141–150 of 201 posts
Look at the minds produced: Larry Page and Sergei Brin of Google, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, etc.
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-...
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"Before I get downvoted into oblivion" Why is it always necessarily to add this? It's like "I apologize in advance but I'm going to insult you". As an aside I was wondering this morning if people who down vote read an entire comment or downvote on the first negative thing they don't like, disagree with etc. If that is the case you would think that putting your last sentence (sans the bigdio) would suffice as a prophy…
Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I see that as a form of passive aggressive manipulation. The way I read that kind of comment is "I know the mob will downvote me instead of discussing the topic; you don't want to be part of the mob, do you now?"
Sigh. You need both. The reality is that there's a lot of book-learning in the world. You're never going to build a rocket to the moon by starting in your backyard with some sheet metal - your lifespan isn't long enough if you take that approach. You have to read books written by people who have gone before, and learn from their mistakes, which you can do at a far more rapid pace than you can by making all those mist…
I think you come from a false premise. The idea that "book learning" can be successfully measured through standardized testing does not have as much backing as you think it does. One of the big problems of standardized testing and school in general the way we've been doing it is that you can inculcate a great deal of pseudo-knowledge, and you can probe for its existence through these targeted tests, but in many cases…
My first instinct was to say that a tree's mass comes from dead stars. Imagining how it got from those stars to the air that eventually becomes the tree would keep you busy for a while :D
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And you know what? I'll tell you why people get this wrong. It's because their brains turn off. They say "omg microscopes scary! big block of text!" and guess at answers instead of actually bothering to try and read the text. That's one reason why they get poor scores at reading comprehension: a lack of reading with intent to comprehend. Heck, if they're pressed for time and the guessing-wrong penalty is low enough,…
>It's because their brains turn off. They say "omg microscopes scary! big block of text!" s/microscope/computer and you have the cause of an average Helpdesk's stress... ed. Downvotes? Really? Nobody has ever struggled with a problem which could be solved if the help-ee has bothered to read the text on their screen ?
On the other hand, when she doesn't call me for help, she ends up printing off a picture from a webpage and scanning it back in to get it into a power point presentation. That's better than giving up on the problem, I guess.
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Robotics labs aren't expensive: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...
I'm not sure you realize just how strapped for cash most school districts are. The average K-12 teacher in the US spends around $350 out of their own pocket each year just to buy supplies like books, pencils and glue that schools and parents can't or won't pay for. Only 8% of teachers can get through a year without spending any of their own money on supplies. ( http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/07/08/teachers-spend…
They're actually not that cash-strapped. They just don't choose to spend money on education.
It's unclear how giving them more money will change that.
Seriously - take the spending per-pupil year and multiply it by the number of kids in a class room. Subtract the teacher's salary and benefits. Subtract the cost of the room and educational facilities (like the library). Heck - subtract the cost of the playground.
Now, ask yourself where the rest of the money went.
Who exactly is going to teach children to build rockets and robots? As a country we have pretty much run all the vocational teachers out of the schools. The vocational teachers were good because most did contracting during the summer. Add to this the decline in schools teaching programming[1]. We need to figure a way to get qualified technical / vocational people back into the schools and realize that they need to pa…
[1] Training?
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Part of this is just a reflection of the changing economy. Shop classes were funded when there was a demand in our economy for people who made things. Now that we've outsourced the making of things to China, there's no perceived need for learning how things are made anymore; they just get made , somewhere out of sight, and when they break we throw them away and buy new ones. This is a strangely infantile way for a so…
So how much demand is there in todays workplace for historians, geographers and spellers - but they still manage to find time on the curriculum
A Geography degree usually involves a mixture of “hard” and “soft” science. While studying I did everything from climbing mountains to set off weather balloons to standing on a street corner interviewing people about their transportation behavior. I also spent far too long hacking away in Python and attended many classes that were essentially computer science/physics classes. Finding a job after graduation was not an issue at all and nearly everyone I graduated with walked into a well paying job that was often in an exotic location. Please don’t lump us in with historians! ;)
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So how much demand is there in todays workplace for historians, geographers and spellers - but they still manage to find time on the curriculum
There is plenty of demand for Geography graduates. From an IT perspective - understanding Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software is essential in many industries - land management, natural resource exploitation, environmental modeling, transportation planning etc. A Geography degree usually involves a mixture of “hard” and “soft” science. While studying I did everything from climbing mountains to set off weathe…
It's the attitude that we should stop shop class because nobody is going to work in metal bashing anymore - and of course there is no way that exposure to engineering in school is going to lead to somebody being an aerospace engineer.
While any 'proper' subject is sacrosanct
Some students need to build rockets and robots. Others need standardized tests to make sure they can read.