Re: The state of education in the USA.

On Apr 3, 1:27 pm, tgdenn...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
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.

My experience, for what it's worth, is that the choice to be a top-
quality engineer or scientist (at least in the mathematically-intense
areas) requires a student to make that decision early in life (say by
age 16). The US culture is most certainly anti-nerd, as the many
threads on this newsgroup attest. It's true that most students don't
think of those as careers at that age. In fact, the 14-18 year-olds
that I have talked with plan to be record producers and performers,
with the odd scattering of prospective lawyers.

As for the basic problem, the US economy is already up the creek, and
the needs for technical expertise will only get greater as energy
usage changes, and our infrastruture collapses. The demand for
engineers is very good - just check the annual Newsweek list of the
subjects in demand. Right now, the graduation levels don't even meet
the replacement needs for those retiring. In turn, this means that
even fewer go to graduate school to train the next generation. You
can't just turn on a spigot to produce well-trained technical
specialists. It takes 10-15 years, and we haven't made a real attempt
since 1973.

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?

In the county in which I work, the average school teacher earns more
than the average professor (all ranks) at the state universities.


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.

Your opinion would be based on what exactly? Mine, if anecdotal, is at
least based on 30 years in the trenches, as well as teaching and
tutoring other subjects on the side to ages 7-60.

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?

And I do so. With the result that our state legislature, and many
others, is talking about funding programs based on popularity.


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- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

In short, the average American uses technology all day, without any
thought at all as to how it works, or what to do when it doesn't. I
have seen a well-respected economist say that, when oil runs out/
becomes too expensive to burn, 'they will find alternatives', without
even mentioning who 'they' are supposed to be. The Industrial
Revolution generated enough wealth and clean food that the idiots of
the world can make decisions on science without actually understanding
anything about it. Historically, the less-educated have been more
numerous than the others, so their voice carries more weight in a
democratic system.

Thanks to the tremendous leverage that distant investors can have in
global markets, and lack of serious long-term planning, the US, my
beloved adopted country, may soon have a complete melt-down of its
financial system, followed by catastrophic failure of the basic energy
and transportation systems. If and when that happens, I really doubt
that people will flock to lawyers, advertising executives and spin-
doctors for their food supplies and other necessities - they will, if
history repeats itself, blame the scientists for not preventing it.

.

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