29-07-2003 09:03									#91
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quote: Less lecturing and more discussing in classrooms.

I'm afraid I'll have to buck the trend and oppose this idea. The last thing American schools need is even more emphasis on bullshit and feelings over the actual learning and retention of facts. High school kids need more lectures and readings, not more discussions on topics they probably don't understand in the first place.

	29-07-2003 09:11									#92
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What I don't get is why the hell you are so obsessed with fixing your education system. Those who really want to get education will get it. Those who are not interested ..., why should you worry so much about it? There are plenty of jobs that should be done but where education is a liability rather than an asset. After all, the US can always hire specialists from abroad.

Well, your concern about the education system is understandable from the humanitarian point of view. However, is there any feasible concrete economic motivation behind it? It doesn't look so.

IMHO, fixing the health care system is more urgent.

	29-07-2003 09:16									#93
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It's also a pride issue, Vagabond. If we can improve our education system, we will be the best in everything. The Euros will be left with nothing to cling to in their desperate struggle to avoid acknowledging their glaring inferiority in comparison to the U.S.A. Life will be good.

	29-07-2003 09:21									#94
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quote: Originally posted by The Vagabond What I don't get is why the hell you are so obsessed with fixing your education system. Those who really want to get education will get it. Those who are not interested ..., why should you worry so much about it? There are plenty of jobs that should be done but where education is a liability rather than an asset. After all, the US can always hire specialists from abroad. Well, your concern about the education system is understandable from the humanitarian point of view. However, is there any feasible concrete economic motivation behind it? It doesn't look so. IMHO, fixing the health care system is more urgent.

You touched on a very important point in the U.S. society. Many people have no desire to get an education. You can pour all the money into the schools you want, but if the kids don't want to learn, they won't learn.

The real problem is the society's perception that being smart is geeky and uncool. When I was in high school most people could care less about learning and reading and such. Yes even all the white kids wanted to be dumb and act like gangsters.

This is the real problem. I'm getting so tired of people saying more money will fix the problem. It just isn't true.

	29-07-2003 09:24									#95
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Drake, in what concerns pride issues, health care is more important. You are the only 1st world country where a significant part of the population doesn't have health insurance. Now that's really a shame.

	29-07-2003 09:25									#96
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Education today makes America tomorrow.

[/cheap phrase]

	29-07-2003 09:25									#97
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quote: You are the only 1st world country where a significant part of the population doesn't have health insurance.

We also have the most advanced medical system in the world. Most of the advances in medicine come from the U.S. Our system is nothing to be ashamed of.

	29-07-2003 09:27									#98
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quote: The real problem is the society

Phrase it like that and I'll agree with you. American society doesn't value learning the way it used to and the educational system reflects that.

	29-07-2003 09:28									#99
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quote: Originally posted by Odin Vouchers give money to religious schools. Dispite what libertarians say, this is bad because lack of funding is why many schools suck. I now this personally because my school had to cut several classes as a result of Minnesota's buget crunch.

What does giving money to students to spend on whatever sort of education they want have to do with lack of funding in the public schools? In many cases voucher programs have increased the per pupil funding for students in schools where some of the students have accepted vouchers and moved on simply to quash this exact "argument" by the teacher's union. Here in Colorado the teachers unions used a lot of national union money to quash a voucher proposal which would have allowed public schools to keep half of the money that any transferring student had brought into their system. This would have meant a significant increase in the per pupil allotment of funds for schools, but the teachers union was more interested in maintaining a monopoly on education than they were in funding schools. Big surprise.

Explain why there is somehow an automatic decrease in funding when a school loses both a student and the state and federal funding that went with him. The school has one less student to provide for, and still receives his portion of local tax money. This means an increase in per pupil funding, or at worst a wash. You spew a lot of prepared political argument, but aren't very clear on the facts.

	29-07-2003 09:33									#100
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quote: Originally posted by David Floyd I would also like a much greater emphasis on philosophy - teach people how to think.

Yeah, like you.

	29-07-2003 09:34									#101
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quote: Originally posted by Dissident You touched on a very important point in the U.S. society. Many people have no desire to get an education. You can pour all the money into the schools you want, but if the kids don't want to learn, they won't learn. The real problem is the society's perception that being smart is geeky and uncool. When I was in high school most people could care less about learning and reading and such. Yes even all the white kids wanted to be dumb and act like gangsters. This is the real problem. I'm getting so tired of people saying more money will fix the problem. It just isn't true.

I am inclined to believe that, in such a capitalistic country as America, the situation you describe takes place because and only because a better education level is not claimed by the economy (at least, not yet).

	29-07-2003 09:36									#102
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten It's also a pride issue, Vagabond. If we can improve our education system, we will be the best in everything. The Euros will be left with nothing to cling to in their desperate struggle to avoid acknowledging their glaring inferiority in comparison to the U.S.A. Life will be good.

You want to try going there, Drake. Or go to Canada. Lower crime, better TV better overall standard of education. No average American (or NZer for that matter) gets an education like the one most Germans get.

I think it has something to do with the anti-intellectualism of English speaking countries. Whatever, it is we are a bunch of dumb, lazy ***** compared to them.

	29-07-2003 09:36									#103
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quote: Yeah, like you.

Now, Agathon, you really shouldn't bite the hand that defends your silly career.

	29-07-2003 09:37									#104
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten quote: You are the only 1st world country where a significant part of the population doesn't have health insurance. We also have the most advanced medical system in the world. Most of the advances in medicine come from the U.S.

True. But still... this can't excuse the lack of health coverage.

	29-07-2003 09:38									#105
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quote: No average American (or NZer for that matter) gets an education like the one most Germans get.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...&threadid=93236

	29-07-2003 09:46									#106
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten It's also a pride issue, Vagabond. If we can improve our education system, we will be the best in everything. The Euros will be left with nothing to cling to in their desperate struggle to avoid acknowledging their glaring inferiority in comparison to the U.S.A. Life will be good.

By the way, Drake, the Euros are so educated (should I say "overeducated"? ) that no one of them wants to fill any kind of dirty and low-skill jobs that are still (unfortunately) required for the human society to function. They have to mass-import Arabs and Turks for that.

	29-07-2003 09:46									#107
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I saw that coming.

EDIT: I saw Drake's link coming. Your post was filthy.

	29-07-2003 10:49									#108
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I think I'll take the opposite of the standard view and say "More standing up and lecturing and less discussion and trying to do cute creative things". I was talking to my cousin who was in junior high school the other day and the discussion went something like this:

Me: "What are you learning in school these days?"
Cousin: "We've been learning about the Civil War the past month"
Me: "So you studied Lee and Grant and the battles and everything?"
Cousin: "Lee? Grant? Who are they?"
Me: "Wait...you're learning about the Civil War and you didn't learn about Lee or Grant? What exactly are you doing?"
Cousin: "Well, first we heard a story about women in the war, then we all made and turned in models of ironclads, then we dressed up and did a mock Civil War battle, then we memorized the Gettysburg Address and recited it to the entire class, then..."

Now, I'm all for little gimmicks to get people interested in what they're learning, but there has to be something they're learning beyond the little gimmicks for that to work out, and from my experience in school and the experience of people like my cousin who I talk to, in ninety percent of classes there really isn't. My high school day would go something like make a paper-mache model of a regular solid for math, draw a picture of a character from a book in English, color in a picture of a cell in science, and then I'd go to history, the only class which had a decent teacher, where I'd sit for a good hour and listen to an hour's worth of lecturing on exactly what Holy Roman Emperor had what dispute with what Pope. And I know it defies all conventional theories of learning, but I became a lot more interested in those Holy Roman Emperors who had no gimmicks or cutesy projects whatsoever to their names than to the latest English "activity" where we had act out the feelings of some author. A bit more standing up and giving material and less trying to do "progressive child-oriented interactive insertnewbuzzwordhere education" wouldn't hurt anyone.

	29-07-2003 10:57									#109
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I hear you.

But that's the way modern schools are these days. The kids expect teachers to entertain them. They don't want lectures.

I would have preferred my history classes to be more involved. Our teachers didn't even require us to learn dates events occurred.

I had 2 female history teachers. I would have preferred male teachers. Yes that sounds sexist. But the women weren't really that interested in history. They taugh as if it was any old job, they weren't empassioned about it.

	29-07-2003 10:58									#110
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quote: Originally posted by Dissident You touched on a very important point in the U.S. society. Many people have no desire to get an education. You can pour all the money into the schools you want, but if the kids don't want to learn, they won't learn. The real problem is the society's perception that being smart is geeky and uncool. When I was in high school most people could care less about learning and reading and such. Yes even all the white kids wanted to be dumb and act like gangsters. This is the real problem. I'm getting so tired of people saying more money will fix the problem. It just isn't true.

Exactly!!! we need to make learning cool, but how? One problem is that for many people science is boring, we need to make it more fun. Last year in history class we made small classroom plays of the different wars of Classical Greece. My part as Darius at Themopylae was hilarious, I was acting ticked off because my army couldn't beat 300 Spartan hoplites.

	29-07-2003 10:58									#111
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well damn i agree completely with Giant Squid... this touchy feely creative progressive interactive or whatever the hell else new education may have seemed like a good idea twenty years ago and a good change from more strict, memorization, and fact oriented classes but it has gone too far...

i have graduated high school and i am yet to have a history class where we are taught anything about battles or generals. according to the philly public school curriculum, the only thing that happened in the civil war was the emancipation proclaimation and the world wars are complete blurs... what happened in world war II? pearl harbour was bombed and we dropped two nukes on japan... how was Hitler defeated? i dont know... some armies invaded Germany and apparently won... how? who knows...

fortunately, tv and movies have made up for some of this loss

	29-07-2003 11:04									#112
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quote: My part as Darius at Themopylae was hilarious, I was acting ticked off because my army couldn't beat 300 Spartan hoplites.

it's so hard to resist blocking Odin...

	29-07-2003 11:06									#113
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and by the way, apparently the play didn't teach you about ancient greece because Xerxes was the Persian emperor at the time of Thermopylae and the persians DID beat the Spartan hoplites and killed every single one of them...

thats your interactive education at work... mis-educating...

	29-07-2003 11:26									#114
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quote: Originally posted by Albert Speer and by the way, apparently the play didn't teach you about ancient greece because Xerxes was the Persian emperor at the time of Thermopylae and the persians DID beat the Spartan hoplites and killed every single one of them... thats your interactive education at work... mis-educating...

Excuse me, I havent't played civ in a while, I always get those 2 mixed up. I am more of a Science geek than a history nut.

the Persians did win but not before loosing 1000s of soildiers to the Spartan meatgrinder. He might of lost a lot more men if he wouldn't of found the path around the beach when a greek traitor told Xerxes.

BTW: A Spartan hoplite is my school's sports mascot.
Go Ulen-Hitterdal Spartans.

	29-07-2003 11:29									#115
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is anyone else getting nauseous everytime they read one of Odin's posts?

	29-07-2003 11:30									#116
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No, but I have to run to the toilet every time I see a cheap troll...by whom I won't mention.

	29-07-2003 11:33									#117
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quote: Originally posted by Albert Speer is anyone else getting nauseous everytime they read one of Odin's posts?

Smart@ss!

	29-07-2003 11:34									#118
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nothing wrong with his posts. except maybe the overuse of smilies

	29-07-2003 11:35									#119
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Odin does not use too many smileys.

	29-07-2003 11:35									#120
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quote: Originally posted by Dissident nothing wrong with his posts. except maybe the overuse of smilies