How US Schools' Culture Stifles Math Achievement 888
Zarf writes "I'd like to file a bug report on the US educational system. The New York Times reports on a recent study that shows the US fails to encourage academic talent as a culture.'"There is something about the culture in American society today which doesn't really seem to encourage men or women in mathematics," said Michael Sipser, the head of M.I.T.'s math department. "Sports achievement gets lots of coverage in the media. Academic achievement gets almost none."' While we've suspected that the US might be falling behind academically, this study shows that it is actually due to cultural factors that are devaluing the success of our students. I suspect there's a flaw in the US cultural system that prevents achievement on the academic front from being perceived as valuable. Could anyone suggest a patch for this bug or is this cause for a rewrite?"
Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Make it financially rewarding to learn and teach math.
Heaven forbid some students do better than others (Score:5, Insightful)
That will just make little Johnny feel stupid! So, instead, let's just make everyone stupid and pretend they're not. In no time, we won't even know the difference. Now, where's my Brawndo?
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
You think? Anybody paying any attention to the current presidential election will see the Republican Party attempting to portray education = bad, ignorant= good. (Dumb) people buy it. It's a serious cultural problem in there here United States.
It goes to the top (Score:5, Insightful)
Homeschooling (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry right wing but I have to do it... (Score:2, Insightful)
While this may seem very partisan I think it's timely and as such I'm going to risk getting modded down by right wing zealots.
The GOP has increasingly become a huge fan of this 'dumb is good' type of culture. For a number of reasons. It's not that they don't want any smart people. Rather they just don't want everyone to be smart. If your smart you can see though a lot of things that they would rather you not. Now the same is true to an extent of people on the left. And even some in the center. However no party has embraced this idea of keeping the populace as a whole dumbed down as the right wing/GOP.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10brooks.html?hp [nytimes.com]
David Brooks does a great idea in showing how this mindset has been honed over the years.
No improvement is possible (Score:2, Insightful)
The is no improvement possible in education. The system operates under union rules. There will be no changes except those changes that help the union.
Your goal for better math education and a higher value for math achievement is not useful to improve things for the union.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
It already is; people just don't see the connection. Strength in math has done wonders for my career. It has allowed me to take on projects that would not otherwise be available to me.
The problem is related to probability in a way. Success at sports is highly rewarded but difficult to achieve (as defined by a standard of playing in a professional league at a national level). In academics, success (attainment of a graduate degree) is easier (number of people able to reach the goal) to achieve though still a difficult task.
What would promote "stronger" academics would be a pay grade within the academic realm for achievements.
Also, keep in mind that the patent and copyright system were designed to do exactly what you are saying. Promotion of the arts and sciences is why people are supposed to get exclusive rights to "their" idea. It is up to them to profit from it. There is an opportunity for success, but the problem is the link between the success and the academics is missing.
and to rile the anti-MS crowd a bit - Bill Gates is considered by many (of the non-programming crowd) to be the biggest nerd/genius in this respect. That is what a competitive academic environment would entail.
(sorry for my over- and mis-use of parenthesis)... (actually I'm not, but thought I would appologize anyways).
Re:Duh (Score:2, Insightful)
Troll, uh? Truth must hurt. Seriously. There is no country in the world that is as anti-intellectual as the US. Sorry, scratch that. That's an exaggeration. Yemen, Zimbabwe, Lesotho heap similar scorn on education and knowledge. I might also add Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and a few other theocracies to it if we discount respect for religious scholars. That's one hell of a company to keep.
Instead, try comparing the respect that intellectuals get in the US with what they get in the other G8 countries, or in any of the Eastern European states. Heck, even China values its scholars more - as long as they don't tread into politics.
Unless the moderator was referring to the specific link to the Republican Party? Sorry, I'd have to agree there, too. The Republican Party is the only party where ignorance and being average is actually sold as a presidential trait.
Re:Get rid of religion (Score:2, Insightful)
I must say that I completely disagree with what you said. I am a Christian, and I am all for reason. Actually, part of the reason that I LOVE math is because of my religion. I am amazed by the way God set up math, and believe, in the words of Galileo, that "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe." I'm pretty sure that what I said here won't affect anyones decision, and neither will what you said, but I just had to protest and say that religion doesn't cancel out reason.
Re:Sorry right wing but I have to do it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, I'll take the NY Times word on that. They have suck a great recent history of honesty and professionalism in journalism.~
R's aren't the ones running most Universities.
D's love dumb as dirt, well indoctrinated *Studies majors. Who, as a group, are required to take no college level math (back on topic). Maybe they get high school stats again (or for the first time). These are the people that can't pass business school (aka baby) calculus.
Why math achievement is stiffled in the U.S. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Recognition (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
When a math teacher can get millions of people to watch commercials and thousands of people to pay $40 to watch them teach math for 2 hours, then they'll get paid as much as pro athletes.
Some use of mass media might actually make this closer to reality. The best math teachers could teach millions of students using video and the Internet -- with lower-paid local assistants to help one-on-one and answer questions.
But the current union structure of education makes experiments like this impossible. Unions don't want one teacher teaching thousands of students. They want the maximum number of union teachers teaching the minimum number of students. It's not about quality. It's not about productivity. It's not about achievement. It's about expanding the union payroll and nothing else.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Do this and you will also be able to attract better teachers. I know multiple would-be teachers that won't teach because of the level of nonsense related to disruptive students that must be dealt with over and over again. Disruptive students are often ones who have become bored because they're studying things they aren't interested in.
Re:It goes to the top (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, they're elitist because they don't trust individuals to make decisions about their own lives.
Sounds like you have confused statism [wikipedia.org] for elitism. [wikipedia.org]
A common, almost defining, error among those who think that working hard to meet high goals is undesirable.
Re:Microsurvey (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a really scary conclusion to come to. Even scarier is that I don't think anyone knows what to do about it.
Re:Cultural problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Our society tells its young what is important by the amount of money you are paid. Look at the salaries that sport and entertainment stars get. Ask many students what they want to be and these occupations are very high (if not at the top) on the list.
Or, if those students were just a little bit more numerate they would realize that for every high-paid star there are 10,000+ burger-flippers who didn't make the cut. Its a lottery mentality at its worst that they can only see the exaggerated success of that 0.01% and not the corresponding failure of the other 99.99%.
But then, that lack of numeracy seems to be a real catch-22.
Re:Get rid of religion (Score:3, Insightful)
On an only vaguely related point, one of the first uses of calculus was Newton attempting to determine a limit on the second coming of Christ based on population statistics. He calculated that it would have to be before the 3000s because it would be around then that christianity died out.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
The Republican Party is the only party where where ignorance and being average is actually sold as a presidential trait.
Because "average" people want their leaders to make decisions like they'd make themselves. Because "average" people don't want their leaders to treat them like serfs or proles or subjects or children. Overt contempt and condescension for "average" people is doesn't earn their votes.
"I hate them and their culture so much. Why won't they vote for me?"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Homeschooling (Score:5, Insightful)
It's great that you brought up this point, however briefly. I have had a rather low opinion of home-schooling throughout most of my life. The home schoolers I knew seemed to have a rather vapid curriculum (mainly focused on passing yearly exams and requirements) in contrast to all of the cool activities I had a chance to take part in at public school (like physics & robotics clubs, advanced science & math courses, etc).
My opinion changed dramatically when I attended a small liberal arts college with a significant proportion of home-schooled students. Many of these students had excelled well beyond high school curriculum to college-level study in the course of their home-school education. They were deeply involved in their studies, often side-by-side with parents who shared their academic interests.
The moral of the story:
Home-schooling is a double-edged sword. Some parents home-school because they can offer their children a richer education away from the time-wasting of the public education system, and they do so quite successfully. Other parents are home-schooling because they want to shield their children from the influences of their peers (or possibly everyone), and they generally rob their children of any education in the process. I haven't met a lot of folks in between.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it has much more to do with culture. Either people are utterly failing at calculating expected value, and actually think that they are going to be NFL stars, A-list actors, rock gods, or whatever and are acting rationally; but on the basis of bad data, or things like sports, music, and entertainment industry stuff have greater cultural attraction. I'm guessing the latter.
If it were a money thing, the least popular kids in school would be the B-list athletes: Not good enough to earn any money playing sports; but still busting their asses(and their knees) on the field. Suckers! That isn't the case at all. A-list athletes tend to be more popular; but the social hierarchy seems to have very little to do with the expected lifetime earning potential of those involved.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
I got your patch (Score:4, Insightful)
get involved with your kids school.
I volunteer to coach a Lego robotics team; which was created because another volunteer did it.
My wife volunteers for art programs, and other school activities. She thought the display case should be changed more often to reflect what's going on. She took ownership and gets it done.
She was the president of the PTA last year. She got programs going that brought money into the treasury; which was used to by expensive things for the class rooms.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:2, Insightful)
Cancel all high school sports. (Score:5, Insightful)
It costs money and does not generate any revenue (unlike college sports, which the colleges are now so dependent on for income that not even a 12-step program could help them). It makes heroes out of kids who are good at running, jumping, and throwing and catching balls. Yeah, those are skills the world really needs.
Put all the money spent on high school sports into hiring GOOD math and science teachers. The reason math and science teaching sucks is that really bright, charismatic people can find better-paying jobs elsewhere.
If we ban high school sports, college recruiters will go away and college sports scholarships will dry up, because nobody will know who's good at running and jumping. The colleges will have to play with whoever turns up, like they used to in the old days. College sports will be exciting and fun again, instead of being semi-professional. In the meantime, the sports scholarship money can go to recruiting math and science whizzes, who are the people that universities are intended for in the first place -- not runners and jumpers.
Make heroes out of the kids who win the science fair, or the ones who ace the math SATs. Load them down with scholarships. Print their pictures in the newspaper. Send 'em to meet the President. Hire hot models (male and female) to be in pictures with them to give the impression that they're sexy. The message will get out.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of our country's math teachers don't understand math well enough to make it interesting. They think it is just memorizing 'math facts' and memorizing cookbook ways to solve problems. They don't see it as understanding the underlying structure of the world or as creative problem solving. They see creativity as something for writing class and understanding as something you get from reading textbooks.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:2, Insightful)
Blaming teacher unions for unsatisfactory results is a kneejerk response.
It's not about blame. The union prevents change. It's simply fact.
A few months back, the Wall Street Journal had an article on how many American educators are looking to Finland for teaching models, because Finland has remarkably high student achievement across the board. Yet, Finland and its fellow Nordic countries are marked by some of the strongest unions on the planet.
Wow. So you're saying union teachers trying to perpetuate a union system are looking to another union system to guide them?
Furthermore, I suspect many individual American teachers, not just the union fatcats you imagine, would prefer teaching classes as small as possible. The best teachers get great pleasure out of directing young people and showing them that learning can be fun. If you have too many students, it's just too impersonal and the emotional contact is lost.
Nevermind the students. Nevermind achievement. Nevermind productivity. The education system, in your description, exists to make teachers happy.
Some of the rest of us would like it to do something for the students too.
Depends on the recognition and requirements (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between being intelligent and being condescending. You, like so many other people, are assuming that one necessitates the other, and that's at least part of the problem. And that issue is partly because our culture gets offended when its pointed out that some people are better than others in certain areas.
Throw money at the problem (I did) (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Answer: Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine the wages they would get without unions. Or having someone to back them when needed. Look at the run of the mill parochial schools versus public schools, where they have teachers that are not unionized. They make diddly squat, have few benefits, and can be fired for stupid things like who they marry or don't marry.
Schools should be for students. They were not originally intended to be run solely for the benefit of teachers. The union doesn't care about the students because the students don't pay union dues.
Why should the rest of society fund an entire institution entirely for the benefit of teachers?
And the individual results aren't so amazing with their students; their high scores are simply because these schools can cherry pick students.
When you get the best results, you don't have to make such excuses.
Re:No improvement is possible (Score:1, Insightful)
Unions? You're missing the point. The problem isn't the teachers, it's the ENTIRE CULTURE. Heck, if little Billy or Suzy gets some recognition from their teacher for being such a whiz at math, what happens? The local bully beats up Billy for making him look comparatively "stupid" in class, and Suzy gets her hair pulled and told she's a stuck-up slut. Meanwhile the star football player who statistically has a miniscule chance to make a career out of it still gets excused from tests and paraded around the school like a hero. When students achieve academically they are usually rewarded by being socially ostracized and called "geeks", "nerds" and "brainiacs".
The problem isn't the teachers, it's the peers and what they've learned about the importance of academic achievement -- i.e. that it is far down the list behind money, sports, drinking, and a host of other activities.
Improvement in education *might* help some, but it's far from the only cause of the problem. Students are being told by their damn *parents* that "math is hard", and judging by the lunacy that allows such things as "sub-prime mortgages" and "minimum-payment credit card bills" to exist, they are probably right. Students are expecting to do bad at math. It's a very difficult prejudice to overcome, especially if most of the rest of your peers are expecting the same thing and will torment the people who start to realize it isn't as bad or as uninteresting as they thought.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
But in the context of the original post, there is not a difference. The condescension exists. The intelligence is still an open question.
Re:If he knew... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're a great mathematician, and someone needs a great mathematician, and they hate your fucking guts... ... they'll get a regular mathematician, and a great fucking calculator.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
School is for students? (Score:2, Insightful)
From my experience (having graduated not too long ago from a large state research uni), an undergraduate student's main purpose at a US university is not getting an education, but instead generating revenue for the school, the graduate level researchers, and even the community.
For example, the tuition was raised significantly every year - huge fees were tagged onto each undergrad's bill each year to pay for new construction of buildings that would not be even be used by the undergrads when completed (for example, new admin offices, a law school building, etc). The meal plans and dorm rates were so expensive, that I could not imagine the school *not* making a decent profit on them.
Walking near the hub of campus, one would be inundated with offers for credit cards from financial firms paying for the chance to be on campus. The main quad area would have weekly 'festivals' where multiple companies would set up big ads for whatever it was they were selling. Like the banks, these companies payed big bucks to the administrators for this opportunity.
On Saturdays, I'd sometimes have to go into the Engineering labs to finish up projects, and my walk went directly by the football stadium and all the tailgaters; during the football season, it quickly became apparent just how much money the student athletes brought in for the school. Traffic backed up for miles with alums coming to the campus with credit cards ready to pay big bucks for tickets, overpriced food, parking, t-shirts, and lots of booze. The students were, of course, offered cheap tickets to the game, though I sometimes think the only reason was to get thousands of cute 19 year old college girls into the area for the previously mentioned alums to gawk at. Not just the university, but the whole college town depended on game days for huge percentages of their revenue.
And don't even get me started on some of the other ways undergrads were screwed - the well known text-book scam, required academic 'projects' where students are essentially used as free labor for industry, outrageous interest rates hoisted on naive students. I remember the computer science department started offering graduate level courses online for professionals trying to get their masters/phds through distance learning. If, by the near-start of the semester, one of these online courses did not have enough distance learners signed up, some of these 'graduate level' courses would suddenly be included in the required elective courses for undergrads. Of course, even though I graduated with more than enough credits for an undergrad, I was denied the grad level credits after taking a few of these exact same courses that non-undergrads took and received credit towards their master's degree.
The worst part about it is that the majority of students will finish up after 4-5 years with a worthless liberal arts degree, and $50,000+ dollars of debt that they'll be paying off for the next 20 years. The majority of my friends who are in their late twenties are still working off their school debts...
Re:Answer: Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Not at all, but if you want to keep great teachers who ensure productivity and achievement, you have to keep them comfortable, otherwise they leave for some other job. This is a basic rule of business.
This assumes the result of "productivity and achievement". That result is not in evidence in much of the educational system. That's why change is in order. If the system were already great then you might have a point. But it is not.
No change can happen though. It is disallowed by the union.
Re:Heaven forbid some students do better than othe (Score:5, Insightful)
A little respect for people who are tasked with doing what is essentially AN IMPOSSIBLE JOB is due.
It's such an impossible job that every country in the world is just a big a failure as the US in teaching math??
If it is an impossible job then why do we bother spending tax payer money even trying? Seriously, why in the world would we as a society spend so much money to try and make something impossible happen?
I guess it being an impossible job has nothing to do with the fact that teachers in CA don't even work full 8 hour days and have teaching in-service days to make back any extra overtime hours that they might have accidentally worked?
I guess it being impossible has nothing to do with the schools paying people based on seniority rather than performance so that there is little incentive to try to improve upon the status quo.
We MUST do better by our kids. We must do better by kids of all ability levels. Why do we have special education on one end of the intelligence scale and not on the other end?? Exceptionally gifted kids are roughly 1/1000. Which means that most schools would have several, yet virtually no schools do anything to help these kids.
An example: my school district has a math/science magnet high school, but so many kids qualify that they have a lottery to give kids spots. This is because the standard is that kids have a C-average and be in the top 70% of standardized testing. This, in my view, makes the magnet essentially a scam to get gifted education funds from the state rather than an honest effort to help gifted kids. I could make similar points about most school districts in CA about their magnets and their GATE programs.
Re:Get rid of religion (Score:4, Insightful)
"Reason" isn't a boolean value. All living human beings, atheists and theists included, have certain areas of their life where their thoughts and beliefs are rational, and other areas where they are irrational.
The original poster's attitude of "people who don't agree with me are wrong and don't deserve to be treated with respect" is indistinguishable from the theist version, and is equally as terrifying to me. His claim that eliminating religion would somehow greatly increase the value of intelligence is laughable.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:3, Insightful)
Some fields are tournaments; most go home with nothing, while the extraordinary few make astoundingly large amounts of money. Some are slogs; if you put in the hours and have the basic ability, you will do reasonably well but never make the big time.
Math is one of the latter; if you're good at it, you will have a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, but there are almost no chances to bag a multimillion-dollar payout. So is my field, medicine; there are no poor doctors, but there are vanishingly few who have made Real Money from it. A huge percentage of those who are the first in the family to do medicine are the intelligent children of lower-middle-class or middle-middle-class families; it remains one of the most sure paths into the upper middle class, despite poor hours and an extraordinarily long training period.
I won't steer my children into medicine, though I won't completely discourage it; I'll encourage them to seek a field where they don't have to work nights, weekends, or holidays. My parents couldn't offer me the kind of security - of freedom to take risks - that I will be able to offer them, and so I had to choose a field with a lower maximum reward but essentially no chance of total failure. Michael Dell, for instance, is exactly the kind of person I would hope my children will have the opportunity to be (if they want) - his parents started his first business, when he was a teenager, with a $15k loan (equivalent to about $30K today) that they were able to give him because losing the money wasn't that big of a risk - it was the sort of thing they could take a chance on.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:4, Insightful)
FWIW pro Athletes are paid so damn much because of a ruling long ago which decided that they are entertainers, and should be paid as such(too lazy to look it up, google it). Think about them as being well-paid actors in a weekly movie series. The prestige lies not in the money or physicality so much as the Hollywood-ality of it.
I think it's simple as how many people are interested in watching, the movie, tv-series, sporting event or the math battle(?). And how much people are willing to pay, simple as that. If nobody is willing to watch or pay for it then the athletes and performers would not receive that huge paycheck.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:2, Insightful)
And conservatives, by definition, prevent change. So you should be attacking them as hard or harder, and when you don't, that shows you aren't intellectually consistent, and thus not worth listening to.
Nevermind the students. Nevermind achievement. Nevermind productivity. The education system, in your description, exists to make teachers happy.
If the teachers aren't happy, neither are the students. Or are you saying that the best teachers are the ones that hate teaching and dread getting up in the morning to go to their jobs? Happy teachers may be a requirement of a good system, but they aren't the goal. That you are too stupid to separate them, or that you realize the difference and purposefully play dumb to attack something you don't like are both reasons to not listen to you. Again, you are trying to win an argument but in winning the argument, you lose the ability to convince anyone of anything. Stop spewing hate and venom with your condescending retorts and someone might listen to you. As it stands, anyone that disagrees with you is probably right, because you are coming across quite evil in your statements. And anyone opposite of that must be good.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not malicious. It's what unions are. Unions prevent change that might, in any way, be a negative to their members or the hierarchy or the size of the union. They also promote change to benefit the members of the union.
They do not exist to help children learn. That is simply not the reason the union exists.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not seeing the condescension, nor am I seeing the connection in the context of the post. Its pretty clear to me, at least, that the Republican party has been saying that intelligence is bad because intelligent people are elitist, and pointing that out isn't condescending. Nor is it condescending to say that we should probably give some weight to people who are experts in their field of expertise. When it comes to the president, being intelligent should be a very desirable trait. Whether or not I could have a beer with the candidate and have a friendly chat ranks barely above what he eats for breakfast in the morning.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:2, Insightful)
Man, I'd trade 20-30 IQ for millions of do... no wait I wouldn't.
Re:Heaven forbid some students do better than othe (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes. I remember in the third grade when I got bored of doing simple addition and subtraction, and started looking into multiplication. This, of course, upset the teacher. Not because I was doing bad, mind you, but because I wasn't paying attention to her. She tried to convince my parents that it would be best for my education to drug me (Ritalin or the like) because I wasn't paying attention in class.
I'd say you did your kid a great service. Kudos.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Its pretty clear to me, at least, that the Republican party has been saying that intelligence is bad because intelligent people are elitist, and pointing that out isn't condescending.
Elitism is bad. People who consider themselves members of the ruling class are elitists (among other things). A ruling class is bad because people should not be "ruled", rather they should be free. (The original post connected intelligence and elitism. I did not. There is a connection: elitists consider themselves intelligent. Note this does not imply that intelligent people are elitists, nor that elitists are necessarily correct in their self-assessment.)
Nor is it condescending to say that we should probably give some weight to people who are experts in their field of expertise.
If "weight" is a euphemism for ruling, then no. Experts should not be given "weight". Appeals to expertise are a common tactic to justify ruling people. I thank experts for their knowledge and guidance. I may be able to use it to make my own choices in my own life. Experts are not needed to make my choices for me.
When it comes to the president, being intelligent should be a very desirable trait.
Desirable, yes. Many things are desirable. But I would rather have a stupid President who wanted people to be free than a genius who decided he deserved to be my king.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
For crying out loud - MAKE IT INTERESTING. I remember doing what I referred to as "Math for the sake of Math". Show how it's useful - the easiest way is through teaching Science.
At least for me, you've hit the nail on the head there. I figured this out back in high school when I had the exact same problem with math - it was math just for the sake of math. Then one day I took a physics class and I noticed something... this is the exact same math I was doing in trig and algebra 2, except it's easy now, because there are real world things for me to relate it to instead of just a bunch of numbers that someone came up with.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure much of the devastation in our economy today is directly attributable to propeller heads, math majors, who took their computers to Wall Street and thought they could rule the world's economy using math, for example by writing algorithms to assess risk of Credit Default Swaps, and to use computerized trading to keep investment banks and hedge funds with 30 to 1 leverage from imploding. They failed. Maybe teaching math isn't always a good idea :)
You might save American education if you could identify and funnel America's best and brightest in to boarding schools that value academic excellence and not competitive sports, just intramural sports to promote good health and and team skills. At the same time do your best to funnel the best teachers to the same institutions and pay them very well. Not sure where you get the money now that America is broke. Full scholarships are important to make sure they are a meritocracy and not a plutocracy like current elitist prep schools. Its kind of an elitist concept since it would stratify education and make the existing public school even worse than they already are. Liberals will hate it because its elitist, the right wingers will hate it because its a meritocracy instead of a plutocracy, so maybe its a good thing it pisses off both fringes equally.
"No Child Left Behind" being the complete fixation of the U.S. education system is insane. It is completely focusing the system on the least able students and totally abandoning gifted students. It is a system designed to destroy American global competitiveness. To compete globally America needs the elite students, it doesn't really need to do a better job of educating people who will end up in fast food joints and on assembly lines, if there are any assembly lines left in America.
Re:Math vs Sports (Score:3, Insightful)
In college? Yes.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
pro Athletes get paid a lot because they are a product that can be sold for lots of money, not because of some esoteric ruling somewhere. They top guys make millions because they are actually really good, the same general wage pyramid is found in most markets. Usually the guys who get paid the most are the ones who are best because there is a little supply of them and lots of demand.
You have the same thing with math, it's just in the US people have a value system that encourages leaving school to make money instead of hanging on as ivory intellectuals. You can't really fix that, since in the eyes of most Americans its not broken.
Re:Heaven forbid some students do better than othe (Score:1, Insightful)
So your son is going to finish his home schooling, get a job and refuse to do the boring bits. He'll last a few months before moving (or being moved) on to another job. This will happen a few times, he'll become disenfranchised with society because it doesn't recognise his true genius.
Not money: Self-esteem (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true, and I would like to add my $0.02 regarding the school system.
Part of the problem with our educational system is that we don't reward outstanding performance as we once did. I am told by a parent of a young child in a local school that they have an award ceremony where they now have the cut-off for rewards around an average of 70 and up. During the ceremony, at least 3/4ths of the class receives awards.
Anymore, there is simply no need to perform exceptionally well when most of the class is going to wind up with the same recognition. School officials are reluctant to recognize the students who perform better than--for example--98% of the rest of the class because doing so would be considered unfair to the others. Such "de-stratification" doesn't exist at the college level (yet) and as a result, many new high school graduates are dumbfounded to discover that they are no longer pushed through the system with the relative ease they've grown to expect.
The same thing has happened in mathematics. When a student merely needs to perform just well enough to make the grade, there's no motive to excel. We've stripped rewards and recognition for those who perform truly outstanding work in comparison to their peers simply on the basis of fearing for the self-esteem of the former. In short, we reap what we sow.
So, there you have it. Our society has fallen so far behind because we cherish mediocrity over bringing harm to the self-esteem of others. Yet, for professional sports, competition among athletes is encouraged; competition among students is increasingly discouraged. Is it any wonder why few children see a need to rise above their peers and become someone exceptional?
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
An expert saying that we should do something is not equivalent to them trying to run our lives.
But people trying to run your life will claim expertise as qualification for the job.
But look at Bush's policies, and what the republican party has been doing, and then tell me that they don't dream of being my king.
Last thing I heard, deregulation was what the Republicans did wrong. Before that, it was tax cuts. They prevented the government takeover of health care. They wanted to move Social Security to a private-sector system. They got rid of the 55 MPH speed limit. They opposed a government enforced minimum wage increase many times. What kind of kings are these who want us to keep more of our own money and make more of our own choices?
Bush has 3 months left. Then what? Which choice do you think will lead to more power in the hands of government and less in the hands of individuals?
I do not support him, but at least with McCain we might get some bills vetoed. Then we can try again in 2012. Maybe the country can find a pro-freedom candidate by then.
Re:Heaven forbid some students do better than othe (Score:3, Insightful)
Both Jobs and Gates are geniuses in the realm of business
Re:Answer: Money (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not about blame. The union prevents change. It's simply fact.
I counted to 100 before I posted this so I could calm down and politely say SHUT THE FUCK UP. Seriously, I can't be more polite than that because I doubt you believe your own words. You know you're wrong.
1)The union is absolutely positively in favor of changes that benefit TEACHERS and STUDENTS. It cannot be otherwise.
2)The only reason teachers get the (still too little) salary they do is because of the union and the public outcry strikes generate. (i.e. the WA state lottery was supposed to be all for education. education never got a dime)
3)The poor state of education today has everything to do with BUDGET CUTS and the slashing of programs that promote critical and creative thinking. You can thank Ronald Reagan for convincing people that we need to focus on the "three R's" and use the money for tax breaks to big business and the wealthy.
4)Some of the rest of us would like it to do something for the students too. Pay the Teachers enough to make more Science and Math majors WANT to be teachers (in other words support the union). Put money back in the budget for programs that teach children to THINK, not just make change at WalMart (want that? support the union, they want it too). The generation that had those programs is the generation that landed us on the moon.
Or maybe Walmart greeting non-voting MTV watching tards is what you really want most people to be.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:3, Insightful)
And conservatives, by definition, prevent change.
Political understanding does not come from a dictionary. You may find it, but you'll have to put the dictionary down and listen to what people actually say and watch what their positions are. Many "conservatives" want change in the schools (among other things).
So you should be attacking them as hard or harder, and when you don't, that shows you aren't intellectually consistent, and thus not worth listening to.
How about if we just get the government out of the system and let people make their own choices as free people? It seems better than attacking people.
And saying that "the union prevents change" isn't an attack. It's just a fact. The union prevents change except when change benefits the union and union members. That's what unions exist to do. And students are not members of the teachers' union.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Answer: Money (Score:4, Insightful)
My student athletes have people skills all up and down the spectrum. Some of them do learn valuable lessons from sports such as how to take a loss and learn from it, how to work on a team, how to lead others to pursue a goal. Others are just playing a sport so they can hit people. Or else they learn above all an us-them mentality in which they always deserve to win, regardless of which team played better. I don't think your theory is correct that playing sports corresponds to having useful people skills.
The problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a European who emigrated to the US, its very obvious how here in the US there is a damaging culture of PCness where it is unacceptable to speak ill or criticise anything or anyone else, no matter how bad they or it is. Consequently morbidly fat people get away with calling themselves 'large' and the bar for academic and other success is made so low that it doesn't represent any challenge just so that everyone can feel like they're a winner.
In fact just because I'm suggesting the US isn't perfect I expect some American with mod points will exactly prove my point by modding this down as a troll, even though I'm trying to be observational and insightful.
Teacher satisfaction not at odds w/student success (Score:5, Insightful)
They do not exist to help children learn. That is simply not the reason the union exists.
This is true, but it's beside the point. The idea that unions exist to serve the interests of teachers isn't particularly problematic, because teacher satisfaction hardly precludes student success, in fact, it's rather dependent on it.
Not to mention that it's completely orthogonal to unions -- if teacher's interests were inherently at odds with genuine education, the problem really wouldn't be unions, it'd be teachers, and the remaining option would be non-professional educators...
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you are arguing a totally different point. You are claiming that being pro-government is inherently elitist. The argument before was about representing the people versus being dictatorial. If it is in the peoples best interest to increase the size of government, and the decision has support of the people, then to do so is not elitist.
Kings may not care what their people do, as long as they (said kings) get to line their pockets with 'tax reimbursements' that favor them greatly over the general populace, no-bid contracts to companies they are heavily invested in, etc.
On the other hand, the Republicans want to control what women do with their sexual organs, want to prevent parents from getting their daughters vaccinated against potentially life-threatening diseases (cancer causing HPV strains), and want to create laws dictating whom you may or may not marry in order to enforce their religious beliefs.
By the way, some of by far the freest countries in the world have nationalize healthcare, and it works EXCELLENTLY.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:3, Insightful)
The astronauts were top-notch test pilots, many with combat flight time in fighter planes. They were fit, good-looking types who were plastered all over TV, got free Corvettes and expensive watches.
They also happened to be excellent engineers and capable of doing complex math in an age before pocket calculators.
The problem today is that there is, to many people, a rather large dichotomy, whether it exists or not. The ancient Greeks stressed physical fitness as well as intellectual fitness because having one will make the other easier.
But think about this: the amount of dorito-chomping, 400lb, thinkgeek-wearing individuals are into math and science are pretty much going to make the crew team, student/athlete types run off to the history or english faculty for fear of their health, and the tribe doesn't really do much to dispel the myth.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. So you're saying union teachers trying to perpetuate a union system are looking to another union system to guide them?
What makes the Finnish educational system great is that it uses a lot of things that other countries don't do. Maybe it's because the unions are so strong so they can impose their ideas on the government bodies that define the way things should be done in schools, but maybe it's because their society has looked to itself and saw that only through education it could achieve great results (both economically and socially).
If Finland wasn't so damn cold, I certainly would move there. It kinda makes you proud to pay extremely high taxes when those are put to good use, unlike in this most countries.
Can't even go to a hedge fund any more (Score:3, Insightful)
So now you have your l33t math skills. What do you do with them? Engineering has been offshored. There's now a glut of unemployed Wall Street rocket scientists. Defense spending has to decline, what with the bailout eating up the Government budget. And don't even talk about NASA.
Few programmers do that much math any more. Even game programmers don't do as much as they used to; most of the hard stuff is embedded in packages now.
(I'm not complaining personally; I've done very well. But I can't recommend this to young people who have to go into debt to learn.)
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
My mom left the teaching profession because she was tired of fighting with the unions. Teachers with seniority got to choose what they taught first, even if they were grossly unsuited. Teachers with seniority got paid more, even if they were blisteringly incompetent. If there were budget cuts, and someone had to be fired, guess who it was? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't the teachers with seniority.
Start teaching at a school early on, and relax! Once you've been there for three years you'll just never be fired, no matter how awful of a teacher you are.
The teaching unions are a blight upon the country.
Now, I'm not blaming them for all the problems. You're right - the painful lack of funding is an issue also. But I find it hard to believe the situation would be *worse* without them, given what I heard about what it was like with them.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
My father was a college level teacher for over 50 years. Tenure and unions are very important aspects of college career. Here's why:
During the civil rights movement, my [white] father held on to his job while being able to protest blacks *not* being allowed into university. If it wasn't for the tenure, he would certainly have been let go.
You see, universities teach science, philosophy, and other disciplines which frequently go against the cultural fad of the day. It is important for freedom of thought to be part of education; without it, teachers would live under constant fear of being fired for simply expressing non-PC views. Think of the number of nuts who want creationism taught as "science" in school.
Universities are turning more and more to private enterprise for funding. This is dangerous, because it lets pointy haired MBAs treat education like a for profit enterprise, which it shouldn't be. Education funding should only be given by the state, federal and individual. Special interests need to stay out. If you think I'm wrong, just look at our congress.
There is another factor - $$ in college are allocated disproportionately to sports programs. Just take a look at the budgets of university sports programs in comparison to other departments. That's where your tuition goes - not to the pittance salary your professor gets.
As far as your other union related comments - I kind-of laugh and flinch at the same time. It's very vogue right now to look down on unions, to think that your "sheer skills" will somehow catapult you above all your peers, and that anyone who is in a union is a slacker.
To some extent, this may be true. However, unions, social security, and other social programs came about because of one very important factor: greed. It's the same greed you see today in Wall Street. Prior to the advent of unions, people suffered tremendously at the hands of companies. Do your homework - read up on why they came about. Time changes little - today in the US system companies would love you to be slave labor (read: WalMart). What do you think WalMart would pay its employees if the federal or state minimum wage wasn't in effect?
In the end, extremes encourage strife. Government, business and people need to live in constant tension, and in balance. There should always be a tug of war happening between all three, with government erring on the side of its people whenever possible.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Pay the Teachers enough to make more Science and Math majors WANT to be teachers (in other words support the union).
The Union wouldn't allow that. Part of supporting all members is that history and english teachers (which there are too many applicants for) make the same as math and science teachers (who there are usually not enough of). The seniority based pay scale the teachers unions insist on hurts as well, a teacher makes decent money in most states if they stick with it long enough, but how many people who just graduated college (and probably have major debt) are going to want to take a job that doesn't pay anything in the short term? A flatter wage will get you more teachers, even if there's more churn. (not necessarily a better situation).
Re:Answer: Money (Score:3, Insightful)
No.. it's because they have a legal cartel.
If there were rules for anyone to set up a football team and compete (so that there were 300 football teams in america) then the pay would not be so grand.
Re:Duh (Score:1, Insightful)
People should be free. Governments use force (or the threat of force) to rule people. Larger governments do more of it. Smaller governments do less. Representative governments are the same as any other governments in this regard, except a majority rules in a representative government. But people are still ruled, and they are ruled more by a large government than by a small one.
This is provably true based on taxes alone. Taxes are taken from people against their will. They are not a willing donation. Large governments tax more than small ones. Americans work an average of about 5 months a year to pay their taxes. During that time, there's no way they could reasonably be called free.
On the other hand, the Republicans want to control what women do with their sexual organs,
It really bugs me when women use their sexual organs to build an accurate scale model of a 17th century cathedral. Is that what you mean by this? Even though it bugs me, I think they should be free to do it.
want to prevent parents from getting their daughters vaccinated against potentially life-threatening diseases (cancer causing HPV strains),
Vaccination police on standby. Alert! Alert! ... What the hell are you talking about?
and want to create laws dictating whom you may or may not marry in order to enforce their religious beliefs.
Bob and his baby sister can't get married now? I mean, Bob's already married to 3 other women and engaged to his mother, but we should respect his choices, right?
By the way, some of by far the freest countries in the world have nationalize healthcare, and it works EXCELLENTLY.
In the USA, we have the best health care. Some people merely complain it's expensive.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:4, Insightful)
It's simple supply and demand. Top-quality athletes have a much smaller supply than teachers.
Hogwash. Top-quality teachers are probably just as hard if not harder to find than top-quality athletes.
The difference is that amazing athletic ability is something that something like 90% of the population will gladly pay to see, or will at least sit and watch so that someone else can sell advertising on their eye-ball time.
Great teachers have a harder time drumming up those kind of audiences. There simply aren't as many consumers interested in the product they are offering.
So, it's all about supply and demand, yes, but you picked the wrong side of that equation. The supplies aren't that different. It's the difference in demand for watching athletes jump up and down vs demand for listening to educational lectures from skilled teachers.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:3, Insightful)
They top guys make millions because they are actually really good, the same general wage pyramid is found in most markets.
Actually, sports is much more pyramid-shaped than most. Most companies would be ecstatic if they only hired people past the 80th percentile. In most economics, you simply want one competent at his job that does it well. In sports, it's about the GOLD, not silver, not bronze. Is the world's 100th best player bad? Hell no, but hardly anybody will know his name. The very, very best are stars and make huge amounts of money while a good athlete isn't anywhere near as useful as a good employee. I'm not going to watch, and certainly not pay to watch, some second division match between whatstheirname and thatotherteam. Their salary follows straight out of their market value or lack thereof.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
This is counterbalanced by the 20 or 30 other athletes competing for the same prize, mostly working as McDonald's staff, security guards, etc. Sports salaries are a lottery: you have to factor in all the losing tickets people buy to make a sound investment in it. You also have to factor in the risks of becoming drug-addicted, getting your limbs mangled in a sports injury that destroys your career, and giving up the best years of your life to a generally very hard and strenuous lifestyle.
But that would mean understanding math.
Re:Not money: Self-esteem (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it any wonder why few children see a need to rise above their peers and become someone exceptional?
Try being exceptional and then say to my face that we should encourage more of such despite how the exceptional are treated.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Public education IS a profit industry, but the profits are long-to-very-long-term, which is why it doesn't get enough money attention in nations that adopt the "maximize medium-to-short term profit" even at the expense of the long-term health and wealth of the nation itself.
Paradoxically, those same nations see no problem in spending trillions of dollars into the military, which is not exactly what one would call a 'profit industry' by any means ...
'nuff said.
Re:Teachers are not underpaid (Score:3, Insightful)
And you call that not underpaid?
Would you personally work for a lousy $17/hr? That's what the 33K translates to. Nevermind the benefits. It's a full-time career with massive psychological impact.
The entire country is underpaid, but that's besides the point.
Teachers are indeed grossly underpaid. They shouldn't have to work during Summer either. It's one of the most stressful positions and they do deserve a break from the madness.
I know plenty of 100K+/year accountants. I don't know as many teachers.
If teachers made as little as 70K, we wouldn't hear this argument. And yes, that is not much money either. A professional making $35/hr is not really considered successful in professional fields. That's why we can't attract professionals into that business.
Home payments eat whatever salary you make nevermind any savings.
I will go out and get my credentials but only after I have sufficient net worth to treat it as a volunteer position.
Re:Answer: Darts. (Score:4, Insightful)
You make it sound like you get any say in it at all.
Millions of people enjoy watching sports on TV and voluntarily shell out big bucks buying tickets to sporting events. Because people love spending money on it, it only makes sense that people involved with professional sports would make a lot of money.
Now look at education. People value it so little that many people eschew the very idea of paying for it themselves, and want other people (aka the government) to buy it for them. Big surprise that people doing jobs nobody wants to pay for won't make very much money. People don't mind paying for "higher education", and you rarely hear college professors bitching about their pay. The funny thing is, if you wanted to pay a teacher more, you probably couldn't - it's all controlled by the government and teachers unions.
Don't take it personally, but your opinion doesn't matter. The majority of people just don't think education is very valuable.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow...where do you live that math teachers (any teachers) make $100K a year?
Re:I remember what happened to Friedrich Gauss... (Score:1, Insightful)
Too Much Emphasis on Math and Science (Score:2, Insightful)
When a student who's interested in writing (technical or otherwise), small business, history, art/photography/video production, graphic design, military, and all the other useful things out there is told they would be better doing math and science, they go along and fail at it.
What we need to do is let the other students pursue their other interests and leave a greater allocation of resources to the students interested in math and science. This way we'll get better math and science students and better students of all other kinds.
The university I am attending does just that, they offer a 'Math for Non-Math Majors' course that is all applied, everyday math. Students who really want to pursue advanced math can still do it, and they aren't drug back by uninterested students in their classes.
I really wish my high school had something like that. I slept most of the time in my math courses and got A's because the instructor was too busy trying to get the uninterested students to focus. I know a few of the uninterested students now and they are successful contributing members of society who almost never use the math they learned. The educational system wasted their time and mine by forcing them to study math and science.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that you have a slightly revisionist view of tenure. The "intellectual life" used to include more than just your narrow field of research, and indeed taking a moral stand against abhorrent aspects of society was at least implied as a tenure right. (Notice that sometimes they intersect; for example the Tuskegee airmen experiment. What sense would it make to protest that in a researcher's capacity, and ignore racism elsewhere?)
Nowadays, education is industrialized and with it comes a narrowing view of tenure. I think Vernor Vinge was right; in the near-future, the research class will be replaced by neuro-engineered savants-on-demand.
Re:Answer: Money (Score:3, Insightful)
I grew up in the Apollo era. Geeks and nerds were even less popular then than they are now. Uber-nerd Bill Gates has actually done a lot to boost the status of geeks.
Totally.
Geek has probably never had a better image in entertainment-- look at the TV shows with geeks in central roles:
- Numb3rs (my least favorite for a lot of reasons, mostly that they're way too serious and the science works out too neatly, but it presents a positive image with science and math as important and useful)
- Big Bang Theory (which I think is a much more accurate portrayal of scientists than just about any TV show. The science throwaway comments tend to be current and accurate, and I know [or am] the real versions of all the people)
- the various police procedurals that revolve around the scientific investigative teams rather than the street cops (CSI:YourTownHere, Bones)
- Mythbusters (sure, a lot of their science is oversimplified and some of their conclusions are incorrect, but they follow a basically good process and show how science works in an entertaining hourlong show).
- House (Medical shows have always been popular, but usually showing doctors as hotties who save lives, House revolves around him being a really smart guy with a lot of flaws)