OK, so we're lagging behind. Solutions are many, but a main issue of contention is as follows:

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Duncan told a room full of science and math experts of the National Science Board on Tuesday morning that this will hurt the United States as it competes internationally. "We are lagging the rest of the world, and we are lagging it in pretty substantial ways," he said.

"I think we have become complacent. We've sort of lost our way."

He acknowledged that in some areas of the United States it is hard to find good math and science teachers. To solve that problem, he said, "I think we should pay math and science teachers a lot more money. We pay everybody the same. We have areas of critical need -- math, science, foreign language, special education in some places. I think we need to pay a premium for that."

The National Education Association, which represents teachers, argues against such a proposal.

"Simply being a teacher of a hard-to-staff subject does not equate with effective instruction, and therefore, should not be rewarded in-and-of-itself through a salary differential," the organization says in a position statement.

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See, on one hand, subjects like history, English, and art are simply easier than science and math. You don't need to be as smart to do well in them on a high school level, and indeed, you don't need to be particularly smart to teach those subjects. If you take this by itself, you might reach the conclusion that you want to draw as many people to teach math and science through economic incentive.

However, I think the real problem lies in the students. Lazy little shits that they are, they'll take the path of least resistance whenever possible. Excelling at science and math in particular is not a natural ability--it requires quite a bit of work. Merely skating by, however, can be accomplished pretty easily. Those willing to work at it will be few and far between by definition(NNNNNNEEEEEERRRRRDDDDDS!). In that regard, throwing money at the science and math teachers won't matter, as this will have no effect on the students' desire to excel at the subject, and so the problem remains unsolved.

So if the problem is with the students, the solution must be there, right? Perhaps make math and science requirements much more onerous? Make it so that no one can simply coast through those classes? That might improve our international standing, but is it going to get kids to pursue careers in the sciences?

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See, on one hand, subjects like history, English, and art are simply easier than science and math. You don't need to be as smart to do well in them on a high school level, and indeed, you don't need to be particularly smart to teach those subjects.

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This isn't even close to being true. Jeebus. If anything, math and science are easier to teach, because the methodology is inherently logical and structured...if not downright mechanical.

It's simply a problem with our PC culture that we've dumbed perception of the liberal arts down to the point where it's expected to be a feel-good exercise with no wrong answers. It's much easier to grade a math problem, because one can point to a) the student did not arrive at the one correct answer and b) it's easy to show the flaw in the process that led to the incorrect answer. It's an entirely more difficult process to assess the process of literary interpretation, for example, because one is grading a subtler process and therefore must oneself be more capable of nuanced analysis.

http://www.education-reform.net/

The current system benefits large corporations because it makes information on potential employees more symmetrical, and it also acclimates them to an atmosphere of constant deadlines and working for vague purposes. It is refreshed every time someone like Bush Jr. or Obama make a call for more funding (i.e. subsidy, not incentive to fix the problem - a common whine behind the Wall Street joke) and get it. In reality, the system is set up nowhere near properly enough to be conducive to true learning or innovation. It's just a waste of time, money, and youth - resources that could be far better spent, considering the unemployment rate and general catastrophic conditions of the economy.

Read all the pages on the site I have linked, and you'll more or less have what I was going to post here.

This is one (of several reasons) I voted Nader, "btw"

" Many of our elected officials have entrusted the control of our schools to corporate interests, because corporations provide a majority of the funding required to sustain our political parties. This raises deep concerns, as the goals of corporations differ sharply from the goals of parents and students.

For example, many corporations want employees who are easily led and not inclined to think for themselves. Most large businesses want people who are hard-driven and achievement oriented, even though this attitude may ultimately be harmful to the employee. They want people who are willing to 'play the game' in order to increase their profits.

Furthermore, corporations tend to neglect the medical and psychological consequences of the learning process that currently prevails in our schools. They believe in the 'tough-standards' theory, and hire social scientists and writers to conduct tainted research, and publish the results of biased studies that support their preconceived notions.

Control of the American government must be returned to the people. This will occur, but only once the populace is enlightened and finds the clear path that it must follow."

"Cults and 'tough-standards' education have the following in common:

* Extended drills, excessive and exact repetition of routine activities

* Sleep restriction

* Establish control over the person's social environment and manage his time by using a system of excessive rewards and punishments.

* Create a sense of powerlessness by subjecting the person to frequent actions and situations, which undermine his confidence in himself and his judgment.

* Create strong aversive emotional arousals in the subject by use of nonphysical punishments such as humiliation, loss of privilege, change of social status, intense guilt, anxiety, or manipulation.

It is difficult for former students - especially those who have spent many additional years in college or pursuing advanced degrees - to admit that they have been thoroughly deceived, and speak out about the evils of our present educational system. Their problems, shortcomings, and anxieties; they blame themselves for all of these things, and hold modern education responsible for nothing. 'The group' is never at fault."

"The institutionalization syndrome that frequently occurs in individuals who have received long-term treatment or care in institutions such as psychiatric facilities encapsulates the following characteristics:

• Loss of independence and self-confidence,

• Erosion of desire and skills for social interaction,

• Excessive reliance on institutions and fear of authority (Lamb, 1976).

With their daily routines, organizational structures and practices that are imposed on patients, psychiatric facilities are notorious for cultivating patient dependency and hampering the development of independent functioning that will facilitate the patients’ reintegration into the community. In such institutional settings, patients are required to conform to the instructions of doctors and staff members or deal with aversive consequences. They thus learn to submit to authoritative figures such as doctors. Furthermore, they are also expected to adapt to an externally imposed schedule of eating, socializing and other activities. In addition, their individual perceptions and responses are disregarded and their interests neglected. In this conformist environment, patients’ efforts to express their individuality and display their skills are thus discouraged, or even suppressed (Lipsitt, 1961)."

Steven Steve fucked around with this message on 08-27-2009 at 02:41 PM.

Scrap the current system, resort to freer methods of information dissemination such as tutors and electronic books, use standardized testing only to certify people for their knowledge (in effect, replacing all required education except for professional school with certification a la driving), and take the bipartisan system's and corporate America's cocks out of our asses (that one's for you Karnaj).

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Channeling the spirit of Sherlock Holmes, Blindy. absently fondled Watson and proclaimed:
There is not a tin foil hat big enough for that post.

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qft

Currently our social education focuses on relying on your betters to give you the answer, rewarding following the rules, and a general sameness. As a democratic republic, these are favorable mores for society to have if your desire is for a stable government. Shifting the focus to a more academic and inquisitive ideal would have fairly dramatic impact on the way that our politics would play out. Would a society of people that have all demonstrated to themselves how little more their 'betters' actually know willingly submit themselves to a representative government?

Making the bottom up change that would be required to the huddled masses from blissfully ignorant to actively inquisitive would have many consequences, not all of which would be positive. The status quo leads to some individuals breaking out and becoming exceptional, either from a genetic quirk or societal influences, I don't know. All it takes is one Bill Gates to drag hundreds of thousands out of ignorance to some level of expertise simply for personal advancement. I think this model, a few luminaries dragging the masses behind them is much more practical then trying to create a generation of Teslas.

The model based on exceptional individuals we have now, ultimately, isn't broken. The outcomes may not be perfect in that everyone isn't Einstein, or even knows who he is, but we function, are relatively stable as a society, and the masses remain open, sometimes overly, to new technologies.

http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

ahhh shit, it's waisz fucked around with this message on 08-27-2009 at 09:05 PM.

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Bloodsage thought about the meaning of life:
This isn't even close to being true. Jeebus. If anything, math and science are easier to teach, because the methodology is inherently logical and structured...if not downright mechanical.

It's simply a problem with our PC culture that we've dumbed perception of the liberal arts down to the point where it's expected to be a feel-good exercise with no wrong answers. It's much easier to grade a math problem, because one can point to a) the student did not arrive at the one correct answer and b) it's easy to show the flaw in the process that led to the incorrect answer. It's an entirely more difficult process to assess the process of literary interpretation, for example, because one is grading a subtler process and therefore must oneself be more capable of nuanced analysis.

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it's funny how you talk about liberal arts being dumbed down and remark about math's mechanical nature in the same breath

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Everyone wondered WTF when Blindy. wrote:
There is not a tin foil hat big enough for that post.

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Bloodsage had this to say about dark elf butts:
qft

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How would you propose the education system be fixed so that so many kids will finally understand basic math and what the difference between "your" and "you're" is, then? Give money to some people to figure it out? No one is going to figure it out as long as their pockets are lined with cash for doing nothing, haha. It's just the same problem as throwing money at the bankers. Innovation is for people who dare to think critically.

Will you toughen standards so as to coerce students into learning their material? Adding hours and stress to school will merely cut out on time that could be spent learning. Or will you just make cynical comments about how kids are sucking their mommas' titties until their thirties and chalk it up to personal failure?

The modern education system relies on lengthy lectures, unsupervised homework, and tests to communicate information to students. Considering the class sizes, the lectures are hardly adapted, so basically it's equivalent to someone giving a crappy oral presentation of information already found in the book, and then you doing the problems that are in the book - in effect, you're just learning from the book, but you're wasting 8 hours a day doing it, and a bunch of putzes are being paid tens of thousands of dollars to be professional students. I'm sure any of you can attest to the fact that if you're giving proper learning materials, then you can learn just about any academic discipline on your own time within about a week or two, and at a fraction of the cost of formal education, as long as you know how to read. The exceptions are highly technical fields, such as those taught at professional schools which require experience and demonstration.

In other words, all school in between the time when you learn how to read and when you learn how to do your [technical] profession is futile as long as it does not exceed the quality of learning on your own - which it doesn't. People aren't learning anything that they're using anyway, so public funding for education might as well be dissolved in favor of private education and tutelage, and much cheaper certification programs. It's quite simple - people are still held accountable for their academics by taking standardized tests and becoming certified in their discipline, yet they save about 20 years of their lives by not having to attend publically- (and personally-) funded daycare. Big corporations can still get what they want by checking who is certified and who received the best honors in their examinations and at professional school, as these people are obviously intelligent, one way or another. The "plebs" get what they want by actually being educated like humans are supposed to be and not having their childhoods pissed on by artificial traditions.

The site I linked is a bunch of unsourced mumbo jumbo obviously, but the fact of the matter (and I'm sure you'll agree) is that the education methods employed by the government, and even in postsecondary institutions, are not even as valuable as something that is free. In other words, the education system is vastly overvalued and in need of a large cut in favor of freer and more scientific means of teaching. Why else would you pay for such a thing, other than to waste your money?

Steven Steve fucked around with this message on 08-28-2009 at 12:50 AM.

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Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.” The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right.

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Steven Steve fucked around with this message on 08-28-2009 at 12:53 AM.

Unfortunately, we're gonna have a lot of astronauts, professional football players, and ballet dancers.

Jeebus.

Frankly, I'm a big fan of even more standardized testing than we do now, and of sorting based on the scores. Not everyone needs advanced studies, and the world needs ditch diggers and janitors just as badly as nuclear physicists. Too many people whine, "I'm really very smart; I just suck at every method of showing it in public."

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This one time, at Karnaj camp:
... See, on one hand, subjects like history, English, and art are simply easier than science and math. You don't need to be as smart to do well in them on a high school level...[/QB]

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See I figure it is because you can dumb down the other classes to retarded levels, but you can only go so far in doing that in math and sciences. I mean hell look at History classes and how much they can skip since it might be offensive?

Besides this is the bold new America were we should strive to be the lowest common denominator, granted our math skill suck so much no one knows what that is anyways...

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Bloodsage had this to say about Captain Planet:
Damn, I missed the whole part where life was a game and if math class seemed "stupid and boring" then, well, one obviously can't be expected to just fucking do it anyway.

Jeebus.

Frankly, I'm a big fan of even more standardized testing than we do now, and of sorting based on the scores. Not everyone needs advanced studies, and the world needs ditch diggers and janitors just as badly as nuclear physicists. Too many people whine, "I'm really very smart; I just suck at every method of showing it in public."

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Lmao, you act as though God descended on the earth and mandated that we do math classes in this way. If I remember correctly, you are an atheist, yet in this case it appears you are applying blind faith to a system that is obviously not working, ignoring the writing on the wall. You seem to warrant that it's the duty of people to conform to tired old cliches rather than thinking critically and analytically. The article wasn't saying that math class "seemed" stupid and boring, it said that it was stupid as well as boring, because it is. As I've said before (and as should be obvious), all that happens in the classes is that students are being coerced by the government, on threat of financial ruin, to memorize things they could learn by just reading without having to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of public money. Surely if you're an expert in anything then you know that self-study and a forum-like classroom (such as the one supported in this article and by the military, for instance) is far superior to someone reading off a Powerpoint for an hour. Despite this, you insist on the way it is. Perhaps it has been too long since you've stepped into a publically-funded math class (no offense).

The problem is our teachers are underpaid and our society is currently in an anti-intelectual fervor (although that is dying).

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And I was all like 'Oh yeah?' and Blindy. was all like:
Except that it works in other countries? You know, the ones that score higher than us?

The problem is our teachers are underpaid and our society is currently in an anti-intelectual fervor (although that is dying).

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Your assertion would be correct if the same system was used in the other countries, but each country listed in this article is actually at least legally different from the United State's (like Canada's slight compulsory age difference) or vastly different (such as Japan's). Further, Canada's system, which is the most comparable to the United States', runs on proportionally half the fraction of GDP that America's does, and yet is still more successful. In other words, no, they don't use the same system, except that there are classes where people learn things, and money isn't the answer either.

But yes, you are correct in saying that our society is in an anti-intelectual [sic] fervor. It is because of this that broken programs and unfounded faith in them continue to persist.

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Naimah had this to say about Captain Planet:
I don't think that it is fair to say an anti-intellectual fervor, an intellectual apathy would be more accurate I would think.

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hahahaha no

have you forgotten about the attempts to pull evolution from the schools?

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Quoth Steven Steve:
Lmao, you act as though God descended on the earth and mandated that we do math classes in this way. If I remember correctly, you are an atheist, yet in this case it appears you are applying blind faith to a system that is obviously not working, ignoring the writing on the wall. You seem to warrant that it's the duty of people to conform to tired old cliches rather than thinking critically and analytically. The article wasn't saying that math class "seemed" stupid and boring, it said that it was stupid as well as boring, because it is. As I've said before (and as should be obvious), all that happens in the classes is that students are being coerced by the government, on threat of financial ruin, to memorize things they could learn by just reading without having to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of public money. Surely if you're an expert in anything then you know that self-study and a forum-like classroom (such as the one supported in this article and by the military, for instance) is far superior to someone reading off a Powerpoint for an hour. Despite this, you insist on the way it is. Perhaps it has been too long since you've stepped into a publically-funded math class (no offense).

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I neither said nor implied any of these things, so it'd make it much easier to have an intelligent discussion if you'd stick to the topic.

The bottom line is that school is neither about self-actualization nor about individually tailoring the program to individual students in order to achieve said self-actualization. It's about learning to fit in and to become productive members of society. It's not about learning to do your own thing in the way that suits you best in order to become a happy person. That's an individual problem.

Further, you're under the misapprehension that there is a single better way to teach [insert subject here]. There isn't for every student who would benefit from a reading-based seminar pogram, there's another who'd benefit more from a structured, lecture-based way of teaching. There's no such thing as, "If we'd only do it this way, everything would magically get better."

Nor, as some assert, would simply paying teachers more do anything except exacerbate existing problems. Nothing done in that arena will have the slightest effect until and unless we also enforce standards on our teachers and require recurring proofs of competence.

The underlying problem has already been hinted at: education is seen as a gimme, feelgood thing rather than the key to existing and succeeding in society. The students, and ultimately our expectations for the students, are the real problem. By worrying more about self-esteem than about progress in subject matter, we cause the system to fail.

Who ends up teaching are either girls who don't know what else to do with their life, and end up quitting teaching as soon as something better comes along (my wife) or people who are actually passionate about teaching, who are forced to quit as soon as something better comes along because the salary is junk.

It only adds to the horrible situation that they are forced to take classes and pay for re-certification every two years or so. The pay simply doesn't justify the hassle. And the job itself has become something less than it used to be- less satisfying, less fulfilling, less respected.

If you want to attract skilled instructors and hold them you need to address these situations.

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Blindy. painfully thought these words up:
I don't mean to say we should simply pay our existing teachers more, I mean to say that for $24,000 a year, you can't really attract talent.

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What kind of shitty-ass school district pays teachers $24,000 a year, really? Here, teachers start at $40,000, which I realize isn't great, but it's livable in this area.

Monica fucked around with this message on 08-31-2009 at 03:32 AM.

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Nobody really understood why Blindy wrote:
When did you find these numbers? Recently there have been a lot of school closings as no child left educated cuts funding left and right- lots of teachers out of work has had a depressive effect on salaries- but it's only been the last 3-4 years.

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Last year when I was thinking about getting my teaching certificate.

Here are statistics showing teacher salaries for DFW.

Naimah fucked around with this message on 08-31-2009 at 09:17 PM.