Education – by Charlie Martin
I’ve been interested in education in the United States, really since I was embedded in the education system myself. I had good teachers and bad teachers, but if I were to summarize my whole experience in one word, it would be “stultifying.” I was suspiciously bright, loved to read, loved science, but was bored to tears by a lot of the content. I was reading adult books — my father, tired of being asked for science fiction books when I was about nine, handed me Stranger in A Strange Land. I think he expected it was to be advanced for me, and was surprised when instead I read the whole thing, wanted more Heinlein, and knew phrases like “knocked up.”
When I looked at the students around me, I was puzzled because I saw they considered school to be toilsome and an unfortunate interruption in their day. Then I got a little older and learned to feel the same way.
I eventually escaped education — well, sort of, anyway, as I had seven years of undergraduate school in something like eleven majors — and then got a job doing computer programming in California that eventually sent me to Germany. There I met a five year old who lived with his mom on the first floor of my apartment building, and who would invariably ask me to teach him some English whenever we met.
I would teach him some words and phrases and he would remember them and use them. This gave me pause. Lots of pause. Here was a five year old who absolutely craved learning, a feeling I remembered from being about the same age. I knew American kids like that. Then they went to school and by the time they were about eight, they saw school as, well, toilsome. They’d lost the attitude that my little five year old friend had.
But then, I didn’t have any trouble understanding it once I thought about it. Thinking back, school really was toilsome. I loved to read, and I read quickly — and was sent to the principal’s office because I not only read my half-hour social studies assignment in about five minutes, and worse passed the quiz on the material with 100 percent. Later, I discovered I wasn’t supposed to be liking the things I liked, reading the things I read. My sophomore year of high school, I got on an Ayn Rand kick, and wrote a book report on Atlas Shrugged. To her credit, my English teacher, Dorothy Robeda — who was honestly one of my favorite teachers, and encouraged me years later when I was really getting started as a writer. Dorothy was a hard-core liberal and teacher’s union rep, but she graded0 it fairly with only a little pinching about the eyes when she found out that I was reading.
I carefully didn’t tell her about reading comic books.
It continued in college. My freshman year of engineering school, I worked hard at calculus in the beginning, because I knew it was important to an engineer, and conventional math had been an issue for me. I worked hard, saw the free tutoring regularly, felt pretty good after the midterm, and deserved to — I had an 86 percent on the test.
Which was a D. Barely.
I discovered The Curve.
My high school in Pueblo, Colorado had no calculus. Instead it had a sort of pre-calculus course called “Elementary Functions,” taught as the necessary sinecure for the football coach, who didn’t approach of a six foot 200 pound male who didn’t go out for football, and — I later realized — wasn’t intellectually prepared for the sort of foundational questions I was asking. (To be fair, I only got some of those questions answered in graduate school.)
My classmates at the engineering school had generally had one or two years of AP Calculus before they started their freshman year, and were repeating Introductory Calculus because they considered it an easy A, and it was after all supposed to be one of the filter classes that determined if you were cut out to be an engineer.
In that population, the median grade was something like 92,
And no, I’m not (just) whining about that either. But there was an interesting discovery by psychologist Carol Dweck who had become interested in why some kids succeeded and others didn’t. It wasn’t well predicted by race, or socio-economic background.
In fact, there were a number of experiments that showed the opposite, the most famous being Jaime Escalante, who took a class of Hispanic students in East LA who were failing and over the course of a few years had classes that were maxing out math in standardized exams. (Escalante was the subject of the movie “Stand and Deliver” in which he was played by Edward James Olmos.)
What Dweck discovered was simple: she called it “growth mindset.” What it comes down to: In order to learn something, you first have to believe you can learn something. It’s opposite Dweck called “fixed mindset”, the belief that your ability to learn something was fixed and immutable.
My experience with The Curve made me feel like I wasn’t up to competing with my classmates. The reason didn’t become clear to me until much later.
Think about traditional education. It’s all really overwhelmingly oriented to the fixed mindset, from the organization into age cohorts — “grades” — to grading, to “college track” or “vocational track” or “secretarial track.” I tried to take typing in Junior High School, but I wasn’t allowed to because I was “college track” and why would a college student need to type, they have secretaries for that.
Sarah’s boys had a similar experience to mine with reading — they were purposefully deterred from reading ahead of their classmates, so that everyone would fit into their nice organized categories.
Maybe the worst example is affirmative action. I watched a documentary years ago about a freshman class at harvard, and particularly following a black kid who had been admitted under affirmative action even though he’d gone to a bottom tier high school.
He was failing, and when he talked to his advisor, the advisor assumed that he just wasn’t up to it or just wasn’t trying. What he didn’t assume was that he was actually capable of learning the topic, but that he needed more help or more time. Hey, he was at the bottom of the curve, it was a flaw in him — in his intelligence or when the advisor asked if he couldn’t have tried harder, in his character.
What happens. over and over in traditional American education, is that kids are repeatedly reinforced in a fixed mindset.
Too often, it’s not that they are failing school — it’s the schools that are failing them.
According To Hoyt 
Monty Python did a sketch on a teacher who managed to make sex education for teenage boys, boring. It would be sad if it wasn’t funny.
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From the “Meaning of Life” movie?
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If it’s the sketch I’m thinking of, it wasn’t just sex education, but sex education with “practical demonstrations”.
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I despise grading on the curve. It’s a lazy way to force everybody into their “place”. And ignores that sometimes you have a group of people that are way good or way bad. If you set the standard and just grade to that, over time and large amount of grading it will naturally fall into the Bell curve of distribution.
I had a science teacher in HS that my senior year asked why I wasn’t doing as well as I had the previous years (small school had him for ALL my HS science classes), told him I got bored as we were going over the same stuff again from all the other classes, just from a slightly different perspective.
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Took an engineering math course being taught by a math major… what a chore. Whenever we asked what the practical application of something was he looked like we were asking him to slaughter babies in the streets. As far as he was concerned we had to know this in order to be worthwhile people because ‘Math is beautiful’. Yeah, we’re engineers. If it doesn’t make our lives easier or aid in understanding something else, or is part of one of our hobbies, then we couldn’t care less. And when a 36% on a test nets you a freaking B-, then the teacher is either making the tests too hard, or failing to properly teach the concepts they are being paid silly amounts of money to convey to students.
Had a high school teacher, where if more than half the students missed a question, he’d throw it out when it came to grading, because that meant he hadn’t taught it properly. That’s the sort of curve I can get behind. Dictating that you have to fail a certain number of students, regardless of their actual performance, is a ridiculousness we can jolly well do without, about on par with passing kids through high school who can’t even properly read.
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I got really lucky in my college senior year. Took a complex variables course (I’d done barely adequately through Calculus and Diffie-Q, and wanted to prove to myself I could do it), and the focus was for engineering students. And, by some miracle, we had an instructor (either advanced TA or barely-minted professor) who got it and taught it as it should have been done. Hard work, but well taught and fairly graded.
Had another course where “the curve” would have killed me. Quantum Electronics, taught by a professor with some impressive patents and accomplishments. Small class, maybe 8-10 people, and I was the only undergrad. I usually made the bottom grade, but Professor H knew what he was asking, and my efforts were worth a B. Might have gotten an A for the final.
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How beat down was I through college? Despite the fact I knew I was good and knew the material? Come out of one of my last tests, a final, feeling pretty good about it. Without the feeling waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not an easy test. But not impossible either. Overheard a group of other students, usually the high curve busters (whether curve graded or not), saying “how hard that test was!” My heart just sank. I knew, just knew, at that point, I had to have tanked the test. I’d missed something. Given I came out of that final with an A+ in the class, my initial feeling wasn’t wrong. In the class I was going into the final with a solid B+, borderline A-. I had to do extremely well to pull an A+ out of the class. But dang if my own confidence wasn’t shattered.
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I was in a small class like that which was combined undergrad and graduate. The difference was our papers were shorter and our grading more forgiving. Oddly enough, I have always found philosophy easier to get good grades in than English, and this was at a Jesuit college, where they actually go hard in on philosophy.
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Oh, I don’t know. Jerry Pournelle’s concept of firing the bottom performing 10% of all teachers would have the same impact as failing a certain number of people regardless of their actual performance. Assuming that everyone was performing acceptably or better, firing the bottom tenth doesn’t sound that great. Of course, in most large enough populations, you will always find substandard performers.
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Curve thinking infected business too.
Tech companies from 1988 through 2012 or so, of which I have first or second hand insights, had mandatory rate, rank, and fire the bottom x percent (sometimes 5%, sometimes more) policies every year.
This meant really exceptionally talented group builders, who excelled at recruiting and developing their teams, who basically built all-star rosters, were penalized by continually having to lay off the “least excellent”, while more game-theory managers, who made sure to acquire and maintain a reserve of slackers and morons and problematic employees, were able to keep their best talent and continue delivering whatever their group was supposed to deliver, and thus keep their own jobs.
The really tricky ones acquired those employees who had, say, had extracurricular relationships with Execs, had kept the evidence, had made it known any “retaliation” would trigger lawsuits, so were thus untouchable by HR edict. These could then rank and rate, fully honestly, the untouchables as their lowest decile employees, and then argue, sometimes successfully, that it would not be fair to RIF their higher performers.
Man am I glad I am not managing in that political stew with all the more recent crap thrown in on top.
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“really exceptionally talented group builders, who excelled at recruiting and developing their teams, who basically built all-star rosters, were penalized by continually having to lay off the “least excellent”.”
Or understaffed. That is what happened to me in 2002. Our department had escaped the prior downsizing cuts over the prior 18 months as the company tried to stave off bankruptcy. Understaffed and no positions not needed, everyone over performing. Until Aug 2002 cuts. Company wide 10% cuts in each and every department, no exceptions. There were the core embedded programmers, they weren’t getting cut. Then there were the 4 of us application programmers. Two of the 4 of us had to go. Two were on family leave (one for triplets, the other because taking care of her MIL). One of the embedded engineers and one of the application programmers on leave, tried to trade having them go instead of me (for their own reasons). Company said “nope”. You going just makes the numbers look better to the department and bankruptcy proceedings. Would have bought me maybe a few months. OTOH my department manager and immediate supervisor declined to let HR know I’d been informed so I could clear out my desk without being “walked out” and schedule pickup of personal items under “supervision”. Which is how the two above found out I’d been RIFFED. The embedded engineer saw me and her response, knowing about the “walk outs”, went “Oh. Good. You were spared.” Her face said it all when she learned otherwise as I was making my goodbye rounds.
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When I worked for Boeing, they had a “move up or move out” policy. I was always one of the top-rated employees on every project I worked on. Everyone was supposed to be angling for management, but for those were not of a management bent (including me), there was a thing called the “tech fellowship”. However, the process of being accepted into this was fraught with office politics, and me not being good at that game, I was never accepted. So the time eventually came when I was assigned to a manager who was having an affair with one of his other employees. For some reason, he regarded me as competition for her affections, and on my next evaluation, he gave me the lowest possible marks, knowing that doing so would get rid of me. My complaints to Ethics about the matter were ignored, and in 60 days I was out the door.
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Whenever we asked what the practical application of something was he looked like we were asking him to slaughter babies in the streets.
Har. I may have related this before: I am told that once my grandfather was trying to explain to a… county committee maybe?… how drawdown of the aquifers worked.
Short version – the water level is lower around the wells than it is in the total aquifer because of the way the water flows through the rock. And it forms a curve.
And one of the committee members who was a mathematics professor at the same university my grandfather worked at, so Grandpa started to explain it in mathematical terms, and the committee member was terribly distressed to have his beautiful mathematics sullies by real-world applications.
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That is a very old tradition in mathematics. There’s a story about a Greek philosopher who taught a student some math, and on being asked what use it was, had a slave give him a coin and kicked him out of school.
Well, it’s better than in the Far East, where numbers in general were regarded as the base tools of merchants — one father was horrified when his innocent children, sent to school for a good Confucian educations, were also taught arithmetic — but it has been a problem.
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Using a bell curve in a class fewer than 300-400 students is a failure on the part of the teacher to understand how bell curves (or adequate sample sizes) work. As with you, the only “curve” I support is “top grade sets the 100%.”
I had a professor in college who did it one better. Not only did the top grade set the 100%—necessary because he had mind-bending questions that had everybody still working at the end of the class—he had your points for various categories set your minimum grade, and he reserved the right to bump your grade higher if you showed an upward trajectory over the course of the semester. Which is the only way I possibly pulled a B- in a class that included optics, electromagnetics, and relativity in a mere 16 weeks, because those early tests slammed me hard.
Hardest class I’ve ever had, and I really wish I could have taken it at some point when my scholarship monies weren’t relying on my grade. (Changing my major did take that class out of consideration for my GPA, but it wasn’t the reason I changed it.)
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I’m wondering how this “curve” differs from the one I used to catch flak for “ruining” in high school.
The teachers there would take the highest score anyone got on the test. That was an A. Then anyone scoring within ten PERCENT of that score got an A as well. More than ten percent lower was a B. Twenty percent lower, a C, and so on.
If I scored one hundred percent on the test, that meant that lazy slackers would receive their richly-deserved Fs instead of scraping through with a D or low C. Hence “ruining the curve”.
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Two types of curves. The one your talking about is the one I like. If the top grade is say a 92, you add 8pts and that person gets 100%, everyone else gets a plus 8 as well. The other type of curve, that I hate is when a teacher says to 100 students – “Only 5 of you will get A’s. Then 15 of you will get B’s. Everyone else can fight for C’s and lower.” Its nuts, but it happens.
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I’ve seen some where the district/dept/whatever rule was that if five students got A’s then 5 had to get F’s, regardless of their test score. If 20 got B’s, then another 20 had to be given D’s, again, regardless of their score. That always struck me as destructive and arbitrary and counterproductive. And I’m saying that as the one who’d get 100% on the Shakespeare test as well as all four extra credit questions. If the lowest score in the class was an 85%, well, with a bell curve, then those 85%ers were jolly well going to fail, regardless of how much they studied or how well the teacher taught, because the rules say it must happen.
Tell me you don’t actually want students to succeed without telling me.
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Luckily I’ve never been subjected to a mandatory A-to-F distributed curve, but a friend got bitten by that in a college algebra class. Any schoolteacher who has ever graded that way deserves to be punched in the throat.
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Kick those teachers and departments to a rudimentary statistics class, and don’t allow them back into education until they can successfully explain the concept of “proper sample size” and why it is important.
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We had a professor in the Electrical Engineering 101 course announce on day 1 that he only gave out 3 grades: A, B and F because, he said, if you didn’t understand the material on at least a B level, you would be totally lost in the follow-on courses.
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Definitely a topic close to my heart in both personal experience and parental experience. While the system (or various systems) mattered, the teachers were the key. The one who beat me because I wouldn’t sit at the assigned lunch table (the food was already on the table and it was stuff that made me puke, and the table next to it had stuff I could eat), the college prof (only there as she was wife of a dean) who gave me an F for a very original essay because I must have plagiarized it because no freshman could possible write like that (I was stuck in the football player’s summer class due to scheduling issues) so I then submitted stuff I wrote in fourth grade (yeah, I compulsively saved stuff like that) that got a C originally and she gave me an A for that, they had significant impact on my perception of authority and the education system. But there were also so many patient, inspired and inspiring teachers who rather than deal with my antics when I was bored challenged me with all sorts of independent tasks or, gasp, independent study – where with a small cadre of similarly cursed or gifted individuals we challenged each other in friendly competition of projects rather than disrupt the classroom – that I learned a lot more than the curriculum. The teachers of my kids, who similarly challenged in positive and negative directions, during their educations were also more of an influence than the system, except for my son who came out of a premier college thoroughly indoctrinated in victim and Marxist theory to this day (sigh). That fucking school failed him and me.
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My daughter, on the other hand, went the community and vocational route and kept her strong independent and creative aspects, and also ended up producing a daughter of similar inclinations. God bless us all.
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I had a run-in with my high school advisor late Freshman year. I was decidedly “college track”, but I also wanted practical classes. So, I signed up for drafting the first semester, then metalworking the second.
This horrified the advisor, since he figured I was going to get greaser cooties or something. I stood my ground, and might have had to drag Dad in (who was a draftsman himself). Because of scheduling, my home room for the semesters was with the greasers in the shop classes. Got along pretty well; I wasn’t a preppie, and I knew as many dirty jokes as they did. (Outcasts can stick together, them because they didn’t fit the assumed demographics of the HS, me because Odd.)
22 years into retirement, and those shop classes have been paying off a lot.
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Son ran into the same problem in HS locally, of college VS not college track. He was on the college track. He graduated in ’07. College ’12.
Do not get me started on grading on the curve. I’ve been on both sides of that curve. I despise that grading theory.
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I’ve been in class where I got 50% and got an A, and class where a buddy got 95% and got a C. This teaches all kids to go to the stupidest possible classes. Dumbest thing ever.
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I’ve been in class where I got 50% and got an A, and class where a buddy got 95% and got a C. This teaches all kids to go to the stupidest possible classes. Dumbest thing ever.
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“Why aren’t you doing A work any more?”
“Because you told me it was A work, but gave me a B anyway. So if I’m only get a B anyway, why waste effort?”
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“I know I did only C work”.
“I got a B”.
“Guess I don’t have to work at getting better in that case”.
Grading on a curve depresses working harder at learning something on all sides.
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At one point in middle school, one of my kids received an A for results, but a B for effort. Kid was bored in the class. We did lose respect for that teacher and the grading system.
Don’t get me started on group work! The worst we encountered was, class was split into groups of 4 or 5 kids. The teacher chose to grade one student per group (supposedly randomly). The entire group received that grade. As it was a class with a wide range of students, from severe special ed (with assigned aide) to kids working above grade level, hilarity ensued. The fact that it reduced the teacher’s grading load by 75% was, ahem, perhaps a reason for this.
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At the university I attended, the grading was usually set by the department and the method was disclosed at the begining of the semester. Very few courses were graded on a curve.
However, in those courses, I was known as one of the “curve busters”. We managed to outperform the majority of the class simply by understanding the subject thru homework, studying before tests, taking projects seriously instead of slacking or drinking.
Most of us had work experience in the real world before going to college. It was our money on the line, not Mommy and Daddy’s. (This was before all the helicopter money student loans…)
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My masters was like that. HP paid the tuition, fees and books after the quarter provided I got a respectable grade. The program was intended for working engineers and was done 7-9AM. Very few students were in there without working experience, and IMHO, it showed. (Recalls a guy copying answers for the take-home final from an accomplice. Wasn’t obligated to nark him out, but figured he’d find the karma bus soon enough. Didn’t see him later…)
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Never did copy someone else’s work. Al my failures and successes are MINE! /grin
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See what I did there? Al vs All. lol.
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See, if you were a proper Marxist you could find some way to blame it on somebody else. :-P
“It’s a fair cop, but it’s society’s to blame.”
“We’ll be runnin’ them in too.”
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You mean I’m not a proper Marxist?
Kinder words I have not read this week.
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Me too. AI (why not) my failures were caused by the trifecta of Me, Myself, and I.
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Taking a pre-calculus class as prep for the MBA (where you had to take “Business Calculus,” and “Statistics,” as prerequisites) and teacher was late. At T + 10, many students left. Teacher arrived, taught the class to the survivors and gave us extra credit. Aaaannnd one kid who skipped complained about it not being, “fair.”
I was paying for every class, he was financed by the Bank of Dad and bluntly, he didn’t want to be there.
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Ah, Statistics, or as I like to refer to it ‘Lying with Math’.
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I hated statistics. Between the 3 different degrees I had to take it twice. Not because I didn’t get a good grade the first time. But because they wouldn’t accept that Biometrics WAS statistics. Oh well. Second time around I could miss 4 weeks running (bed rest, hospital, more bed rest — miscarriage) and ace the test on my first day back. Trust me statistics is not my thing.
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Bank of Dad? That exists? (Just kidding. More familiar with the bank of SS missing parent, which I did not have, but a lot of co-students seemed to. They were headed out to study, I was headed out to work, even the first degree.)
Folks paid room and board the first year. I (and the bank) paid for my first degree. The second two degrees were paid by hubby and I (and not the bank), with brief help from first programming employer (he wanted me to have the CS bachelors, I had to be talked into it).
Yes, we helped son pay. Keyword is Helped. He was paying out of his pockets too. We weren’t willing to sell our souls (Parent+ loans), but short of that? We helped. (Had some 529 funds. If it had come down to it, would have just pulled the money and taken the tax and penalty hit. Would have been cheaper in the long run. Besides given timing, ’07 – ’12, SOTUS was not happy with at least Oregon state 529 fund. Could have withdrawn without the penalties.) We, three, got son through without loans (dad and I paid our loans off in ’89, just before son was born, in allotted 10 years).
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Dad had his last heart attack my freshman year, and I got the survivor’s benefit through graduation (it might have covered a year of MS, but I was done with college by that time). ‘Twasn’t much money; if memory serves maybe $135 a month (circa early 1970s) heading nearer $200 by graduation. OTOH, ground beef hit $1.00 a pound in 1973, so it went a ways.
Scholarships took care of tuition and books. Summer jobs took care of the fees/living expenses before SS, as well as minor luxuries–the very used car and kit-built* stereo and such. Mom gave me enough to buy lunches when I wasn’t in the dorms (or in; meal plan was 20 meals per week, Sunday evening was on us).
I was able to graduate with zero debt. Felt good.
((*)) Not sure why the Dynaco Stereo 120 had a consistent failure mode, but it got to be an easy fix. Channel out? Swap that transistor.
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My parents helped me, but I was expected to try for,scholarships (got two) and then we qualified for grants from the State of Florida that helped a lot. I only worked one summer and that got turned j to a down payment later. Otherwise I was, “Kraft macaroni and cheese poor,” as Jeff Foxworhty put it. (I predate Ramen noodles).
I started buying savings bonds shortly after our son was born. He worked some, lived at home part of the time and we got through without loans.
I paid for my Masters, one night course at a time.
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Can’t stand Kraft. Because Home Ec was required in middle school (Jr High back then) I could make my own cheese sauce. Otherwise it was fried egg & cheese sandwiches.
Did luck out with meat. One summer it was salmon – steaks, even for salmon tuna type sandwiches (folks salmon fished off of Oregon coast. Back then they could sports fish off the boat before season started if they didn’t use commercial gear. They limited out on one trip, just before I started work. That was my only meat until I got my first summer check, six weeks later. I was so tired of salmon.) Also got hamburger, and other meat and groceries, when I could be home to raid parents game freezer. During school I was making about $2/hour, 8 – 16 hours work, per week (same era, mid-’70s). Oh the times I paid for groceries with saved change. Forget going out for dinner, movies, or even beer (not that I could get inside, I was carded until well past my 30’s).
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FYI. While I learned how to stretch the almighty dollar. Also know I was incredibly lucky. While my parents did not directly pay for school or room/board (after that first year), they were there for pantry raiding, and backup. After we married, it was all on us. Definitely in a different financial situation for second two degrees.
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If there had been a “business calculus” requirement at State U when I was there, there would have been riots. The traditional “Can’t math, only arithmetic? Go to Business School, it only requires accounting!” was in full force then and there. Ours did also require statistics.
And my disdain for j-skool formed at that time due to “Can’t math, can’t arithmetic, but can put words in a row? J-school for you!”
The “Can’t math, can’t arithmetic, can’t write none neither?” reputedly went to the education dept.
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Sister got her masters through HP that way.
Wish my second bachelors was at night. Started out having an employer paying too (until they moved their business out of the area). One class a term during the day. Regardless of the time, class time was my lunch hour. Not complaining that employer paid for almost half the classes I needed (also the reason I got my job in 2004, but who has that insight in ’88?) When I was free to have MWF all day as class time, at least I could meet with other students to do homework between classes (usually immediately after math class). The other two days of the week I was working 10 hour days (that employer wasn’t helping to pay to finish up the degree).
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I was going to be a machinist coming out of high school, and took 3 years of metal shop. Even though the machinist job didn’t work out, the knowledge has been valuable. I wanted my son to get sone practical shop experience, but no, the high school didn’t even offer shop anymore, and the HS that did have shop classes reserved them purely for vo-tech students.
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Son’s HS was the same for the vocational shop, or was supposed to be. But the teacher knew dang well that the program benefited from any college bound that wanted to work with their hands. Student would too. Why? The program builds *electric cars (go kart size) for endurance racing, from scratch. Not the only HS program, but most are HS clubs, not a formalized class program, and the clubs do not make new ones every year. In fact if a car does not belong to an instructor, or bought by a student’s family, the car is dismantled after the last August race. The 4 day, Friday – Monday, memorial weekend races at Portland Raceway is technically the end of the “racing season”. Son had cars for his junior and senor years. Senor year, his crew’s car was one of the top in the state despite breaking the “streamline” perceived design ideology, because the team wanted anyone on the team legally able to drive, to be able to drive it (one of the members was not tiny).
*Or did. Who knows how the 2020 messed with that class.
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Learning drafting, metal shop, and, in my case, typing are not wasted skills no matter what your level of intellectual pursuit. One friend in HS who was on the college track with me also took shop classes. Came in handy when he became a phone freak and built his own version of a pay phone to enable “free” calls to anywhere. Also when he tired of his 3-ring binders falling apart, he made his own out of sheet metal. You don’t have to be “dumb” to work with your hands.
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Ooh, my brother ran into the same problems with recalcitrant professors; my dad’s a welder and Brother wanted to be an engineer. Well, Dad wanted to make sure that Brother had practical skills as well as theoretical because he had a very low opinion of the engineers at his work, so Brother is an excellent welder, machinist, AND engineer – and as such, understands materials science far better than most of his peers, because he has worked with all kinds of metal and plastics and knows their characteristics and tensile strength and loading capabilities, and also he learned to draft while working for a local shop. Even if the engineer thing didn’t pan out, I have no doubt that he’ll find work somewhere, as welders are always in demand.
And all those skills come in handy when he needs to draft a plan for, say, a bridge (upcoming project) or a set of stairs or a handrail for my dad’s small welding business that he works for on the side!
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My understanding is that the reason Kelly Johnson at Lockheed’s Skunk Works was able to produce such such prodigious accomplishments as the U-2 and SR-71 in record time was that he had started out as a toolmaker, and thus had an instinctive knowledge of the difficulties and processes it would take to make various components.
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I know several working engineers who support welding as a skill that should be available if not mandatory for engineering students.
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c4c
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The education system is a huge part of the problem in this country. What would be the answer? If you were designing a perfect system, how would it work? Home schooling makes sense for some families but certainly not all. Individualized, certainly, but I would have never learned any English or social studies. Didn’t like them. Certainly let the kid work as fast as he can and retain info. If I can read a book in a night and pass a test on it, I should be done with that requirement and go on to something that interests me. Some kids are self motivated but certainly not all. Boys are different than girls and do better with some competition, and less group projects. Me too to be honest.
This is a pet peeve for me.
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Flashback to the lab report that began my longest duration without sleep, 42 hours. I think it was physical metallurgy class.
I never got curved down. Wow.
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Even better, I attended an accelerated premed/medical program with 25 very intense students who were told if you got less than a 3.5 GPA you were out of the program. Then they stick all of us in a class together and graded in a curve.
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Hi, guy. Good to see you.
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er….
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Not a guy?
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Apprenticeships used to be a thing; still are in some vocations. It might not be a bad idea to bring them back for teenagers who show no interest in ‘book learning’, but need something to do.
I certainly agree about homeschooling; it works for some (me & Brother) but not all, though the current school system is soul-suckingly awful. Everyone used to worry that I wasn’t being properly ‘socialized’, which was stupid since the kids I met who went to public school had awful manners and didn’t know how to interact with anyone older or younger than they were. Grading by age ought to be abolished.
I’d say everyone with average intelligence ought to be able to read, write, and do basic arithmetic, but if there must be a school ‘system’, as such, it ought to gear itself heavily toward practical things such as basic life skills. However, I also think that school choice ought to be a very much larger thing, because no one system is going to work for every child – or adult!
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You raise a great point about segregating kids by age for most of their day. That’s the equivalent of growing up in a criminal gang.
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It turns out that we can show that having me design this sort of system cannot be optimal.
This is ‘maybe persuasive to d sane audience’ show, not mathematical proof show.
Same reason plus for not optimal that there is for not being able to do a mathematical proof.
Human behavioral spaces for large groups allow for sufficient complexity that sampling/reducing order tand working from that model can be unpredictably invalid. and also predictably invalid.
The plus is that I am a pretty narrow obsessive, and you can be sure that the goods I am looking at are not the ones that another party would have on their list, in same order of priority.
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You can’t design a perfect system for imperfect people. Educational, economic, social, governmental, NO system containing humans can ever be perfect. Even so, there are better systems, and worse systems.
A good (NOT perfect) education system has to be flexible. It has to accommodate students of varied interests and abilities.
The whole purpose of Jimmeh Cahtah’s Federal Department Of Education seems to be forcing all schools into a single rigidly defined model to efficiently educate the Standard Student. Any student not fitting into the Standard Model is A Problem to be Dealt With. It made a fairly functional education system much worse.
Marxism is all about forcing people into a Perfect System as conceived by a decidedly imperfect man. Marxism is fatally flawed in every way, but even if it wasn’t, the basic principle is insane. As if, even with the best of intentions, a Perfect System could be designed that would force people to become Perfect in order to fit into it.
That way lies Camazotz.
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The reasoning behind the Dept. Of Education was pure, “Europe has standards. Russia has standards. Japan has standards. We need to be like the cool kids and have national standards !”
Along with suggesting the whole world would pull in front of us because they had efficient, practical, national standards.
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”Keep all the kids in lockstep at setting ‘slow’” is great for the teachers union, to accommodate their slowest teacher members. It’s my understanding that outstanding performer teachers face similar “making the others look bad” crap as gifted kids.
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The education system is a huge part of the problem in this country. What would be the answer? If you were designing a perfect system, how would it work? Home schooling makes sense for some families but certainly not all. Individualized, certainly, but I would have never learned any English or social studies. Didn’t like them. Certainly let the kid work as fast as he can and retain info. If I can read a book in a night and pass a test on it, I should be done with that requirement and go on to something that interests me. Some kids are self motivated but certainly not all. Boys are different than girls and do better with some competition, and less group projects. Me too to be honest.
This is a pet peeve for me.
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The best education system I know of is the one room school. It is why homeschooling works so well. A small group of students supervised by an adult with the different grade levels working in close proximity to each other. Older students helping and inspiring younger students and students progressing through the grades at their individual pace in each subject. No one held back or pushed through but everyone encouraged to do as well as they can.
The Federal Department of Education can’t be eliminated fast enough for me. And I say this as a Middle School Librarian and Technology Support person. I homeschooled my own kids and do what I can to encourage kids here in a good (for certain levels of good) public school.
Bring back as much local control as possible!
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I expect that I skated through public school relatively unscathed because the public school system did then track according to level of ability after about the 8th grade. I loved books, learning new stuff, had the advantage of one 6th grade teacher who was a marvel and had us doing very advanced and interesting things, and could take all the honors and AE (academically enriched) classes that I wanted to in high school. I was bored to tears the couple of times that I accidently was assigned to an ordinary class. College was relatively a walk in the park for me. Loved every minute, since it was already accepted that I was intelligent, instead of having to prove it at the start of every term in high school. I thought then and still do that the kids who weren’t the least bit interested in academic matters ought to have more of an apprenticeship and work-study programs that were then available. If they wanted to bail out of formal schooling at 14 and earn an honest living, I thought they ought to have that opportunity.
My daughter wants to have Wee Jamie the Wonder Grandson go to public school – the district that she plans on purchasing a house in is very, very good, still. I’m holding out for private parochial school or home-schooling.
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I’ve felt for a long time that part of middle school should be some sort of vocational assortment training, so kids can try their hands at a bunch of different things and see what they are good at or like. Then, in high school they can focus in on training for what they wanted, with an apprenticeship available at the end, rather than this constant push to force kids into college whether they are suited to it or not. I mean, I know part of that push is a straight up money grab, and part of it is a deep desire to further the indoctrination, but some kids really aren’t geared for or interested in college and would be much better served immediately starting some sort of trade. Liberals constantly look down their noses at blue collar workers as ‘uneducated’, while lamenting that there aren’t enough American’s willing to do those jobs they harp on and deride.
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My wife went to school with a kid who did poorly in classes but was an amazing artist at a young age. She was of the intellectual bent, but she recognized what the school was doing was wrong in neglecting his talent and trying to turn him into something else.
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I don’t know what the “best” education system in the near or long term future is, but I’m tired of funding the one we have now producing worse results with more expenses.
Locally they are shutting down 5 schools in the district due to lack of students. This is after 20 years of record building and tax increases. Even with all the “refugee”/ESL children (40+ %) in the schools, the number of overall students is decreasing.
Don’t know if the change in Federal adminstration is going to reduce the number of students more, but if more schools close, I’m going to want a refund or reduction in property taxes.
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All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.
It keeps running through my head, ever since I read the post title.
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Well, yes, the schools are failing them. But more broadly, its the ADULTS in and out of schools that are failing them.
Its also up to the parents/guardians to tell them that they are capable, and to ensure that the schools are ALLOWING them to be capable.
Look at people like Justice Thomas – or our own Sarah’s boys. Their parents pushed them at home, taught them at home where necessary, and fought the battles with the school system where it proved to be dysfunctional.
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Yes, it’s very hard for a school, even a good one, to make up for a disrespect for learning that’s taught in the home. The attitude of the parents is the main deciding variable in how well the children do in learning.
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My simple rule for improving my grade in any class was this … the closer to the front of the class I sat the better my grade would be … this worked thru high school and getting an Ocean Engineering degree at USNA … if I ever had kids it would be one piece of advice I would give them … (the other side of the coin was of course you could tell the courses I didn’t need a good grade in and that I just didn’t like … back row for sure)
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I sat in the back of the one college history class that I couldn’t test out of and did engineering homework. Instructor got annoyed since the calculator on my desk gave me away, but I aced the class.
Helped that I skimmed the book in the first week and it was a later edition of the one my aunt used to teach her classes. :P
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It finally dawned on me a few years ago why, oh so many decades back, my GPA crashed so badly when I hit college. I had always ascribed it to my poor study habits from public HS being so easy, and that was definitely a thing, but the epiphany was realizing the damage my AP English test high scores had done. With my AP English test result I basically tested out of all the lower division English classes. Those would have been a pile of “easy A” classes, but my testing out messed up the GPA arithmetic as they didn’t add in a bunch of 4.0s for those tested-out courses everyone else suffered through, they just were skipped.
It took me until I was upper division to get back to what I’d more expect.
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You still might have dodged a bullet. My understanding is that low level English is where they like to stick at least one of the “flunk out” classes at many schools.
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I discovered girls in high school, but done discovered me until sophomore year :) Also, I think I sprained my brain taking five classes senior year of high school. Mine you, first semester calculus wasn’t too bad; I had that, mostly, in two semesters in high school. Then I hit second semester calculus like a bug hitting a windshield at 65 miles an hour; I never got my confidence back in math.
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I got a 5 on the AP English Composition test without an accompanying class, and the college I went to would have stuck me in English 101 regardless if I hadn’t found the one loophole for mandatory attendance (being one of 20 students admitted to the Honors Program.)
The description stated that it taught you how to construct sentences and paragraphs. Somebody would have had to die if I’d had to take that class.
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Late wife went to parochial school and the instructor re-arranged student seating after every grade period – best scores at the front, and running to the back. As a smart kid she was always up front.
One week, wife was out sick and had no grade – off the back row!
And then they found out she needed glasses …
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Middle school science teacher took an irrational dislike to me. I never figured out why for sure, but generally assumed it was because she’d met my older brothers (one was a smart-aleck bully, the other the sort of nerd that would ace his classes, correct the teachers, and wear the same outfit 3 days in a row to school until an adult at home caught him at it and made him change). 8th grade year she assigned me to the special needs science class, which only had 12 kids in it, so she could give them all ‘extra attention’. I was always done with the assignments before she was done explaining them to the rest of the class, and this seemed to exacerbate her dislike for me. I was already writing my own computer programs (in BASIC) and designing things like catapults and mini radios (I knew I was gonna be some flavor of engineer when I ‘grew up’) so I didn’t let her discourage me, but there are plenty of kids out there that might not bounce back from treatment like that.
The DOE needs to be abolished and control of education needs to be seized by extremely local authority, like community or neighborhood, specifically parents, not ‘council’ or ‘board’ members. Any teachers that isn’t getting it done, or is actively harming students, needs to be run out of town, not protected by the district and kept around indefinitely. And the parents need to set up some sort of rotation so that at least one of them is sitting in on classes frequently enough to prevent indoctrination shenanigans.
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I was fortunate in grade school that someone had donated all the Heinlein juveniles, and they were kept on a bookshelf in the back of the classroom for those who needed something else to do with our time.
It’s tempting to say that unionizing schools led to a union mindset, “Just do the minimum required and no more,” but the problem predates that. My years in American K-12 convinced me that school was basically a relatively benign prison for kids, one that kept us mostly supervised and out of trouble until our parents were once again available for us to be paroled to.
When my wife taught a year in high school, she explained the curve to her students. “That means if I write a test that’s too simple, and you all score 100%, you all get Cs.”
Fortunately my experience in college was more about learning how to think. Even then, in most classes, it was easier to just parrot on the exam what the instructor said. Still, there were some excellent teachers, for whom I am eternally grateful. Of course, that was back in the old days.
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I’ve never realized that there are places where the curve can lower your grade! It could only go up for me (including in drivers ed where my 80 average somehow got curved into a A). It still was rather unfair to high achievers though, since a high score could lead to people being annoyed at them if they did a lot better than everyone else and ruined the curve. I did see one teacher give a student in that situation extra credit once, which I guess would have helped with that issue.
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You were lucky. Or always on the top end of the curve. Me? Solidly above average. Thus a solid high B, or higher score, could easily result in a C or a few times a D, depending on what the curve busters did. Frustrating, and horribly demoralizing.
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Ah school. The source of so many bad study habits.
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School / Formal Education is going to drag around for a while because of institutional inertia but ultimately is a doomed animal.
I can already today pick up almost any AI and get better information on subjects than most teachers can provide, *and* it is perfectly patient, always eager to explain, and tailored to what I know. And that is a generic language model with no systems in place to manage teaching a subject.
Imagine having a personal teacher / coach that has your best interests in mind, has a list of goals / topics to teach you, can look over your shoulder at any time to give you a hand with whatever you’re working on, and come up with a few examples and exercises on the spot customized to relate to what you are working on. And who your parents can chat to at any time to see how you’re doing, let alone have them jump in and learn things alongside you.
It’s going to be a massive change because our education systems are *still* based on rote factory learning (“Memorize this fact and repeat it back, aim to have perfect memory”) which is frankly ridiculous in this day and age. The value of Credentialism is getting hammered, which is the end-goal of most education systems. “Go to university just to get your papers because that will guarantee you a job!” is a lie that more and more are catching on to.
Right now the focus of AI technology is about getting accurate answers (AI is already outperforming doctors for diagnoses), but all the pieces are there to make an AI that is dedicated to making you a better person, tracking what you know and testing that in casual conversation.
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Yes. It is a massive lie.
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I just learned some stupid education jargon.
When somebody autistic leaves the classroom without leave, it’s being called “eloped.”
Dear freaking Lord.
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I was failing in the Fall of second grade because I didn’t do my Phonics assignments. To me a pointless and useless exercise because I already could read well. A kind understanding teacher bribed me. If I completed all the assignments, I could check out 5th grade science books. Backlog was completed within a week, and the rest on time.
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Cat report: Unmystifying.
This one’s a doozy. So from another perspective, here we go:
An old friend of mine from way back, let’s call him James McCormick, he gets a call from one of his old buddies from the service. I imagine it went something like this, knowing him.
“You still working that dead ass job out in podunk Appalachia, Sar’nt?”
“I am, sir. May I ask what this is leading up to?”
“I need you here. Pronto. The company is hiring again, and if I don’t hire you I have to accept the Veep’s dumbass son in law. Don’t make me go to jail, son. I’ll wring his bloody neck. I swear I will.”
“You know Marie has family here-“
“Pay starts at double your current rate. Triple for those with experience like yours.”
“And the kids are still in school-“
“I can swing a bonus for you. Call it a sign-on bonus. But I need you by the twenty-third.”
“Little Vee really likes it here.”
“The missus will be cooking. I told her you’d be there.”
“That’s low.”
“Yep.”
“I’ll pack.”
James’ nickname when we were working together was “Zilla.” As in “Godzilla.” Biggest human being I’ve ever met in person. Used to have his hair cut in a short mowhawk back then, before he got married. His wife Marie is almost Amazonian, six foot five and shoulders broad as a line backers. She looks like a toothpick cheerleader next to him. Sweet gal, though. She mellowed him out, humanized the wild character he used to be.
They’ve got two daughters. One, Vila, just turned fourteen. The other, Amanda, just turned four. Birthdays within a week of each other. Amanda just got a kitten for her birthday from a litter of seven. The original family didn’t want to give them up, but already had three cats. Had to foster them out.
As the family is packing up, Marie decides they are going to have one last meal before they go at her favorite restaurant. This after an entire day of packing an entire household into one pickup and seriously packed tight and nearly overstuffed trailer.
Vee is normally an overachiever. Fourteen going on forty. She was everywhere, helping out here, watching over Amanda and the kitten there. Poor girl was tuckered out. She fell asleep while the adults were talking.
Somehow, the little fuzzmonster got free. And here’s where the mystery comes in. The restaurant is about eighty yards as the crow flies from my place. How the wee one got from there to here is the question. Either divine providence, or Othercat picked him up while scavenging for vermin is my guess.
From here, my neighbor lady, a retired secretary heard me looking for someone’s lost kitten. She knows everybody around here, and the old lady back fence network lit up and found out from one of the wait staff about Zilla and Marie cutting out and leaving.
While they had the name on the credit card receipt, I didn’t need it. Seven foot tall white dude about as wide as a barn door clinched it. There can’t be too many of those running around. Especially not in my little town. Lucky for me, Zilla never changed his phone number.
“Zilla.”
“D man. I’m a little busy at the moment. Can I call you back?”
“Hand the phone to Marie. Think I’ve got something you lost.”
Marie gets on the line.
“Daniel? What’s this about?”
“Are you missing something small and fuzzy and calico colored?”
Cue a feminine shriek.
“Not so loud, Vila! Did I hear you right? You found Miss Mustard?”
“Think so. One of mine was wrapped around the little thing under my tree in the front yard. She’s okay. Voracious little thing, though.”
I explained what happened. Marie agreed this had to be little Amanda’s lost kitten. Vee had been a wreck the whole time, blaming herself and depressed. She adored that little fuzzball too.
One problem though. They couldn’t just turn around. Zilla’s new job was starting in two days. And travel time was around twenty hours or so (would have been less, but weather and idiot drivers on snowy roads mean delays). Neither adult had slept yet, so they were going to check into a hotel, then drive the rest of the way. From Oklahoma.
I’m not going to be the guy that keeps my bud’s daughter’s kitten from them. But I needed to be here today, for an appointment I could not miss. Promised to be kept and all that.
So that meant driving all night to catch them right before they left the next day. Then all the way back here to make it in time for my own responsibilities. Wee fuzz was a handful all the way down, tucked under my shirt for most of the ride but wiggling around like she wanted to explore.
Zilla and fam were most pleased. Offered me money, but friends don’t count favors. Couldn’t stay long. All the girls were teary eyed and joyful. All’s well that ends well, I say.
Long story short, kitten reunited with family. I am exhausted and sleepy as all get out. Doofus is curled up in my lap. Just need to summon up the energy to make it to bed. Nastycat is already zonked out on the pillow. Othercat and Neighborcat are scouring the kitchen for something-or-other to kill.
Me, I’m going the way of Nastycat. Sleep calls. Well, demands and summons more like. Y’all be good to each other tomorrow. y’hear? World’s a better place now than it’s been in years. We just got to do right.
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Great news. Now, take care of yourself and enjoy Nastycat’s company. If possible.
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Awwww.
Glad kitten and family reunited.
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Blessings on you, sir, for friendship that goes above and beyond. What a marvelous 2-part story of rescue and restoration. Thank you for posting it!
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You’re a good man, sir. And I’m so happy the story had a happy ending. I might be teary eyed myself right now. Thank you for telling us.
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Oh wow. What an update! Amazing that you managed to locate the kitten’s lost family and make a reunion possible.
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I remember what I calledthe french curve in one of my EE classes. Class average was 40, I had a 71. Two of the best students in the class got 40s. So the whole class said curve it and the professor agreed. I thought I get curved up to an A, but when he returned our curved tests I had a 71, while the top 2 students had 95s. I went to the professor and complained…he took my test and raised my score to a 72.
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I watched a terrifying Yoo-Toob video yesterday. Guy went to a college campus (or maybe a few of ’em) and asked college students questions:
“What is 3 cubed?” If they got the wrong answer (usually 9) he’d ask “What is 3 times 3 times 3? What is 9 plus 9 plus 9?” Two out of 30 or more managed to stumble to the correct answer.
“How many weeks in a year?” None got the correct answer. One guessed 300. When informed that was wrong, he guessed 600.
“What is the 3rd planet from the sun?” No, you dumbasses, it’s not Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Mars OR Mercury.
“How many minutes is a quarter of an hour?” Most popular answer was 25, then 30 and 20.
“How many dimes in a dollar?” Complete befuddlement. One gal immediately answered “Fifty”, then practically face-palmed and corrected “Ten, of course. Fifty dimes in a roll. I’m a cashier.” I would have howled if somebody said, “Dude, you can’t get no dime bag for a dollar!”
“How many years in a decade?” A few answer 100. I think one figured out it was 10.
“If you were born 7 years ago, how old would you be now?” They didn’t have a clue how to even go about figuring it out.
“Name 3 countries other than the United States.” Most started their lists with “Africa”.
“What is 66 plus 44?” Sometimes it was 77 plus 33, or 85 plus 25. ONE Rastafarian-looking dude got it right, 110.
“What continent is Hawaii on?” I know, trick question, but none of them had a clue. He also asked what continent Jamaica is on. No clues there either.
“What country is north of North Korea?” Blank looks.
“When is Independence Day?” More blank looks.
“What state is Missouri in?” Confusion.
“What shape is a STOP sign?” ONE guessed right.
“What shape is the Pentagon?” Zero clues had.
THESE WERE COLLEGE STUDENTS!! Paying a fortune in tuition, for what? To get even stupider?
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