Bachmann: Let's get rid of the Department of Education

I guess nomix understood the intention of my post the best.
 
Cold Fussion said:
Ancient cultures had technology that is reminiscent of the industrial revolution, but they had no understanding of the underlying physics behind it, and that is crucial difference between Ancient societies and modern ones.
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Hero et co were using steam engines to open temple doors. The issue was the cultural mindset.

WillDAQ said:
I think you're selling the Romans pretty short on that one. Had political issues not caused the empire to implode we'd be a good 1400 years ahead of where we are now.
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No you are wrong. Read my post two posts up from yours.
 
calvinhobbes said:
FTFY

Thomas Edison didn't receive a standardised school education. The Greek philosophers argued until the cows came home, yet could never agree on standards for everything. Albert Einstein was an academic misfit.
Standardisation, if applied strictly and without exception, completely stifles innovation and discovery.
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I also fit into that category, I cannot learn the ways most everyone else does. Had I gone to a average or sub par school I would have failed and dropped out. Thankfully, I went to an exceptional school in an excellent school system in a city that emphasized education.
 
calvinhobbes said:
:yes: Moderation, as always, is key.


I think that's the problem most of the time. The term "special needs" has been made synonymous with "learning impaired", which IMHO is wrong. Special needs can just as well be needs for a faster pace and more complex issues taught. But while we do have public institutions for slow learners, there is next to nothing for fast learners - they are supposed to be able to deal with it all by themselves, almost as if they're told "Well, if you're so much smarter than me (you little twerp), you'll have no trouble getting over your issues! Now get in line with mediocrity and JUST PUT YOUR MIND TO STUDYING!"
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There's too many kids not getting the challenge they need to learn faster because they are smarter than some other kids. Then again, there are a lot more kids not learning because they're not going babystep enough.
 
rickhamilton620 said:
Seconded. Getting rid of the dept. of education is pretty stupid IMO. There's a reason why it exists.
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because jimmy carter thought it would get him reelected

Firecat said:
She's saying get rid of it on the federal level. Basically, let the States take care of it themselves. It's not the worst idea ever. It's a small department and i'm not entirely sure they even do anything.
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The Dept of Education is a huge waste of money developed to slow any reform of the education system because the teachers unions are jerks. Look even when a Democrat, President Obama, believe that pay for performance should implemented unions went ape. If the Federal government backed out of the education game states and individual communities could vary with class size, curriculum emphasis, and teacher requirements. Why is it that former President Clinton couldn't teach a history or civics course for a high school because the unions don't want qualified teachers they want "socialization facilitators"
 
calvinhobbes said:
:yes: Moderation, as always, is key.


I think that's the problem most of the time. The term "special needs" has been made synonymous with "learning impaired", which IMHO is wrong. Special needs can just as well be needs for a faster pace and more complex issues taught. But while we do have public institutions for slow learners, there is next to nothing for fast learners - they are supposed to be able to deal with it all by themselves, almost as if they're told "Well, if you're so much smarter than me (you little twerp), you'll have no trouble getting over your issues! Now get in line with mediocrity and JUST PUT YOUR MIND TO STUDYING!"
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Here in the states there's gifted programs in most public schools catering to faster learners.
 
rickhamilton620 said:
Here in the states there's gifted programs in most public schools catering to faster learners.
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In most German states, we have three kinds of highschool. The better your grades in elementary school are, the more likely you are to be recommended for (and succeed at) the most difficult of the three. However, the recommendation is not binding and so there's loads of people dropping out of the Gymnasium after a year or two, only to attend the school they were recommended for in the first place.

Still, even despite the three-tier system there's a lot of variety in the students attending a Gymnasium. There is little in the form of gifted programmes and so you get the impression that special skills and/or strengths are not part of the plan for education.
 
argatoga said:
Hero et co were using steam engines to open temple doors. The issue was the cultural mindset.



No you are wrong. Read my post two posts up from yours.
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They used it but they didn't know why it worked, they didn't understand the expansion of gas was producing work, and without understanding the underlying physics of how something works it would be very difficult to develop much more complex systems. It's more than just a cultural mindset they may have held them back (which I somewhat doubt because Humans have always pushed the boundaries of what we can do).
 
They understood them and were writing the formulas to explain it to others too. They just had less time to put the new inventions to a practical use.
 
Cold Fussion said:
They used it but they didn't know why it worked, they didn't understand the expansion of gas was producing work, and without understanding the underlying physics of how something works it would be very difficult to develop much more complex systems. It's more than just a cultural mindset they may have held them back (which I somewhat doubt because Humans have always pushed the boundaries of what we can do).
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You are looking at it from a modern mindset. If you look at ancient texts you will see the past idealized. Look at Hesiod's Works and Days where each subsequent age is worse and worse. The Sumerian King's list shows rulers living ever shorter lives. The Bible says man lived longer and happier at the start of time. These are just examples off the top of my head. Obviously invention did happen but there was no drive like there exists in the modern world. Ancient peoples believed "what is was" as far as technology is concerned.

The Greeks were able to deduce the world was round and fully understood advantaged geometry. I doubt Hero didn't observe that gas was expanding which allowed his various steam powered inventions to work. These people aren't idiots.
 
calvinhobbes said:
:yes: Moderation, as always, is key.


I think that's the problem most of the time. The term "special needs" has been made synonymous with "learning impaired", which IMHO is wrong. Special needs can just as well be needs for a faster pace and more complex issues taught. But while we do have public institutions for slow learners, there is next to nothing for fast learners - they are supposed to be able to deal with it all by themselves, almost as if they're told "Well, if you're so much smarter than me (you little twerp), you'll have no trouble getting over your issues! Now get in line with mediocrity and JUST PUT YOUR MIND TO STUDYING!"
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Jay said:
I also fit into that category, I cannot learn the ways most everyone else does. Had I gone to a average or sub par school I would have failed and dropped out. Thankfully, I went to an exceptional school in an excellent school system in a city that emphasized education.
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This, only I DID go to an average/sub par high school and started to fail classes and eventually dropped out. Before anyone says "obviously you are just retarded Kat!" which I have gotten a lot. I did well enough on standardized tests to obtain a scholarship (that the bastards later dropped) and always made the deans list in college, in two different schools. The problem is if you just hand me the book and say LEARN and walk away, or stand there talking and doing nothing else I don't get it. Most of my high school classes were like that, and for someone who once upon a time was good at school it was very dejecting. Even when mom went in, pointed to my test scores still being way above average and my old grades being great and asking why isn't she learning anymore the school didn't give a fuck. That is why I don't give a fuck about them. Some teachers might care about students but the school as a whole doesn't. If my town cuts salaries and fires teachers I will laugh at them, you fired or retired all the teachers that did care already, why should I care about you when you didn't care about me?
 
MadCat360 said:
Do you think they might have a similar thing to say?
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My father, who is a retired maths and physics teacher, once told me how he'd loved teaching the youngest kids in the type of school that he taught at. Those were the fifth- and sixth-graders and he vividly remembered their openness to new things, their eagerness to discover and their enthusiasm for learning - not learning by heart or studying until their grades were perfect, but the actual process of taking in knowledge, digesting it and using it. On older students, he commented that many of them had (been) turned into robots* who went to school for no other reason than getting their grades and be done with it.

In several ways, I agree with him. School and learning is, or at least should be, so much more than merely a place where you gobble up facts, puke them out on exam day and receive a grade so abstract that most of your strengths and weaknesses are not represented by it. But that is the way the system is set up, that is why many students and teachers keep giving up on each other. It shouldn't be that way, but our societies' unspeakable obsession with number-crunching has led us here.



* yes, that was a dramatic overstatement for effect
 
MadCat360 said:
Do you think they might have a similar thing to say?
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There were a few teachers I cared about. I had one last year at college in fact, that due to her effort to get the kids to actually learn and work organizing her ciriculum so anyone could learn as long as they tried. I have never in my life done that well in history (which is arguably my worst subject) and wrote her a letter of gratitude for teaching me after the class ended. I am incredibly sad I never got a chance to thank my 10th grade english teacher for his work before he died, or a few of my other teachers before they retired.
 
argatoga said:
You are looking at it from a modern mindset. If you look at ancient texts you will see the past idealized. Look at Hesiod's Works and Days where each subsequent age is worse and worse. The Sumerian King's list shows rulers living ever shorter lives. The Bible says man lived longer and happier at the start of time. These are just examples off the top of my head. Obviously invention did happen but there was no drive like there exists in the modern world. Ancient peoples believed "what is was" as far as technology is concerned.

The Greeks were able to deduce the world was round and fully understood advantaged geometry. I doubt Hero didn't observe that gas was expanding which allowed his various steam powered inventions to work. These people aren't idiots.
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Where did I claim they were idiots? It's clear the Ancient world didn't understand principals of thermodynamics, and even if Hero did have an idea of what was going on, he didn't write it down for anyone else to improve upon the ideas in a scientific way. The Ancients advanced mathematics, but they didn't advance the sciences in quite the same way.
 
Learning sound production from an Acadamy Award winning sound engineer, who knows how to teach, and having (attempted to) learn from the exact opposite, I know the importance of good teachers. I went through a period some months ago when my life was agony from bad teacher; the contrast to now is amazing.
 
nomix said:
Learning sound production from an Acadamy Award winning sound engineer, who knows how to teach, and having (attempted to) learn from the exact opposite, I know the importance of good teachers. I went through a period some months ago when my life was agony from bad teacher; the contrast to now is amazing.
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This, my first econ prof was absolute crap. Totally bombed the class.

This time I got a 99 on my FIRST EXAM! That would have been a miracle 2 years ago.

The not so hilariously ironic thing? In a desperate attempt to monetarily rape more of their students ensure high education standards, my original uni won't let my grades I take in econ at the community college count because I failed at my original uni. I have to retake the class at said og uni, + IIRC Financial Aid won't cover it.

Same goes for my other classes I'm taking now (under the apparently misguided impression that they'd count when I return to Ship) at the community college. Just can't win for losing.

One thing's for sure, if I can't transfer back 12 new credits to return to Ship, there will be hell for them to pay. Period.

EDIT: http://gawker.com/5840579/its-official-kids-these-days-dumber-than-ever
 
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