Skool

[Sever]

The level of intelligents in school is droppin like flys . in science we recycle unnits from gr.s 1-3(im in gr. 7 and am 13) not to mention no experments ahh every year we do matter from gr.3 onward :cry: :cry:
1 kid said this( we were doing the earths core not the georeacter theory which i like anyway the core is supposeeddy made o metal so he said "so thats were we get our metal" and no1 corrected him)
Need i go into discussing about other things :evil: :evil: :cry: :cry:

[TriangleMan]

Does anyone else find this ironic?

[Sever]

bout what??

[Sever]

Oh sorry about the spelling when I post on boards I go all MSN Mesanger lingo sorry bout that. but I am still smarter then most other kids.

[WolfKC]

I had a good science class around 7th grade. I made a flashing light circuit using 2 capacitors, 2 resistors and 2 neon bulbs. :) I had a great high school physics teacher. Of course that was about 25 years ago :(
Dont want to go into politics to much here but it's a problem of money not going to the right places and lack of discipline. You put too many kids in a classroom and they dont separate out the disruptive ones. Plus the good teachers need to pay their bills so they got a better paying and safer job managing a McDonald’s,
Maybe if more people were taught to be skeptical and scientific, stuff like Zeta wouldn't take so many people in

[TriangleMan]

Oh sorry about the spelling when I post on boards I go all MSN Mesanger lingo sorry bout that. but I am still smarter then most other kids.

Oh, got it. Forget about my previous post then.

[Sever]

U were so lucky to have such a good class.

[nexus]

My school has pretty decent Science classes, last year I had Honors Chem, this year AP Chem and Physics (So basic it makes me want to cry), next year AP Physics and AP Bio.

Most of the people in the non - AP/Honors science classes are pathetic though, you wouldn't believe how long it takes to explain basic physics concepts to them.

[Wingnut Ninja]

My seventh grade science class was cool. We didn't learn a whole lot of science, but we learned really quickly what you can and can not do with things like bunsen burners and hydrogen gas. One poor guy learned not to be the one holding a match when someone opens a 2-liter bottle full of hydrogen.
Common sense helps.

[Mr. X]

Being from elsewhere ( and a few foreign students on the boards will probably agree with me ) and having seen scores and compared programs for a while between high school and college equivalent in my country ( which you don't know and won't know :P , but is very well rated education wise ), I think I've concluded that the american school system is pathetically weak.

I'm not trying to be mean to anyone... but I think it's bad to a point where it might actually be a wise idea for american students to attend school elsewhere, provided you have the funds and can learn the language...

I've seen americans excuse their school system saying the americans are superior students and in fact are better, and it's just that the rest of the planet learns everything by heart and are not better... that would be one of the biggest lies I have ever heard, and is a terrible excuse that is made up to blame the problem on everyone else rather than examining yourself, because something IS wrong. Denying it is the easiest way to fix a problem.

You'd be amazed to hear how many foreign students are using highly regarded american colleges as backup schools because they were unable to manage the grades to enter in their own countries.

A lot of american brainpower is now imported from everywhere, and it is hurting all the exporting countries very badly... These people could be very useful in their countries, but the promised money and advantages are just too much for anyone in their right mind to pass up. Everyone can be corrupted no matter your ideals... it's just a matter of finding the right amount. In many cases all these people are educated by a public school system, and all funding used to educate these people is lost when they leave.

I'm sorry to rant on and on and on like this but education is a topic that touches me very deeply, and I know I am busting my a** a lot more than what I am seeing people do elsewhere...

In the end my college ( which has a football team that loses 50-nothing ) will be judged by american standards, and is unfairly penalized for the very amateurish football team and zero athletic-academic balance.

I'm happy to be where I am... I don't think I would trade my place for any other in the U.S. ... Frankly that would be called "downgrading" from my point of view. :lol:

I'm sorry, but I have been toying with the idea of teaching in college when I finish, and this touches me very very deeply. Sorry for the long rant...

[Donnie B.]

In my opinion, American schools (including public schools) still can and do turn out some of the finest minds in the world. Where I think their greatest failing comes is in the disparity between the top students and the great mass of "average" ones.

My impression (and I admit that it's not a very deeply informed one) is that the average American high school graduate lags far behind those in the rest of the developed world, both in knowledge (facts absorbed) and reasoning ability (critical thinking).

Sadly, I believe that grade erosion and overspecialization within majors has led to much the same problem with American college graduates.

What can turn the tide? I don't think the current trend toward standardized testing will work. The only way it's going to change is if the general public values, and therefore demands, greater rigor. Maybe what's called for is another Sputnik-type scare, a wake-up call that shows just how badly we're lagging (on average), even though the cream of the crop is still at the cutting edge.

[Mr. X]

In my opinion, American schools (including public schools) still can and do turn out some of the finest minds in the world. Where I think their greatest failing comes is in the disparity between the top students and the great mass of "average" ones.


In my opinion they do turn up some people... but in proportion nowhere near what the rest of the world has been doing for a while now... I'd say it's going downhill instead of up, which is not right at all...


My impression (and I admit that it's not a very deeply informed one) is that the average American high school graduate lags far behind those in the rest of the developed world, both in knowledge (facts absorbed) and reasoning ability (critical thinking).


Tests seem to demonstrate that so you're not far off.


What can turn the tide? I don't think the current trend toward standardized testing will work. The only way it's going to change is if the general public values, and therefore demands, greater rigor. Maybe what's called for is another Sputnik-type scare, a wake-up call that shows just how badly we're lagging (on average), even though the cream of the crop is still at the cutting edge.

In america I'd say one of the serious problems is sports... Way too much importance in the "collective mind" is given to sports. From what I know there is a large part of "be good at sports or you'll be a sissy and it's bad to be a sissy" thinking going on, and that is definitely affecting the way school is treated in america.

Setting things straight IS going to require a very large quantity of work, and can't be done without effort. It will not happen overnight.

The cream of the crop is still at the cutting edge... however so is now a large quantity of the crop of everywhere else...

[Sever]

Err I live in canada(saskatchewan) actully and its a little different from america
:wink: :wink:

[kilopi]

Being from elsewhere ( and a few foreign students on the boards will probably agree with me ) and having seen scores and compared programs for a while between high school and college equivalent in my country ( which you don't know and won't know :P , but is very well rated education wise ), I think I've concluded that the american school system is pathetically weak.
When I was last on Planet P, the third graders were calculating quantum sums over history and composing symphonies. 'Course, by the time they got to graduate school, they'd caught up to the USA, and were doing drugs.
In the end my college ( which has a football team that loses 50-nothing ) will be judged by american standards, and is unfairly penalized for the very amateurish football team and zero athletic-academic balance.
That sounds like an American-football score. Hmm...

I'm happy to be where I am...
We are too.

Last night, I had a long conversation with my high school freshman daughter about spherical harmonics.

[dgruss23]

Donnie B. wrote: In my opinion, American schools (including public schools) still can and do turn out some of the finest minds in the world. Where I think their greatest failing comes is in the disparity between the top students and the great mass of "average" ones.

This is exactly where the problem is. Most of my students that are in the great mass of average are capable of much higher achievement but are unwilling to work. I can explain the chemistry. I can give them an appropriate set of practice problems. I can make myself available to help them after school. But I can't follow them all home and make them do the homework. I can't make them study for the tests.

I think its hard for parents to follow through too. Everybody is so busy that even parents with the best of intentions get distracted from making sure their children are keeping up with the school work. I've got things going on 4 straight nights this week. If my kids were in high school this would not be a week that I'd find a lot of time to get on them about their school work.

But at some point students have to become intrinsically motivated about learning if they're going to be successful - precisely because parents can't be on them all the time.

[TriangleMan]

Err I live in canada(saskatchewan) actully and its a little different from america
:wink: :wink:

In some ways, such as school funding, Canada does differ a lot from the American model but in terms of academic performance I'm still of the opinion that there is not a lot of difference between the 'average' American and 'average' Canadian student. (Hmmm, next time I get a chance I'll investigate this further and see if I can locate some studies.) Many Canadians will tell you that the Canadian education system is better than the US but I know a few semi-literate Canadian high-school dropouts that might say differently.

I realize that doesn't help you much Sever (that the US system might be worse than where you are now) but any discussion of improving US schools could apply to your school as well.

Now, for the benefit of readers who might not know Canadian geography, Sever lives in an area just north of North Dakota, in a province that has had budget difficulties as of late, so education funding has probably been cut in recent years. It's a shame if science education is turning out as poorly as Sever tells us. Looks like its time for parent groups to put pressure on their local MPs for more funding!

[darkhunter]

In america I'd say one of the serious problems is sports... Way too much importance in the "collective mind" is given to sports. From what I know there is a large part of "be good at sports or you'll be a sissy and it's bad to be a sissy" thinking going on, and that is definitely affecting the way school is treated in america.

Setting things straight IS going to require a very large quantity of work, and can't be done without effort. It will not happen overnight.

The cream of the crop is still at the cutting edge... however so is now a large quantity of the crop of everywhere else...

Agree'd The high school I went to was losing it's accrediation for not teaching all the state required subjects. Classes were without books, but the jocks all had new gear.... When we started a science club it consisted of 5 students and the biology tacher (one of the two science teachers I had that actually KNEW science)

Some of the people most influential in education are the parents. Sadly, they are victims of the same education system that we are trying to improve...a visous circle...

Much more hard work for the rest of us with a love of knowledge....

[nebularain]

IMO, a lot of the problem has to do with the culture at large. What does society hold in higher regards - entertainment or intellect? Glamour and strength or "nerds"? (Why is it that anyone with "above average intelligence" or is science-smart or plain simply knows a lot is considered a nerd? :o

[daver]

IMO, a lot of the problem has to do with the culture at large. What does society hold in higher regards - entertainment or intellect? Glamour and strength or "nerds"? (Why is it that anyone with "above average intelligence" or is science-smart or plain simply knows a lot is considered a nerd? :o

Happy Days. Anyway, i'm not a nerd, i'm a geek.

[TriangleMan]

IMO, a lot of the problem has to do with the culture at large. What does society hold in higher regards - entertainment or intellect? Glamour and strength or "nerds"? (Why is it that anyone with "above average intelligence" or is science-smart or plain simply knows a lot is considered a nerd? :o

Happy Days. Anyway, i'm not a nerd, i'm a geek.

Only a nerd would admit he's a geek. :lol:

I, however, am an uber-nerd 8)

[informant]

Maybe if more people were taught to be skeptical and scientific, stuff like Zeta wouldn't take so many people in

But then neither would most politicians. ;)

Being from elsewhere ( and a few foreign students on the boards will probably agree with me ) and having seen scores and compared programs for a while between high school and college equivalent in my country ( which you don't know and won't know :P , but is very well rated education wise ), I think I've concluded that the american school system is pathetically weak.

And the worst part is that many non-American opinion-makers are trying to “sell” the ridiculous notion that the American system is the way of the future!

[spaceditto]

The science courses in Canada are worse we don't even have proper experiment equipment to use (darn budget cuts) believe or not teachers actually fight over chalk!!!!! :lol:

[logicboy]

I had a great 7th Grade Science class, we had all types of experiments and got to blow a lot of stuff up :P I didn't have another good Science class until Junior year Physics in High School, I should have taken AP the experiments we cool and interesting but the material covered was very basic and I ended up sleeping through almost everything class and still got a B.

[SollyLama]

I am sad to have to agree that American schools are little better than warehouses for kids while mom and dad work all day to scrape by.
I stopped referring to the education in this country as education at all and settled on INDOCTRINATION.
The proof is in the pudding of what schools are expected to do for kids today. You hear less and less about education standards and much more about ethics, diversity, sexuality, etc being taught (an invariably p**sing someone off due to content). You know, the things that mom and dad used to be responsible for.
Which, IMO, is exactly the problem. School has become, for all intents and purposes, the surrogate parents for an entire generation of latch-key kids.
Parents today expect school to teach their kids right and wrong, reading and writing are secondary. Given this inch, the extremists take a mile- as in a push to teach "ebonics" and creationism in place of real language skills and science.
And so very few parents express outrage over the dumbing down of the schools their tax money goes to support. They just take the easy way of letting the school raise the child they can't be bothered to.
Schools used to be the place where parents would defer education to trained experts for things such as math. Many folks just can't teach very well and teachers are supposed to be trained to do it more effectively. However, many teachers aren't teaching anyting related to what they went to school for.
Things like ethics and religion used to be the domain of concerned parents. Over the past couple decades the focus has shifted to schools being forced to take this role as less parents seem terribly interested in actually raising their own kids.
I have my theory about the liberals ruining education- but that's another rant.
So I'm left with looking to quit work (and remain living in the ghetto because of pay-loss) in a couple years to home-school my daughter. Quite frankly, I do not trust the school system in the US to teach anything to my kid or protect her from violence while she's there.

[Mr. X]

I sure didn't expect everyone to be on the same side like this... But I guess it is painfully obvious to everyone now. You'd probably have to be living under a rock on mars for the last 100 years and be completely oblivious to reality to claim things are "just dandy".

Now that countless lives have been squandered, what it all comes down to is action. What will be done to change things... Correct me if I'm wrong but I do think nothing is still being done at this point, and it still is going downhill...

My question to you is: what will it be like in 10, 20, 30 years. Will the US be stuck with a mass of uneducated underskilled people, who all want to be singers, actors, football and baseball players (What I call the "common" aspirations... everyone wants that but such an infinitesimal portion make it you should as well count on winning the lottery instead)?

And who will replace the people presently at the top? Will it be a huge mass of foreigners, strengthening the US and sending a lot of the providing nations crumbling?

One thing is for sure though...
People sure do like pickles... :lol:

[daver]

More room for rants.

When i went to college, i could work during the summer and part time at school to put myself through. It was a cow college, but it had a decent math and comp sci department (it still has a decent math department).

Most other countries have a two-tier education system, and a test (or battery of tests) that you take to decide which tier you get stuck with for the rest of your academic career. I think this is a bad idea for various reasons.

Anyway, american state colleges used to be cheap, accessible, and would provide a decent education. Nowadays they are no longer cheap, they are probably too accessible (admissions offices seem to be bending over backwards to let anyone who wants to get in, in, regardless of academic ability). I can't speak to the education bit; i expect they can still provide a decent technical education, but i have no evidence for that one way or another.

[Mr. X]

:lol: A cow college... LOL! That must be one of the funniest expressions I've ever heard :lol:

[kilopi]

I sure didn't expect everyone to be on the same side like this... But I guess it is painfully obvious to everyone now. You'd probably have to be living under a rock on mars for the last 100 years and be completely oblivious to reality to claim things are "just dandy".
"There is no hope for the satisfied man."

Will it be a huge mass of foreigners, strengthening the US and sending a lot of the providing nations crumbling?
It is interesting, though, that everyone's expectation is that the US should be at the top, and anything less is viewed as failure of some sort.

[snowcelt]

The reality of empire is that all those that find themselves outside the limes want in. For example: the Germans and Rome. the Chinese and the Mancherians, the Mongols and the Hindus, and the Islamics and the East Romans/Persians. I could name many lesser examples, but, the point is that the grass is always greener inside the empire. Few empires have escaped this. The U.K., maybe, but history has not finished with them yet.

[Matherly]

Hey, I went to a cow college... Texas Agricultural & Mechanical University.

Of course, this "cow college" also commisions more military officers every year than any school that isn't an actual military academy, has one of the largest (if not the largest) undergraduate busniess college, and one of the most respected engeneering colleges in the country (especialy in computer science and petroleum engeneering), and was selected by the Chinese governemnt as one of their top picks for their citizens studying abroad.

:) So thar an't a durn thing wrong wi' cow colleges.

I think the main diffrence between American public schools and universities is that the universitys have a "sink or swim" attitude. You either work and study and learn or you get the boot. That causes even the wildest party animal to put down the keg and crack open the books.

[snowcelt]

Cow college! What the hay does that mean? The U. of Lethbridge, in southern Alberta, has one of the highest ratings for a post sec univ. in Canada. However, this univ. is in the middle of 'feedlot alley'. There are over eight million head of cattle here: and maybe one hundred thousand people. Cow college? BS. Intellect? You bet.

[SollyLama]

What the schools will be like in 10, 20 or 30 years is EXACTLY why I plan on home-schooling.
I see the political correctness trend only getting stronger. This is a country of Me-Monkeys. Everything is about how I feel, What offends ME, what I'M interested in. Look at any text book nowadays and you can find GLARING cases of politically incorrect words and phrases being omitted or changed. There are no more stories with fat kids- they are 'heavy'. The brutish realities of the world we live in is being expunged from learning. Simply, history is being re-written.
Schools spend far more money and energy on sports than books. My old high school came under fire for erecting a $2.5 million weight lifting room that only the school athletes could use. It was (more than a decade ago) and still remains, the largest investment the school has ever made. Meanwhile the city had to FORCE the school to renovate a wing that was crumbling, asbestos and all.
I also don't think schools will get back into the business of teaching the 3 R's. They exist now to indoctrinate the youth into the culture of diversity at all costs. The push a couple years back to bring ebonics into the fold just shows that there are no longer any standards, instead just a push to legitimize ridiculous behavior.
Part of this is the leftist liberals that have no interest in personal accountability or responsibility- heck, if you get a diploma without being able to actually read it, there is some tax dollar funded welfare program for that. No skills? More tax funded programs. Don't even want to bother with that? Then there's welfare. We pay people just to breed and breathe.
THe other part is a lack of parenting. Parents today seem all too at ease with making babies they don't intend to raise. Let the schools do it. Parents have, I'd say since the hippy generation of the 60's, stopped raising their own kids in the pursuit of the materialism that consumes them. They'll all too happy to let the 'Village" do the raising, regardless of whether their kid will someday grow up to be the village idiot. Then they just sue the school for a quick buck. Schools teach garbage like ethics because parents can no longer be bothered to.
Then there is the utter incompetance of many teachers. Again the state fails to provide quality control. We hear horror stories of leftist teachers harrassing children whose parents served in the Gulf. How many have been fired over such an outrage? None that I know of. What that has to do with the 3 R's I can't imagine.
Nope, I see our schools in the future as little more than concentration camps to warehouse millions of kids whose parents care more about their tan then their children. Like I said, indoctrination into political correctness and non-accountability.
I don't see this downward spiral getting any better. The right wants to push religion and psuedo-science, the left wants diversity at all costs. Neither are interesting in actual learning anymore and have simply made schools an extension of their political battlefield. The kids themselves are sort of an afterthought.

[TriangleMan]

Could everyone do me a favour and try to tie their posts in with science/astronomy education? I find this topic really interesting and I don't want BA to lock it because it is going away from astronomy.

Thanks! :)

[informant]

(Sorry, TriangleMan, but I couldn't think of anything...)

My question to you is: what will it be like in 10, 20, 30 years. (...) And who will replace the people presently at the top? Will it be a huge mass of foreigners, strengthening the US and sending a lot of the providing nations crumbling?

Probably the privileged minority wealthy enough to pay for private schools.

[kilopi]

What that has to do with the 3 R's I can't imagine.
Or, the three A's, astrodynamics, astrophysics, and astronomy!

[daver]

:lol: A cow college... LOL! That must be one of the funniest expressions I've ever heard :lol:
State college, primarily agricultural. We sometimes referred to ourselves as Moo U. I expect other state ag schools are similar.

[daver]

Umm. Astronomy reference. My college had husband and wife astronomy teachers, Dr. & Dr. Lutz. I never took a class from the female Dr. Lutz; the first class i took from the male Dr. Lutz was linear algebra. He had an astronomy example for one of the problems--correcting lens aberrations in a digital image, i think. It probably was simplified enough from the real world that it no longer had any practical purpose, but it was still a nice justification.

The school had a refractor telescope; there was some interesting history behind it which i've forgotten. Trusted students could get keys to the observatory and go out and play with it. There was one girl's dorm that was within range of the telescope; the cops knew about that and would make sure that the telescope wasn't being used for prurient purposes when they drove by.

[Mr. X]

Moo U! That's gold! That's going in the act!

And what is the link between a Cow college, Moo U and Bovine University :D