One reason US students lag in math and science scores:

[Atticus]

for the past decade at least, the GOP has treated these fields as worthless.

No need to crunch numbers; no need to bother with formulas and calculations and precise determinations. Just use whatever figures fit your argument and simply "reject" the work of anyone stupid enough to have actually tried to calculate an accurate answer. SEE: http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/136397-republicans-reject-cbo-estimate-of-budget-effects-of-healthcare-repeal for an example.

And, science? Bah, hum-bug! It's just an elitest plot to distract honest Christians from the plain and simple truth of the Holy Bible. Fossil record? In a pig's eye! Just give me Genesis and don't profane The Word with your "scientific" blasphemy! SEE: http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers/topic/fossils

While we're at it, let's hear none of that "global climate change" nonsense! This claptrap about the ice melting and raising ocean levels might scare some, but thank the Almighty that good men like Illinois' Congressman Shimkus know their scripure! SEE: http://washingtonindependent.com/103079/shimkus-greatest-hits-climate-change-edition

So why should anyone bother to actually study math or science when the answer to any question in those fields is simply: (What would you like it to be?)

[JBoy]

1. Don't forget rapture day is in July 2012.

Why study when you've only got a year and a half to use the knowledge?

[Atticus]

2. Well, yes, there IS that. nt

[Avalux]

7. Sorry to correct you, but rapture day is 5/21/11.

They picked my birthday this year (that's why I remember it) and I'm oh so excited!! It will be the best present ever to wake up and find they're gone.

[lpbk2713]

14. Does Hallmark have any "Happy Rapture Day" cards out yet?

I'll have to stock up.


:rofl:

[Teaser]

31. You know, we could make this the biggest prank of all time

set up a bunch of "rapture cams" and then at 12:01 am, on 5/21...

[ladywnch]

27. do we have a date? I just want to know if we'll get to celebrate our

5 year wedding anniversary or not. :-)

[RandomThoughts]

3. Ah you are talking about the clever being thwarted.

I don't really think that is correct. It is a bit childish to think God needs to prove his smarts. I do think that if someone tries to be clever to hurt he may run into some things that stop that.

I also have heard that if you have faith then that is what is important, so having the weak and dumb succeed can show that it is not anything about the person. But again if it is not about the person then why free will in the first place, or why do people even have thoughts, so again that is not what I think of as God doing. Although I think faith is important to get past obsticals.


My point is this, there is a doctrine that says the weak will be elevated and the smart brought low.

That makes sense in why we need to break up consolidations, not as a punishment for smart, but to keep people closer together to avoid the problems of unequal distributions.


The group that picks dumb or offensive people and elevates them is the bad side, the group that picks actual people of good heart and intent, that people think are dumb or offensive by their own view of things, those get elevated by good side.


The concept that a mean uncaring dummy can make it is an insult or mean joke on all people, and not done from service side of forces in my view. Although they are easier to control, even to get them to do things that hurt many people. There are some things that hate people. But many more that care about people that don't need credit for stuff when they help people.

I can list many legislators that are smart and caring, but they also been kicked around by spells around some of the mean side. So it is not easy, also why it is so great when a victory is achieved, since the structure makes that difficult.

[LooseWilly]

9. Umm, a point of clarification: "service side of forces"?

What are the "service side of forces" that don't perform "an insult or mean joke on all people" by means of the exploitation of "The concept that a mean uncaring dummy can make it"?

Are you talking about God? Or... maybe the DMV?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. Education in the US lives in the dark ages

inflated grades, teaching to the test and stressing the kids out so that they can't learn.

[roody]

5. I don't know what other countries' tests are like,

but ours are all multiple choice, so it does not really test what the child knows. There is always a trick answer that is the outcome of an easily made error. If the kids would just calculate, we might know what they really do know. The teachers do know what they can do, but the outcomes of standardized tests do not always show what the children can do.

[Hannah Bell]

6. another reason is that 40% of students in china don't even attend high school, & the "tests"

the deformers are touting don't even sample HS students across china: they sample 5000 students in Shanghai, a city where the children of laborers from the provinces who actually do most of the work aren't allowed to attend schools (they must attend in the villages they came from).

Rural schools in China are notoriously worse than city schools, which cater to the westernized commercial classes.

Education in china is only free to 9th grade -- so you can see why so many don't attend HS.

So those tests are like comparing students from your local private prep school to all the students in the us.

IOW, it's bullshit.

[Terry_M]

8. Whatever the accuracy of testing against parts of China are...

As someone who has been through the education system of 4 different countries while growing up, I can tell you from personal experience that the education system in the US sucks.

[Hannah Bell]

11. there is no testing against "parts of china". there is testing of 5000 students in shanghai.

did you hear when i said FORTY PERCENT OF STUDENTS IN CHINA DON'T EVEN GO TO HIGH SCHOOL?

ps: as someone who worked in a japanese high school for 3 years, i can tell you their system sucks worse.

[Khan Descend]

10. Somewhere around 20 years ago, we stopped pushing kids to strive to be the best, and started

dumbing down education to the 'least common denominator' (do they even teach THAT any more?)

We certainly can embrace the concept that everyone is equal under the law without adhering to the idiotic notion that every human is inherently equal in every possible way; that way lies not only madness, but greases the skids to perdition.

[SoCalDem]

18. Feelings & self-esteem became the norm

Criticizing kids for bad spelling/math/history might hurt their feelings, and make their parents mad:(

A few angry parents complaining loudly enough was sometimes enough to get a teacher "in trouble".

once kids know they have the upper hand, it's not such a great thing to be a teacher busting your ass trying to teach kids..

[Recursion]

25. When I was resourcing at DCPS the 8th grade kids would say every morning

in unison, "I don't have to be the best, I just have to do my best."

I threw up in my mouth a little every time I heard that.

[Johonny]

29. actually dumbing down a result of striving to be best

The cycle goes like this: we need to be the best at let's say math. So every student needs to be studying math at the highest level. Not every kid can pass math classes at the highest level. Teachers and programs don't have resources to teach everyone at this level. The class starts to get slowed down to help the slowest. The subject heads toward the common denominator. This thus gets done with the "best" of intentions "to give everyone the opportunity to study at the highest level". However no program that has that intent looks to see if the resources are really there to do this or if this is really possible. In some ways we were better off when it was more acceptable to have different levels of educational programs and let kids find their own path to success. There are of course negatives to both approaches.

[Karia]

12. Taking multiple choice tests is no substitute for learning math

Yet kids in the US spend a ridiculous amount of school time taking practice tests to "get ready" for more tests.

[GSLevel9]

13. I thought it was more about

video games, cell phones, twitter, facebook and pot?

[thesush]

15. Hmm

I don't know, I don't think it's so much what is taught, but how it's taught.

On top of that, there are a lot of other factors. Kids in America don't seem
to take very much pride in their schoolwork.
I know in my school, more emphasis was put on sports than actual education.
My family had to scrounge up money to rent my bassoon, but if I had been even
average at a sport, they would have waived the fees in a second (and where's
that extra money going to come from).
Don't even get me started about testing...

Science and math are the fields that receive the most attention in schools.
High school for me was 8 credits of math, 8 credits of science, 6 credits
of English and lit, 1 credit (!) of learning how my government worked, 3 of
general social studies (history mostly) and a handful of electives.
The only AP classes my school offered were for science and math.

[Hannah Bell]

16. There are roughly 80 million kids in the US. You purport to be able to generalize about how

they view schoolwork.

sheer nonsense.

[thesush]

23. what?

I named several reason that could also contribute to what the original
poster observed.
If anything, I was saying that the problem can't be summed up by any
single issue. Maybe I wasn't clear enough at 2 in the morning

Be more constructive and less combative.

[seabeyond]

17. the kids today do more at an earlier age than ever before. nt

[olegramps]

21. I certainly agree with you.

I have looked at the texts that my grandchildren use and what is being taught on a daily bases. It is detailed and far more extensive than what I experienced in public school. I wasn't exposed to some of the subjects that the older kids are striving to master until I went to university. I really wonder if people who express how bad the educational system is have actually availed themselves of what is really being taught.

What I have seen in our metropolitan city is that those children that are in the lowest economic group, most of whom qualify for free lunch programs, are the ones who are struggling. The problem is not the teachers, it is a poverty problem. The students from middle and upper class homes are succeeding and scoring well on the tests. Many of the kids that are having a difficult time are from lower economic single parent families and don't get the required attention that is required to succeed. Parental involvement is a critical element that is often not even regarded.

The fact of the matter is that the most vocal critics of the public school system have an ulterior motive and this is little more than a Trojan Horse. Their intent is to gain tax dollars for religious schools and they absolutely care less what happens to the kids from economically disadvantaged homes. If they were actually motivated by Christian values they would be acutely concerned with the actual welfare of these disadvantaged kids. Just another case of gross hypocrisy.

[seabeyond]

22. "vocal critics... ulterior motive ...little more than a Trojan Horse." oppotunity for education is

there. way beyond my day. way beyond a mere decade ago. this argument pisses me off and regardless of how many times people show the FACTS on why these scores are skewed, the critics ignore for agenda

[Erose999]

19. I have a roommoate who believes that people and dinosaurs walked the Earth at the same time.

"Its not JUST the Christian timeline... every culture has a dragon myth". Yeah, this person is a college grad as well.

[Generic Other]

20. And teachers are blamed for the students' wilful ignorance

It took the church 800 years to accept that Galileo was right--the earth did revolve around the sun! It will take them 800 more to accept that Darwin was right. Maybe when they evolve to having smaller skulls to fit their shrunken heads.

[eilen]

30. LOL my BIL's fiance teaches science to 8th graders

at risk etc. She can 't believe the dumb that has been passed on to some of these kids. She told me one kid actually believed the earth was flat a long time ago-- instead of knowing that flat earth was a Theory, he believed it was an Actuality/Fact.

Much of her day she just tries to teach them how to think and refuses to teach to the test. Critical thought. She says the kids just expect everything to be spoonfed to them without pushing any brain cells to try and figure it out. They will just look blankly and say "I don't know." I guess this is what works everywhere else, but not in her classroom. She also has them write journals. (Another sad depressing story).

[Recursion]

24. The only real reason is that we test poor students too

Unlike the alleged "competing" countries.

[JI7]

26. there are people on DU who think not everyone needs to learn it

[Johonny]

28. I agree

If children learn from their parents and society that math and science are not valued/ important they will tend to feel they are not valuable or important. As many people have talked about: education starts in the home. If you as a parent demonstrate you value science, math, reading, learning... etc then your kids will tend to value it too.