The Defeat of the Schools - 39.03

The Defeat of the Schools - 39.03: "Most people--certainly most laymen--would be apt to think that the chief business of the schools is to give pupils at least a modest working knowledge of the subjects of the curriculum. Not a few students of education, it is true, consider that this is a misconception, and that the true purpose of schools is to bring about an adjustment to social demands for which the various subjects are at best only means. Nobody, however, who surveys the conventional working apparatus of courses of study, textbooks, recitations, examinations, and marks can have much doubt that in practice the schools are making the mastery of the curriculum an end in itself. Whether in theory they ought to or not, this in fact is what they are manifestly trying to do."

From 1939, it's been happening for a long time.

Education videos from everywhere

There has just been an explosion of educational video resources.

youTube EDU
Academic Earth
Open Culture
MIT Opencourseware
Stanford Engineering Everywhere
iTunesU
And more

A great time to be alive.

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids: Scientific American

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids: Scientific American: "Parents and teachers can engender a growth mind-set in children by praising them for their effort or persistence (rather than for their intelligence), by telling success stories that emphasize hard work and love of learning, and by teaching them about the brain as a learning machine."

A 30 year study!? Well, we had to be sure, maybe they should have nuked it from orbit.

Concentration

Concentration: "Concentration means directing one's attention on whatever one intends. We all have a natural ability to concentrate. Have you noticed how difficult it is to get young children's attention when they are playing? Do you remember the time when you were completely engrossed in an interesting novel, a super film, an exciting match or an exhilarating piece of music? You were concentrating then. "

We also know this as flow.

A Very powerful and very useful skill and one well worth learning.

Occasionally I go tot he library to "get away from it all," but sometimes there are some people who just don't get that a library is supposed to be quiet. If I can here someone talking on a cellphone a good 50 feet away they are talking way too load. The library is generally well designed, it has a separate children's room that keeps the noise under control, but some of their chairs are absolutely awful, they cut into you spine if you try leaning back.

Why No Child Wants To Study Math and Science

Kansas City area students recognize that their generation had better master math and science.

But too many of them, according to a survey released today, answer, “Who, me?” when asked what they personally intended to do about it.

from theKansas City Star

Most engineering schools stress subjects like differential calculus and physics, and their graduates tend to end up narrowly focused and likely to fit the stereotype of a socially awkward clock-puncher. Richard K. Miller, the president of the school, likes to share a professional joke: “How can you tell an extroverted engineer? He’s the one who looks at your shoes when he talks to you.”

from The New York Times

I have noticed that children aren't all that dumb, they may not be able to tell you in some may words why they know something is bad but they do have the gut feeling that something is wrong. They read Dilbert and see that it is too close to the truth, when their Uncle Bob or their friend's dad is laid off and it takes months if not years for that family to recover.

They might not have a plan on what they should do but they do have a clue about what they know won't work out. How many times do you have to hear on the news that more engineers are being laid off and jobs moved offshore before you realize that engineering is not a good, safe job.

Getting a math, science or engineering degree is hard work, and then when you do get a job, even if you do a great job solving a problem that had never been solved before, it is all that was expected of you, but if something doesn't come out in just the right color, you're fired. The story of the guy who invented the blue LED and got $11,000 for it is real. And there are tons of other stories about inventors getting fleeced. One of my former bosses had founded a company but he was little more then a show dog for them, he would invent things and get hardly anything back from the company after he gave control to the VCs who put in their own management team.

The kids see "All pain, no gain" so obviously they are going to choose to go in another direction.

An engineering degree is a long hard slog, I remember we had a whole college lecture and the speaker asked how many expected to graduate in 4 years, only 1 person raised their hand out of 1500 students, most expected 5-6 years. And when you do get out of school you end up doing huge amounts of grunt work, until you are ready to do real work.

If they are even the slightest bit diligent they realize that businesses aren't really interested in engineering for the most part. Engineering wages have been stagnant for decades, except for a blip for the dotboom period. They hear their parents or the parents of friends about how the engineer slaves all day and night but the English LIt manager gets all the reward.

Why should they ever think of going into the hard stuff when the soft stuff gets better rewards.

I have got to give Olin credit here. Helping engineers be more entrepreneurial will help them far more then another math class ever will.

MIT Entrance Examination, 1869-70: Exhibits: : Institute Archives & Special Collections: MIT

MIT Entrance Examination, 1869-70: Exhibits: : Institute Archives & Special Collections: MIT

This is pretty cool and fairly tough. These are scans of the test questions and are not for the faint of brain.

If you are homeschooling it is a glimpse into what was important to people then and that is important to know. It is a way to think about how you might want to test your own children and see what is important to you.

I wonder if the tests actually got them the poeple they were looking fo or someone else. These tests are there to exclude people. But were they the right ones to exclude?

TCS Daily - CEOs Learning About Education

TCS Daily - CEOs Learning About Education: "They also recognize that restrictions induced by the federal No Child Left Behind act 'have made it more difficult for high schools to take a radically different approach to curriculum and instruction.' In other words, the autonomy required for the replication of successful enterprises is currently stifled by central planning."

It is amazing how some well meaning group can spend so much money to learn something that a million+ people figured out without spending any money at all.

The school system is tied up in its own red tape and cannot change. The administrators are going to do everything in their power to protect their jobs, that is natural. Everyone wants to protect their income and therefore their family.

We, the people, just need to make it painful enough for them to make it in their interest to change. But that doesn;t help our children so we homeschool.

We've been officaially homeschooling for a couple of weeks now and she is generally quite excited about schooltime. Not always but then she is 5 and that is okay we toss plan A and pull out plan B and see what she would like to do and add some material to it to make it more educational.

It is the full Moon right now and we were driving around and she mentioned that the Moon was following us. I explained why it looked that way. And so it goes.

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries (Curious Expeditions)

Sublime.

But they missed this one. Which I have actually visited and is wonderful.

Significant Literature

The article linked above (from hatrack) really hammers home something I ran across before, that modern literature doesn't seem to do any heavy thinking any more. I've noticed in school that a lot of the books I read in my English classes where rather meaningless. They didn't really go anywhere and didn't do anything or have anything to say at the end of the trip. Finishing the book was like finishing a sit-com, that was a waste of my time.

I've long been a fan of sci-fi and fantasy and now Harry Potter. They tended to wrestle with hard problems come out with something that may or may not work.

Almost everyone ignores or disdains those genres, and that is okay by me. It's really for the best. What they don't know can't challenge their mindset.

The thing is I remember when Star Wars came out. I saw it 9 times and drove my parents crazy about it. They see what they believe is everything that it is about. A space shoot-em-up and rescue the princess story. Eventually it made its way through the Iron Curtain, and the censors saw the same things: a nice safe space western, no threat to the Party. Talking to my cousins after they'd seen it, they saw what I saw, the little guy can make a difference and destroy the empire. I might not be the Luke but I can be the Biggs that let's Luke get his shot off.

People see what they expect to see. There was someone railing against Harry Potter because it isn't Christian because it is set after the ministry Christ and doesn't talk about it, while The Lord of the Rings is okay since it is set before. That just made my head spin and I had to stop reading, it made no sense to me whatsoever.

If you want to write something that is going to do some serious thinking forget about trying to get into traditional literature, you have to go into the children's or fantasy genres to do it. Pixar is doing the same thing very well. The Incredibles taught that happiness is found through honesty to ourselves and families. Cars; there is more to life then work, and Ratatouille explores loyalty to self, family and friends. Much deeper then the comedies they appear to be.

The economics of parenting

I came across a couple of really tough articles via Instapundit. I've known for a while that being a parent is pretty hard stuff and that it is getting to be very hard to raise kids, I know I worry about things my parents didn't, and I am censoring myself just by talking about it.

This is worth a little compare and contrast.

From Pajamas Media:

Piano lessons, tutoring, art classes and vacations to Europe can all be very enriching. But they become nothing more than highlights on a resume when they are forced upon a child whose life is completely controlled and scheduled.

From TCS Daily:

Parenting was always hard work, of course. But aside from the economic payoffs, parents used to get a lot of social benefits, too. But in recent decades, a collection of parenting "experts" and safety-fascist types have extinguished some of the benefits while raising the costs, to the point where what's amazing isn't that people are having fewer kids, but that people are having kids at all.

There are a lot of downsides to having children. DINKs have been around for a while but not all that long in the grand scheme of things. It isn't just the economics that are bad it is all the small and petty annoyances that really get you.

The money quote has got to be this one:

NPR reported this month on “competitive birthing,” an example of wealthy families choosing to have many kids because they view it as a status symbol. While higher incomes have historically led to smaller families, in the past 10 years the number of rich parents having three or more kids has increased by 30 percent.

That is bucking a trend that has been around for a good long time, but I guess it isn't a surprise. It used to be if you were rich you wanted pale skin because that was a status symbol of saying you didn't have to work outside. When a large portion of the population moved to the city and office work and everyone was pale then the status symbol became having a really good tan. The symbols change over time as the middle class follows the symbols, so now it is birthing.

I would not call this a good sign for our society.

Aug. 17, 1807: 'Fulton's Folly' Steams Up the Hudson

Aug. 17, 1807: 'Fulton's Folly' Steams Up the Hudson : "Nevertheless, he persevered and by 1807 'Fulton's Folly,' as the local wags christened the Clermont, was ready to sail. It was a leisurely trip, taking 32 hours to reach the state capitol while steaming along at about 5 mph. "

A great day in history.

Forced to Pick a Major in High School - New York Times

Forced to Pick a Major in High School - New York Times: "Two years ago, Akelia applied to the magnet program%u2019s law and public safety academy because she wanted to be a lawyer. But after finding many of the legal cases boring and hard to relate to, she was unable to take classes in other fields because she was locked into her specialization."

At first I was thinking this might be a good idea for some students, but as this quote shows all they are doing is following the European model. I spent quite some time in Europe and one of the things I've noticed was the enormous amount of time, money and energy they spent on hobbies.

Europeans tend to be very hidebound in their thinking. "This is the way it's always been done." Even being a non-conformist there is very structured, I wish I had taken more street pictures showing how all the "free-thinking" kids were the same city to city. Being anti-x is not the same as being different.

The problem here is that it isn't going to help. With the loss of pretty much everything outside of college track there really isn't much choice here. They dropped shop and home ec a long time ago.

This is going to be terrible.

We have to take control of our children's education, it's too important to leave it up to the professionals.

The most important thing about learning is making it interesting, which is very different from entertaining.
• One great way to learn electronics is to get a Ham radio license and start building your own antennas and radios.
• Want to learn small engine repair, which scales nicely to larger engines, is to grab an old dead lawnmower at a garage sale and fix it up.
• If business is something you want to learn you could turn that lawnmower repair experience into real summertime business. Setup the corporation, hire employees: someone to gather lawnmowers from yard sales, someone else to repair them and someone to sell them.
• want to learn archeology there may be a dig not all that far away from your home.

The possibilities are endless.

A Little Learning Is an Expensive Thing - New York Times

A Little Learning Is an Expensive Thing - New York Times: "When I was a college president, I was never able to give incoming freshmen the honest talk I wanted to. But had I done so, here's what I would have said:"

The realities of the situation of the price of higher education.

Start saving now.

Education 2.0: What%u2019s most important to do in college today? � Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

Education 2.0: What%u2019s most important to do in college today? � Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk: "In general I think college kids should prepare for the work world by learning to make friends with a wide range of people on campus and lay off the books. But maybe that%u2019s because I found that the time I was getting straight A%u2019s in college was the time I was learning the least."

On the one hand I agree with her. Sacrificing a social life for education is a problem. On the other hand if you're not trying to do something important with your education why are you spending the money?

What I have to encourage my daughter to do is to balance these things. Spend time getting to know and network with other people and work on hard problems and generally be a nice person.

U.S. Drops Out of Global Math Test - Newsweek Education - MSNBC.com

U.S. Drops Out of Global Math Test - Newsweek Education - MSNBC.com : "The United States has quietly withdrawn from an international study comparing math and science students."

Ah, we don't really need math anyway. Besides it boosts school test scores

A whimper not a bang.

A DIALOGUE WITH SARAH, AGED 3: IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF YOUR DAD ISA CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR, ASKING %u201CWHY%u201D CAN BE DANGEROUS

A DIALOGUE WITH SARAH, AGED 3: IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF YOUR DAD IS
A CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR, ASKING %u201CWHY%u201D CAN BE DANGEROUS: "A DIALOGUE WITH SARAH, AGED 3: IN
WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF YOUR DAD IS A CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR, ASKING %u201CWHY%u201D CAN
BE DANGEROUS"

Engineers are just as bad. I've have similar conversations with my 4 year old and my wife actually.

Feeding the desires behind these questions are great, but it does get murky when gone far enough.

I am always amazed by people who say science has all the answers. They just don't get it. They've just stopped asking why too early. The fun part is when you get to the point of saying, "I don't know." If your next statement is, "I want to find out." You are a scientist.

Teaching and Learning Teamwork

"I'm glad that people who love sports have had a good time with them. But don't ever, ever say, "This is a life lesson that you just can't learn any other way." There are no life lessons that you can't learn any other way.

And a kid who's lousy at sports but good at music or theatre or writing or videogames should get as much encouragement and honor as any athlete.

But he won't.

And that's what I hate about sports. That these physical games get treated, by kids and adults, as if they mattered more than activities that are just as valid, just as competitive, just as rewarding -- and maybe more so.

There is no excuse for athletes being more respected and honored in school than scholars. But few indeed are the high schools that provide scholars and musicians and actors and poets with anything remotely like the honor given to athletes. And it's not because athletics is harder than those other activities."

One of the top business skills out there right now is teamwork. It seems like everyone wants team players for their team. If are are going into management team building skills are in huge demand. Obviously there is a disconnect between the desire and the reality.

I want our children to learn team skills. But I've been on sports teams in the past and those are just not the skills that are needed. "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." "Taking one for the team."

My boss was a soccer coach last year and he loved the kids but hated the parents who wanted to win at all costs. This year his 8-year-old is on a team that has practice 5 days a week for at least 2.5 hours until the season starts and then it will only be 3 days for 2 hours. He complains that pro teams don't do that much practicing. But they still go. I am not sure that lessons learn there will be ones that will provide for a good and happy life.

I enjoy being part of teams. I readily admit I don't know everything or am the best at any particular skill, but with a team we multiply are skills in ways that I've never really seen in sports.
In my dorm at the university the 6 of us quickly got a reputation for "knowing everything." Between engineering, physics, chemistry, computer science and political science, we did seem to know an awful lot about all kinds of stuff. One guy even complained about us having forgotten more math then he ever learned. But still people came for help and we did what we could which often was a whole lot.

Lots of good teams I've been on haven't lasted very long, sometimes just a few hours someplace to clean up a historical site or help out at the community cannery.

One experience at the cannery was amazing. We needed to assemble the boxes to put all the cans in. A few of us went to do that job and we were all going it alone getting a box, opening it, taping it, and putting the dividers in. A few minutes of that we realized that was too slow so we formed into an assembly line and cranked out more boxes then they needed by the time the head guy came around again to see how we were doing.

There are lots of places to learn teamwork and most of them aren't sports. A band, a choir, a theater group, Ham radio club (our current project), a scout troop, or any where that a group comes together to accomplish something is all you really need and a desire to dive in and help.

We want our children to learn teamwork but sports may only be one place out of many to learn that.

Teach your kids to read, no one else will.

Current View: "But if you are concerned about your children, teach them to read. Do it yourself, or in concert with other parents, but do not entrust them to either the public or most private schools. The teaching profession is dominated by professors of education, few -- if any -- of whom ever taught small children to read."

Make sure to read the article that Jerry links too as well.

Can the schools be fixed? It sure looks like they don't want it to be fixed and that is where the real problem lies.

Gateway Educational Subjects

We just took the first lesson in a Ham Radio class and I realize that getting a Radio Technicians license is a great gateway subject into electrical engineering. It's a bit of math and electronics and a whole lot of fun.

A gateway subject sparks the fire of curiosity into a line of inquiry. People learn faster and better when they are interested in a subject.

There are other educational subject that are gateways to greater understanding.
Cooking gateways into physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics. Alton Brown of Good Eats does a great job of relating cooking to science.

Algebra for higher mathematics. If you have algebra down everything else is pretty easy. We used to complain in our calculus class that the calculus was easy the algebra afterwards was hard, mainly because that was the place we make the most mistakes.

Swimming may be a good gateway to other physical activities, by knowing how to swim you can be confident in water which is a good thing, and is gentle to your body for a workout.

Piano can be the gateway to greater musical talent and appreciation.

A Teacher Grows Disillusioned After a ‘Fail’ Becomes a ‘Pass’ - New York Times

A Teacher Grows Disillusioned After a ‘Fail’ Becomes a ‘Pass’ - New York Times: "Mr. Lampros’s introduction to the high school’s academic standards proved a fitting preamble to a disastrous year. It reached its low point in late June, when Arts and Technology’s principal, Anne Geiger, overruled Mr. Lampros and passed a senior whom he had failed in a required math course."

The dumb thing is that this girl will suffer most over time and society will have to bear that burden. She is not likely to reach her full potential.

It may be even worse then we fear. At least the graduation rate is still good a that school.