Disgusting.
Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
141–150 of 241 posts
Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
#142Without attribution of who made the original statement and the context, this is completely meaningless. The Wired article is good, but the Cato article is not HN worthy at all. Purely political propaganda.
I don't think this article is worthy of any up-votes myself, because it doesn't say much.
And if political leanings have corrupted this article, it is in phrasing the solution to the problem in terms of "market competition" and "monopolies"--i.e. the terms of capitalism--rather than in terms of freedom.
In the name of providing an informed citizenry, the educationists have demanded the power to shape American life(how many years of your formative life did you spend in school?), and in too many cases have misshaped it--for their own purposes, good and bad--into a clumsy mess. And still demand that we provide the clay. For evidence, read what the NEA and the AFT say about home-schooling and charter schools.
And to paraphrase Nietzsche, take care in decrying against "political propaganda", lest you become a propagandist yourself.
Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
#143As a software developer who works with teachers on a regular basis (and one of my parents is one), the issue of becoming "too advanced" is a legitimate problem. Its the same reason why Einstein supposedly got Fs throughout school - he was bored with the curriculum, he was too smart for class.
Teachers have to work within the framework and structure of the current education system. Let me assure you that in education the tallest blades of grass are the first to get cut. I don't really blame them, its just self-preservation.
If you look at the current structure of grouping kids by age, then the teacher's issues are perfectly reasonable. How are they going to keep the 15% of really smart kids from being bored, goofing off, and raising a ruckus while the teacher tries to run around and help the average or behind kids with the exercises. A child could legitimately be 3-4 months ahead in school work if they're brilliant learners. So what do we do, let me out in March if he has mastered all the material for the school year? Let him start on next year's material?
If we start grouping by ability to learn and knowledge level, that has problems too. I was great at math but only a good reader and poor at spelling/grammar. Do I get put in an advanced class and lag the other students in areas where I wasn't as strong? Does elementary school look like high school with different classes throughout the day, and how does that impact students in non-knowledge areas?
The rates at which children learn is not steady across all subjects. The rates at which children learn aren't even steady throughout childhood - they could start slow and speed up at a certain age. Self-paced education would be ideal for every student if we were all self-starters and bright, KA will be great for home-schoolers and tutors. Even kids who need remedial help over the summer, give them an iPad and the Khan Academy app and let them catch up over the summer. But letting a bright, ultra-focused kid master an entire grade level over the summer and then the kid will be a hellraiser in school for the next 9.
Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument is essentially "marketing is bad". Which is a shadow argument for "capitalism is bad". Take an ad for the Macbook Air. It shows a stylish person happily using the Air to do something fun. Now consider an ad for a private school that shows a child happily benefitting from something he/she learned at the school being advertised. Maybe the ad shows a graduate getting accepted into a prestigious college or…
Your argument is essentially "marketing is bad". Which is a shadow argument for "capitalism is bad". While your formulation is deliberately obtuse, the underlying sentiment can be quite damning for a certain kind of free market fan-boy, the kind who insists that buyers in a market are rational in some individual or even collective sense, that they somehow optimize their own happiness or utility function. That notion…
I appreciate your boisterous rejoinder to my comment.
I think you are mistaken in your understanding of rationality. Emotion is part of rationality, not separate from it. To make a rational decision, a rational person ought to consider his/her emotional response as input to the decision function, not throw it away.
Also, different individuals have different utility functions, and not all are practical, far-looking, mature, or wise.
Your view of humanity seems rather grim if you think that people are so easily misled by advertising. While dishonest claims in ads are a bad thing, those fall under the category of "dishonesty" and not "advertising". An ad touting an inaccurate gas mileage for a car is no more abhorrent than a window sticker or owner's manual stating inaccurate gas mileage figures, and of course laws exist to discourage companies from engaging in either practice.
If anything, advertising omits negative facts about a product or service. But in a competitive marketplace firms have an incentive to publicize negative aspects of competing products (note the Velveeta ad claiming "Cheddar's lumpy, cheddar's oily..."). So the complaint about ommitted negatives is actually a complaint about an insufficiently competitive marketplace.
Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well put. Finally, I basically hate most aspects of public school. I was ready to agree with this. But then I reflected. What I really hated were my rotten peers (and, to an extent, my rotten self) from around the start of junior high to the end of high school. They weren't horrible, mind you. Just middle-of-the-distribution-curve kids, with the inevitable psychopath or two. I don't think privatization is going to fi…
By no means universal, merely a reflection of my experiences. For example, I was an exchange student for a year and when I came back I was told I'd get no credits for it because I couldn't produce a report card , so I was held back (i.e. punished for studying in a diff. country for a year). Same year: moved from another state, forced to take freshman "earth & environmental sciences" because it's a state requirement.…
This is not limited to public schools. I experienced something similar after transferring from a private university, taking six full semesters of a computer engineering curriculum, only to be required to attend community college to take intro to computers, among others, before I was allowed to enroll in a public university.
So, six years of fulltime classes for an undergraduate degree is my experience.
Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument is essentially "marketing is bad". Which is a shadow argument for "capitalism is bad". Take an ad for the Macbook Air. It shows a stylish person happily using the Air to do something fun. Now consider an ad for a private school that shows a child happily benefitting from something he/she learned at the school being advertised. Maybe the ad shows a graduate getting accepted into a prestigious college or…
For myself, I think advertising as it currently exists is a massive negative for society, and I think capitalism is a net win (perhaps marginal). So I insist that "marketing is bad" is NOT a shadow argument for "capitalism is bad". You do a fine job of describing what I think is wrong with ads (that most ads consist primarily of false information, often conveyed via subtle signals that the consumer processes non-cons…
Please see my above post on persuasion as a rebuttal, it also applies in part to this post.
Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are misunderstanding what college is intended to accomplish. The goal is to teach students how to teach themselves. This knowledge doesn't become outdated, and ensures that students never have to allow their other knowledge to become outdated as well.
Couldn't that goal be reached in mess than four years?
Maybe. I don't have sufficient background in psychology or whatnot to say.
Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
College is not working - by the time kids graduate most of what they 'learned' in the classroom is outdated. College if anything is just a good place to gain 'social experiences'.
That's ridiculous when applied to college education in general. Do you really think that history, mechanical engineering or business majors graduate only to find that their education is rendered uselessly out of date?
Exactly. Out of date information may perhaps plague trade schools (I kind of doubt it there too..) but in a proper curriculum in a university it's total popular myth rubbish.
Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how it worked at my university. I had some choice as far as what order I could take classes in, but everything still worked at the same pace no matter what.
Um. You can be taking freshman-level courses your senior year. Or, if you are up to the challenging, junior level courses your freshmen year.
At my university in the EE program you had to complete all freshman and sophomore level classes before you were allowed to take any junior or senior level classes.
You also had to meet with an adviser towards the end of each semester before you were released to schedule classes for the next. Apparently engineers tried to circumvent the rules too many times, probably because we're always focused on optimizing solutions.
Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be clear, my pronouncement of it not being HN worthy has nothing to with it being from Cato. But purely with the content of the article. Let me explain. It opens with an unattributed quote. One that is somewhat surprising given what I've seen from the teachers and educators I know who have seen Khan Academy. While some complain about things like the rigor of the exercises, I've never heard the complaint about need…
The "appeals to authority" fallacy applies when I'm citing non-experts (like if I'm citing Chomsky for an economics issue). CATO is overwhelmingly filled with PhDs in Economics, and with my economics background, I think it's safe to assume the above article is not controversial at all among economists across the aisle and none of them would term it "purely political propaganda". You state that CATO is "purely politic…
The "appeals to authority" fallacy applies when I'm citing non-experts (like if I'm citing Chomsky for an economics issue).
Or when there's not consensus in the field.
You state that CATO is "purely political propaganda" without substantiating that claim with any specifics whatsoever.
Why do you keep saying that? The first sentence of my last post makes it clear that this isn't about Cato. I don't care who wrote it.
I'm from Seattle and this school district, up until this year, has been open enrollment which means students could attend any school in the school district they wanted. And the school district would even pay for busing, but traveling halfway across the city, spending 2 hours a day on the bus typically meant people went to neighborhood schools.
And that's my point with supermarkets too. Go to Watts and check out the selection and quality of food in supermarkets. Then go to La Jolla. Sure its a free market, but people don't really have much in the way of choice in poor areas. Unless they want to hop on a bus for an hour each way.
A PhD in econ may mean you've figured out the optimal way to rapidly approach equilibria, but it won't tell you that you can't ride the L through the westside to get to the good supermarkets if you're known to be from the eastside.