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nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I feel like most of the people on this site who think that the university system is obsolete and who think that college is overrated don't understand how privileged their perspective is. If you grew up middle class and came from a family where most people went to college, or even just a family where going to college wasn't looked down upon, then yeah, there are a lot of other paths that could work out just as well for you, from traveling to starting a company to self-learning to joining the military. Whatever. But severely underprivileged kids don't skip college because of their other options and because they think it's not the best way to learn. They skip it because the idea of college is foreign to the point of being laughable. Because bettering oneself hasn't been taught. Because education isn't valued. Sadly, for some people in these subcultures, higher education is not only ignored, but viewed with suspicion or even scorn.
The entire trajectory of these kids lives will be changed forever because they earned the right to go to college. The mere fact that the education system in this country enables that means that we're still doing something right.
You are looking at a story about a few of the "lucky" ones and declaring the system a success. What the story doesn't mention is the incredible damage credentialism causes in the first place.
Not to mention the credentialism (a focus on credentials rather than actual ability) that is encouraged throughout society, which adds more obstacles even where legal barriers don't exist.
While this hurts everyone, the poor are especially affected because it's more difficult for them to obtain credentials. Offering more and more state assistance to try to help them obtain credentials is akin to holding someone's head underwater and providing some dirty air once in a while.
Well, the idea is that credentials are a measure of actual ability. A company looking for new hires can't give everyone a month-long trial to see what their ability is firsthand, so credentials like GPA and degree serve as a heuristic. It's not a perfect system, and in some respects you could even call it broken...but until someone comes up with a better way for companies to work out who to interview, it's necessary. Personally, I think it would be better to fix the problems than to remove the system entirely.
Sure, that's the idea, but they're not. I'm not saying people should use any one system to evaluate people, but a variety of different ones instead. The one-size-fits-all approach is inherently broken and extremely expensive to boot.
I think it's ridiculous to think that utopia is a world in which credentials are ignored. And they're only part of what helps people get jobs...this argument is like saying that we shouldn't use interviews for jobs because some people aren't very friendly and are therefore at a disadvantage.
For instance, lawyers used to be able to pass the bar and become a lawyer by simply self-studying and passing the tests. The bar associations wanted to raise the barriers to entry to the profession, so they passed laws requiring a Law school degree. Students then started taking correspondence courses. The bar associations then changed the accreditation rules to mandate a minimum amount of classroom face time. These artificial credentialing laws ended up hurting the poor. Because before a student could study with books from a library card and become a lawyer. Now he must pay a very expensive tuition bill. Also, the artificial barriers to entry drive up wages for the credentialed professions, which means everyone has to pay more for doctors, legal help, etc.
Something like 30% of all jobs in the United States now have a legal credentialing requirement. Other companies are forced to use college attendance as a proxy for IQ tests, simply because the Supreme Court made it illegal to use IQ tests in hiring.
This is just corporate propaganda. GPA has no correlation with work performance, it's only used because it's a legal way to keep minorities out of the workforce.
I'd like to see some reliable studies to back up this statement. I don't see how this could be true when adjusted for variations in programs and schools. If I'm hiring twenty programmers from the same school who graduated from the same program at the same time, you're telling me that if I hire 10 people who barely graduated with a 2.0 GPA and ten people who busted their ass and graduated with a 4.0 GPA, the first group won't outperform the latter? Why would that be true?
It's only used because it's a legal way to keep minorities out of the workforce.
Bullshit. Corporations don't give two shits if there are minorities working for them, as long as they're making them money. This sounds like a viewpoint that drove whatever study came to the conclusion in the first part of your sentence, if there even was such a study.
http://searchyc.com/alex3917+gpa
(Some of these comments may be part of threads with other relevant info.)
Evidence? I've never heard anyone who does hiring say anything like that, not even in private late night conversations after many libations.
After working as a secretary in New York during WW II, she got married, had kids, and when we were all in school, wanted to go back to teaching. Unfortunately, by then that required a college degree in education, which she was unable to acquire (financial difficulties after my parents split). She ended her working career as the secretary to the director of special education (who had an EdD) for a small school district. The irony of that was that she had to write all his correspondence for him, as he was incapable of composing a coherent paragraph. I'd submit that it's possible the kids in that school district would have been better served if he was the janitor, and she a teacher or administrator.
Are these kids going to do better than other kids who made it into college from relatively harsh backgrounds?
Are these kids going to keep their good work ethic when the teachers in college don't care about them?
I wonder if getting into college has become the goal for the students like it has for the teacher/principal at their high school. If I had to guess: I expect the results to be quite polarized: some kids will drop out and accomplish little, others will keep their work ethic and do well.
More than anything, children want to be loved, accepted, and encouraged. They'll do anything you ask if you love them for doing it. They don't know anything else.
Lying is a natural. It is a gift that humans and few other species share. Every child that matures into a capable adult learns how to lie. They experiment with lying. They test their ability to lie. Children who don't learn to lie are emotionally and intellectually stunted.
It is effective parenting that instills in the child the knowledge that lying is only so effective. It gets you some distance, but when the lie is discovered you crash. People distrust you. They won't help you when you need it. Honesty has value as well.
If parents give in to the lies, because they lack the courage to punish them, the child pays the price later in life. If parents don't teach their children that lies and dishonesty have negative consequences, and if lies are continually rewarded, then that's what the child is going to learn best.
Parents who reward lies are doing their children a great disservice as well as the world who has to tolerate them as they grow up.
Huh? Do you have any hard data to back up this bizarre proposition? Certainly everything I've ever experienced speaks rather forcefully against it. The bullying in schools, the ostracism of anyone different, the teasing. This is not learned behaviour, it is the default state, to be overcome by education and socialisation, not to be encouraged or preserved.
Methinks you are confusing the reality of children with what you wish or imagine children are. There is a reason "acting like a child" is not a compliment.
I think the problems you mention are largely caused by today's school environments, not cured by them.
I think the US public school system is deeply flawed, but one of the few things I don't blame it for is the cruelty of children. Kids are just cruel.
Kids who are loved are cruel, they lie and they cheat. Children that are not loved are simply even worse.
I really wish people would not use words like "innocent" in this context. Exactly what do you mean by your statement? Do you mean they are not guilty of a crime? What crime, the crime of being adult? Or free from moral wrong? A few minutes watching a young boy pulling wings off flies will disabuse you of this misconception.
I just can't stand this nonsense about children being these pure little angels who can do no wrong. A blank slate, yes, perhaps. Words like "innocent" are just plain inapplicable and say more about the speaker than they do the kids.
Actions that are morally wrong to us are not morally wrong for those who lack morals. And if you can do no wrong you certainly can't be guilty. Therefore, innocent seems an apt label.
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Semantics, ie. meaning, is the whole point of language. I do not think that it is useless nit-picking to point out that your use of words is wrong. The word "innocent" has a positive bias; you could not criticise someone as being innocent. But lacking "societal norms, customs, virtues or values" (from the article you linked to) could not possibly be described as a positive attribute.
Language means what it means. If you mean something different, say that instead. You can't wave away criticism by just saying "well who cares about word meanings anyway".
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The first one, "free from guilt or sin especially through lack of knowledge of evil" is exactly what I am talking about. Think about the axioms implicit in that definition:
1. evil exists
2. there is no inherent evil, evil must be learned
3. we can therefore prevent "evil" by restricting knowledge
4. guilt and sin exist
You might think all of this is just irrelevant bickering but I think it's extremely important. "Innocent" is a highly loaded term, straining under the weight of its inherent assumptions - it's not a word, it's a whole potted worldview. I think it's useful to point that out. I've done that now, and the prosecution rests.
And since we're linking to wikipedia, here's one for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis
That kind of sounds like a typical class warfare argument to me...
American education still has a emphasis on liberal education which practically only exists in the anglo world and most strongly in the US. For all the antagonism towards the general curriculum requirements here on HN, which IMHO is a strain of philistinism, our mental life, and the strength of our democracy depends on citizens well aware of the world around them and capable of critical argument. While some are innately born with this ability, a liberal education is the way to ensure it in those who are not.
Beyond this, for our most promising scientific minds are very well served by our educational system. Generally attending a strong public or good private secondary school, they will be recognized early in their ability and encouraged to supplement their mathematical and scientific coursework at a local institution of higher learning. During summers, they will work in the lab of a prominent university professor and get early exposure to research. This will continue in university as they become further familiar with the state of the art as an undergraduate and are better prepared for graduate school than someone without these benefits so early, say in India or China where the state of research is not so strong.
Do some talented individuals fall by the wayside? Yes, but not as many as imagined. The only real criticism of american education is that it leaves those who may not want or be capable of a high status creative profession underserved. But this is a uniquely american calculation in the interests of equity and idealism. We accept some measure of inefficiency here in our educational system to maintain coherence with our national mythos that all men are created equal, an ambiguous but politically useful statement. Otherwise we could follow a german model and single out the talented children from the rest around the age of 10 and send them to different schools. But I can't really imagine this working in the United States.
I'm skeptical of the idea that, with enough money,, we can coddle kids into learning by revising how the information is taught or otherwise candy coating the material to be more accessible. It's a bad life lesson. Sometimes learning things is hard. Sometimes you have to work at it. Sometimes you need to learn a subject inside out to understand it and that is difficult. If you manage to find someway to make a particular subject easy to learn it only works to a certain degree because kids may be conditioned to believe that all information they need to learn in life will be presented in such a carefully engineered and optimized way. That is simply not reality. The reality of most people's lives is you work for your own best interest and are rewarded for it in a tangible way. Duplicating that model in public schools in some form would be a step in the right direction.
No, it's not.
http://www.amazon.com/Punished-Rewards-Trouble-Incentive-Pra...