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As soon as a metric becomes a goal in and of itself, all hope is lost. There's no way these people, who clearly don't understand that, should be put in charge of anything more complex than a peanut cart down in the park.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:21
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Oxphocker posted:I truly don't think it's a case of 'teachers are bad'. I think that's been way overblown by a population expecting entitlement and a media that only conveys bad stories about teachers, which really ends up being less than 1% and probably isn't any different than any other profession. Plus the idea that teaching is somehow easier to get into and get through...I'd really be curious to see if the people saying that have actually gone through the process themselves or if they are just parroting the popular perception? It's a lot more involved than most realize and it's no surprise we're seeing less people going into education and more people leaving the profession early because the economics of it don't make sense. The job conditions, pay, and public treatment of teachers is insane and lots of people see the reality of it and leave the profession because it's not worth the abuse. I have a coworker that took a teaching job in China, only teaches half the day and it making twice what he was making here. Can't blame him for taking the job... Personally, I'm looking to eventually transition to a district position in school business/operations because I'm tired of having no life and making crap wages for the amount of time I'm putting in. I love teaching and helping students, but that only goes so far and I'm getting to the point of burning out because I'm working multiple jobs for the school on half pay just to make the budget work out. It's not sustainable to ask anyone to do that for long. I think another big problem is that, while most teachers aren't bad -- the vast majority are competent at their jobs -- everyone has, hopefully, a few exceptional teachers that, for whatever reason, they really connected with and enjoyed having as teachers. So if that's where you set the bar for "good" then, yeah, most other teachers are going to seem bad. The thing is that "that teacher" was probably a different teacher for everyone, because having that sort of exceptional connection is simply not feasible between a teacher and all of their students. So, yeah, occasionally you're going to have to put up with a competent teacher who you're mostly indifferent to, and that's okay.
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Feb 19, 2017 17:58
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It has to be both things at once. A great school isn't going to help if a student is living in poverty, under constant stress, and hungry all the time, and there can be no path away from welfare reliance without good educational institutions. Throwing a whole bunch of money at just one side of that equation, and then throwing your hands up when it doesn't make things better, is obviously not a solution.
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Feb 19, 2017 20:26
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Well, calculus isn't required for high school leaving anywhere in North America that I'm aware of, so... no, but I would argue that knowing what an instantaneous rate of change is and where it comes from as a concept is useful for many people, even if the actual process of finding a derivative is not. And, no, knowing about individual historical events is not important, but I would argue that it would be beneficial for our society if people had a better concept of how historical events relate to one another, and how geopolitical entities have behaved and interacted in the past. Not everyone has to be an expert at everything, but I think we should aim our sights toward making sure everyone has a good, basic education that will expose them to many different fields so they can find the thing they like, and have a good base of information with which to participate in society.
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Feb 19, 2017 22:26
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"Knowing a single fact is useless, therefore knowing things is not useful" is a really poo poo argument, and perhaps we need an education system that produces people who are able to understand why it's a really poo poo argument.
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Feb 19, 2017 22:27
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Shbobdb posted:Wouldn't it be better suited towards actually preparing people for the workforce? And how do you propose we do that without ensuring that students have a good knowledge base from which to work? The world needs journalists, and lawyers, and artists, and engineers, and pilots, and chefs, and doctors, and all that other poo poo that's necessary to our modern lives. Our education system should be preparing children so they aren't forced down one path or another based on choices they made when they were 12 or something ridiculous like that, and that means providing a well-rounded education.
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Feb 19, 2017 22:47
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As soon as a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be useful as a metric.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:37
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Part of the problem with holding the lender responsible when teens do stupid poo poo, is that it impairs the ability of teenagers to enter contracts -- some of which are basically necessary to live on one's own. This is also why, in my province, minors who live on their own have additional legal capacity to enter into contracts compared to someone the same age who lives with their parents. Either 18-year-olds are adults and can make their own financial decisions, and deal with the consequences, or they aren't, and they can't participate fully in adult society.
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Apr 28, 2017 14:06
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Triangle Shirt Factotum posted:If said 18 year olds could file bankruptcy and discharge the loans, I'd call it fair. Making the loans non-dischargeable is pure bullshit. Aren't private student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy, and it's only government-backed student loans that aren't?
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Apr 28, 2017 17:19
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Sure, you could void a degree. You can't make people unlearn what they've learned, but you can certainly make it so that they do not officially hold a degree. This is like saying you can't suspend a drivers' license because the person will still know how to drive a car. It's a horrible idea to void a degree for non-payment of student loans, and it would further hamstring class mobility, but it's technically possible.
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May 1, 2017 17:54
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Voiding someone's degrees in the first few years of someone's career would be devastating. After that who even cares? Before my first job trying to get by with a voided degree would be a huge problem, but now? Who even cares. If someone called me up to tell my my degree was "voided" it would have near zero impact on my current life. Yes, I agree. So why did you say: Owlofcreamcheese posted:You can't "void a degree", like it's fun to jerk off that education is just a worthless piece of paper and learning is for chumps or whatever but if you took the classes you can't untake them. ? Voiding a degree would be a huge problem for people just starting their careers, which are also the people who are most likely to be unable to pay for their student loans.
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May 1, 2017 18:52
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I think part of the problem too is that, in university, it's debatable how much work you have to do "per night," because you tend to have a few big projects, and you know, by reading the syllabus, exactly when they'll be due, so it's your responsibility to budget your time in whatever way you see fit in order to fulfill your responsibilities. Reading and practice, of the sort you might get in a math course, are your own responsibility and in general are not checked for completion -- you do as much or as little as you need to grasp the material and feel comfortable on the test. Thus, taking any single day off or focusing on something else for a while is not penalized. This is typically very different from the case at the middle and high school levels, where small assignments are assigned and checked for completion, so students have less flexibility in budgeting their time, and ultimately they don't learn about time management because everything is so structured. I may have averaged three hours per day of work in university (although, frankly, that seems a bit high unless you count time spent reading), but there were plenty of days I didn't do anything in exchange for working on a project six hours straight at some other time. Also, you only spend 3 hours per week actually in class for any given class in university, whereas at the high school level, you basically show up at 8 and you're always doing something until 3 or 3:30, every day. Saying that middle- and high-school students need 3 hours of structured homework per night to prepare them for university, or for life in general, is asinine.
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May 2, 2017 13:01
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Accretionist posted:Any strong opinions on relaxing GED test-eligibility requirements? The program requires you to be 16+ and not enrolled in high school with states being able to add restrictions. Assuming students under 16 would take advantage of this path in large numbers, you'd then have the problem of what to do with a bunch of 15-16 year-olds (let's say) that don't really have the capability to work full-time, live independently, and often would not have the financial means for higher education or even the ability to obtain student loans. Passing high school is basically a piece of cake for any motivated person, the reason it takes so long is because society deems it attractive to not have a bunch of teenagers looking for something to fill their time. Hell, my school wouldn't let me take additional spare periods even though I graduated with more than a semester's worth of extra credits.
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May 7, 2017 23:38
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It would be different, but it wouldn't really fix the problem of good students in bad schools (because presumably the junior colleges would be just as bad/underfunded), and it could only be a get-ahead plan for motivated students until you run up against the issue of simply needing a certain amount of life experience and maturity to handle and/or benefit from some parts of an actual university education (frankly, even 18 is too young in a lot of ways). I'm starting to understand why 80% of the gifted program I was in was coming up with ways to keep us from being bored out of our minds and going deeper into the material rather than simply trying to cover more of it.
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May 8, 2017 03:13
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Accretionist posted:I find the maturity/socialization angle persuasive. Although if testing out of classes meant taking more electives, I'd be inclined to see value in that. You need qualified teachers and facilities for electives, some may require very expensive equipment, and some might not be popular enough to justify using a teacher's time unless you have an extremely large student base like universities do.
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May 8, 2017 04:39
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