zigmonty Wrote:Literature wanks have way too much influence on school curriculums. They've inflicted their pet hobby on generations of school children and gotten away with it.

Well said. You have phrased what I have long thought - Here in the UK we have a subject called media studies. When I was studying languages at college and got reccomended to the best university for Japanese in the land, a twat was playing loud videos in the classroom next to us. This fat, pony-tailed prick would tell me I didn't know how to behave in an academic institution. He said he met and spoke to Sartre. When I asked him whether Sartre spoke English he backed off...

I wrote an email to this prick stating that I have a degree and have translated a book with the help of my gf but I didn't send it because I knew it would do no good...

These people disgust me.

Martha Nussbaum is known for defending a liberal arts education (that includes things like Shakespeare). I'll link to a review of one of her books:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/article1630082.ece

A few quotes:

"Nussbaum defends “the human development mode,” which regards the humanities as having a crucial role in our commitment to a democratic community and social equality. This alternative approach is perhaps better described as the “ethical model,” since in respect of both its method and content it aims to produce humane, sympathetic and creative “global citizens.” "

"A healthy democratic society needs independent-minded and creative individuals"

"Democratic society, she argues, has priorities that are not secured or served by a population of subservient, uncritical and unimaginative cogs in an economic system with no greater goals or ambitions than profit. A healthy democratic society needs independent-minded and creative individuals who have the character and confidence to resist arbitrary authority and hierarchical attitudes. In order to produce such people, we need a form of education that encourages active dialogue that develops out of “Socratic questioning.”"

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:This fat, pony-tailed prick would tell me I didn't know how to behave in an academic institution.

What did you tell him exactly?

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:I wrote an email to this prick stating that I have a degree and have translated a book with the help of my gf but I didn't send it because I knew it would do no good...

Why would you send the guy an email about a book you translated? Doesn't make sense.

Eikyu Wrote:Martha Nussbaum is known for defending a liberal arts education (that includes things like Shakespeare). I'll link to a review of one of her

This is pretty far-fetched and assumes that science/math people are nothing more than uncreative guys capable of regurgitating formulas over and over.

The core of science and math IS creativity, an attempt to distill and explain the world to us. Some of the greatest philosophers were also mathematicians and scientists. Science, math, and philosophy (and history, and languages, and literature) cannot be truly separated. Isn't Socratic thinking the basis of the scientific method?

The problem is that in the modern curriculum, not only are they separated far from each other, but some things like Shakespeare are so highly specialized within the field of English/Language/Communication that it loses its relevance.

Why are we taught about the eloquency and brevity of the lines of Shakespeare, then forced to write an essay (with a minimum page limit) about one line? (How much critical thinking did they put into that assignment?)

On top of that, due to the way our education and industry is set up, how well you analyze the lines of Shakespeare could impact what type of jobs you are eligible for in the future! It's well known that certain universities are highly recruited in certain fields to the point where you just need to tell them your name, that you're from that university, and voila, you have an internship. (Feel free to plug in MIT, CS, and Google.) Is it right that my eligibility for this university should be denied because I thought that a certain poem was iambic pentameter when it really isn't?

[Zgarbas]

One more note and I'm out. Our educational system is renown for the Jack of all trades way of doing things. Let me explain.
Kindergarden usually teaches reading/writing, though private ones go crazy about the curriculum. I learned English along with reading&writing in English in kindergarden for example, and there are a few which go as far as to teach 2 foreign languages or mathematics. Kids sign up for kindergarden around 2-4 years of age and sign up to school when they're 6-7.

Primary(grades 1-4) teaches basic things like maths, reading, writing, basic literature, basic history, basic geography, basic civics, English, music, arts, etc.
Gymnazium(grades 5-8) is where the good kids get separated from the bad...the poor kids usually get sent to some shitty school where they rarely do nothing. The rest already start with their 3rd language(German, Spanish or French, though some schools also offer Italian). Heavy maths, to the point where in 5th grade I was doing stuff that was highschool material in America. Romanian literature. Basic English literature. World geography, history, civics, biology, chemistry, physics, music, arts, etc. I also did informatics, but I signed up for a special class with the higher grades for it.

Highschool(grades 9-12) is split into various specialisations, mainly Humanities, Economics or Maths. There are also trade schools which train kids for stuff like architecture, arts, music, carpenters, etc. Trade schools when you're 16, highschool when you're 18-19. We have this big ass exam(actually they keep changing the exam, I think they're grade sorted now, whatevs) and get sent to schools appropaite to our grades. I went to Maths Bilingual(English-Romanian) in one of the best schools in the country, but later moved to Humanities Bilingual. Cut off everything English related for the average curriculum. Economics is the only one with a really special curriculum as it does pretty much everything economics-related(duh), with reasonable amounts of both Maths and Humanities subjects.

Up to grade 10 specializations don't matter much, as most of the curriculum is the same. Maths(up to complex numbers...which were what made me stop liking it), basic Informatics(pascal or C++), basic computer use(MS office, HTML, etc.), world geography, world history, we also got British-American geography and history since we were bilingual, logics, psychology, arts, music, biology, organic&inorganic Chemistry, physics, Romanian literature, etc.

So basically, all 16 year olds have been taught optics, complex numbers, the lowest temperature ever recorded in Asia, clrscr()s, genetics, etc. Humanities also did Latin.

Switch to grade 11, where Humanities drop all Maths-related subjects (maths, physics, biology, informatics & chemistry), whilst Maths drops music and arts and reduces the hours of Humanities subjects. They get to do derivatives, integrals, matrixes and what not. Informatics never gets really advanced, mostly up to backtracking&greedy in C++/Pascal, with Visual Basic in 12th grade. Physics already covered optics, mechanics and what not and just gets to delve deeper into the already-taught material. Same for chemistry.

Us at humanities did the entire world's history from antique to modern, continued with world&local geography, basic Office, Latin, history of music&arts, we had about 11 hours per week of English including a bit of linguistics, history, C&C, Literature(from Chaucer to 20th century), EU studies, language awareness(political corectness, differences between British&American, what not), UK studies, American studies, what not. So we did everything from studying how ydampened from Chaucer's English can mean either damned or dampened to "why you should never make a joke about the Pope when in northern Ireland". We also did Universal Literature, one year for antique-to-medieval, one for medieval-to-modern.

Oh, also all specializations started offering L4, possibly even L5, but at a much lower level than the others(1 hour per week). Economy&Philosophy was also in the common curriculum.

And this ain't everything there was, there are also a few subjects I just can't remember since highshcool was long ago.

So basically we do EVERYTHING there is to do, in a painful 40-to-50 hours per week, depending on how many extras you take and what your highschool offers. You come out knowing a bit of everything, yet it is just so tiring to learn for everything that most people don't. I can't remember anything out of Physics or Chemistry, despite being very studious about them back in the day. I can't even list more than 5 mathematical formulas, and I was participating in national-level Maths competitions back in the day. I would much have rather done a few subjects, "missing out" on the others, and been able to stick with them rather than with the plethora of subjects we went through "to make sure we cover everything".


P.S. Trade schools aside, education is theoretically compulsory up to grade 10, though practically a college degree is mandatory even for the most menial of jobs... So yes, this is all just the compulsory education.

IceCream Wrote:But honestly, i have no idea how anyone coming through the school system at the same time as i did ever found out they wanted to become an engineer, architect, mechanic, programmer, or even an investor in shares and bonds etc, because you just don't learn that these things even exist at school, let alone build a base of skills to continue with.

I second that, it's a shame that things go like that.
In fact, even in university, I wasn't able to capture what is means to be an engineer until my 3rd year!
After that I became aware of why do all this schooling, and got to gradually understand each profession role in life.
I think this was supposed to happen at school, this is school's highest priority, to get students to understand the world around them, and allow them to make a picture of it. Indeed this requires the UNDERSTANDING of subjects (which gives students skills), from History to Math!

Why should I stuff info in head that I can find in an encyclopedia? Except what is needed to continue understanding more complex subjects.

Lastly, at whichever level you are now, subjects that you think are useless most likely are useful! In my four year engineering degree, I've been dealing mostly with math and physics, but with the context of the subjects, problem solving and deep understanding skills developed, yeah I will never find the mechanical response to harmonic excitations, not even working with vibrations at all, but that course gave me insight in someway or another, that added to my overall "skill set".
Another example is when you meet two people with different educational levels, you will be amazed by the difference in mentality between them, and I mean better and worse, not just being different!

Zgarbas Wrote:...Maths(up to complex numbers...which were what made me stop liking it),..

If only someone showed you how cool are complex numbers and the philosophy behind them... :S

LivingNexus Wrote:You can make whatever defenses you want of the current system, but the fact is that, at least according to 2009 figures collected by the NAEP*, more than half of the 12th graders studied were "not proficient in reading." For a compulsory education system, that is laughable. No, more than that, it's shameful. How can you expect a system to properly teach people about the implications of historical events or the nuances of literature when it can't even ensure basic literacy?

IS this the fault of the education system? The stats don't lie, people can't read. In a perfect world you could turn around and point at the schools and say "Get your act together!" But I think thats crap. I came through the US school system and the biggest problem inherent in the system are the kids. You can shove all the best teachers, books, facilities, computers, etc. into a school; get education scientists to form a spectacular curriculum. But if at the end of the day your students just don't give a shit then it means nothing!

The reason for these bad students is the fact that most families don't seem to value education anymore. So you get gets that go to school and just dick around. A lot of these kids seem to come from families having problems.

You can't force someone to learn; you can only show them the road.

Zgarbas Wrote:@Math

I guess this explains why there are so many professors in the Math dept.s from Eastern Europe.

[Zgarbas]

undead_saif Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:...Maths(up to complex numbers...which were what made me stop liking it),..

If only someone showed you how cool are complex numbers and the philosophy behind them... :S

I didn't get along with them since the reason I liked maths (and mechanics in Physics, and inorganic Chemistry) was that I could see what was going on and understand it. As soon as Maths left that field of realism it turned me off completely... That was the year with organic Chemistry and Optics, so I was all "SCIENCE Y U STOP MAKING SENSE" and just learned Latin and switched.

P.S. Though studying the Aeneid, Satyricon, Illiad&Oddysey is probably useless, I don't regret a thing and it was my favourite part of the curriculum =). (and now that I think about it we did Gilgamesh in 7th grade for some reason, so I think we started doing world literature earlier than I thought)...

Eikyu Wrote:Why would you send the guy an email about a book you translated? Doesn't make sense.

To show him that I could achieve getting a degree, translating a book and getting a job despite his telling me I was useless. To show that I had proven him wrong. I wanted to tell him not to speak to other language students - IMO he had no right to teach in the same building as language teachers, let alone telling a talented language student (me!) how to behave.

The French teacher asked him to turn his video down as it was disturbing us (which it was) and he didn't do anything. When both me and the French teacher asked him to turn it down he said I was immature etc.

The French teacher used to say "Media studies - what IS that?" which made me laugh.

Zgarbas Wrote:

undead_saif Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:...Maths(up to complex numbers...which were what made me stop liking it),..

If only someone showed you how cool are complex numbers and the philosophy behind them... :S

I didn't get along with them since the reason I liked maths (and mechanics in Physics, and inorganic Chemistry) was that I could see what was going on and understand it. As soon as Maths left that field of realism it turned me off completely... That was the year with organic Chemistry and Optics, so I was all "SCIENCE Y U STOP MAKING SENSE" and just learned Latin and switched.

O_O!
FYI, complex number play crucial roles in: AC Circuit analysis, Signals and Systems (i.e communication - analog and digital), Control systems (robots, cars, airplanes, missiles,...), and in solving differential/difference equations (everything is modeled in DE).

EDIT: I hope I didn't sound like a smart---, I just wanted to say that most things we learn are meaningful but we have to look for it.

[Zgarbas]

Yes, but for a highschooler they just sound like something that make you go "WTF why do I have to imagine numbers that make no sense"?! (which was strange given that i was really anxious about 12th grade quantum physics at the time =/. I had weird values I guess?). Actually using them in a practical manner doesn't come for YEARS after you first hear about them, and I guess I couldn't think that far ahead.

I didn't think you sounded like a smartass, I was just trying to explain why I had a problem with them =).

IceCream Wrote:@Caivano:
The point is a much more fundamental one about what skills you need in the world... and what methods you have at your disposal to learn about it.

When i want to learn something new, what do you think i do? i go and get a book on it. I'm good at learning that way, and it's not a horrific thing to do. But there's many other ways of learning things. When i wanted to learn about chimpanzees, i went and checked a bunch of books out of the library. When i was told to learn by observing the actual chimpanzees in front of me, i felt horribly uneasy, because i have no clear idea of how to learn like that. So... i went and checked out a book on how to learn through observation lol. And i still don't get it really, not in a practical way.
It's exactly the same situation with practical things... i should be able to fiddle around with my bike until i get it, but it's something that i'm really not confident in doing, because... well, i've never done it. It's not a matter of knowing how to fix a bike in particular, it's a matter of never having learnt how to learn to do something through... practically doing something, rather than reading a book on it. Does that make sense?

I guess people are different... I'll generally only look something up if I try to do it myself a few times and fail. I often make things worse by doing this (especially with cars and mechanical stuff :$) but I guess it's a good leaning experience. If someone is teaching me how to do stg, I'll always make them let me try at the same time, as I learn better like that. The exception for me is cooking, I always look up a recipe and follow it through, even if it's just making pancakes!

vix86 Wrote:You can shove all the best teachers, books, facilities, computers, etc. into a school; get education scientists to form a spectacular curriculum. But if at the end of the day your students just don't give a shit then it means nothing!

That's true, and one of the reasons I wouldn't ever want to become a teacher of kinds under college level - at least there you have a higher percentage of people who are there because they actually want to be.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I still think we could come up with a system that encourages children to be intrinsically motivated by giving them reasons to learn, which is something that keeps coming up with this thread. Even just fixing that problem alone would go a long way, I think. Yet, teachers still continue to expect us to learn things "because I said so" or "because it's on the test."

Man i love kicking hornets' nests...

I think the funniest thing about this thread is that everyone is talking from their own experience, but because we're from all over the world, none of us have a clue what everyone else is talking about. It's pretty hard to talk about reforming education when the systems in each of our countries differ so much (my history classes were *definitely* not as yudantaiteki described). Maybe if the subjects i consider important were taught better, i'd be less enthusiastic about ditching the others.

Oh and ln(-1)/i by any other name would smell as sweet.

LivingNexus Wrote:That's true, and one of the reasons I wouldn't ever want to become a teacher of kinds under college level - at least there you have a higher percentage of people who are there because they actually want to be.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I still think we could come up with a system that encourages children to be intrinsically motivated by giving them reasons to learn, which is something that keeps coming up with this thread. Even just fixing that problem alone would go a long way, I think. Yet, teachers still continue to expect us to learn things "because I said so" or "because it's on the test."

Creating a system based on a theoretical idea doesn't really work that well though(see: communism)--it's not easy to tell whether or not a new system will work better or worse than the current one. There's a good chance that it will just have a different list of advantages and disadvantages.

I would be up for trying something different, but there's no real reason to think that any particular system will work. We don't even know anything about pedagogy. Humans know literally nothing about good teaching. It's extremely hard to make studies that actually confirm whether a teaching method is better or worse than another. Teachers have their own philosophies about teaching, but they all think that their philosophy is right despite no real evidence.

I think teachers that are charismatic, fair, and reasonable can solve a lot of the problems you're talking about, such as intrinsic motivation. Some teachers can make there students think the subject is interesting, and can therefore increase the intrinsic motivation of their students.

Well the obvious lesson to take from communism is that central planning doesn't work, which is why we should stop doing it with public education. If you allow greater parental choice through a system of school vouchers for example, you'll see improvements in quality. If the state stops centrally proscribing the curriculum maybe the market can decide what people want/need to know. If you make school non-compulsory, the market will decide how necessary schooling is.

[Zgarbas]

the problem with parental choice is that most parents expect a great deal from their kids and would put them through much harder/undesired education just because they kid is a widdle genius and "it's best for him". Sure, some might listen to their kid's desires, but even then it can go wrong since many kids just want an easier time without being able to think about their futures (I sort of regret moving to Humanities out of a whim instead of keeping with Maths, though the reasons for that were not really something you could foresee...).

E.g. I know many kids who went to "easier" schools because of superficial reasons (their friends went there, it's close to home, the guys in the tougher schools are more demanding, what not), without realizing how much they missed out on. I also know many people who went to colleges specializing in things they didn't care about or were good at just because their parents said that's what pays best. There's just no way to win with this.

P.S. My school was the one of the first to approach an alternative teaching environment and we were given a lot of freedom around there. We didn't accept uniforms even when they became the norm, skipping class was usually not a problem, class debates where encouraged, most teachers encouraged creative thinking, etc. We still had a few teachers which stuck to the traditional teaching methods and unsurprisingly they had the worst results. Some of the most boring classes became excellent thanks to certain teachers.

E.g. my Latin teacher knew that Latin ain't the most interesting thing a 14-year-old wants to learn so she would start out all classes with a story. Anything ranging from Roman myths to fun stories about the Roman lifestyle, and then we would study a text about it in Latin and only then do language studies.

Umm, no? Karl Marx basically criticized capitalism (similar to how you're criticizing the current education system) and said that we needed a change into a system which would ultimately be stateless and in which there would be common ownership of the means of production. There was nothing about the theoretical idea of communism that included central planning ('common ownership' is different from both 'state ownership' and 'public ownership').

The problem is that putting an ideal into practice is not easy, and once you do it it's not actually going to act the way you thought it was going to. People advocating communism had a noble theoretical ideal, but they didn't have any good way of putting it into practice so they basically ended up with an oppressive dictatorship that claimed to be working towards the great good and the ideal of communism. But ultimately the dictatorship itself did not know how to put those ideas into practice either, and was corrupted by power.

Communism didn't work in Russia and China because it's hard to put theoretical ideas into practice.

Sometimes central planning works really well, and sometimes it doesn't. Depends on the problem at hand, and how good the planners are.

yeah... real communism has never actually been tried. It's in no way synonimous with dictatorship and waste of resources, at least in Marx.

But regardless, the argument "state planning like Russia and China did was bad therefore all centralised planning is bad" really doesn't work, on a number of levels.

i very much doubt that the market would dictate any broader of a base for education than the current system does.

At any rate, those things you suggested could just as easily be brought about through the state, without the need for people to pay over the odds for a good education. Again, think about how much you have to pay for a degree in America, especially for top universities.

nadiatims Wrote:If you allow greater parental choice through a system of school vouchers for example, you'll see improvements in quality.

There is already parental choice, it's called the private school system. Imho, one of the purposes of compulsory education is to limit the extent to which bad parents can screw a kid up. One of the core principles in Australia (and i'm guessing most of the western world) is that it doesn't matter who your parents are, you'll still be given a fair go in life. Everyone receiving the same compulsory education is a great leveller. I'd rather everyone receive a slightly sub-optimal education than have wild differences in the outcome depending on what loony ideas your parents had.

Tzadeck Wrote:There was nothing about the theoretical idea of communism that included central planning ('common ownership' is different from both 'state ownership' and 'public ownership').

great. I'm not talking about the theoretical realization of communism, I was making a comparison to how it has always been realized in practice (via violent revolution, theft, censorship and elimination). And public school systems do resemble communism in reality.

Tzadeck Wrote:Sometimes central planning works really well, and sometimes it doesn't. Depends on the problem at hand, and how good the planners are.

I'm very interested in hearing your criterion for where you draw the line. I think we all agree that state run farms are a bad idea. Why is the public school system sacred?

Icecream Wrote:i very much doubt that the market would dictate any broader of a base for education than the current system does.

Sure it would. Parents would be free to send their kids to whatever kind of school they like, maybe that would be entail a classical education, maybe something vocational, maybe more artistic. You'd have different kinds of schools catering to different niches and income levels. You could let schools and universities completely decide their own entry criterion. That might involve some outsourcing to testing services that exist solely for evaluating knowledge.

@Zigmonty
Some parents have the money to opt out of the system. But the public system has a monopoly on low cost education (though you'd be amazed how much it actually costs) because it is subsidized by taxes.

Zigmonty Wrote:Everyone receiving the same compulsory education is a great leveller.

Um yeah no. All you do is force individuals with different strengths and weaknesses to compete on the same playing field for the first 16 years of their life. Some kids would enjoy and learn more being employed as low or unpaid apprentices, interns in various fields of their interest.

Also schools aren't the only place people learn. I certainly hope people take responsibility for their own learning well after they finish their schooling.

nadiatims Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:Sometimes central planning works really well, and sometimes it doesn't. Depends on the problem at hand, and how good the planners are.

I'm very interested in hearing your criterion for where you draw the line. I think we all agree that state run farms are a bad idea. Why is the public school system sacred?

I don't have time to respond about my criteria--maybe when I get back from Hokkaido. I'm there til Sunday.

But, I didn't say that the public school system was sacred. I said that central planning does work in some situations, I said that we don't know much about pedagogy, and I said that if you make a theoretical idea for how a new education system will work it probably won't turn out anything like you expect it to.

exactly. We don't know the best ways, or the best things to the teach. There also isn't one choice that works for every individual. This is exactly my point. Board of educations don't know whats best. This is why we shouldn't prescribe the same thing to every school in a top down manner. Allow schools to be autonomous and allow individuals to have choice.

So basically you're switching an ignorant board of education with ignorant individuals? I'm sure all the people who go to high school for astrology, biology sans evolution, and homeopathy will make America a great country again.

What's up with all those countries that have boards of education AND have well-educated students (i.e., northern Europe)?