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The Education System (pg. 2)
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| kush paintings |
Psy-t, Ill respond to your points more thoroughly and more directly later, I want to read over the articles again, but I dont think (which you may not be) you should underestimate the social interaction probelms between groups if schools were abolished. Please not, also, that I am not saying we dont have those problems right now, just to what I think would be a lesser magnitude than without schools.
And preppy? Huh? |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by kush paintings
Psy-t, Ill respond to your points more thoroughly and more directly later, I want to read over the articles again, but I dont think (which you may not be) you should underestimate the social interaction probelms between groups if schools were abolished. Please not, also, that I am not saying we dont have those problems right now, just to what I think would be a lesser magnitude than without schools.
And preppy? Huh? |
i'd recommend reading the book i linked to a few posts ago instead, in fact i'm actually considering making a new thread for it. |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by venomX
I have to run know, but i will say that i do not agree with this, and most research proves the otherwise, ie. that structured learning is more efficent and beneficious than unstructured learning. I'll post a more detailed rebuttal later.
PS. imo its a bad analogy, no offense. |
here's some research that supports it though:
| quote: | Intellectual Espionage
At the start of WWII millions of men showed up at registration offices to take low-level academic tests before being inducted.1 The years of maximum mobilization were 1942 to1944; the fighting force had been mostly schooled in the 1930s, both those inducted and those turned away. Of the 18 million men were tested, 17,280,000 of them were judged to have the minimum competence in reading required to be a soldier, a 96 percent literacy rate. Although this was a 2 percent fall-off from the 98 percent rate among voluntary military applicants ten years earlier, the dip was so small it didn’t worry anybody.
WWII was over in 1945. Six years later another war began in Korea. Several million men were tested for military service but this time 600,000 were rejected. Literacy in the draft pool had dropped to 81 percent, even though all that was needed to classify a soldier as literate was fourth- grade reading proficiency. In the few short years from the beginning of WWII to Korea, a terrifying problem of adult illiteracy had appeared. The Korean War group received most of its schooling in the 1940s, and it had more years in school with more professionally trained personnel and more scientifically selected textbooks than the WWII men, yet it could not read, write, count, speak, or think as well as the earlier, less-schooled contingent.
A third American war began in the mid-1960s. By its end in 1973 the number of men found noninductible by reason of inability to read safety instructions, interpret road signs, decipher orders, and so on—in other words, the number found illiterate—had reached 27 percent of the total pool. Vietnam-era young men had been schooled in the 1950s and the 1960s—much better schooled than either of the two earlier groups—but the 4 percent illiteracy of 1941 which had transmuted into the 19 percent illiteracy of 1952 had now had grown into the 27 percent illiteracy of 1970. Not only had the fraction of competent readers dropped to 73 percent but a substantial chunk of even those were only barely adequate; they could not keep abreast of developments by reading a newspaper, they could not read for pleasure, they could not sustain a thought or an argument, they could not write well enough to manage their own affairs without assistance.
Consider how much more compelling this steady progression of intellectual blindness is when we track it through army admissions tests rather than college admissions scores and standardized reading tests, which inflate apparent proficiency by frequently changing the way the tests are scored.
Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered. According to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was illiterate and you probably don’t want to know, not really, what people in those days considered literate; it’s too embarrassing. Popular novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10 million copies to match it. If you pick up an uncut version you find yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners, politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and well-educated reader can handle it nowadays. Yet in 1818 we were a small-farm nation without colleges or universities to speak of. Could those simple folk have had more complex minds than our own?
By 1940, the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites, 80 percent for blacks. Notice that for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were nevertheless literate. Six decades later, at the end of the twentieth century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can’t read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled. Before you think of anything else in regard to these numbers, think of this: we spend three to four times as much real money on schooling as we did sixty years ago, but sixty years ago virtually everyone, black or white, could read.
In their famous bestseller, The Bell Curve, prominent social analysts Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein say that what we’re seeing are the results of selective breeding in society. Smart people naturally get together with smart people, dumb people with dumb people. As they have children generation after generation, the differences between the groups gets larger and larger. That sounds plausible and the authors produce impressive mathematics to prove their case, but their documentation shows they are entirely ignorant of the military data available to challenge their contention. The terrifying drop in literacy between World War II and Korea happened in a decade, and even the brashest survival-of-the-fittest theorist wouldn’t argue evolution unfolds that way. The Bell Curve writers say black illiteracy (and violence) is genetically programmed, but like many academics they ignore contradictory evidence.
For example, on the matter of violence inscribed in black genes, the inconvenient parallel is to South Africa where 31 million blacks live, the same count living in the United States. Compare numbers of blacks who died by violence in South Africa in civil war conditions during 1989, 1990, and 1991 with our own peacetime mortality statistics and you find that far from exceeding the violent death toll in the United States or even matching it, South Africa had proportionately less than one-quarter the violent death rate of American blacks. If more contemporary comparisons are sought, we need only compare the current black literacy rate in the United States (56 percent) with the rate in Jamaica (98.5 percent)—a figure considerably higher than the American white literacy rate (83 percent).
If not heredity, what then? Well, one change is indisputable, well-documented and easy to track. During WWII, American public schools massively converted to non-phonetic ways of teaching reading. On the matter of violence alone this would seem to have impact: according to the Justice Department, 80 percent of the incarcerated violent criminal population is illiterate or nearly so (and 67 percent of all criminals locked up). There seems to be a direct connection between the humiliation poor readers experience and the life of angry criminals.2
As reading ability plummeted in America after WWII, crime soared, so did out-of-wedlock births, which doubled in the 1950s and doubled again in the ’60s, when bizarre violence for the first time became commonplace in daily life.
When literacy was first abandoned as a primary goal by schools, white people were in a better position than black people because they inherited a three-hundred-year-old American tradition of learning to read at home by matching spoken sound with letters, thus home assistance was able to correct the deficiencies of dumbed-down schools for whites. But black people had been forbidden to learn to read under slavery, and as late as 1930 only averaged three to four years of schooling, so they were helpless when teachers suddenly stopped teaching children to read, since they had no fall-back position. Not helpless because of genetic inferiority but because they had to trust school authorities to a much greater extent than white people.
Back in 1952 the Army quietly began hiring hundreds of psychologists to find out how 600,000 high school graduates had successfully faked illiteracy. Regna Wood sums up the episode this way:
After the psychologists told the officers that the graduates weren’t faking, Defense Department administrators knew that something terrible had happened in grade school reading instruction. And they knew it had started in the thirties. Why they remained silent, no one knows. The switch back to reading instruction that worked for everyone should have been made then. But it wasn’t.
In 1882, fifth graders read these authors in their Appleton School Reader: William Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others like them. In 1995, a student teacher of fifth graders in Minneapolis wrote to the local newspaper, "I was told children are not to be expected to spell the following words correctly: back, big, call, came, can, day, did, dog, down, get, good, have, he, home, if, in, is, it, like, little, man, morning, mother, my, night, off, out, over, people, play, ran, said, saw, she, some, soon, their, them, there, time, two, too, up, us, very, water, we, went, where, when, will, would, etc. Is this nuts?"
footnotes:
1 The discussion here is based on Regna Lee Wood’s work as printed in Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch’s Network News and Views (and reprinted many other places). Together with other statistical indictments, from the National Adult Literacy Survey, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and a host of other credible sources, it provides chilling evidence of the disastrous turn in reading methodology. But in a larger sense the author urges every reader to trust personal judgment over "numerical" evidence, whatever the source. During the writer’s 30-year classroom experience, the decline in student ability to comprehend difficult text was marked, while the ability to extract and parrot "information" in the form of "facts" was much less affected. This is a product of deliberate pedagogy, to what end is the burden of my essay.
2 A particularly clear example of the dynamics hypothesized to cause the correlation can be found in Michael S. Brunner’s monograph, "Reduced Recidivism and Increased Employment Opportunity Through Research-Based Reading Instruction," United States Department of Justice (June 1992). Brunner’s recent book Retarding America, written as a Visiting Fellow for the U.S. Department of Justice, is recommended. A growing body of documentation ties illiteracy causally to violent crime. A study by Dennis Hogenson titled "Reading Failure and Juvenile Delinquency" (Reading Reform Foundation) attempted to correlate teenage aggression with age, family size, number of parents present in home, rural versus urban environment, socio-economic status, minority group membership, and religious preference. None of these factors produced a significant correlation. But one did. As the author reports, "Only reading failure was found to correlate with aggression in both populations of delinquent boys." An organization of ex-prisoners testified before the Sub-Committee on Education of the U.S. Congress that in its opinion illiteracy was an important causative factor in crime "for the illiterate have very few honest ways to make a living." In 1994 the U.S. Department of Education acknowledged that two-thirds of all incarcerated criminals have poor literacy. |
| quote: | Looking Behind Appearances
Do you think class size, teacher compensation, and school revenue have much to do with education quality? If so, the conclusion is inescapable that we are living in a golden age. From 1955 to 1991 the U.S. pupil/teacher ratio dropped 40 percent, the average salary of teachers rose 50 percent (in real terms) and the annual expense per pupil, inflation adjusted, soared 350 percent. What other hypothesis, then, might fit the strange data I’m about to present?
Forget the 10 percent drop in SAT and Achievement Test scores the press beats to death with regularity; how do you explain the 37 percent decline since 1972 in students who score above 600 on the SAT? This is an absolute decline, not a relative one. It is not affected by an increase in unsuitable minds taking the test or by an increase in the numbers. The absolute body count of smart students is down drastically with a test not more difficult than yesterday’s but considerably less so.
What should be made of a 50 percent decline among the most rarefied group of test-takers, those who score above 750? In 1972, there were 2,817 American students who reached this pinnacle; only 1,438 did in 1994—when kids took a much easier test. Can a 50 percent decline occur in twenty-two years without signaling that some massive leveling in the public school mind is underway? |
taken from pages b & c of chapter 3. |
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| metalgearsolid |
| quote: | Originally posted by kush paintings
And preppy? Huh? |
Well what would you coin yourself?:conf: |
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| venomX |
| quote: | Originally posted by Psy-T
here's some research that supports it though:
taken from pages b & c of chapter 3. |
I think were stating different ideas. The pieces you posted argue for a revision of our teaching methods, but not for unstructured classes. What i stated was that structured classes are more beneficial than unstructured classes. What i mean by structured classes is classes with a clear goal and a well defined syllabus. Im my opinion a revision of our current inefficent methods is not exclusive of having structured classes. And nowhere in the pieces you posted does it argue that the drop in litteracy has been caused by increasingly structured classes. From what i gather it argues that we have gradually dumbed down school curriculums in an effort to make it easier for people, and are know experiencing the nasty side effects, ie. less informed people. |
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| DJ Shibby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Psy-T
how many years of schooling do you believe a child should go through, and why? |
One million billion. |
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| LazFX |
| quote: | Originally posted by venomX
From what i gather it argues that we have gradually dumbed down school curriculums in an effort to make it easier for people, and are know experiencing the nasty side effects, ie. less informed people. |
That point is true, schools are killing are future by insisting that everyone can win, by not allowing the normal growth process in a child's mind to developed. Little things such as not using Red Pens to grade, due in part that red is seen as a negative color. Giving out ribbons to every child that participates in an event. When I went to school, there were winners and losers. In education, sports and in life. Now they give ribbons and medals for just going to school. They give money to kids that have less than perfect attendance, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, what the hell has happened. Dumbing down the curriculum; in order to make it easier for kids has and will breed dumb graduates; college students and future workers. It really is so bad now that over 75% of a child school year is studying for an end of year test and nothing else.
One could argue that its not entirely the School System's fault, the fault also is in the Parents. The sad truth Mom & Dad is "your child is not an A student, Your child is not that good in sports, your child is not that great looking" with out "truth" and preparing a child for the "real" world; where every thing is not equal, you do not get a trophy for coming in second and "yes" little Billy, you are Not Special; is ing up our Western Civilization. |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by venomX
I think were stating different ideas. The pieces you posted argue for a revision of our teaching methods, but not for unstructured classes. What i stated was that structured classes are more beneficial than unstructured classes. What i mean by structured classes is classes with a clear goal and a well defined syllabus. Im my opinion a revision of our current inefficent methods is not exclusive of having structured classes. And nowhere in the pieces you posted does it argue that the drop in litteracy has been caused by increasingly structured classes. From what i gather it argues that we have gradually dumbed down school curriculums in an effort to make it easier for people, and are know experiencing the nasty side effects, ie. less informed people. |
i assumed that with time passing the education system has became more & more structured, can you really tell me that it's not the case, for instance, when we compare 1882 to today?
in any case, you can see the results unstructured learning brings in contrast with structured learning by comparing the early histories of Athens and Sparta. |
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| venomX |
| quote: | Originally posted by Psy-T
i assumed that with time passing the education system has became more & more structured, can you really tell me that it's not the case, for instance, when we compare 1882 to today?
in any case, you can see the results unstructured learning brings in contrast with structured learning by comparing the early histories of Athens and Sparta. |
I dont know how structured the system was in 1882, and i will agree that there was more interest in those times and in Athens and Sparta. But then we go back to my original point, that it is more than just changing the education system but changing what people value. An unstructured system worked well in Athens because of the value that was put on being an educated person, same in 1882. In our time we have seen a decline in the prestige and status associated with being an educated person. Its mentioned in the articles you posted with the issues of popularity in american high schools. In our current society i dont believe unstructured learning would work because of the little value and prestige associate with having a large knowledgebase. This little value would cause people to lack drive and hence only accomplish the bare minimun. |
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| Yoepus |
| quote: | Originally posted by Psy-T
taken from pages b & c of chapter 3. |
Actually the last parapgrah is wrong, can't be arsed to look up for links but the SAT changes its scoring annually, and the College Board (people who conduct the SAT) say that the SAT score has become harder and harder over the past 50 years, not less so.
So saying someone scored over 600 on the SAT in 1970 is not equivalent to a score of 600 in the SAT in 2000. The true intelligence of the 2000 600 score is much higher. |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
Actually the last parapgrah is wrong, can't be arsed to look up for links but the SAT changes its scoring annually, and the College Board (people who conduct the SAT) say that the SAT score has become harder and harder over the past 50 years, not less so.
So saying someone scored over 600 on the SAT in 1970 is not equivalent to a score of 600 in the SAT in 2000. The true intelligence of the 2000 600 score is much higher. |
i'm having trouble finding any information about it aside from the source i've already quoted several times here, so please give a few links. |
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| Yoepus |
ftp://ftp.ets.org/pub/res/researche...2-04-Dorans.pdf
Also from the link above, a different explination for why scores (or americans) were less educated in the 40s and 50s then before, look at page 2 section titled "Growing Concerns about the Original Set of Scales"
http://www.yale.edu/oir/open/pdf_pu..._Fresh_SATs.pdf
Mentions rescoring done in 1995 effected grades (negatively in this school).
Now I don't recall if this is true or not, but some part of my memory tells me that aside from the scoring, the test themselves have become more challenging. |
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