about later years in high school. I think that the change needs to be made earlier though; kids need to be interested in learning. If you look at a lot of the smart guys on Teamliquid, you'll see that they spend time doing "intellectual" stuff. A lot of us don't watch a ton of TV or play a lot of "mindless" videogames. In America there's a huge anti-intellectual movement where people just do dumb stuff all the time and kids don't enjoy doing intellectual things (ie. a lot of kids don't read outside of school, you're a nerd if you watch documentaries on science/physics, etc.).
I also think that we need to stop testing for "ability." The SAT doesn't claim to be a test that gauges anything other than a student's "ability to reason," which it doesn't even do effectively. There are a bunch of ridiculously written questions that don't apply to anything you do in college (or high school) that they try to make as unbiased as possible to account for all minority groups. I think that fundamentally the issue lies in the fact that school just isn't vigorous enough in the United States. We spend a lot of time doing stuff that makes us dumber, and a lot of people don't really care. If more people spent time reading good literature and pursuing interests that lead them to gaining some form of intelligence (whether it be learning a language, playing an instrument, playing a competitive sport, etc.), I think that the US could have a bunch of really bright students who are excited about what they're learning and have some sort of passion that drives them to keep learning.
Moving onto later stages of education though, you focus more on the logistics of how to make it work. I think that you're oversimplifying a colossal issue. I think that your 1st idea is very good. I think that there should probably be some kind of tier ranking and do this for most levels of students (for instance a university like UVA may be higher up on the rankings than a small state school like SUNY Purchase).
The ones that rank higher would get into more selective schools and would get access to cheaper tuition for each tier. The top tier student may get access to $20k/year tuition for the top school, $15k/year for the second tier, $10k/year for the third tier, $5k/year for the 4th tier, and the second tier student might get $20k/year for the second tier, $15k/year for the third tier, $10k/year for the 4th tier, and on and on with financial aid options as well to assist qualifying students.
I guess I'm taking a different approach to it than you are, but I think that your option does have more practical legitimacy. I don't really believe that the US' problems will ever be fixed though; we have too large of a base of poorly educated workers and a highly bureaucratic system that favors wealth over true success.
Interesting topic though, definitely a cool idea to talk about. I guess going to college has given you time to reflect on how shitty our education system is?
Hmm, I agree that physical stimulation is important, but at the same time I worry about the implementation of it. Perhaps it would be beneficial for kids to spend more time simply standing at desks, get rid of recess, and add a longer PE class?
About the language: definitely. I'm actually surprised that most schools don't make it mandatory for everything to be submitted through plagiarism checkers like turnitin; as is, in a lot of situations students almost never write anything themselves. I've tutored kids and helping one of them write a paper was one of the most excruciating experiences of my life. However, it's a lot easier to say that there needs to be more focus on an area than it is to actually get results.
You're probably right about the history and science, though I think advanced students are actually underserved by the current middle-school science education. I could have easily learned HS honors bio and chem in 7th and 8th grade.
What is wrong with testing for ability? I don't think it's inherently flawed. The SAT may be flawed (it tries to meet IQ and subject understanding in the middle), but I think testing for ability in fundamental disciplines like reading and math can be helpful. People just get mad that some populations do worse on these tests than others, but there is no universal law saying that there is a completely equal and random distribution of ability.
I think we actually need more magnet schools, too. My state has a a magnet school that draws from all regions, tied to a university, and it's considered one of the best magnet schools in the country. It would be neat if more states had a program like that - or if they were more widely publicized. I didn't know about this specific program until it was too late to apply.
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Put in a mandatory critical thinking class. We'd progress if people would simply think properly. No joke.
Put in a mandatory basic psychology class. We'd progress if people understood the processes behind their own motivations and biases. So many people live without even recognizing how their own body influences their decisions in life.
Put in a mandatory personal philosophy class. We'd progress if people would actually take some time to think about what's the best way to live rather than have them default to whatever their parents/society tells them is "best."
These are just the basics off the top of my mind as vehicles towards what I would personally like society to achieve from education. It all really depends on what you believe is the purpose of education. Surprisingly enough, you need to define this before you can craft the curriculum to fulfill this goal.
/beginrant Shift the focus to progress our elementary/middle/high school education. The greatest time a child needs to be helped is during the early stages of his/her life. Build a strong enough foundation, and he'll find his way independently. But then again this essentially requires a paradigm shift in our culture away from creating a specialized "useful citizen" to a thinking human being. Magically make our society recognize the immense value that could be had by having qualified primary/secondary school teachers to the extent that the limited budget + societal prestige would attract high quality teachers. Sometimes I want to stab a recent graduate in the face when she says she wants to go straight into a primary/secondary teaching position because she "likes kids." It's an important responsibility, so make sure you're actually qualified to be in that position. Go out and interact with society and learn about yourself and life. Then come back and teach the kids some value rather than being a mouthpiece for some textbook. When were kids qualified to teach kids. And my definition of kid is not defined by age at all. /rant
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1. A very large portion of those going to college need to take out loans. The free, or close to free, credit offered to university students only allows universities to increase prices and does nothing to actually alleviate pricing.
Money is an issue because schools are still businesses. They need to pay their employees to continue running the school.
2. Some people can't go to college simply because they can't afford it, or are limited in their choice due to finances (for example, a student may have to attend a local university that does not offer the subject of the student's choice, like aerospace engineering)
Going to a local university is not the end of the world. I do agree it isn't fair that a student can't take their major because the schools offering it are too expensive but rich people have always had advantages over the poor.
Obama did say he would try to help students:
http://dailycurrant.com/2013/08/22/obama-announces-plan-to-forgive-all-student-loans/
3. Too many people are going to college, which dilutes the value of the degree by itself. This has caused the prestige/selectivity frenzy that we have seen in the past several decades (especially the last two), where everyone wants to go to the top 20 or so universities in the country.
Making it so only the top 10% can go to Universities does increase the difficulty of schools, but that's the case already. The top X% go to Harvard and other prestigious Universities. They compete with each other already. It's not like they really compete with the bottom 90 percentile. If you read the college board a lot, you know how admissions officers do their admissions work. It's mostly your grades and achievements, or legacy status, unless you've won a national competition or something. As much as they hate to admit it, affirmative action also takes place at many schools. Caltech accepts more female students. Harvard has lower barriers for African Americans.
HS GPA is determined by homework/project/quiz results but also a standardized year-end exam of the material covered by the subject
1. I know no one mentioned anything to the contrary, but I think it needs to be brought up. For all its criticism the SAT is a good measure of ability, but it's fairly easy to study for so it can show your aptitude at the SATs and nothing else. There was a weird article in the New York Times about this fox story that seemed confusing to parents but was fairly easy imo to understand.
I recall two years ago that the ACT pulled ahead of the SATs as the most taken standardized test in the states so we shouldn't just talk about the SATs either
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/more-students-are-taking-both-the-act-and-sat.html?_r=0
2. The problem with putting too much emphasis on standardized testing is that it puts undue stress on students to cheat and take tests and does not focus on the learning. There are other countries that have these systems in place and students say they don't learn anything useful from it and just spend all day doing rote exercises. With the current system in the states, a lot of people actually don't cheat much and do a vast majority of their assignments the way they're supposed to. They are helpful towards other students.
You have to make sure the standardized tests are relevant. But in addition some people are horrible test takers. Some are impossibly bad test takers but they work so hard and get school projects done a year beforehand over the summer. Many of my friends program on their own time and keep up to date with tech trends. That's not reflected in SAT scores.
3. There are some schools that are harder than others. The 5th best student in Boston Latin might be smarter than the Valedictorian of the high school next door but his GPA might be lower. Why does he have a lower overall score?
2. High School lasts from the age of 16-20 with the option to drop out or complete the degree early. There's no reason that intro to sociology, psychology, economics, Calc1-4, Linear Algebra, intro CS, etc. can't be taught in high school. In fact, since these classes tend to be huge lectures in college, it may be better. Use online classes (similar to Stanford's online HS) to teach classes that aren't popular enough to have a dedicated teacher.
Alternative teaching methods are something that I agree should be done. We need to experiment and find out how to motivate and teach people the best. The problem is that there's a lot of bureaucracy in the way of these changes.
No one wants to risk breaking a "working"(profitable) business model and standards have been set by education boards and accredition boards on exactly what a student needs to get a degree. Change is also slow because the education giants with influence can't restructure too quickly because their employees can't keep up.
I don't like the idea of having youth waste their time on sociology at the age of 16-20. If you look at progamers their hands peak at the age 19-21. After that they start to become adults and their brains learn significantly slower. That's a valuable time where people can be making massive strides on their own. After that you grow old, and your dreams are no longer possible. If people can be motivated to do their individual projects that would be best.
As it stands, you can get a quality education for free(or very cheap) online:
“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. “It will be better than any single university,” he continued.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/bill-gates-education/
You don't get much certification but companies like Coursera and edX have started offering certificates. It's not as widely recognized or respected as a college/university degree though.
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On April 21 2014 13:43 PassionFruit wrote:
Put in a mandatory critical thinking class. We'd progress if people would simply think properly. No joke.
Put in a mandatory basic psychology class. We'd progress if people understood the processes behind their own motivations and biases. So many people live without even recognizing how their own body influences their decisions in life.
Put in a mandatory personal philosophy class. We'd progress if people would actually take some time to think about what's the best way to live rather than have them default to whatever their parents/society tells them is "best."
These are just the basics off the top of my mind as vehicles towards what I would personally like society to achieve from education. It all really depends on what you believe is the purpose of education. Surprisingly enough, you need to define this before you can craft the curriculum to fulfill this goal.
/beginrant Shift the focus to progress our elementary/middle/high school education. The greatest time a child needs to be helped is during the early stages of his/her life. Build a strong enough foundation, and he'll find his way independently. But then again this essentially requires a paradigm shift in our culture away from creating a specialized "useful citizen" to a thinking human being. Magically make our society recognize the immense value that could be had by having qualified primary/secondary school teachers to the extent that the limited budget + societal prestige would attract high quality teachers. Sometimes I want to stab a recent graduate in the face when she says she wants to go straight into a primary/secondary teaching position because she "likes kids." It's an important responsibility, so make sure you're actually qualified to be in that position. Go out and interact with society and learn about yourself and life. Then come back and teach the kids some value rather than being a mouthpiece for some textbook. When were kids qualified to teach kids. And my definition of kid is not defined by age at all. /rant
Just do the International Baccalaureate and go to a good school??? Aren't these things are already done?
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My rant on a specific issue:
Fix these stupid English classes. All the way to the end of high school I don't think I took a single significant lesson on grammar (although maybe my memory is wrong). I made an effort to learn it myself, and obviously teachers pointing out mistakes when grading papers makes people learn, but that's not sufficient.
Kids in English class seemingly get taught about ancient texts like Romeo and Juliet, allegory, metaphor, satire, iambic pentameter, limericks, rhyming, creative writing, and book comprehension. This stuff seems entirely ridiculous to be mandatory; some people might like it but that should be post-secondary work as it's all entirely irrelevant to living in modern civilization. Meanwhile the kids aren't told how to use commas or semicolons or how sentence structure works. I've gotten these ridiculous women teachers in highschool who would say things like "your assignment is to send me a 30 second track of music to express your book, and along with it provide a paper describing how it fits" — what kind of garbage is that?
I guess there's also that whole "underground railroad" or "to kill a mockingbird" English class as well, where the class becomes history class and/or ethics class. Those are beneficial things to learn, but is it really a high priority, and does it deserve to be in a class that's titled "English"?
That said, this is my personal experience and is not necessarily representative of the greater population. In addition the grammar part may be somewhat mistaken.
On April 21 2014 09:45 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
3.) Stop wasting years on science and history early on. They teach the same science/history from 2nd grade to 5th/6th grade in New York. There's really no reason to waste time just teaching kids basic facts about history or science concepts that they really can't understand at that point. Some exposure is good, but I think it's better to expose them to it in the form of reading. Spending years on history just to teach kids the same basic information when they can't understand the fundamentals of it (they can't understand war, government, economics, social organization really until they're older) is asinine.
I'd say you need to elaborate more on what you mean by science. Science itself should be taught at a younger age, or at the least it should be taught at all since in a sense it is not taught to many kids. They are taught about scientific discoveries and scientific facts, but not necessarily science itself. I think the annual science projects we had was the only real teaching of science, and I think it was only mandatory for me in grade 5 and 6 — it seems optional for most people I think. Maybe in the US it could be different. I think there's a lot of science that can be understood pretty early on; just not mathematical/algebraic aspects of physics.
History is quite a low priority I would say as it's not very important to function in society —if at all— and can be learned later on in electives or post-secondary. Same sort of thing with social studies, —they are often intertwined courses.
If anything, I think law would be a nice thing to teach at a younger age (11 and up — which also happens to be the age of criminal responsibility for the USA, 12 for Canada). It might sound crazy, but as long as it's kept simple I think it would be a highly pertinent thing to learn.
On April 21 2014 09:45 MtlGuitarist97 wrote: If more people spent time reading good literature and pursuing interests that lead them to gaining some form of intelligence (whether it be learning a language, playing an instrument, playing a competitive sport, etc.), I think that the US could have a bunch of really bright students who are excited about what they're learning and have some sort of passion that drives them to keep learning. I maybe somewhat agree with the overall point of this but not really based of the examples. I don't see how playing competitive sports could significantly encourage learning, nor do I see how reading fiction would do so either.
I think educational games are one of the best ways to get kids involved and motivated to learn. The games can be educational to varying degrees, but almost everyone likes games/interaction, so it doesn't leave people out such as with many other things. They don't need to be just video games either (or at all); you can have quizzes (like jeopardy), challenges, and somewhat physical games.
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On April 21 2014 15:41 Letila wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2014 13:43 PassionFruit wrote:
Put in a mandatory critical thinking class. We'd progress if people would simply think properly. No joke.
Put in a mandatory basic psychology class. We'd progress if people understood the processes behind their own motivations and biases. So many people live without even recognizing how their own body influences their decisions in life.
Put in a mandatory personal philosophy class. We'd progress if people would actually take some time to think about what's the best way to live rather than have them default to whatever their parents/society tells them is "best."
These are just the basics off the top of my mind as vehicles towards what I would personally like society to achieve from education. It all really depends on what you believe is the purpose of education. Surprisingly enough, you need to define this before you can craft the curriculum to fulfill this goal.
/beginrant Shift the focus to progress our elementary/middle/high school education. The greatest time a child needs to be helped is during the early stages of his/her life. Build a strong enough foundation, and he'll find his way independently. But then again this essentially requires a paradigm shift in our culture away from creating a specialized "useful citizen" to a thinking human being. Magically make our society recognize the immense value that could be had by having qualified primary/secondary school teachers to the extent that the limited budget + societal prestige would attract high quality teachers. Sometimes I want to stab a recent graduate in the face when she says she wants to go straight into a primary/secondary teaching position because she "likes kids." It's an important responsibility, so make sure you're actually qualified to be in that position. Go out and interact with society and learn about yourself and life. Then come back and teach the kids some value rather than being a mouthpiece for some textbook. When were kids qualified to teach kids. And my definition of kid is not defined by age at all. /rant Just do the International Baccalaureate and go to a good school??? Aren't these things are already done?
Successfully passing an IB course =/= critical thinking. I took seven APs back in the day and got 4s on all, except my foreign language course. Critically thinking is a process that should constantly be used during your waking life. An IB course simply teaches you a very specialized form of critical thinking upon a very narrow subject to be used in a very small window of your day. You can be a wiz at calculus, chemistry, biology, and physics yet still be wholly vacant when it comes to thinking about unrelated subjects like the humanities, analyzing current events, or even when interacting with other human beings. Sometimes a specialty knowledge misapplied will narrow your perspective than widen it. Actually this tends to happen quite often...and it leads to ill-founded opinions being unwaveringly held by rather arrogant people.
And my focus is on primary/secondary school where you actually not only learn "how to learn" but also the importance of it as applied to your life. Once you go to the university level the hand-holding shouldn't be necessary. You don''t even really need a teacher to understand all introductory/core courses. As long as you can read and think properly there are more than enough hard resources (books, manuals, online resources) to do it all yourself. It's not until you get to the upper division courses where the means to solve a problem becomes more unorthodox, fluid, dynamic, requires more creativity, etc... where the guidance of a professor is valuable. But even then sometimes having a poor professor is just a sink of time. At that point a person should essentially be capable to approach any elementary subject on his own regardless of the subject matter, and hopefully he'll also have formed some real opinion as to how he wants to approach his life as well...and I mean something with a little more reflection than "get a great GPA and get a bitching job to impress my friends, family, and myself." Teacher guidance is insurmountably more important at the earlier stages of a person's education.
The real value of a university education is not necessarily in the course curriculum. It's in the opportunity to meet with a diverse group of intelligent young adults like yourself and to grow off of one another. Personally I believe this was actually the greatest value I gained from going to a good university. Sure you get the prestige and the connections, but you can network to get a pretty good job without the name brand. You'll have to do more legwork, but your options to most jobs are not closed indefinitely. But you cannot replace the time spent in the company of a diverse group of intelligent and reflective young people. This is the only time where you're exposed to the perspectives and ideas from such a wide ranging segment of not only your home nation's population but the world as well. That's where the real growth happens, that's where the real value of a good university education resides.
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Regarding English and History being useless... I think part of the problem is the fragmentation of knowledge into discrete subjects. Every subject is useless in isolation. The way they fit together is how we make progress. The history of our knowledge is fascinating and awe inspiring. It's such a shame that none of that gets communicated to students, and so many rightly ask "why the fuck am I learning this?" But it's also true that not everyone is interested in knowledge, and why should they have to waste their time and be miserable in school? I don't know... there's a lot to be desired. Wish I had more to contribute.
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On April 21 2014 16:51 PassionFruit wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2014 15:41 Letila wrote:On April 21 2014 13:43 PassionFruit wrote:
Put in a mandatory critical thinking class. We'd progress if people would simply think properly. No joke.
Put in a mandatory basic psychology class. We'd progress if people understood the processes behind their own motivations and biases. So many people live without even recognizing how their own body influences their decisions in life.
Put in a mandatory personal philosophy class. We'd progress if people would actually take some time to think about what's the best way to live rather than have them default to whatever their parents/society tells them is "best."
These are just the basics off the top of my mind as vehicles towards what I would personally like society to achieve from education. It all really depends on what you believe is the purpose of education. Surprisingly enough, you need to define this before you can craft the curriculum to fulfill this goal.
/beginrant Shift the focus to progress our elementary/middle/high school education. The greatest time a child needs to be helped is during the early stages of his/her life. Build a strong enough foundation, and he'll find his way independently. But then again this essentially requires a paradigm shift in our culture away from creating a specialized "useful citizen" to a thinking human being. Magically make our society recognize the immense value that could be had by having qualified primary/secondary school teachers to the extent that the limited budget + societal prestige would attract high quality teachers. Sometimes I want to stab a recent graduate in the face when she says she wants to go straight into a primary/secondary teaching position because she "likes kids." It's an important responsibility, so make sure you're actually qualified to be in that position. Go out and interact with society and learn about yourself and life. Then come back and teach the kids some value rather than being a mouthpiece for some textbook. When were kids qualified to teach kids. And my definition of kid is not defined by age at all. /rant Just do the International Baccalaureate and go to a good school??? Aren't these things are already done? Successfully passing an IB course =/= critical thinking. I took seven APs back in the day and got 4s on all, except my foreign language course. Critically thinking is a process that should constantly be used during your waking life. An IB course simply teaches you a very specialized form of critical thinking upon a very narrow subject to be used in a very small window of your day. You can be a wiz at calculus, chemistry, biology, and physics yet still be wholly vacant when it comes to thinking about unrelated subjects like the humanities, analyzing current events, or even when interacting with other human beings. Sometimes a specialty knowledge misapplied will narrow your perspective than widen it. Actually this tends to happen quite often...and it leads to ill-founded opinions being unwaveringly held by rather arrogant people. .
Well there is a specific compulsory class called THeory of Knowledge in the IB which for me was basically this exact thing, so ....
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On April 21 2014 16:23 Xapti wrote:
I'd say you need to elaborate more on what you mean by science. Science itself should be taught at a younger age, or at the least it should be taught at all since in a sense it is not taught to many kids. They are taught about scientific discoveries and scientific facts, but not necessarily science itself. I think the annual science projects we had was the only real teaching of science, and I think it was only mandatory for me in grade 5 and 6 — it seems optional for most people I think. Maybe in the US it could be different. I think there's a lot of science that can be understood pretty early on; just not mathematical/algebraic aspects of physics.
I don't think you really understood what I was talking about since you're not an American. At least in New York, they try to teach stuff that most kids really can't understand the basics of (they teach about electrons, electricity, basic physics like thermodynamics, and some introductory biology stuff). They basically created this watered down curriculum where they teach the same thing over and over again from 3rd to 6th grade, making almost zero progress in science. In 6th grade I guess some of the stuff starts to stick since I can remember learning about the various types of energy, but most people don't have the fundamentals of the science down to the point where they can understand basic things like why hot air rises and why conduction and convection work the way they do. It's not that I believe science is a waste of time, I just think that the way they teach it at earlier ages is a huge waste of time.
On April 21 2014 16:23 Xapti wrote:
I maybe somewhat agree with the overall point of this but not really based of the examples. I don't see how playing competitive sports could significantly encourage learning, nor do I see how reading fiction would do so either.
It's not that the activities themselves encourage learning so much as they get kids thinking. They're realistic ways to get people interested in what they're doing, unlike what most schools do. They read the most mundane, pointless shit in school most of the time and nobody's interested in what they're doing. Even though they're not necessarily directly related to the educational problems concerning how kids do on tests, it's pretty obvious that there's at least some correlation between reading and how you do in school. It might have been different for your experience, but in mine I know most kids don't read anything outside of school and really don't even read the school books. Most of them just get the sparknotes and then just try to get above a 90.
Obviously that scenario is not the best for anyone. If kids started reading from a younger age and learned to enjoy it (and think; thinking is an incredibly important part of reading that most high school aged kids just don't have at all), I think that performance across all grade levels would improve.
Also, regarding your last point I don't think games really help the problem. My point was to improve their learning potential OUTSIDE of the classroom, and most kids just don't play educational games outside of the classroom. Even though a lot of us SC2/DotA players like to imagine that we're getting smarter because we're playing them, it's not really true -- at least not in the sense that it will improve test scores and get people more interested in learning. My goal with the "intellectual activities" wouldn't be to just get kids to do things that help them learn, it's to get them to enjoy what they're doing in school and be more motivated to enjoy their classes.
One last thing that I would say is a fundamental issue with the educational system is that across America, teachers make terrible money for the most part. I happen to live in one of the few places where they don't, but it's retarded that the people who are paid to help facilitate the growth and development of every child in America make less than people with half their education.
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I have a radical suggestion: offer proper incentives to students by integrating education fully with society.
Doesn't sound too radical yet, but here are a few examples. Popcorn is $10, until you get an A in Course X, at which point popcorn is now $7. You can ice-skate for 30 min. at a time until you get an A in Course Y, at which point you can now ice-skate for an hour. And I mean all throughout town, every industry, every entertainment zone, even shops and public areas should be integrated with education.
Now, the idea is starting to get more radical... it's starting to sound like GPA determines your social worth, but notice how I never said you need a certain GPA for privileges? Instead, you need to pass a certain course, which ensures students can align their interests with their studying.
Here is a clearer example: You love hiking, but it costs you $3 to enter your favorite hiking course. Well, if you pass Geology with an A, then you can get in free. The idea is that the student is interested in hiking, then the education system encourages him to learn more about the formation of those mountains, etc. The student will thus be more motivated to study, while also exploring his interests.
Okay, now you fill high schools with thousands of courses, literally thousands. With online courses, this actually becomes a very real possibility. It is no longer possible to take all the AP courses at your school; students take only the classes they are interested in, and GPA becomes less and less important (especially since GPAs are no longer comparable with radically different schedules). Instead of student 1 having a 4.0 GPA and student 2 having a 2.0 GPA, the system now becomes student 1 who took a lot of biology courses and student 2 who took a lot of economic courses. Quite a radical departure from standardization and general education courses, but I feel that individual talents really do matter and we should cultivate them accordingly.
So now students are studying whatever the hell they want, but they have real incentives to study the subjects that align with their interests. This gives society important information about the students' interests, so it's now a trivial task to form groups of students who share the same interests. Additionally, students can be introduced to the workplace much much earlier; if a student passes Genetics and Biotechnology, let him inside the lab for an internship.
Perhaps one of the best aspects of this would be the elimination of our grade hierarchy. It would be harder to tell who's smarter and who's not, just a plethora of students specialized in their own areas. Right now, I bet there are a lot of students with middling GPAs who feel they can't beat the system, when in reality they're not playing to their strengths. Maybe one student excels in all subjects (4.0 GPA) and another student is terrible at all but one subject (2.0 GPA), but that second student has a chance to flourish if he actively focuses on his specialty.
I'm done talking now, I know that my idea is 100% impractical and will never be implemented. The idea's still out there though, for those of you who want to poke holes in it! 
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On April 21 2014 19:32 Entirety wrote:I have a radical suggestion: offer proper incentives to students by integrating education fully with society. Doesn't sound too radical yet, but here are a few examples. Popcorn is $10, until you get an A in Course X, at which point popcorn is now $7. You can ice-skate for 30 min. at a time until you get an A in Course Y, at which point you can now ice-skate for an hour. And I mean all throughout town, every industry, every entertainment zone, even shops and public areas should be integrated with education. Now, the idea is starting to get more radical... it's starting to sound like GPA determines your social worth, but notice how I never said you need a certain GPA for privileges? Instead, you need to pass a certain course, which ensures students can align their interests with their studying. Here is a clearer example: You love hiking, but it costs you $3 to enter your favorite hiking course. Well, if you pass Geology with an A, then you can get in free. The idea is that the student is interested in hiking, then the education system encourages him to learn more about the formation of those mountains, etc. The student will thus be more motivated to study, while also exploring his interests. Okay, now you fill high schools with thousands of courses, literally thousands. With online courses, this actually becomes a very real possibility. It is no longer possible to take all the AP courses at your school; students take only the classes they are interested in, and GPA becomes less and less important (especially since GPAs are no longer comparable with radically different schedules). Instead of student 1 having a 4.0 GPA and student 2 having a 2.0 GPA, the system now becomes student 1 who took a lot of biology courses and student 2 who took a lot of economic courses. Quite a radical departure from standardization and general education courses, but I feel that individual talents really do matter and we should cultivate them accordingly. So now students are studying whatever the hell they want, but they have real incentives to study the subjects that align with their interests. This gives society important information about the students' interests, so it's now a trivial task to form groups of students who share the same interests. Additionally, students can be introduced to the workplace much much earlier; if a student passes Genetics and Biotechnology, let him inside the lab for an internship. Perhaps one of the best aspects of this would be the elimination of our grade hierarchy. It would be harder to tell who's smarter and who's not, just a plethora of students specialized in their own areas. Right now, I bet there are a lot of students with middling GPAs who feel they can't beat the system, when in reality they're not playing to their strengths. Maybe one student excels in all subjects (4.0 GPA) and another student is terrible at all but one subject (2.0 GPA), but that second student has a chance to flourish if he actively focuses on his specialty. I'm done talking now, I know that my idea is 100% impractical and will never be implemented. The idea's still out there though, for those of you who want to poke holes in it!
Not a hole but students have been paid to get good test grades before.
This has been the subject of some debate.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/4/13/students-results-fryer-incentives/
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From my time in the California K-12 education system (which is imo one of the worst ones), I feel like i've wasted like at least 10 years of my life. And I feel that most of the things I learned in class actually just came from google instead.
The root of the problem is that the teachers in America are severely underpaid, and the government doesn't really give a shit about the kids (compared to wanting cheap energy and a strong economy). They want the successful kids because they think those are the ones that are naturally smart, and they want the rest of the kids to go flip burgers, burn money at bars, and hold a gun to the people in Afghanistan. Natural selection of the children if you will.
It's a type of oligarchical manipulation by the people with power so that they can stay in power. Basically, if you want to succeed, you're going to have to do it on your own. Which I absolutely hate, because this is just perpetuating stupidity as a social norm. Education should go beyond numbers and letters -- it should incorporate responsibility, motivation, and character (note: they do, but it's so undervalued that no one cares about it).
And since everything stems from money and America refuses to cut military spending, we're not going to see an education reform until at least 10 years from now, possibly more
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On April 21 2014 16:23 Xapti wrote:My rant on a specific issue: Fix these stupid English classes. All the way to the end of high school I don't think I took a single significant lesson on grammar (although maybe my memory is wrong). I made an effort to learn it myself, and obviously teachers pointing out mistakes when grading papers makes people learn, but that's not sufficient. Kids in English class seemingly get taught about ancient texts like Romeo and Juliet, allegory, metaphor, satire, iambic pentameter, limericks, rhyming, creative writing, and book comprehension. This stuff seems entirely ridiculous to be mandatory; some people might like it but that should be post-secondary work as it's all entirely irrelevant to living in modern civilization. Meanwhile the kids aren't told how to use commas or semicolons or how sentence structure works. I've gotten these ridiculous women teachers in highschool who would say things like "your assignment is to send me a 30 second track of music to express your book, and along with it provide a paper describing how it fits" — what kind of garbage is that? I guess there's also that whole "underground railroad" or "to kill a mockingbird" English class as well, where the class becomes history class and/or ethics class. Those are beneficial things to learn, but is it really a high priority, and does it deserve to be in a class that's titled "English"? That said, this is my personal experience and is not necessarily representative of the greater population. In addition the grammar part may be somewhat mistaken. Show nested quote +On April 21 2014 09:45 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
3.) Stop wasting years on science and history early on. They teach the same science/history from 2nd grade to 5th/6th grade in New York. There's really no reason to waste time just teaching kids basic facts about history or science concepts that they really can't understand at that point. Some exposure is good, but I think it's better to expose them to it in the form of reading. Spending years on history just to teach kids the same basic information when they can't understand the fundamentals of it (they can't understand war, government, economics, social organization really until they're older) is asinine.
I'd say you need to elaborate more on what you mean by science. Science itself should be taught at a younger age, or at the least it should be taught at all since in a sense it is not taught to many kids. They are taught about scientific discoveries and scientific facts, but not necessarily science itself. I think the annual science projects we had was the only real teaching of science, and I think it was only mandatory for me in grade 5 and 6 — it seems optional for most people I think. Maybe in the US it could be different. I think there's a lot of science that can be understood pretty early on; just not mathematical/algebraic aspects of physics. History is quite a low priority I would say as it's not very important to function in society —if at all— and can be learned later on in electives or post-secondary. Same sort of thing with social studies, —they are often intertwined courses. If anything, I think law would be a nice thing to teach at a younger age (11 and up — which also happens to be the age of criminal responsibility for the USA, 12 for Canada). It might sound crazy, but as long as it's kept simple I think it would be a highly pertinent thing to learn. Show nested quote +On April 21 2014 09:45 MtlGuitarist97 wrote: If more people spent time reading good literature and pursuing interests that lead them to gaining some form of intelligence (whether it be learning a language, playing an instrument, playing a competitive sport, etc.), I think that the US could have a bunch of really bright students who are excited about what they're learning and have some sort of passion that drives them to keep learning. I maybe somewhat agree with the overall point of this but not really based of the examples. I don't see how playing competitive sports could significantly encourage learning, nor do I see how reading fiction would do so either. I think educational games are one of the best ways to get kids involved and motivated to learn. The games can be educational to varying degrees, but almost everyone likes games/interaction, so it doesn't leave people out such as with many other things. They don't need to be just video games either (or at all); you can have quizzes (like jeopardy), challenges, and somewhat physical games.
Alright, lets talk about your english classes. It sounds to me like you are not being taught properly. English at its core isn't just about mechanics -- about where the independent clauses go, about where the semi-colon belongs, all that junk. Like most of the arts, english is there to grow your critical thinking skills and help you learn how to formulate arguments and relate to the texts.
If you are being taught Shakespeare in highschool and they are focusing on iambic pentameter, they are teaching you wrong. The reason those plays are so important is because they are still so highly relevant and influential. Students can take an old piece of text, relate it to the world around them, and formulate opinions and arguments. It sounds like you have had bad teachers.
I also find it strange you list creative writing as being entirely useless. At its core, creative writing is your ability to take ideas from your head, put them to paper, and communicate. It isn't held to the rules of essay writing but being able to tell a story is certainly something society values very highly and always has. And if you think reading comprehension is irrelevant to modern society, you probably shouldn't be posting arguments on an online forum.
Anyway, I don't have much of an opinion on education reform, I just have a very strong opinion about where the arts belong in education.
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I say add a "gaming class" such as sc2, to increase logic and analysis skills..mandatory for EVERYONE.
Other then that, only time will tell how education is reformed, there is simply so much to fix and too many ideas to incorporate. Maybe the president after obama will base his career on educational reforms, but to be honest I d on't think it is that big of a deal not to get the best education (there are plenty of cheaper, more effective ways to learn)
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On April 22 2014 12:43 EJK wrote:
I say add a "gaming class" such as sc2, to increase logic and analysis skills..mandatory for EVERYONE.
Other then that, only time will tell how education is reformed, there is simply so much to fix and too many ideas to incorporate. Maybe the president after obama will base his career on educational reforms, but to be honest I d on't think it is that big of a deal not to get the best education (there are plenty of cheaper, more effective ways to learn)
I think the problem with mandatory classes is that everyone thinks theirs are the best.
There are people who believe mandatory religion classes would be best, but only for their particular sect of religion, and those who believe their feminist classes are best. Others think critical thinking classes are best. Why do you get to decide for others?
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On April 22 2014 18:11 obesechicken13 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2014 12:43 EJK wrote:
I say add a "gaming class" such as sc2, to increase logic and analysis skills..mandatory for EVERYONE.
Other then that, only time will tell how education is reformed, there is simply so much to fix and too many ideas to incorporate. Maybe the president after obama will base his career on educational reforms, but to be honest I d on't think it is that big of a deal not to get the best education (there are plenty of cheaper, more effective ways to learn) I think the problem with mandatory classes is that everyone thinks theirs are the best. There are people who believe mandatory religion classes would be best, but only for their particular sect of religion, and those who believe their feminist classes are best. Others think critical thinking classes are best. Why do you get to decide for others?
Yeah, the timeless dilemma of "But who are to educate the educators?" This all depends on what you define as the purpose of education. If you hone in on the very specifics of what you are attempting to achieve through education, a majority of the classes you will employ towards this goal will come pretty naturally. I like to focus on independence of thought and personal growth as opposed to economic utility. This is why I prefer to lean towards introducing courses for the young that encourage critical thinking and reflective thought. I would still support having kids being exposed to the basic elementary courses in the arts and sciences, but an additional focus on personal growth would be great.
But really, I don't actually believe that changing education by itself will do anything substantial towards progressing society in the USA. This isn't Sparta where you leave kids in a barracks outside of their homes and where the culture of the community mirrors what is presented inside the classroom. Before there is any change in society (which is something I assume most people are attempting to better in some way via education), there needs to be a cultural shift in how education is viewed in not only its value but its purpose as well. So all my talk is generally a pipe dream since the vast majority tend to disagree with me about the value of education. The standard view is that if you aren't able to eventually create some kind of measurable dollar value for society, then your education was useless. I tend to disagree. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important but it shouldn't be the primary focus at all.
Edit: Oh, and I guess to actually answer your question. You've got to start somewhere. Pick your purpose, then justify the courses you want to introduce. Your concern can pretty much be blanketed over all government intervention into the daily lives of its citizens. Who are you to decide how we redistribute a citizen's hard earned money? Who are you to decide when you are allowed to intrude on a citizen's privacy? Who are you to decide how to even define privacy? Your generalized critique would probably be more profitable to discuss in general regarding the justification of the State itself and its influence over its citizens. For education, I would assume the discussion presumes that people believe mandatory education in one form or another is an essential thing for society. So given that basis, you need to simply justify the rational for introducing the course, which I've already outlined above.
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On April 22 2014 18:11 obesechicken13 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2014 12:43 EJK wrote:
I say add a "gaming class" such as sc2, to increase logic and analysis skills..mandatory for EVERYONE.
Other then that, only time will tell how education is reformed, there is simply so much to fix and too many ideas to incorporate. Maybe the president after obama will base his career on educational reforms, but to be honest I d on't think it is that big of a deal not to get the best education (there are plenty of cheaper, more effective ways to learn) I think the problem with mandatory classes is that everyone thinks theirs are the best. There are people who believe mandatory religion classes would be best, but only for their particular sect of religion, and those who believe their feminist classes are best. Others think critical thinking classes are best. Why do you get to decide for others?
i think you are mixing up passion for superiority. The reason why a teacher normally teaches aa class is because they are passionate about it (or should be), which does nto nesecarily mean they think their class is better than someone else's class
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On April 23 2014 02:07 EJK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2014 18:11 obesechicken13 wrote:On April 22 2014 12:43 EJK wrote:
I say add a "gaming class" such as sc2, to increase logic and analysis skills..mandatory for EVERYONE.
Other then that, only time will tell how education is reformed, there is simply so much to fix and too many ideas to incorporate. Maybe the president after obama will base his career on educational reforms, but to be honest I d on't think it is that big of a deal not to get the best education (there are plenty of cheaper, more effective ways to learn) I think the problem with mandatory classes is that everyone thinks theirs are the best. There are people who believe mandatory religion classes would be best, but only for their particular sect of religion, and those who believe their feminist classes are best. Others think critical thinking classes are best. Why do you get to decide for others? i think you are mixing up passion for superiority. The reason why a teacher normally teaches aa class is because they are passionate about it (or should be), which does nto nesecarily mean they think their class is better than someone else's class
No, you clearly said that a gaming class should be mandatory. This has nothing to do with teachers teaching subjects they like and understand.
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EPT
