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On September 25 2011 07:17 Holykitty wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 00:44 Jibba wrote:Yes, because a school known for partying means not much else is getting done in the school. No, he doesn't deserve a defense. He's flat out wrong. I mean, I guess the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, a school with 26 Nobel laureates and the place where the internet was invented, should give up their reputation and work because they're listed as a party school. haha, says flat out wrong then says an american invented the internet <3 best troll of all time ok ill be nice, as much as the web is a group of technologies and cant be attributed easily to one person, time berners lee is internationally regarded as the 'inventor of the internet' while working with others at cern. im sure you are gonna come back citing some american version of internet which was first but its such a pedantic subject because it depends on what you define as the internet compared to modern standards Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 05:49 Slaughter wrote:The U.S. invented the Internet. Your welcome.  hehe. In all seriousness do we really need to argue about what country's research dick is bigger? america has been trying to out do the european colonialism dick for many years now, why stop there 
I'm pretty sure you're thinking of the world wide web, not the internet
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United States24782 Posts
On September 25 2011 07:35 Millitron wrote:
The only thing I'm not sure how to deal with is the effect of previous years of schooling on the students. It wouldn't be fair to punish a late high-school teacher whose students did poorly because they didn't learn some fundamental thing an earlier teacher was supposed to teach them.
This is a very big problem actually. I teach 11th and 12th graders. Some of them could pass my course after sleeping most of the year. Some of them can't do basic algebra. Some of them study 50 hours for the state final. Others don't study at all and then put their head down during the final. This varies from class to class. Last year I had the 'fast track' AP class so my AP kids did way better on the AP exam then the other teacher's class. This doesn't mean I did a better job teaching.
This is an extremely difficult (more like impossible) system to make even remotely fair. Let's not forget that teachers have no control who is put into their classes. If I piss off guidance or an AP or something they will make sure all the problem kids end up in my class. Of course no system is perfect but the one you are pushing for would be so far from perfect it would be more counterproductive than whatever problems you believe exist with the current system.
The day merit pay and job security is so strictly tied to student performance is the day I find another career. And I'm one of those teachers who is working really hard, isn't burned out, and considered to be effective right now by my employers.
I'm far from alone among the 'not bad' teachers... can't speak for the terrible ones.
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Do you know any bad teachers, micronesia?
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United States24782 Posts
On September 25 2011 07:54 BlackJack wrote:
Do you know any bad teachers, micronesia?
Mostly through stories... I only ever had one that was that bad and it was because the district pissed him off and he retired halfway through the school year (lol, better off with a leave replacement I think).
The teachers who I work with closely aren't bad but I don't see other teachers for the most part since I don't go into their classroom. Around here (where I live/work) there are far less bad teachers than in places where teacher pay/conditions are worse. I'm sure I could find plenty in bad neighborhoods in nearby cities, for example.
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Many of international ranking of universities are based mostly on the research output of the university. It says nothing or little about the standard of undergraduate education at these institutions.
American university attract the most talented people from all of the world. In any top school majority of the PhDs students come from outside US. At my school in my program there are usually 2-3 American students out of 20 each year.
Short answer: Money => hiring best researchers + best facilities => best quality research in high volume => ranked high in the international rankings.
I bet if you considered achievements of the undergraduate students the difference between US and world would be much smaller.
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On September 25 2011 07:57 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 07:54 BlackJack wrote:
Do you know any bad teachers, micronesia? Mostly through stories... I only ever had one that was that bad and it was because the district pissed him off and he retired halfway through the school year (lol, better off with a leave replacement I think). The teachers who I work with closely aren't bad but I don't see other teachers for the most part since I don't go into their classroom. Around here (where I live/work) there are far less bad teachers than in places where teacher pay/conditions are worse. I'm sure I could find plenty in bad neighborhoods in nearby cities, for example.
I think I may have had bad luck; for a good part of my schooling, I had mostly meh teachers, with a few awful ones. I only had 4 or so that I thought were really good. This probably is affecting my judgement a little, since I was personally affected by it.
As you said in your other post though, plenty of students just don't care at all. This, I think, is because of No Child Left Behind. The students don't have any responsibility, they just coast through. The students themselves need to be held responsible for how hard they try, and if they don't, maybe they should be left behind.
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Not everyone has time to care about a test or studying when they work all the time. Not talking about college talking kids i knew in high school. People who dropped out even to go to a trades school once they had the money to. Not everyone has a nice cushy life where the only thing they have to worry about is school and social pressures.
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On September 25 2011 05:20 Morfildur wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 05:04 wherebugsgo wrote:
I mean, you could say that te U.S. didn't invent the wheel either. True statement, but that has nothing to do with whether or not the U.S. has been greatly influential in research, since it's completely irrelevant and from a timeperiod in which the country didn't even exist (I.e like half your examples) Well, tell me one groundbreaking technology the US developed... You could say "The computer", though that was based on work by the british Charles Babbage. Rockets for Moonlanding? Based on a theory of the soviet Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and developed by german Engineers (Wernher von Braun). Nuclear Bombs? The german Albert Einstein. Cars? Karl Benz, Germany. Yes, the US has been influential, but putting them above all other countries (like the poster i quoted previously) is just wrong. There are recent developments by the US, but that is very recent and not yet comparable with the rest of the world in a historic context.
lol, how about the internet?
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The teachers at my high school (public, just outside of Detroit) were a range, some really good to some meh to some crazy. One example was in a literature class where the teacher failed to get the class to read a book (Fahrenheit 251) and she eventually bowed to their bitching and just showed the movie (I think I was the only one in the class to actually read all the required books). It was sad. And junior year we had this 3 day test in Michigan that was to test to see how students were doing (this was pre NCLB so teachers weren't really teaching to the test) but it did impact funding so the school was desperate to get everyone to take it because if they didn't they got an auto 0 and the school average went down. Several students in the room I was in taking the test didn't take it at all and could care less that it was fucking over their school (main incentive for kids was that they got like 1.5k a year towards their college tuition from the state for free if they did well). Still some will just say "nothing in it for me since im not going to college" and just basically say screw you to the school. Sad I think that motivation is one of the bigger problems but that motivation can be sapped in a kid by so many different kinds of factors that its a hard problem to deal with imo.
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The top universities can basically take their pick from the top students of public and private high schools in the nation (and outside the nation). And not all public schools are horrible. That's my explanation of this paradox.
Considering public schools, I think there needs to more privatization and competition, if you want to improve the situation. I don't believe that public schools are "underfunded" and that the system can be made better just by throwing more money at the schools. The system is fundamentally flawed right now and inefficient. As stated before, there's no incentive for students to work hard. They are allowed to just "coast". Same is true for teachers.
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The quality of your high school depends on what town you live in America. My town has high property taxes, because it is next to the water, but most of that money goes to improving our school. Our school is considered the best school in the state, because of all the money my town puts in. But, 15 miles down the road, in a neighboring town, the school is terrible. This mostly has to do with incomes of the two towns (there's a lot of millionaires in my town).
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The way anything gets good whether it be Universities, teams, businesses ect. is their selecting. The American universities have enough prestige to be able to only take the best.
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On September 25 2011 08:53 Loanshark wrote:
The top universities can basically take their pick from the top students of public and private high schools in the nation (and outside the nation). And not all public schools are horrible. That's my explanation of this paradox.
Considering public schools, I think there needs to more privatization and competition, if you want to improve the situation. I don't believe that public schools are "underfunded" and that the system can be made better just by throwing more money at the schools. The system is fundamentally flawed right now and inefficient. As stated before, there's no incentive for students to work hard. They are allowed to just "coast". Same is true for teachers.
You've never seen oakland's schools have you...
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Pre-university schooling in the USA isn't bad when compared with many other countries - that's not to say it can't be improved.
It's just that Americans complain loudly.
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If you hear Americans talking about how shitty their schools are, it just means that their schools used to be better than they are now, and the standards haven't dropped from what they used to expect from their education system. It doesn't mean that their schools are actually shitty compared to the rest of the world. It just means that their schools are shitty compared to what they used to be. It's like rich people complaining because they have only half a billion dollars instead of the whole billion they used to have. They can still buy anything they could ever want, but they are just dissatisfied because they know they could have more like they used to. Does that make sense?
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A friend of mine is doing a year of post graduate college in Paris, she told me the first time she got into the library, the person in charge there wouldn't let her get in without authorization of her advisor -- no matter that she was a registered student there already -- later after having gone throughout all the trouble of getting a signature from her professor, she still couldn't get and access the library because she needed to pass through a couple of interviews.
Shit like that would never happen in USA, no matter the color of your skin, age, religion or even whether you are a registered student or not.. just saying that might be one the reasons universities in USA get the best students around the world too.
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On September 25 2011 09:11 MichaelDonovan wrote:
If you hear Americans talking about how shitty their schools are, it just means that their schools used to be better than they are now, and the standards haven't dropped from what they used to expect from their education system. It doesn't mean that their schools are actually shitty compared to the rest of the world. It just means that their schools are shitty compared to what they used to be. It's like rich people complaining because they have only half a billion dollars instead of the whole billion they used to have. They can still buy anything they could ever want, but they are just dissatisfied because they know they could have more like they used to. Does that make sense?
What are you basing this on?
Also, the very idea that if U.S. schools haven't improved upon where they were 30 years ago (or however long ago they may have been better than they are now) that means they ARE worse in comparison to everyone else now, because over the past 30 years development has increased and schools worldwide should be better.
It's ongoing improvement and the U.S. public school system keeps slipping in comparison to other countries.
http://www.saratogafalcon.org/content/us-education-falling-behind-those-other-countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#Historical_league_tables
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Is a culture problem more than anything. Students don't care/aren't held accountable by their parents.
If they fuck up its of course the teachers fault. Administrators are the biggest pussies nowadays, one parent complains and they flip their shit. Meanwhile the teachers have been basically castrated by administrators in dealing with parents.
Basically, we are fucked culturally. People who have said they have had "meh" teachers, think about those teachers compared to college professors. 100% im sure they are better at teaching than almost all Professors you have had. The kids and their parents need to be held more responsible, less onus needs to put on the teachers unless there is some egregious shit going on.
Also people who don't wanna be in school need to be kicked the fuck out. They ruin it for everyone else and are a big drag on morale.
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I can only comment on the public schools in Texas but I think the reason why public schools are considered so bad is because the only performance review for teachers is the grades their students make on standardized tests. In Texas it is the TAKS test, and this test is a fucking joke. We would spend part of the year kind of learning the stuff that would be on the test and the other part of the year would be spent on test taking skills specifically for the TAKS. The whole school year would be taught around a shitty test that is no challenging in the slightest.
tldr: too much time is spent teaching how to take a test and not enough time spent actually learning math/science/english/ ect.
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On September 25 2011 10:13 Sadist wrote:
Is a culture problem more than anything. Students don't care/aren't held accountable by their parents.
If they fuck up its of course the teachers fault. Administrators are the biggest pussies nowadays, one parent complains and they flip their shit. Meanwhile the teachers have been basically castrated by administrators in dealing with parents.
Basically, we are fucked culturally. People who have said they have had "meh" teachers, think about those teachers compared to college professors. 100% im sure they are better at teaching than almost all Professors you have had. The kids and their parents need to be held more responsible, less onus needs to put on the teachers unless there is some egregious shit going on.
Also people who don't wanna be in school need to be kicked the fuck out. They ruin it for everyone else and are a big drag on morale.
Replies these are completely typical. So pro-establishment it is disgusting. Do some research on teacher unions and then say teachers are always the victims. Once you've got the job, thanks to the mafia-like organization backing you up, it's almost impossible to get fired, especially if you're a minority. I had an Aboriginal math functions teacher a few years back and her class average was 68. Not only that, she threw a stapler at a student. Did she get fired? Of course not.
So next time, don't make broad assumptions.
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EPT
