American Education

[JLM]

I am going to write something which will have my poor father rotating in heaven .... he was a labor organizer....

I honestly believe organizing teachers was a bad move intellectually because although it levels the benefit field, it takes competition out of the equation and all teachers must teach at the same level with each other regardless of personal supremacy in their field of work.

Now teachers can complete coursework for students - whether the students "get it" or not - and it has no effect on their job security. Once the work has been taught and covered and tested, that's it.

The students are being taught by rote and not all learning is at the same level - in a class of thirty students there could be five or six different modalities of learning and repetition is key - but teachers are rarely allowed to segregate the learning abilities because it is another 'rule' that students are not to be pointed out for their ability or lack thereof.

Bang on Curio- Unions do bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Memorizing is good for certain learning processes like citing poetry or the times tables, but there is a limit to how much any person can remember so if you are going to learn any amount of involved stuff you have to understand the principles. Like while I could never remember formulas I could generally derive formulas for processes I understood the relationships.

 

[Tonington]

Memorizing is good for certain learning processes like citing poetry or the times tables, but there is a limit to how much any person can remember so if you are going to learn any amount of involved stuff you have to understand the principles.

How can you learn the principles of anything without recalling, or using memory?

As an aside, how do you quantify this alleged limit for human memory? It's my understanding that attempts thus far to quantify memory, let alone human limits, are next to impossible. Suppose you met someone new last week, they were driving a 1967 Camaro, but now you can't remember what their name is. But you still remember meeting someone who drove a 1967 Camaro...is this a half memory? How do you quantify that?

 

[JLM]

How can you learn the principles of anything without recalling, or using memory?

As an aside, how do you quantify this alleged limit for human memory? It's my understanding that attempts thus far to quantify memory, let alone human limits, are next to impossible. Suppose you met someone new last week, they were driving a 1967 Camaro, but now you can't remember what their name is. But you still remember meeting someone who drove a 1967 Camaro...is this a half memory? How do you quantify that?

Of course there is some rote or memory involved. Let's say you had to perform all the calculations necessary to put a man on the moon- probably thousands of formulas - can you imagine not understanding anything about physics but having to memorize A + B- C3 divided by the z to the 24th power minus x to 9th power and 500 other variations of everything from A to Z? But if you understood forces and vectors and friction and deceleration and gravitation pull of the earth and the moon and other objects in space and so on it would be much easier. With the '67 Camaro- simple- there's who, where, why, when and what. So you forgot the who but remember the where, when and what. YOu get 3/4 = 75%. :lol:

 

[Tonington]

So you forgot the who but remember the where, when and what. YOu get 3/4 = 75%. :lol:

Yes, but 3/4 of what? It's like digging 3/4 of a hole in the ground...

 

[JLM]

Yes, but 3/4 of what? It's like digging 3/4 of a hole in the ground...

That's simplifying it- actually with any event there's possibly thousands of minute details.

 

[Tonington]

That's simplifying it-

Yes, the problem is easily simplified. Quantifying memory is difficult, and perhaps impossible. And placing a limit on human memory doubly so.

 

[Bar Sinister]

With the exception in major cities. school boards pretty much work as an elected official receiving no pay. The administrations I was referring to are the top heavy office staffs and eminence personnel most schools have.

You won't find that in Alberta. They have to be paid out of the school budget. In our school we had over 1000 students with an office staff of three.

 

[ironsides]

Where I am those same 1000 students would have 50+ administrative people.

 

[CurioToo]

Tonington

I took that comment from JLM to mean "rote memorization" such as multiplication tables - I memorized all I was required to do faithfully and could spout them out like a bad recording but they meant nothing to be until I was able to sort them out and utilize them in real work
of mathematical testing - even seeing them scattered instead of being neatly lined up like soldiers had me fizzled for a while.

What a child initially learns at first may not be the "key" to opening the mind's door of memory and utilization for future implementation.

In fact I was sick that all those neat tables could be broken up and incorporated into other systems - because my desperate need to remain with the original "learning" was paramount and I had to go back and relearn that numbers are required to be moved in use.

 

[darkbeaver]

45% Of Students Don't Learn Much In College

 

[JLM]

45% Of Students Don't Learn Much In College

Those would probably be the ones that go there to party or find spouses. Wish there was a way of screening them out so we could afford to give the serious ones their education a lot cheaper. :smile:

 

[ironsides]

Those would probably be the ones that go there to party or find spouses. Wish there was a way of screening them out so we could afford to give the serious ones their education a lot cheaper. :smile:

We can, I kept my kids staying in college based upon their grades and I thought I was pretty lenient. As long as during the first two years they had nothing lower than a C, I stayed off their backs. The last two years had to be B or better. My daughter had a photography scholarship at Syracuse University but in her second year decided it was polluting the world, then without telling us took up ceramics. Lasted a few weeks and we brought her home. She worked as a waitress for a year they to a Community College then 2 years at State University at Stony Brook where she received her nursing degree.

 

[BaalsTears]

It's possible for a student to obtain a wonderfu education in America if her parents are wealthy or are willing to be heroes. Just sending one's child to American public schools is a gamble. It's a gamble because some teachers are excellent while others just don't care. Sooner or later an incompetent public school teacher will get his or her hands on your child and progress stops.

The American public school systme is great at employing adults, but not so good at educating children. This has been going on for two full generations down here, and it's one of the primary reasons for America's decline in the world. America doesn't produce educated people as it once did.

 

[JLM]

It's possible for a student to obtain a wonderfu education in America if her parents are wealthy or are willing to be heroes. Just sending one's child to American public schools is a gamble. It's a gamble because some teachers are excellent while others just don't care. Sooner or later an incompetent public school teacher will get his or her hands on your child and progress stops.

The American public school systme is great at employing adults, but not so good at educating children. This has been going on for two full generations down here, and it's one of the primary reasons for America's decline in the world. America doesn't produce educated people as it once did.

That is exactly the same situation we have in Canada. I had many wonderful teachers and the same with all my kids and grandkids, but unfortunately in all the situations there was the occasional dud. (Like most situations in life) One school that stands out in my mind was D.A. Perley Elementary in Grand Forks, B.C. Every teacher that taught my grandchildren there was excellent, they had a good work ethic, empathy for kids and you never heard them whining. In the bigger centres up here you get a lot of whining, which drives me absolutely insane.