261–270 of 371 posts
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..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The public school system is not without its flaws. For many, it can be battling constant abuse by their "peers" -- people neither their social nor mental equals, the like of whom they'll never interact with as adults -- under the guise of "learning social skills". Additionally, it's full of outdated, half-false, and irrelevant curriculum & busywork, pandering to the lowest common denominator and increasingly focused…
All of the things you mentioned are true and still homeschooling is worse. You know why? Our society is not without its flaws either. So unless you can provide a full alternative reality experience to your children, I'd say stand back. And by the way, who's preventing you to teach your children to identify(and thus ignore) the flaws of this system? What you're suggesting is the nuclear option and I don't see any reas…
Ideally, the parents will choose the method that lets their child learn most effectively. In reality, some of them will make bad choices and stunt their children's education. Which sucks, but life is not fair.
Public schooling is trash in USA. As an Asian parent I can tell you it is more than worthless. That is what happens when you put government into too much of control. Americans as a society have clearly traded job safety of teacher for good quality education. Stossel's Stupid in America : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw
This doesn't make any sense, most of the leading countries have far more governmental control over education than the US does.
If "governmental control" is your metric of choice, the US would need to increase it badly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
13 year olds should be treated like 13 years olds: they go to school and after they leave they get to go hang out with their boy/girlfriends, do sports, ride their bikes around or play videogames with their friends.
Mozart at 13 was not hanging out with his friends partying around.
Here's the thing, my son spends more time doing homework and studying for tests in elementary school than I ever did throughout my entire public education.
I have worked internationally. From my own anecdotal experience, I didn't see a difference in intelligence or ability to do the job between cultures.
Of course the US does poorly in this survey. The survey measures life skills. We've spent the last decades changing our schools from teaching life skills to pure college prep. A terrible disservice to young people. Here's some sample questions http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_onli... .
He addresses the problem of education and the ways it is being done. One really important remark he has made was that one of the biggest differences between children of well off families and others less fortunate is the availability of books: kids of comfortable families have access to more books since they are very young, contrary to their peers. The more important remark is the follow up: libraries tend to offset the impact of economic differences.
It's an interesting talk.
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…
I think part of the issue is the corporate lobbying culture that exists in America. I read an article a while ago about what goes into selecting textbooks in American schools apparently textbook companies lobby the education departments to use their brand of books so rather than getting the best textbook schools get the book from whichever company "bribed" the officials the most. Because it all goes through politicia…
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/21/business/math-book-salted-...
Excerpt:
> But a spokesman for McGraw-Hill said the publisher received no payments from companies whose products appear in the book. ''We have no commercial or promotional arrangements to use particular brands,'' said the spokesman, Neal Allen. One of the book's authors said that the well-known products were included simply to make the math problems more relevant to sixth graders.
[...] For example, the 1995 edition, still in use in many places, introduces a decimal division problem as follows: ''Will is saving his allowance to buy a pair of Nike shoes that cost $68.25. If Will earns $3.25 per week, how many weeks will Will need to save?'' To the right of the text is a full-color picture of a pair of Nikes. Another word problem, this one in the 1999 edition, gives a plug to Oreos, made by Nabisco: ''The best-selling packaged cookie in the world is the Oreo cookie,'' it begins. ''The diameter of an Oreo cookie is 1.75 inches. Express the diameter of an Oreo cookie as a fraction in simplest form.''
To conclude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK0BMaUMmGw
I won't go into much detail because I would wind up ranting and only be somewhat understandable.. However, as an American citizen who went to public schools as a child/teenager and am now finishing up at a public state university, I'm inclined to say that the education system here is a complete wash. It works for some people who fit the one-size mold that the system here seems to target, but there are a large number…
Some students want to learn but don't do well in the "system" of public education. This is a pedagogy issue; we're not teaching those kids in the way that they will learn the best. Those kids might benefit from "unschooling", homeschooling, or other forms of self-directed learning.
Some students, mostly in areas of concentrated poverty, are going to struggle in school because of the emotional turmoil of living in poverty. Unsafe neighborhoods, neglectful homes, etc. The school system can't "fix" that by itself.
Lastly, there are students that are simply not smart enough to thrive in academic learning. If you accept that some kids are smarter than others, the natural corollary is that some kids are not as smart. That doesn't mean their worth as human beings is less. It just means we should not be shoehorning them into this terrible "everyone must go to college" meme.
Of course the US does poorly in this survey. The survey measures life skills. We've spent the last decades changing our schools from teaching life skills to pure college prep. A terrible disservice to young people. Here's some sample questions http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_onli... .
I don't agree that this is the problem. I mean, it is a problem at times, but that's a separate issue. There's quite simply no easy fix here. The best schools (and yes, that includes many public schools) are teaching a variety of skills that help the students whether they're going on to college, a trade school, or straight into work. And I suspect that those schools would be competitive or even beat Japan and Finland…
The following numbers are just for illustration but if you think of the DoE with a billion dollars and some percentage of that pays for the DoE. Then that percentage is education money that is going to pay DC bureaucrats rather than being delivered directly to the states. Each state already has a Department of Education, thus the benefit of the federal DoE is often redundant. The DoE doesn't create curricula, the DoE doesn't hire teachers, the DoE doesn't do anything that State departments aren't already equipped to do.
So yes, abolish the DoE and let the states do what they are already doing.
If we want to improve education, that happens at the state and school board level. A school in urban Detroit has much different needs than a school in suburban Austin, yet a blanket DoE directive doesn't necessarily respond well to dramatic variations between states and localities. Highly centralized control is less efficient than more granular control given the huge variations among communities and states.
The problem with American education is cultural. Comparing a Chinese parent with a south Chicago parent reveals huge discrepancies. I taught in both China and Korea and they provide a fraction of the per student funding than they do in DC Public Schools. They're using old desks, the students are required to clean the school, technology is very limited, teachers are paid less -- yet they kick American ass in things like math and science. After school in China is spent studying -- for hours. Parents have zero tolerance for failure. Schools paddle rogue students. Embarrassment is a very big deal. Yet what happens to the south Chicago kid that goes home after school and spends his time studying: he's ostracized, even being accused of 'acting white.' There's your problem. A culture that puts the Kardashians on a pedestal and parents who are disengaged and teacher unions that put seniority above results. You also have the issue that university schools of education are frequently the refuge of academic rejects. This is incendiary, I know, but have a look at the academic standards required for education majors compared to pretty much any other major. There are exceptions, but they prove the rule. Funding isn't a problem -- it's a scapegoat. If you want proof of that, compare per student funding and academic achievement per dollar spent: there's little correlation.