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Tobodai
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Topic: A Great Education Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 22:55 |
cannot be ofund in America...this article I thought illuminated the point very well.
http://www.reason.com/hod/js011306.shtml
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"the people are nothing but a great beast...
I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value."
-Alexander Hamilton
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poirot
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Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 23:19 |
sad! Belgian kids rule
Edited by poirot
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AAAAAAAAAA
"The crisis of yesterday is the joke of tomorrow.� ~ HG Wells
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Constantine XI
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Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 23:42 |
While I agree that in the US's case it may be sensible to allow wider opportunities for education, I feel it necessary to make some forewarnings. The government cannot simply parcel the problem off to the private sector and expect everything to be ok. In even the richest societies there will always be students from poor or apathetic families who have the means to do perfectly well inspite of their circumstances.
Maybe America should allow privately run schools (needless to say poorer students will not get in). But if the government does not address the issue of students who can't afford such schools and just think the private sector will invisibly take care of everything they are seriously mistaken. Build bridges for all students, not just those from wealthy and attentive families.
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Genghis
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 00:35 |
A voucher system to reintroduce competition into the American school system would be a good way of increasing quality. I totally agree with that article, a government monopoly can't do anything right.
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gcle2003
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 05:11 |
Originally posted by Genghis
A voucher system to reintroduce competition into the American school system would be a good way of increasing quality. I totally agree with that article, a government monopoly can't do anything right. |
A voucher system will simply increase private school fees. You'll just have to pay the current fees PLUS a voucher to get in.
Increasing monetary demand, with no other action, just pushes up prices.
(It's possible you might get some new entries on the supply side, with cheap private schools being set up at the low-quality end. But generally the higher quality schools will just put up their prices.)
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ulrich von hutten
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 05:33 |
non modo in schola ,sed etiam in vita discimus -
and what i learned in my life is ,that obviously i'm surrounded of stupidity and even the silliest rule the world.
let's make an alliance against stupidity (AAS) and let's start here in this forum
with our work .there's a lot to do !
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Decebal
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 08:46 |
Originally posted by Genghis
A voucher system to reintroduce competition into the American school system would be a good way of increasing quality. I totally agree with that article, a government monopoly can't do anything right. |
I agree that government monopolies are generally bad in situations where there is profit involved. But pre-universitary education is not one of those situations. I went to school until grade 8 in Romania, in a system that had been setup by a communist regime, and I can tell you that it was much more advanced than the North American system. Once I moved to Canada, I didn't learn anything new in math, science, chemistry and biology until grade 11! I'm fairly confident that a grade 10 Romanian student could pass an SAT equivalent with flying colors.
The problem with the North American system is first and foremost that it is oriented towards giving everyone a very basic education; the student that it has in mind is the mediocre student. The European and Asian school systems are designed with the good students in mind. An average European student is challenged a lot more than an American student. The level of difficulty in the North American education system increases like a parabola, increasingly getting more difficult as time goes by, especially in university. By contrast, the difficulty level in European and East Asian education systems is more linear, so in lower grades they have a huge head start over their American counterparts. The only time that American or Canadian students can catch up is in university.
Every single school system has its problems regarding poor teachers and funding, but I think that these are primarily not to blame for the education of the American students. It is a systemic problem of approach instead.
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What is history but a fable agreed upon?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.- Mohandas Gandhi
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Maju
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 10:16 |
I couldn't agree more with Decebal: the problem with the US school
system is that is not challenging at all. All my life I have got about
8 hours of class daily, while in the USA they have 6; when I did my
12th degree in a US High School, I didn't study at all and still I
graduated with golden ribbon. Furthermore I found the school
administrators greedy and ignorant: I asked for high level maths and
they placed me studying things that I had alredy gone through in 8th
grade. Besides, most Nordamericans don't have libraries at home, not
even an encyclopedia, that obviously makes their children intelectually
lazy. The US passion for sports, while maybe healthy, is also
undermining the standards of what is expected from a normal child or
teen: it seems that if you are good at school but a mediocre football
player you are nobody (a nerd?)
and the opposite is like being a god, what is ridiculous. In Europe
things are more balanced in this regard, while education is still
public and affordable for the most part.
Edited by Maju
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NO GOD, NO MASTER!
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Kalevipoeg
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 13:10 |
Yes, America is doing bad in overall education, but comparing them to
Belgium will hardly do. I don't think American parents care what those
little Asian countries do with their education, they live in the west. Sorry, an obscene joke, but i'll leave it in the post nevertheless.
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There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge...
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Genghis
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 16:24 |
Originally posted by gcle2003
Originally posted by Genghis
A voucher system to reintroduce competition into the American school system would be a good way of increasing quality. I totally agree with that article, a government monopoly can't do anything right. |
A voucher system will simply increase private school fees. You'll just have to pay the current fees PLUS a voucher to get in.
Increasing monetary demand, with no other action, just pushes up prices.
(It's possible you might get some new entries on the supply side, with cheap private schools being set up at the low-quality end. But generally the higher quality schools will just put up their prices.)
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Increased profits though will draw more people to the education business. There will be a rough transition period but that's to be expected whenever you're going over from one system to the other. Again, I'm not a hardcore voucher fan, but there must be some way of introducing competition between schools.
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pikeshot1600
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 16:29 |
I went to Catholic schools and an independent (non public) university, and I think I got a pretty good education. Most of the people I know would agree, I think.
It probably depends on where you are. Many innercity schools and those systems in the deep south and Appalachia don't have the stronger schools as resources are more limited.
Because of the new push in test scores, public high school kids in my neighborhood are getting homework that is heavier than mine was. One 16 year old said his daily homework assignments took about six hours, due to AP in his case, and he had cut back on his other school activities.
Another kid said hers were often 5 hours a day or so.
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Fort Brooklyn
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 17:19 |
While this is a growing problem, as said before it's where you come from. Alot of American families don't put too much thought into a GREAT education. Their kids scrape their through high school to just get the diploma and then either not go to college or not graduate. But on the other hand, They're other families who put alot of attention into their childrens education.
Not to mention the school systems in this country are in the sh*tter. Huge classes being taught in a half an hour timeframe is bad enough, but the information is almost wrong or only half the truth. (Coming from personal experience).
But yeah. I used to know someone from Belgium and from what I learned, education is a high priority over there. I think I can remember the person telling me they had like four language classes almost and all the other classes. In America, SOMETIMES you'll get a language class, it's usually Spanish and it never gets finished.
Edited by Fort Brooklyn
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pikeshot1600
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 20:15 |
Originally posted by Fort Brooklyn
While this is a growing problem, as said before it's where you come from. Alot of American families don't put too much thought into a GREAT education. Their kids scrape their through high school to just get the diploma and then either not go to college or not graduate. But on the other hand, They're other families who put alot of attention into their childrens education.
Not to mention the school systems in this country are in the sh*tter. Huge classes being taught in a half an hour timeframe is bad enough, but the information is almost wrong or only half the truth. (Coming from personal experience).
But yeah. I used to know someone from Belgium and from what I learned, education is a high priority over there. I think I can remember the person telling me they had like four language classes almost and all the other classes. In America, SOMETIMES you'll get a language class, it's usually Spanish and it never gets finished.
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Well, in Belgium you are very close to populations that speak other languages. In the U.S., not so. Languages are a "use it or lose it" skill. Academic training in languages is probably not going to help you in colloquial conversation as all that changes frequently. You sound like a dictee in the textbook!
All you French Canadians, don't get upset, but on a trip to Quebec, in a cafe, I was ridiculed by natives because: "he can't speak French, ha ha ha." Well, true enough, but it is they who seem to need to speak English to get along. It was the unfriendly attitude that pissed me off.
After all, the official lingua franca of AE is....English.
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flyingzone
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 22:36 |
Originally posted by Decebal
The problem with the North American system is first and foremost that it is oriented towards giving everyone a very basic education; the student that it has in mind is the mediocre student. The European and Asian school systems are designed with the good students in mind. An average European student is challenged a lot more than an American student. The level of difficulty in the North American education system increases like a parabola, increasingly getting more difficult as time goes by, especially in university. By contrast, the difficulty level in European and East Asian education systems is more linear, so in lower grades they have a huge head start over their American counterparts. The only time that American or Canadian students can catch up is in university.
Every single school system has its problems regarding poor teachers and funding, but I think that these are primarily not to blame for the education of the American students. It is a systemic problem of approach instead.
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The word "systemic" is really the key. EVEN if the voucher system is a feasible solution to the problem of poor performance of American students (which, by the way, I don't agree), it can only be part of the solution. (By the way, John Stossel, the guy who wrote that article, is a big time conservative, not that it matters - or does it?) Anyone who proposes that as THE solution to the problem is, again, oversimplifying things, trying to provide a simplistic and unidimensional solution to a complex problem.
Again, the key word is "systemic". It is a systemic problem. I agree with what Decebal says (or implies) in regard to the idea of what the education system expects of a student. Any North American educator would be either shamed or shocked if he or she gets a chance to see what's being taught in the elementary and high schools in Europe and in Asia.
And I think Decebal is a little bit too generous with North American universities. Personally, I think even at the college/university level, at least in the freshman year, there still exists quite a discrepancy between what's taught in a typical North American university and a European/Asian one, especially in the science and technology programmes. That may explain why North America's top graduate schools, again especially in the science and technology programmes, are filled with students from Europe and Asia.
I am a college teacher. My experience is, the less teachers expect from their students, the less students expect from themselves. Unfortunately, we teachers are under a lot of pressure "from above" to lower our standards in order to make our department "look better" when it comes to student passing rate, which will in turn make our college look better in comparison with other competing colleges. As a result, both teachers and students are trapped in a vicious circle - the standard of our students is getting lower and lower, so we as teachers have to keep lowering our expectation from students, which in turn encourages even more mediocre student performance. This may in fact be a very common problem faced by a lot of North American schools and even colleges and universities.
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flyingzone
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Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 22:53 |
Originally posted by pikeshot1600
All you French Canadians, don't get upset, but on a trip to Quebec, in a cafe, I was ridiculed by natives because: "he can't speak French, ha ha ha." Well, true enough, but it is they who seem to need to speak English to get along. It was the unfriendly attitude that pissed me off.
After all, the official lingua franca of AE is....English.
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First of all, as a Quebecois, I apolgoize for the bad experience you had here in Quebec. Second, don't generalize your experience to all Quebecois. It's as silly to generalize all Quebecois as "unfriendly" and "language chauvinist" as to call all Americans "stupid" and "religious fanatic" (something that you resent, understandably). And third, you have to understand one thing. There are many foreign tourists and even tourists from English Canada who would walk into a store here and demand being served in English, and when they don't get the "language service" they expect, they would get mad and sometimes very rude and mean. But you have to understand that, even though Quebec is in North America, French is the language spoken here. You, even as a tourist, cannot expect everyone here to speak English, let alone speaking it well.
So while rudeness, whether language is concerned or not, is not a good thing, first of all, it is not a universal phenomenon here, and second, it goes both ways - there are some rude Quebecois but there are also some very rude tourists.
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Maju
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Posted: 14-Jan-2006 at 08:13 |
Originally posted by pikeshot1600
I went to Catholic schools and an independent
(non public) university, and I think I got a pretty good
education. Most of the people I know would agree, I think.
It probably depends on where you are. Many innercity schools
and those systems in the deep south and Appalachia don't have the
stronger schools as resources are more limited.
Because of the new push in test scores, public high school kids in
my neighborhood are getting homework that is heavier than mine
was. One 16 year old said his daily homework assignments
took about six hours, due to AP in his case, and he had cut back on his
other school activities.
Another kid said hers were often 5 hours a day or so.
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Homework, specially heavy one, doesn't work well either. Here it was totally abolished some time ago.
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NO GOD, NO MASTER!
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DayI
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Posted: 14-Jan-2006 at 08:38 |
Originally posted by Fort Brooklyn
But yeah. I used to know someone from Belgium and from what I learned, education is a high priority over there. I think I can remember the person telling me they had like four language classes almost and all the other classes. In America, SOMETIMES you'll get a language class, it's usually Spanish and it never gets finished.
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A Belgian used to know all the languages around them (beginning from french then to english and latin, later german and so on).
Out here (yes i live in Belgium) you start learning other languages from youth beginning with the second official language (is french) then to english, etc etc... Ive asked once "why do we learn all those languages, cant we survive with dutch?" he replyed "if you wanna improve youreself outside school in factory or somewhere else you must to know it all".
Now i see it myself, i do electronical programming i have to know german to program it (klockner Mller, Siemens step 7 all in german), if im finished with programming i go (somethimes) to french speaking area's to set up those stuff so ive must know also french (its ok). Plus next month i have to go to czech republic for installing electrical stuff so English is the language to communicate with them...
Edited by DayI
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Guests
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Posted: 14-Jan-2006 at 18:01 |
Well, in Belgium you are very close to populations that speak other languages. |
But many of them refuse to speak the language of the other half of the country, even if they are able to speak it.
It's not as bad as in the past though.
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flyingzone
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Posted: 16-Jan-2006 at 15:16 |
Originally posted by Decebal
Every single school system has its problems regarding poor teachers and funding, but I think that these are primarily not to blame for the education of the American students. It is a systemic problem of approach instead.
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Another indication of the "systemic" nature of the problem with the American education system is the inflitration of religion into school curricula. Already woefully lagging behind most developed and even some developing countries especially in elementary and high school science and mathematics, the United States is witnessing an alarming trend of elevating pseudo-scientific concepts such as "intelligent design" to the status of "real science", which, according to some "neo-Creationists" backed by the Religious Right of course, should be taught in American schools. The mere fact that the debate of whether schools should teach kids "intelligent design" in schools exists in the United States is just laughable and incomprehensible.
Personally I have no objection to teaching students ABOUT all religions (and atheism) under "ethics" or "religious studies" because whether one likes it or not, religion is an important social institution. But the separation between religion and education should be as scared as that between religion and state. Brainwashing kids with fairy tales like the virgin birth or the resurrection and spreading ignorance like homosexuality is a sin should be jobs that are most fittingly left to churches, not schools. After all, churches have tons of of experience in doing that.
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Fort Brooklyn
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Posted: 16-Jan-2006 at 16:19 |
Originally posted by DayI
A Belgian used to know all the languages around them (beginning from french then to english and latin, later german and so on).
Out here (yes i live in Belgium) you start learning other languages from youth beginning with the second official language (is french) then to english, etc etc... Ive asked once "why do we learn all those languages, cant we survive with dutch?" he replyed "if you wanna improve youreself outside school in factory or somewhere else you must to know it all".
Now i see it myself, i do electronical programming i have to know german to program it (klockner Mller, Siemens step 7 all in german), if im finished with programming i go (somethimes) to french speaking area's to set up those stuff so ive must know also french (its ok). Plus next month i have to go to czech republic for installing electrical stuff so English is the language to communicate with them...
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Yeah, it's a wee bit harder in New York. Heh. One side of my family came from Germany and the other from Italy and somewhere in the past 3 generations, they forgot the language. I had to learn it myself. And luckily I did for it would help me later in life and my lines of work.
Edited by Fort Brooklyn
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