OT: What are our schools learning

[HeyBub]

Actually, it's both. Here's an example. There's not enough light falling on the surface of the earth to have ANY possibility of running this country off of sunbeams. Those who mastered the multiplication tables in the third-grade can easily determine this to be true; those who did not master these fundamentals now run the government.

After my first year of law school, I was ranked 18th of 180 freshmen. I went to my advisor and asked how this could be - I skipped a third of the classes, didn't open a book until the week before finals, and so on, while my classmates lived in the library and dreamed in Latin.

"What's your undergraduate background," he asked.

"Uh, I have a Master's in math," I replied.

"Oh, then, you won't have any trouble in law school. You see, the purpose of law school is not to teach law - that changes every day! The purpose of law school is to train you to think like a lawyer! Since you already know how to think logically, deductively, objectively, you won't have any trouble."

"In general, we find that the students who come to us from math, the hard sciences, and engineering make the best law students. Those who majored in the soft sciences and business become the average law students. Those who studied the fine arts, education, and the liberal arts like English or History, well, they never really make it."

Bottom line: It's the memorization of the multiplication tables that led to mastering math which in turn guaranteed success in higher endeavors. You can't build a worthwhile structure on a feel-good foundation.

Which argues well for the one-room schoolhouse. The older kids teach the younger ones and the lesson is further imprinted.

[HeyBub]

Uh, yeah. When I started working the DJIA was about 600. Today, it's over

10,000 (although not as high as it was in the Bush years when I retired).

[Bill]

I've liked the following quotation ever since I first read it years ago. I share it with my students, up to the word "not", when appropriate.

Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895): Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

Bill

[Steve]

Bullshit.

Also bullshit.

My wife's students' parents.

There is NO job more real or more important than teacher. This applies more widely than just in the classroom. Unconcered, incompetent, and just plain uninformed parents teach their children the same inverted "values."

This also explains the success of "reality" TV, the modern equivelent of "paying sixpence at the local madhouse to watch the lunatics howl at the walls.".

[Ed Pawlowski]

We're at 5.7% while Japan is 3.6%. Check out the scholastic standings.

gets the better band for the buck?

[Steve]

And that's EXACTLY the point -- if we'd privitized SS accounts in the stock market during the Bush years, we'd have more retirees today eating dog food, and it wouldn't be Alpo.

There was out-and-out fraud in the markets following financial deregulation as poster-boy Bernie Madoff and the now-unrolling foreclosure crisis amply demonstrate. Those buying housing beyond their means were complicit, however those greedsters who not only enticed them but filed phony paperwork enabling the loans did true evil. They and their kind were lickin' their chops at the prospect of funneling more dollars into derivitives and other such "solid" investments.

But you pays your money and takes your choice, since, ultimately, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

I figure I'll be working -- or trying to find work -- until the day I go toes up.

[Ed Pawlowski]

"Steve" wrote

What is sad is that those same attributes apply to many teachers too. Starting with my Civics teacher (in 1963) that taught us how to work in the summer at a resort and collect unemployment the rest of the year. The best way to dodge the draft was to go to school to become a teacher. Those draft dodgers became teachers and are now the senior administrative staff.

We have a bad combination of poor parents, students and teachers. No one wants to take responsibility for anything.

Having raised a couple of kids and grandkids, I've had to correct the papers from too many teachers over the years. There are some great ones, but there are too many poor ones in the batch.

[Robatoy]

[Puckdropper]

"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in news:09GdndvE77NJ4SfRnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

*snip*

Parents are essential to the process, and they have to know when to interfere and when to back off. As people get older, they tend to forget just what school is like (and how much of a drag it usually is). My parents let us take care of our business, and only got involved when they needed to.

Most students don't want to be at school anyway. They're herded like sheep into classrooms to be bored for 45 minutes at a time. The knowledge offered is usually very old and usually very repeated, and there's never any revelation in its disclosure. The hunger for knowledge is there, but it's never fed. I suspect many students are burned out of boring learning by the time they reach Sophmore year.

Teachers often forget how to be students by the time they're teachers. I've never been a teacher, but I've been a student. I can tell you this: We don't want to be bored with the same old drivel you've taught for the past 15 years. Sure, your lesson plan is done, and your tests are all written*, but when was the last time you learned something related to your field?

"The Office" should have much less power than it does at many schools. The teachers should have final authority (with veto power from the principal, of course) as to what students can do. When a kid finally does get sent to the office, he should be in explaining what happened to the principal and not sitting in a chair waiting for the "hour" to end.

• The last major update was in 1987, when the teacher switched from hand written to typed tests. "Washignton" has been misspelled ever since.

*snip*

Puckdropper

[J. Clarke]

The Marines get that through one's head in 13 weeks. The schools have our kids for 12 years.

On the other hand, some things have to be taught by drill and practice. Reading, writing, and basic arithmetic are fundamental tools--if you can't do those then your ability to discover solutions is severely handicapped.

Any course in which the majority of class time is spent with the teacher standing up at the front of the room regurgitating crap that he or she read out of a book should be automatically suspect--the kids can read the book a lot faster than the teacher can recite it.

[Larry Jaques]

Hey, the USA is right there next to Elbonia!

Singapore's #1. I guess caning does help after all.

BTW, how much do "real online degrees" cost?

-- Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly. -- Plutarch

[krw]

A lot. State schools are teaching classes online, too. The tuition is the same as those with a real classroom.

[Bill]

Some of the college kids tell me it will be a lot faster if I just "show them how to do it". I tell them at the beginning of the course that one of my main goals is to make myself obsolete--so that don't need me around when they get stuck.

There have been various academic swings over the years, but I think it's fair to say that most educators are taking their mission seriously. I think failure is more related to social issues than on teachers not trying to teach.

Bill

[Larry Blanchard]

Hey! We agree on something!

[Larry Blanchard]

That's the least of the problems. *All* of our economy is a Ponzi scheme depending on an ever growing population. Consider what a static population would do to the demand for housing, transportation, and durable goods.

[J. Clarke]

Oh, you're one of those. If you don't see your job as showing the students how to do whatever the students are supposed to end up knowing how to do then why is anybody paying you to teach?

It's more related to the teachers not knowing the subject.

[J. Clarke]

That's been true throughout history. The trouble is that success breeds population decline--Japan's running into that now, the US would be fairly soon if not for heavy immigration.

[Bill]

You're jumping to conclusions. I pointed the student to the resources they needed to solve the problem (just 2 days ago). And the student's response was, and I quote, "It would be faster if you just showed me". Speed is not my main goal. What happens when the student has a more difficult problem and really Needs To Know how to read? It's better that the (college) student learn that he or she can solve problems on his or her own, and to build up a little confidence and skill by practicing doing so.

I'm not sure we have much of that occurring at the college level. Unfortunately, some students arrive so unprepared that their fate is practically sealed before they get there. Those are the ones that will make you sad.

Bill

[Bill]

And I might add, *especially* for a computer science major taking a 3rd or 4th class in the discipline!

Bill

[J. Clarke]

Who said anything about "the college level"? I've never seen any assertion anywhere that US colleges are substandard. it's the K-12 schools that are crap.