Education and the modern generation

[Beorning]

I've just read a shocking article about the state of education among the current teenage / young adult generation in Poland. The article described the experiences of a few teaching aides - and the examples of pure ignorance they witnessed among their students. The examples include:

• a high school student asking if Świtezianka (a 19th-century poem about rusalkas) was based on facts (the teaching aide's comment: "Should I really be explaining to a 18-year-old that rusalkas aren't real?"),
• a high school student (shortly before graduation) asking who Hitler was ("I've heard the name mentioned..."),
• a student having trouble telling what present century was - and being *unable* to tell what century it was 100 years ago (the aide relates she tried to calculate it by substracting 100 from 21...),
• students being unable to tell what year the WW2 began,
• a student asking who is the current 'president of Earth'.

The worst thing? Some of these students actually managed to *graduate* from high school and got admitted to *universities*. Meaning, in a few years, we'll be getting teachers, doctors, maybe even lawyers and politicians which such shocking gaps in basic knowledge...

Is it that bad in your countries?

[Oniya]

The little Oni is in Honors for all applicable classes - just finishing 6th grade.  I know that there is one grandparent who insisted on pulling her grandchild out on any days that the science class was going to cover evolution.  Other incidents (that the little Oni just boggled at) included:

Not knowing the names and locations of the 50 states.  We're not talking about confusing Colorado and Wyoming (somewhat understandable), but listing Canada, Japan, and Madagascar as states.

Not being able to identify U.S. Presidents.  Specifically, thinking that Albert Einstein was an American President. 

The one new, non-trivial topic that she's learned in math (combining like terms) was done with a self-study computer application.  This is why I have some plans for her over the summer - that she is completely on board with - and a request for a placement exam that might get her into 8th grade math next year.

[Retribution]

I recall tales like this when I was in school. I had classmates at both the college and high school level that well lets say were not so bright. I have two teens and I will spare the parental gloating other than to say they are at the top of their respective classes. They tell me similar tales from the school front so this sort of thing has been going on more than a little while. Having said that we can and should do all we can to improve education.

But! pick about any field or endeavor and one can find horror stories. So I think it is important to take such things with a grain of salt. The other thing is a lot of the problem is home environment and or lack of motivation on the part of the student. I wish I knew how to fix that because I honestly feel it is one of the great plagues that faces our society. Even in about the worst school system if one applies themselves they can get a serviceable education. The problem is often just that applying themselves is not an environment they have been exposed to at home or anyplace else and the parents probably came from a similar background.

It all makes for a terribly vicious cycle with each generation falling into the trap that captured the last one. In the same vein if you find families with a history of success the younger generation tends to follow in those footsteps. I have no idea how you break the cycle in the bad case without trampling all over individual rights. But I firmly believe that this is where the problem lies with these sorts of horror stories through the decades.

[RubySlippers]

The trick to motivate many students is make the education relevant say your in High School I had to take history mostly rehashing what I learned in elementary and middle school, when I had a class in retail employment skills that tied to a way to earn money such as cashiering. I just found many classes useless to me I wasn't planning to go to college being disabled the debt didn't make sense up against the unemployment rate simply put the degree would not have made much difference. Skills tied to employment did make sense.

Now for the really gung ho students and brilliant geeks they are college material and will work to get there and take these redundant classes but how much science or history does an average person need knowing what states are where is not useful to most people, such as a retail worker or someone fixing cars.

I blame lots of people parents and the do-gooder educators and employers making college such a vital focus if there was an option to learn enough skills to be employed out of High School in an entry level capacity. Why? Any education after that means debt and in High School its state funded which is better for the poor. But this could include joint programs with community colleges and universities to offer certificates or other options.

[Oniya]

Now for the really gung ho students and brilliant geeks they are college material and will work to get there and take these redundant classes but how much science or history does an average person need knowing what states are where is not useful to most people, such as a retail worker or someone fixing cars.

If you're driving a long 18-wheeler, you better for goddamn sure know where your states are.

[RubySlippers]

I said most people, truck drivers going long haul routes need more knowledge on US geography but there are map books, but what about a worker at Walmart?

[Oniya]

Knowing the relative positions of the states gives you some idea of how long that thing on back-order will take to get to the store.  Knowing that Japan is not a U.S. state lets you know that shipping something to it is going to cost you something fierce.  Knowing that Rhode Island is very close to Connecticut and you can get something transferred in hours instead of days could help you keep a customer from going to the competition.

And as the 12-year-old says:  Walmart is an international store.

[RubySlippers]

Just check GOOGLE.

[Blythe]

As for major gaps in education, I'm noticing that there's been a large dip in the average USA citizen's ability to read and write. I used to grade college papers, and students would try to use text or chatspeak in their term papers. There were students who still did not understand what a noun was. And these were adults in college.

Mathematics is quickly becoming an additional weak point in today's education. I was baffled when I realized that many normal USA citizens cannot do simple addition, subtraction, division, or multiplication in their heads. I'm not talking about someone asking them to solve quadratic equations here; I'm talking about people unable to say what 8 multiplied by 7 is without using a calculator. This is something supposedly taught in elementary school, for crying out loud.

I think it's important for people to be able to be self-reliant, and education is the key to that. I believe people shouldn't have to rely on electronic gadgets as crutches to cover for a basic lack of knowledge.

Note: My examples are anecdotal evidence (my experiences teaching in college, and my tutoring of students taking Algebra), so I don't have sources.

[Oniya]

Just check GOOGLE.

At work, on the clock?  Good luck with that.  The managers I've had would write you up for that in a heartbeat, and that was back in the days when they actually gave a damn about the employee.

[Blythe]

The trick to motivate many students is make the education relevant say your in High School I had to take history mostly rehashing what I learned in elementary and middle school, when I had a class in retail employment skills that tied to a way to earn money such as cashiering. I just found many classes useless to me I wasn't planning to go to college being disabled the debt didn't make sense up against the unemployment rate simply put the degree would not have made much difference. Skills tied to employment did make sense.

Technical school deals with skills related to trained labor, and I don't see a reason to merge specialized technical school with high school education, with high school's intent to be broader and include basic skills and knowledge to let people function in society.

Now for the really gung ho students and brilliant geeks they are college material and will work to get there and take these redundant classes but how much science or history does an average person need knowing what states are where is not useful to most people, such as a retail worker or someone fixing cars.

I doubt stereotyping some students as "geeks" has any relevancy to this topic.

Anyone who will work processing and dyeing metal or anyone wanting to work at a soda plant making the beverages (just a few examples), might want some functioning knowledge of chemistry or physical science. Any person working in construction is going to need to know some math and science.

A basic knowledge of history in the USA tends to include a basic overview of the political system as well, so any student ever wanting to start on the path to becoming an informed voter would need history.

I blame lots of people parents and the do-gooder educators and employers making college such a vital focus if there was an option to learn enough skills to be employed out of High School in an entry level capacity. Why? Any education after that means debt and in High School its state funded which is better for the poor. But this could include joint programs with community colleges and universities to offer certificates or other options.

While I might concede that parenting can be an issue, "do-gooder" educators are not the problem. Educators are limited by the system they are in. All the recent rules regarding this unrealistic focus on standardized testing are just one way teachers are limited--many teachers can lose their jobs if enough of their students don't consistently pass standardized tests, and they end up focusing on prepping for the exams rather than teaching what students need to know. This is a flaw of the system, not the flaw of the educators, who are more often than not frustrated with this very lack of focus on essential subjects for their students to learn.

EDIT: Have made a few edits to clean up a few sloppily used words. The general intent remains the same.

[RubySlippers]

Here is what I would do decide what skills are essential in academics to do jobs where a High School diploma should be sufficient and set a grade level say 9th grade, not sure what that would be. Ask employers and vocational experts. Then to graduate with a diploma aim at that level, exceed it if one can. Included in this what essential base knowledge you want them to have if ,for example, you consider civics important put that on the list. I would include common uses of mathematics as one complained about already. That would be the national graduation standards expected for a diploma.

One should also offer pre-college tracks, career tracks and career tracks with post High School options so each student in the US would have a goal based on skills assessments and other factors.

Other nations should also do this since frankly skills can be more important that apply to a career over general unrelated knowledge to employment.

Technical school deals with skills related to trained labor, and I don't see a reason to merge specialized technical school with high school education, with high school's intent to be broader and include basic skills and knowledge to let you function in society.   I gave reasons High School is pretty much free and therefore the best place to offer a level of technical career training to all students where going after High School means debts taken on. You do get that fact which is why its often a turn off to young adults especially poor ones. Your very elitist like most people say a student had two years of general classes and later two years technical training learning useful skills and gaining one or more career options. I would say that is as good as a pre-college track and can be as demanding on the student. And unless going into debt for an education almost assures a good job its no longer worth it.  Even a trade school can cost thousands of dollars where in High School it would be covered under the free public education umbrella.

[Bloodied Porcelain]

My sister is studying to be a teacher (music teacher, but an educator nonetheless) and no matter how bright and driven she is, she doesn't seem at all surprised or even disheartened by the ignorance of some of her fellow students studying to become teachers.

One of her friends from college asked me word for word...

"Where in America is Norway? I can't find it on a map!"

This was after meeting the FOREIGN EXCHANGE STUDENT who used to live with my family a few years back and who comes to visit quite often. We even introduced her as a "foreign exchange student".

And when I answered her with "Uhm... It's not in America..." while trying to keep from losing my shit over how idiotic a question that was...

She asked this gem:

"Do they speak Japanese in Norway?"

When my sister didn't speak up to answer her, I looked at her... and then I looked at Stine (I can't get my phone to make the accent over the e >.<), and said

"Are you sure you're cut out to be a teacher? Please let me know where you end up teaching so I can make sure my son never ends up as your student."

And to top it all off, my sister said I was in the wrong for calling her out on her ignorance.

I've also heard these gems:

"How can the world be more than 2000 years old, if we're only on the date 2004?"

This was asked during one of my high school history classes, when we were talking about things that happened prior to our modern calendar's beginning. The fact that she honestly things that the year 1 is the dawn of time is only dwarfed by the fact that she didn't believe the world could be more than 2k years old, even though by her own standards it was 4 years AFTER that mark.

"I didn't think fossils were real."

"I've heard of China, but I don't know where it is."

"How do you make tea?"

This was from a college sophomore to a friend of mine... they had tea bags... they couldn't figure out how to make tea. When told they needed to heat up some water to boiling or near-boiling, they asked her HOW. She had to SHOW THEM you could use a coffee pot to heat up water without putting actual coffee in the machine. They didn't even think putting a mug of water in the microwave was something you could do.

The level of ignorance found in my and younger generations (I'm only in my 20s, so I'm more than willing to admit that some of my generation are fucking morons) display is absolutely baffling.

[Trieste]

Ruby, you don't support education for anyone at all ever. Really, you've made your point numerous times.

I've just read a shocking article about the state of education among the current teenage / young adult generation in Poland. The article described the experiences of a few teaching aides - and the examples of pure ignorance they witnessed among their students. The examples include:

• a high school student asking if Świtezianka (a 19th-century poem about rusalkas) was based on facts (the teaching aide's comment: "Should I really be explaining to a 18-year-old that rusalkas aren't real?"),
• a high school student (shortly before graduation) asking who Hitler was ("I've heard the name mentioned..."),
• a student having trouble telling what present century was - and being *unable* to tell what century it was 100 years ago (the aide relates she tried to calculate it by substracting 100 from 21...),
• students being unable to tell what year the WW2 began,
• a student asking who is the current 'president of Earth'.

The worst thing? Some of these students actually managed to *graduate* from high school and got admitted to *universities*. Meaning, in a few years, we'll be getting teachers, doctors, maybe even lawyers and politicians which such shocking gaps in basic knowledge...

Is it that bad in your countries?

I went to private schools and I couldn't tell you what year WWII began until a few years after high school. It wasn't for lack of effort on the teachers' part, either - I got into an argument with my history professor teacher my sophomore year of high school. Like, neither of us were angry but it was a fairly involved argument. I argued that dates don't matter, and he argued that dates do matter (is the simple version). He finally told me that I could forgo the dates IF I could relate everything on exams with Other Stuff Going On In the World at that time. So I didn't learn them.

(It would have been easier to just learn the dates rather than marking things by other things, but I guess I used to be a little stubborn back then. >.>)

And then there were all the professors in college who didn't make me learn dates, so long as I could explain which event came before that event and how they affected one another. It happens. I could also see an argument for Hitler being less relevant as we move further into the next century. More relevant would probably be things like Rwanda's ethnic cleansing (1994), Lockerbie (86), things like that. I think to modern students, WWII is about as relevant (to them) as the US Civil War or some such. It's difficult to connect with and remember, as happens with most large events as time moves away from them.

I would argue that these anecdotes mean very little by themselves. There have always been idiotic questions, strange gaps in knowledge, especially in younger people. However, if people are really horrified by these things, I would recommend writing to politicians and tell them that schools need more funding. I don't know about Poland, but the US could certainly use it.

Edit: Been around professors for too long.

[Blythe]

Here is what I would do decide what skills are essential in academics to do jobs where a High School diploma should be sufficient and set a grade level say 9th grade, not sure what that would be. Ask employers and vocational experts. Then to graduate with a diploma aim at that level, exceed it if one can. Included in this what essential base knowledge you want them to have if ,for example, you consider civics important put that on the list. I would include common uses of mathematics as one complained about already. That would be the national graduation standards expected for a diploma.

I think this is somewhat impractical. The sheer amount of vocations that are available to pursue would render specialized technical schooling based on intended vocation exceedingly expensive to accommodate the variety in a high school setting. Taxpayers are the ones who pay for education, so I think you'd see a tax hike by trying to merge tech school and high school. The average USA citizen would end up paying for specialized education either way, in high school or in college. At least with college a student has a choice to pay the extra money for specialized knowledge and job training. But we're dealing with a rather tricky area here, and I'd rather not get off topic with exploring that idea further.

One should also offer pre-college tracks, career tracks and career tracks with post High School options so each student in the US would have a goal based on skills assessments and other factors.

A lot of high schools do this already (the offering of career tracks and so on); the services are usually offered by a school counselor or other qualified official, and students are encouraged to select electives based on what career they like and what they show aptitude in.

Other nations should also do this since frankly skills can be more important that apply to a career over general unrelated knowledge to employment.

Some nations do. The text section here before the contents is most informative. Germany does have something similar to what we're discussing. But for the USA, it would require an enormously expensive overhaul of the educational system that I doubt would be practical, considering how we fund such things.

Technical school deals with skills related to trained labor, and I don't see a reason to merge specialized technical school with high school education, with high school's intent to be broader and include basic skills and knowledge to let you function in society.   I gave reasons High School is pretty much free and therefore the best place to offer a level of technical career training to all students where going after High School means debts taken on. You do get that fact which is why its often a turn off to young adults especially poor ones. Your very elitist like most people say a student had two years of general classes and later two years technical training learning useful skills and gaining one or more career options. I would say that is as good as a pre-college track and can be as demanding on the student. And unless going into debt for an education almost assures a good job its no longer worth it.  Even a trade school can cost thousands of dollars where in High School it would be covered under the free public education umbrella.

The problem with offering comprehensive technical training in high school, in my opinion, is that you can't cover enough basic vocational fields to warrant it being practical, at least here in the USA. High school education is broad and generalized somewhat because most high school students don't seem to know what profession they'd like to be in when they graduate, and fusing vocational learning and high school learning seems like it would be a knowledge overload.

Your very elitist like most people say a student had two years of general classes and later two years technical training learning useful skills and gaining one or more career options.

Could you clarify this? I can't tell if you're referring to most people as elitist or if you are referring to me specifically as elitist.

However, if people are really horrified by these things, I would recommend writing to politicians and tell them that schools need more funding. I don't know about Poland, but the US could certainly use it.

*smiles* I do write to my state officials about it. And if enough constituents show their support and interest, politicians will generally cave and do something, so I definitely agree with you, Trieste.

EDIT: Had to add a few words here and there.

[Ephiral]

Staying out of the broader debate so my mouth doesn't start frothing with blood and rage. So an aside:

This was from a college sophomore to a friend of mine... they had tea bags... they couldn't figure out how to make tea. When told they needed to heat up some water to boiling or near-boiling, they asked her HOW. She had to SHOW THEM you could use a coffee pot to heat up water without putting actual coffee in the machine. They didn't even think putting a mug of water in the microwave was something you could do.

To be fair, tea-making is such a contentious topic that there is an ISO standard for it, and sticking a mug of water in a microwave is incredibly dangerous under the right circumstances.

[Oniya]

As I understand, you need a clean mug (so that nucleation sites don't exist to start the boiling process).  Those are in dreadfully short supply on most college campuses.  ;D

[Trieste]

Flash boiling is usually due to superheating without nucleation sites.

[Oniya]

Precisely.  Which means you have to have a perfectly smooth, perfectly clean vessel.  (Distilled water also helps.)  Finding a cup clean enough to be free of nucleation sites in a college dorm?  Among people who haven't figured out how to heat water of the municipal variety? 

[DarklingAlice]

Precisely.  Which means you have to have a perfectly smooth, perfectly clean vessel.  (Distilled water also helps.)  Finding a cup clean enough to be free of nucleation sites in a college dorm?  Among people who haven't figured out how to heat water of the municipal variety? 

Well...that could be where all my lab glassware keeps going!
Other than the one box of specimen jars that might have been re-purposed for fire cupping...

Seriously though, highschool is becoming more and more useless, it's a waste of everyone's time (and there is perhaps good reason to argue that that is intentional). The actual intricacies of this sort of thing are hard to discuss without concrete data, but I know that I personally can't rely on most of my students to have any background in science from highschool. It's incredibly frustrating.

[Ephiral]

Well...that could be where all my lab glassware keeps going!
Other than the one box of specimen jars that might have been re-purposed for fire cupping...

Seriously though, highschool is becoming more and more useless, it's a waste of everyone's time (and there is perhaps good reason to argue that that is intentional). The actual intricacies of this sort of thing are hard to discuss without concrete data, but I know that I personally can't rely on most of my students to have any background in science from highschool. It's incredibly frustrating.

Some of us had enthusiasm for science in high school. At least until the bomb squad hauled away pieces of one of my projects that one time.

[Trieste]

Precisely.  Which means you have to have a perfectly smooth, perfectly clean vessel.  (Distilled water also helps.)  Finding a cup clean enough to be free of nucleation sites in a college dorm?  Among people who haven't figured out how to heat water of the municipal variety?

Ohhh, I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying you needed a clean mug to avoid the boilover thing and I was like, "Waitasec..."

Makes much more sense now.

With the prevalence of bottled and filtered water, it's not always wise to rely on the impurities in the water to help, but I imagine putting a tiny bit of sugar or salt in the water beforehand would do. Or just steal some Boileezers from the lab. Okay, maybe not.

[gaggedLouise]

Ruby, you don't support education for anyone at all ever. Really, you've made your point numerous times.

I went to private schools and I couldn't tell you what year WWII began until a few years after high school. It wasn't for lack of effort on the teachers' part, either - I got into an argument with my history professor teacher my sophomore year of high school. Like, neither of us were angry but it was a fairly involved argument. I argued that dates don't matter, and he argued that dates do matter (is the simple version). He finally told me that I could forgo the dates IF I could relate everything on exams with Other Stuff Going On In the World at that time. So I didn't learn them.

(It would have been easier to just learn the dates rather than marking things by other things, but I guess I used to be a little stubborn back then. >.>)

And then there were all the professors in college who didn't make me learn dates, so long as I could explain which event came before that event and how they affected one another. It happens. I could also see an argument for Hitler being less relevant as we move further into the next century. More relevant would probably be things like Rwanda's ethnic cleansing (1994), Lockerbie (86), things like that. I think to modern students, WWII is about as relevant (to them) as the US Civil War or some such. It's difficult to connect with and remember, as happens with most large events as time moves away from them.

I would argue that these anecdotes mean very little by themselves. There have always been idiotic questions, strange gaps in knowledge, especially in younger people. However, if people are really horrified by these things, I would recommend writing to politicians and tell them that schools need more funding. I don't know about Poland, but the US could certainly use it.

Edit: Been around professors for too long.

You know, there are places in the world where fully adult people (who might not even keep personal guns at home) would be ready to sharpen some knives to begin hacking each other into pieces over statements such as "Hitler or Göring really aren't any more important than General Lee or Sherman" or "there are people who have suffered just as bad as the Jews did in the thirties" (note, the way that one's phrased it would *not* include the years when things really moved into high gear - it's still a statement that would make many people grit their teeth and have newspaper feuds starting) or "things were pretty nice in the seventeenth century" (apart from the Thirty years war, plagues and witch burnings, all of which would implicitly be glossed over). Well, kicking or stabbing each other to pieces in a figurative sense, but in public...

And of course those sly or dingy statements are very obvious picks, even laughable. You could get in seriously strained situations for a lot less than those.  :-X

In Europe you'd definitely get some strange glances if you were shrugging at world war two, or implying that the conflict was *not* absolutely central to the modern world, but I figure that's true in China and Japan too. And in many places, or many schools, many homes in the U.S. too. I mean, the U.S. spent fifty years paying much of the bills and largely holding the steering wheel for serious military activities and planning in many parts of Europe, and still has far more military muscle than any nation in that continent or in the western hemisphere: there has to be a reason for that somewhere... ;)

Okay, I would agree it's...likely? that WW2 and the atrocities that happened then will not always remain as crucially central to history as they are to many of us now (though what kind of war, apart from a nuclear armageddon, could 'outpace' WW2? - shivers). But for the present it's still a big part of the wider backdrop to many people's lives and to the history of nearly every country on the planet. So is WW1 by the way, only less obvious, 'cause it was a much less photogenic war, less Hollywood potential you could say, and it happened one more generation back, so to us it's obscured by the magnificent second round (next year the centenary is up). Right, you know that for sure, guys and ladies. It would actually be interesting if someone staged a debate on the premise "9!11 was a more important, more seminal, more powerful event than WW2" - just supposing that the huge war could be telescoped into one event - but lots of people would find it offensive to even put the question like that. With 9/11 no one needs to ask the year, of course.

And to handle the ways that WW2 - or 9/11 and the war on terrorism - still impacts us, still frames all of us, I guess it matters that those wars and upheavals look different to people from different places. Which could be iffy to handle if all that a big part of the population knows about WW2, beyond the movies, is that it started somewhere around the time grandpa went to school, ended in 1945, and was started by a looney dictator called Adolf Hitler and his evil Jerries, or is it germs?  :D  ::)

[Retribution]

*the biologist wants it noted he remained silent on the relevance of science....he should get cookies* ahem and you can always add a boiling chip to get the process started if the glassware is too flawless but I digress!

There are vocational schools out there one of my best buds knew college was not for him and it is not for everyone. He went to enough though to become a tool maker he makes metal parts within tolerances that are mind blowing like tens of thousandths but he has a trade. On a side note for those who say math is not relevant he complains that doing sin'es in his head is kind of hard....I know messed up the spelling on that as I am not educated enough to figure out how to properly make the word plural.

I still think much of this goes back to home environment and application of a little effort. Here is some more anecdotal evidence. Track meet the other night my son is in a relay that is the very last event there were delays so parents took their kids that were supposed to run and left. My son had to go get kids who normally do not do the event to run with him since it was a really. It was late, we would have liked to go but by god his coach had signed him up to run that event and you do your (#^$^ assignment. So he had his team in 2nd after running but then they got smoked when the patchwork took the baton. My boy gets in the truck and he is raging "I was raised you do what you are supposed to, when you are supposed to, and they LEFT!?"

A bit of gloating on my part, but the point is these kid's PARENTS took them and left when they all knew they were supposed to run. Really? And we wonder why they do not do well in school?

[Oreo]

It has been a few years back, but I doubt much has changed for the average student. When my son was in the 7th grade I pulled him out to home school him myself. My job at the time was swing shift and left little time for me to interact with him for homework purposes. I had no idea just how bad things were until we sat down and opened the books. He didn't know there was a glossary at the back of his books where he could find and study his spelling and definitions. He didn't know how to use a dictionary or an encyclopedia. He didn't know how to structure a report, create on outline, or gather information. This was just the tip of the iceberg.

I believe the main problem with schools are they keep shoving information into growing brains, but not teaching them how to learn. Information comes with study and passes away without constant use. When you teach someone how to find and process information, they can learn anything they desire.

[gaggedLouise]

Totally agree with Oreo, also I think it's only getting more important in this new globalized and info-rich, story-rich world we live in, and which our kids will be living in, to learn to understand and handle the difference/interaction/mutual dependences of actual history and history'based fictions, historical romance, historical myths, pseudo-historical tropes and stories and so on. Between the actual events, the changes, the actual people that lived through WW2, the Napoleonic wars, the age of discovery and the reformation -those vs movies, novels, paintings and given ideas about those ages. Like, what in Gladiator, Romeo and Juliet, The Mammoth Hunters or The Naked and the Dead matches actual history, what's guesses and what's free elaboration and fiction? It's getting more important and, to some degree, more daunting all the time, and the issues are different everywhere.

It seems to me at least that history is more habitually, freely fictionalized in the U.S. than in Europe, but that's largely because of the entertainment industry. Hollywood and U.S. tv have simply been the leading fictionalizing-of-history factory of the planet for the past eighty years, mass market fiction anyway, and it can happen quickly after an event. The JFK assassination and the sixties were becoming the stuff of all sorts of marketed fiction within a dozen years after they happened. No country in Europe or Asia (except maybe Japan) has quite that kind of muscle when it comes to making mass-market drama and romance out of historical events, and conversely it's a bit more touchy sometimes to do it as liberally with history over here, at least history that's still within living memory or next to it, because everyone has been at war with everyone in the past and though peace is now reigning, this past, sometimes a complex and touchy past, is etched into so much of the social fabric, of family histories, of the makeup of a town or even of the road and rail network sometimes, that you can't escape it if you mix fiction up with history too loosely, and sell the product as if it was history, the real thing or next to it.

When it comes to struggles, frictions, empowerment and "affairs" within a society, that goes right into the present of course. I would love it if tv series like The West Wing, which was to some extent a running, intelligent commentary on contemporary U.S. society and politics, or The Sopranos, which took a leisurely look at the contemporary trappings of a few already mythified but also quite real strata in the nation, if that kind could be done more easily and frequently around here in Europe, but in most countries that's just not happening too often I think. We often don't quite have that kind of leeway and sense of authority when it comes to making tv fiction about contemporary history I think (it can be done in a movie, but much less frequently as a long tv series). Or the budget that creates those kinds of frames in the tv factory.

History is a more difficult and polymorph beast this side of the ocean, but the same will be true of places like China, India or Latin America in the near future, to their people and to foreigners living there. Which makes it even more pressing to know something of how to separate history from historical fictions, and enjoy and undrstand both. Yeah, I know historical writing and even historical sources have their own kind of story-telling, conscious and unconscious, open and hidden, but it's a bit different from the actual invention or remixing of historical people and what they did or how they lived. Ultimately: how history and historical legends and romances get written, for whom, and by whom, and why?

[RubySlippers]

http://www.ibtimes.com/us-17th-global-education-ranking-finland-south-korea-claim-top-spots-901538#

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States

Okay references will help make my case looking at the major facts our nations education system is doing pretty good out of 195 countries excluding the Vatican we are comfortably in the top quarter of nations, room for improvement perhaps but with our complicated education system likely we will not go up very much. But also we are unlikely to go down much either.

I would say with the range of student ability we have a decent system of options, breaking up low and high performance and things such as people who have earned a bachelors degree or are those of poor literacy to those of high literacy.

If unprepared students are entering a college or university its the fault of the school letting them in, if they had to meet high standards then only qualified students would get in. And that is the fault of poor tracking of the student properly.

[Ephiral]

Those statistics... don't make the case you think they do, Ruby. Are you really asserting that the US is less capable than Finland, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, the UK, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Ireland, Denmark, Austria, Poland, Germany, and Belgium? Maybe it doesn't have as many resources to devote to education?

No, that's not right. The US spends more than average, and more than the majority of those nations. Maybe the US system is just poorly designed and extremely inefficient? Perhaps it could actually accomplish considerably more if restructured properly, rather than less? Ranking below all of the nations I listed above, while outspending all of them on a per-student basis and most of them as a percentage of GDP, isn't "comfortable". It's "obviously a problem".

[Trieste]

*the biologist wants it noted he remained silent on the relevance of science....he should get cookies* ahem and you can always add a boiling chip to get the process started if the glassware is too flawless but I digress!

Silly biologist, we were talking about chemistry!

... *flee!*

stuff

You know, there are places in the world where fully adult people (who might not even keep personal guns at home) would be ready to sharpen some knives to begin hacking each other into pieces over statements such as "Hitler or Göring really aren't any more important than General Lee or Sherman" or "there are people who have suffered just as bad as the Jews did in the thirties" (note, the way that one's phrased it would *not* include the years when things really moved into high gear - it's still a statement that would make many people grit their teeth and have newspaper feuds starting) or "things were pretty nice in the seventeenth century" (apart from the Thirty years war, plagues and witch burnings, all of which would implicitly be glossed over). Well, kicking or stabbing each other to pieces in a figurative sense, but in public...

And of course those sly or dingy statements are very obvious picks, even laughable. You could get in seriously strained situations for a lot less than those.  :-X

In Europe you'd definitely get some strange glances if you were shrugging at world war two, or implying that the conflict was *not* absolutely central to the modern world, but I figure that's true in China and Japan too. And in many places, or many schools, many homes in the U.S. too. I mean, the U.S. spent fifty years paying much of the bills and largely holding the steering wheel for serious military activities and planning in many parts of Europe, and still has far more military muscle than any nation in that continent or in the western hemisphere: there has to be a reason for that somewhere... ;)

Okay, I would agree it's...likely? that WW2 and the atrocities that happened then will not always remain as crucially central to history as they are to many of us now (though what kind of war, apart from a nuclear armageddon, could 'outpace' WW2? - shivers). But for the present it's still a big part of the wider backdrop to many people's lives and to the history of nearly every country on the planet. So is WW1 by the way, only less obvious, 'cause it was a much less photogenic war, less Hollywood potential you could say, and it happened one more generation back, so to us it's obscured by the magnificent second round (next year the centenary is up). Right, you know that for sure, guys and ladies. It would actually be interesting if someone staged a debate on the premise "9!11 was a more important, more seminal, more powerful event than WW2" - just supposing that the huge war could be telescoped into one event - but lots of people would find it offensive to even put the question like that. With 9/11 no one needs to ask the year, of course.

And to handle the ways that WW2 - or 9/11 and the war on terrorism - still impacts us, still frames all of us, I guess it matters that those wars and upheavals look different to people from different places. Which could be iffy to handle if all that a big part of the population knows about WW2, beyond the movies, is that it started somewhere around the time grandpa went to school, ended in 1945, and was started by a looney dictator called Adolf Hitler and his evil Jerries, or is it germs?  :D  ::)

I am not making those statements - it's quite obvious that Hitler and Robert E. Lee are on two entirely different planes of existence, from two different time periods, and that the Jews (and homosexuals, and political dissidents, and Jehovah's Witnesses, and and and...) suffered immensely at the hands of the Nazis. I am not saying that they are not relevant in the greater context of history, but that they don't necessarily have the same relevance to the current generation as they did for people a generation or two back.

Just as, to use another example, I would expect the events of 7/7 to be relevant to modern Londoners (and UKers in general) but I would not expect it to be considered as immediately relevant two or three generations from now. The same goes for 9/11 - is it a big deal now? Yes. Will it continue to be taught in histories as an event that sparked a protracted war in the Middle East? Yes. Will it have the same visceral, deep-seated relevance to future generations as it does now? Probably not. Just ask the people who lived through the Pearl Harbor bombing and the subsequent internments.

History is fascinating if you're into it and there is a lot to learn. But... there is a lot to learn and if you're just learning it to get through the next standardized test? You're not going to give a shit about Mengele, Hitler, Nero, Constantine, G.W. Bush, or Jesus.

[gaggedLouise]

Just for the record (and this has already been clarified between Trie and myself, amicably and privately) I did not figure that anyone in this thread would state that "Robert E. Lee was as important as Hitler in every way/some way" or that the 17th century was the place to be, or insinuate that German and central European Jews didn't go through terrible suffering even before 1939 and certainly after that year. Those statements were deliberately moronic and over the top, and the one about Lee vs the Reich was a dodge on Trie's suggestion that to some people who are young at the present time, the U.S. civil war could appear just as important as WW2. Could well be true for the US, and I admitted myself that WW2 and the Third Reich will likely not look as absolutely central to all of history to people living in five hundred years time as it does to us now.

So yes, those statements are cranky. The main point I wished to make was that if it's "anything goes" beyond a certain low point in the kind of history we pick up, at school or in other places, it can lead to some really funny and unacceptable "truths" taking hold with people. And who would accept the same kind of dodgy reasoning in what students know about physics, biology or languages?

[Oniya]

Quite honestly, it wasn't until college, where I was given a glimpse beyond the standardized, US-centric curriculum, that I developed a very deep interest in history.  (Seriously, you can only go over the same 300-400 years so many times before it gets dull.  At least you folks across the Atlantic have a few milllennia of history to sift through.)

[Lilias]

I've been regularly crossing swords (elsewhere) with die-hard homeschoolers - universally American - on the usefulness of public education. I can understand it's hard to wrap one's mind around the facts of another culture's ways, especially when one has no contact with that culture, but I find this article does a great job:

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

[Shjade]

And as the 12-year-old says:  Walmart is an international store.

It is indeed. Actually just listened to a Walmart conference call a couple days ago and was surprised by how many separate international segments they had (as in it's not just "here's our South American Walmart segment," it's "Walmex").

I was not surprised by their unimaginative segment names, however. -.-

I like to think of myself as a pretty intelligent person. I did well in school, for the most part. That said, I'm well aware that I have horrendous gaps in my education, particularly with regard to history and geography. This may be partly the fault of the education system in my area, but even if it had better material and instructors for those topics I doubt I'd be much better off: I just didn't care. Still don't, to be completely honest. I understand the relevance of the information, but...just can't make myself care about it.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be confusing provinces in Canada for U.S. States. I just can't look at a blank map and put names on all the states and their capitals. If I were as bad off as some of the examples in this thread I'd say that's probably the fault of the school system. In my circumstance, I had the information presented, I just didn't put effort into absorbing it - that's my bad, not theirs.

I bring myself up as an anecdotal example to consider where to draw the line between failures in the education system and failures in the students themselves when it comes to things like this. Someone asking who is the "president of Earth?" That's not an indicator that the school is poor, it's an indicator that that student apparently hasn't made any effort to look into what actually, y'know, exists as a thing in the world. You shouldn't need your school to tell you there's no such thing as president of the whole planet. You have to draw the line somewhere to determine personal vs. community responsibility.

...

I'm not sure if any of that made sense or if I'm just rambling. x.x

[ofDelusions]

I've been regularly crossing swords (elsewhere) with die-hard homeschoolers - universally American - on the usefulness of public education. I can understand it's hard to wrap one's mind around the facts of another culture's ways, especially when one has no contact with that culture, but I find this article does a great job:

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

From perspective of someone who is studying to become a teacher in Finland that was a very interesting article, even if it ignores the criticism finnish school system has had.

Also, Finland is not part of Scandinavia...

[Inkidu]

I was floored when a friend of mine, who is a teacher of 6th to 12th grade English and literature, told me that his students during his student teaching failed an exam on a book. They only had to watch the movie version of the book, by the way.

He was teaching them how to do an MLA-style research paper, he put all of the formatting information on the whiteboard and then tested them on it. He was shocked at how many times he docked ten points alone because they couldn't format right. :\

Sometimes I wonder.

[Kythia]

Quite honestly, it wasn't until college, where I was given a glimpse beyond the standardized, US-centric curriculum, that I developed a very deep interest in history.  (Seriously, you can only go over the same 300-400 years so many times before it gets dull.  At least you folks across the Atlantic have a few milllennia of history to sift through.)

A good friend of mine is a Canadian immigrant and a Professor at a uni specialising in the Tudor period (broadly.  Obviously his field is narrower than that but for the sake of argument...)

His argument is that that period are just as much North American history as they are European.  Essentially, that "beginning" US history in 1776 or with the Mayflower or whenever is wrongheaded, its just that prior to those events North American history was in two halves - the history of the various native peoples and the history of Europe. 

Basically, the US has exactly the same amount of history, it just doesn't recognise it.

[Oniya]

Tell that to the folks that wrote my 4th through 11th grade history books.  (Not the teachers - I'm sure they were chafing at the borders.)  :P

[Ephiral]

Tell that to the folks that wrote my 4th through 11th grade history books.  (Not the teachers - I'm sure they were chafing at the borders.)  :P

I find it strikingly ironic that that huge a chunk of a history curriculum is so bent on ignoring the context of the events it discusses.

[gaggedLouise]

Tell that to the folks that wrote my 4th through 11th grade history books.  (Not the teachers - I'm sure they were chafing at the borders.)  :P

My 4th grade history textbook opened with a few lines on the receding of the ice age, with a photo from Greenland to accompany it. You can't get any further back as far as human occupation nearby goes (well, unless you begin with the Spanish cave paintings, but that's down south...). I suspect Ephiral may have had something of that kind too.

[gaggedLouise]

Actually, the reason I even know of General Sherman of the U.S. civil war (mentioned together with Lee above) is because of the huge sequoia tree named for him, and referenced in the Guinness Book of World Records.  ;D

[ofDelusions]

Actually, the reason I even know of General Sherman of the U.S. civil war (mentioned together with Lee above) is because of the huge sequoia tree named for him, and referenced in the Guinness Book of World Records.  ;D

Heh, I only learned those names from Lieutenant Blueberry comic books.

[Oniya]

I'd be more worried about those two statements if you lived in Alabama.  ;D

[Moraline]

To go off slightly on a tangent but perhaps relevant to the topic...

I remember when I first started taking Uni courses. I was quite young and was only allowed to take them because my father is a professor. It made me wonder what the qualifications were to enter university....

On looking them up in the Uni library I came across an old definition of literacy (which was part of the Uni's qualifications.)

It said something like: "The applicant must not be an illiterate." It then went on to define a literate as someone that could quote whole passages from the bible, quote complete Shakespearean soliloquys, and recite full page multiple paragraph passages from other works of literature.

Now, I mention this because it occurs to me that maybe in today's schools our definition of literacy is a bit weak. I think our schools (US & Canadian because those are the only ones I'm familiar with) have lowered the standards too much.

I don't think we should go back to the same types of standards that I quoted above, but perhaps we should consider raising the bar a bit more then, "able to read and write."

In my opinion, it's no wonder that we graduate people that are functionally illiterate when we set the bar so low they barely need to know how to write their own names and form a sentence to graduate.

[Oniya]

By those standards, I'm functionally illiterate.  ;D

Your talk about studying 'at your father's coat-tails' reminded me of how glad I am that Stanford and other universities have started putting lecture series on YouTube.  While it doesn't take the place of actual courses with hands-on assignments, it at least lets people expose themselves to higher concepts.

[Lilias]

The British PM became the butt of much hilarity when he mentioned memorising poetry as one of the goals of school ('Can Mr Cameron recite a poem for us and explain how it influenced him?') Me, on the other hand, coming from a system that does involve memorising poetry, I was nonplussed by the fact that it not only isn't required here but considered ridiculously unnecessary. ::)

[gaggedLouise]

The British PM became the butt of much hilarity when he mentioned memorising poetry as one of the goals of school ('Can Mr Cameron recite a poem for us and explain how it influenced him?') Me, on the other hand, coming from a system that does involve memorising poetry, I was nonplussed by the fact that it not only isn't required here but considered ridiculously unnecessary. ::)

Bruce Chatwin - high-end English public school boy, archaeologist by training and a riveting writer - gave an unforgettable, wildly funny description* of how he went on a visit to the Soviet Union, in the late sixties, with a magnate art-collector/antiques expert friend of his, and got invited to an Uzbek-style banquet in Moscow with some of the top archaeologists of the USSR. The only dish was a whole roasted lamb stuffed with rice, apricots and spices; there was lots of beverages - red wine, champagne and vodka - and nearly everyone became fabulously drunk as the party went on into the night. The sister of one of the elite archaeologists asked Bruce to recite speeches from Shakespeare, and he rose up to belt out "If music be the food of love..." and the St.Crispin's day speech from Henry V. (I'm sure some of the Russians had been declaiming heir own classics too - training in memorizing and reading aloud with style is very much a part of the Russian school tradition). As the sun rose, Bruce and his collector friend left the party, roaring drunk too but conscious of having defended the honour of England.


* The piece on George Ortiz in What Am I Doing Here? - a gem of a book, very stimulating and ferociously cool writing

[Caela]

To go off slightly on a tangent but perhaps relevant to the topic...

I remember when I first started taking Uni courses. I was quite young and was only allowed to take them because my father is a professor. It made me wonder what the qualifications were to enter university....

On looking them up in the Uni library I came across an old definition of literacy (which was part of the Uni's qualifications.)

It said something like: "The applicant must not be an illiterate." It then went on to define a literate as someone that could quote whole passages from the bible, quote complete Shakespearean soliloquys, and recite full page multiple paragraph passages from other works of literature.

Now, I mention this because it occurs to me that maybe in today's schools our definition of literacy is a bit weak. I think our schools (US & Canadian because those are the only ones I'm familiar with) have lowered the standards too much.

I don't think we should go back to the same types of standards that I quoted above, but perhaps we should consider raising the bar a bit more then, "able to read and write."

In my opinion, it's no wonder that we graduate people that are functionally illiterate when we set the bar so low they barely need to know how to write their own names and form a sentence to graduate.

Bolded the part that caught my attention the most.

By this definition, I am functionally illiterate, which makes me laugh my ass off because reading is one of my favorite pastimes.

With this though, keep in mind, that a lot of standards like this, were written at a time when most people didn't have such ready access to the sheer number of books we have so easily on hand nowadays. These days even a small, rural library could have more books than some people, in earlier centuries (especially those without money), would see in a lifetime. Often times they learned to read by studying their Bibles at home, and a small school might only have a copy of Shakespeare and a couple other books for students to share. When many of your incoming students have only had access to less than 20 books in their entire lives before coming to you, expecting them to be able to quote chapter and verse (or entire soliloquies etc.) is really quite reasonable.

[Silk]

I remember when I was at College, one of the students asked "Can you use computers in ICT?" It was roughly the time I lost faith in humanity.

Although I will admit I do not personally know the year WW2 started, may of been taught it but when something has such little relevance in day to day life like that, is it really supprising that things such as that happened, what would be worrying is if they did not know that WW2 happened outright, but not knowing the date of events is pretty forgivable.

[Oniya]

I remember when I was at College, one of the students asked "Can you use computers in ICT?" It was roughly the time I lost faith in humanity.

Although I will admit I do not personally know the year WW2 started, may of been taught it but when something has such little relevance in day to day life like that, is it really supprising that things such as that happened, what would be worrying is if they did not know that WW2 happened outright, but not knowing the date of events is pretty forgivable.

I'll just say that Trie probably learned more in trying to avoid learning the date - which may have been a good thing.  Knowing that it was somewhere in the late 1930s is probably close enough for most purposes.  Knowing the major players (people-wise) helps put it into historical context as well.  Not knowing that it happened would have me reaching for volume 'M' of my parents' encyclopedia set - not because of relevance, but because it was the thickest book in the set.  A good, hardcover Michener novel might combine heft and relevancy, of course.

[Beorning]

I don't know - it's pretty hard for me to imagine not knowing that particular date (start of WW2). But it may be a cultural thing - I'd risk saying that WW2 was more traumatic event for us Poles, than for Americans. So "September 1st, 1939" is one of these dates you learn as a child...

[Oniya]

That whole 'Panzers crossing the border' thing will get you every time.  It doesn't help Americans that at the time we were trying to stay out of it.  Now, the date that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor - that one gets played back pretty often.  I would hope that most high school students have a memory of Roosevelt's speech about 'A day that will live in infamy'.

[Moraline]

So what would a good education system look like? What would it cover and how would it cover it?

[Trieste]

I'll just say that Trie probably learned more in trying to avoid learning the date - which may have been a good thing.  Knowing that it was somewhere in the late 1930s is probably close enough for most purposes.  Knowing the major players (people-wise) helps put it into historical context as well.  Not knowing that it happened would have me reaching for volume 'M' of my parents' encyclopedia set - not because of relevance, but because it was the thickest book in the set.  A good, hardcover Michener novel might combine heft and relevancy, of course.

Trie ended up working harder in history than in any other class that year. >.>;;

[Oniya]

Heh - you mentioned.  But I wasn't thinking so much of the amount of work as the amount of extra information that you ended up having in your memory - at least until college.  ;)

[Trieste]

That much is true. The only class that did as much good for knowledge was the class my junior year that used "Don't Know Much About History" as its textbook. It was an alternative learning program that was experimental at the time. It's my understanding that the students did so well on the MCAS that it's being integrated throughout the rest of the classes now. It's only something that would work at a school as well-off as the one I went to, though, because an integral part of the curriculum was hands-on. As in, traveling to D.C. and having our lecture on constitutional law on the steps of the Supreme Court building.

The only reason it didn't do more good, in fact, was because I didn't actually finish my junior year of high school - was pulled out in February of that year due to external reasons and didn't go back.

[gaggedLouise]

I remember hearing of a survey among U.S. 8th graders that seemed to indicate that many of them would not be able to point out where the U.S. was on a world map (without national borders marked) but that may have been a joke.   ???

[Neysha]

I've just read a shocking article about the state of education among the current teenage / young adult generation in Poland. The article described the experiences of a few teaching aides - and the examples of pure ignorance they witnessed among their students. The examples include:

• a high school student asking if Świtezianka (a 19th-century poem about rusalkas) was based on facts (the teaching aide's comment: "Should I really be explaining to a 18-year-old that rusalkas aren't real?"),
• a high school student (shortly before graduation) asking who Hitler was ("I've heard the name mentioned..."),
• a student having trouble telling what present century was - and being *unable* to tell what century it was 100 years ago (the aide relates she tried to calculate it by substracting 100 from 21...),
• students being unable to tell what year the WW2 began,
• a student asking who is the current 'president of Earth'.

The worst thing? Some of these students actually managed to *graduate* from high school and got admitted to *universities*. Meaning, in a few years, we'll be getting teachers, doctors, maybe even lawyers and politicians which such shocking gaps in basic knowledge...

Is it that bad in your countries?

I think this has to do with the haphazard way many school systems teach the humanities and social sciences.

I personally would prefer to see less of a focus on such things and more of a focus on (especially in elementary/primary school) the basics of "English" (or whatever language is primary) and thus including speaking, reading and writing and in addition mathematics as well as technology related courses so that people can communicate effectively at the very least. Maybe some Civics tossed in so that the kids aren't completely ignorant of the world around them with basics on governments and laws and very generalized social norms. Then when we go into secondary school we can dive into a core curriculum focused around the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and try and focus students on those. Granted, a lot of students simply aren't cut out to engage in such fields, but instead of driving them to the humanities/social sciences, maybe business/personal finances/ money management or trade learning or apprenticeship programs could be more fitting so they can learn nice job skills and talents which will help them be responsible and more important, help them find employment or a sustainable career path or occupation.

Most of the humanities and social sciences then can be considered electives as opposed to part of the core program as we're seeing now in a lot of programs. And ultimately, if people really want to invest in further education in the humanities, there's still always going to be college, or more fiscally possible, the internet and libraries and other resources which can often be obtained easily and cheaply if people wish to pursue/better educate themselves in such topics without making it mandatory or a huge part of a basic or core educational curriculum.

[Callie Del Noire]

My take of late? Say the last 15 to 25 years.

In the US there is a background movement to weaken the public education system for a variety of reasons.
-Religious groups want their 'truth' taught.
-'Small Government' groups like the tea-party
-Groups that want to privatize education so that they can do to it what they did to the US penal system.

[Cyrano Johnson]

I think this has to do with the haphazard way many school systems teach the humanities and social sciences.

I personally would prefer to see less of a focus on such things . . .

So, just to be clear: you looked at that list of examples, concluded that they're instances of the haphazard teaching of humanities and social sciences... and figure that the take-away is that there should be less focus on teaching those things? That's what you're saying?

[Shjade]

Looking at that statement with as objective a viewpoint as I can manage, I can see some merit to the suggestion of tossing the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. Teaching a very one-sided version of history might be more damaging in some respects than leaving people to find out about these things on their own, assuming they bother to do so.

I'm not saying I recommend that as a course of action for public education, but...

[Neysha]

So, just to be clear: you looked at that list of examples, concluded that they're instances of the haphazard teaching of humanities and social sciences... and figure that the take-away is that there should be less focus on teaching those things? That's what you're saying?

Absolutely. I don't want any schools teaching humanities and social sciences with watered down textbooks, known or subconscious biases and filtered viewpoints, and political or social meddling, and general incompetence/uneven teaching. There's a virtual cottage industry of literature (best exemplified by the popular book by James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me) from both sides of the political spectrum that's been rightfully critical of schooling at least in the US, and not just of public schools, but private as well. Outside of a bare minimum of understanding of some of the subjects, I honestly don't see the purpose of overemphasizing studies in the humanities when there is a very important need to focus on the STEM fields, as well as focus on English (or other languages as appropriate) and personal finance/business concepts as a core curriculum. And later in secondary school, expanding the prior studies and trying to find a greater focus on trade/apprenticeship type programs for the large numbers of students that might not be STEM oriented.

Humanities can still be there, but as a far less emphasized elective. With the proliferation of information on the internet and libraries and books and other media, people can be free to educate or delude themselves as needbe. They're doing a wonderful job of doing so in spite of, or perhaps due to an over emphasis on humanities in schooling already and are willing to invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into pursuing degrees in somewhat self replicating degree fields. (where the main outlet of pursuing a subject of study is teaching said subject)

[Oniya]

'People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.' - Edmund Burke

[Kythia]

Humanities can still be there, but as a far less emphasized elective. With the proliferation of information on the internet and libraries and books and other media, people can be free to educate or delude themselves as needbe. They're doing a wonderful job of doing so in spite of, or perhaps due to an over emphasis on humanities in schooling already and are willing to invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into pursuing degrees in somewhat self replicating degree fields. (where the main outlet of pursuing a subject of study is teaching said subject)

But the proliferation of information on the internet and in the libraries isn't just humanities.  It's also the sciences.  I'm pretty certain that if I wanted to know how to do some maths thing or what a certain chemical reaction would do I could find it using the some tools and techniques as I'd use to find something in the humanities (Wikipedia, as a starting point, most likely). 

It seems your argument can be expanded to "Schools aren't needed, everyone can teach themselves".

Sure, they'll get some of it wrong.  Miss or misunderstand basic concepts.  But that applies to both branches

(and I think the science/humanities split is wrongheaded and a relic of historical accident rather than anything core, but that's by the by).

[Neysha]

But the proliferation of information on the internet and in the libraries isn't just humanities.  It's also the sciences.  I'm pretty certain that if I wanted to know how to do some maths thing or what a certain chemical reaction would do I could find it using the some tools and techniques as I'd use to find something in the humanities (Wikipedia, as a starting point, most likely). 

It seems your argument can be expanded to "Schools aren't needed, everyone can teach themselves".

Sure, they'll get some of it wrong.  Miss or misunderstand basic concepts.  But that applies to both branches

(and I think the science/humanities split is wrongheaded and a relic of historical accident rather than anything core, but that's by the by).

Oh no, I fully support schooling as opposed to leaving it to some sort of individual choice or self teaching. I just want to see a greater focus on the subjects I illustrated before.

While both categories are accessible beyond schools, I feel schooling is more essential for one over the other. In regards to the Humanities, there's still plenty to learn outside of formal schooling if one chooses too and being in a very generalized manner more interpretative and speculative, there's a lot more freedom to it as well. (which is part of the hazard of it being such an overemphasized focus in many schools)

[Shjade]

'People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.' - Edmund Burke

But I don't even like posters! :|

[Cyrano Johnson]

Absolutely. I don't want any schools teaching humanities and social sciences with watered down textbooks, known or subconscious biases and filtered viewpoints, and political or social meddling, and general incompetence/uneven teaching.

Okay. Glad to know I wasn't misreading you.

So, first of all, your diagnosis of the root problem seems mistaken to me. One of those examples above -- the girl who tried to figure out what century it was a hundred years ago by slightly flawed methodology -- is a clear example of innumeracy, a mathematics fail. Whatever problem is going on in those schools extends to more than just the teaching of humanities.

In the larger sense, though, I have a feeling would see the dangerous foolhardiness of someone saying to you: "that school system is teaching math poorly, so we should de-emphasize the subject and make it as marginal an elective as we possibly can, since people can go and learn it on their own if they really want to anyway." I don't get the feeling that, as pertains to a subject as important as being able to count, you would fail to see the insanity in that "reasoning." So, I'm puzzled as to why you seem to imagine that the humanities -- which address similarly basic areas of knowledge as being able to synthesize information, comprehend what one is reading and share a reasonably common base of knowledge about society and history with people around you -- are relatively disposable in this way. It seems just completely nuts to me to look at bad humanities education and say not "let's fix it" but "let's throw as much of it out as we possibly can," for much the same reasons that doing this with maths or science would be nuts.

I mean, science and maths need partisans, don't get me wrong. I'd be happy to see more scientific literacy and better numeracy in the modern world. But I don't get the kind of partisans who imagine every other sphere of endeavour can be chucked in the process, and fail to see how foolhardy and dangerous that kind of thinking is. When you have schools that don't teach Civics, or teach it as some minimal throwaway subject, the whole concept of citizenship and involvement in democracy deteriorates. When that happens, groups that want to give "equal time" to Creationism in the science classroom -- or teach totally fictional versions of history reframed to make "their side" look more heroic -- gain purchase and power. It's incredible to me that people should fail to see the problem with that.

[Healergirl]

 Vocational schools in the USA?


Nowadays, the Community College system picks up the load that Vocational schools used to carry.  Far too often, the load that High Schools are forced to carry as sell.

Home Schooling?  The motivations for doing that can be quite complex.  A far from small motivation is the perceived lack of safety for the student in some school systems.    And of course, the perceived decline in standards.  And yes, I am aware that frequently these are  Dog Whistles for justifying white flight due to integration.

But not always, and I would argue that in an age of sensationalized bad news, perhaps  not even mostly.   And lets face it, education system bureaucrats can be a very unresponsive bunch to legitimate parental complaints at times.

[Neysha]

Okay. Glad to know I wasn't misreading you.

So, first of all, your diagnosis of the root problem seems mistaken to me. One of those examples above -- the girl who tried to figure out what century it was a hundred years ago by slightly flawed methodology -- is a clear example of innumeracy, a mathematics fail. Whatever problem is going on in those schools extends to more than just the teaching of humanities.

I don't feel it was mistaken. My diagnosis wasn't meant to specifically deal with each and every issue brought up in the OP ultimately and specifically. But in a general fashion and I think that generally, as I stated in my original post, it was mostly due to haphazard humanities instruction.

In the larger sense, though, I have a feeling would see the dangerous foolhardiness of someone saying to you: "that school system is teaching math poorly, so we should de-emphasize the subject and make it as marginal an elective as we possibly can, since people can go and learn it on their own if they really want to anyway." I don't get the feeling that, as pertains to a subject as important as being able to count, you would fail to see the insanity in that "reasoning." So, I'm puzzled as to why you seem to imagine that the humanities -- which address similarly basic areas of knowledge as being able to synthesize information, comprehend what one is reading and share a reasonably common base of knowledge about society and history with people around you -- are relatively disposable in this way. It seems just completely nuts to me to look at bad humanities education and say not "let's fix it" but "let's throw as much of it out as we possibly can," for much the same reasons that doing this with maths or science would be nuts.

Incorrect. I'd prefer a greater emphasis on the STEM fields, as well as personal finances and English/Grammar/Communications (whatever we can call it) and a base of Civics, as I stated earlier. Reading comprenhension and communication should be covered by Grammar classes, or at least I hope they would, early on. Being able to communicate goes beyond the purview of just the Humanities IMHO and if I misspoke, I apologize. I want people to be able to communicate at a reasonably competent level, or else the STEM education would be useless. But yes, I do find possessing anything more then a basic knowledge of most humanities to be rather disposable unless its in a field one is pursuing or a hobby or passion or something they themselves choose to make an investment in.

I mean, science and maths need partisans, don't get me wrong. I'd be happy to see more scientific literacy and better numeracy in the modern world. But I don't get the kind of partisans who imagine every other sphere of endeavour can be chucked in the process, and fail to see how foolhardy and dangerous that kind of thinking is. When you have schools that don't teach Civics, or teach it as some minimal throwaway subject, the whole concept of citizenship and involvement in democracy deteriorates. When that happens, groups that want to give "equal time" to Creationism in the science classroom -- or teach totally fictional versions of history reframed to make "their side" look more heroic -- gain purchase and power. It's incredible to me that people should fail to see the problem with that.

Civics would be covered, as I stated in my original 'diagnoses.' But I don't see any particular need for expansion of the core curriculum into humanities. They can still exist as electives, both in Secondary School and in College so if people want to invest their time and money into it, they should feel free. But again, I would much prefer an emphasis on a core of STEM + Personal Finances (since many people seem woefully ill equipped at managing money) and as stated before, Grammar/English so they can communicate their ideas effectively. Therefore with this system, there'd be a lot less wiggle room for cultural/societal radicals such as those you bring up, to corrupt schooling. It certainly would be hard to be worse then social studies standards are today. And "theories" like Intelligent Design can be rightfully relegated to the Humanities electives where they belong by an increasingly scientifically literate populace. :)

And again, for emphasis, I don't want to eliminate the Humanities. Just de-emphasize them in core curriculum. Humanities are still important in a broad sense, but individually, I find its importance a fair bit more muted in comparison to learning STEM fields or learning a trade, skill or vocation or how to communicate effectively etc.

[Oniya]

I think, perhaps, there is confusion about what you class as 'Humanities'.  Traditionally, the humanities include ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, religion, and visual and performing arts such as music and theater. The humanities that are also sometimes regarded as social sciences include history, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law and linguistics.

[Neysha]

I think, perhaps, there is confusion about what you class as 'Humanities'.  Traditionally, the humanities include ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, religion, and visual and performing arts such as music and theater. The humanities that are also sometimes regarded as social sciences include history, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law and linguistics.

Well I prefer using "Humanities" as a broad term as opposed to "Ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, religion, and visual and performing arts, music and theater, history, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law and linguistics etc except on a base level of the previously bolded subjects and others as de-emphasized electives."

;)

I apologize for any confusion. :)

[Cyrano Johnson]

About the only thing on that list that's not already an elective in most secondary school systems I know of is literature. And that only sort of, because the study of literature at the secondary level is basically an excuse to teach basic composition, reading comprehension and critical thinking. I wouldn't make the learning of any of those "de-emphasized electives" and I don't see what school system really exhibits the supposed problem your suggestion is solving. Take the examples in Beorning's post: if you think those students should be learning a base level of history, they aren't, and your notions about what should be done don't seem relevant at all to improving that; the issue is the need for more emphasis on quality humanities education (which isn't a zero-sum game with STEM subjects, the one should complement the other).

[Neysha]

About the only thing on that list that's not already an elective in most secondary school systems I know of is literature. And that only sort of, because the study of literature at the secondary level is basically an excuse to teach basic composition, reading comprehension and critical thinking. I wouldn't make the learning of any of those "de-emphasized electives" and I don't see what school system really exhibits the supposed problem your suggestion is solving. Take the examples in Beorning's post: if you think those students should be learning a base level of history, they aren't, and your notions about what should be done don't seem relevant at all to improving that; the issue is the need for more emphasis on quality humanities education (which isn't a zero-sum game with STEM subjects, the one should complement the other).

It's only an elective in that the typical graduation requirements for a US Secondary School is something along the lines of four credits of English (which is fine, people should be able to read, write and speak ideas) but the upper level courses tend to be excuses for straying into the humanities for various reasons when they could be spending that same time learning something more STEMish or of use in an actual job or career field not directly related to that particular humanities subject. And then, you get three or four credits in Social Sciences as a basic requirement and one to two credits in Fine Arts... and yet only 2-3 in Math and maybe 2 in Science related related fields. Then you toss in all of the electives, which can be easily utilized by opportunistic students to pad their GPA's with classes they'd rather glide through. (and IMHO there's a tendency for Humanities as opposed to STEM classes being easier to coast through) There's only so much classroom time to utilize and kids aren't moving past basic algebra, basic scientific literacy, and alternatively have little actual schooling in any particular trade or vocation or other practical/technical skills, and while these generations are familiar with technology, we should be focusing more on whether they can do coding and programming languages, or use various software beyond MS Word or be able to manage their personal finances. Maybe then they can actually be prepared and equipped to go to college, or at least enter the job field with more relevant skills then knowing what year WW2 began. (which sounds kind of like a trick question anyways)

[Lilias]

'People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.' - Edmund Burke

That's why the Horrible Histories franchise (books, TV show and magazine) is such a smash over here. Who can resist 'History with the nasty bits left in'? ;)

[Neysha]

That's why the Horrible Histories franchise (books, TV show and magazine) is such a smash over here. Who can resist 'History with the nasty bits left in'? ;)

I think the best method for secondary schools and intro level college history classes would be taking Howard Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States, and Paul Johnsons A History of the American People, rip the books apart, and then juxtapose the chapters chronologically, and then bind it up textbook style for classroom instruction.  >:)

[Lilias]

My school years are long past, and the Spawn still has a ways to go, but I'm starting now to clear shelves for this. >:)

[Ephiral]

Another issue I see with your approach, Neysha, is that the lines aren't as clear as you seem to think. Where would anthropology be without history, for example? Information theory? Yesterday's philosophy. Epistemology? Today's philosophy. Any proposal that would dismiss the idea of being able to measure how much and how well we know as an unimportant elective is going to turn out shitty scientists. For that matter, while science courses tend to be very good at nurturing curiosity and teaching inquisitiveness, IME teaching independent and critical thought is left to the humanities. I humbly submit that this is pretty important to a strong science program.

[Cyrano Johnson]

It's only an elective in that the typical graduation requirements for a US Secondary School is something along the lines of four credits of English (which is fine, people should be able to read, write and speak ideas) but the upper level courses tend to be excuses for straying into the humanities for various reasons when they could be spending that same time learning something more STEMish or of use in an actual job or career field not directly related to that particular humanities subject.

The upper level courses are for people thinking of doing those subjects in college, and should be preparing them for what they will face there. (They don't, really, but they should be.)

Anyway I think you're partly posing a fallacious problem here: the communication and thinking skills learned in basic lit. study or in Humanities more generally are most certainly of use in actual job and career fields outside the Humanities, especially if one is talking about the general knowledge base that comes from secondary work and a bachelor's degree in something like EngLit. All those people don't just go out and become profs, you know; you can find them in Marketing, Fund Development, Communications, Law and various creative and management positions throughout the public and private sectors. (The Arts, by the way, have also more than proven their utility to a similar range of the job market... but it doesn't matter how many studies get done, there will always be someone running their mouth about how the Arts are supposed to be a waste of time...  :P)

I don't know specifically how electives and vocational / STEM education break down in American schools. It could be that some electives could be lost in favor of better mathematical and scientific literacy and I think having a subject stream specifically devoted to learning basic code would be a pretty great idea -- I wish something like that had existed when I was in school -- along with education about personal financial and life skills that isn't a joke.

But I'm not in the least convinced that needs to happen at the expense of basic literacy -- which schools across North America are most certainly failing at right now, students routinely come out of secondary education functionally illiterate -- or, say, at the basic core of historical understanding that Social Studies are meant to provide. (There's a whole complex of basic social touchstones and knowledge about civics that come out of knowing WW2 history, for example, which is why it still looms so large and why it horrifies teachers to encounter students who don't know who Hitler was or when Poland was invaded. That factual ignorance is a proximate indicator of a larger likely ignorance that's way scarier.)

In general the function of high school is not and should not be to stream everybody into vocational colleges and tech fields. That's just one aspect of the job market they'll be going into. If there are electives people are coasting through, the answer is to toughen up those electives or eliminate them; if the existing time isn't enough to teach both humanities and STEM subjects adequately then the length of school days needs looking at. I still don't see any reason to accept the conjecture that the failure of your schools to teach humanities adequately means they should teach them less.

[Cyrano Johnson]

+1 to Ephiral's post above as well.

[RubySlippers]

Okay simple question what good are higher level BS classes if the student is not going to college? I do understand literacy, mathematics to a general level, an understanding of other subjects for general knowledge but you can knock those out in two years of classes to a level sufficient for a working man or woman as an adult. So to me your wasting two years of classes for the most part useless to half the students who may go on for a certification, vocational training or maybe an associates degree but are more often going into the work force out of High School.

Its funny to I have a relative take the GED at 16 and went out bypassing two years of High School going into a two year program and is now a gainfully employed automotive tech at 18 earning over $32,000 a year, once he gets his certifications upgraded he will earn $40,000 likely by 26 a lot more than many college grads with bachelors degrees are getting. And you cannot outsource this work and its in demand and largely recession proof. So why not just educate for two years, let those that want to try for the GED and give them the rest of their education money for two years of additional education at any accredited or similar school or apply it to an apprenticeship. Say 60% of their education costs if that in a  state is $20,000  apply a $12,000 amount to be used by the time they are 19. Then students wanting to get a High School diploma can do that yet as well. Just an idea.

[Oniya]

Have you even thought about your own signature text?  You are referring to education that is designed to adjust the individual to society, rather than allowing people to develop to their full potentials.  I guess you must see leisure as a problem.

[gaggedLouise]

Another issue I see with your approach, Neysha, is that the lines aren't as clear as you seem to think. Where would anthropology be without history, for example? Information theory? Yesterday's philosophy. Epistemology? Today's philosophy. Any proposal that would dismiss the idea of being able to measure how much and how well we know as an unimportant elective is going to turn out shitty scientists. For that matter, while science courses tend to be very good at nurturing curiosity and teaching inquisitiveness, IME teaching independent and critical thought is left to the humanities. I humbly submit that this is pretty important to a strong science program.

*high-fives Ephiral* Perfectly put.

[Ephiral]

Okay simple question what good are higher level BS classes if the student is not going to college? I do understand literacy, mathematics to a general level, an understanding of other subjects for general knowledge but you can knock those out in two years of classes to a level sufficient for a working man or woman as an adult. So to me your wasting two years of classes for the most part useless to half the students who may go on for a certification, vocational training or maybe an associates degree but are more often going into the work force out of High School.

Its funny to I have a relative take the GED at 16 and went out bypassing two years of High School going into a two year program and is now a gainfully employed automotive tech at 18 earning over $32,000 a year, once he gets his certifications upgraded he will earn $40,000 likely by 26 a lot more than many college grads with bachelors degrees are getting. And you cannot outsource this work and its in demand and largely recession proof. So why not just educate for two years, let those that want to try for the GED and give them the rest of their education money for two years of additional education at any accredited or similar school or apply it to an apprenticeship. Say 60% of their education costs if that in a  state is $20,000  apply a $12,000 amount to be used by the time they are 19. Then students wanting to get a High School diploma can do that yet as well. Just an idea.

...except for the part where voucher systems, essentially what you're suggesting are a) poisonous to real education and b) historically rooted in racism.

[Neysha]

Another issue I see with your approach, Neysha, is that the lines aren't as clear as you seem to think. Where would anthropology be without history, for example? Information theory? Yesterday's philosophy. Epistemology? Today's philosophy. Any proposal that would dismiss the idea of being able to measure how much and how well we know as an unimportant elective is going to turn out shitty scientists. For that matter, while science courses tend to be very good at nurturing curiosity and teaching inquisitiveness, IME teaching independent and critical thought is left to the humanities. I humbly submit that this is pretty important to a strong science program.

Well any strong students tend to be well rounded regardless from my limited experience. Hence I don't think the talented "honors" students being dismissive of such electives as they typically aren't now. And for the talented students, the context of advances in various STEM fields could find some usefulness. But for the mass of students, and considering the time and resources, I would think a concentration in STEM type fields would be ultimately preferable to Humanities, at least when it comes to those who are college bound. And for colleges and premier secondary schools I suppose, those courses you've stated would be excellent for fleshing out a strong science program. Definitely love to see them encouraged in lieu of less related Humanities electives.

Okay simple question what good are higher level BS classes if the student is not going to college? I do understand literacy, mathematics to a general level, an understanding of other subjects for general knowledge but you can knock those out in two years of classes to a level sufficient for a working man or woman as an adult. So to me your wasting two years of classes for the most part useless to half the students who may go on for a certification, vocational training or maybe an associates degree but are more often going into the work force out of High School.

Its funny to I have a relative take the GED at 16 and went out bypassing two years of High School going into a two year program and is now a gainfully employed automotive tech at 18 earning over $32,000 a year, once he gets his certifications upgraded he will earn $40,000 likely by 26 a lot more than many college grads with bachelors degrees are getting. And you cannot outsource this work and its in demand and largely recession proof. So why not just educate for two years, let those that want to try for the GED and give them the rest of their education money for two years of additional education at any accredited or similar school or apply it to an apprenticeship. Say 60% of their education costs if that in a  state is $20,000  apply a $12,000 amount to be used by the time they are 19. Then students wanting to get a High School diploma can do that yet as well. Just an idea.

Sounds like a good idea to me if it works generally as you laid out. We need more skill technicians and the like. Auto mechanics. Plumbers. Carpenters. Other assorted handyman style work and contracting. Even just general education in DIY type technical projects. Especially for those that might not be inclined to go into the STEM fields, which is a lot of people, and might not be prepared for the rigors of pursuing a narrower slice of employment options by going into some of the Humanities fields. A lot of people who go to college but end up underemployed after graduation or not graduating at all from a four year school, or even a smaller college, might've found they could've have a better investment of time and money going into a program like you are suggesting.

[Ephiral]

Well any strong students tend to be well rounded regardless from my limited experience. Hence I don't think the talented "honors" students being dismissive of such electives as they typically aren't now. And for the talented students, the context of advances in various STEM fields could find some usefulness. But for the mass of students, and considering the time and resources, I would think a concentration in STEM type fields would be ultimately preferable to Humanities, at least when it comes to those who are college bound. And for colleges and premier secondary schools I suppose, those courses you've stated would be excellent for fleshing out a strong science program. Definitely love to see them encouraged in lieu of less related Humanities electives.

So... what I'm hearing here is "Yeah, that'll make the standards completely crap at accompishing their purpose (ie, more students graduating ready to pursue STEM-related goals), but if people can't overachieve, to hell with them." This is... not promising.

And again: Your proposal throws epistemology by the wayside. Exactly how do you plan on a robust science program that doesn't have foundational studies in that?

[Neysha]

So... what I'm hearing here is "Yeah, that'll make the standards completely crap at accompishing their purpose (ie, more students graduating ready to pursue STEM-related goals), but if people can't overachieve, to hell with them." This is... not promising.

I don't recall saying that. *checks* Nope I didn't. Whew...

And again: Your proposal throws epistemology by the wayside. Exactly how do you plan on a robust science program that doesn't have foundational studies in that?

I don't recall stating that either. Unless stating that "those courses would be excellent for fleshing out a strong science program" is somehow interpreted to also stating "Your proposal throws epistemology by the wayside."

[Ephiral]

I don't recall saying that. *checks* Nope I didn't. Whew...

Well any strong students tend to be well rounded regardless from my limited experience. Hence I don't think the talented "honors" students being dismissive of such electives as they typically aren't now.

Seems to me that you're saying that these "electives" will be taken by some students, but not most. Given that, as I pointed out, some of them are foundational to a strong science program, this seems like a very poor way to achieve your goal of strong STEM education. Hence my read.

I don't recall stating that either. Unless stating that "those courses would be excellent for fleshing out a strong science program" is somehow interpreted to also stating "Your proposal throws epistemology by the wayside."

So you haven't been dismissive of the overwhelming majority of humanities, explicitly including philosophy?

I think, perhaps, there is confusion about what you class as 'Humanities'.  Traditionally, the humanities include ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, religion, and visual and performing arts such as music and theater. The humanities that are also sometimes regarded as social sciences include history, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law and linguistics.

Well I prefer using "Humanities" as a broad term as opposed to "Ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, religion, and visual and performing arts, music and theater, history, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law and linguistics etc except on a base level of the previously bolded subjects and others as de-emphasized electives."

;)

I apologize for any confusion. :)

[gaggedLouise]

And again: Your proposal throws epistemology by the wayside. Exactly how do you plan on a robust science program that doesn't have foundational studies in that?

I don't recall stating that either. Unless stating that "those courses would be excellent for fleshing out a strong science program" is somehow interpreted to also stating "Your proposal throws epistemology by the wayside."

Experiments or statistics often do not prove one, and only one, proposed statement as fact, if they are not judged critically and discussed within some particular methods - and any science, hard or soft, is likely to have several sets of methods operating within it at the same time, or over the course of let's say fifty years. Some of those methods may be, or can appear, contradictory vs each other. To really produce some sort of certain and useful results, methods are needed, and secondary education textbooks by themselves are not big on explaining the fine points of method and how they relate to the actual research in nature, in the library or the lab - it's methods of understanding how to solve a scientifc question we're talking of, how to formulate questions rigorously, translate them to valid experiments and judge the results, not just the hands-on skills of learning how to set up the right gadgets in the right way to get the right results.

So experiments have a limited ability to prove things in and of themselves, unless they are put inside a reasoning that includes, like, how to acquire and formulate knowledge, questions or hypotheses (epistemology). Experiments don't simply pole science straight into the bedrock of plain natural facts and leave the outcome standing there as incontrovertible pillars of fact. That's how it's sold to junior students and in many popular books, but most serious researchers know it's not that simple.

Both students and researchers are busy though, often stressed, so if students in a natural science are supposed to learn that these things matter, they have to acquire some grasp of critical thinking and of understanding of how and why knowledge evolves. And learn it in a way that's not just a back-written celebratory story portraying every advance in science as the obvious solution that everyone who was around at the time should have understood straight off.

[Neysha]

Seems to me that you're saying that these "electives" will be taken by some students, but not most. Given that, as I pointed out, some of them are foundational to a strong science program, this seems like a very poor way to achieve your goal of strong STEM education. Hence my read.

They're elective. Students can elect to take them or not IMHO. I'd prefer a core curriculum more focused on what I've stated a half dozen times before.

So you haven't been dismissive of the overwhelming majority of humanities, explicitly including philosophy?

No I haven't.

[Ephiral]

Humanities can still be there, but as a far less emphasized elective. With the proliferation of information on the internet and libraries and books and other media, people can be free to educate or delude themselves as needbe. They're doing a wonderful job of doing so in spite of, or perhaps due to an over emphasis on humanities in schooling already and are willing to invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into pursuing degrees in somewhat self replicating degree fields. (where the main outlet of pursuing a subject of study is teaching said subject)

But yes, I do find possessing anything more then a basic knowledge of most humanities to be rather disposable unless its in a field one is pursuing or a hobby or passion or something they themselves choose to make an investment in.

Civics would be covered, as I stated in my original 'diagnoses.' But I don't see any particular need for expansion of the core curriculum into humanities. They can still exist as electives, both in Secondary School and in College so if people want to invest their time and money into it, they should feel free. But again, I would much prefer an emphasis on a core of STEM + Personal Finances (since many people seem woefully ill equipped at managing money) and as stated before, Grammar/English so they can communicate their ideas effectively.

So. Humanities are disposable, in favour of STEM fields, and should be a de-emphasized elective, or just picked up on the internet. Philosophy is one of the fields you explicitly stated fell into your (rather odd) definition of 'humanities'. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy. But you're not saying that epistemology is disposable? Please explain.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Just to add some emphasis:

an over emphasis on humanities in schooling already and are willing to invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into pursuing degrees in somewhat self replicating degree fields. (where the main outlet of pursuing a subject of study is teaching said subject)

I don't know what dismissiveness is if this isn't it. (It's also fairly ignorant of how Humanities degree fields actually work in the job market, as I pointed out earlier.)

[Neysha]

So. Humanities are disposable, in favour of STEM fields, and should be a de-emphasized elective, or just picked up on the internet. Philosophy is one of the fields you explicitly stated fell into your (rather odd) definition of 'humanities'. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy. But you're not saying that epistemology is disposable? Please explain.

Okay...

I don't recall saying that. *checks* Nope I didn't. Whew...

I don't recall stating that either. Unless stating that "those courses would be excellent for fleshing out a strong science program" is somehow interpreted to also stating "Your proposal throws epistemology by the wayside."

Just to add some emphasis:

I don't know what dismissiveness is if this isn't it.

I'm extremely impressed that you're able to ignore everything I've stated up to this point and snip it down to one sentence and be capable of managing a response. You'll have a bright future at Fox News.  :P

[Trieste]

I'm in a STEM field. Philosophy is an integral part of my field. If someone were to say that philosophy is useless or shouldn't be taught to STEM students, it would be a very ignorant thing to say.

[Healergirl]

Sir Isaac Newton - the fellow invented Calculus - would have  flatly rejected the idea that Philosophy had no important part in his own education.  Well...Maybe he would not have, because it would not have occurred to him that it was needful to even address the point.

[Trieste]

I could have sworn they told me calculus was invented in the Middle East during their golden age (during the European dark ages, no less). I've always had this grudge against some nameless guy from back-when Arabia. Now you're telling me I have to stab effigies of Isaac Newton, too?!

* Trieste will never forgive calculus. Nevar!

[Healergirl]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus

Has a good overview of the origins.  The Indians (subcontinent) have a much stronger claim to developing the early components that Newton codified into calculus in the modern form.  So do the Greeks, particularly Archimedes.


Now, Algebra(an arab word)?  That is very much on the Arabs. That may be what you were remembering, Trieste.

edited for typos.

[Trieste]

Could be conflating the two. But I like algebra, so I'm going to have to stop stabbing those effigies now, I guess, if they actually invented algebra and not calculus. I mean I know calculus is supposed to just be advanced algebra but fuck that noise. >.>

[Oniya]

The Arabic nations did have a very advanced grasp of mathematics (the word 'algebra' comes from the Arabic 'al-jabr', meaning 'restoration')  As for calculus, however, I think your teachers may have been referring to Madhava of Sangamagrama who was from India.  Isaac Newton gave calculus more applied usage in his work in physics.  (I once took a class in physics that was done for the person who hadn't yet taken calculus.  It was horribly clunky.  When you know the math behind how position over time relates to velocity, and velocity over time relates to acceleration, it all fits neatly together.)

[Healergirl]

What Oniya said.

And I share trieste's distaste for calculus.  god, I was miserable that semester, all I needed or could stand of the thing.

[gaggedLouise]

And as for astronomy, early medieval Persians (and maybe Indian astronomers before them) seem to have been the first to notice the patch of dim light in Andromeda that we now know is the neighbour of the Milky Way, the closest big galaxy, excluding the small satellite galaxies of our own. The ancient Greeks didn't notice it, although they had plenty of astronomers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy#Observation_history

[Oniya]

What Oniya said.

And I share trieste's distaste for calculus.  god, I was miserable that semester, all I needed or could stand of the thing.

*wibbles*  My only problem was that I'd had that semester at the end of 11th grade - my entire first semester as a college frosh was review!

(This is why I feel so bad for the little Oni this year.  :( )

[Trieste]

What Oniya said.

And I share trieste's distaste for calculus.  god, I was miserable that semester, all I needed or could stand of the thing.

Chemistry majors have to take three semesters of calculus. Three.

More if they *cough* don't pass the first semester. >.>;;

The Arabic nations did have a very advanced grasp of mathematics (the word 'algebra' comes from the Arabic 'al-jabr', meaning 'restoration')  As for calculus, however, I think your teachers may have been referring to Madhava of Sangamagrama who was from India.  Isaac Newton gave calculus more applied usage in his work in physics.  (I once took a class in physics that was done for the person who hadn't yet taken calculus.  It was horribly clunky.  When you know the math behind how position over time relates to velocity, and velocity over time relates to acceleration, it all fits neatly together.)

I much, much, much prefer calculus-based things to be taught with calculus. Generally, the calculus that is involved in Classes That Aren't Calculus is fairly simple and really not that involved, so it's not, like, scary-Calculus. The stats class I just took was for people who hadn't taken calculus, and after spotting a couple equations that looked suspiciously like derivations, I started going and just looking up the calculus method of doing them. It ended up being much easier.

And as for astronomy, early medieval Persians (and maybe Indian astronomers before them) seem to have been the first to notice the patch of dim light in Andromeda that we now know is the neighbour of the Milky Way, the closest big galaxy, excluding the small satellite galaxies of our own. The ancient Greeks didn't notice it, although they had plenty of astronomers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy#Observation_history

The best part about learning about the heavenly bodies was learning about the myths that went along with their names. ^_^

Now I demand you all stop hijacking this thread! *flees while cackling*

[Oniya]

*sits up stiffly*

I'm not hijacking.  I'm educating the modern generation.  It's right there on the tin.

*flees, giggling*

[Valerian]

I was reading a book just the other day where they mentioned that Newton originally used the word "fluxions" for his new math.  It's probably better that "calculus" won out.

Erm.  Also educational?  At least potentially helpful in trivia contests?

*flees after Oniya*

[chaoslord29]

Piping in for the value of the humanities in education! You math/science types will ultimately be lost without us!

*waves philosophy pennant meekly*

[Oniya]

Einstein himself recognized this. 

Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I
cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image:

science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

An excerpt from Albert Einstein’s “Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium” From Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.

[chaoslord29]

Einstein himself recognized this. 

An excerpt from Albert Einstein’s “Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium” From Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.

I don't know that every major in the humanities and liberal arts would appreciate being compared to religion haha.

However, I'm familiar with the quote, and the good Mr. Einstein's feelings towards religion, and feel that the term as he uses it might be more accurately captured by Theology. Regrettably, strong theological traditions are lacking from many modern, popular religious practices.

Speaking on the liberal arts in general though, I'm often frustrated by those who say the career best suited to those who study them is to become a teacher or professor in the discipline themselves, perpetuating a cycle of impractical academic theories and speculation.

[gaggedLouise]

*pushes herself up after Trie scuffled into her*

I'm not hijacking either. I'm um...medicating for general moderation.  :D

*ties Trie's hands behind her back and urges her to stop preparing for her fifth nervous breakdown*

[Healergirl]

Chaoslord29,

No need for meekness, you do have allies here! *waves a Philosophy pennant while wearing her "I.T. is It!" shirt.

Ummmm..... Trie's hands are tied behind her back?  Ahhh... we are in serious danger of derailment here.

[Oniya]

*pushes herself up after Trie scuffled into her*

I'm not hijacking either. I'm um...medicating for general moderation.  :D

*ties Trie's hands behind her back and urges her to stop preparing for her fifth nervous breakdown*

At least it's not her nineteenth.  (Yes, I took some music courses too!  Math and music are intrinsically linked.  Woot!  Back on topic!)

[chaoslord29]

Chaoslord29,

No need for meekness, you do have allies here! *waves a Philosophy pennant while wearing her "I.T. is It!" shirt.

Ummmm..... Trie's hands are tied behind her back?  Ahhh... we are in serious danger of derailment here.

Well now that there's too of us . . . I suppose we can relentlessly banter back and forth till we invent a new field of science XD

Maybe something that can get us back on the rail as it were: A problem that I've predicated some of my particular career in both philosophy and political science on is that of human decision making and free will. Not that I want to turn this into a huge free will debate, but I would like to pose that without philosophy to speculate as to the precise nature of the expression of will, doesn't science reduce us to simply automatons? And doesn't that have rather disconcerting implications for society, unless political science intervenes to mitigate them?

[Neysha]

I'm in a STEM field. Philosophy is an integral part of my field. If someone were to say that philosophy is useless or shouldn't be taught to STEM students, it would be a very ignorant thing to say.

Thankfully no one in this thread has yet.

[Healergirl]

Chaoslord29,

Are humans rational animals, or simply rationalizing animals?  That's another way to pose the question.  I think that the ability to ask the question is something of a positive answer that "yes we do have free will- to a point".  I don't view it as a binary condition, but rather as a sliding scale.

And the second question....  yes. Political Science always ahas a place, regardless of the answer.

Neysha,

I don't think that you do believe philosophy is useless, but it is very easy to read your presented position as supporting that view.

[chaoslord29]

Thankfully no one in this thread has yet.

But it's something I hear engineering/business/chem/pharmacy/computer science majors say all the time.

Chaoslord29,

Are humans rational animals, or simply rationalizing animals?  That's another way to pose the question.  I think that the ability to ask the question is something of a positive answer that "yes we do have free will- to a point".  I don't view it as a binary condition, but rather as a sliding scale.

See, I don't think that it does; at least in part, because of an answer like the one you gave. People are inclined to believe in Free-Will, I think, or at least, not to worry about it, because if they were constant worrying about free will or believed they didn't have it in the first place, they would find less meaning in their lives. In other words, rationalizing to the effect that we do have free will may very well be a sort of anthropic evolutionary adaption: as our ancestors developed a level of consciousness capable of speculating in regards to their own free will, those who spent too much time worrying about it, or else saw that their lives had no meaning because of it, were less likely to survive. Meanwhile, those who believed in their own free will, and perpetuated that belief, derived greater meaning from their lives and were more likely to proliferate, regardless of any factual basis for the idea.

[Trieste]

I... wait, what?

Et tu, Healergirl? :P

[Healergirl]

caoslord29,

Good answer.

But here is another argument in favor of the existence, indeed,  the burden of free will. 

Alcohol.

It has  been argued quite seriously that the invention of beer was crucial for human development because fermented grain allowed us to deaden our awareness of our own weight of responsibility for our actions in our lives.

It has also been argued that a factor in the rise of agriculture was to provide a more reliably available  feedstock for fermentation thn the occasil self-fermenting beres found while gathering, but that is a separate chain of discussion.i

In short, I am arguing that if we do not have free will, we would not find mind-altering substances so attractive, because these substances reduce our will, our control, leaving our genetically programmed instincts and behaviors a far freer rein.

Trieste,

*blinks innocentishly*  Oh I would never take advantage of you, Trie.

  Unless you asked me to, of course.

[chaoslord29]

caoslord29,

Good answer.

But here is another argument in favor of the existence, indeed,  the burden of free will. 

Alcohol.

It has  been argued quite seriously that the invention of beer was crucial for human development because fermented grain allowed us to deaden our awareness of our own weight of responsibility for our actions in our lives.

It has also been argued that a factor in the rise of agriculture was to provide a more reliably available  feedstock for fermentation thn the occasil self-fermenting beres found while gathering, but that is a separate chain of discussion.i

In short, I am arguing that if we do not have free will, we would not find mind-altering substances so attractive, because these substances reduce our will, our control, leaving our genetically programmed instincts and behaviors a far freer rein.

Trieste,

*blinks innocentishly*  Oh I would never take advantage of you, Trie.

  Unless you asked me to, of course.

Ah, but mind altering substances don't necessarily reduce free-will, so much as the alter the state of our conscious minds, which may or may not have free will in the first place. If anything, that suggests to me some further proof for the notion that the perception of free will is a by-product, a backfiring even, of the cognitive processes which also produce in human beings a higher degree of consciousness of self and actions than in most other animals. The consumption of substances which reduce that perception are appealing therefore, because they remove that perceived burden of responsibility, whether it factually exists or not.

Again, not wanting to totally derail this into a discussion of free-will and all that, but the point remains: These are questions that are not strictly defined within the realm of science, or else, if they are so, then their are some rather interesting and potentially negative repercussions that we would have to face.

For me, the biggest problem is that of agency. If the actions of other animals can be perfectly captured in purely deterministic (or at least probabilistic) function of firing neurons in their brains in accordance with natural laws of cause and effect, by what agency do human beings exercise a greater degree of control over their own actions?

[Cyrano Johnson]

I'm extremely impressed that you're able to ignore everything I've stated up to this point

You know, getting cross at being confronted with your own reckless statements really won't change the fact that you made them.

[Healergirl]

Chaoslord29,

Oboy.  I don't have answers for those points.  I have arguments, but that is not the same thing, and I'm not sure there are definitive answers anyway.  Yet.

I will say that recent studies into neurochemistry and MRI analysis of brain activity under various conditions and stimuli,  are opening doors that nearly everybody, of whatever belief or creed, will find something not to like about whatever comes out of them.

[Neysha]

You know, getting cross at being confronted with your own reckless statements really won't change the fact that you made them.

I'm here for a discussion, not for debasing myself by offering credence to your nauseating Limbaughesque gotcha moments. I understand its easier for you to respond to only one out of context line as opposed to holding a discussion, but please don't get so cross when you're confronted for it. :(

[chaoslord29]

Don't I know it XD

Fortunately, no one who criticized my senior thesis did at the time.

But at a more fundamental level, unless you can prove that an individual human being can exercise some sort of conscious control over past events/fundamental fuctions of physical "laws", it's rather difficult to prove we aren't autamatons. Fortunately, as I understand Quantum Physics, we can't actually rule either of those things out  ;D

[Ephiral]

Okay...

I'm extremely impressed that you're able to ignore everything I've stated up to this point and snip it down to one sentence and be capable of managing a response. You'll have a bright future at Fox News.  :P

So now quoting your actual words is "ignoring everything you've stated"? I'd really love to know how that works.

Thankfully no one in this thread has yet.

But yes, I do find possessing anything more then a basic knowledge of most humanities to be rather disposable unless its in a field one is pursuing or a hobby or passion or something they themselves choose to make an investment in.

Pretending you didn't say it doesn't work very well when we can go back and see it for ourselves. You have said that humanities are disposable. You have said repeatedly that they should be de-emphasized electives. You have specifically included philosophy in this. These are indisputable facts. I want to know how you reconcile this with the foundational necessity of philosophy to the programs you do support. This is not a "gotcha", and your ad-hominems are not distracting anybody from the central point.

Philosophy is foundational to science. How do you expect to have a strong science program without any emphasis on philosophy?

[gaggedLouise]

Louise smiles at the restrained Trie, while thinking of Aristotle's statement that man is different from all animals through his ability to laugh.

[Cyrano Johnson]

I'm here for a discussion, not for debasing myself by offering credence to your nauseating Limbaughesque gotcha moments.

Also probably not a good idea to cite Limbaugh (or Fox News for that matter) when you're the one who's employing the "how dare you quote me accurately, I shall rage!" tactic. Ephiral said you were being dismissive of the humanities, you plainly were, nothing unfair or inaccurate has been said about your position, get off your high horse.

[Ephiral]

As to the free will question: The first and most important question is to define "free will". This is nowhere near as obvious as it is typically taken to be.

[chaoslord29]

So now quoting your actual words is "ignoring everything you've stated"? I'd really love to know how that works.

Pretending you didn't say it doesn't work very well when we can go back and see it for ourselves. You have said that humanities are disposable. You have said repeatedly that they should be de-emphasized electives. You have specifically included philosophy in this. These are indisputable facts. I want to know how you reconcile this with the foundational necessity of philosophy to the programs you do support. This is not a "gotcha", and your ad-hominems are not distracting anybody from the central point.

Philosophy is foundational to science. How do you expect to have a strong science program without any emphasis on philosophy?

And you folks are needlessly fixating on somebody who isn't ruling out the humanities as unnecessary in the first place, and attempting to vilify them using their own words.

. . . disposable unless its in a field one is pursuing or a hobby or passion or something they themselves choose to make an investment in.

That right there is the most distinguishing feature to me. I'm in the field of political science, which has far reaching ramifications, so I study it more specifically. I study philosophy as a passion, and because I believe it provides an excellent foundation for other knowledge, science, argumentation, everthing-else.

It seems to me that all Neysha is saying is that the engineer/chemist/physicist/etc. shouldn't be required to take anymore humanities courses than necessary to help them gain an appreciation and respect for their study and utility. Not that they are unnecessary/masturbatory as a whole.

As to the free will question: The first and most important question is to define "free will". This is nowhere near as obvious as it is typically taken to be.

Please spare us your deepity. The definition of free will which we are operating upon and within has been sufficiently illuminated, I should think, by the arguments posed thus far, on both sides.

[Healergirl]

Chaoslord29,

I'm not sure we can prove it in the empirical sense.  We are too close to the problem, perhaps.

If someone did come up with such proof, who would accept it?  Surely such proof would have something in the analysis that would offend everyone, and not the same thing for everyone to boot.

[chaoslord29]

Chaoslord29,

I'm not sure we can prove it in the empirical sense.  We are too close to the problem, perhaps.

If someone did come up with such proof, who would accept it?  Surely such proof would have something in the analysis that would offend everyone, and not the same thing for everyone to boot.

Bam! Hit the nail on the head with that one. There needs to be some kind of evolution of the principles which govern our use of reason, logic, and empirics themselves, a task that empirical science is institutionally incapable of, and really only suited to wildly theoretical philosophy. Which also tends to be pretty offensive haha, but over time, some crazy philosophers' theories may become the foundation fields of science that science itself cannot yet conceptualize of.

[Ephiral]

And you folks are needlessly fixating on somebody who isn't ruling out the humanities as unnecessary in the first place, and attempting to vilify them using their own words.

That right there is the most distinguishing feature to me. I'm in the field of political science, which has far reaching ramifications, so I study it more specifically. I study philosophy as a passion, and because I believe it provides an excellent foundation for other knowledge, science, argumentation, everthing-else.

It seems to me that all Neysha is saying is that the engineer/chemist/physicist/etc. shouldn't be required to take anymore humanities courses than necessary to help them gain an appreciation and respect for their study and utility. Not that they are unnecessary/masturbatory as a whole.

Then I don't understand why the same argument doesn't apply to the STEM fields. If you're planning on, say, writing for a living, is a strong empahsis on chemistry really necessary? Neysha's arguments as I understand them say emphasis should be placed there regardless of career choices; why? Why is it any more valid to place emphasis there?

Please spare us your deepity. The definition of free will which we are operating upon and within has been sufficiently illuminated, I should think, by the arguments posed thus far, on both sides.

Think you could pack a little more hostility in there? I guess, since I'm apparently not allowed to demonstrate how I arrive at my conclusions, I'll just say "no" and exit that half of this thread.

[Cyrano Johnson]

And you folks are needlessly fixating on somebody who isn't ruling out the humanities as unnecessary in the first place

This particular tangent started out with Beorning's post about a series of examples of spectacular ignorance of basic history and several other foundational skills (like the ability to reckon dates and centuries) from the Polish school system. Neysha's response was that these were examples of the haphazard teaching of the humanities, in response to which the humanities should be "de-emphasized" and made "elective" and the secondary school system as a whole should be more focused on vocational and STEM training. I took great care at the outset to clarify that this was in fact what she was saying and she confirmed it, precisely because I did not want to be assailing her for something she was not saying.

She's not talking about engineers and chemists at the university level. She made that very clear. Her point is that the "humanities" are relatively useless to general and secondary education except at some extremely minimal level that is presumaly below the benchmark of ignorance seen in the examples from Beorning she responded to, because most of them just feed into masturbatory self-referential fields anyway in which most people just go on to teach the subject after studying it. Her recommendations for education are based on this demonstrably false idea, and have mostly consisted of claims that this minimized approach to "the humanities" will address whatever is needed just fine because, essentially, she says so.

I am not "vilifying" anyone, and neither is Ephiral, except where to "vilify" someone is to ask them repeatedly how seemingly untenable ideas like this are supposed to work, and pointing out to them that it is unhelpful to pretend not to have said what they have said. Whether the exercise is "needless"... well, you may have a point there.

[Beguile's Mistress]

Disparaging remarks about each other, your beliefs and opinions are not valid arguments.  Neither are they helpful.

Unless you return to civil discourse this thread will be locked.

[chaoslord29]

Then I don't understand why the same argument doesn't apply to the STEM fields. If you're planning on, say, writing for a living, is a strong empahsis on chemistry really necessary? Neysha's arguments as I understand them say emphasis should be placed there regardless of career choices; why? Why is it any more valid to place emphasis there?

Admittedly, I'm coming into this argument a little halfway through, so I apologize for my manner, but as I read Neysha's arguments, they suggested to me that she's saying there's a reason the Humanities and STEM fields are separated, and why cross-disciplinary study is not always of paramount value. We all seem to be in agreement that we at the very least need to respect the value of our opposite field (I happen to think the STEMs are a little more guilty of it than we are, but that might be my own) tendency to vilify coming through.

Think you could pack a little more hostility in there? I guess, since I'm apparently not allowed to demonstrate how I arrive at my conclusions, I'll just say "no" and exit that half of this thread.

Apologies, I didn't mean to rule you out entirely, and would of course appreciate input in regards to where you think the definition of free will factors into the debate. I hope you would understand though why I might be a bit embittered against the apparent appeal away from the present argument towards a discussion of 'definitions', and a generalization regarding 'things not always being as simple as they seem'.

This particular tangent started out with Beorning's post about a series of examples of spectacular ignorance of basic history and several other foundational skills (like the ability to reckon dates and centuries) from the Polish school system. Neysha's response was that these were examples of the haphazard teaching of the humanities, in response to which the humanities should be "de-emphasized" and made "elective" and the secondary school system as a whole should be more focused on vocational and STEM training. I took great care at the outset to clarify that this was in fact what she was saying and she confirmed it, precisely because I did not want to be assailing her for something she was not saying.

She's not talking about engineers and chemists at the university level. She made that very clear. Her point is that the "humanities" are relatively useless except at some extremely minimal level that is presumaly below the benchmark of ignorance seen in the examples from Beorning she responded to, because most of them just feed into masturbatory self-referential fields anyway in which most people just go on to teach the subject after studying it. Her recommendations for education are based on this demonstrably false idea, and have mostly consisted of claims that this minimized approach to "the humanities" will address whatever is needed just fine because, essentially, she says so.

I am not "vilifying" anyone, and neither is Ephiral, except where to "vilify" someone is to ask them repeatedly how seemingly untenable ideas like this are supposed to work, and pointing out to them that it is unhelpful to pretend not to have said what they have said. Whether the exercise is "needless"... well, you may have a point there.

My apologies for assuming we were speaking about Higher Education rather than secondary, but I do believe you are reading a bit too much into Neysha's apparent devaluation of the humanities. It seems to me that she's pointing to the value in secondary education prioritizing vocational training and the practicality in doing so, not solely in the context of the present system.

Suppose for a moment we quit quibbling over who said what and take a moment to consider the implications of a vocational secondary education system which allowed for electives truly be just that: passions, and pursuits not to be required by curricula, but options which everyone could pursue in their own time with likeminded individuals? My concern would be the potential for overspecialization in a specific field (where STEMs are concerned), but I don't see it as insurmountable. Perhaps even preferable to the generalized factory model education system that we have here in the states.

[Cyrano Johnson]

So... bad time to point out that "deepity" isn't really a word?  :P

I should get some work done and have to bow out of this thread in any case.

(EDIT: In response to chaoslord29's last post, I haven't said that all of Neysha's ideas are necessarily uninteresting. The idea for specific courses in coding, for better life-skills training, are not bad. Generalist education is not so easily done away with, however. The idea of vocational secondary schools with the humanities as largely elective would be more viable if Neysha's views of the humanities' place in the job market were correct, but unfortunately they just aren't. I would take the more boring approach and say that if humanities education is inadequate, maybe actually reinforcing the humanities is in order rather than the reverse.)

[chaoslord29]

So... bad time to point out that "deepity" isn't really a word?  :P

I should get some work done and have to bow out of this thread in any case.

I don't think we're past the point of rationale discussion, just that we need to do a little backpedalling to reach the point where we can find some productive conclusions to draw.

As for my use of the term 'deepity', it's not entirely outside the vernacular for academic discussion, at worst, it's slang  ;D

[Ephiral]

Admittedly, I'm coming into this argument a little halfway through, so I apologize for my manner, but as I read Neysha's arguments, they suggested to me that she's saying there's a reason the Humanities and STEM fields are separated, and why cross-disciplinary study is not always of paramount value. We all seem to be in agreement that we at the very least need to respect the value of our opposite field (I happen to think the STEMs are a little more guilty of it than we are, but that might be my own) tendency to vilify coming through.

First of all: Thank you. The courtesy you're displaying here is all too rare, and greatly appreciated. That said, the part I'm objecting to is less "these are different fields" (though I think there is a false division in place); it's "...and the overwhelming majority of humanities should be electives with no emphasis put on them at all". Cross-disciplinary study isn't of paramount value, but I see things like epistemology for any science, or history for anthropology, are less "cross-disciplinary" and more "foundational".

Apologies, I didn't mean to rule you out entirely, and would of course appreciate input in regards to where you think the definition of free will factors into the debate. I hope you would understand though why I might be a bit embittered against the apparent appeal away from the present argument towards a discussion of 'definitions', and a generalization regarding 'things not always being as simple as they seem'.

Again, thank you. I am deeply impressed with your reconsideration here. I... can understand, yes; I was trying to lead to, rather than push, my perspective as the latter has generated hostility before, but I guess I was too low-information. I do think rigorous definitions are important, though. "Free will", as I usually see it conceptualized, is the idea that, when a decision comes up, we could take any of the options available. To avoid a long chain of "Yes, but what does X mean?", I'll cut to the point: "could" strikes me as illusory. When we say "I could do X", what we really mean is "I see a physically possible chain of events that would result in me doing X". Regardless of how many options you "could" choose, you will choose specific ones, and these would be predictable by a system that had perfect information.

Suppose for a moment we quit quibbling over who said what and take a moment to consider the implications of a vocational secondary education system which allowed for electives truly be just that: passions, and pursuits not to be required by curricula, but options which everyone could pursue in their own time with likeminded individuals? My concern would be the potential for overspecialization in a specific field (where STEMs are concerned), but I don't see it as insurmountable. Perhaps even preferable to the generalized factory model education system that we have here in the states.

That system would be desirable, but we would need to make sure electives aren't necessary. Philosophy strikes me as necessary to science, at least in the form of epistemology; similarly, I think a significant percentage of philosophers could benefit from learning to ask "If this idea were true, what would the world look like?"

So... bad time to point out that "deepity" isn't really a word?  :P

If I'm going to accept "truthiness", I'll accept "deepity". Especially since they seem to be closely related concepts - the illusion, at least to the speaker and certain groups, of truth or depth.

[chaoslord29]

In response to chaoslord29's last post, I haven't said that all of Neysha's ideas are necessarily uninteresting. The idea for specific courses in coding, for better life-skills training, are not bad. Generalist education is not so easily done away with, however. The idea of vocational secondary schools with the humanities as largely elective would be more viable if Neysha's views of the humanities' place in the job market were correct, but unfortunately they just aren't. I would take the more boring approach and say that if humanities education is inadequate, maybe actually reinforcing the humanities is in order rather than the reverse.

See, now that's productive discussion ^_^

Part of the problem is definitely that separation of STEM and Humanities studies seems to deepen the perception (both ways) that neither is as valuable as the other, especially in exclusion. To me, that more a fault of the commodification of education rather than something inherent to either or any discipline. STEM can more readily produce degrees with tangible applications translatable into goods and services bought and sold. Humanities are of course just as capable of doing so (in terms of services, often more so in relation to specific job-fields) but they also deal with concepts and values not as easily quantified, which of course, is something STEM is not as readily able to deal with in the first place, even before trying to put a dollar value on it.

[chaoslord29]

First of all: Thank you. The courtesy you're displaying here is all too rare, and greatly appreciated. That said, the part I'm objecting to is less "these are different fields" (though I think there is a false division in place); it's "...and the overwhelming majority of humanities should be electives with no emphasis put on them at all". Cross-disciplinary study isn't of paramount value, but I see things like epistemology for any science, or history for anthropology, are less "cross-disciplinary" and more "foundational".

Again, thank you. I am deeply impressed with your reconsideration here. I... can understand, yes; I was trying to lead to, rather than push, my perspective as the latter has generated hostility before, but I guess I was too low-information. I do think rigorous definitions are important, though. "Free will", as I usually see it conceptualized, is the idea that, when a decision comes up, we could take any of the options available. To avoid a long chain of "Yes, but what does X mean?", I'll cut to the point: "could" strikes me as illusory. When we say "I could do X", what we really mean is "I see a physically possible chain of events that would result in me doing X". Regardless of how many options you "could" choose, you will choose specific ones, and these would be predictable by a system that had perfect information.

That system would be desirable, but we would need to make sure electives aren't necessary. Philosophy strikes me as necessary to science, at least in the form of epistemology; similarly, I think a significant percentage of philosophers could benefit from learning to ask "If this idea were true, what would the world look like?"

If I'm going to accept "truthiness", I'll accept "deepity". Especially since they seem to be closely related concepts - the illusion, at least to the speaker and certain groups, of truth or depth.

Happy to oblige, and really though, consideration and reconsideration are all a part of the discernment process, as I know and practice it. I try, at all times, to be as combative and pointed as I am considerate and apologetic. The way I see things, it's productive so long as one perpetually reserves judgment in regards to the issue at hand, and always to those on the "opposite" side. Ally and enemy to all at the same time as it were.

Personal reflections and explanations aside, I think the heart of the matter, as you've put it is that the humanities are more or less foundational for the more technical and "scientific" fields. At the same time, they also represent the areas which STEM fields have not yet dared to tread, or at least to quantify, while dealing with them in an academic and relatable format founded upon reason. Ostensibly, since the STEM fields also draw their methodology from logic and reason, it is this basis which cross-disciplinary exchange can be predicated upon, to the benefit of both sides.

More and more, it seems to me that the problem isn't with either side inherently disparaging the other, but rather the growing trend toward commodification of an education: "My degree is worth something because with it I can make X yearly salary."

[Beguile's Mistress]

"My degree is worth something because with it I can make X yearly salary."

Anything that can be done to change this philosophy has my vote.

Team members in my department have anything between a high school diploma or the equivalent through Master's Degrees.  A degree is worth nothing to me unless the person holding it knows how to use it.  I have goals and quotas to meet on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis and I determine who is qualified to handle which accounts.  Once you hit my floor it is your performance that matters and only your performance.  The technical knowledge you gained in studying within your field may be a benefit to you but the more important aspect of your educational experience as far as I'm concerned is how well you developed you ability to learn.

"My degree is worth something because with it I can make X yearly salary."

My boss told one of college graduates that her degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on in practical use unless you know how to learn to do your job after she complained that someone with only a high school diploma was promoted over her.  One could do the work and the other couldn't.

Also, in circumstances where everyone has a degree the value of the degree is cheapened in favor of performance.  You'll only succeed if you learn how to work with effectiveness.

[Chelemar]

While I can understand the need to believe that removing all but the most basic of humanities and focusing on STEM courses would seem more logical for those in secondary education who prefer to persue a vocational field, I have to disagree with you. 

My reasons are thus:  First, as George Santayana states,"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  I believe as a society as a whole, we are obliged to learn from history, from our past to learn from the mistakes, and successes of our forefathers so that we are not doomed to make the same mistakes we've made, and try to learn what works.  Though it doesn't seem to work very often. :)

As it is our duty to vote, we need to be an informed electorate, part of our educational base has to be given in school.  Some though Civics yes, but that is complemented via History.  Our duty as teachers is then to make sure that the History we are teaching is as truthful as possible, and not centric to one nation, thought, idea, etc... 

Also, the teaching of History should not only focus on facts the past but also on the "hows" and more importantly the "whys."  It engages the student in critical thinking, and that is necessary no matter what position or station you are in life.



At least that's my 25 cents worth. ;P


(PS:  The US is not the only country that colors it's History with a nationalistic paint brush.   At least from anecdotal findings from teaching History/US Cultures to international students and exchanging "facts," that's what I've found out.  XD

[Ephiral]

Also, the teaching of History should not only focus on facts the past but also on the "hows" and more importantly the "whys."  It engages the student in critical thinking, and that is necessary no matter what position or station you are in life.

My grade 11 history teacher had an odd format: He'd give us a subject, presenting two sides to it, and spend about a week on typical classroom lecturing/assignments. Another week was basically open-ended research. At the end of week two, we would be expected to pick a side and debate it formally.

I still think this is the best way I've ever seen of engaging students with history and making them understand the how-and-why aspects.

[chaoslord29]

That sounds awesome and engaging, exactly the style of teaching I would love. Also, totally incongruous with standardized testing, and very subjective in terms of 'grades'. So basically everything we would all like, but is politically speaking untenable for most public school systems.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I had the same history teacher for four years in high school.  He loved history and was a great communicator, too.  Rather than break it down geographically he taught by time line incorporating everything that was happening worldwide over a period.  He would bring in things from the past to show their effect on the current time under examination and would point out how one thing or another came to influence the future.  He was creative and inspiring.  I had teachers I loved as people but this man I remember.

[Chelemar]

I had the same history teacher for four years in high school.  He loved history and was a great communicator, too.  Rather than break it down geographically he taught by time line incorporating everything that was happening worldwide over a period.  He would bring in things from the past to show their effect on the current time under examination and would point out how one thing or another came to influence the future.  He was creative and inspiring.  I had teachers I loved as people but this man I remember.

I had a History Prof like this as well BeMi, he was wonderful and informed the way that I taught History.  He also taught us to do Ephiral's teacher had done, and in a small way, I tried to do that too.  It was amazing to see the differences that each country was taught compared to what we, as Americans were taught.

[Healergirl]

Chaoslord29,

I was going to say that perhaps we should table the free will discussion for five years, but based on how rapid the data gain is from brain chemistry/activity research is these days, next spring may be long enough for us to get some movement.  Not a resolution, but movement.


************************************************

"generalized factory model education system"

This is the Achilles heel of my opposition to home schooling.   The motives of many home schooling parents are rooted in this, a basic recognition that the current system just isn't up to the demands that modern society requires.

[Neysha]

Also probably not a good idea to cite Limbaugh (or Fox News for that matter) when you're the one who's employing the "how dare you quote me accurately, I shall rage!" tactic. Ephiral said you were being dismissive of the humanities, you plainly were, nothing unfair or inaccurate has been said about your position, get off your high horse.

No I have not been dismissive of the humanities. By with-holding the truth and quoting me out of context, you are spreading ignorance and fabrication. I thought we were having a discussion, it's clear you're only here for "Gotcha" points in lieu of actually discussing anything. Which is perfectly fine, just be honest with yourself that you're not interested in discussing the issue, in lieu of pursuing relevance fallacies and trading barbs.

*snips Strawmans*

Instead of you defining what I said, how about we quote what I said about the issue as opposed to your strawmanning.

I personally would prefer to see less of a focus on such things and more of a focus on (especially in elementary/primary school) the basics of "English" (or whatever language is primary) and thus including speaking, reading and writing and in addition mathematics as well as technology related courses so that people can communicate effectively at the very least. Maybe some Civics tossed in so that the kids aren't completely ignorant of the world around them with basics on governments and laws and very generalized social norms. Then when we go into secondary school we can dive into a core curriculum focused around the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and try and focus students on those. Granted, a lot of students simply aren't cut out to engage in such fields, but instead of driving them to the humanities/social sciences, maybe business/personal finances/ money management or trade learning or apprenticeship programs could be more fitting so they can learn nice job skills and talents which will help them be responsible and more important, help them find employment or a sustainable career path or occupation.

Most of the humanities and social sciences then can be considered electives as opposed to part of the core program as we're seeing now in a lot of programs. And ultimately, if people really want to invest in further education in the humanities, there's still always going to be college, or more fiscally possible, the internet and libraries and other resources which can often be obtained easily and cheaply if people wish to pursue/better educate themselves in such topics without making it mandatory or a huge part of a basic or core educational curriculum.

Absolutely. I don't want any schools teaching humanities and social sciences with watered down textbooks, known or subconscious biases and filtered viewpoints, and political or social meddling, and general incompetence/uneven teaching. There's a virtual cottage industry of literature (best exemplified by the popular book by James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me) from both sides of the political spectrum that's been rightfully critical of schooling at least in the US, and not just of public schools, but private as well. Outside of a bare minimum of understanding of some of the subjects, I honestly don't see the purpose of overemphasizing studies in the humanities when there is a very important need to focus on the STEM fields, as well as focus on English (or other languages as appropriate) and personal finance/business concepts as a core curriculum. And later in secondary school, expanding the prior studies and trying to find a greater focus on trade/apprenticeship type programs for the large numbers of students that might not be STEM oriented.

Humanities can still be there, but as a far less emphasized elective. With the proliferation of information on the internet and libraries and books and other media, people can be free to educate or delude themselves as needbe. They're doing a wonderful job of doing so in spite of, or perhaps due to an over emphasis on humanities in schooling already and are willing to invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into pursuing degrees in somewhat self replicating degree fields. (where the main outlet of pursuing a subject of study is teaching said subject)

Incorrect. I'd prefer a greater emphasis on the STEM fields, as well as personal finances and English/Grammar/Communications (whatever we can call it) and a base of Civics, as I stated earlier. Reading comprenhension and communication should be covered by Grammar classes, or at least I hope they would, early on. Being able to communicate goes beyond the purview of just the Humanities IMHO and if I misspoke, I apologize. I want people to be able to communicate at a reasonably competent level, or else the STEM education would be useless. But yes, I do find possessing anything more then a basic knowledge of most humanities to be rather disposable unless its in a field one is pursuing or a hobby or passion or something they themselves choose to make an investment in.

Civics would be covered, as I stated in my original 'diagnoses.' But I don't see any particular need for expansion of the core curriculum into humanities. They can still exist as electives, both in Secondary School and in College so if people want to invest their time and money into it, they should feel free. But again, I would much prefer an emphasis on a core of STEM + Personal Finances (since many people seem woefully ill equipped at managing money) and as stated before, Grammar/English so they can communicate their ideas effectively. Therefore with this system, there'd be a lot less wiggle room for cultural/societal radicals such as those you bring up, to corrupt schooling. It certainly would be hard to be worse then social studies standards are today. And "theories" like Intelligent Design can be rightfully relegated to the Humanities electives where they belong by an increasingly scientifically literate populace. :)

And again, for emphasis, I don't want to eliminate the Humanities. Just de-emphasize them in core curriculum. Humanities are still important in a broad sense, but individually, I find its importance a fair bit more muted in comparison to learning STEM fields or learning a trade, skill or vocation or how to communicate effectively etc.

Well I prefer using "Humanities" as a broad term as opposed to "Ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, religion, and visual and performing arts, music and theater, history, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law and linguistics etc except on a base level of the previously bolded subjects and others as de-emphasized electives."

;)

I apologize for any confusion. :)

It's only an elective in that the typical graduation requirements for a US Secondary School is something along the lines of four credits of English (which is fine, people should be able to read, write and speak ideas) but the upper level courses tend to be excuses for straying into the humanities for various reasons when they could be spending that same time learning something more STEMish or of use in an actual job or career field not directly related to that particular humanities subject. And then, you get three or four credits in Social Sciences as a basic requirement and one to two credits in Fine Arts... and yet only 2-3 in Math and maybe 2 in Science related related fields. Then you toss in all of the electives, which can be easily utilized by opportunistic students to pad their GPA's with classes they'd rather glide through. (and IMHO there's a tendency for Humanities as opposed to STEM classes being easier to coast through) There's only so much classroom time to utilize and kids aren't moving past basic algebra, basic scientific literacy, and alternatively have little actual schooling in any particular trade or vocation or other practical/technical skills, and while these generations are familiar with technology, we should be focusing more on whether they can do coding and programming languages, or use various software beyond MS Word or be able to manage their personal finances. Maybe then they can actually be prepared and equipped to go to college, or at least enter the job field with more relevant skills then knowing what year WW2 began. (which sounds kind of like a trick question anyways)

Well any strong students tend to be well rounded regardless from my limited experience. Hence I don't think the talented "honors" students being dismissive of such electives as they typically aren't now. And for the talented students, the context of advances in various STEM fields could find some usefulness. But for the mass of students, and considering the time and resources, I would think a concentration in STEM type fields would be ultimately preferable to Humanities, at least when it comes to those who are college bound. And for colleges and premier secondary schools I suppose, those courses you've stated would be excellent for fleshing out a strong science program. Definitely love to see them encouraged in lieu of less related Humanities electives.

Sounds like a good idea to me if it works generally as you laid out. We need more skill technicians and the like. Auto mechanics. Plumbers. Carpenters. Other assorted handyman style work and contracting. Even just general education in DIY type technical projects. Especially for those that might not be inclined to go into the STEM fields, which is a lot of people, and might not be prepared for the rigors of pursuing a narrower slice of employment options by going into some of the Humanities fields. A lot of people who go to college but end up underemployed after graduation or not graduating at all from a four year school, or even a smaller college, might've found they could've have a better investment of time and money going into a program like you are suggesting.

They're elective. Students can elect to take them or not IMHO. I'd prefer a core curriculum more focused on what I've stated a half dozen times before.

What Cyrano is making my position out to be is...

"de-emphasized electives"

and

an over emphasis on humanities in schooling already and are willing to invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into pursuing degrees in somewhat self replicating degree fields. (where the main outlet of pursuing a subject of study is teaching said subject)

Whether it's vilification is beyond my ability to say. I won't attest to his motives. All I know is we had a perfectly reasonable discussion going on before my companion here elected to pursue the Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck methodology of discussion IMHO with utilizing out of context quotes.

And you folks are needlessly fixating on somebody who isn't ruling out the humanities as unnecessary in the first place, and attempting to vilify them using their own words.

That right there is the most distinguishing feature to me. I'm in the field of political science, which has far reaching ramifications, so I study it more specifically. I study philosophy as a passion, and because I believe it provides an excellent foundation for other knowledge, science, argumentation, everthing-else.

It seems to me that all Neysha is saying is that the engineer/chemist/physicist/etc. shouldn't be required to take anymore humanities courses than necessary to help them gain an appreciation and respect for their study and utility. Not that they are unnecessary/masturbatory as a whole.

Thank you. It's nice to know that most of us are interested in discussing the issue, as opposed to villifying our opponents in order to score 'points' in order to pander to an invisible audience.

[Beguile's Mistress]

We've already been through this and things have calmed down.  Let us please respond to disagreements without being disagreeable.

[Cyrano Johnson]

No I have not been dismissive of the humanities

Readers of the thread can judge for themselves whether anyone has summarized your arguments unfairly or done violence to their context. I've already been clear about what I think is happening with your recent attempts at denial, and this is just another instance, so I won't belabor the point further.

[chaoslord29]

Chaoslord29,

I was going to say that perhaps we should table the free will discussion for five years, but based on how rapid the data gain is from brain chemistry/activity research is these days, next spring may be long enough for us to get some movement.  Not a resolution, but movement.


************************************************

"generalized factory model education system"

This is the Achilles heel of my opposition to home schooling.   The motives of many home schooling parents are rooted in this, a basic recognition that the current system just isn't up to the demands that modern society requires.

The sooner the better to your first point, as far as I'm concerned. I've made something of a crusade pushing for greater consideration given to neurological sciences and even deterministic/probabilistic implications of the physical sciences where criminal justice is concerned, but the major stumbling block there isn't the science, it's the civics.

Which of course, leads us back to education, as the best way to improve and streamline political processes is to have a well informed, civically minded public, or at the very least one who's more inclined towards dispassionate cynicism than they are susceptible to demagoguery and fear-mongering. You and I couldn't agree more about the dangers of homeschooling, and I have the same complaints about recklessly biased smaller charter and private institutions, but the issues with factory-model education are . . . manifold, and unfortunately thoroughly entrenched in our society.

Readers of the thread can judge for themselves whether anyone has summarized your arguments unfairly or done violence to their context. I've already been clear about what I think is happening with your recent attempts at denial [including the mass regurgitation above which you seem to mistakenly imagine as a refutation... awk-waarrd...], and this is just another instance, so I won't belabor the point further.

I'm sure we're all grateful for that.

[Branwen]

As an educator I am very much enjoying this thread and would like to ask that participants remain civil so it won't be locked.  Please?

[chaoslord29]

As an educator I am very much enjoying this thread and would like to ask that participants remain civil so it won't be locked.  Please?

Indeed. Neysha has done much to clarify her position from this point forward, there's no need to continue to prod the proverbial bear one way or another.

[Healergirl]

I do not at all want this thread locked.

Chaoslord29,

Civics is inded the stumbling block, the logjam impeding movement.  But science is continuing to build up pressure, rapidly building pressure that is forcing the beginnings of movement on the issue.

[Trieste]

My grade 11 history teacher had an odd format: He'd give us a subject, presenting two sides to it, and spend about a week on typical classroom lecturing/assignments. Another week was basically open-ended research. At the end of week two, we would be expected to pick a side and debate it formally.

I still think this is the best way I've ever seen of engaging students with history and making them understand the how-and-why aspects.

I had to do that in history, and then in college I had a polisci instructor that didn't let us pick sides - he had a series of issues where students were to argue pro and con (things like censorship, sex education, etc) and he assigned students to them. Whether you agreed with the side or not, you had to argue what you were assigned - and when it came time for the debate/presentations, he was much harsher in his questions and critiques on the sides that students traditionally agree with... Although he still threw some pretty tough questions at those who were arguing sides that are traditionally less popular with students.

So even if you agreed with the side you had been assigned, you were expected to defend the crap out of your position. I was assigned to argue the pro side for censorship - it was extremely interesting.

[Healergirl]

trieste,

Arguing the Devil's Advocate role is a mind expanding experience.  You may well see more value in the position you opposed.  And at the very least, you will gain insight into the weaknesses of that position.

[chaoslord29]

Healer Girl,

Hence why my biggest complaint with society, at any time, in any generation, at any point, is whatever given movement, demographic, or faction is currently engaged in disparaging, discrediting, and inciting people against intellectuals and intellectualism. There's always someone doing it, and at the risk of generalizing about the ignorant plebeian masses of the mob (too late) it's rarely the other intellectuals.

I've sort of come to embrace elitism, as it were . . .

[Healergirl]

I believe Heinlein said something to the effect that the people who actually solve problems are the enemies of Right(as in culturally proper)-Thinking people everywhere and always have been.

[Cyrano Johnson]

There's always someone doing it, and at the risk of generalizing about the ignorant plebeian masses of the mob (too late) it's rarely the other intellectuals.

Often it's also people who wanted recognition from the intellectual establishment that they didn't get. Goebbels was a failed novelist and playwright, for example; or for a less Godwin-esque instance, Nixon's crew back in the Sixties and early Seventies, in a lot of ways the co-founders with Barry Goldwater of modern conservatism, was chock-full of frustrated conservative intellectuals who felt angrily out of step with the times. (Not least among them Kissinger and Nixon himself.)

[Neysha]

Not sure how schooling works in y'all's respective countries, but well, what should be covered in... for example... A Secondary/High School History class? Keeping in mind... you have maybe 120 hours to cover it. (roughly estimating four months, or 16 five day weeks worth of classroom time, at 1.5 hours/90 minutes a class)

I don't know - it's pretty hard for me to imagine not knowing that particular date (start of WW2). But it may be a cultural thing - I'd risk saying that WW2 was more traumatic event for us Poles, than for Americans. So "September 1st, 1939" is one of these dates you learn as a child...

You mean December 7th, 1941. You missed it by like two years.  ::)

KIDDING!

*runs away*

[chaoslord29]

Not sure how schooling works in y'all's respective countries, but well, what should be covered in... for example... A Secondary/High School History class? Keeping in mind... you have maybe 120 hours to cover it. (roughly estimating four months, or 16 five day weeks worth of classroom time, at 1.5 hours/90 minutes a class)

Neysha makes a good point, because of course the answer to what should be covered is, well, everything.

Personally, I'm inclined to say that you should try and break it up over the four years. Something like

Pre-history/Ancient History; Late classical to the dark ages; Medieval to Renaissance; Then early Industrial to Modern.

Of course, what you really ought to do is break that down further so you can examine politics, scientific development, and art in every era. So say, that's three classes. THen you take three more STEM and  . . . Fuck, why aren't their more hours in a day XD

[Healergirl]

Neysha,

*snerk*

Many Asian commentators hae observed that from Japanese textbooks, one gets the idea that the War in the Pacific started with Hiroshima and ended with Nagasaki.

[Neysha]

Neysha,

*snerk*

Many Asian commentators hae observed that from Japanese textbooks, one gets the idea that the War in the Pacific started with Hiroshima and ended with Nagasaki.

Hey now... at least some of them have made horribly insensitive and mind numbing attempts at expressing sympathy... for their actions during WW2.

[Oniya]

Here's something that would possibly add to our educators' ability to fit more into the day, but I guaran-damn-tee it that it's going to upset some people.

Our teachers should not be teaching our kids how to act like civilized people. 

Maybe K and pre-K should do some, but things like teaching kids to be polite, to respect others, to make responsible choices, to stay safe - these are things that parents should be teaching their kids before they even reach public schools.  There are hours lost because kids don't even grasp the concept of listening to the teacher, or not throwing pencils at other students, or staying in a group on field trips, or even simply lining up for class dismissal or heading to lunch.  And this is based on what I've seen with the 'Honors' classes around here.

[chaoslord29]

Here's something that would possibly add to our educators' ability to fit more into the day, but I guaran-damn-tee it that it's going to upset some people.

Our teachers should not be teaching our kids how to act like civilized people. 

Maybe K and pre-K should do some, but things like teaching kids to be polite, to respect others, to make responsible choices, to stay safe - these are things that parents should be teaching their kids before they even reach public schools.  There are hours lost because kids don't even grasp the concept of listening to the teacher, or not throwing pencils at other students, or staying in a group on field trips, or even simply lining up for class dismissal or heading to lunch.  And this is based on what I've seen with the 'Honors' classes around here.

This gets back to the point though that there's no real system or method in place for ensuring people are good parents. In the words of an age old comedian "You have to get a license to own a dog, but any asshole can make a kid."

[Caela]

Here's something that would possibly add to our educators' ability to fit more into the day, but I guaran-damn-tee it that it's going to upset some people.

Our teachers should not be teaching our kids how to act like civilized people. 

Maybe K and pre-K should do some, but things like teaching kids to be polite, to respect others, to make responsible choices, to stay safe - these are things that parents should be teaching their kids before they even reach public schools.  There are hours lost because kids don't even grasp the concept of listening to the teacher, or not throwing pencils at other students, or staying in a group on field trips, or even simply lining up for class dismissal or heading to lunch.  And this is based on what I've seen with the 'Honors' classes around here.

+1, totally agree Oniya!!!

This is also not helped by the fact that teachers have, in many ways, been hamstrung when it comes to controlling their classrooms. After all, you can't actually punish the poor darlings! You might hurt their itty bitty feelings!

I fully intend for my daughter's teachers (she'll be starting K this fall) to know that if she acts up, they have my full support in disciplining her in whatever fashion they deem appropriate (sentences, stick her in a corner, no recess, whatever) and that I should be informed when I pick her up so that follow-up can be done at home.

[Branwen]

I fully intend for my daughter's teachers (she'll be starting K this fall) to know that if she acts up, they have my full support in disciplining her in whatever fashion they deem appropriate (sentences, stick her in a corner, no recess, whatever) and that I should be informed when I pick her up so that follow-up can be done at home.

I always love and appreciate when parents like you do this, but just be aware that we teachers are still bound by the rules of our administration, handbooks and school boards.  We can't just willy nilly discipline them in the same manner you do, even with your consent. 

Usually, that's not an issue because parents like you don't have kids who lack in how they behave.  It's like it's reinforced at home or something.  :)

My worst kids, even worse than the ones with more or less absent parents, are the ones who tell me "My mom/dad is my best friend."  Oh, hecks no. 

[Caela]

I always love and appreciate when parents like you do this, but just be aware that we teachers are still bound by the rules of our administration, handbooks and school boards.  We can't just willy nilly discipline them in the same manner you do, even with your consent. 

Usually, that's not an issue because parents like you don't have kids who lack in how they behave.  It's like it's reinforced at home or something.  :)

My worst kids, even worse than the ones with more or less absent parents, are the ones who tell me "My mom/dad is my best friend."  Oh, hecks no.

I totally get that you guys have guidelines you have to follow, that's part of why I want to know when she acts up though...I'm not bound by those guidelines and can ground her, take away toys/privileges, make her write sentences of my own at home, etc. One of the things my current daycare provider as said she likes about me is that she knows I'll follow up when she lets me know the mini has been acting up and I never act like my child's poor behavior is somehow her fault.

The mini might actually tell you I'm her best friend, but she also knows that I am both a friend and a Mom and if she misbehaves, the Mom will discipline her appropriately! She told me once, in a fit of pique, "You're not my friend!" and looked shocked as all hell when I just laughed at her! Five minutes later she came out of her room, hugged me apologized for acting like a brat and informed me that I was still her friend and she was also sorry for yelling at me. :) You can be a friend and a parent, you just can't let the friend part trump the parent part.

Oh, and is it bad that I am actually looking forward to her learning to read and write better (she can write a bit already, but her letters are very much those of a 4 year old) so that I have a reason to buy a set of encyclopedias? "Oh look, you can't listen when your teacher tells you to calm down, copy out these fie pages for me...word for word...and if you missed any when I check it, you'll write three more."

[Branwen]

I'm sorry, I should have offered some background.  I teach kids ranging from 14-18, so by that time if Mom/Dad is their best friend instead of their parent, things are out of control.  It's totes fine - and super adorable - that your little thinks of you as her friend because that's a huge relationship in her mind and a big compliment to you.  Both of my kids have tried the same 'I'm not your friend' bit and I reacted almost identically to you.  Students try it to from time to time.  I'm like "Oh no.  I've made a teenager mad and depressed.  Whatever will I do?" very dramatically then just move on.

Those of you speaking to curriculum, do you know where your school's curriculum comes from and how much of it is dictated at the state or national level and how much is open to teacher design?  In Texas, The United States of America, my curriculum guidelines are laid out by the state and I must follow them.  At a district level myself and other teachers write a scope and sequence and then how to deliver the curriculum through the scope and sequence is left as the craft of the individual teacher.  So while you may say "I want to see more X in biology and no Y" it's not up to me, it's decided by the state.

I can, do, vote to put people in power who value education but in Texas that's, erm, problematic because we're such a deeply conservative state.  I did serve on the state board for textbook approvals a few years back and was a very minority voice when it came to keeping intelligent design nonsense out of books and solid evolutionary theory in it.  None of this 'teach the controversy' crap.  I took a major browbeating from people around me for that with only a few supporters but we kept it out.

[Caela]

Ahhhh, yeah, I fully expect her to be in the throws of disliking me by the time she's a teen! lol I'm hoping she'll still know that she can talk to me if she needs to, and I know we'll have what I hope won't be entirely uncomfortable discussions, but I won't be her best friend anymore at that age. :D

Oh and I must say, thank goodness for rational minded people on those text book discussions!!! I don't want some of that crap filtering through to my own child, but if it does...well I can always add essays and research projects to her summers off if needed.

[Oniya]

When I've complained about curriculum it's because, from what I saw in the text books, the little Oni was ready for 7th grade math this year.  In her previous school, the math teacher encouraged them to work at their own paces, and even though she coasted, she was still up to dealing with expressions using variables.  One of her former classmates (back in Ohio) is 'coasting' a bit this year - and taking 9th grade math as a 6th grader.  This kid was their 'go-to' for math questions at Academic Challenge.  We spent almost all year getting the 'oh, we'll have her evaluated...' line before they finally told us that they had never gotten her gifted assessment from Ohio and that we were supposed to have requested it in writing.

[Branwen]

When I've complained about curriculum it's because, from what I saw in the text books, the little Oni was ready for 7th grade math this year.

That's a wonderful point, Oniya, for several reasons.  As you say, based on the curriculum presented in the book, the little Oni was far in advance of the curriculum as published in the textbook.

For years two states, Texas and California, drove the textbook industry.  They were the largest purchasers of textbooks and publishers catered to each states' standard, largely building the book around them.  When a district in say, Kentucky, bought a book they'd get a modified (or not) Texas or California edition.  This often mean that the curriculum teachers and parents saw were based on Texas or California standards and not at all related to your state's standards or, indeed, may not have been age appropriate.  Both Texas and California service an extremely large percentage of students who are in poverty and ESL.

This is beginning to change as most states have adopted the Common Core curriculum.  Publishers have basically abandoned Texas and are now working to create texts that work for the majority of the other states.

So what I believe may have happened is you and Little Oni got a textbook that was far too low in level for her for these reasons and because she's scandalously smart like you.  :)

[Trieste]

It's not necessarily a new thing. They wanted to skip me at least one grade in elementary school at one point, but my mother told them not to do it because she was worried about the social damage of putting me in with much larger, older kids. (Which ... a year or two would have been.) A couple other kids in my school were skipped, here and there. I think that's the general solution for most schools. Kid is bored = skip grades (and chunks of their educations).

[Branwen]

It's not necessarily a new thing. They wanted to skip me at least one grade in elementary school at one point, but my mother told them not to do it because she was worried about the social damage of putting me in with much larger, older kids. (Which ... a year or two would have been.) A couple other kids in my school were skipped, here and there. I think that's the general solution for most schools. Kid is bored = skip grades (and chunks of their educations).

It ignores the social development of the child as well.  A good GT program should address this, but when testing and accountability  ::) drive things, you ignore the GT kids because they'll do fine without you.  You also ignore the hopeless kids because you can work and work with them and not get them above standard.  Average kids - here do these drill 'n kill worksheets. 

But bubble kids, those of you right on the razor's edge of passing or failing?  Hang on because you're going to be worked six ways to Sunday.

[Caela]

It ignores the social development of the child as well.  A good GT program should address this, but when testing and accountability  ::) drive things, you ignore the GT kids because they'll do fine without you.  You also ignore the hopeless kids because you can work and work with them and not get them above standard.  Average kids - here do these drill 'n kill worksheets. 

But bubble kids, those of you right on the razor's edge of passing or failing?  Hang on because you're going to be worked six ways to Sunday.

I hate that attitude! I know that there is little that can be done about it, but I wish there were a way to gear classes more toward these groups of students. Put the GT kids in a class that will challenge them, the average kids in a class that might bring them up as well, and the problem kids in a class that might have a chance of motivating them to do better, instead of making them compare themselves to other kids and giving up on themselves.

Oh, and to explain my position better...I was one of those kids that was bored out of their minds and my grades totally suffered for it...so did my relations with the other kids in my class because I just couldn't understand why we were still on a subject that I understood the first time the teacher explained it!

[Branwen]

I hate that attitude! I know that there is little that can be done about it, but I wish there were a way to gear classes more toward these groups of students. Put the GT kids in a class that will challenge them, the average kids in a class that might bring them up as well, and the problem kids in a class that might have a chance of motivating them to do better, instead of making them compare themselves to other kids and giving up on themselves.

I concur.  So do most teachers.

The problem is that's called 'tracking' and has been found to be Bad and Mean.

[Caela]

I concur.  So do most teachers.

The problem is that's called 'tracking' and has been found to be Bad and Mean.

I say a big, fat, PFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!! to that! I fail to see how it is Bad and Mean to teach children to the level they are at. And I don't just mean a grade level. I think it would be interesting to actually see how children did in a setting where they weren't assigned an arbitrary grade (with the exception of K as a starting point) but were assigned to classes based on their actual ability. You'd end up with some classes with differing ages but kids are good at adapting and you wouldn't have just one kid who got skipped a grade, but a group of kids of varying ages who are all at the same level and learning at the same speed.

For myself, in this type of environment, I'd have been with much older kids for reading/literature/grammar/english and with students my own age, maybe some younger in something like Mathematics. It would have challenged me, avoided the massive bouts of boredom that drove my teachers crazy too (I can't tell you how many times I got into trouble for bringing my own books to read in class, ANY class, and just ignored my teachers going over the same thing for the fifth time) and made my educational experience a much more positive one because it would have worked to my strengths and improved on my weaknesses.

[Branwen]

If the teacher had time, resources and authority they could ability group to accomplish that goal.  Unfortunately time and authority are always in short supply in a teacher's supply cubbie.

Tracking is also expensive and requires more teachers.  Shoving kids willy nilly into a one size fits all classroom is cheaper.  Education requires money, mainly from property taxes, and people vote against raising them regularly. 

[Caela]

If the teacher had time, resources and authority they could ability group to accomplish that goal.  Unfortunately time and authority are always in short supply in a teacher's supply cubbie.

Tracking is also expensive and requires more teachers.  Shoving kids willy nilly into a one size fits all classroom is cheaper.  Education requires money, mainly from property taxes, and people vote against raising them regularly.

It would also require a bit more specialization, especially at the elementary level, because it would be set up more like a HS, with kids going from one class to another. Not one teacher having to split her classroom, but kids almost starting with a "schedule" like they have in Middle and HS.

As for needing more teachers and money...even if we don't change how we teach one iota, we need those. Call me silly, but it irks the hell out of me that the federal government will spend billions on foreign aid (particularly to dictatorships or countries known to be hostile toward us), specious research projects, ridiculous pork barrel projects etc; instead of spending that money on something useful...like improving our schools, paying our teachers a decent wage, and ensuring that our children can do things like read/write/and balance a checkbook!

Going to stop before that turns into a rant.

[Valerian]

Speaking as someone who was put into a class full of bigger and older kids... yeah, it isn't a good plan.   ::)  The grade schools and high school I went to were all quite small, too small for any advanced programs as such, but it was also easier to have smaller class sizes, at least, and a bit more individualized instruction.  So overall it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but still far from ideal.

[Oniya]

Actually, in the little Oni's elementary school, they did do 'class shuffling'.  There were four fifth grade teachers, and the kids rotated from one to the other for different subjects.  I forget exactly when that started, but it's all old hat to her now.  Her sixth grade is set up with different teachers too.  I wasn't about to skip her - I was skipped out of kindergarten, and I did lose a lot of socialization skills, but it shouldn't have been too difficult to have her go to one of the other teachers for math.  The kids are all changing classrooms anyways.

[Caela]

Speaking as someone who was put into a class full of bigger and older kids... yeah, it isn't a good plan.   ::)  The grade schools and high school I went to were all quite small, too small for any advanced programs as such, but it was also easier to have smaller class sizes, at least, and a bit more individualized instruction.  So overall it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but still far from ideal.

I don't know that there is a standardized way that would work for "everyone" but I certainly think we could be doing a far better job than we are.

We need (IMO) more teachers, smaller class sizes, to return at least some power to teachers to control their classrooms, to chuck at least 95% of standardized tests so that teachers can actually teach their subjects instead of just preparing kids to fill in bubbles, and for more parents to get off their asses and get involved in their children's education. It's not just the school's responsibility to ensure our children are educated, but ours as well.

[Caela]

Actually, in the little Oni's elementary school, they did do 'class shuffling'.  There were four fifth grade teachers, and the kids rotated from one to the other for different subjects.  I forget exactly when that started, but it's all old hat to her now.  Her sixth grade is set up with different teachers too.  I wasn't about to skip her - I was skipped out of kindergarten, and I did lose a lot of socialization skills, but it shouldn't have been too difficult to have her go to one of the other teachers for math.  The kids are all changing classrooms anyways.

I think the idea could work, particularly in larger population areas where you have more kids so you'd get a better mix of ages, in general, and not just one little kid with a bunch of bigger ones. Also, depending on their skills, they might have more older kids in one class, and more of their own age in another and I would have classes like gym, and fun activities like recess, be done in age appropriate groups so that they still learn to socialize and make friends.

[Healergirl]

Tracking.   Anecdontes are not the most reliable of data, but they are data.

My sister n law is a professor at a local Community College.  Much of her class load is remedial work.  Her students, by a very large margin, tell her they would lvoe, purely love for tracking to be reinstated once they find out what it is and can do.

This is another reason why Home Schooling is so popular.  yes, much of the motivation, most of teh motivation is not very thinlyt disguised White Flight,  but not all of it.

I have a brother whose kids are home schooled.  Very smart kids, both of them (of course they are, I'm their Aunt by blood!)  the amount of work my sister-in-law puts into their education is phenomenal.  But they have an advantage many Home Schooled kids do not.  One of their uncles and one of their aunts are teachers, their curriculum gets a once-over by those relatives.  And by the history-nerdette of yours truly.

My brother told me once he could tell that a history textbook didn't pass muster with me, I didn't have to say a word, just the way my eyes went wide and I  hyperventilated as I skimmed it were enough.  I had gone straight to the section on the Antebellum South in the USA, a sure litmus test for the tone of such a  book, I have found.

It was truly atrocious.  Went on at some length abut the bond of Christian faith that linked and moderated the relationship between black slaves and white masters, the mutual respect that arose from that.

It was vile.  Evil is not too strong a word.

And it came highly recommended by a Home Schooling association.  Which is why I have such deep reservations for Home Schooling, so many parents don't have access to, or trust in the "subject matter experts" the way the parents of my  nephew and niece have.

The kids' assessment  scores are splendid, by the way.  Of course they are.  My brother is (almost) as smart as I am.

[Caela]

Healergirl, I'd love to be in a position to be able to homeschool my daughter. To have the ability to let her fly fast through subjects she excels in and find advanced work for her to do, and be there to help her with the subjects she struggles with...it would be wonderful! Being a single Mom though, that's not going to happen. SO she'll go to one of the local public schools...and then do work for me at home to fill in the gaps! lol I am lucky enough to have a core group of friends who are very smart people and have been volunteered (hehehe) to help her out with subjects I can't.

And I now know I need to be leery of her history textbooks. Thanks for the heads up! That may be a subject she will find herself doing research projects for Me during the summers off. :)

Any other pitfalls I should be looking out for??

[Healergirl]

One pitfall to avoid is the social isolation that can befall some Home Schooled children - but there are bound to be others in your area who do this, and At least a semi-formal group that will organize field trips, cookouts, camouts so that Home schooled kids can find people to hang out with - and this is Vital!

Not just for your daughter, but for you as well, meeting other parents will hel ease your own sense of isolation, they will b sources of advice and supprt, and parents can have a much more critical eye of textbooks than many in the Home School movement find comfortable, especially when the parents cll shennanigns on textbooks.

I wish to God I remembered that history  book so I could warn you off by name.  It was published by an outfit with a strong religious affiliation.

But, and this is very important, there are quite a few robustly secular groups in the me school movement.  And frankly, for many if not most subjects, the standard school system books are just fine.

Parents take a number of approaches that differ in detail, and are perhaps not surprisingly, are very tolerant of others who take slightly different aproaches to educating their kids.  That's the  fundamental point of Home Schooling after all.

Now the "leadership" of the movement... they are all too often hidebound, pushing a broader agenda of their own.

[Caela]

I don't have to worry about the isolation part, my own daughter will be going to a public school. As much as I wish I could home school her, so I could tailor her education to her abilities, I am a single Mom and can't just quit working. I will be supplementing her education at home though (this is where only working 3, 12 hr shifts a week comes in handy!) so it's still good to know what pitfalls and holes there are in some of the books. With public schools being forced to use a "one size fits all" approach to education, it just seems like kids end up lacking, especially if they get bored and stop listening, so I am planning on my own child having special projects to work on at home as well...especially during school breaks.

[Healergirl]

Caela,

You, my dear, are a very good Mom!

[Lilias]

Even though I'm not gainfully employed, if I were to homeschool the Spawn, I'd hire a governess or a tutor. Attempting to do it myself would be a disaster for both of us.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I'm totally in favor of parents who raise self-sufficient children.  Bosses don't want to be hearing from mom when junior complains about working condition.

[Caela]

Caela,

You, my dear, are a very good Mom!

~blushes~ Thanks! I just want her to have a good education, and the choices in life that that opens up for a person. I've watched too many of my siblings struggle because they threw away the chance at even a basic education and I refuse to allow my daughter to go down that road. I don't mind at all if she chooses a vocational school, or some sort of artistic endeavor over college, but I want her to have the choice if she wants it. And even if she chooses not to go to college, in favor of other pursuits, I still want her to have a thirst for knowledge and the capability to find that knowledge.

~grins~ Having a couple of friends that are librarians is going to be good fun when she's a bit older and I ask them for help in deciding on research projects for her. I'm thinking that for a few of them, I'll actually go so far as to limit her to resources she can find in, or get from, the library itself; computers only allowed for ordering such materials, not looking it up or sorting through them.

I'm totally in favor of parents who raise self-sufficient children.  Bosses don't want to be hearing from mom when junior complains about working condition.

This I totally don't get! I've heard of it, of course, but what self-respecting parent would actually call their child's workplace? If I grumble about work (which happens to all of us) my Mom just tells me to do something about it, or find something else to talk about!

[Beguile's Mistress]

This I totally don't get! I've heard of it, of course, but what self-respecting parent would actually call their child's workplace? If I grumble about work (which happens to all of us) my Mom just tells me to do something about it, or find something else to talk about!

Helicopter parents - those who have hovered over their children from day one.  They interfere in every aspect of the child's life rather than teach the child how to cope on their own.  I had a mother come storming into my office to berate me for abusing her child because he had a lunch schedule to adhere to.  Our policy is to let HR handle things so I call them.  He had been a problem from the start and we ended up firing him on the spot. 

[Healergirl]

Caela,


Library only is a good way to teach some basic research skills that she will find  to be priceless when using them to winnow out all the dross that, say, google search will churn up.

Bei,

A helicopter parent getting wound up over a child's lunch schedule... I wish I could say I'm surprised.

[Beguile's Mistress]

Bei,

A helicopter parent getting wound up over a child's lunch schedule... I wish I could say I'm surprised.

She was the worst. 

[RubySlippers]

Have you even thought about your own signature text?  You are referring to education that is designed to adjust the individual to society, rather than allowing people to develop to their full potentials.  I guess you must see leisure as a problem.

Education IS indoctrination by the government, to make good obedient little cogs who will do as they are told. The only way to fight the system is to get outside of it and go against the system. I for one work as little as I can my for of leisure is to work around 40 hours a month and I can earn enough to get by. I live modestly and just don't care what people think about that I don't care I hate working.

So why pretend otherwise get people in and out of the system as fast as possible.

[Caela]

Helicopter parents - those who have hovered over their children from day one.  They interfere in every aspect of the child's life rather than teach the child how to cope on their own.  I had a mother come storming into my office to berate me for abusing her child because he had a lunch schedule to adhere to.  Our policy is to let HR handle things so I call them.  He had been a problem from the start and we ended up firing him on the spot.

These people need to get a life! If the person had some sort of schedule they needed to adhere to (because of being diabetic/hypoglycemic/some sort of medication they're on/etc.) then that was something that the employee should have handled with their manager, not something their parent should have been involved in in ANY way/shape/form.   ::)

And people wonder why kids are such brats! With parents like this it's no wonder.

Caela,


Library only is a good way to teach some basic research skills that she will find  to be priceless when using them to winnow out all the dross that, say, google search will churn up.

Hehehehe...I am evil enough, that if most still had card catalogues, I wouldn't let her use the computers at all!

[Healergirl]

*sigh*

I miss card catalogues, I had anintuitive feel for them. 

I guess that tells you how much time I spent haunting libraries in my perhaps not so mis-spent youth.

[Beguile's Mistress]

These people need to get a life! If the person had some sort of schedule they needed to adhere to (because of being diabetic/hypoglycemic/some sort of medication they're on/etc.) then that was something that the employee should have handled with their manager, not something their parent should have been involved in in ANY way/shape/form.   ::)

And people wonder why kids are such brats! With parents like this it's no wonder.

I have theories about how this all came about but I usually offend parents when I talk about them since I don't have children of my own.  Part of our management training is how to identify various motivations our team members experience.  We theorize that helicopter parents often come about because they the product of families where both parents work or single parent households.  They felt neglected and/or deprived and over-compensate with their children.  Of course, they also burden their children with high expectations of success.

[Oniya]

Education IS indoctrination by the government, to make good obedient little cogs who will do as they are told. The only way to fight the system is to get outside of it and go against the system. I for one work as little as I can my for of leisure is to work around 40 hours a month and I can earn enough to get by. I live modestly and just don't care what people think about that I don't care I hate working.

So why pretend otherwise get people in and out of the system as fast as possible.

You hate working, and yet you recommend vocational schools.  I hate to break it to you, but most vocational schools are lining you up to be one of those 'cogs' that you so despise.  Higher education is where people learn that there is more, that they can do more, and that they can be more.  They learn to appreciate learning for learning's sake, and thinking for thinking's sake. 

I just don't understand why you bother posting in these topics when you hate education so much. 

[Caela]

I have theories about how this all came about but I usually offend parents when I talk about them since I don't have children of my own.  Part of our management training is how to identify various motivations our team members experience.  We theorize that helicopter parents often come about because they the product of families where both parents work or single parent households.  They felt neglected and/or deprived and over-compensate with their children.  Of course, they also burden their children with high expectations of success.

lol..I don't offend that easily. Just because you don't have children of your own, doesn't mean you can't have insight into them. Some of the best advice, and insights I've gotten came from a friend who doesn't particularly like children (with case by case exceptions) in general, but always enjoyed studying psychology and watching people.

I'm sure some helicopter parents come about exactly because of what you said, or perhaps they were middle children in large families and felt neglected because of that. No matter the cause, it does seem that they are overcompensating for something and need to learn balance.

[Beguile's Mistress]

*nods*  I also think that competition to have the best kid or kids is in there, too.  My brother turned the raising of their sons over to his wife when they were born.  She is one of the most concerned and loving parents I know and also the most hands-off.  At sixteen and fourteen those two boys have more life skills than some men twice their age.

[Moraline]

Every child is different, some thrive with a more hands on approach and others do better when left to "handle" life experiences on their own.

There is no one single method for raising good children. Because children are individuals, it's up to the parents to do their best to gauge just how involved or hands off they should be with them. Some get it right, some get it wrong, some don't bother trying, etc... There really is no one single method or approach that works best.

And in defense of the parents that come in and give grief to employers of teenagers. There are many times when those employers are really taking advantage of and abusing their positions. Far too often teenagers are treated terribly by employers that know they can always "just get another teenager to fill their place."  It often takes an adult to step in and say "what you are doing it wrong and I won't let you treat my child like that."

Teenagers are not adults and it is still the parents responsibility to protect them and help them. A parent has responsibility to show the child how to stand up to an abusive employer and sometimes that means going to face the employer themselves.

(I've seen teenagers in fast food restaurants be made to feel like they had to stay at work when they were actively getting sick. I've seen teenagers forced to work in rubber boots in a kitchen with ankle deep waste water around them after a flood. The list goes on. I can understand why some parents get defensive and over zealously stick up for their children. Not saying it's always warranted but we should take a step back and be a bit more understanding as to why they are doing it. It's not all, helicopter parenting.)

It's equally as bad for a parent to be to much hands off as it is for a parent to be too hands on.

Note: The same goes for school systems. One of the major flaws in our education system is the universal approach to learning. The one size fits all mold has never worked well. There needs to be more flexibility and different approaches (which doesn't happen in classes with 35 children to one single teacher.)

[Healergirl]

Moraline,

Oh absolutely, teenagers are treated as a renewable resource by even the best employers at times.