How Do You Fix Education? 949
TaeKwonDood writes "Carl Wieman is the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Physics but what he cares most about is fixing science education. The real issue is, can someone who went through 20 years of science education as a student, lived his life in academia since then and even got a Nobel prize get a fair shake from bureaucrats who like education the way it is — flawed and therefore always needing more money?"
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fix it at home (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems to me that "parents need to take responsibility" is all to easy to use as an excuse for the flaws in the system. At least, easier than actually trying to fix the flaws. Further more it seems to me that the reforms the do try to push through are often based upon a perception of reality not fully bases in fact and research. There are brilliant people studying the ups and downs of various educational methods; but politicians and bureaucrats seem more interested in enforcing their party's, or their own, agenda.
Friend of mine is a teacher, 10-15ish age group; and he is very into reading up on the latest articles, papers, research, studies, etc, regarding all aspects of education. One of his greatest frustrations is the institutionalized stupidity of the system. Methods that have been proven to work are showed aside because they are in conflict with current dogma.
It's worse (Score:2, Interesting)
> bureaucrats who like education the way it is â" flawed and
> therefore always needing more money?
It's even worse. To the bureaucrats, liberals and other enemies of civilization the government schools aren't broken, they are working exactly as they designed them.
Like socialism, our government schools are relics of the Industrial Revolution and the assumptions and thinking of that era. All 'right thinking people' of the period believed Socialism was the future. And the other major thing they believed was that the purpose of mandatory public education was social engineering, to remake the unruly free peoples of the civilizations engendered by the Enlightenment into docile worker bees fit to work long mind numbing hours in factories. Leader types (the ones making these policies) would, of course, continue sending their own children to elite academies to be taught how to be doers, thinkers, leaders.
Re:Vouchers (Score:5, Interesting)
On the flip side, I don't think it will help near as much in more rural communities. Also, many students don't work well in online/homeschool environments. I think having the option is a good thing overall though.
My son was home-schooled last year via an online charter school, and did very well, much better than the local school district (in a fairly rural community). However of my friends/family with children of school age, I don't think most of the children would respond nearly as well to that environment.
I think the biggest problem is too much funding is lost in bureaucracy instead of higher salaries for teachers... to be honest, I think a lot of teachers today probably don't deserve more pay, but more money needs to be offered to bring in those that may not have otherwise considered teaching. As a senior programmer, I make about 3-4x what the average the average teacher in my state makes. I honestly don't think that this is right. I feel that probably 1/5 of our teachers should be rotated out annually... have "teaching" programs for professionals, you spend 2 years as a T/A (all classes should have two instructors, one main, one TA, and a parent in daily, imho). After that year, the TA would take primary on a class, then after a couple years as the main instructor, go back into the private sector. There are some good instances of lifetime teachers... but imho these are too far and few between, and I'd rather see "fresh" teachers come in, and out in a relatively short period. And it should be an honor, to have served as an instructor for said 4 year engagement.
The problem seems to be, that the various educational systems seem to be dedicated to hiring trained "teachers" who don't have much, if any specialty, instead of people who are good at their professions who want to spend a few years teaching.
As a home schooler, I must agree with most of that (Score:3, Interesting)
Learning, of any kind, needs to be a life long passion or it won't be successful. That won't happen if kids are forced to learn stuff when they don't want to. Forcing kids to learn to read too early and you teach them that reading is a drag. My one son was self motivated to learn to read at age 5 and the other at age 9. Both are now avid readers, reading far more than the average school kid.
Science is all about hypothesizing and critical thinking: something that is severely lacking in society in general and is definitely missing in schools. Instead the kids are encouraged to just "get with the program", be politically correct and make the least work for the teachers.
My kids love to experiment with stuff. Experiments often don't work which triggers thinking and learning. School "science" experiments on the other hand are canned activities which are generally guaranteed to work with no thinking required. Where's the science in that?
My experience as a student of Prof. Weiman (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the privilege of taking a quantum mechanics course from Carl Weiman 2 years ago while he was teaching at the University of Colorado. It was by far the best college course I've taken, he had the perfect mix of well versed lecturing with "clicker" quizzes throughout the class, homework that was appropriate for the material, and tests which rewarded understanding of the material and not memorization.
The best part really was that by the end of the course, he gave his lecture on Bose Einstein Condensate which he won the Nobel prize for, and all the students could understand what he was talking about from learning things throughout the semester, it was incredibly rewarding.
Compare that to my next physics courses which were basically applied calculus, except they left out the important part of what the **** any of it meant and how it applied to... anything really. His course overshadowed the rest of my physics courses and in the end, because of the huge disparity in teaching styles, made the rest of my studies quite grating and rather uninteresting.
Re:How can a culture that celebrates ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
This is about as worthy of a "+5: Insightful" as a post can be.
In the 1960s, we used to have parades that celebrated astronauts. Let me say this again - we had PARADES... for... ROCKET SCIENTISTS... To become one was something that was considered the height of a child's aspirations. No wonder we were sending people to the moon with a pocket calculator and a roll of duct tape.
And what are we left with now - an utter disdain for anyone and anything that displays the traits of having even a shade of reason. Even more importantly, we've managed to "democratize" science. The "intelligent design", "vaccines and autism", and "global warming is a myth" campaigns are only the tip of the iceberg of targeted ignorance, that aims to teach the public, and especially the younger generation, that on one hand science is a mysterious black art, to be feared and distrusted, and on the other, it's little more than a game of weak, impotent men and women, that can be played by anyone... a medium where all voices are equal.
As a result, we have a number of situations, where people's beliefs are shaped not by scientific fact, but by whoever screams the loudest. Add to that an overall atmosphere of distrust of "the system", and you have a society where scientific "rogues" that spout senile and frequently openly fallacious concepts, are treated as heroes by much of the population.
How can we hope to fix education in such circumstances?!
Not to rant further, but the other major problem we've run into, that must be resolved if our educational system is to be salvaged, is one of unrealistic expectations. When kids dreamed of being "rocket scientists" in the 60s, it was understood that not everyone was going to achieve this dream. Which was more of a reason to pursue it! Instead, we now say that everyone must go to college, and everyone must achieve an X level of educations, which is... let's face it... unrealistic. But what these expectations HAVE done, is devalue higher learning, by trying to push everyone into the same bracket. And since you certainly can't raise the expectations for people who simply cannot meet them, we just lowered the bar for everyone, most likely leading many talented kids off the right path. In terms of primary education, there have probably been few policies as harmful as "no child left behind".
If we didn't acquire this dream of equality of mental condition, and didn't fight so hard to accomplish it, perhaps we would have less problems with education, and less 2 (and even 4-) year colleges with a level of education that does not even meet high school requirements.
The honorable Snidely Whiplash (R-Montana) (Score:5, Interesting)
one of the hallmarks of that is the kneejerk reaction that every bureaucrat is by nature evil and dishonest.
I had a conversation with an insurance lobbyist on a flight to Boston a couple years ago. She has a lot of dealings with state and federal senators and congresscritters, so I asked her what were the things she discovered in her interactions with them that came as a surprise. Three of them were:
The first one is relevant here, but the last one has been on my mind since then. Slashpac, anyone?
Re:You dont. (Score:3, Interesting)
---Have you actually spoken to the people in the lower 50% of our population? And you want those people to home school their kids? I'm not saying it can't work for a lot of people, but smart people usually hang around other smart people, it's easy to forget that many people exist that do not car about education in the least, and that probably could not divide two numbers without a calculator.
I actually have faith in the "lower 50%" only because many of them have not been blessed with decent high schooling, or have little to no options. Moreso now than ever information and knowledge is easy to obtain, but the real art is finding it.
And I remind myself when I think I'm smarter than them: I may know physics of motion and can do the math required, but people who play sports know that exact same formulas intuitively. People who are not scientifically inclined are almost always artistically inclined, something I will not be.
And after looking at the real skills these lesser 50% have, there's a few rotten eggs. They're there in all societies.
---Not to mention the people who turn home schooling into bible schooling. Not that it's bad unless they crack down on critical thinking or don't teach evolution at all or something, but you know some people will do that.
I was Catholic. I studied the Bible from Genesis to Revelations (well, skipping over begats and much Revelations).
I'm no longer Catholic.
Re:You dont. (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a period in American education, particularly after Sputnik kicked the US government into the realization that those crazy goddamn Commies could scoop them on a major technological advancement, where a good deal of effort was put into finding and training scientists, mathematicians, technicians and so forth. Kids wanted to be rocket scientists, astronauts and atom splitters. Home chemistry and rocket kits, as well as toys like Mechanos and Legos, were seen as important ways to produce what the US needed to get ahead of the curve and stay there. But, sadly, within a relatively short period of time, the educational edifice took over, with it's unions, bureaucracies, mindless testing, endless tinkering and the new "next big thing", and now the US is faced with the reality that while domestic talent may just as often be wasted, it has to import talent from abroad.
Part of it is, I think, a consequence of the rugged individualism of America. In places like Japan and Germany, there's a pretty fiercing weeding process going on to find the best and brightest, and to some extent that sort of defies the American Dream that anyone has a chance to be the next guy on the Moon or the next President or the next Bill Gates or whatever. But the fact is that the one-size-fits-all education system favored in North America has become nothing more than a recipe for mediocrity. Coupled with ludicrous laws like No Child Left Behind, which should be restated as No Child Ever Pulls Ahead, and it's a wonder that education isn't worse off than it is.
To my mind, education should be more focuesed. By thirteen or fourteen the kids, parents and teachers ought to have some idea where the kids' talents lie. From there it should be an encouragement to go where those talents lead. Rather than basically delaying all of this until the kid is going off to college and then saying "Okay, waddya when a be when you grow up, which is about 9am this morning" start that process earlier.
The reality is, no matter how optimistic laws like No Child Left Behind are, some children will be left behind, for any number of reasons; socio-economic status, health, intelligence, disability and so forth. No system is going to catch every would-be neurologist and physicist, but at least we can try to better the odds.
The problem isn't the education. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's that kids don't care. The vast majority of kids don't really care about science, it's neither fun nor interesting to them.
And to make it worse, even if they're interested in science, once they realize that it involves that oh-so-dreaded subject, MATH, then you're sure to run off most of the rest.
In fact, one of the largest criticisms of math courses (which is, in some respects, quite true) is that the majority of people who learn it will never use 99% of what they learn in there.
Hmm... maybe they should teach math and science together. Get the kids excited about a thing, then teach them the math behind it. Hmmm....
Re:War on science (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Vouchers (Score:3, Interesting)
This is how it works in the army (the British one at least). I'm not sure about infantry, but in the 'support' trades the instructors are the top few % of soldiers who spend a 2 year posting as an instructor. It works well because as well as their professional knowledge they also teach from a broad base of experience, and always have plenty of anecdotes to back up what they're teaching. They also command much more respect from the recruits because they have real-world experience and they are the end product that the recruits are aspiring to become.
one assumption he makes... (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article:
This assumes that "complex problem solving skills" are something that can be effectively "taught". My anecdotal experience is that by the time students arrive at university, their possession (or lack) of "complex problem solving skills" is already largely fixed, and isn't likely to change significantly.
Re:Free market competition? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully we can keep this from devolving into a flame war, but if you're interested do search for John Stossel's "Stupid in America". Private schools in the heart of Chicago catering to poor black students spend about a third per student compared to private schools and produce standardized test scores that compare favorably with white suburban schools. Being cheap and producing results, even poor families are willing to sacrifice that second tv and fast food meals to send their kids there. Charity will also go a lot further and be better funded with the knowledge that government isn't taking care of it. Gates by himself is already giving nearly enough to k-12 to provide free education at 1/3 current costs to every family below the poverty line, and that's just one guy.
And if you think the telecom industry is an example of the free market, I can understand your confusion. Telecom more closely resembles mercantilism than capitalism.
Re:Fix it at home (Score:2, Interesting)
Understanding a subject, at least those that does not require expensive appliances (like many medicinal related studies); is fully possible on your own. Of course it's much harder on your own, especially if your elementary education is lacking. But it is possible. However, under the current perception, a diploma from a good school weights more than a good understanding of the subject. Not to say that a diploma from a good school isn't an indication of a persons understanding.
Something I reckon geeks will be able to relate to. I had several friends when I grew up that got heavily involved in Linux and C in the mid to late nighties and had a better understanding in their teens than many university level students I have met later.
Be honest, everyone is not equal (Score:4, Interesting)
As such at college level there needs to be a way to separate the cream of the crop from the rest of the class.
The simple fact is, we are not created equal nor do we apply ourselves equally regardless of our ability.
Yet education is beset with claims of racism should one group do poorly compared to another regardless of the subject. As such schools have to dumb it down because if they did separate someone would take offense, even if they were not directly affected. Too many people are of the belief that they have the right to not be offended and that means not being called sub par compared to their fellows.
So how do you fix it? Take politics out of education. Take favoritism other than by demonstrated ability out of college. This might mean having two types of degrees for the same course. You could award a minor bonus to gpa for taking and succeeding at the harder level or grant more hours or even shorten the length of the classes.
One last area, reduce the effect of tenure even it means getting rid of it. It allows some real idiots to persist simply because they "have done their time". Professors who pontificate about politics instead of the subject at hand, provided they even bother to show for the course.
Still to fix college your going to have to fix public schools too.
Re:Impossible. (Score:5, Interesting)
The single-most important thing to "Fix Education" is to increase parental involvement and stop the mentality that school is a place where you "send" your kids "to be educated"
The school has a curriculum and it will present its content to your children whether you like it or not (unless you home school them.) You can send them to a really and truly private (thus expensive) school and perhaps avoid it, and get them a good education.
The school is a place where your children are sent to be indoctrinated. Some good teachers exist, and will try to give you information that you need rather than simply what is in the standardized test. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day. One teacher I know would need something like 45 more minutes in the school day in order to spend the amount of time required to be allocated for each task if everything went perfectly throughout the course of the day. Heh heh.
Unless you are extremely lucky and find the rare self-motivated student you simply cannot remove parents from a successful edcuation.
Unless you are extremely lucky and can either home school or send your children to a private school you simply cannot avoid having your children damaged by public education.
There is no single most important thing to do to fix education; I agree wholeheartedly that parents need to be involved in the process, whatever it is, beyond shipping their children off to school like so many cattle.
Re:Fix it at home (Score:1, Interesting)
I think most pedos would be hiding in the bushes with nets if our kids were all forced to walk to school. There are other ways of getting your kids to be self-reliant and this doesn't sound like it's one of them.
Re:How can a culture that celebrates ignorance (Score:3, Interesting)
Our fellow countrymen have gone so far as to use the word "intellectual" as a slur. WTF is that all about?
I think it has far more to do with the attitude associated with many of those who call themselves "intellectual" than the actual status of using one's ability to reason along with the capacity for knowledge. If more intellectuals criticized those other intellectuals who are rude and condescending to the less intelligent, I imagine it would cease to be a slur.
Re:Impossible. (Score:3, Interesting)
MOD PARENT UP!
The only flaw is that curriculum does need to change. The phrase often used is "Curriculum is like a graveyard - more and more goes in yet very little goes out". When I was in High School as a senior, I had 6 subjects in total. I had maths and English every day, and Physics, Engineering Science and Chemistry 4 times a week. I had one period of PE per week, and 2 hours sport. I sat in a maths class 7 hours a week, and my English class 5.
Now students may do upwards of 12 to 14 subjects in their senior years. They have 3 or 4 hours of English per week, and all but those doing the "suicide course" do 3 hours per week of maths, sciences or languages. They might do 3 hours per week of Rugby, plus their PE and sport, 4 hours of "pastoral care", and they will probably get a "teacher free day".
Simplify the curriculum, encourage great teachers, engage the kids. Spend real money on the country's future. The catch is that the conservative forces in politics want to specify detailed curriculum, don't trust teachers (after all they tend to be leftward leaning by inclination), see the kids as a problem that has to be kept off the streets and can't look at spending money over a period longer than an electoral term.
Science education (Score:3, Interesting)
"Meanwhile, we can still do a better job of teaching science (mostly in making kids interested in science). Perhaps the only way to get the parents involved is to teach this generation that science isn't jsut a waste of time, so that they encourage thier kids in turn."
While I'm all for improving science and math education, I have a problem with a push to get more kids on a math and science track by fiat. I've come to the opinion that in any population, only X number of kids are going to be interested in those fields. People act as if we just improved the classes, science and math interest would suddenly take off among kids, and especially among minorities and girls. And I just don't think that's true. I think kids that are are naturally interested pretty much know it, even if their curriculum isn't first class. I just don't think that if we put a Jaime Escalante in every class, suddenly everyone would be interested in calculus. I think that's a fantasy, a pipe dream. Some kids are interested in math and science as a career, and some kids aren't... most kids, actually. I think we could get some more involved, but not the numbers that education reformers claim.
Re:How can a culture that celebrates ignorance (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree with the overall premise of your post, I think this is a flawed example to draw upon.
While it's true that most of the original astronauts had degrees in some scientific area, what the country was celebrating was much more related to their backgrounds as test pilots and military aviators. There were no parades for the engineers who accepted Kennedy's ambitious challenge even though they were probably much more influential in succeeding at that challenge. The ones who got the parades were probably among the least educated of all non-clerical NASA employees (which isn't really a reflection on them but more a reflection on who the other people at NASA were).
And we weren't praising their ingenuity or intelligence, we were praising their bravery and the fact that they symbolically beat the Russians.
OTOH, if you want to look at another example of where we exalted someone who did use intelligence and ingenuity to also beat the Russians, the fame garnered by Bobby Fischer would probably be a good example. It's pretty unlikely that our current society would heap the kind of praise given to Bobby Fischer on someone who accomplished a similar intellectual feat. About the closest we've come that I can think of is Ken Jennings and it won't be long before people have mostly forgotten his name (if they haven't already).
Re:Vouchers (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, and the corruption that produces charter schools with nothing more than a compelling business plan, would leave about 5 years of stolen money from the public school system. Roughly the amount of time before local governments could prove several of the recently created local charter schools were either scams or hyper-mismanaged.
This isn't a take against charter/private schools, it's a take against a MASSIVE slosh of funding thrown towards a specific target with lots of creative minds in a capitalist society.
If you accept that competition will produce a more 'efficient' school system, then you have to accept that it does so by weeding out cancerous schools. New ideas means some REALLY bad ideas will exist in the market place for a long while.. The difference is that the experiments will be unsuspecting generations of school children.
I also guarantee that a voucher system would have a massive uptake in church schooling.. And we've never seen a Christian denomination produce scandelous steal-from-the-poor mega-churches have we? Didn't we just shut down the Taliban? Do we really need to reproduce it here? God only, science-is-from-the-devil, questioning-faith-sends-your-soul-to-hell schooling.. wonderful.. Not saying church schools don't work (Catholic schools do quite well, thank you). But in this fly-by-night churching society we have, it's guaranteed that some poor town will set up a horribly underqualified, backwards church-school, with the promise of tons of government money. Only takes 2,000 bad apples to spoil the barrel. And we've got a full 2/3 of a country full of barrel hunters.
My parents went to Catholic school, and I went to public school, and I never had a problem with their systems. My family is very well educated as a result. But my parents and myself had strict homework encouragement in our respective families. Many of my friends who never made it very far from high-school were sega-mongers afterschool with mostly absent parents (at least while we were at their houses). School was free day-care for their 14-year-olds as best I could tell.
I don't know how much public education has changed since I've been there, but I recall it as being very systematic. There was little confusion about course materials - only people that hadn't done their homework and progressively fell further behind. Classes always had feedback systems. Very rarely did we see multiple choice - most quizes involved critical thinking - no guesswork possible. Partial credit was assumed. I was actually surprised when I got to college and the proliferation of multiple choice. The D-average was possible practically by guessing and showing up to class every day. I understand the challenges of 100 students per teacher in college necessitating less critically reviewed quizes/exams, but I honestly think I got a better education (fact for fact) in public elementary and high school than I did in college. And I went to a well-ranked college.
High school was what you made of it.. I was highly motivated and had a powerful support structure at home. But by sophmore year I'd surpassed the ability of my parents to help with homework, so the only thing you can argue at that point is positive re-inforcement. I was (as many slashdotters, I'm sure) an introvert so I didn't have the daily distraction of socializing - which I fear represented my main advantage over my high school competition. The sense of excelling I'm sure was a prime motivator in and of itself (as a sports athelete is driven to rise from 3'rd place to 2'nd or maybe even first). If we had school uniforms, greater anti-social regulations in classes, I'm sure that my competition would have been much firmer and I'd have been less motivated as a result. Who knows. I will say that parents have a tremendous influence on how their children develop self-esteem. If you're told you have to make friends, doing x,y,z will make you popular or cool, funny, the life-of-the-party. If doing things (as a parent) to help your kid look cool or s
Re:Fix it at home (Score:1, Interesting)
Nice would-be troll, but you're simply not correct. Interestingly, I was talking to my girlfriend yesterday about her experience with homeschooling. She is quite talented musically, horrible at mathematics, and did quite well in college. Guess what? She didn't learn any advanced subjects after 7th grade except for muscical studies and some very light other education. She was literally at a piano or violin 6+ hours a day. What did she tell me? "I didn't need more than 7th grade education to do well in most (non-math) courses in college."
The reality is that if testing was really honest at ensuring 7th grade criteria were met, the GP poster would be exactly correct. You on the other hand have a typical myopia. It takes very little education comparatively to do well enough in the "real world" so long as the 3 "R's" are taken care of.
Further your tone suggests that you're one of those retarded people that thinks that education = smarts. It's not true. People figure out how to get done the things they want to do once they know where to find the information. I would be very rich if I had a nickel for every would-be "intelligencia" with 10+ years of schooling who can't separate their head from their ass either in their field of study or otherwise. Congrats though on working in your pet meme attack by linking anyone without your recommended eduational background and welfare.
Please mod this asshat down.
Re:Fix it at home (Score:4, Interesting)
Some? You mean MOST. Home schooled kid regularly out pace public schooled kids. It may be unpleasant for the majority of people to accept that they are not giving their kids the best education possible, but that doesn't change the reality of it.
"They also need to be informed what is going on at school, and they need to care about that. They have to avoid at all costs giving the impression that school is something to be endured until they can leave - kids that learn *that* lesson from home rarely discover their potential."
No parent that is really informed about what is going on at school is going to be able to NOT teach their kids that they will have to endure at least large parts of it. A kid that goes through public school is under the care of somewhere around 45 different teachers by the time they are done. Contrary to what some people believe, getting a job in education does not magically make you a good person. Even being unrealistically generous and the kid being really lucky, a kid is going to have half a dozen to a dozen crappy people who have control of them for large chunks of time.
To fix education here in the US we would have to completely scrap our current system. The current system is a business. There are huge sums of money being thrown around, and there are plenty of people who want it. Asking how to fix the current system is the same question as asking how we can fix corporate America to start putting the customers before profit. There certainly are ways, but you can forget about it happening. Not enough people really care to make it happen. We have become a orphanage state. Most kids start getting shuttle off to state or semi-private institution between 1 and 3 years old. By the time they are five or six, most of them spend more waking hours under the care of the state than they do their parents. It is not uncommon for half of all meals a kid eats to be supplied by the state. The numbers look even worse if you don't add together the number of hours mom and dad care for their child. Then when the kid is under the parents care, they are supposed to spend a significant portion of that time, doing work that they were instructed to do by the state.
Quite simply, what we call parents, have been relegated to the role that used to be supplied by the absentee divorced father. The state is most kids primary care giver. So, the question becomes, how do you fix a system where 98% of youth are raised in an orphanage?
I'm skeptical (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole "engaging the kids" meme avoids the fact that there is only one acceptable outcome--study, learn, don't take the easy way out, etc. We are trying to SELL them on the idea, not involve them in the process of decision-making. That's inherently dishonest, because we're only pretending to give their preferences (which consist of sleeping, video games, and manga) equal weight in deciding what their priorities should be.
Basically I think we're too nice to our kids. I'm not saying we should beat them (much), but I remember a conversation I had with a doctor I worked with (parents were Chinese) whose siblings also all had professional degrees. On a basic level, the kids all had the feeling that if they didn't do well in school their parents wouldn't love them anymore. It was never stated, but the feeling was there. Could I do that? No. But that inability translates into, if not academic mediocrity, then definitely a mentality that makes excellence a hypothetical option for my kids. They do well enough to get by, but there is no drive. I basically feel that I've let them down by being too nice.
Re:Fix it at home (Score:3, Interesting)
The American system is vastly better in this respect, and as a result I think it works a lot better at teaching creativity and free thinking, as well as adapting to each person's individual needs.
I'm not sure how you got the second half from the first, but it doesn't really follow. Have you ever heard of the concept that too many choices are not better for a person, but worse? See, they did this experiment where they put a varying number of different flavors of a certain product on a supermarket shelf, to see how many people bought the product. Well, what they found was that naturally, as more flavors were introduced, more people were likely to buy, as the extra variations filled the niche that different people desire. Then, to their surprise, as they kept increasing the amount of flavors, the number of people who bought the product actually started dropping sharply.
What these researchers found out was that too many choices confused people, so that they ended up frustrated, threw their arms up into the air, and left to buy something else altogether.
The US education system is like that, if you only look at the good parts. That is, the open-endedness of the system, the ability to go anywhere and do anything. The education system reflects the idea of the American dream.
Unfortunately, the bad parts significantly outnumber the good parts. The nannying. The whole idea that there are no winners or losers anymore. The bullying. The typecasting and stereotyping.
Part of it has to do with television. Kids these days watch a lot of TV. Kids are immensely impressionable. What has been happening is that kids are now mimicking behaviors they see on television. Television shows that feature jocks and nerds and such aren't a reflection of reality anymore, reality is actually reflecting television. Well, it's not so simple, as such behaviors have been around for the longest time, since the first time one man of one color killed another man of a darker color just because the second man was darker. But, television reinforces it, makes it seem like that's how things are and ought to be. And so instead of things getting better (which is what a good system is supposed to be), they're getting worse.
And it's worse for math and science. Television likes to show the science-loving students as the rejects, the outcasts. They tend to have the "cool," good-looking ones that everyone wants to be as the stupid ones. The entire idea of jocks stems from this. Why can't someone be well studied and physically excellent? So kids, consciously or unconsciously gravitate towards the cool end of the spectrum, by dumbing themselves down. It's most noticeable in girls, where popularity effectively means being dumb. People wonder why there's such a drop-off of interest in science among young girls. Yes, they're discouraged from match and science by old schoolers, but that should mean that they're putting their vast intellect to other uses. But they're not doing that either. They're dumbing themselves down to be more likable and more popular among the jock-type boys who act stupid and don't bother trying to become smart because the think that's how they're supposed to be.
Part of the problem has to do with the nanny state. I read somewhere that it is the rise of feminism, and the feminism of society that's destroying all of the fun in life. Everything has to be 100% safe now. Everything needs a label. And if anybody gets so much as a scratch on the playground, it's time to bring out the lawyers. And this idea of babying every child has extended to emotions as well. Children don't win or lose anymore. Now the winner goes home happy and the loser sues for emotional distress. Actually, the loser doesn't sue, the loser's parents sue. So what this means is that nobody knows their strengths and weaknesses, because suddenly everybody seems to be equally good at everything.
Yeah, it's great that a future tailor thinks he has the same chance of becoming a medical surgeon as a future medical
I fail to understand what appears (Score:2, Interesting)
to be one of the central points of his argument.
Excuse me while I actually discuss a topic related to the article it self, yes shame on me.
He essentially claims that students, based on cognitive research , fail to gain "expert" status over material and the ability to self analyze one's thought process concerning a matter of average complexity.
I learned this first hand when i was in the second grade trying to get a hold on division and multiplication. It turns out that study and practice makes you better.
This principle applies to college courses as well. The preview for my engineering undergrad stressed that practice and thoughtful study was the key to success. 2 hours devoted for every hour in class was the rule of thumb.
Now, maybe this is simply because I attend a Tier 1 university (I can say with certainty, from experience, that my friends at lesser schools rarely even buy their textbooks or bother to study while passing) but studying is where you develop this "expert" status.
The only part of this article that has any bearing on the university as I see it is that professors have increasingly demanding positions as the grant getters. The increasing demands on the professors to take part in time consuming research can certainly degrade the quality of teaching to a degree. How far this goes is mostly dependent on the professor himself and is hard to gauge.
Reforming junior high and grade school is a whole different beast. I couldnt imagine even trying to go into the horror that the system is.
Re:Fix it at home (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you ever wonder why maintaining a fleet of buses, fueling them, having drivers for them, buying new ones as they wear out etc is financeable, whereas building a pedestrian-bridge so that people who walk can safely cross the road no matter the traffic-level is -not- financeable ?
To some degree it's a chicken-and-egg problem: There's no point in making communities pedestrian-friendly, because nobody walks anyway. And nobody in their right mind would walk -- because the community ain't pedestrian-friendly.
Time for a revolution (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Paper Routes (Score:3, Interesting)
Where I grew up, the paper truck dropped off the stack and the carrier was to wrap and tie or bag the paper for delivery. I usually helped my friend who did deliver and he paid me and there was no driving, it was biked across the neighborhood and that was your route. No more than 30 homes.
Now forward that about 30 years, I happen to work with some pretty successful and wealthy people that came from nothing and got their start on a responsible paper route.
I've always said that pressure creates diamonds and if I read your response correctly, you are suggesting that pressure shouldn't even be applied. You never know what people are made of until you ask them to do something.
All ideas have a timestamp... (Score:3, Interesting)
Education is based in a Victorian era copy of a flawed greco-roman model. Easy to say but what does that mean?
Our education models are not about learning, but creating students with a homogeneous comparative experience. If you really want them to learn you simply provide them with resources and incentives.
That's it.
A good analysis is from this former NY teacher, John Taylor Gatto. He put his book online. It's a good read to find out how *DEEP* these hierarchical ideas go. Underground History of American Education [johntaylorgatto.com].
There was a recent TED presentation I remember where the speaker stated flatly that higher education was specifically tuned at making academic administrators, but perhaps not much good at other things.
Having just achieved my bachelors and even considering a master's (not in science granted but) I find the education wasn't so much about the knowledge but also about the opportunity to interact with the knowledgeable. What they have given is of dubious value at best but what you tease from them with your own questions is invaluable. How they went about becoming a "professional" was of interest as well. Using your time in any program as a launching point for what you want to do seems to me the true way to use this education system.
As to what should replace it. You need to decide on the principles of what you want to achieve. The rest will flow.