Tendo City

<img src="http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/7411b663-d0ab-4081-82c7-679ce940f1d3.jpg">

It only takes ONE cut to saw it into two pieces!!

Eureka GR!

... I'm really wondering, though, about someone who takes ten minutes to cut a board in half... :)

Measure twice, cut once, taken to an extreme?

Because we are spending record amounts of money on public schools while being told that public education is underfunded in America?

People believe that because they don't learn math properly when they're in school!

The population is also at a record high. While I can't say what the current money being spent on schools is, what I CAN say is that the local schools here recently are cutting out basic science equipment for the science labs, and the computers haven't been updated since the 90's. So, either there's some huge conspiracy among the teachers that's funneling this money away into some sort of hidden breakfast clubhouse, or they actually are underfunded.

One thing's for sure, either way thousands of dollars are being wasted on building outdoor stadiums for high school sports teams and oversized gymnasiums. Perhaps that's where all the money is currently being wasted?

This isn't really a nice thing to say, but a lot of money is being wasted trying to teach students that simply can't be taught.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:The population is also at a record high. While I can't say what the current money being spent on schools is, what I CAN say is that the local schools here recently are cutting out basic science equipment for the science labs, and the computers haven't been updated since the 90's. So, either there's some huge conspiracy among the teachers that's funneling this money away into some sort of hidden breakfast clubhouse, or they actually are underfunded.

One thing's for sure, either way thousands of dollars are being wasted on building outdoor stadiums for high school sports teams and oversized gymnasiums. Perhaps that's where all the money is currently being wasted?

The national education budget is nearly $10,000 per student, which is a record high, and there is not a strong correlation between spending and performance.

Though, certainly, there is a lot of money wasted on extraneous shit such as athletics. I don't even like that the money is spent on athletics in college, even though it typically pulls in commensurate income, but colleges collect tuition. Public schools are totally on the public bill. I definitely think the problem is that there is enough money and it's not being spent properly, but that can be fixed by solid oversight. More of the problem, I think, is that we have a flawed approach to education overall in many ways. There is too great an emphasis on standardized testing and boiling down learning to memorization and recital, instead of finding ways to impress knowledge into children by exposing them to real-world applications of the material.

An experience which will always stand out for me was taking tenth-grade biology and not conducting a single hands-on experiment throughout the entire year. Biology 10 for me was taking notes and being quizzed and tested on the notes I took. It should surprise no one that I retained almost none of the knowledge afterwards.

To be honest, I have learned far more by experimentation on my own time than I ever got out of public schools. I am ten years past graduation and I still make an effort to expose myself to math, science, literature and history, because I've discovered that I would have been utterly fascinated by all of these things in school if the education system did a better job delivering the knowledge to me.

Pundits like to say that kids are getting dumber, but I don't think that's true at all. I think that the system is outmoded and is not delivering to children in a way that they otherwise are exposed to new things. People learn best by experience. You can't tell a kid to write an essay about the mechanics of bicycle-riding and expect him to learn how to ride a bike armed only with that information.

A fair enough set of points Weltall. (GR, I don't think "giving up" is a valid response to the problem).

It's simply a fact that rote memorization IS a part of learning. You can't teach kids the alphabet by real world application and experimentation. That also goes for numerous basic things like years of important historical events, the periodic table of elements, and commands for a command line interface in a modern system like Unix. That's the sort of thing standardized testing, ideally, would test for.

However, as you mention there's far more than just memorizing things. Too many science teachers only bother to teach kids "science facts" without bothering to explain HOW those conclusions were arrived at. That's a far more important piece of information in the long run than just listing off scientific information. It's important, perhaps most important, to teach kids how to teach THEMSELVES later on in life and be able to distinguish nonsense from valid information in the real world. Mind you, this isn't at all limited to today's generation. Today's vitamin water is yesterday's snake oil.

Science classes that never actually do science are worthless. An underfunded school can't afford such things, so that's important. Is it just a result of poor spending? Maybe, but then you see schools that are dilapidated, no air conditioning, and with books from 10 years ago. Are they really just spending the money badly? If so, where exactly is it going? It's a good question to ask. Also, an average leaves a lot of questions. How's the distribution of this average? Do some schools get much more funding while others have barely enough to keep a skeleton staff afloat? If so, that's something to be dealt with.

Teaching kids how to think critically and scientifically is an important part, as you say. To do that, certain tools are needed.

As to the physical education thing, I think that can be boiled down to basic health and fitness lessons. School football teams just aren't important. Kids can get plenty of exercise on their own time, in the playground or at home. Really all anyone needs to work out is a yard.

Kids can be taught a lot of basic science just by getting them to ask a question, and then boil it down to a basic yes/no proposition as a possible answer. Figure out a test that by design HAS to conclude one way or another in that proposition and you've got yourself some science. The worst thing any science teacher can say to a class full of kids is "just learn this stuff because it will be on the test". Teaching science that way is no different than dogma and results in adults that think science is "just another bunch of claims, what do THEY know anyway?". If they learned the way to arrive at an answer as a kid, they'd know exactly how scientists know things, and maybe we wouldn't have people wasting their time on psychics or homeopathy.

Applied math is important too. Teaching kids how to actually apply math to a unique problem is important. It's no good to teach someone what a hammer is, or even how to use one, you must teach WHERE to use it and when it is appropriate. That photo above sums it up perfectly. A small note: that question could have been phrased more specifically to remove that ambiguity, but that's beside the point. The kid figured it out, but the teacher couldn't. The teacher used the wrong tool for the job. In this case understanding that it was a question of how fast a cut can be made, not how fast can boards "multiply", would be important. One doesn't even need to know about woodworking. It's enough to realize that if it's a question about turning one thing into two things, you need to simply add up the time it takes to do that. It's two of those events. Teach math and how to apply it correctly, and maybe kids won't throw away their lives in something like gambling (only later waking up enough to make up an excuse like they're just playing it to have fun, but that's just a comforting lie, they know that).

Quote:GR, I don't think "giving up" is a valid response to the problem

I'm not talking about students who aren't motivated to learn, I'm talking about students who completely lack the ability to learn.

That's somewhat hard to determine, but in general they end up being sequestered away and forgotten in some special home for such people. I don't know how many of them actually end up going through the entire public school system to graduation.

Legally, the school is required to teach them until they reach age 18. Teachers are also required to teach the student [even when that's impossible] AND do paperwork that PROVES the child has been taught the same knowledge/skills that every other child in the school has been taught. The school also has to hire a full-time nurse or aid to take care of the student.

A school can end up paying $20,000-$30,000 a year to teach a student that will never learn a single thing.

I don't have any kind of statistics I can pull out, but it's something that school are having to deal with more and more. Especially since parents already see school as little more than free daycare as it is.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:

I wouldn't be to hard on the child I looks to me that the question was designed to suggest such a careless mistake.
I mean what grade is this child in?

It was the TEACHER that made the mistake though!