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President Obama: School year must be extended by month for US students
jjmusicnotes:
--- Quote from: Viashino Cutthroat on September 30, 2010, 07:52:08 pm ---What's to consider? You cannot legislate any of the following and get re-elected:
* Discipline your children to pay attention in school, and authorize teachers to maintain that discipline.
* Alter your cultural values to elevate the learned man above they who merely know enough to survive, often on subsudies.
* Pay teachers according to realized performance, not according to union dictate.
--- End quote ---
Agreed, especially that last one ;)
However, effectiveness of teaching concepts is not wholly contingent upon discipline. There are obviously myriad reasons why students do not pay attention - one the largest of which pertains to the concept known in the academic world as "transfer" - the ability for students to correlate concepts to their personal life. If our educational system was altered to reflect information that people would actually be able to USE, then we would see more success that we currently do.
Cultural values also definitely affect how students learn, and lesson plans (at the very least student-teacher interaction) must be adapted in order to meet the students' needs. Rather than alter different cultural values, teachers should capitalize on those differences in order to illustrate different points of view for the same concept. More neurological connections = easier to retrieve information = smarter people.
Average beginning teacher salary is ~ $28,000-32,500. As a music teacher, I took 40 more credits than those of you with a single undergrad degree, as my degree is essentially 2 in 1.
I think it's a little ridiculous that America gauges our success with students based solely on numbers, grades, and statistics, not the content of our character, our personality, or our ability to be good human beings.
There are more things to consider than there are years to fix them.
VC:
Presidency is not that important, honestly. If you want to fix things, you need to find the right people and vote them in at every level, city, county, and state. The more-important election is coming in a month.
It is wholly contengent on discipline. You either have the discipline to pay attention and absorb the lesson, or you don't. Not even a death in the family changes this fact; it's a popular excuse to miss class, but the truth is quite simply that most of the population lacks the discipline required to set that aside and maintain studies. There is no right or wrong in this, just an objective fact.
"Transfer", a made-up re-definition of a word, wrapped in quotation marks to emphasise this fact, designed to be highlighted in boldface in a worthless textbook, is an excuse. Here's why: If you base your self-esteem (SELF) on what you can, and do, accomplish, then the phrase "it's not like I'll ever need to know this" is never uttered, since everything learned has the potential to become useful, albeit unexpectedly. That popularly-clichéd statement is a cowardly excuse. The human brain, despite being a greasy blob of crap, has more useful storage than you will ever challenge it to contain and it has developed to become almost impossible to "clutter" such that you can't find what you need when you need it. There is no cost to learning something that you will never use again, except the price of not being lazy.
Exactly how do you propose one capitalize on a cultural value of "smart is bad?" Excepting, of course, creating a nation of easily-controlled and easily-pacified chattle. Futhermore, what use is "illustrat[ing] different points of view" when the student's plan for the day is "I will sit here and daydream until the bell rings because school is wasting my TV time"?
Before distracting ourselves with salary figures, let us establish that, in general, a serious lack of financial discipline has created a madness that mistakes discretionary expenditures for necessary expenditures; e.g., no, you do not HAVE TO afford cable TV, a vacation journey, personal cell phones for every member of the family, or a new vehicle, when you have the option of renting a book from the library, relaxing at home, sharing a phone, or maintaining your current vehicle. While arguing "more" or "less" money as compensation for higher- or lower-quality work is fine, citing numbers is unfounded without adjustments for the earner's family type, regional cost-of-living, etc.
America doesn't guage its success anymore. It sits in a throne of its own detritus and says "I'm good enough and if you disagree you're an asshole for thinking you're better than I am." Numbers, grades, and statistics are meaningful only insofar as if they are "bad" then the public will demand that "someone" do something to make them "good," without any interest in how that is achieved.
I disagree. One proper zombie outbreak and the survivors will be prepared to make a clean-break as they rebuild.
Kinky:
I read the first and last paragraphs. VC needs to be admitted.
killermonkey:
VC is spot on. I will add one of my other observations:
I went through high school like a hot knife through butter. Unchallenged, bored, and rather unstimulated. Most of the more challenging things I did I imposed on myself through the NJROTC program and going through "mini boot camp" and "leadership academy" over my "free" summers. The fact that I never really _rested_ during school is most likely why I am so damn successful now (not a joke).
Listen, I had a GPA of roughly 3.93 in high school and a 3.5 (earning high honors) at my college (avg GPA was ~3.0 due to the rigor).
When I arrived at the Univ of Michigan, I was humbled. The foreign kids, who mind you just showed up off the boat/plane/air balloon, were BLOWING ME OUT OF THE WATER. They knew more math then I ever thought was possible and solved complicated equations like they have seen it 10 times before.
THE AMERICAN SYSTEM IS BROKEN.
The lack of challenge is the problem. Teachers are under-schooled and rewarded for continually shitty performance. Shitty teachers make shitty students, there are a rare few gems that do things _ON THEIR OWN_ like myself that actually get something out of high school besides a 5x3 index card that says you can officially work as a McDonald's floor sweeper, yay! Parents are also very much to blame. Most couldn't give a damn or never succeeded themselves so there is no drive from home. No child left behind was the worst idea in recorded history, it propagated this lack of challenge, lack of work, lack of motivation, yet still "succeed".
Sit down with your grandparents (if you have any left) or go to a nursing home and fire up a conversation about how school was like back in the day. Guaranteed you'll be surprised, also surprised at how much your high school only educated grandparent/elder friend knows. College and graduate school may be to blame for all this, high school is the new elementary school. The expectation is to let the motivated "learn it later" as they move up the educational ladder.
Unfortunately, most never do.
Kinky:
Same thing happens here in the UK. Government targets require so many A-Cs at GCSE (age 16) from as many people as possible so the focus goes onto getting all the dumb kids as close to that as possible. If youre guaranteed 5 A-Cs they wont bother to teach you anything and asume when you get to college (16-18) youll already know what you want to do with your life and learn it all in 2 years before you take exams to see which university you just scraped in to.
On a personal note, i was very much a victim of this system. I was somewhat of a smart kid, my school forced me to take 3 extra subjects and predicted me 14 A*s (which is like yay im going to oxford or cambridge kinda thing). Problem was they just expected me to do it and didnt bother teaching me what i needed in a reasonable manner for me to learn it. So obviously i went of the rails and did a bunch of drugs and wound up with 7 B-Ds :P
Luckily i managed to blag my way into Uni and i worked my ass off for three years for my first class honours BA. KM is completely right, if you dont try you dont get, not many are as lucky as i was.
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