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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

#241

Post by goblin89 »

nfd wrote: post #169
ktRolster wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, what happened?

I didn't get regular social interaction for a really long time. Think on the order of 10 years. Turns out that people really need it. I spent most of about 5 years mostly holed up in my room teaching myself about programming, crypto, bits of math, reading, playing games, and breaking and fixing my pet Linux install. I don't regret teaching myself that much for an instant, but I do realize that my entire life probably…

I did go to school, and while I wouldn’t prefer having been homeschooled by my parents, I however think the school did harm my mental health (from bullying, for one example) and I would’ve benefitted from. Note: not in US, but from what I can glimpse US schools are similar or worse in relevant regards.

I’ve come to think that going or not going to school is unlikely to be the deciding factor, and it’s rather up to parents and the overall environment. Homeschooling or sending your kid to school—neither seems ‘easier’ by itself, they just pose somewhat different sets of challenges to parents. The answer probably depends on given school system, the specific school, parents’ and kid’s personalities, etc.

In other words, one can go to school—and be bullied w/o the skill to handle it and w/o parental notice due to neglect, or grow up dysfunctional/struggling due to whatever else unhealthy family circumstance such as NPD of a parent due to them being an object of childhood abuse, etc.; and one can also be homeschooled—and be adequately prepared by parents, lose less time doing boring things, and have the necessary social interaction with siblings and friends. Now switch that around and there are indeed a lot of things that can go wrong with homeschooling, and an attentive parent can be able to help their kid deal with school just as well.

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

#242

Post by Hermel »

droithomme wrote: post #236

The test checked literacy, numeracy, and IT skills. US did fine on literacy, so-so on numeracy, and last on IT skills. Which is interesting given where most tech comes from. Here's an example of the sort of task you had to complete ( http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016039.pdf ): > Level 3: Meeting rooms (Item ID: U02) Difficulty score: 346 This task involves managing requests to reserve a meeting room on a particular da…

> Basically, users are given an intentionally badly designed user interface in which they receive no training, and a task that is impossible to accomplish within the obvious constraints of the interface, and asked to accomplish a goal.

This is a gross misrepresentation of the test. The task is to manage incoming reservation requests. Having to decline such a request does not mean the "task is impossible to accomplish". It just means that the correct answer is to deny the incoming request within the framework of the test. Also, the test simulates an entirely realistic simulation. In everyday live, I often have to decline meeting requests and propose alternate dates. Also, having to use badly designed user interfaces without training seems very realistic to me. Being good at handling that is a relevant skill in modern life.

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

#243

Post by leereeves »

emptyfile wrote: post #194
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…

What the hell? "My kids are gonna be web devs by 13 and they're gonna like it!" Is this considered normal with you stylish, American, Silicon Valley types? Do you think children are like Pokemons or Sims or RPG characters who you control from a 3rd person perspective?

Not just SV. Children working in the family business is quite common, and there's an exception for it in US child labor law.

IMO it's more common among farmers and blue collar businesses than SV types.

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

#244

Post by return0 »

agumonkey wrote: post #226
jacquesm wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think they'll teach them Python or Swift? Those will not be a career path for much longer. > Conversely, I fully expect to start "outsourcing" my web dev work to my children when they are 13. Child labor got outlawed long ago, which is one of the reasons a lot of countries have mandatory education. High school is about much more than learning programming language or marketable skills, that's what you have secondary…

Python made a nice nest in many places what makes you say it won't last ?

Who knows, it might be a favorite language when the AI programmers rise up.

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

#245

Post by restalis »

mattmanser wrote: post #53
awakeasleep wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're imagining a world where people go to college and find high paying jobs after following their dream without their parents holding them back. That is actually a marketing story, dangerous and unrealistic to believe. Esaym is talking about teaching his kids a real skill they can use. It certainly won't override their ability to learn and persue things- it'll actually make that possible . It'll enable them to make…

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…

"instead of letting them learn a range and choose"

You should acknowledge the weakness of your children's characters and that without parent's strong influence they will most likely be hype-driven, drown to many interesting but useless, maybe even damaging prospects. They will need your guidance, and hopefully you'll be able to provide a good enough one.

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

#246

Post by camelite »

vectorjohn wrote: post #185
PKop wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whose judgement do you trust enough that you're willing to outsource this decision to? Would you let esaym teach your children what he thinks is important? What if he was your child's teacher? At the end of the day you're placing your trust in someone. They are just going to teach your kids what they think is important. Are you not willing to have an opinion on whether they are choosing the right things to teach?

No, wrong. They are going to teach what a large association of actual experts in education think they should teach. Of course you should trust the people that put as much or more effort into education as you did in becoming an expert in your field. I think I heard something about how people that get a lot of expertise in one area like doctors, lawyers, programmers, tend to far overestimate their skills in unrelated t…

The vast majority of people who style themselves as experts in education are worse than useless. You've chosen a poor discipline to outsource your critical thinking to.

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

#247

Post by restalis »

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.

You assume the problems you had were for being a minority, which may be true. You could however have had a similar hell schooling without having a handy social issue to blame. Many of us (nerds) had that hard time as kids with or without racial discrimination.

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

#248

Post by Hockenbrizzle »

kuschku wrote: post #140
keithnz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 science…

That's a great advertisement.

I've just moved to Germany from the US about one year ago. So far it's made me realize how under-developed the US society is. As I learn more about how Germany operates, I constantly have those, "that makes so much more sense", moments. Of course this isn't always true, but in general I feel that they are just doing things a little better here.

I agree that society has to change how we view jobs that don't require education from a university. It makes no sense that we should value an engineer from a tech company more than a farmer that provides our food.

Also, I find that people in Germany are more aware of what role they play in society and how it operates.

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

#249

Post by jessaustin »

tronje wrote: post #238
Tehnix wrote: post #233

As a non-native speaker this sentence actually got me a bit unsure (perhaps because I looked too much at it): "Buy one, get the second half off." Is that meant as the second unit you buy, you get half off? Don't know if this is a common way to phrase a discount like that in the US..

Not a native speaker either, but I spent a fair amount of time in the US and Canada; and I don't think I've ever heard that phrase. Usually it's "buy one, get one free" or some variation of that. The phrase you mentioned would mean that you receive 2 units and pay for 1.5.

ISTM basic English comprehension was part of this test? That isn't a common idiom as compared to BOGOF, but one will see it sometimes.

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

#250

Post by cauterized »

Cookingboy wrote: post #12

And in this age of information and technology, many of these people are voting to decide the next leader of the only superpower left on Earth. This may sound grossly elitist, but democracy can be super scary sometimes.

That's one of the biggest reasons why we do and should have universal public education. And why we should invest the resources to make it a high quality education (for instance, pay teachers salaries that make teaching as attractive a profession to intelligent people with student debt as finance or consulting is -- or at the very least better than a guarantee of near-poverty).
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