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US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

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Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#191

Post by dotnet00 »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #183
jf22 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the comparisons to other schools or cultures where memorization is the priority. What kids do with what they learn in school matter more than whether or not they memorized a calc function. Besides, who cares if you know cal functions in a post-phone, post-AI world. You look that shit up now.

I wish this narrative that memorization is bad would die. Yes, understanding concepts is also important, but memorization is incredibly useful for learning and applying knowledge. The faster you can recall "trivia" the better you are able to make connections. I say this as someone you drank the "no memorization" koolaid. Now I always start new things with memorization first and I learn so much faster.

Yep, the most obvious example (besides language) would be of math. Despite what kids (and unfortunately, some adults) say, it's worth memorizing the tables from 1->10 despite the ubiquity of calculators because the process of memorizing them helps with seeing the patterns that provide a deeper understanding, and it's much faster than pulling out a calculator and plugging the numbers in.

There are some subjects where the emphasis on memorization that some places have is detrimental, but that doesn't make memorization bad in general.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#192

Post by bjourne »

echelon wrote: post #80
stephendause wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jonathan Haidt has a lot of good material on this. He is leading the charge in encouraging parents to delay giving their child a phone until high school and not allowing them to have social media accounts until age 16. https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/family/story/author-sugge...

How do Asian countries and top-performing countries deal with this? We should do whatever they do. On that note, we should also segregate kids by academic desire and achievement like Japan and China. The bullies and underachievers hold back those who are academically excellent. We do this in limited instances, but not enough to really count.

[flagged]

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#193

Post by MisterTea »

estimator7292 wrote: post #170
lucideng wrote: post #33

The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. Most parents just watch TV, stare at their phones and don't want to be bothered by anything that requires effort. A major societal shift needs to happen for this to be reversed. It's many factors... the parents, the food system, various inequalities, social media, technology, healthcare... the solution is multi-pronged. But if I had t…

The core problem is actually twofold: 1. We pay teachers like shit and treat them even worse. Even if you wanted to do a good job as a teacher, it's fundamentally impossible because: 2. Our schools are structured and run by busybodies that have absolutely no business being within 100 yards of a school. Curricula is set by politics and ideology, not established science. We have book bans and helicopter parents suing t…

> Curricula is set by politics and ideology, not established science.

This is part of it. A friend is a teacher and is now in an admin position where he manages teachers. His big gripe is the higher ups have no formal system - every time a new person comes in they bring with them their system and politics, burning down the previous efforts while doing little to nothing for students. Then they leave for greener pastures and the next ideologue comes along with their matches.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#194

Post by toast0 »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #27

Just looking at the picture triggered me. Why are the students sitting in groups and cutting paper with scissors? There’s a huge teaching gap between USA and Asia. See for yourself: https://youtu.be/wIyVYCuPxl0?si=f6wFv2G3Iru7QFTy https://en.wikipedia-on-ipfs.org/wiki/James_W._Stigler Edit: since it may not have been clear from the video, this is my interpretation: * in the Japanese math class the teacher teaches at…

> Why are the students sitting in groups and cutting paper with scissors?

Because paper cutters are too easy to disassemble as re-use as a shiv machete? And anyway, it's pretty hard to make cloudy curves with a paper cutter.

> in the American class the teacher spends practically 0 time at the blackboard, the students sit in large groups, the teacher spends most of the time with one or two groups.

Three or four students is a large group?

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#195

Post by jjulius »

watwut wrote: post #182
julienchastang wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent here with school-aged kids. I think this sub-thread blaming the parents is particularly depressing and not founded in reality. Here is the way I see it. The social media companies with quasi infinite resources have won. They hired the best and the brightest engineers to hack our minds and steal our attention and they have succeeded beyond expectations. As evidence look that the market capitalization of Meta, e…

Of course kids are reading less. When I was growing, there was frequently not much else to do. Reading was replaced by movies and shows on demand and wont come back no matter what educators or parents do. It is cheaper, easily available and more fun. Sure kids also use social networks. But the role reading had was mostly taken over by Netflix, youtube, disney and such.

>Reading was replaced by movies and shows on demand and wont come back no matter what educators or parents do.

... huh?

I'm a parent and this just isn't true. My wife and I have phones, our young children do not. We do not own a tablet. Our children have never known what it's like to have the option of resorting to a screen to keep them busy when we're out of the house. TV time is limited on the weekends, extra limited on the weeknights.

My oldest absolutely loves reading, and I watched her sit in the corner for 90 minutes on Sunday with a pile of books and a massive grin on her face the whole time. My youngest is still too young to read, but I'm hoping for results within the same realm.

Your comment about there frequently not being much else to do? It's up to parents to, for lack of a better phrase, teach kids how to be bored.

Edit:

>It's cheaper, easily available and more fun.

What's super fun, easily available and free for us is going to a park on the weekend to play and have lunch, and then driving around to a bunch of Little Free Libraries in the area. Drop off books we don't want, see if the kids or parents find anything that strikes our fancy. Our kiddos love it and so do we, it's great family time.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#196

Post by MisterTea »

julienchastang wrote: post #142
lucideng wrote: post #33

The majority of the public school system has devolved into day-care, not education. Most parents just watch TV, stare at their phones and don't want to be bothered by anything that requires effort. A major societal shift needs to happen for this to be reversed. It's many factors... the parents, the food system, various inequalities, social media, technology, healthcare... the solution is multi-pronged. But if I had t…

Parent here with school-aged kids. I think this sub-thread blaming the parents is particularly depressing and not founded in reality. Here is the way I see it. The social media companies with quasi infinite resources have won. They hired the best and the brightest engineers to hack our minds and steal our attention and they have succeeded beyond expectations. As evidence look that the market capitalization of Meta, e…

My friend has kids, 8 and 10, who run around outside and play with neighborhood kids as well as read books. They are very active in their kids lives and constantly bring them to events and other social gatherings. This keeps them active physically and socially making things like screen time seem boring.

The shitty parents are the ones who let meta and the like hack them to the point where their children are just following by example - if you stare at the screen all day, so will they.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#197

Post by ryandrake »

yepitwas wrote: post #136
bityard wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me that cell phones in the classroom is even controversial. When I was in school, some kids had Walkmans, CD players, and game boys. You could bring them to school but they weren't allowed in the classroom without prior approval. In class, you were expected to pay attention to the teacher, even if you didn't want to. If you got caught with a device instead of listening, the teacher simply took it away u…

To be very blunt: trashy parents with too much time on their hands will become enraged and raise a huge stink if their kid can't text them or answer their calls (!) while in class. So many will do this that schools just gave up. That's why it's nice when states just make it a law. That shuts those people up (or at least forces them to go complain somewhere else, where they're more easily ignored and it takes more eff…

I think as a general societal change, we need to stop catering to people simply because they "become enraged."

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#198

Post by tenarchits »

Most of the comments are focused on the supply of education. But I don't think the supply side is the problem, irrespective of teachers and high schools. There is more and cheaper education available than ever before. Nearly every highschooler has more access to learning that kings and emperors would have fought wars for less than 200 years ago. However,the United States, particularly in the last 50 years, seems to have fostered a culture averse to education. I believe the years long decline in test scores is a symptom of that cultural shift.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#199

Post by benmw333 »

When I think of all my teachers I had throughout K-12 public school, not one of them stands out as having meaningfully impacted my life.

In fact I would argue many of them were a net negative to my learning achievements (or lack thereof).

So yeah, defund public schools as much as possible. That will get my vote.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#200

Post by bsder »

vondur wrote: post #176
estimator7292 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core problem is actually twofold: 1. We pay teachers like shit and treat them even worse. Even if you wanted to do a good job as a teacher, it's fundamentally impossible because: 2. Our schools are structured and run by busybodies that have absolutely no business being within 100 yards of a school. Curricula is set by politics and ideology, not established science. We have book bans and helicopter parents suing t…

Where my wife works the average salary is over 100K per year, so not bad for 9 months of work. This is in California where the test scores are some of the worst in the nation. I would not lean too hard at political party affiliation, California politics is heavily influenced by Teachers Unions, and yet we score near the bottom of the entire US.

> This is in California where the test scores are some of the worst in the nation.

This is an easily disprovable statement that calls into question your credibility.

California schools generally score right at or just below the median for the entire US.

That doesn't make them good, but they sure aren't the worst.

> I would not lean too hard at political party affiliation

In the US, it's not hard to look at a map of political party affiliation and a ranking of the worst schools and not notice the correlation.

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