American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist
wired.com
wired.com
My Son just recently graduated High School and now is in his first year of college for dual major in Aviation Science (to be an air traffic controller) and Business. His high school (Valhalla High School in El Cajon California) gave him a test to determine his aptitude that said he should go into "building maintenance" (being a Janitor more or less) and wouldn't move up his classes to more difficult ones so he was in classes with kids who didn't really want to be there and were continually disruptive.
Looking for a solution for this problem I found Grossmont Middle College which is a high school on a 2 year college campus. My son was able to get into that and finished high school with about 34 units in college classes most of which transferred to the 4 year university he now attends (University of North Dakota... why he wants to move from California to the freezing cold I have no idea!).
Common Core can't fix the segregation of high schools between the rich high performing kids and everyone else who isn't allowed into the higher level of learning at schools. Every school is essentially 2 schools and if you don't get into the right classes you are screwed big time.
Reading the article, personally I see what is wrong in schools more about getting kids to where they want to be in life. Either college or a trade. For those who want a trade they should get 2 years of High School and 2 years of trade school along with some additional classes.
While I don't doubt that your kid was hilariously unappreciated from the school based on one test, I was a relatively lazy middle school student, scoring B-C ranges on most of my classes as well as pretty much failing the first aptitude test (pretty sure it said that I should be a truck driver). As a result, I wound up getting placed into non-honors classes freshman year. After a few weeks of finding the classes mind-numbling boring, I offhandedly mentioned to my advisor that I wanted my classes to be more challenging, and she immediately moved me to honors courses because of the fact that I had taken the prerogative to tell her that I wasn't being sufficiently challenged. Currently I'm studying Computer Science at a large state University.
Because both our examples have an n = 1 sample size, it's definitely not correct to generalize high schools across an entire nation. However, in my experience, high school advisors were more than willing to toss out aptitude test results if the student had taken the prerogative themselves. While I agree with the idea that "Every school is essentially 2 schools", the barrier between them is honestly so low that it's not realistically a problem.
But the real crime of the traditional education system, in my mind, is to condition students to be so focused on jumping for gold stars that they don't think about what they really want to accomplish and what activities (stars or no) will get them there.
I would say his school situation may have been more on the extreme side. Luckily he was able to get out of there. It was very demoralizing to him but once out of there he received all A and B grades in his college classes and he continues to get A and B grades at UND.
If we add 2 billion people or 30% to the world population over the next 20 years it raises some interesting questions about feeding these new 2 billion people. Especially since most of the projected population boom is coming from countries who already have problems feeding their people:
> During 2005–2050, nine countries are expected to account for half of the world's projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, United States, Ethiopia, and China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growt...)
Countries like that are able to increase their populations faster than their food production because of trade, and their agricultural leaps are because of outside help as well.
If the entire world was averaging 7+ children per woman I could see us hitting a food ceiling pretty quick.
That's the thing, as it turns out there is a very high correlation between "birth rate" and "infant mortality rate", so as you reduce the infant mortality rate, the number of children per woman reduces drastically.
As for looking at food production solely with a country, it's a bit silly since we know all countries have international food trade (heck, even North Korea). The real question would be if Niger can afford to feed their population.
Seeing as sub-Saharan African countries are struggling to feed the billion people they have already, no they can't handle another billion. We're talking about the poorest people on the planet here. Somehow we're so caught up in being PC that we can't tell people it's a bad idea to have so many kids for numerous reasons.
> there is a very high correlation between "birth rate" and "infant mortality rate", so as you reduce the infant mortality rate, the number of children per woman reduces drastically.
No. Correlation does not imply causation. A third factor is that infant mortality rates drop as modes of living change. It's apparently urbanization that causes people to choose to stop having so many children.
There's certainly a place for learning by doing, and "discovering" but most of the science that moves society forward is a very deliberate process involving incremental accretions to the collective knowledge. And our educational system is superbly designed to facilitate that process.
Perhaps we rely on the system more than people used to.
Hard work and dedication to learning is what created all those breakthroughs you mentioned. The education system contributed here and there.
Sure, but hard work and dedication is not a sufficient condition for building a modern scientific society. What's crucial is also building the infrastructure for passing along institutional knowledge to enable incremental advances. The modern educational system is very well-designed to facilitate that.
E.g. I studied aerospace engineering in college. You spend 4 years in college + 5-6 years in grad school learning everything about the state of the art. During your PhD you push something forward a little bit. Then you go to Boeing and figure out how to make the turbine blades withstand 5% higher temperatures so you can get 3% better combustion efficiency. And at every step the system is there to keep things moving dutifully forward. Eventually, you'll see you started with a 737 and are staring at a 787.
First, the idea is that most people learn more by doing than they do from rote memorization or even school lab experiments. If you want kids to be involved with the process of creating new food sources, have them start creating new food sources. Then they'll have a context for understanding how cells work and the value of organic chemistry and the other basic and advanced biology concepts. If you present it as just another boring thing that they're being forced a learn, a lot of creative and curious minds will shut down and just go through the motions of homework assignments and studying for quizzes. Many of us on hn are programmers not because we were forced to learn programming in school, but because we wanted to make a thing and set about learning the skills necessary to make that thing. That's what this article is saying, learn by doing.
The second issue is that not everyone can or should become a biologist. One of the other commenters mentioned that his son wanted to be an air traffic controller. Why make him sit through a biology class at all? It's possible that he'll be so intrigued by life sciences that he'll change his mind and switch his career path. Certainly wouldn't be the first 16 year old to do that. But our method now is to force young people to sit through dozens of hours of instruction on topics that they will probably never recall or use again in order for a small percentage of them to go on to advanced study. There has to be a better way. What we're doing now isn't just a waste of time and resources, it's actively turning kids against the process of education in general.
We need to allocate resources to hiring better teachers and to standardizing education across states and school districts. But pulling down even these low hanging fruit is highly politicized and controversial. The real core of the problem is to make young people excited enough about the process of education that we can't stop them from learning more on their own. Our current education system fails miserably at this. The one thing we don't need is more of the same. The only way to deal with the challenges of the future is to get the next generation so engaged and invested in solving them that our biggest problem becomes figuring out how to slow them down. Good luck doing that with a text book and homework assignments.
Statistics is probably far more important to most scientific disciplines, and is probably best taught beginning with real world examples that a young student can relate to (say, baseball).
Im not surprised that engineering fields use a lot of calc and diffq. Afterall, they are engineering, not science.
I think I offended a calc teacher or physicist with my last oost, it got down voted.
An elementary school in my town had an attachment for sixth graders being held back from advancing to middle school because they were functionally illiterate. Somehow, none of their teachers in five years of school noticed this.
Once all students are literate and have a grasp of basic mathematics, then maybe we can talk about teaching "discovery".
When my eldest was in 2nd grade I asked when they would be learning how to (finally) start learning cursive. The school's response was that they don't need cursive anymore because soon everyone will just be typing. Great, I said, so when are you starting your touch typing class? School response: oh, we won't need to teach that either, because in the future people will just talk to their computers...(this was in Florida, one of the top school districts, highly acclaimed A+ elementary school). I don't think banking on the Singularity and a benign AI should be the education system's only policy... I could barely decipher the 3rd-4th graders' texts. Spelling mistakes everywhere ("Don't want to stifle their creativity").
The daughter of a neighboring family did terribly at math. The school thought she needed to repeat 5th grade. They got a tutor who concluded that she did not know her multiplication table. Are you serious? Five years and no basic, fundamental skills taught (but it's all about self-esteem, creativity, exploration...). The girl started memorizing the times table, finally, passed the last exams already improved. At the middle school they evaluated her 6 months later and found that she was "way ahead of the class" - this is sad!
The ongoing war on memorization and lack of basic and elementary skills like proper writing and mental math (from what I could see as a German expatriate) makes it all unnecessarily hard for students.
This might be down to different personal experiences, but... Is the "War on Memorization" the same as the perennial "War on Christmas", while both become more and more popular?
My memory is that memorization (like Christmas) was rife throughout the test-centric establishment, because it was the easiest thing to make multiple-choice tests for, demanded relatively little from the teachers, and made it simpler to create state-wide tests than more subjective fare.
What if there's plenty of memorization, but none of it takes because there's no application, and because the student just moves to the next thing they have to memorize?
Source for this?
The only hard limits on food production are the amount of energy and carbon/nitrogen/oxygen/etc. we can get our hands on. We are nowhere near these limits. We still have plenty of room for growth left with current popular agricultural technology. If that is exhausted, we have plenty of room for growth through hydroponics, GM, etc.
I will say however that it seems some of our large food supply sources may be in danger and the economic and human cost of pivoting a food supply chain will be astronomical.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib-economic-informatio...
There is certainly lots of additional land that could be utilized with modern farming practice. Water is probably the bigger problem.
My main point, which seems to have been lost here is that the main impediment to increased food production is economic. Whether the economic pressures creating the situation are born out of greed, over-regulation or something else I didn't speculate.
The land is there. The water is there. The equipment is procurable as well as the labor. It's a simple factor of motivation. Our semi-free market produces the current amount of food. A more free market would likely (but may not) produce less. A more regulated market could (but may not) produce more.
Imagine cutting out the whole supply chain for staples (farming, machinery production, transportation, middlemen, processing, distribution and sales) and turning it into a machine on your kitchen counter that emits rice. Changes the whole game.
The limit seems to be the extent at which governments will continue to pay for excess food production. The limit of feeding who is on this planet is purely political, political in that certain nations are ruled by despots who care not for their people and political for the lack of political will for those other nations who will not act to correct it.
I think we have had quite enough adventurism, people have to stand up for themselves and what type of future their kids will have.
Of course there's still a very large part of the world that doesn't have the same food security we have. Now most of that could probably be solved by simply taking the things that work here, and using them "over there". But its possible that as the world keeps growing we'll have to keep finding better ways.
Of course, even if quantity isn't an issue... we still need to innovate ways to improve quality, or to maintain sustainability.
My point is, food is already pretty industrialized, and we probably need to maintain some research to keep it going.
"We “learn,” and after this we “do.” We go to school and then we go to work."
The actual solution is to continuously learn, after leaving school. That is the formula for success. Getting fascinated by looking at 3-d printouts ("people enter words that turn into architectural forms") is a small part of motivating people to do continuous learning- but no one will learn calculus in a culture lab.
But during all this time in school the students develop the mental infrastructure necessary for higher studies. In that sense even dead languages can be of benefit, even if the students never use them again.
At the very least, sitting still and focusing on mental work trains the prefrontal cortex which is essential for impulse control and discipline.
But today the focus is too much on learning practical skills, which often aren't that difficult to learn and easily forgotten. Rote learning is despised, even though it is the only way to build up the necessary memory skills for certain subjects.
Take up the White Man’s burden– The savage wars of peace– Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.
Why does the author sound like he's saying we're going to add another 2 billion people to the current population over the next 20 years?
With a big chunk of the population being aging baby boomers, adding another billion people over 20 years wouldn't seem like its going to tax the planet any more that it is today.
I'm off course banking on a large aging population with falling birth rates.
It's really funny how people view themselves as separate from the Earth. Aside from the thousand or so people that have had the opportunity to travel to orbit, when was the last time we left Earth?
If anything, we are just a unique geographic feature.
http://www.voanews.com/content/africa-to-record-largest-popu...
The answer is that we (very probably) can't - so we should focus on preparing our young people to be resilient, flexible, and motivated.
>There is debate about whether the rise in IQ scores also corresponds to a rise in general intelligence, or only a rise in special skills related to taking IQ tests. Because children attend school longer now and have become much more familiar with the testing of school-related material, one might expect the greatest gains to occur on such school content-related tests as vocabulary, arithmetic or general information. Just the opposite is the case: abilities such as these have experienced relatively small gains and even occasional decreases over the years.
>Researchers have shown that the IQ gains described by the Flynn effect are due in part to increasing intelligence, and in part to increases in test-specific skills.
By thinking that we are getting smarter, when in fact we are actually getting dumber.
In short 'discovery' is not enough. Implementation is also important.
If we could develop (even...barely...just a little) common understanding that what you do impacts those around you (and those who will live in this place after you) then perhaps we could regain some sense of common purpose, vision, or responsibility.
This happens every 10 years or so. Google "Why Johnny Can't Read" and "New Math" for examples.