Our Educational System-Science

[Braeden P]

So sounds like my German teacher she would not except any late work even if you are sick and you ask for help and she would yell that you should have kept up and she speaks in mostly German and we only learned 10 words and then she would blame her personal problems on whoever was the first to ask a question so we dropped out a class of 20 now only has 4 people left and my parents went on a zoom call with her to see what was going on and she was giving them attitude when they would ask a question so as soon as they got off that call they called the principal and we dropped out but she can’t be fired because of teacher union and the highest grade in that class right now is a 25% really low.

 

[savarin]

I loved calculus at school and was pretty good. Never used it since so today all I can remember is the name.

 

[RJSakowski]

I am amazed and dismayed at the amount of ignorance that I see today. Much of it is due to the internet and the ability of Joe Blow to spout out a bunch of misinformation and people to accept that misinformation as fact.

On the other hand. I am truly amazed at the brilliance that I see in the 12 to 18 year old youngsters who participate in the FIRST robotics teams. I was asked some time ago by the regional director of the FIRST program to consider becoming a mentor but after attending one of the local sessions, came to the conclusion that there was nothing that I could teach them. This, considering that I have multiple degrees in math, physics, and chemistry and multiple careers as an analytical chemist, a electronics manufacturer, and in engineering, was a humbling moment.

 

[Peyton Price 17]

I am amazed and dismayed at the amount of ignorance that I see today. Much of it is due to the internet and the ability of Joe Blow to spout out a bunch of misinformation and people to accept that misinformation as fact.

On the other hand. I am truly amazed at the brilliance that I see in the 12 to 18 year old youngsters who participate in the FIRST robotics teams. I was asked some time ago by the regional director of the FIRST program to consider becoming a mentor but after attending one of the local sessions, came to the conclusion that there was nothing that I could teach them. This, considering that I have multiple degrees in math, physics, and chemistry and multiple careers as an analytical chemist, a electronics manufacturer, and in engineering, was a humbling moment.

I was turned down from the team because using an arduino board is not electronics! All they did was make legos with gears to make them walk of a table.

 

[RJSakowski]

I was turned down from the team because using an arduino board is not electronics! All they did was make legos with gears to make them walk of a table.

That's the FIRST Leggo League. Intended to get kids interested in STEM. The FIRST robotics challenge is entirely different. The teams are given a challenge to design, build, and compete in local, regional, national, and international competition, a robot capable of perfo4rming a specified set of tasks. The tasks are announced and a budget is allocated some 6 weeks prior to competition. These grade 9-12 students, working on their robots after normal school activities and on weekends, will complete their robots in that six wee time frame.

The local team that I visited had a full machine shop, including a Tormach CNC at their disposal. They were designing in SolidWorks and creating their G code, as well as designing their own electronics and writing complex code for controlling their robots. In addition, they had an administrative group managing the budget and human and material resources.

At the competition sites, they had an engineering pit where on the spot tweeks and repairs were carried out. As the competition progressed, they would make design improvements.

I have worked for a number of companies, including one Fortune 500 Silicon Valley company and I would defy any of them to design a new product from concept to finish in six months, let alone six weeks.

 

[gr8legs]

I was blessed to grow up in a smaller school system (about 600 kids in grades 9-12) and graduated high school in 1966.

That puts me in grade school about the time Sputnik went up and everybody in the US was hogwild for science and math education. I soaked up information like a sponge.

The high school didn't exactly know how to deal with a student like me so they left me alone to learn at my own pace, and I could 'float' from class to class without much on the way of 'Imperial Entanglements'. I did, however, need to clock the minimum hours to graduate from high school so I took correspondence courses on school time and even 'student taught' for a science class that the actual teacher was the basketball coach and didn't much care for science.

I also ran the AV department, did game performance statistics for the athletic program and generally tried to be 'me'.

Nowadays it seem that schools 'teach to the test' and the best and brightest (both students and teachers) get pounded down to the least common denominator. Nobody can go any faster than the slowest kid in the class; excellence is discouraged.

~ Sigh ~

Would that it were otherwise.

Stu

“There's no doubt who was a leader in space after the Apollo Program. Nobody came close to us. And our education system, in science, technology, engineering, and math, was at the top of the world. It's no longer there. We're descending rather rapidly." -- Buzz Aldrin, former NASA astronaut and second person to walk on the moon

 

[jbolt]

I am amazed and dismayed at the amount of ignorance that I see today. Much of it is due to the internet and the ability of Joe Blow to spout out a bunch of misinformation and people to accept that misinformation as fact.

On the other hand. I am truly amazed at the brilliance that I see in the 12 to 18 year old youngsters who participate in the FIRST robotics teams. I was asked some time ago by the regional director of the FIRST program to consider becoming a mentor but after attending one of the local sessions, came to the conclusion that there was nothing that I could teach them. This, considering that I have multiple degrees in math, physics, and chemistry and multiple careers as an analytical chemist, a electronics manufacturer, and in engineering, was a humbling moment.

FIRST Robotics is one of the most amazing programs I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of. FIRST is a cooperation of students and mentors working side by side, not a teacher student program. A really solid program.

I am not college educated but have a lifetime of real world practical mechanical and fabrication experience that many of the mentors didn't have so I filled a niche that others did not. Many of the students had never used hand tools before. I did always feel intimidated by the math and engineering abilities of some of the young mentors and students but took great pleasure during the design and manufacturing to be consulted on how to approach or make something and then work with them to think it through and implement.

The most rewarding thing for me was training students to use the lathe. With such a limited amount of time for training I taught them how to make the parts the team typically made. Some students were naturals and other struggled but always succeeded with some encouragement.

Completions are great fun to watch and participate in. I would encourage anyone who has the opportunity to be a part of it to do so.

 

[Larry$]

the actual teacher was the basketball coach and didn't much care for science.

I had a teacher that wanted to be the football coach, end up civics teacher. He was so bored in class that he put himself to sleep, multiple times. I played chess with a friend in the back row. At least the chess games were interesting.

 

[Lo-Fi]

Nowadays it seem that schools 'teach to the test' and the best and brightest (both students and teachers) get pounded down to the least common denominator. Nobody can go any faster than the slowest kid in the class; excellence is discouraged.

I was almost a victim of this myself and had the same experience. I narrowly dodged falling into a pit of despair by refusing to go to secondary (high) school for a term and a half and doing what pleased me at home. I went back for exams and passed with some of the better grades in my year. I went to college after, absorbed what I wanted from my science, maths and electronics classes and didn't bother to turn up to the exams, which to this day I do not regret.

I owe a lot to my own curiousity and to people who were kind enough to lend me their time and benefit from their knowledge. Some of those were science/tech teachers who happily taught what I wanted to learn, which, of course, was outside syllabus. If we'd had the internet as we know it now 20 years ago, I'd have skipped college altogether.

 

[Aukai]

My stepson who is now 40, and a PhD Mechanical Engineer in Mountain view CA wanted to get out of his advanced classes in his Junior year to be with his slower(normal ed) friends. I took him for a man to man talk, and told him if you do that, you will end up working at Mc Donald's after graduation, and be stuck here with us. As I'm writing this, I'm not sure which part of that scared him. But it worked.....