5 ms·

No, focus on pre-college education. As funny as it sounds, we don't need another top-flight university (which would cost billions alone) as much as we need bett

by yef 17y ago

No, focus on pre-college education. As funny as it sounds, we don't need another top-flight university (which would cost billions alone) as much as we need better education in our local schools.

ctbarna 17y ago
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is already working on making better high schools. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/topics/Pages/high-schools.aspx http://www.gatesfoundation.org/topics/Pages/high-schools.asp...
TheElder 17y ago
A few things that would help right away, uniforms and tiers. Three or four tiers would do. Slow, average, bright. I understand the mixing of students of different abilities, but I think it does more harm than good.
- unalone 17y ago
  What does more harm than good is the fucking standardization of education, to the point where we assume that all children learn the same and if one has a different route to learning he's dull or disabled or disadvantaged. I mean, yes, he's disadvantaged, but only because the system we're in is so concerned with monitoring kids and determining who's bright and who's not bright, with such an ass-backwards system that it very frequently puts the wrong people in the wrong places. When I was seventeen years old, I took the best class of my life. It was a science fiction/fantasy literature class elective, half a year long. I'd had the teacher the year before for AP English, and I assumed that perhaps the class might be as good if I didn't have to deal with the out-and-out retards that came with the subject of science fiction. We had the violent kids who fantasized about being evil dictators, the obsessives who didn't know when to shut their mouths... All the "special" kids who I'd stopped seeing in the eighth grade when it was determined I was better than them and shouldn't have to spend my time dealing with them. (Like dealing with the typical honors student is any less frustrating.) Instead, our teacher barged ahead from the first day, without stopping for anybody or anything. The stuff he was teaching was alien to all of us: Propp's hierarchy for fairy tales was first on the list. He'd give us a book and a set of short stories a week and expect us to finish it all. While we read perhaps eight books all year in my IB English class, we got to at least ten in the sci-fi course, all in half a year, and we weren't dealing with bullshit sci-fi, we were dealing with the stuff that's complex and heavy enough to qualify as Serious Literature in my book. How he achieved it: He had no lesson plans, he gave no tests, he did nothing but talk, using the things we were reading as a frame of reference. He'd do research so that he knew more than any of us (he crammed for Asimov, who I know inside and out, and came up with things I hadn't heard of before), and everybody just talked. There was no monitoring, no belittling, no talking down, just an hour-long conversation every day, with four big projects that determined our grade - but the projects were freeform; we could decide how to handle them. I wrote prose and poetry; three kids made a documentary; a bunch of the kids I'd detested went into Garry's Mod and recorded a pantomime; other kids made large cardboard replicas of alien figures and devised their own SF worlds. Again, these were not honors kids. They were kids I'd thought were too stupid to read. But they handled the courseload as well as anybody, and left with a pretty hardcore understanding of how sci-fi works. I have never had much success in school. I'm the kid who got placed in all honors courses because teachers realized I was a faster learner than their other students, but who spent his time in school refusing to get much schoolwork done. Before I discovered art school, which cared more for my portfolio than for my GPA, I was at a good public school, which in the minds of friends going to good private schools was a shithole. I endured a year of snide comments and mockery from people I'd gotten along with who were more-than-delighted to remind me that society had determined my "place" was in a public school with no famous alumni. Now that I've transferred to an excellent art school, all the comments are something along the lines of "Can I have a tall latte with milk?", which was funny about twenty years ago. I find it unbearably offensive that society makes attempts to "rank" students. Yes, people are different, and learn differently, but those are strengths unless decided otherwise. I know a lot of people whose lives were ruined by well-meaning administrators who assumed children were shitty brats who needed disciplining and straightening out. What would help right away was a system that made an attempt to welcome diversity, not just in appearance (seriously, screw uniforms, they're fixing the wrong problem) but in character and style.
  - lliiffee 17y ago
    Fortunately, while all the research I've seen has suggested that it is critical to have different "tracks" for different students, it has also suggested that there is no need for the teachers/administrators to decide what track each student goes in. The results are actually better if you let the students and parents decide.
    - unalone 17y ago
      I'm a big believer of the theory that if you let kids decide what they want, they actually find a good path for themselves. I've been doing a lot of research on the Summerhill School in Britain, and it surprises me how radical that approach is, yet what logical sense it makes.
      - maggie 17y ago
        I can't seem to find the pricing on that school. There are similar schools in the States (Carolina Friends school in Chapel Hill comes to mind), but most of them are very, ridiculously expensive (as much as a private college in the U.S.).
        unalone 17y ago
        Summerhill costs 20,000 pounds a year.
    - ctbarna 17y ago
      My high school was one funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and we tried to limit tracking as much as possible. For the first two years, there is absolutely no tracking. The idea is that the faster learners will help their slower peers who benefit from more interaction with their friends. Anecdotally, it seemed to work rather well but required students to initially be motivated to learn. My school never really had a problem with that because students applied to the school and could opt out of the application process without their parents knowing.
- shaddi 17y ago
  With all due respect that's an awful idea. Who gets to decide what tier a student is in? A test? How does a student who's in the "slow" tier get into the "bright" tier if they feel they've been miscategorized? You might be surprised, but that's no different than it is now, actually, in the school district that I went to and my brother is now in. If he wants to get into the AP classes in high school, he has to be in the advanced classes in middle school that put him a year ahead over the already slow curriculum. If you don't jump into the right stream of classes early on, you're screwed later if you decide "hey, I think I can work harder and learn more." You'll be a year behind everyone else. What we need is classes that move quickly, classes that move slowly, and the ability to move /freely/ in between without stigma. That, and higher standards for /everyone/.

by yef 17y ago

No, focus on pre-college education. As funny as it sounds, we don't need another top-flight university (which would cost billions alone) as much as we need better education in our local schools.

ctbarna 17y ago

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is already working on making better high schools. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/topics/Pages/high-schools.aspx http://www.gatesfoundation.org/topics/Pages/high-schools.asp...

TheElder 17y ago

A few things that would help right away, uniforms and tiers. Three or four tiers would do. Slow, average, bright. I understand the mixing of students of different abilities, but I think it does more harm than good.

unalone 17y ago
What does more harm than good is the fucking standardization of education, to the point where we assume that all children learn the same and if one has a different route to learning he's dull or disabled or disadvantaged. I mean, yes, he's disadvantaged, but only because the system we're in is so concerned with monitoring kids and determining who's bright and who's not bright, with such an ass-backwards system that it very frequently puts the wrong people in the wrong places. When I was seventeen years old, I took the best class of my life. It was a science fiction/fantasy literature class elective, half a year long. I'd had the teacher the year before for AP English, and I assumed that perhaps the class might be as good if I didn't have to deal with the out-and-out retards that came with the subject of science fiction. We had the violent kids who fantasized about being evil dictators, the obsessives who didn't know when to shut their mouths... All the "special" kids who I'd stopped seeing in the eighth grade when it was determined I was better than them and shouldn't have to spend my time dealing with them. (Like dealing with the typical honors student is any less frustrating.) Instead, our teacher barged ahead from the first day, without stopping for anybody or anything. The stuff he was teaching was alien to all of us: Propp's hierarchy for fairy tales was first on the list. He'd give us a book and a set of short stories a week and expect us to finish it all. While we read perhaps eight books all year in my IB English class, we got to at least ten in the sci-fi course, all in half a year, and we weren't dealing with bullshit sci-fi, we were dealing with the stuff that's complex and heavy enough to qualify as Serious Literature in my book. How he achieved it: He had no lesson plans, he gave no tests, he did nothing but talk, using the things we were reading as a frame of reference. He'd do research so that he knew more than any of us (he crammed for Asimov, who I know inside and out, and came up with things I hadn't heard of before), and everybody just talked. There was no monitoring, no belittling, no talking down, just an hour-long conversation every day, with four big projects that determined our grade - but the projects were freeform; we could decide how to handle them. I wrote prose and poetry; three kids made a documentary; a bunch of the kids I'd detested went into Garry's Mod and recorded a pantomime; other kids made large cardboard replicas of alien figures and devised their own SF worlds. Again, these were not honors kids. They were kids I'd thought were too stupid to read. But they handled the courseload as well as anybody, and left with a pretty hardcore understanding of how sci-fi works. I have never had much success in school. I'm the kid who got placed in all honors courses because teachers realized I was a faster learner than their other students, but who spent his time in school refusing to get much schoolwork done. Before I discovered art school, which cared more for my portfolio than for my GPA, I was at a good public school, which in the minds of friends going to good private schools was a shithole. I endured a year of snide comments and mockery from people I'd gotten along with who were more-than-delighted to remind me that society had determined my "place" was in a public school with no famous alumni. Now that I've transferred to an excellent art school, all the comments are something along the lines of "Can I have a tall latte with milk?", which was funny about twenty years ago. I find it unbearably offensive that society makes attempts to "rank" students. Yes, people are different, and learn differently, but those are strengths unless decided otherwise. I know a lot of people whose lives were ruined by well-meaning administrators who assumed children were shitty brats who needed disciplining and straightening out. What would help right away was a system that made an attempt to welcome diversity, not just in appearance (seriously, screw uniforms, they're fixing the wrong problem) but in character and style.
- lliiffee 17y ago
  Fortunately, while all the research I've seen has suggested that it is critical to have different "tracks" for different students, it has also suggested that there is no need for the teachers/administrators to decide what track each student goes in. The results are actually better if you let the students and parents decide.
  - unalone 17y ago
    I'm a big believer of the theory that if you let kids decide what they want, they actually find a good path for themselves. I've been doing a lot of research on the Summerhill School in Britain, and it surprises me how radical that approach is, yet what logical sense it makes.
    - maggie 17y ago
      I can't seem to find the pricing on that school. There are similar schools in the States (Carolina Friends school in Chapel Hill comes to mind), but most of them are very, ridiculously expensive (as much as a private college in the U.S.).
      - unalone 17y ago
        Summerhill costs 20,000 pounds a year.
  - ctbarna 17y ago
    My high school was one funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and we tried to limit tracking as much as possible. For the first two years, there is absolutely no tracking. The idea is that the faster learners will help their slower peers who benefit from more interaction with their friends. Anecdotally, it seemed to work rather well but required students to initially be motivated to learn. My school never really had a problem with that because students applied to the school and could opt out of the application process without their parents knowing.
shaddi 17y ago
With all due respect that's an awful idea. Who gets to decide what tier a student is in? A test? How does a student who's in the "slow" tier get into the "bright" tier if they feel they've been miscategorized? You might be surprised, but that's no different than it is now, actually, in the school district that I went to and my brother is now in. If he wants to get into the AP classes in high school, he has to be in the advanced classes in middle school that put him a year ahead over the already slow curriculum. If you don't jump into the right stream of classes early on, you're screwed later if you decide "hey, I think I can work harder and learn more." You'll be a year behind everyone else. What we need is classes that move quickly, classes that move slowly, and the ability to move /freely/ in between without stigma. That, and higher standards for /everyone/.