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Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

economist.com

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Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Such posts require workers to think critically, yet graduates of local schools are often unable to read or do simple maths. This is why the company recently decided to open a new factory in Poland... This was the solution? Seriously? Going through the hassle of opening up a factory on the other side of the planet across language and legal barriers all because the local population in Oklahoma didn't come shrink-wrapp…

This comment is so naive that it hurts. So the company is supposed to push through an educational reform and wait 10-15 years for their future employees to go through the system before it can hire them?

Or spend two weeks training them to work on a biscuit making assembly line or babysit machinery that they'll have to be trained on anyway.

But I have a feeling this is less about having a basic skillset and more about that few Americans wanted to spend their time doing that kind of work for what they were willing to pay.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#122
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure that company wants those engaged in its lowest paid repetitive tasks to be critical thinkers. They might sit there, thinking critically, and realise that skill-shortage is economic new-speak for "wage-shortage". Everyone wants a ferrari, no one wants to pay for it. This doesn't mean there is a ferrari-shortage. Similarly, every big business and corporation wants cheap labour, preferably labour that will tak…

You make it sound like there's something wrong with outsourcing?

Outsourcing is fine. Outsourcing and saying "It is because you all are so stupid." when that is clearly not the truth is not.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#123

Growing up, I declined to participate in the educational system (primarily to avoid harassment at school) and instead spent all of my time learning to program video games at home. So I would sleep through class, go home, and try to write Pong. My academic performance was nonexistent, but I came out of it with a career. I was wondering, was anyone else's childhood experience similar? Highschool felt at best a dungeon,…

I felt the same about school: mostly, I hated it, and it was torture to go. I did very well, mostly because my mother instilled a kind of fear of getting less than an A on anything, which my extreme personality ratcheted up to a fear of getting less than A+. I obsessed over test scores, and remembering information came pretty easy.

The only part of school I enjoyed was math. I absolutely loved learning and doing math. That I could do a problem with lots of complicated steps, many of which seemed almost creative, and arrive at a common answer, was like logical magic. And it complimented my budding programming hobby very well.

I started trying to program games almost as soon as I had a computer, when I was still very young. I remember it took a long time to understand for loops at first. Then it took a long time to figure out how to poll keyboard input the right way. Then it took a while to learn the ins and outs of BLTing, and so on.

I left college after only one semester. I still thought the programming thing would probably only be a hobby. Still, I made a game, and tried to sell it. But it only sold 500 copies, so I was discouraged. My adulthood got off to a very rocky start, not knowing what to do. I took me 2 years to realize that I could actually get a programming job with what I already knew. At first, I wouldn't have believed it was possible, not without college. But through a couple of lucky breaks, it happened, and I found myself a full-fledged software developer at a real software company at 21, with no formal education. 15 years later, I find myself in the middle of a pretty interesting, varied programming career.

Looking back, the only parts of school that served me were math, and english. I could have just studied those two during high school, I think, and come out just as well. Everything else was self study.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#124
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a number of good friends who are teachers, including maths, and they talk about it a lot. While you may not think your system is good, it sounds like the UK system is encouraging mediocrity. For example, when I was at school 20 years ago, we had to memorise formulas for common thing ( speed = distance over time, and similar). Apparently the kids are given the formulas in exams now. There doesn't appear to be s…

> Apparently the kids are given the formulas in exams now. I don't see a problem with that. Memorizing formula is as useful as memorizing anything else, it's not very useful and not a measure of knowledge. Knowing how to use the formula, how to manipulate them, are what they are supposed to be being taught.

That's true, but giving the formula makes the problem way easier : You know you have to use that formula in the problem. That's less intellectually challenging.

The best is to give the students a cheat sheet with a lot formulas, but not a reminder in each exercise of which formula is useful in that exercise. In that case they have to think about which one to use.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also memorised the formulas for d/s/t and f/a/p but struggle to see how these translate in to academic excellence of any type, or even why giving them to someone is encouraging mediocrity. There is (imho) nothing of value in memorizing simple formulas, and everything in the value of knowing how and when to apply those formulas, or where to Google for them.

The presumption that students have memorised the formulae allows you to build more complex tests with confidence that they will tease out understanding and not just computation. In my highschool physics exam, about 2/3rds was of questions based on memorised formulae. For example, the bouncing ball problem, with a series of questions to tease out our application of calculus, memorisation of compression rules and so on…

> To solve this problem you actually need to consider the thermic effect of water falling.

I suspect you got this question wrong.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#126
post #103
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the same, it's quite a shock read such a statement. On the other side I value my education I had in Poland only because it was hard sometimes and I was looking into how to hack the system and outsmart teachers' questions/assignments (math especially). Education system I had ten years ago was focused on memorization, "soft" subjects and skills (languages, first language) while math and physics weren't valu…

>I would say the same, it's quite a shock read such a statement. You might find it interesting to read and comment on the actual article then. It dates the beginning of the recent reform of Poland's education system to 1997, just one year before you graduated, so it may be that a lot has changed since your time.

[deleted]

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#127

Growing up, I declined to participate in the educational system (primarily to avoid harassment at school) and instead spent all of my time learning to program video games at home. So I would sleep through class, go home, and try to write Pong. My academic performance was nonexistent, but I came out of it with a career. I was wondering, was anyone else's childhood experience similar? Highschool felt at best a dungeon,…

> I didn't really know how the world worked, and it seemed to me like the system had been designed for the purpose of dragging me down to the level of the brutes around me. A huge amount of education "policy" in the US is driven by the goal of closing the "achievement gap" between blacks and whites (for educational purposes, Asians are honorary whites). Since when you improve instruction, high performers tend to bene…

Please provide a statistically significant number of examples when effective teaching strategies were discouraged because they improved education for whites and blacks equally. Otherwise, I'm left to assume you made this up, because it sounds good.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#128
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently the kids are given the formulas in exams now. I don't see a problem with that. Memorizing formula is as useful as memorizing anything else, it's not very useful and not a measure of knowledge. Knowing how to use the formula, how to manipulate them, are what they are supposed to be being taught.

That's true, but giving the formula makes the problem way easier : You know you have to use that formula in the problem. That's less intellectually challenging. The best is to give the students a cheat sheet with a lot formulas, but not a reminder in each exercise of which formula is useful in that exercise. In that case they have to think about which one to use.

> The best is to give the students a cheat sheet with a lot formulas

This is the way I've seen it done, the same way you give chemistry students a periodic table.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#129
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently the kids are given the formulas in exams now. I don't see a problem with that. Memorizing formula is as useful as memorizing anything else, it's not very useful and not a measure of knowledge. Knowing how to use the formula, how to manipulate them, are what they are supposed to be being taught.

That's true, but giving the formula makes the problem way easier : You know you have to use that formula in the problem. That's less intellectually challenging. The best is to give the students a cheat sheet with a lot formulas, but not a reminder in each exercise of which formula is useful in that exercise. In that case they have to think about which one to use.

It's depressing but giving people "s = d / t" then asking questions like "Bob travelled for 2 hours at 50 mph. How far has Bob travelled?" is still tricky for some people to work out.

We don't want people to learn formulae. We don't particularly need people to do mental arithmetic. We want people to understand problem solving and gathering information and relationships between different bits of the formula.

See also the viral video "meaning of MPH" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhm7-LEBznk)

There's some unpleasant "HURR DURR GURLS ARE STOOPID" in some videos (and don't for the love of god read the comments) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0OsGu9B2o)

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#130
post #119
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised that you agree w/ the conclusion of the review that segregating talent into higher and lower achieving groups is bad. I think it's bad too, and here's why: The teachers & staff in charge of the less-performers will do less to help them. Won't push them as hard. Generally just not care(as much). I think it's better for the under-performers to see the strong-performers and understand those kids are not…

So do you think that the US higher-ed system is inherently flawed also, with competition between high achievers (i.e. Harvard) and schools that anyone can get into? It's true that there are more resources associated with success, but doesn't that also incentivize people to work harder to end up in the higher bracket? I don't see the "Class-C" problem as necessarily a problem, so long as the person in "Class-C" has th…

>> So do you think that the US higher-ed system is inherently flawed also, with competition between high achievers (i.e. Harvard) and schools that anyone can get into?

Yes, I do think there's a flaw there too. But the paid schools' issue is more complicated because of the "private" money involved. "Private" in that, students are paying directly out of pocket rather than the taxes that go into public high-schools that's less visible to people. What I'd like to see there, is that people who go to the cheaper & less "high society" schools get a chance to take maybe 1 or 2 classes a year at the Havards/Stanfords/Yales/etc just to see what it's like on those campuses. No segregation either; there should not be any way to tell which students are exclusively attending Harvard/Stanford versus the ones on the "visitor" program unless the student him/herself chooses to disclose that info.

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