## Education Importance

Post by Jay Feely » Wed Mar 09, 2016 7:24 pm

Are grades important? Or, are we pushing kids too hard? Like in Asia where getting B's is seen as a weakness. In America, I'm not sure what it's like.
You will have to subdue me to restrain me. I been a bad boy so make sure you torture me too with anything but pain.

### Re: Education Importance

Post by SolidSnickerdoodle » Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:38 pm

I think everybody here would agree that it is important for children, as well as the general public, to be educated. It took me until I was in my freshman year of high school to realize that while I may not enjoy all the aspects of school, it is ultimately for my own benefit and well-being to attend (I was going through some messed up stuff back then.)
As far as the importance of making good grades, there are a number of arguments that could be made for either side. I am currently a senior with little to no real-world work experience, so please feel free to take my thoughts with a grain of salt. What I have come to conclude (a conclusion that may very well change by the way) is that the actual GPA of a student is not as important a it once was.
For a long time I was led to believe that so long as I maintained an impressive GPA, then all the doors to my future would be opened (this is what they were telling us in middle school when we were first introduced to the concept of GPA's). Now, whatever your stance on education is I think its safe to say that this is simply not the case anymore.
The job market has become saturated and having good grades just isn't enough to stand out anymore. We could go into a conversation about college and its merits, but I'll just skip that for now.
The general trend among employers seem to be the value of experience over crystallized intelligence (psychology terms, yay!). Employers are looking for workers that have performed well with other jobs, are able to work well in a social setting, coordinate with fellow employees, possess a variety of soft skills, and maybe even showed the initiative to go above and beyond what was required in high school.
We live in a day and age where where hundreds of applications for a job position can be submitted online, only to have about half of those get thrown out by an algorithm scanning your resume for key words. These are the times we live in and these are the sort of things that are required to "be successful". Grades are still important mind you, just not as important as they once were.
Now, to answer your question about pushing students too hard on grades, I don't think we are, at least not in my experience. And I also don't think we should push harder. Just let kids be kids. So long as I B or above I'm generally happy because I don't define myself by my grades, and it seems to be increasingly obvious that the work force doesn't either.
There is only one God, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: Not today.

### Re: Education Importance

Post by drawscore » Thu Mar 10, 2016 5:56 pm

One of the problems we face, is not so much the education of our youth, but the indoctrination. Teachers/professors give assignments, and if the students' presentations do not reflect the political leanings of that teacher/professor, the student gets anything from a C, to an F. That's not right. The grade should be based on the students' work, not the teacher's/professor's politics.
Drawscore

### Re: Education Importance

Post by Jason Toddman » Thu Mar 10, 2016 6:56 pm

> drawscore wrote:One of the problems we face, is not so much the education of our youth, but the indoctrination. Teachers/professors give assignments, and if the students' presentations do not reflect the political leanings of that teacher/professor, the student gets anything from a C, to an F. That's not right. The grade should be based on the students' work, not the teacher's/professor's politics.
> Drawscore

Where do you see that happening? I attended four years of college - albeit in the mid 1970s - and never experienced such a thing even once. And i was as conservative at the time as you are now. I know several other people who are currently or have recently attended college, and have heard them voice different kinds f complaints... but never that one.
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

### Re: Education Importance

Post by SolidSnickerdoodle » Thu Mar 10, 2016 9:23 pm

> drawscore wrote:One of the problems we face, is not so much the education of our youth, but the indoctrination. Teachers/professors give assignments, and if the students' presentations do not reflect the political leanings of that teacher/professor, the student gets anything from a C, to an F. That's not right. The grade should be based on the students' work, not the teacher's/professor's politics.
> Drawscore

Yeah, I'm with Jason. I've never seen this happen before. Now, just because I'm never personally observed it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I sincerely hope that this is not the case, but there are some states that I would imagine are not above this level of twisted logic (cough cough, Texas, cough cough).
In my schooling experience, students were always graded based on the content of their projects and assignments. In fact, in Georgia, teachers run the risk of being fired for weighing in on politics or religion because they are in a position to influence a large group of students.
Now, this hasn't stopped my government teacher, who has some very clear opinions. In the days leading up to Super Tuesday, he decided that he would crank it up a little more than usual, going as far as bashing certain candidates. I understand that when you teach a government class some personal bias is going to be a t play, but here we have a teacher, a source of influence with access to roughly 25 kids in seven classes, asking the class who in their right mind would vote for a socialist like Bernie Sanders. He even singled out a girl in one of his classes (who by the way is the quietest student ever) because she had a Sanders 2016 cup. Mind you, he didn't target her per say, just made the class aware.
He won't come out and tell us who we should vote for, or who he is voting for, but you can ultimately deduce who his prime candidate is by looking at the only one he hasn't publicly bashed yet. It got to a point where I considered telling administration about him, but I ultimately decided against it.
So yes, politics may find its way in the school system. But what you seem to be concerned about is a teacher lowering a student's grade because of a political disconnect. I know that this teacher of mine would never reduce a grade of mine because I don't share his agenda, and neither should any teacher.
There is only one God, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: Not today.

### Re: Education Importance

Post by misterg792000 » Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:08 am

Sorry, I'm calling bullshit on that one. The entire "indoctrination" argument generally comes from people who either didn't go to college to begin with or are looking for any excuse as to why their instructors don't treat them like the biggest genius they ever met.

### Re: Education Importance

Post by Jason Toddman » Fri Mar 11, 2016 12:28 pm

It may happen some places but not in others. That might be why Cruz could say what sounds like stupid stuff to people like me. He was in my state recently claiming that young people were being brainwashed by 'their liberal professors'. He said this in the auditorium of the largest University on my state. Students and faculty alike looked at him like he was a raving idiot, from what I saw of the news footage. But Maine is a laid-back state and, despite having having a tea-party fruitcake for a governor, usually pretty moderate. It's possible that in other places like his home state of Texas his message would resonate with the people more.
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

### Re: Education Importance

Post by drawscore » Sat Mar 12, 2016 3:15 am

I've run across numerous instances of this. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has filed several lawsuits on behalf of conservative students, screwed over by liberal professors. Just type ACLJ into your web browser.
Drawscore

### Re: Education Importance

Post by misterg792000 » Sat Mar 12, 2016 9:32 am

Ah yes, Pat Robertson's parody of the ACLU, who doesn't understand the constitution in general or the first amendment in particular, last seen claiming that the Congressional Muslim Staffer's Association was inviting jihadists into the Capitol. I'm sure they can be trusted to present an objective view of this matter.

### Re: Education Importance

Post by Jason Toddman » Sat Mar 12, 2016 11:01 am

> drawscore wrote:I've run across numerous instances of this. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has filed several lawsuits on behalf of conservative students, screwed over by liberal professors. Just type ACLJ into your web browser.
> Drawscore

Although they claim to oppose the Far Right, i can't see that their views are very much to the left of the Tea Party either. They oppose the GOP stonewalling on selecting a new supreme Court justice and decry the presidential race being the most far right in decades, but at the same time they oppose gay rights (to the point where they actively encouraged Uganda to adopt the death penalty for gays), tried to put prayer in public schools, and equate separation of church and state with being anti-religious. I don't agree with everything the ACLU does either (I consider their defense of free speech rights for the KKK, NAMBLA, Nation of Islam, the Westboro Baptist Church's protesting of the funerals of soldiers, and other hate groups to be going a bit far), but i agree with most of their positions and definitely much prefer it to this group of religious bigots.
Anyway, unless you are attending a religious school, most colleges and universities are by their very nature and purpose necessarily liberal. So what do you expect? Or, as a wise man once said, "Why do think there's such a thing as a Liberal Arts degree but not a Conservative arts degree?"
Well, a wise guy said it anyway... namely, me.
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

### Re: Education Importance

Post by Mask6184 » Wed Mar 16, 2016 7:51 pm

The biggest issue in education (at leas in the US), in my opinion, is the broken K-12 public education system, something that I don't hear about anywhere, especially from a lot of our presidential candidates. They keep focusing on college, college, college instead of the public school systems.
Decades ago, it use to be that if you had a high school diploma, you can get a job and work your way up from the bottom. Now, unless you're very adventurous, the mentality is to get a 4 year bachelors degree to even have a shot at a decent paying job, unless you're a professional athlete, star, etc. Bernie Sanders' solution is to have the government (or taxpayers to be more accurate) cover the costs of a bachelor degree for public colleges. It sounds good in theory, except it's just throwing money at the problem. He even talks about the high school diploma being what you need in the past to get your foot in the door. Well, why not reform the K-12 system so that when students graduate high school, the will have the equivalent skills and knowledge of someone with a bachelors degree today. How to do that is the question, but one suggestion I would offer is that in the higher grades, the curriculum for each student should be specialized for a student's career path. I think one of the candidates, John Kasich, mentioned having the school system reformed to reflect the current job market.
As for the cost of college, especially for those who seek more advanced degrees, contrary to public opinion, I believe that the student loans, especially from both the private and public sector, need to stop. From a business standpoint, the loans are risky to offer because it depends on a student completing college and landing a job to help pay it off, in which there are so few off. Also, it changes the customer (i.e, who is directly paying the college). In this case, it would be the banks and the state, whom have deep enough pockets, the colleges can charge high tuition rates to take advantage of, and the banks and state would worry about the students paying them back. Plus the colleges can directly bill the student for other fees, including textbooks. If you take away the middle man, the college would have to directly get their tuition from the students, whom may not have deep pockets. The college would have to price their tuition in order to not only maximize revenue per student, but to be able to maximize the number of students entering into college. Heck, they can even reduce or eliminate those extra costs of fees, room & board, textbooks, etc.
Regarding the discussion of political indoctrination in school, it's difficult to say because the student's views could either align or disagree with the teacher's views, which could explain why some people may not have experienced it, but I do agree a clear sign of it is if the teacher gives an opinionated assignment, and the teacher gives a student a lower grade because the student's opinion is different from the teacher's opinion, even though the student is able to defend his opinion in the assignment.
Those are my thoughts. Fill free to agree or disagree.

### Re: Education Importance

Post by Jason Toddman » Thu Mar 17, 2016 7:54 am

> Mask6184 wrote:The biggest issue in education (at leas in the US), in my opinion, is the broken K-12 public education system...

Having had some experience with the education system (I trained to be a middle school teacher in college) i couldn't agree more. The system was broken even in the mid 1970s and has only gotten worse ever since.
Unfortunately however the educational system is (unless some other countries) run on the state level rather than by the Federal government, so there is only so much the Federal government could do. This is probably why even Bernie Sanders does not say much about fixing our schools; it would be outside the president's purview unless the laws governing how we run out schools is changed radically. He could increase funding for schools, but we already spend more per student than many other countries with superior student performance. What we need is to fix the infra-structure of the school themselves but last i knew that is something the federal government is unable/not allowed to do.
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...