Maybe you all should go back to citing blog quotes after all?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

This seems sensible. But I'd still like to see the shift toward more hard science and math. The argument we should be "well rounded" is bullshit. We should learn to think more critically. That doesn't come with studying history or political science. It comes with being exposed to as much math as possible as early as possible.

The difference between the rich and poor in this country has as much to do math skill as anything else. For the better of our society - for a more even spread of wealth - we should be pushing math on kids as soon as they're able to walk. A poor guy who can run the numbers isn't going to get taken by a fraud peddling mortgage broker.

it doesn't matter what the poor schools teach- e.g.60% of Detroit schools drop out

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

This seems sensible. But I'd still like to see the shift toward more hard science and math. The argument we should be "well rounded" is bullshit. We should learn to think more critically. That doesn't come with studying history or political science. It comes with being exposed to as much math as possible as early as possible.

Please. Throughout the 80s, this was the bugaboo about Japan -- they were training their kids in math and science and were going to leave us in the dust. But did the Japanese innovate, or copy (and perfect)? Did they seize on the Internet? No.

I'm not saying that teaching kids how to innovate and think critically, and teaching kids math and science, are antithetical. They aren't. (And, I would bet, the average Japanese student also learned a lot of history and other disciplines too during the 80s.)

Subject matter is one thing, method of thinking is another. You can teach math, science, history, whatever, in a manner that is based on rote memorization and that fails to promote critical thinking. Fails to promote empirical analysis, creativity, experimentation. Or you can teach those subjects in a different way.

We teach kids a well-rounded curriculum for a lot of reasons, but one of them is because doing that promotes learning about a number of different ways to think, a number of different ways to approach problems.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

This seems sensible. But I'd still like to see the shift toward more hard science and math. The argument we should be "well rounded" is bullshit. We should learn to think more critically. That doesn't come with studying history or political science. It comes with being exposed to as much math as possible as early as possible.

The difference between the rich and poor in this country has as much to do math skill as anything else. For the better of our society - for a more even spread of wealth - we should be pushing math on kids as soon as they're able to walk. A poor guy who can run the numbers isn't going to get taken by a fraud peddling mortgage broker.

Forgive me, but a lawyer chat board is the last place I expect to hear someone pushing hard science and math. Our profession is where the people who can't do those things go.

There's plenty of time to pursue it all. There are way too many idiots out there with Sarah Pallin's understanding of the constitution. Stinting on history will get you more. And understanding geography and history can be just important as language for interacting culturally.

But I'd revamp the curriculum in both areas. They'd come out of high school not just knowing where India and China are, but appreciating the difference between Kerala and Gujarat or Cheng du and Shanghai, and having read more Chinese literature than Italian or German literature.

And they'd have read the fucking constitution.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

my mentor, sidd finch, says that if em calls other people stupid em is probably more stupider.

Now, now. I said your statement was moronic; I avoided noting your stupidity. I wouldn't do that.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Forgive me, but a lawyer chat board is the last place I expect to hear someone pushing hard science and math. Our profession is where the people who can't do those things go.

There's plenty of time to pursue it all. There are way too many idiots out there with Sarah Pallin's understanding of the constitution. Stinting on history will get you more. And understanding geography and history can be just important as language for interacting culturally.

But I'd revamp the curriculum in both areas. They'd come out of high school not just knowing where India and China are, but appreciating the difference between Kerala and Gujarat or Cheng du and Shanghai, and having read more Chinese literature than Italian or German literature.

And they'd have read the fucking constitution.

I was thinking the same thing, except that I don't know the difference between Kerala and Gujarat or Cheng du and Shanghai.

The only subject that spring to mind as wasteful from a purely academic point of view is phys ed. It may not be wasteful from a health point of view, but I guess on balance I wouldn't shed any tears if it were to go.

ETA: And of course Hank is right this discussion has very little to do with the problems facing urban schools.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

ETA: And of course Hank is right this discussion has very little to do with the problems facing urban schools.

I don't know about Detroit schools, because Detroit is really a whole nother level of pit from around here, but the two worst school systems in Massachusetts would be filled with kids who know the difference between Cheng du and Shanghai, and with even more kids who know the difference between Hanoi and Loc Ninh.* That knowledge is a huge potential asset for our economy.

10 years ago, I didn't know Kerala from Gujarat. I learned. But shit, it would have helped if they'd at least read a bit from the Mahabharata in history or a little Tagore in English.


* The kdis who know the differnece between Kerala and Gujarat because they have family in one or the other are disproprotionately in really good school systems.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I don't know about Detroit schools, because Detroit is really a whole nother level of pit from around here, but the two worst school systems in Massachusetts would be filled with kids who know the difference between Cheng du and Shanghai, and with even more kids who know the difference between Hanoi and Loc Ninh.* That knowledge is a huge potential asset for our economy.

10 years ago, I didn't know Kerala from Gujarat. I learned. But shit, it would have helped if they'd at least read a bit from the Mahabharata in history or a little Tagore in English.


* The kdis who know the differnece between Kerala and Gujarat because they have family in one or the other are disproprotionately in really good school systems.

this discussion shows why a national dept of education is a waste- while kids that will graduate with an actual complete education surely benefit from having knowledge in geography and other social sciences- and that may well make sense for the kids in the school down the street from you.

but there are kids graduating with little knowledge of anything- surely basic math that might allow them to have a cash register job, or know when they're being cheated would be most important.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

You think so? I'm skeptical, but my world tends to be over-exposed to lawyers and business people, where writing, and more importantly oral communication skills, seem to be the difference makers.

Of course, my math education ended with high school calculus.

It's more a method of thinking that accrues from looking at things mathematically. Math gets to the only thing that matters - the bottom line. When you think with that in mind primarily all the time, every interaction becomes a transaction. You have a finance background, so you probably do this reflexively and don't even realize it. And you probably think most people think mathematically.

They don't.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Forgive me, but a lawyer chat board is the last place I expect to hear someone pushing hard science and math. Our profession is where the people who can't do those things go.

There's plenty of time to pursue it all. There are way too many idiots out there with Sarah Pallin's understanding of the constitution. Stinting on history will get you more. And understanding geography and history can be just important as language for interacting culturally.

But I'd revamp the curriculum in both areas. They'd come out of high school not just knowing where India and China are, but appreciating the difference between Kerala and Gujarat or Cheng du and Shanghai, and having read more Chinese literature than Italian or German literature.

And they'd have read the fucking constitution.

On a dollar per billing event basis, our profession is dying. And our profession creates nothing. At best we adminster in regulatory frameworks that, in a more healthy society, would be 1/2 their size. At our worst (litigation), we dick around in Byzantine procedures that create nothing but acrimony and bills, and create perverse incentives for people to go to court instead of working out problems among themselves, as decent humans should. Is this an industry we should expand? Even Scalia has said we're brutally overlawyered.

I'm happy to collect checks doing what I do right now, but we can be honest with one another here - the legal profession is a cancer. It's needed, but it's been growing malignantly for quite some time.

Are you suggesting we should encourage more amateur celebrityship and punditry? I don't think we need more history majors starting right wing radio shows or left wing blogs.

I'm with you on geography. As to language, I think learning a foreign language automatically interests one in the nation's literature and history.

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

One of the biggest problems is that they're taught to have shit for expections : yeah, you really know your shakespeare, but we're going to laugh if you even think about one of those fancy private colleges. This happens in poor rural districts as well.

It happens in not poor, suburban-like districts, too (as Adder noted). I was subjected to a presentation for the "smart kids" where one of the counselors was discussing for us our options if we neither scored a 19 on the ACT nor graduated in the top half of the class (of ~400). Might have been the biggest waste of time I had in HS.

And, on the "some good schools" in urban districts front, they almost all do have some. Chicago has a bunch K-8, but at HS, it's all selective enrollment, with a couple partial exceptions, in the category of "not godawful". Anyone who can remotely afford it, and doesn't get kids into selective enrollment, goes private or moves to the 'burbs for HS. The selective enrollment HS's, tho, are good enough that people lie about living *in* the city to try to get their kids in, so it's really a gigantic contrast between the fortunate and everyone else.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

It happens in not poor, suburban-like districts, too (as Adder noted). I was subjected to a presentation for the "smart kids" where one of the counselors was discussing for us our options if we neither scored a 19 on the ACT nor graduated in the top half of the class (of ~400). Might have been the biggest waste of time I had in HS.

And, on the "some good schools" in urban districts front, they almost all do have some. Chicago has a bunch K-8, but at HS, it's all selective enrollment, with a couple partial exceptions, in the category of "not godawful". Anyone who can remotely afford it, and doesn't get kids into selective enrollment, goes private or moves to the 'burbs for HS. The selective enrollment HS's, tho, are good enough that people lie about living *in* the city to try to get their kids in, so it's really a gigantic contrast between the fortunate and everyone else.

What I considered more controversial about my thesis was that no public school can be great, not that every public school can aspire to being good. It is interesting that there seems to be more dispute over whether ANY school in a difficult area can even aspire to being good.

But I don't think there's a truly great public school anywhere in the country.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It's more a method of thinking that accrues from looking at things mathematically. Math gets to the only thing that matters - the bottom line. When you think with that in mind primarily all the time, every interaction becomes a transaction. You have a finance background, so you probably do this reflexively and don't even realize it. And you probably think most people think mathematically.

They don't.

You may have a point, and I also definitely used math a lot after high school, I just didn't study it.

Although reading this makes me think that economics -- at least basic micro --should be a point of emphasis as well. Especially because it's a topic that can be taught in terms that anyone can understand (not so much macro).

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

What I considered more controversial about my thesis was that no public school can be great, not that every public school can aspire to being good. It is interesting that there seems to be more dispute over whether ANY school in a difficult area can even aspire to being good.

But I don't think there's a truly great public school anywhere in the country.

I assume you are talking about a general attendance school, rather than a selective enrollment school of one sort or another. If so, I probably agree. If not, I'm not so sure.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I don't think we need more history majors starting right wing radio shows or left wing blogs.

I thought we were talking K-12 education. And there I think the basics of history are quite important in a democratic society.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

But I don't think there's a truly great public school anywhere in the country.

I think defining "great" is hopeless problematic, so why argue about it?

I also think the student and the parents have a lot more to do with greatness than the school.