Topic: our USA education system sucks and is obsolete - page 2. (Read 2137 times)

Higher education in the US allows people to choose their college.

I dont know if you ever had watched good times show, but thats what happen to AJ, they passed him just to get to graduate, nor to care if he learned anything in those years of his education. so this coming from a show in the early 80's show saying we had this problem for a very long time.

Still US higher ed in pockets is the best in the world and attracts elite students every year

It is all about supply and demand.

He mentions that 98% of kindergarteners have this great creative instinct.

So...if there is a demand for such a thing...you have a supply consisting of billions of people that can think at least at the level of a kindergartener.

That is wonderful, supply covered.

Now, what if you want someone with the knowledge to transfer electrons over a large distance at a certain frequency converting it to useful information...then you may need to spend some time to figure out how such things work and might require a background that allows you to understand each of the pieces that go together to get that knowledge. Or more importantly, to come up with new ways of doing such things, better.

Is there a large supply of such people? Is there a large demand for cell phone technology?


But you have a choice, you can be someone that is in plentiful supply with little demand or you can be someone in high demand with limited supply. The result tends to be that you will not have much power (money) if you are part of a huge supply with little demand, while someone that is in huge demand with limited supply will have more power (money).

It tends to be human nature to want more power, not less.

If you want to not learn about things that are in demand...go for it, find yourself. Offer to the world that which billions of other people can offer and find out quickly how well that works out for you. You can artistically put a Subway sub together (until someone else comes along that will do it cheaper).

LIFE magazine "Crisis in education" march 1958

http://englishrussia.com/2010/05/17/life-magazine-1958/

http://oldlifemagazines.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/c/v/cv032458.jpg


"Our sputnik moment then and now"

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/our-sputnik-moment-then-and-now/7286/

That's exactly what's going on, teachers want children to memorise answers, I won't use the word 'fact' because that means that the answers people give would have to be correct, so you're having whole generations growing up not knowing basic English and Maths because everybody is so focused on these ridiculous tests. If you think I'm bad, the next generation isn't going to know the multiplication table or know how to do basic grammar soon enough and they'll leave school under false pretences and wonder why they can't even get a starting job at a food chain despite getting A's in everything because the teachers will have lied to them about their future prospects.

a bigger problem is how the US (and the rest of the world) overvalue standardized testing. seems they promote memorization more than they do learning. education should be not just learning, but learning through interest.

Especially in the US and the EU, the teachers are a bunch of over-paid people whose qualifications are getting less and less preferable over the years. Any attempt to weed out the under-qualified staff is met with opposition from the powerful unions. A few decades ago, the teachers cared a lot about the talent and knowledge they input among the students. Not anymore. Now their only concern is to maintain a hefty salary package and 200-day paid leave per year.

Thats because teachers are protected by a certain law, after years of working once they have protection with there seniority teachers get lazier and hence dont make educating fun for the children

How about this: a lot has to do with the teachers.  I can count on 1 hand the number of GOOD teachers I had.  The rest I merely had to endure.  Some actually taught things like HOW to think (instead of rote memory learning) and made me think about how I was living my life.  Unfortunately with the amount of time kids spend in school you need teachers to do more of this in my opinion.  You get these boring teachers teaching kids science and tech etc. and obviously yes none are going to want to pursue it when there are more "fun" subjects like art or music.

Arts should be given the importance it deserves, just like the Science and Technology branches should be given their due importance. But nowadays, far too many people are choosing the arts streams, which is creating a scarcity of people with Science and Technology degrees.

Some of the best socially educated people I know could not deal with the commonality of grocery shopping, or preparing a meal using common cooking facilities and utensils, yet they are deemed "well educated".

Sorry, but even in this day and age, if your education precludes your ability to feed yourself other by ordering a pizza from Little Cesers or a sandwich from Jimmy John's, your wholeness as a human is a total fail.

But you know, you could get a decent full set encyclopedia (printed), like 26 volumes or more (World Book or Britannica or what have you that looks good and thick with lots of pages.)

You take the time to just read through almost everything, even skipping every other section, you will learn a lot. (No, wikipedia does not count, but its a good anyway.)

Education reform is a false dichotomy.  The alternative is which?  You spend trillions of dollars only to produce more over-educated individuals without gainful employment?

 If you increase the standards, you would end up with Engineers and PhD Calculus serving coffee at Starbucks ~ oh wait ~ we already have that.

What he talks about in the video is not just a problem with the US system, it's a problem pretty much everywhere in the world. The problem with the US system (I think) is that kids are not allowed to fail, so you bring the standards down so much so that everyone passes, and you limit bright children by forcing them to the standard.

Pretty much all praised education for the act of educating, without a consideration of education as good for the masses because it just is. I expected nothing less.

This is a problem with our system. Without young minds that think they can individually make a difference, why?

Intercity schools fail not because the kids are stupid, but because they are realistically un-motivated. They understand their lot in life is limited by their environment, and they also are big believers in energy conservation.

Everything I needed know about life, society and inculcation I learned in kindergarten.

We edify to an educational standard, not to an employment standard. If we inculcated to an employment standard, handled properly, most people would not require to progress past the 8th grade, let alone high school or college, because the prodigious majority of jobs available in our society do not require advanced education, but on the job training.

Why do we keep wasting our money and the money of most families on having students procure a college degree with which they will be ineffective? Other than exposing our children to more socialism and feelings of entitlement or guilt?

Such importance is contained in this amazing speech by Sir Ken Robinson reminding us on how fast we are moving without giving regard to the qualitative development which is very much needed for mankind.

You might really like this as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I

arts are great as part of the overall education but a theater degree is just going to finalize thar you are in deep in debt and working as a waiter or waitress for the rest of your life .