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America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

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Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#131

Post by kuschku »

mindcrime wrote: post #113
murjinsee wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saying this! I work with phones and it's sad to hear people talk about the ever-widening gap technology places between them and their children. Too many people from younger generations make fun of their parents for being technically illiterate. I spend an hour a week at least bringing my mom up to speed on Google Photos, iOS content management, etc. It feels good seeing somebody learn how to do things for…

I work with phones and it's sad to hear people talk about the ever-widening gap technology places between them and their children. Meh. It's not an age issue. Anybody who's the parent of a contemporary teenager is probably a gen X'er themselves and when we were teenagers people said the same shit. Except back then it was "parents can't program their VCR's but the teenagers can". It was bullocks then and it's bullocks…

Indeed. My parents never had to use computers much, and only got a smartphone 2 years ago, but by now they can send GPG encrypted mail, can install apps — and understand why an app requesting permissions it shouldn't need isn't trustworthy, etc.

If you want to, you can always learn.

Most people just don't want to learn.

Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#132

Post by esaym »

sunwooz wrote: post #61
mattmanser wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wake-up call, we're a community of programmers and contrary to our echo-chamber, programming is 1 skill of the thousands which make money. I know a range of different people, none of them are programmers. Do you think only programmers make money? I am actually shocked and disgusted by his idea of parenting. He wants to isolate them from other children and teach them one skill instead of letting them learn a range and…

I would've loved it if I never went to school. Especially as a minority living in a white neighborhood -- it was pretty much hell every day.

I didn't see much of a point to my public schooling either. Everything I learned there could've been taught by my parents, except they really had no career skills themselves.

The "minority" issue you speak of is interesting. Up until 4th grade, I went to a small country school where every one was white. There was only one teacher per grade, and each grade had 15-20 kids or so. Then because my mom re-married, I moved to a more city location. It was the complete opposite. I was bullied for the next 4 years for being white...

Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#133

Post by mindcrime »

Throwaway23412 wrote: post #126
mindcrime wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study looked at basic technology tasks: things like using email, buying and returning items online, using a drop-down menu, naming a file on a computer or sending a text message. Do they realize that the average American High-School aged student would consider almost all of those activities to be archaic relics of a bygone age? Young people don't use email or drop-down menus, and even texting is "so 2000's". Amer…

Am I missing something? In what world does the average young person not use a drop-down menu? Also, doesn't Snapchat require an email to register? Do young people not use iMessage or any other messaging app to send text messages? Are you making a joke that went over my head?

In what world does the average young person not use a drop-down menu?

I'm thinking in terms of "old style" drop down menus, as in ones you'd see in a browser on a desktop PC. As opposed to the newer style that replace those in smartphone apps and browsers.

Also, doesn't Snapchat require an email to register?

Probably, but that doesn't mean many young people actually use email, at least not on any regular basis. Heck, the stuff about young people not using email is so old now, I feel like I'm dating myself by mentioning it!

Do young people not use iMessage or any other messaging app to send text messages?

But is that what this study looked at?

Are you making a joke that went over my head?

Not really, but I may have been engaging in just a smidgen of hyperbole.

Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#134

Post by esaym »

polymeris wrote: post #88
CamperBob2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for long, at $60/hr

That's what they'll spend on therapy after having Python inflicted on them!

I'm actually a Perl dev (for now)...

I was being nice...

Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#135

Post by kuschku »

Retra wrote: post #9
victorhugo31337 wrote: post #3

This is what happens when no child is left behind. How can EVERYONE graduate from HS without lowering the bar?

Because education is not a zero-sum activity?

You can say that when your school can provide 2 or more teachers per class of 20 pupils in high school, but as far as I know, in contrast to the schools where I'm from, in the US that doesn't happen.

With growing class sizes, and less teachers, US schools don't have the resources to focus on individual students' needs. The best they can do is trying to get some students through.

They could adopt the more modern concepts, where small groups of pupils get a task they can't do yet "derive a function", each group gets given some hints in which way to try it (each group in a different one — one going via limits, the next doing it numerically, the next graphically), and then each group presenting their concept to the others, and comparing.

Those, more modern teaching concepts, also allow for good teaching for every student with a low amount of teachers (and teach independent understanding, research, etc), but they're rare in most countries.

Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#136

Post by tokenadult »

Denzel wrote: post #23
tokenadult wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study is about comparative data, and I can well believe (having lived in another country) that there are countries where a larger percentage of adults than in the United States can use commonplace technology of today. The math literacy (numeracy) advantage for other countries I absolutely believe, as I have read the textbooks from other countries (I am an American who can read Chinese), and the textbooks are simp…

How are the textbooks better? Can you provide some examples?

Thanks for the follow-up question. Here is a link to a LONG article about Russian textbook that I learned about from a fellow HN participant years ago.

http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf

Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#137

Post by deciplex »

tim333 wrote: post #108
Houshalter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is a really shitty form of government. It prevents tyrants, and it prevents a single party from holding power for too long. Which are great benefits over, e.g. monarchies. But the average voter isn't informed enough to really understand all the issues. So who wins isn't really correlated with who is best or who is right. In my ideal form of government, the representatives would not be elected, but randomly…

Or have the next version of AlphaGo run things.

AlphaGov

Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#138

Post by Frqy3 »

thwarted wrote: post #50
Houshalter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is a really shitty form of government. It prevents tyrants, and it prevents a single party from holding power for too long. Which are great benefits over, e.g. monarchies. But the average voter isn't informed enough to really understand all the issues. So who wins isn't really correlated with who is best or who is right. In my ideal form of government, the representatives would not be elected, but randomly…

A "representative democracy" is one specifically where the average voter doesn't need to be informed enough to really understand all the issues, and that's supposed to be its advantage. In contrast, direct democracy is best when all the voters (have the time to) understand the issues. But that's not very pragmatic, so we do representative democracy. But of course, that has its own issues, as what to understand moves…

With the infrastructure available today we should be able to do a hybrid direct-representative model and also have multiple representative delegations that we can change on an ad-hoc basis (i.e. not just at elections).

For example, on some issues, I might like to do the research and make my own decision, while for other issues I might trust and delegate to a representative for that set of issues, and for a third set of issues I might trust and delegate to a different representative.

Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#139

Post by alxndr »

Swizec wrote: post #101
esaym wrote: post #32

I don't expect the public school system to teach my children anything. Hence why they won't be attending. Most of the schools I attended growing up were completely useless. Filthy, full of drugs and gangs. Sadly I even listened to some of my teachers more than I did my own parents (indoctrination) which I now see lead me down the wrong path. I don't expect the public school to teach my kids any kind of career skills…

As a publicly educated kid from Eastern Europe. We had programming classes as on-school extracurriculars in Pascal when I was 12. In the late 90's. We started with Logo at 9. In 1996. Do public schools in other countries not do this kind of stuff?

Programming classes are uncommon in American high schools:

> "There currently are just over 42,000 high schools in the United States. But only 2,100 of them were certified to teach the AP computer science course in 2011"

http://www.exploringcs.org/resources/cs-statistics

edit: Wish I could find the numbers for public high schools, but I'd wager that they're much lower than 5%, with public middle schools smaller still.

Re: America's High School Graduates Look Like Other Countries' High School Dropouts

#140

Post by kuschku »

keithnz wrote: post #8
victorhugo31337 wrote: post #3

This is what happens when no child is left behind. How can EVERYONE graduate from HS without lowering the bar?

Rather than this conclusion, perhaps, look at what other countries are doing? Are they leaving children behind? or do they have better techniques for making sure everyone does well?

Germany, in fact, does leave people behind.

But it doesn't leave them without perspective.

The tiered school model of Germany sorts you into one of three tiers based on your abilities with the age of 10, which gets even more specific over the years after that.

Only people finishing from the highest tier can go to a theoretical university, people from the tier below can at maximum go to a university of applied sciences, and people from the lowest tier can only go to a trade school.

Obviously, these tiers have different lengths of education (5 years, 6 years, 8 years), and you can always switch up a tier if you believe you can do it, but most people take what's recommended for them.

And this is necessary.

We, as a society, have to accept that some people won't be able to study maths. Or computer science.

For some people, applied sciences, or even a more technical job might be more ideal.

The solution isn't to get everyone into college, but to accept the fact that not everyone can do so, and to also value the job the manual workers are doing.

There is this nice advertisement campaign from 2014 from the German association of craftsmen, "What would the world be without craftsmen?": https://youtu.be/YfgqIWwxk2g

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