This is so sad:
The sophomores are tired and disgruntled. They’re grinding through Question 40, which is meant to test their knowledge of the difference between a mean and a median. To calculate the mean, add the salary numbers together and divide by the number of people, Guinn explains patiently. As she writes the long equation down on a white board, some students punch it into their calculators. Others zone out. And Sydne Kersey starts to get frustrated.
“There’s no easier way to do this?” Sydne, 15, asks.
Okay, how about we simply dismiss a lot of the idiotic wastes of time that are mandated by educators and let them do this at ten a.m.? And take the calculator budget and use it to give them high-protein snacks.
The amount of school time spent telling kids things they don’t need to know, or showing them movies, or doing useless group projects is vast. Let people kick back in the twilight hours.
Hat tip: Chris.
The lack of logic behind these things is appalling.
Problem:
Too many kids graduating lacking basic math and English skills, making them unfit to support themselves in almost any manner.
Solution 1: Make the necessary adjustments to ensure that kids learn basic math and English skills.
Solution 2: Require every student, regardless of his abilities or the likelihood of his entering any profession or career in which algebra is used, to learn algebra and biology.
“Hey, we’re failing teaching arithmetic to kids! I’ve got the solution: MAKE THEM PASS ALGEBRA TESTS!”
It’s absolutely insane!
Besides the fact that figuring means is basic arithmetic. It worries me that the teacher said, “This is algebra.” Though if she meant “You need to know this to do algebra,” that would be different. But it does make one wonder.
Mark,
I’m not entirely sure what you think the problem is here — that the kids are learning to calculate the mean and median (which is the more useful indicator of central tendency in this context: to know the median U.S. household income, or the mean U.S. household income? Defend your answer) or that they’re there at 4 p.m. (which isn’t exactly “twlight” except for a couple of weeks in December)?
Some observations:
[1] Get rid of band, P.E., typing, etc. Have students go to school for half a day.
[2] Homework expectations have changed since I (we?) were in school. My fourth grader often does homework the entire evening, through 9 or 10 p.m. (and sometimes does a half hour or so in the morning before school). I think it’s excessive, but parents and politicians decried lack of homework in the past, so teachers have been invited to pile it on. And they’ve responded.
That, plus the expectation that almost everyone will go to college. This has made the admissions process much, much more competitive that it has been in the past, and this has created a sort of prisoners’ dilemma game between students: students who would have easily attended the state’s flagship public university must now scratch and fight their way to maintain class rank to get into the same school — more studying, more AP classes (plus all the squishy stuff like volunteering to be a “rounded” individual). And even then they might still have to spend a year or two at a regional school before transferring into the flagship school.
Some of this is good news — more people want to go to college and have the means to do so. Nonetheless, childhood is somewhat less pleasant as a result. (Of course, childhood for college-bound kids in Europe has been like this forever.)
So, yes, it is a marathon, in a manner of speaking.
I found it quite credible that remedial coursework after a full day of school wasn’t a productive idea. And it frustrates me that the remedial material is probably more important than a lot of the require curricullum.
Yeah, the homework thing is something I have noticed. It makes homeschooling look tempting, except that now our kids would hate to miss the social interaction, and we weren’t all that in love with homeschooling when we tried it.
Everybody going to college is not a necessarily a good thing. How many people are blowing $50K or more on a college degree that has nothing to do with what they want to do in life? What’s the opportunity cost on the 4-5 years of near zero earnings and potential accumulated experience that is foregone to spend 4 years partying at State U?
Who is really better off, the newly minted graduate with a mountain of debt and no experience, or the 22 year old that has failed twice trying to start his own company, and having learned the important lessons on the way, is poised for a home run on try 3?
The other unsaid issue is why exactly does it take the schools all day and most of he night to impart basic knowledge on the kids? Why do homeschooled kids learn at least as much, if not more, in only 2-3 hours a day? Sure, class size is a big part of it, but the teachers professional training is supposed to compensate for that. Something is broken in the system, and piling more work on the kids to compensate for the system’s failures is not the answer.