13th August 2004, 1:50 PM
The SATs here are to make sure the students actually know what they were taught pretty much. The government DOES do accruity tests every year in all schools (private ones that want to stay accredited have to do it too), but it doesn't really matter that much, because a lot of people fail. Thing is, some people just give up and drop out later on, so no matter how good the education, they decided failure on their own. Some people don't really get the point that they are supposed to keep a lot of the stuff they learn in school and ONLY bother maintaining the knowledge until the test is over. They will study very hard only to forget everything when the test is over. Hence, grade after grade goes over the same basics because everyone forgot everything. Anyway, the school system itself does educate, but it's not a focus on students KEEPING that knowledge.
And by the way, having all teachers need 5 years of university? That's a stroke of very VERY smart thinking there. I had teacher after teacher who obviously was NOT smart enough to be teaching the material. Some of them would throw out huge sections of the text to teach using their own method. Admirable, if it actually is better than the book (which let's face it, is EASILY done, those books are VERY inaccurate in grade school, teaching frickin' MYTHS too often), but sometimes the teacher is doing an idiot's job of it that's WORSE than the book. For example, rather than actually teaching biology like she was SUPPOSED to, one teacher insisted on making it clear that germs causing sickness was "only a theory", and a lot of those people in that class to this day have kept that belief. Public schools are there to prevent this sort of mass ignorance, not TEACH it! I mean, a theory is actually what all scientific principles ARE! It's what science is working TOWARDS, the END GOAL! GRAVITY is a theory! These teachers obviously never bothered expanding their own education. These books, ugh, it's like they just picked the cheapest ones they could find without even doing a basic check for validity. Now, even a book where the author checks every source and validates all the data can get some things wrong or at least not fully accurate, but they did check things out! These, they just stuck together the "fun facts" you read on popsicle sticks and snapple lids and claimed it's a general science book! Well, at least that's the feeling I get checking some of those things out. They actually taught that water only spins one way in the drain! They also used terms like "hot air wants to rise", which is wrong for so many reasons (air doesn't have any desires as far as the scientific community can tell :D, and hot air isn't actually going up so much as it's less dense and thus PUSHED up by the denser cold air, if there's no cold air, the hot air will in fact fall, heat is not an anti-gravity force), and they explain how flight works incorrectly as well stating things like "since air is forced to move over the curved top half faster, there is less pressure causing lift" (this is only a very small part of what causes lift, just a feature added for a bit, the extreme majority of lift is derived by the angle of attack, where the air hits the bottom part head on, while the top part is aimed away and so air is actually moving away from it). Math books get things much more accurate, but they tend to specialize in simplifying to the point of deception. I know that they need to teach simpler concepts first, walk before you can run and all, but to say "0 is not a number" in kindergarten and then slowly change that to things like "0 is a placeholder for a number" then "0 IS a number" is confusing to put it lightely. They are not obligated to teach ALL of math in the first grade of course, but whatever they DO teach, they are obligated to GET IT RIGHT!
And by the way, having all teachers need 5 years of university? That's a stroke of very VERY smart thinking there. I had teacher after teacher who obviously was NOT smart enough to be teaching the material. Some of them would throw out huge sections of the text to teach using their own method. Admirable, if it actually is better than the book (which let's face it, is EASILY done, those books are VERY inaccurate in grade school, teaching frickin' MYTHS too often), but sometimes the teacher is doing an idiot's job of it that's WORSE than the book. For example, rather than actually teaching biology like she was SUPPOSED to, one teacher insisted on making it clear that germs causing sickness was "only a theory", and a lot of those people in that class to this day have kept that belief. Public schools are there to prevent this sort of mass ignorance, not TEACH it! I mean, a theory is actually what all scientific principles ARE! It's what science is working TOWARDS, the END GOAL! GRAVITY is a theory! These teachers obviously never bothered expanding their own education. These books, ugh, it's like they just picked the cheapest ones they could find without even doing a basic check for validity. Now, even a book where the author checks every source and validates all the data can get some things wrong or at least not fully accurate, but they did check things out! These, they just stuck together the "fun facts" you read on popsicle sticks and snapple lids and claimed it's a general science book! Well, at least that's the feeling I get checking some of those things out. They actually taught that water only spins one way in the drain! They also used terms like "hot air wants to rise", which is wrong for so many reasons (air doesn't have any desires as far as the scientific community can tell :D, and hot air isn't actually going up so much as it's less dense and thus PUSHED up by the denser cold air, if there's no cold air, the hot air will in fact fall, heat is not an anti-gravity force), and they explain how flight works incorrectly as well stating things like "since air is forced to move over the curved top half faster, there is less pressure causing lift" (this is only a very small part of what causes lift, just a feature added for a bit, the extreme majority of lift is derived by the angle of attack, where the air hits the bottom part head on, while the top part is aimed away and so air is actually moving away from it). Math books get things much more accurate, but they tend to specialize in simplifying to the point of deception. I know that they need to teach simpler concepts first, walk before you can run and all, but to say "0 is not a number" in kindergarten and then slowly change that to things like "0 is a placeholder for a number" then "0 IS a number" is confusing to put it lightely. They are not obligated to teach ALL of math in the first grade of course, but whatever they DO teach, they are obligated to GET IT RIGHT!
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)