• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Education Part ll

JOEBIALEK

New Blood
J
Joined
Jun 16, 2005
Messages
19
This is the second part to an earlier writing about education in the United States. As you may recall, I advocated for the privatization of all schools from kindergarten to graduate studies. This piece will focus on the curriculum that needs to be followed.

Everytime I encounter someone in the workplace, I am reminded of just how much we have failed to properly educate United States citizens in the fundamentals of communication: reading, writing and speaking. Few would argue that the time is long overdue for the United States to "get back to the basics" of a fully functional education system. We need to exclusively focus on the development of communication skills from kindergarten to eighth grade along with annual testing that measures apptitude and interest. Training in mathematics should be limited to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Unless communication skills are fully mastered, there is no need to advance to high school.

For those who graduate to high school, the emphasis could evolve into a curriculum of philosophy, sociology, economics, psychology, science and religious studies. Books such as "For Dummies" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide" could be used to foster an understanding of different religions. Athletic activity would be strictly confined to cardio vascular exercises and all sports would be eliminated. While there would still be an emphasis on communication skills, the focus would now be on developing a foundation of basic knowledge so as to be able to graduate to college. Testing for apptitude and interest would continue through high school increasing the chances of picking the right field of study . Those not continuing on to college would enter some type of apprenticeship training for the purpose of learning a trade. For those who do graduate to college, the student would continue to study an advanced version of the same curriculum as high school but only for the first two years then they would complete their education by strictly focusing on coursework designed to train them in their field of study. Nearing graduation, internships would be required to begin the transition to the working world. Think of how different our society would be if our education system could just teach the fundamentals of reading, writing and speaking.
 
Dude. Half the point of being a rich, competitive nation is to have a little fun with our leisure time and maybe even school/work too. Your proposed school would be awful, and any sane person would skip out on it. Japan tried something close to that. Everyone worried that they were going to buy the world, then they entered 10 consecutive years of recession. Pass, thanks.
 
Hmmm. All schools must be private, but here is the curriculum they must follow.

What's the point of a private school with a mandated curriculum?
 
manny said:
Dude. Half the point of being a rich, competitive nation is to have a little fun with our leisure time and maybe even school/work too. Your proposed school would be awful, and any sane person would skip out on it. Japan tried something close to that. Everyone worried that they were going to buy the world, then they entered 10 consecutive years of recession. Pass, thanks.
Click to expand...

How is Teldar Paper these days? ;)
 
JOEBIALEK said:
This is the second part to an earlier writing about education in the United States. As you may recall, I advocated for the privatization of all schools from kindergarten to graduate studies. This piece will focus on the curriculum that needs to be followed.
Click to expand...

Define and explain "privatize," and explain what organization or entity would be responsible for administering this curriculum.

Everytime I encounter someone in the workplace, I am reminded of just how much we have failed to properly educate United States citizens in the fundamentals of communication: reading, writing and speaking.
Click to expand...

I could point out the obvious errors in your own "communication," but I won't. It's so base, and so easily done. (You could, however, stand to hire yourself a pronoun wrangler, pardner.)

Few would argue that the time is long overdue for the United States to "get back to the basics" of a fully functional education system. We need to exclusively focus on the development of communication skills from kindergarten to eighth grade along with annual testing that measures apptitude and interest.
Click to expand...

And do what with the results of such assessments? Assessments are meaningless without a structure to assimilate the data gathered and put it to some sort of defined use.

Training in mathematics should be limited to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Unless communication skills are fully mastered, there is no need to advance to high school.
Click to expand...

Interesting. So your plan would knowingly and deliberately inject undereducated minors into society, rather than actually reform or restructure the educational system so that more students might be successfully graduated with improved comprehension and critical thinking skills.

Wait. That's not interesting. That's frightening.

Why the limit on mathematics? Considering that math, and I do mean algebraics, is found in every human endeavor, one would think you'd have the sense to know that more maths must be learned, not fewer.

For those who graduate to high school, the emphasis could evolve into a curriculum of philosophy, sociology, economics, psychology, science and religious studies. Books such as "For Dummies" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide" could be used to foster an understanding of different religions.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. This is all a joke.

Athletic activity would be strictly confined to cardio vascular exercises and all sports would be eliminated. While there would still be an emphasis on communication skills, the focus would now be on developing a foundation of basic knowledge so as to be able to graduate to college.
Click to expand...

So to what philosophy of education do you subscribe that advocates "knowledge," the least productive level of Bloom's taxonomy, as the sole sufficient foundation of education for college? Do your hypothetical students not need any skill or ability at synthesis, analysis, or evaluation?
Great. A bunch of kids who "know" a lot of stuff (like "there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do" --Christianity for Dummies, 2005), but haven't a clue how to use it. They're just what the country needs.

Testing for apptitude and interest would continue through high school increasing the chances of picking the right field of study . Those not continuing on to college would enter some type of apprenticeship training for the purpose of learning a trade. For those who do graduate to college, the student would continue to study an advanced version of the same curriculum as high school but only for the first two years then they would complete their education by strictly focusing on coursework designed to train them in their field of study. Nearing graduation, internships would be required to begin the transition to the working world. Think of how different our society would be if our education system could just teach the fundamentals of reading, writing and speaking.
Click to expand...

I'm so irked by the huge number of errors in this paragraph, I just don't wanna talk to you no more. I bet you also use phrases like "free gift," and "true fact," don'tcha?
 
JOEBIALEK said:
Everytime I encounter someone in the workplace, I am reminded of just how much we have failed to properly educate United States citizens in the fundamentals of communication:
Click to expand...

I think this says more about your workplace than it does about American education.

Few would argue that the time is long overdue for the United States to "get back to the basics" of a fully functional education system.
Click to expand...

I would. We have tried "back to the basics" movements repeatedly over the past eighty-odd years, with uniform lack of success. Focusing on "basic education" values rote knowledge over actual skill and decreases the ability of students to operate in a novel environment (such as the workplace).

We need to exclusively focus on the development of communication skills from kindergarten to eighth grade along with annual testing that measures apptitude and interest.
Click to expand...

Testing "that measures aptitude and interest" is useless, unless you have a plan for how this knowledge could be used pedagogically to increase performance -- since aptitude, by definition, is relatively fixed, and interest is orthogonal to performance, these are exactly the sort of things that will have no impact on the curriculum and teaching when measured. And "annual" testing will result in wasting tremendous amounts of classroom time, create a huge additional bureaucracy to develop, administer, and monitor the testing, and create a substantial reduction in classroom performance.

Training in mathematics should be limited to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Click to expand...

This will cripple secondary and post-secondary technical education. I assume you plan on hiring all your automotive and computer engineers from Japan? Because under this framework, there will be almost no American high school graduates capable of taking a first-year engineering (or science, or medical) curriculum.

Unless communication skills are fully mastered, there is no need to advance to high school.
Click to expand...

So we'll prevent a substantial number of students from achieving a high school education at all?

Think of how different our society would be if our education system could just teach the fundamentals of reading, writing and speaking.
Click to expand...

I am indeed. And I am appalled that you would consider such a positively medieval situation to be a step forward.

Indeed, if I were an enemy spy, with the intent of crippling American public education and destroying US society as a consequence, I would find it difficult to improve upon your proposal.
 
And, those of us who excel in mathematics and engineering, but who aren't the best written communicators in the world, you'd throw us away?

If we did what you suggest we'd set the nation back hundreds of years inside of two generations.

I worked at Bell Labs and at AT&T Research for 26 or 27 years, and I can tell you that the people there weren't the best communicators, but they could do math and engineering (and lots of other stuff) very well, indeed, invent new things, build them, and so on.

According to you, such people should not finish high school.

I'm sorry, your idea is simply foolish, and selects away from many of the people who have advanced civilization, modern or otherwise.
 
Given a choice between driving down the freeway in a car designed by someone with excellent higher math skills but poor communication skills, and a car designed by someone with excellent communication skills but whose math is limited to the basics, I would have much more confidence in the former. Thus your proposal sucks eggs on that point alone.

I won't even go into such things as your flagrantly illogical proposal that schools be privataized yet have the curriculum mandated by law. You may as well ask for square circles. But others have already pointed out this immense logical flaw.
 
The US education system is just fine. Everyone starts off with this given premis that its all screwed up. Thats bullflop. You dont become one of the leading countries in the world wh/o haveing a strong education base.

By the way whats wrong with sports? I think of education as being more than factual memorization and propeller head robotic students.
 
Tmy said:
The US education system is just fine. Everyone starts off with this given premis that its all screwed up. Thats bullflop. You dont become one of the leading countries in the world wh/o haveing a strong education base.

By the way whats wrong with sports? I think of education as being more than factual memorization and propeller head robotic students.
Click to expand...

Dude, you are responding to someone who is a spammer who will never return to read your posts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom