The Gaming Den

My spouse's work paid for them to go play dodgeball last week, in fact.

-Crissa

It has nothing to do with whether people can read or not to cut out history. The problem is the focus is missing in education. How does someone who cannot read even pass the grades, let alone learn history?

Also what role in the majority of Americans lives does history play? When they watch Jeopardy they can answer an extra question or two? What does it do for the steel worker? The car factory worker? The farmer that puts food on everyone's tables? Not a lot of anything.

It means little to nothing to them. Oddly enough there are many (including women) who find a lifetime of joy working in the sweltering heat of welding shit together than people use, like bridges and such. History doesn't help them do their jobs, nor does it help them get food, or a place to live, or medicine to remain healthy.

PE may have provided them some entertainment if they like it, but doesn't do squat for them in the long run unless there was an in-school weight room.

PE is primarily for either unadvised exercise without consulting a physician, or teaching sports which most people will not be able to get a career in.

I had to take history EVERY year out of primary school. I don't give a damn about the war of 1812, or civil war, except to know the right people won during the civil war. Nothing else really matters about it. Like any war you had the dumb people, and the right people. History is written by the victor anyway. I don't need to know nor care everywhere that Sherman went, or about the Alamo. It is in the past. Nothing we can do to change it, so like any other story that is uninteresting to people, just get to the end of it for the next one.

Scorched Earth came out of history...la-de-da. So let us all nuke each other and we all win because we scorch all the Earth right?

PhysEd as a class needs to go. There is nothing to teach. jumping jacks aren't that hard to fucking learn, nor is a sit-up or pull-up (not the child training pants). Teach people to ride a bicycle. Teach people to use tools and such that exert energy and burn calories. Not trying to teach people the few "sports" that the school has room to build a whole field/pitch for.

One ball and some nets and any football field becomes a soccer field. Sell all the dodgeballs, and you can more than afford the goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaals.

Where is the class in PhysEd? What are you learning? How to grab someone else's ass in the course of playing and get away with it? The wight room is for the football team only, so nothing there to help people that may want it because their are not eligible. Climbing a rope isn't fun, nor does it teach anything except to make fun of people with no upper body strength. And hazing is what school is all about right?

Tell me exactly what can be taught in a PE class. It is an attendance only grade. You show up and look like you are doing it and you pass. WTF?

But them many schools have been using the everyone passes thing recently anyway, so school isn't even about teaching, and just showing up in general. That is why the US education levels are dropping lower and faster.

@Crissa: Why? How much does it exactly cost to play dodgeball? They could have bought more toilet paper for one of the stalls for the price of the ball.

Was it some sort of bonding retreat thing for employees?

shadzar wrote:Also what role in the majority of Americans lives does history play? When they watch Jeopardy they can answer an extra question or two? What does it do for the steel worker? The car factory worker? The farmer that puts food on everyone's tables? Not a lot of anything.

It means little to nothing to them. Oddly enough there are many (including women) who find a lifetime of joy working in the sweltering heat of welding shit together than people use, like bridges and such. History doesn't help them do their jobs, nor does it help them get food, or a place to live, or medicine to remain healthy.

I'm going to go back to what I said earlier in response to the original poster's musings...

It's diversity of experience, not the actual educational process itself, that improves so many social problems. School is one way to approximate more diversity without the requirement of travel, and the best tools - in the same vein as what tzor was saying - are those that enable more experiences (like reading).

Education needs to start with the basics, and it should include necessary real-world skills, but all of the "frivolous" courses need to be available, too, so that the steel worker, the car factory worker, the farmer all know that there's more out there than just steel, cars, and farm. Because who knows...? Maybe the steel worker doesn't want to work steel.

shad, your arguments are bordering on silly the whole way through.

The purpose of history is to gain context on the present. History shapes the present, and the future. Therefore, knowing history, will allow people to understand, and shape the present and future.

Your PE arguments seem to stem from a single, or a series, of bad experiences in HS PE. I didn't take HS PE 1st year, and instead took it 2nd. Apparently the other kids were utter shits to anyone that was even remotely bookish. I blame 1st year jitters, and not knowing who the other person is as the cause for why those kids acted the way that they did. In any case, I dodged a bullet there.

Also, PE and sports are as much about combat, strategy and tactics as they are about physical exercise. I may have been the weakest player on my team, but since my actions in many team games were specifically "keep on the other teams best player, and make them useless for their team, never let them get open by always covering them" I was able to contribute more to my team than I could pretending that I could play the game.

The obesity issue is for a number of reasons. Miseducation about food portion sizes, and the lack of solid understanding of the effects of consumption has on the body being an other.

I see people with all kinds of problems with their skin, and they never think "holy shit, I'm eating garbage, my body is freaking out and giving me breakouts b/c of it".

Also, exercise is definetly a really good way to improve a person's quality of life. There's the health benefits, but there are also psychological benefits, such as camraderie, and the endorphine high that comes from extended bouts of exercise.

Myself, I was at a larping event last weekend, and I'm still on the tail-end of the results of running, walking, sprinting, and yes, fighting for 40-odd hours over the course of three days.

People need to be taught, and reinforced with the fact that sports and exercise are fun.

Other languages are all about understanding your own language better. I'm serious about that one. Until I was working as an ESL tutor I didn't really have a firm grasp of the elements of English grammar.

"Literature" instructors who spout their opinions are a test. You will seriously meet people like that in real life.

People who want to hold forth on whatever topic they feel strongly about. So you have to know how to deal with an manage them into acting in a manner that you want them to. Either by giving you a high mark on a paper, or giving you a promotion or raise at your job.

The problem is that these things aren't formalized. Some of them never can be formalized.



I'll be honest about what I did, and didn't learn in school. I learned a lot of facts, and information about why things happen, but a lot of the learning techniques that I personally use I've developed over time and independently.

The thing is, unless I had all of that information about how other people solved their own problems, then I would seriously be inventing a method out of no where, and would probably be refining my methods for an other 5-10 more years.

shadzar wrote:I had to take history EVERY year out of primary school. I don't give a damn about the war of 1812, or civil war, except to know the right people won during the civil war. Nothing else really matters about it. Like any war you had the dumb people, and the right people. History is written by the victor anyway. I don't need to know nor care everywhere that Sherman went, or about the Alamo. It is in the past. Nothing we can do to change it, so like any other story that is uninteresting to people, just get to the end of it for the next one.

Scorched Earth came out of history...la-de-da. So let us all nuke each other and we all win because we scorch all the Earth right?

Firstly, I would take offense that you don't want to know about the War of 1812. You should at least want to know the important message of America's earliest flirtation with Imperialism - that lofty ideals do not make you immune to lust for power. The US Civil War should have taught you that people do not take to change well. If you did not understand these facts, then you lost out on History.

History taught well teaches you to analyse evidence from multiple sources (and to be concerned when you only have a single source of evidence) - a skill that, in my opinion, Americans are in sore need of.


Honestly, Shadzar, you sound like a schoolkid whining about the fact that you have to take aaaaaall these classes when you'd rather read comics and play videogames.

Maj wrote:

shadzar wrote:Also what role in the majority of Americans lives does history play? When they watch Jeopardy they can answer an extra question or two? What does it do for the steel worker? The car factory worker? The farmer that puts food on everyone's tables? Not a lot of anything.

It means little to nothing to them. Oddly enough there are many (including women) who find a lifetime of joy working in the sweltering heat of welding shit together than people use, like bridges and such. History doesn't help them do their jobs, nor does it help them get food, or a place to live, or medicine to remain healthy.

I'm going to go back to what I said earlier in response to the original poster's musings...

It's diversity of experience, not the actual educational process itself, that improves so many social problems. School is one way to approximate more diversity without the requirement of travel, and the best tools - in the same vein as what tzor was saying - are those that enable more experiences (like reading).

Education needs to start with the basics, and it should include necessary real-world skills, but all of the "frivolous" courses need to be available, too, so that the steel worker, the car factory worker, the farmer all know that there's more out there than just steel, cars, and farm. Because who knows...? Maybe the steel worker doesn't want to work steel.

I use the steel worker because I know a girl who had to fight to get that education against her parents wanting her to be a doctor. She had the aptitude for both. She had no problems with the sight of blood and such. She just preferred the value of welding over being a doctor. She had no knowledge of it except it wa hot and hard work, but loved it. Also I think bad experience with doctors tilted the scales.

But like you say, the opportunity does need to be there, but NOT forced onto people. Nobody in this day and age that I meet doesn't know there is plenty of crap out there. The problem many have is they don't know anything except a tiny bit about anything because so many things are touching on barely briefly and never expounded on.

This girl sold her car and got a job to take welding classes because her parents wouldn't pay for the lower-classed education.

WTF?!?!

Another example of what many to think that more expensive means better. Well I am glad she didn't become a doctor, because she wasn't interested. Could you imagine having someone that doesn't want to be a doctor doing your surgery?

Nurse: Doctor she has gone into arrest, should we intibate?
Doctor: I don't care, I just want this shift over, do whatever you want.
Nurse:

I have also met doctors like that. Like how pilots have second jobs they go to before flying a plane and are disgruntled about not being paid enough....Yeah I don't think I will ever fly even if I wasn't afraid of heights and shit. Some jobs just NEED people who care about their work to do.

So they should offer things for the people who want them, I have no problem with that, but the mandatory is what I have a problem with. They teach a class, rather than actually teaching the individual. If you teach someone something they are interested in, they will pay more attention and get more out of it.

You know, just like dealing with a child. Tell them medicine and they may not take it, but lie, and apologize for lying later, and tell them it is candy..."Just a spoonful of sugar" and all that jazz. It is hard to lie and get someone interested in a school subject when they probably don't even want to be in school anyway, so you need to make sure they are interested rather than just trying to teach in an interesting manner. That does help when teachers are allowed to use alternative teaching methods. But it still doesn't help with everything.


@Eagle: The present is fucked up, and even children can see that. Nothing about how good anything in the past was will help them with the present. Having good values will help shape the future. Always teaching about bigotry via the civil war, and helping to perpetuate it doesn't help the future. Teaching how many wars humanity can get in for no reason, doesn't help the future. All those things do is continue the cycle.

I remembered learning about WWII, and how good it was that the bomb was dropped on innocent civilians, because it helped to end the war. I learned then and there, that government in the US was flawed. Teachers are idiots. To trust nothing any random body I know very little about says. It spat in the face of my beliefs.

Don't even get me started on the crusades being taught in school that I gained from it about how people fight and kill each other over the right way to think about death. But it was also a needles land dispute, because people cannot leave other people the hell alone and have to always tell other people what they are doing wrong because it is different than how they do it.

I can tell you little about the Magna Carta in all the time wasted on it save for it having something to do with due process or people's rights or something. It like Hammurabi's Code are outdated and updated to be other things that run the world today. Knowing someone was smart enough to figure out they have fucked up and been doing it wrong for years, doesn't impress me as people still do that today.

If that is the founder of things such as due process/etc, then why doesn't everyone always reference it in daily life?

How many people play D&D today, and do not know who Gary Gygax is?

How many people today use computers and don't know who Charles Babbage is, or what The "cotton gin" guy (Eli Whitney) had to do with computers?

People don't know Babbage or Whitney in regards to computers, because it doesn't matter. But everyone using a computer should know what part they played right? Just like people need to know what the Magna Carta was for since it, like computers, play a very important role in their day to day lives, even if they don't connect with the actual things those people created.

You cannot have your cake and eat it too. People don't know Babbage or Whitney in regards to computers, and that is fine. But likewise they need not know about the Magna Carta either since it is outmoded.

@Heath Robinson:

Sorry, don't like comics, they are pretty stupid, along with sports and sports cards.

I would have rather read Verne, than Shakespeare. Asimov that Homer, Poe....well I like Poe.

I would have preferred cooking classes and sewing classes to PE and history, since I can get use out of them on a daily basis for the rest of my life. Cooking to eat healthy and not need to overexercise like is done in schools (running laps doe 55 minutes my ass!). I wanted to know HOW and with WHAT Betsy Ross made the first flag with. I prefer sciences and technology, so the things you think are way off base. Sorry, I am a true nerd, not one of those retarded jocks or wanna-be jocks. I'd take a muon over Napoleon any day of the week.

So bottom line, Shaz is a total retard of epic proportion who is completely incapable of accepting that one != all.

One doctor was an ass, (probably not, probably made up) therefore, all doctors are assholes.

Some history classes tell you some information that is not helpful, amidst things that are. Therefore, all history information is useless.

shadzar wrote:It has nothing to do with whether people can read or not to cut out history. The problem is the focus is missing in education. How does someone who cannot read even pass the grades, let alone learn history?

Adult literacy rate in the US: 99%

In the year 2007, there were 100,308 public high schools.

That means that, probably about 50,000 schools had a 100% literacy rate of their attendees, including drop outs and shit, probably much more, since lack of literacy is probably more common in people who don't go to school, or localized in specific schools.

Wow. It's almost like they already do fucking teach people how to read, and it's not a damn problem.

99% of all high schools can afford to focus on teaching things besides reading, because they already teach reading just fucking fine.

Seriously 1 != all.

shadzar wrote: I had to take history EVERY year out of primary school. I don't give a damn about the war of 1812, or civil war except to know the right people won during the civil war. Nothing else really matters about it. Like any war you had the dumb people, and the right people. History is written by the victor anyway. I don't need to know nor care everywhere that Sherman went, or about the Alamo. It is in the past. Nothing we can do to change it, so like any other story that is uninteresting to people, just get to the end of it for the next one.

Scorched Earth came out of history...la-de-da. So let us all nuke each other and we all win because we scorch all the Earth right?

I wish there was a crying smilie. Not the Highway Indian Tear smilie, but the exaggerated anime waterfall tearducts smilie.

I don't expect you to know a lot about the War of 1812 except:
A) The United States tried to, for the second time, invade Canada and got it's fucking ass kicked. There's a reason why Canada and the United States has the longest demilitarized border and that's because Canadians are fucking hardcore.
B) This was the war where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner during the defense of Baltimore.
C) The White House got motherfucking burned and British soldiers did a little dance, since they didn't get much of a chance to during Philadelphia.
D) Tecumseh attempted to create a league of Indian Nations and came very damn close to doing so. Once he was able to they were able to start kicking some serious ass except for the fact that Proctor and his dumbass brother started fucking things up.
E) PIRATES. You like Pirates, don't you? Well, we call them privateers, but the thought is the same. Anyway, the War of 1812 is the war that really started to establish the United States as a naval power, since they were able to frequently take on the British Navy and win, which was a positively shocking feat at the time.

And not caring about the Civil War... God help me, the smug ignorance just burns. I don't even know where to start with the important takeaways. Someone educate this guy, Lago's guts are burning.

Shadzar,
So, because you have no academic ambition and you were taught badly, you want the entirety of your nation to lose all possibility of learning a vital skill that, evidence suggests, is key to political discourse. Americans need intellectual honesty, they need to learn to compare sources and account for bias, and they need to learn that their country is no better or worse than any other. You, Shadzar, are part of the problem when you suggest that the school system shouldn't be teaching them how to do these things.

OK retard, which part of science nerd did you not understand? Not having academic ambition? Do you speaka da Engrish?

Apparently you do not, nor does anyone else. I have said over and over that teaching everything as they do now compulsory to make well-rounded people, means you end up teaching things that have no focus, and later bitch because the people being taught have little interest in the little info they are given about anything.

I know people that dropped out at 16 and got a GED, then a 2 year degree, and were working making much more than minimum wage when everyone else was just getting out of high school.

The fact that that can be done should tell you the current system doesn't work. When dropping out of the free system is better than staying in it, something is fucking wrong! It means the system does NOT work, and DOES waste time, effort, and money in the system.

One person who went for a 4 year degree afterwards even started working with one guy, who dropped out to get a 2 year degree, as his boss! 2 year degree the bos os someone with 4 year degree because he already had 4 years of experience in the job.

You want to tell me something isn't wrong with the current system since that CAN happen?

The current system is so fucked up because all the people that think it works perfectly fine. Ad to that Obama trying to tell peple to stay in school, when they know they can make more by dropping out for college sooner in a high entry vocation. Being many of them things that will always have a market for... like Joe the Plumber.

shadzar wrote: You want to tell me something isn't wrong with the current system since that CAN happen?

Yeah, apparently the system is failing to teach people not to substitute anecdotes for reality.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

shadzar wrote: You want to tell me something isn't wrong with the current system since that CAN happen?

Yeah, apparently the system is failing to teach people not to substitute anecdotes for reality.

Put my premise into the original idea behind this thread. The drop-out would be better socially as well as economically equipped sooner than the one finishing high school.

And if you think for a minute, that people don't drop out to go ahead for a 2 year degree after getting a GED, then you better ask around.

The same two people going for a job will be valued and evaluated based on their educations. One has a degree, and the other only a high school diploma.

Which do you think would get the job? Having said job, which do you think could afford health care? Which would you think would have a fuller and more stable life?

The one with the higher education, no matter how they got there. The ages wouldn't even be considered when the degree for the drop-out was discovered to be true.

So ask anyone if they have seen that happen at all.

shadzar, you're being monumentally stupid.

You're shaving all of the variables that go into getting a job down to education. When of course anyone can tell you that there are other factors that tell us who should get a good job such as nepotism, training (important if you want to be an auto mechanic or a carpenter), and just good ol' dumb luck.

You're not even telling us what the fucking job is, which is misleading to the point of deceitful. I would not be surprised at all if a waiter at a nice restaurant with a GED gets more money than some guy with a college degree earning minimum wage.



Just to show you how absurd your complaint is, let me tell you a little story. Right now, all I have is a high school diploma. My old job for the Navy was being a reactor operator. Since separating, I have gotten a lot of job offers from power plants to serve as an operator because of said experience. I can expect preferential treatment over people with degrees in electrical and nuclear engineering even though I got jack squat. Of course, I can expect even BETTER treatment if I actually had one of those degrees but I can get further with just the training than I would with just the education.

Is it a failure of the system that I would earn more money and get a better job than those dopes who went to college? Fuck no.

All that means is that your story isn't the least bit unusual, especially when you don't offer any extra information for why that happened. Now this wouldn't get my goat so much if you weren't parading your weaksauce example as some ultimate revelation.

You know what. They teach automotive repair in high school. I learned that after I graduated, but was never offered it as a course. It was only for "certain types" of students. They also taught printing and stuff for the school newspaper, which Also goes for those types of students, but never offered to me, where people made the school newspaper, and I always thought it was done by a local printer.

Carpentry was also taught only to certain types of students, and not offered to everyone.

THAT is the problem.

It was so long ago I don't recall. It was in an office, not a crap job. I don't recall what his degree was but it was business related. I tried searching something old with info on it but couldn't find anything. Sure anyone could work for two years at a diner and be the boss of the new guy, but the degrees were what got the jobs. I don't put much into remembering people from school either so even their names escape me.

Yes nepotism blows the original thread premise out of the water because it doesn't take into account education either. But I was trying to look at education related reasons as the thread asked. The fact is still that the education level or perceived education level means to better reactions from people.

Take the 9-11 rescuer who cannot get health care help after helping survivors. She doesn't have a high education and was praised at first, but now fuck her because she isn't needed because she is chronically ill from rescuing people at ground zero.

So again the caste system at work. Depending on where you go it will be based on 2 things. Education, and income/wealth. If you have the money you don't need the education, and if you have the education you can get the money.

Otherwise you are screwed for just about everything. Even health care. Hospitals prefer insurance over cash, and people with insurance get better treatment.

Same kind of caste system just applied in another way, but all boils down to the same thing. Perception of who you are based on some quantitative view of education or wealth.

Look at Heff. He lived a long time now because of the money, and things he learned with it.

So on the health front a higher education meaning more money is a no brainer. More money means less stress, means better health and health care. Also the less stress means less need for crime. Unlike Madoff and Ken Lewis (BoA CEO), people with enough money to live don't need to steal or commit crimes to get money.

So even if you focus only on the education you will still have to follow the money and come right back to it.

The better education you are ALLOWED to get, then the more money, and more easily you can adapt to and fit in to society. VAs with little education also get the shaft. Respect for other people is only earned through those two things that you never had any control over. Education and wealth.

Some get lucky, and many just get fucked.

shadzar wrote:OK retard, which part of science nerd did you not understand?

If you really were a science nerd, you'd be smart enough to realize why history is important. You know what being really good at one thing and having no knowledge about anything else makes you? A retard. Seriously, Rain Man might know number, but in the end it's a struggle for him to not shit his pants on a daily basis. Being really good at one thing with nothing else to go by makes you retarded, no matter how good at that one thing you are. Even a human with an int of 3 can have max ranks in one skill.

shadzar wrote: Yes nepotism blows the original thread premise out of the water because it doesn't take into account education either. But I was trying to look at education related reasons as the thread asked. The fact is still that the education level or perceived education level means to better reactions from people.

Your trite little examples didn't take into account anything but education. You know what's more idiotic than whining about an analysis not taking a variable into account? Presenting a counter-analysis that takes NO variables into account except for the one you whined about.

Until you do give us something less uselessly slanted I'm just going to kind of look at you with this face: and ignore you.

shadzar wrote: You know what. They teach automotive repair in high school. I learned that after I graduated, but was never offered it as a course. It was only for "certain types" of students. They also taught printing and stuff for the school newspaper, which Also goes for those types of students, but never offered to me, where people made the school newspaper, and I always thought it was done by a local printer.

Second of all, it's not the job of the fucking school to teach specific job skills. Yes, it is sad that not everyone can take what they want, but that's more like someone not being able to take Soccer or Marching Band than the school somehow fucking up the next generation of future carpenters.

shadzar wrote:OK retard, which part of science nerd did you not understand? Not having academic ambition? Do you speaka da Engrish?

Apparently you do not, nor does anyone else. I have said over and over that teaching everything as they do now compulsory to make well-rounded people, means you end up teaching things that have no focus, and later bitch because the people being taught have little interest in the little info they are given about anything.

I know people that dropped out at 16 and got a GED, then a 2 year degree, and were working making much more than minimum wage when everyone else was just getting out of high school.

The fact that that can be done should tell you the current system doesn't work. When dropping out of the free system is better than staying in it, something is fucking wrong! It means the system does NOT work, and DOES waste time, effort, and money in the system.

One person who went for a 4 year degree afterwards even started working with one guy, who dropped out to get a 2 year degree, as his boss! 2 year degree the bos os someone with 4 year degree because he already had 4 years of experience in the job.

You want to tell me something isn't wrong with the current system since that CAN happen?

The current system is so fucked up because all the people that think it works perfectly fine. Ad to that Obama trying to tell peple to stay in school, when they know they can make more by dropping out for college sooner in a high entry vocation. Being many of them things that will always have a market for... like Joe the Plumber.

It's very difficult to take you seriously when you say you have academic ambition at the same time as you rail against a whole academic discipline, saying that you'd rather have learnt how to make authentic revolutionary-era US flags. That is outrageous, and I am quite outraged indeed, that you would deny millions the oppurtunity to learn the skills that History has to teach.

You present an anecdote, but an anecdote is a single point cherry picked from the data and is insufficient evidence to prove a trend. You claim to be interested in Science, but you don't even realise that the plural of Anecdote is not Data (and neither is the singular).

You have no right to declare the failure of the system, either. Your standard is one of many, and has no priveleged position just because it's yours. The success of the education system is determined by the entire population, and there are a massive set of conflicting standards. If the education system were not successful in at least some peoples' opinions, why would the voluntary parts of it have students at all?

http://www.educator.com/news/2009/2009- ... -a-decade/

25 years and with the Bush policy I mentioned early, there has been no change in the levels of education. Seems the system doesn't work if there is no improvement in nearly 3 decades with all the new technology that has appeared to help increase teaching capability, and empower teachers to cover more and increase the amount of time given to each student thanks to the technology speeding up the process of teaching to the masses.

So basically people are as smart as they were 25 years ago, which means they are unable to use the newest technologies of today's world.

Search for yourself if you don't like the SAT even though colleges do. Find the info on the decline of education that even Obama stressed needed something done about.

Plain and simply put, the US is falling behind other nations.

So, according to Shadzar, we are slipping behind on education because we teach too much history. And to increase the level of education, we should only teach kids the bare minimum of what they need to learn a trade. Yeah, that makes sense.

:sigh:

Read again. I said in interest of making education better, they should focus more on the trade based things to equate to getting a 2 year degree out of high school with the free system provided for all, rather than having to try to make the existing system form free universities and colleges.

But again after so long nobody reads the first page.

Again just so many people here proves the current system doesn't work.

Shadzar, that person who made that little histrionic bullshit article is the one who needs to go back to school.

You wanna know why SAT scores have been falling? For two reasons:

1) A greater percentage of minorities have been taking the SAT/ACT; historically this has been people already going on the college-bound tract, i.e. the best students. So you have people less the cream of the crop taking the damn tests. So even when their scores rise the greater participation of less-advantaged youths drive the overall score down. But when you actually look at the subgroups you can see scores rising.

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/minoritytrends/ind_3_14.asp
http://www.collegeboard.com/press/releases/206201.html

2) We are currently in a recession. Recession years are correlated with a drop in SAT scores.

Look on the damn chart for these recession years. You'll see that scores drop during these years and when the recession is over the scores rise again. Since we're in an especially severe recession this isn't surprising.

1973-75, 1980-83, 1990-92, 2001-2002, 2007-present.

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/p ... able-2.pdf
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/ ... ly-income/



So in conclusion, shut the fuck up about falling SAT scores. This represents a success for minority outreach and a failure of the fucking economy.

Read again. I said in interest of making education better, they should focus more on the trade based things

First of all, when you elaborated on what focusing meant you said stupid things like not focusing on history, because who needs that?

You:

Made a vague generality that sounded good (focus on important stuff)
When you volunteered details, you said something stupid and people called you on it.
So now completely ignoring what people are criticizing you for you fall back onto the vague generality and then complain people are criticizing that while having amnesia about what attracted peoples' venom.

Or in other words: I say support healthy children. They should be force-fed a bag of Cheetos a day. Then when people call me a moron I start whining about people picking on me because all I said was that I supported healthy children.

to equate to getting a 2 year degree out of high school with the free system provided for all, rather than having to try to make the existing system form free universities and colleges.

See, you're getting back into generality territory again.

I agree that we should have trade schools but that's not what people were yelling at you for. They were yelling at you for your boneheaded statements on curricula.

shadzar wrote:OK retard, which part of science nerd did you not understand? Not having academic ambition? Do you speaka da Engrish?...

...they should focus more on the trade based things to equate to getting a 2 year degree out of high school with the free system provided for all, rather than having to try to make the existing system form free universities and colleges.

You DO have no academic ambition. You ARE ignorant.

Your suggestion is stupid AND is the biggest PROBLEM with modern education.

You want to destroy the concept of a broad eduction.

That is incredibly fucking mind numbingly stupendously alarmingly utterly STUPID

1) A public that isn't broadly educated is, well, you.

"Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.", have you heard that one (I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't after reading your other comments).

We largely educate our public for civic purposes. The public creates and controls our society. If they are as stupid as you they vote for George Bush.

That is bad. We educate people broadly so they can have knowledge about history, war, the economy, science and all the issues that DO need to know to vote wisely.

2) Renaissance Man is better than You
There is this old fashioned concept of being the best that you can be. And the best that you can be is NOT a narrow specialist ignorant outside of his incredibly narrow field. It is being a man of broad knowledge.

Our educational institutions were founded on this sort of concept, especially at a tertiary level. And they thrived on it.

The very concept that a person can get a university level education and walk away utterly ignorant of basic history is abhorrent even on a personal level.

There is a richness in knowledge, a personal wealth and value. NO knowledge, no FIELD of knowledge fails to enrich a person by learning it.

You are advocating a poverty of the mind and soul that is disgusting and abhorrent in its extremity.

3) Your Degree is a Degree in flipping Big Macs
Strictly vocational training is fundamentally flawed as a career building mechanism from all perspectives except one (the worst one of course).

Who is it who cheers when everyone in society chooses and learns a SINGLE job at a young age?

Why... the bad employers do.

Because when you learn Big Mac flipping and Betty learns Cheese Burger Sorting and never the two shall meet then they can ransom you individually to their own terms.

You MUST work flipping big macs. You cannot go and do anything else, you do not have the training. To further, even HAVE your career you must bow to employer pressure.

And hell. The Big Mac Flipping University is still in business. Don't think they don't have a million replacements for you who ALSO cannot work outside of the big mac flipping field.

A broad education brings broad career opportunities. When the big map flipping employers are being dicks you can go and work making kebabs, or with a REAL broad education just go and be a scientist or a librarian or something.

AND you can rest assured that the education system is churning out similar broadly qualified individuals. Who will NOT take those shit burger flipping jobs until ALL the other jobs are taken or until the employer shapes up and acts in a socially responsible manner.

A large percentage of graduates work outside their "specialist fields". Broad educations help them.

Narrow educations are bad for them. And for society.

Falling or rising scores represents statistics failures by the College Board. Remember, SATs don't stay the same year to year, they are supposed to demonstrate differences between people in the same class. So they are ideally set to be at the point where they can be differential to level of achievement that people in that class actually attain. An SAT of 1200 today is much more impressive than an SAT of 1200 from ten, twenty, or whatever years ago. On the whole, the test gets harder every year because achievement increases every year.

When test scores go down, that usually simply correlates to the College Board over estimating the rate at which the knowledge of an average college bound high school graduate would increase. Which in times of economic and scholastic stagnation, is understandable.

-Username17

Corroborating Frank's explanation:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT

1994 changes
1994 changes

In 1994 the verbal section received a dramatic change in focus. Among these changes were the removal of antonym questions, and an increased focus on passage reading. The mathematics section also saw a dramatic change in 1994, thanks in part to pressure from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. For the first time since 1935, the SAT asked some non-multiple choice questions, instead requiring students to supply the answers. 1994 also saw the introduction of calculators into the mathematics section for the first time in the test's history. The mathematics section introduced concepts of probability, slope, elementary statistics, counting problems, median and mode.[18]

The average score on the 1994 modification of the SAT I was usually around 1000 (500 on the verbal, 500 on the math). The most selective schools in the United States (for example, those in the Ivy League) typically had SAT averages exceeding 1400 on the old test.

2005 changes

In 2005, the test was changed again, largely in response to criticism by the University of California system.[21] Because of issues concerning ambiguous questions, especially analogies, certain types of questions were eliminated (the analogies from the verbal and quantitative comparisons from the Math section). The test was made marginally harder, as a corrective to the rising number of perfect scores. A new writing section, with an essay, based on the former SAT II Writing Subject Test, was added, in part to increase the chances of closing the opening gap between the highest and midrange scores. Other factors included the desire to test the writing ability of each student in a personal manner; hence the essay. The New SAT (known as the SAT Reasoning Test) was first offered on March 12, 2005, after the last administration of the "old" SAT in January 2005. The Mathematics section was expanded to cover three years of high school mathematics. The Verbal section's name was changed to the Critical Reading section.

Thanks, Frank, I was wondering about the 1994 and 2006 aberrations.