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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

#971

Post by hopelite »

graemep wrote: post #614
hopelite wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> And yes, skin color itself is irrelevant, it is simply a convenient identifier for underlying significant biological differences No, its a terrible identifier. If you group people by genetic similarity (which is of dubious usefulness) you essentially end up with three different black African races, one Australian, Pacific and Native American, and one everyone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_cluste…

When you try to identify a type of apple, do you just throw your arms up in total capitulation because you cannot identify the likelihood of an apple being a Granny Smith apple vs a Ruby Red apple because "color is a terrible identifier"?

You people have had your minds so warped and messed up like is common in most cults, that you can't even see what is right before your very eyes and have to rationalize away what you see due to the abusive conditioning. It's very common among all mentally and emotionally abused people. It's why all abused people will defend their abusers beyond all edges of reality.

Now genetics is also "of dubious usefulness" because it is irrefutable proof and must be rationalized away because your abusers have conditioned you to that position?

It's insanity, my friend. Reality is fine, come join us, even if your abusers hate that you may break away from their abuses and the conditioning that serves them and their sadistic ways. You are better than this, you deserve sanity and reality. You deserve to believe the truth.

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

#972

Post by hombre_fatal »

KPGv2 wrote: post #387
hombre_fatal wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember racing home from school to catch Gundam Wing and Dragonball Z. And then they were over until the next day.

yeah but you get home at 4, watch an hour of anime, it's 5pm, you do homework for half an hour, then you have dinner with family until about 7, then you have about an hour of getting ready for bed/chores and that gets you to 8pm. At most you have one more hour of studying. So 90 minutes of education-related stuff at home a day in your ideal past where kids "only" spent an hour on TV.

I'm not sure what your point is.

My point is that the entertainment was finite, in this case because it was only available for a set duration.

That Dragonball Z came on for a single episode created a dead zone where it made sense to do homework and it wasn't pulling teeth when it came time to sit down for dinner with my family (something we both would be very privileged to have in our youth btw).

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

#973

Post by rayiner »

graemep wrote: post #602
inglor_cz wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot think of any single ethnocultural group in the West that highly values education and, at the same time, has bad outcomes doing so. We have invested a lot of money and effort into our educational systems. Even traditionally oppressed groups like the Jews or the Chinese (Chinese Exclusion Act anyone?) or descendants of Russian muzhiks or Indian untouchable castes do have good outcomes if they actually motivate…

Jews were motived to achieve because they were oppressed. How do Indian low castes do compared to higher castes in the same country? They often continue to suffer from discrimination from higher castes in the west. I can believe they do better than some other groups, but how to they compare to higher caste Indians?

I don’t know about low caste indians, but a good data point might be vietnamese. They are generally looked down on by other east asians. Their poverty rate in 1980 was higher than among black people. Today (where 60% are still foreign born) their median income and poverty rate is right around the national average, about 10% behind white americans.

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

#974

Post by BeFlatXIII »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #866
BeFlatXIII wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every now and again there is an aberration where teachers actually teach something in a public school, but in the US, why take the chance? If you can afford it, send your kids to a private school. Ignoring the existence of well-off suburban public schools.

Yes. I went to a very nice suburban public school. As did my offspring. But it seems somehow... thermodynamic... in order to maintain the quality of our suburban public schools, we have to take more and more resources away from other schools, in less well-off neighborhoods. I don't have data on this, but it certainly SEEMS to be that way.

At least where I grew up, it was a result of higher real estate prices in the suburbs leading to higher revenue at the same tax rate.

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

#975

Post by wing-_-nuts »

cevn wrote: post #703
jmpman wrote: post #693

My son is taking a woodworking class in high school. First week, he came home and I asked him what he was doing in his woodworking class… “Disassembling the library bookcases”. “Why???” “Because they’re getting rid of the library”. Apparently the school board decided to save money by cutting the librarian, and then decided to just move the books out of the school library and into the “nearby” public library. In reali…

Wow, I spent 90% of my free time as a kid in the school library. Reading this hurts. At least they are protecting them from using their brain

I got shunted into remedial reading in the 1st grade because I had a visible disability. I was there for about a week before the teacher noticed I was bored to tears. Bless her, she had me tested. Turns out I was reading at a 4th grade level, so I immediately got taken out of that class and put into the 'gifted' class.

That class was the best kind of unstructured. We had a new teacher with little experience, but she just turned us lose on the school library and let us read whatever and then talk about it in class. I *ADORED* that class. It was getting an hour a day to basically do what I wanted to be doing anyway.

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

#976

Post by p1esk »

int_19h wrote: post #956
georgeecollins wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but the past also needed more serfs than readers. I don't think that is good, but maybe it is too idealistic to think you can create a nation of 330m critical thinkers. Not because it isn't possible, but because not everyone wants to approach life that way.

The past needed more serfs than readers until the Industrial Revolution, but once we got those going, all that machinery required skilled people to operate.

Did making things without machinery require fewer skilled people?

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

#978

Post by hamza_q_ »

spicymaki wrote: post #587

Almost all of the comments have someone’s pet theory about the cause of the decline in achievement. The truth is we don’t actually know why there is a decline or how to stop it.

We do know; it's just not in the popular conscience yet. Read a bit of Marshall McLuhan.

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

#979

Post by paulddraper »

lurking_swe wrote: post #917
paulddraper wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However,the United States, particularly in the last 50 years, seems to have fostered a culture averse to education. !! The rate of college graduates has increased nearby 50% over that timeframe. A rather unexpected result for a cultural aversion to education.

most students are going to college because many jobs require it, or because they were “pushed” into it by teachers or parents. Not because they value education in the slightest. I went to a state school and was one of the “weirdos” that didn’t party or join a fraternity. IMO some of us are there to learn and socialize on the side. Others are there to socialize and learn on the side.

> or because they were “pushed” into it by

That's literally the definition of cultural influence

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

#980

Post by benmw333 »

clejack wrote: post #588
benmw333 wrote: post #199

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.

I was happily lurking until I saw this astounding response. "Every relationship with {men|women} I've been in has been bad, so romance is obviously worthless." "My neighbors dog always barks at me, I didn't get why anyone likes dogs." "I've had a bad experience with ${race} so I really wish we could get rid of them." "I caught the flu, and it didn't kill me. I don't get why people are always worried about it." "I've…

Yes, I'm serious.

You make the mistake of thinking I am one of few, when I am one of many.

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