Our Educational System-Science

Our young engineer at work, is a member of First Robotics team, as a mentor at the university. The kids are smart!
When I went to university, the stats prof was the worst. We all failed the mid term except for one guy, he got 100%! In the end I passed to course, not due to his teaching but street smarts. The last 2 weeks he was going through previous years exam questions and being open book final, I wrote them all down as examples to draw from. When we sat for the final, the questions were the ones he had shown in class! Should of heard the chatter as the others figured out what was going down. For me, the 3 hour exam was 20 minutes of transcribing and out the door, to never look back.
My favorite class was Production Management. All case studies and with an industry experienced prof. The class was all Q&A and the easiest 25% of the final mark was to either ask or answer a question in class. How easy was that! Some had 0 by the end of the year. Only 3 of us had the full 25% and we sat in the back!
Teacher can make or break kids, but the system can destroy all if allowed to. Unfortunately most parents are not active at the local level and it is their kids lost and the future of their society. Social media had a chance to improve the world at it beginnings but is now the lowest and worst source of information. We older folks had working libraries and even in some cases home encyclopedias to use to further our education of the real world.
Pierre
 
The old encyclopedia set, and National Geographic(not for the "native pics") I read through them.
 
Peyton Price 17 said:
I'm taking pre-algebra in 7th grade, next year I take algebra 1. some kids even make it to calculus in 11th grade!!
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That’s the path both my kids are taking. My son is in AP Calc as a junior, he is FAR smarter than I was in school! I was not a good student, but mostly because I was bored to tears in school. I probably had ADD, but back then nobody knew what that was. When I was in 6th grade, we had to take a standardized test and I wasn’t in the mood to take the test that day, so I made a pattern of the dots on the math portion instead of answering the questions. I got placed in remedial math the next year and the teacher realized I was in the wrong class when I was solving problems using methods a couple years more advanced than her class. That was too late in the year and I couldn’t move to another class, so that put me behind where I should have been. She was a great teacher and gave me special assignments to help me catch up.
 
The skill of learning and instructing is still in its early stages for this civilization. Systematic learning in organizations (if you could call them that depending on the era, demographics, etc.) was the norm globally but only in organizations and institutions that had an interest in investing in that infrastructure: universities, churches, trade guilds, etc. and employed apprenticeship and some documentation. Corporations as we know them today that required large scale coordination beyond the use of forced or indentured labor weren't really a thing until you get to the 16th and 17th century.

It was only less than 150 years ago during the onset of the Industrial Revolution that there was a need for a better educated population. This led to the adoption of generational education. The methods of learning and instruction that worked for centuries in guilds, apprenticeships and through hands-on experience was not really well suited to providing the basics needed by companies, landowners, industrialists, capitalists, etc. that wanted more than a person who could fog a mirror. It's important to note that educational systems are never designed to create the best. They are - by design - always going to produce "average". Yes, you get the people who fall into the tails of distribution - some superstars and some lost souls. But that is statistics.

The mean average can be changed though. It sounds like the sentiment here is that the mean average has lowered over time. That may be true, but I think there is some context to consider and I'm not convinced that it is in fact, true.

IF, the things that were important to people say, 50-500 years ago was to learn something in order to "understand the world we live in", then it may be useful to know how the earth orbits the sun, how that affects our seasons, or weather, our growing cycles, rainfall, dew-points, frost, etc. In other words, it was a matter of survival (not to be overly dramatic) to understand how the world actually works.

Can you say that today? Do you need to know the growing seasons in order to eat? Do you need to know how to braze in order to fix the plow? These are not rhetorical questions in order to make a value judgement about our dissatisfaction with the education system, but our civilization is VERY different today and no longer requires the same knowledge required just a few generations ago. The requirements ARE in fact, different - and this is important - FOR THE MASSES.

Thankfully, the individual who is curious about the world realizes that he has a choice - be ignorant or learn. This is one of the reasons why this forum exists, even though it has never been stated that way.

In my opinion, rather than blaming others for all of our ills, the matter comes back to the man in the mirror. What is important to us? Why does it matter? Should it matter? The answers to these questions should lead us to better understand the world we live in and make a decision on how we learn and navigate in our world. With that said, we live in a time where nobody can EVER reliably claim ignorance. One who choses the path of ignorance is doomed to be left behind and it is likely their generation will suffer the same fate and so on and so on. And here we find ourselves in 2021.

That is the context of my response when an engineer, one of my sons, my wife, a parent, a friend, or any other person says to me, "I don't know."

My answer: "Google it."
 
Janderso said:
I am amazed at the amount of people who don't know 4th grade science.
I'm a Youtube surfer. I have many interests that can usually be in two or three categories,
History, anything mechanical and science and wonder.

Jay Leno went to a popular tourist area in Los Angeles. This was back when he had his show. California had just come in last place for testing results.

The questions went like this,
What is the boiling point of water at sea level?
What holds the planets in place in our galaxy?
What is the speed of light?
What covers 2/3 of earths surface?
What is the largest organ on the human body?

I can proudly say I knew all the answers to these questions except the largest organ.

I then asked some of the employees here at work. The techs and the parts guys knew most of the answers. The sales staff did not do well.
Then I asked myself why. Why do I know these answers and others do not?
Is it because I had a better education in elementary school? is it because I've always been in awe over science and space?
My adult sons did not do well, I'm embarrassed to say. My wife knew one of the answers??

I have a hunch many of you know these answers too.
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Have you seen Mark Dice ask people to name an author(of any book ever) ?

ow dear .

Stu
 
stupoty said:
Have you seen Mark Dice ask people to name an author(of any book ever) ?

ow dear .

Stu
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While the Mark Dice and Jay Leno and many other copycat routines are very entertaining and can make ourselves feel better about our station in life, or, leave us in despair - it is important to remember that these are curated and heavily edited productions to pull out the most entertaining examples, i.e. least informed/educated. The wrong conclusion to draw from these is that literacy is at an all time low. The opposite is true. With that said, there are nearly 1 billion people on the planet who are illiterate and many more who are somewhat literate. That means some of them are amongst us in literate, civilized societies and provides plenty of fodder for entertainment and outrage media.

Sorry, I'm the buzzkill in the room. :)
 
vtcnc said:
While the Mark Dice and Jay Leno and many other copycat routines are very entertaining and can make ourselves feel better about our station in life, or, leave us in despair - it is important to remember that these are curated and heavily edited productions to pull out the most entertaining examples, i.e. least informed/educated. The wrong conclusion to draw from these is that literacy is at an all time low. The opposite is true. With that said, there are nearly 1 billion people on the planet who are illiterate and many more who are somewhat literate. That means some of them are amongst us in literate, civilized societies and provides plenty of fodder for entertainment and outrage media.

Sorry, I'm the buzzkill in the room. :)
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Well you might think that , I'm sure mr leno has more time to edit and shoot.

From my time at school it was definitely the "what are you doing reading a book" "whats a book" and that was a while ago now.

Literacy vs being retarded isn't the same thing.


Stu
 
stupoty said:
Well you might think that , I'm sure mr leno has more time to edit and shoot.

From my time at school it was definitely the "what are you doing reading a book" "whats a book" and that was a while ago now.

Literacy vs being retarded isn't the same thing.


Stu
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While I don't disagree with your sentiment expressed here - I choose to try a different approach:

"Whenever a person’s lack of shame offends you, you should immediately ask yourself, 'So is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world?' It isn’t, and you should therefore stop demanding the impossible. He’s just one of those shameless people who must necessarily exist in the world. You should keep the same thought readily available for when you’re faced with devious and untrustworthy people, and people who are flawed in any way. As soon as you remind yourself that it’s impossible for such people not to exist, you’ll be kinder to each and every one of them. It’s also helpful immediately to consider what virtue nature has granted us human beings to deal with any given offense — gentleness, for instance, to counter discourteous people…"

- Marcus Aurelius
 
savarin said:
Its amazing how much a good teacher can bring out of a student.
I always came bottom of the class in History for the first three years in high school.
For some reason the teacher hated me and I never scored higher than 15% in any history test.
In the 4th year we had a different teacher and wonder of wonders I came second with a 98% score in the first test.
I never dropped below 90% in any history test in that year.
I once had a student who had zero confidence and always put himself down. Over the course of his first year I managed to turn him around to where he succeeded and passed and on graduation his mother hugged me and thanked me for the huge improvement I had made to her son.
I think he had been told his whole school life that he was no good and believed it and it colored his whole behavior.
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Sounds like my senior year Government class. I couldn't wait to get to that class = great teacher!
 
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