Re: The state of education in the USA.

On Apr 3, 10:37 am, Tim Norfolk <timsn...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 3, 8:24 am, tgdenn...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:



On Apr 2, 8:02 pm, Tim Norfolk <timsn...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Apr 2, 5:37�pm, Ferrous Patella <FerrousPate...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Iain <iain_inks...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:9d81e772-2d15-42ed-9f46-
12777d2fc...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

In Britain, no students graduate from high school.

Are they graduated from high school?

Most students used to leave at age 16, after taking O-levels, or
CSE's. Those going to higher ed (about 10%) took A-levels the last 2
years. After we took our exams in our last year, they gathered us
together and said "It's been nice having you here. Goodbye."

So how is this different from your statistic about 15% of students
meeting some minimum math requirement? Why is it a problem that only
10% of US students are qualified for higher ed, but ok that this is
the case in your native land?

-tg

Perhaps the point is that too many people are going to higher
education, and getting meaningless (and frequently useless
'educations'). As an aside, in the intervening years, the number going
to higher education in Britain has moved towards 50%, and one can now
get degrees in golf course management and alternative health remedies,
for example.

The real problem for us is that the students who have the aptitude for
the highly technical fields that we desperately need are being shorted
in the US system, since the underlying philosophy in all too many
school systems is that 'everyone should be able to succeed'. By
comparison, in a regular British Army school in Cyprus, circa 1970, my
equivalent of 8th grade math included more trigonometry than most of
my Honors students have ever seen, and the standard curriculum started
Calculus I for the better students in 9th grade.

I studied at a university where many students from good American
colleges (Penn State, William and Mary, Kenyon) took their junior year
abroad. These were affluent and well-educated Americans. No matter
what their majors, they had to be put into freshman-level courses, and
many struggled even there.

One statistic quoted in the youtube rant that started this thread was
that 51% of the engineers in the US are foreign. It has been that way
since the country was founded, but a look at foreign applications to
graduate school will demonstrate that the numbers and quality are
going down. Just as in energy, we have no choice but to produce more
of our own, and we aren't set up to do that.

The issue, by reference to the high school graduation rates that were
in the news this week, is not so much what percentage graduate (make
the standards low enough, and you can make this high), but what they
have learned.

I'm afraid this is one of those areas where people react reflexively
without thinking through what they are saying.

If the US can't attract good quality engineers from overseas (which is
of course another un-sourced assertion,) then that just means that we
aren't making it an attractive career choice. Considering that this is
a pretty good place to live compared to lots of the 'source
countries', what does that say about the attractiveness of the career
choice for people who are already citizens? Why *should* our kids go
into science and engineering---or even become quality teachers, who
are treated even worse?

I think the claims about how terrible education is is just groupthink
repitition of tropes from both sides of the political divide, each
with its own agenda manipulating and spinning the same statistics. And
to go back to my original comment---how is your institution, with its
open admissions, different from "the school systems where 'everyone
should be able to succeed' "? You personally at least have the
opportunity to rectify things by giving all your poor students failing
grades, right?

The scandal lsn't low standards (that is a problem, although not the
way you suggest), but inertia and inflexibility at all levels---I
think the students may just be the ones who have it right.

-tg



-tg

.

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