711–720 of 925 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but back when California was poorer, it had some of the best schools in the nation. Now that it's richer, the schools are collapsing, so it's really hard to argue that systematic social problems are the root cause.
The only thing that changed is that California got richer, and it just so happens that wealth was evenly distributed. How convenient.
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If you hold a race, but some people start further behind others, they have a longer track to run. I think we can agree that to call it a fair race, we'd want to accommodate for the track length.
Sure, but if some people are faster than others because they have longer legs or because they've trained more etc. then people without such advantages aren't given special accomodation. It actually runs in my family that we have very short legs in comparison to our torsos. For example I'm 6' tall but look like I'm 6' 4" or thereabouts when sitting down next to someone with more normal proportions. In spite of this di…
I used to teach high school math. There was a big push for doing everything digitally. And admittedly, for some topics the use of technology in the classroom or at home can really be a benefit, for instance visualizations or interactive exercises. But having a digital device in class was the number one cause of distraction every time. For a lot of things, good old blackboards are just fine as are pen + paper exercise…
blackboards in uni where you can't do anything but just rewrite everything the prof is writing is a nightmarish waste of time, especially for anyone with any kind of attention difficulties please remove the devices from the students but provide slides
For me this meant I recalled it way better. I hardly looked at the notes afterwards, but writing them down were crucial. I also could follow the process and ask questions where I didn't understand a step. When I did review the notes, they were very well structured and thus very informative.
The absolute worst lectures I had were slide-based. I either had to focus on transliteration to notes, but that meant I had to focus on that rather than what the professor was saying. And if I did the opposite I didn't write notes and thus could hardly recall the details if at all.
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The problem is that just like students, teachers are not all created equal. My 3rd grade teacher wanted to fail me for “discipline” problems. In reality, she simply didn’t like me; I had no discipline complaints in other years. I had undiagnosed ADHD and was gifted. She did not know how to deal with that, and actively disliked me. Activist teachers are also a thing.
Crazy that such a load bearing job isn't better funded and more respected. Arguably the most important job in society and the level of respect, pay and to some extent training (at least a lot of places require a masters for what that's worth) is absolutely not commensurate with it's importance. I dropped out of high school for the same reason, I had a teacher that failed me for writing an essay in three different sty…
I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates. University was free and there was no test for enrolling in STEM degrees, and you could retry exams every semester as much as you wanted to. But goddamit exams were HARD and if you weren’t prepared enough you would keep failing until you gave up. We weren’t entitled because we weren’…
I think the large class model and a barrier of exams to advance makes sense in Europe. I've not been in the University of California system for years, but the school I went to - some classes didn't always hold up a level of academic rigor.
> “We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” they warned. i dont understand why the teachers would go out of their way to reteach middle-school math. i teach. my courses have prerequisites. if a student somehow makes it into…
> i dont understand why the teachers would go out of their way to reteach middle-school math. "gaps" implies a critical mass of students who require middle-school math reteaching. > i teach. If you've taught for a non-trivial amount of time, you did one of the following with that class: * graded on a curve so you don't fail half the class * failed half the class, and got suspended (pours one out for my compsci profes…
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> i dont understand why the teachers would go out of their way to reteach middle-school math. "gaps" implies a critical mass of students who require middle-school math reteaching. > i teach. If you've taught for a non-trivial amount of time, you did one of the following with that class: * graded on a curve so you don't fail half the class * failed half the class, and got suspended (pours one out for my compsci profes…
(at least in Budapest, many moons ago) highly technical programs had some really infamous classes. but people had a lot of chances to pass the exams. each semester about 3. and it was possible to take the class 3 times (the 3rd required a permission, but it was formality, it was granted almost to everyone) so in the end if someone was unprepared, they had at least a year to get their shit together. (but the exams rar…
I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates. University was free and there was no test for enrolling in STEM degrees, and you could retry exams every semester as much as you wanted to. But goddamit exams were HARD and if you weren’t prepared enough you would keep failing until you gave up. We weren’t entitled because we weren’…
Having just shipped the kiddo into the real world, she's leaning liberal arts (her and her mom suck at math), but she has a benefit neither her mom or I had - EU deal citizenship. She's going to do a year here to figure things out - she's also been thinking about Europe. University in Europe, for undergrad, is different than the US. I think the large class model and a barrier of exams to advance makes sense in Europe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having just shipped the kiddo into the real world, she's leaning liberal arts (her and her mom suck at math), but she has a benefit neither her mom or I had - EU deal citizenship. She's going to do a year here to figure things out - she's also been thinking about Europe. University in Europe, for undergrad, is different than the US. I think the large class model and a barrier of exams to advance makes sense in Europe…
What is EU deal?
Edit: if anyone’s confused, there was a typo in the original post. I corrected it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that just like students, teachers are not all created equal. My 3rd grade teacher wanted to fail me for “discipline” problems. In reality, she simply didn’t like me; I had no discipline complaints in other years. I had undiagnosed ADHD and was gifted. She did not know how to deal with that, and actively disliked me. Activist teachers are also a thing.
I'm not completely convinced that "ADHD" isn't just the natural state of kids who are bored most of the time.