Limiting the Teaching of the Scientific Process In Ohio 528
frdmfghtr (603968) writes Over at Ars Technica, there's a story about a bill in the Ohio legislature that wants to downplay the teaching of the scientific process. From the article: "Specifically prohibiting a discussion of the scientific process is a recipe for educational chaos. To begin with, it leaves the knowledge the kids will still receive—the things we have learned through science—completely unmoored from any indication of how that knowledge was generated or whether it's likely to be reliable. The scientific process is also useful in that it can help people understand the world around them and the information they're bombarded with; it can also help people assess the reliability of various sources of information."
The science standards would have "...focus on academic and scientific knowledge rather than scientific processes; and prohibit political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another." Political interpretation of scientific facts include humans contributing to climate change according to the bill's sponsor, who also thinks intelligent design would be OK under the law.
Re:just because the dept of ed.... (Score:3, Informative)
Right, you seem to be of the mistaken impression that people are getting less educated or something. Drop out rates have lowered across those 40 years, while test scores have mostly gone up.
You've only been "failed" inasmuch as other first world nations have been doing it better.
Re:The US slides back to the caves (Score:2, Informative)
This is a proposed bill. Come back and say that when it actually passes. Yeesh. You would think Europe forgot they still have politically active nationalists throughout.
Re:just because the dept of ed.... (Score:3, Informative)
Which of course explains away why a steadily increasing number of incoming college freshman have to take remedial courses. Here's a quote from http://www.highereducation.org... [highereducation.org] for you.
"he California State University (CSU), a large public university system, for many years has applied placement or readiness standards in reading, writing, and mathematics that are linked to first-year college coursework. All first-time students at all 23 CSU campuses must meet these standards, principally through performance on a common statewide placement examination. Despite systemwide admissions policy that requires a college-preparatory curriculum and a grade point average in high school of B or higher, 68% of the 50,000 entering freshmen at CSU campuses require remediation in English language arts, or math, or both."
Re:The US slides back to the caves (Score:1, Informative)
Granted, I don't know where you live. But this sounds like the high and mighty attitude of some people in Europe. So let's have a look at some [wikipedia.org] of the wack-a-loons [wikipedia.org] they've voted into power [wikipedia.org]. What the hell is up with you people in Europe?
Re:just because the dept of ed.... (Score:5, Informative)
the US DoED has nothing to do with this.
i know people on the right like to mock the department of education, as if education and a department to oversee it are bad things.
but this view is born out of ignorance over what exactly the department of education even DOES.
unlike most countries, the US DoED has almost nothing to do with curriculum.
most of thethey do is disburse funds from the fed to the states, along with some minor oversight responsibilities regarding civil rights on college campuses. That's it. But after articles like this, and others, maybe they should have something to do with curriculum.
Also, fun fact: the republicans opposed the creation of the US DoED as well. Apparently they were of the opinion that education is unconstitutional because education is not in the constitution...boy, they've sure come a long way in 40 years, haven't they ?
Re:This is good! (Score:4, Informative)
I got my first programming job, after a couple of years of struggling to find one, in part because I remembered how to do long division (and some other pencil and paper math). No joke, it was my big break.
But it's been shown that memorizing multiplication tables (and using them in drill until you reach effortless competence with multiplication) directly improves your ability to learn more abstract math and related reasoning.