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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

#341

Post by camelNotation »

fractallyte wrote: post #321
camelNotation wrote: post #281

The purpose of school is to equip students on how to teach themselves, not to spoon feed them facts. For that reason, philosophy, rhetoric, logic, music, literature, and mathematics should be the priorities. Students who are well-versed in those areas WILL figure out the rest of it a million times faster than some kid who drilled on history, science, or other facts. Teach the kids how to study history, don't feed the…

'Science' is also a method - one that took a long time to develop - and is fundamental in understanding the universe. It should also be included in your list of essentials...

I believe science as method would be included with philosophy, given the direct relationship between the two. I imagine in a proper school, there would be a "philosophy of science" course of some sort, but it wouldn't look like the science courses we have today. Instead, it would be focused on allowing students to pursue research projects, letting them learn a baseline of information on a topic, propose a project, and then do their own research and analysis. The problem is that today, they are given textbooks and told to memorize data they won't use and that they can find on Google in five minutes. It isn't teaching them science the process or asking them to engage in questioning the validity of one study over another, which is the true-to-life test of a person's understanding of science.

How great would it be for a kid to ask "why does rain slide off of leaves?" rather than be told all the different leaf shapes and tree types? How excellent would it be to have a kid spend time documenting all the different types of clouds and offer a hypothesis on their purposes rather than just telling them the formal names and descriptions? Teach them the process, don't make them memorize. No one ever said, "wow, I really am glad they taught me the difference between cumulus and cirrus clouds in middle school science."

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

#342

Post by brightball »

rapala wrote: post #325
brightball wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to fix that is with true school choice options. That way when parents realize it's a problem they can send their kids to schools that make a point to include it rather than the ones that leave it out completely.

School choice fixes the wrong problem. Those children who have parents smart enough to select the right school are going to be better of in any case. It is those children that are left behind in the bad schools that need the systemic improvements. That is, if every child getting a decent schooling is what you want.

This misses the point entirely. It theory it should be impossible for any child to be stuck at a "bad school" because if the school was bad they could simply be sent somewhere else.

It's the total lack of school choice that keeps people stuck in bad schools in the first place.

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

#343

Post by mcgannon2007 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #289
nibs wrote: post #271

This study does not surprise me. All four of my grandparents were educators for their entire career. And as a result, my parents decided to unschool my brothers and I. In trying to be as objective and self-aware as possible, it is clear to us that the homeschoolers/unschoolers we built a community with are vastly better prepared for adulthood, regardless of level of general intelligence. There is a reason the accepta…

> There is a reason the acceptance rate at Stanford is ~27% for homeschoolers vs. 5% for those who went to school. Is it selection bias?

I think this is due to self-selection. Generally, children who are homeschooled have parents who are obviously extremely active in their child's education - an important factor in long-term academic success. Also, homeschoolers tend to be a special group of people on either end of the intelligence spectrum which led them to decide they need the specialization not offered in regular schools. The kids applying to Stanford would be on the high end of the spectrum.

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

#344

Post by BookmarkSaver »

TheBeardKing wrote: post #311
thaumasiotes wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a reason the acceptance rate at Stanford is ~27% for homeschoolers vs. 5% for those who went to school. Is it selection bias?

If Stanford were ineffective at selecting qualified students they wouldn't be an effective school.

I don't think that that is what he was referring to.

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

#345

Post by CalRobert »

mindcrime wrote: post #335
CalRobert wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If memory serves, style guides suggest putting the punctuation inside the quotation marks, even if the punctuation applies to the larger sentence. This, of course, is dumb if you think about it. print "What an absurd convention!;"

If memory serves, style guides suggest putting the punctuation inside the quotation marks, even if the punctuation applies to the larger sentence. Yeah, I've definitely seen that, but I've always thought of that as one of those controversial points where there's no real agreement. I feel like I remember this coming up on HN before and leading to quite a lot of discussion, although I might be mis-remembering.

I've ignored it my entire adult life and haven't been corrected on it. Similarly, my stepmother once insisted I was committing a grave error not using two spaces after a period, but ignoring her advice has been for the best.

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

#346

Post by donutz »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #255
tcdent wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a publicly educated kid who started working when he was 15-1/2 (the legal minimum age in CA for a work permit at the time), I'd encourage you to rethink the importance of child-like innocence. Not that I regret my choices, but that 13 is just a little too young to be career-oriented, and 16 is probably the bare minimum. I was into computers at that age, but if my decisions were based on profitability or profession…

> As a publicly educated kid who started working when he was 15-1/2 (the legal minimum age in CA for a work permit at the time), I'd encourage you to rethink the importance of child-like innocence. Only adults think that any such thing as child-like innocence actually exists. Children see and hear everything .

Are you serious? Seeing and hearing everything doesn't mean understanding everything.

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

#347

Post by zeveb »

tallanvor wrote: post #202
gregatragenet3 wrote: post #24

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…

> Look at the Republican candidates all crowing about how they'll shut down the Department of Education if they're elected.

Please explain to me where in the Constitution the United States are given any authority over the education systems of the individual states.

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

#348

Post by saint_fiasco »

rantanplan wrote: post #331
saint_fiasco wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And by the way, who's preventing you to teach your children to identify(and thus ignore) the flaws of this system? What do you mean 'ignore'? If children are forced to go to school, they can hardly 'ignore' that they are being bullied or 'just go away' if a teachers is incompetent. Most children are perfectly capable of identifying the flaws, they are just impotent and can't do anything about it which causes additio…

The children are incapable. The parents are not. If they don't know how to handle those things then maybe: 1) they should have thought better before deciding to have children and 2) seek help on how to raise them? We used to live in the fucking jungle and you think that today's society is cruel? What's the matter with you people?

>The parents are not.

True. Some parents see those problems and deal with them by, for example, homeschooling their children.

Homeschooling doesn't strike as a thing an 'incapable' parent would choose to do. It takes deliberate thought and lots of work.

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

#349

Post by crpatino »

briandear wrote: post #272
brightball wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to fix that is with true school choice options. That way when parents realize it's a problem they can send their kids to schools that make a point to include it rather than the ones that leave it out completely.

Yes, but teacher unions and Democrats hate that. The idea of free market competition is contrary to every bone in their bodies. That could lead to actual accountability. Currently the US school system is the Lada, free markets could turn it into a Honda.

In free markets, client is always right, right? Like in... the client is 16 y.o., loaded with hormones, and more interested in the current gossip than in the skills that will change his/her life a decade from now. The client is also interested in not having his/her parents nagging about bad grades those old bookworms like to give because they hate youth and freedom...

I am extremely sure that would work OK.

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

#350

Post by brooklyndavs »

zeveb wrote: post #347
tallanvor wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Look at the Republican candidates all crowing about how they'll shut down the Department of Education if they're elected. Please explain to me where in the Constitution the United States are given any authority over the education systems of the individual states.

Really? Article V Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

The interpretation of "gerneral Welfare" varies of course, but providing SOME sort of standards and funding at the federal level for education is well within accepted US federal authority.

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