## Education

Post by Jay Feely » Fri Oct 24, 2014 8:47 pm

Does anyone think American Education need to be reformed? And if so, in what ways does it need to be reformed?
And also, in your state, what needs to be changed about Education?
But to put in my 2 cents into the equation, I'll say that,
More should be taught to prepare students for college in high school.
There should be an elimination of standardized testing since to me, it's pointless to think one must pass them in order to advance into new grades.
I could be wrong, but share what you think.
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### Re: Education

Post by jsherwood » Sat Oct 25, 2014 1:54 am

I don't understand some SAT questions

### Re: Education

Post by drawscore » Sat Oct 25, 2014 9:01 am

Unfortunately, there are schoolteachers, textbook writers, and college professors that want to politicize education, rather than teaching the kids how to think and analyze. When your kid brings home a math book with a problem like "David owns a stinky, polluting coal fired plant, which has five chimneys. Two of them are imploded. Give as a percent, the number of imploded chimneys," then it is time to question the wisdom (and political leanings) of the idiot(s) that approved this math book for 9 year olds.
I also think the US Department of Education should be abolished. (It was created in the 70's under Carter, as a reward for teacher union support.) Why do we need some Washington bureaucracy telling the states how to run their schools? Can't state and county/parish school boards do just as good a job?
Drawscore

### Re: Education

Post by sarobah » Tue Oct 28, 2014 12:17 am

I cannot really comment on American education because any information I get comes through the prism of the news media. But I can give you an Australian prospective.
Jay…
In Australia there has recently been less of an emphasis on preparing students for tertiary education, as the system has for too long been creating an overqualified workforce. There is a growing recognition here that not every student need or wants to go to university.
As for standardized testing, I agree. There is no strong evidence that it is has any educational value whatsoever. Schools should be places where the primary function is to educate, not to assess.
Drawscore…
Here in Australia, calls for educational “reform” invariably come from the right wing of politics and focus of reducing the emphasis on thinking and analytical skills, in favour of rote learning. That sort of politicized nonense will be a disaster if it is ever implemented.
As for the problem you cite. Again, Australia may be different from the US, but here the teaching of mathematics stresses context. “Pure” mathematics problems that don’t have some sort of relevant application to the real world are normally reserved for the highest levels. But if your issue is with the type of problem set... Again from an Australian perspective, we leave that sort of thing up to the teachers. You of all people should agree that having some bureaucratic body whose job it is to vet curriculum content in order to purge inconvenient political positions is not a good thing for education.
As for getting rid of a centralized (federal) education department... Countries like China will fall head over heels in love with you if you decimate the American education system (still recognized as one of the best in the world) in favour of a balkanized system with literally thousands of different codes and sets of standards. Your universities will be crippled because there will be virtually no comparability between states or even between localities. Business will have to look overseas to recruit. Asians and Europeans in particular will be lining up a hundred deep at the visa counter.

### Re: Education

Post by drawscore » Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:41 am

This country got along quite well for more than 200 years without a federal education department. It was not created until 1978 or 79, and is just a useless bureaucracy.
Drawscore

### Re: Education

Post by NemesisPrime » Tue Oct 28, 2014 5:46 am

> drawscore wrote:This country got along quite well for more than 200 years without a federal education department. It was not created until 1978 or 79, and is just a useless bureaucracy.
> Drawscore

Oh so stagnant/falling wages are okay with you then. Nevermind the fact that we're still teaching kids in a way where they can't absorb the information well and teaching them to be good workers when that caste is dying out due to technology becoming more and more complex thus leaving our kids woefully unprepared for the future and preparing them for jobs that won't exist anymore! Couple that with a focus on standardized testing and teaching to the test and you have a recipe for disaster.
The US education system needs a massive overhaul not just so we can stay relevant but also preserve our democracy for it is in an educated populace that democracy works.
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### Re: Education

Post by Chloé The Librarian Extraordinaire » Tue Oct 28, 2014 7:30 am

Here in France ministry of Education should be reformed by fire !
As times goes by students are taughts how to be good consumers, good non thinking citizens.
The socialists are destroying National Education.
History is rewritten and some parts purely vanish to coincide with politically correct views
Soon, this is what programs will look like :
Fortunately some Teachers (and fearless Librarians ) are resisting !

### Re: Education

Post by drawscore » Tue Oct 28, 2014 4:19 pm

> NemesisPrime wrote:

> > drawscore wrote:This country got along quite well for more than 200 years without a federal education department. It was not created until 1978 or 79, and is just a useless bureaucracy.
> > Drawscore

> Oh so stagnant/falling wages are okay with you then. Nevermind the fact that we're still teaching kids in a way where they can't absorb the information well and teaching them to be good workers when that caste is dying out due to technology becoming more and more complex thus leaving our kids woefully unprepared for the future and preparing them for jobs that won't exist anymore! Couple that with a focus on standardized testing and teaching to the test and you have a recipe for disaster.
> The US education system needs a massive overhaul not just so we can stay relevant but also preserve our democracy for it is in an educated populace that democracy works.

Three words: Common Core math.
Drawscore

### Re: Education

Post by xtc » Tue Oct 28, 2014 4:39 pm

An anecdote:
The Boy (he lives in Ameica) was servicing some computers in a school and witnessed a teacher assuring her class that, "No, the Russians didn't fight on the Allied side in the Second World war". Being a good Socialist (in his own opinion), he put her right and she asked him not to report it to the Principal. Although not proppogating lies, the current British Tory government is trying to institute a history syllabus that reverts to "Our Island Story" and puts an emphasis on leaning dates and sequences. Just like that American teacher, they are afraid of students learning the causes of historical events.
Don't get me started on maths. As a retired maths teacher, we used to have to try to get our students to practice "using and understanding" maths..Gone.
As far as SAT's (Standard Attainment Tests) are concerned:
1) You don't fatten a pig by weighing it.
2) They are merely ways of beating the serfs (teachers) without taking improvement into consideration.
3) Teaching to such tests is inevitable and therefore wastes much proper learning time.
Anyone who is really interested should probably try to track down some of the work of Afzal Ahmad, a man who put his principles into practice.
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### Re: Education

Post by TUfriend » Tue Oct 28, 2014 5:06 pm

In my high school(USA), there was a huge divide. Either you were in all/mostly honors classes and you learned and did work, or you were in non-honors classes and literally had 8 study halls a day. The few students who were in between often got stuck in non-honors classes and didn't learn anything. I had one non-honors class, history, where I learned about the American revolution, the civil war, the great depression and the world wars. I know nothing about more recent events such as the Vietnam War or Korea. Most of this was because the teacher didn't care, but that could have been a result of most of the class not caring either. From what I understand based on what my friends told me, the majority of non-honors classes were this way in my school.
On the other side of the coin, the honors teachers who actually cared taught us well. I got 2300 on the SATs and perfect scores on all of my SATIIs(Math 2, Physics, Bio). I, like most of my friends in honors classes, was able to get accepted into the top school for my degree program. Now that I'm in college, I'm finding that my classes are easy because high school prepared me well.
My school district is one of the top 10 in the state I'm from.
Just my experience in the American Education system.
Edit: In regards to Math:
I have a professor this year who teaches discrete math as a memorization course. She gives us a proof or a problem in class, we go to our dorms to "memorize" what she taught us and then our exams are exactly what we did in class. If I didn't already know this information, I would not have any understanding of what we are "learning." I much prefer my Calculus teacher from last year's method. He would introduce us to a topic, show us several ways to do it and then answer any questions about anything that was relevant and let us explore whatever it was on our own. He forced us to be curious about Calculus so we all enjoyed it a lot, even though his class was extremely difficult.
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### Re: Education

Post by Kyle » Tue Oct 28, 2014 6:57 pm

American education focuses largely on two things: passing standardized tests (or doing well on the ACT/SAT) and getting kids to college. It's practically a badge of honor for schools to have high standardized test scores and a high college attendance rate. While these are both good things on the surface, standardized tests do little to help students in the long run and college simply is not for everyone.
Although she was talking about a different country, to a certain degree I can see what Chloe was saying about French education in the United States. Students aren't really taught how to think, they're taught what to think. Kids thinking too far outside the box are almost seen as a threat sometimes because they can cause trouble for the teachers and administrators.
And as someone with a history degree, I need to say something about the teaching of that subject in particular. It is amazing now that I've gone through college just how many outright untrue things are taught in history classes in grade school. Some of them are probably known to a few of you: the first Thanksgiving, much of George Washington's life, Christopher Columbus was the first European to reach the Americas, etc. It was understandable when some of these things were truly believed to be true, or even if it's just questionable, but we have so much evidence against so much of it today it's baffling to see why it still gets taught as fact.
As for the education department, little will be solved as long as it can't bridge the gap between school districts that don't have money and those that do.

### Re: Education

Post by Jason Toddman » Wed Nov 19, 2014 1:11 pm

This is like reading about life on an alien planet to me. When I was in school, students had a choice between college prep courses and courses for those who expected to go straight to work on a trade, like drafting and shop. We actually learned something in school; enough so that my 101 level courses in college mainly covered the same information I'd already learned in high school; especially the sciences.
Sure we took tests and such but back then we didn't just do rote memorization. Though I might be prejudiced since I liked to learn more than the average student did (and still do), it seems to me the educational quality of my high school was a lot better than it sounds like schools are these days.
And to think I once considered a career as a middle-school teacher. From the way things sound, I'm glad I didn't now!
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