What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
It's not stupidity that scares me these days but the arrogance that comes with it.
I think this is a huge part of the problem with ignorance the world over, and especially in Western nations where democratic rights have been commonplace for some time. People honestly feel like they have the right and the freedom to be ignorant and to make choices without being informed.
I know it's a defense mechanism when confronted with one's own stupidity, but c'mon for fuck's sake. And therein lies the crux of the argument: in a democratic process, can ignorance be tolerated, and if so, legitimized by participation within the process?
It's more that people aren't taught how to not know something and it seems to pervade society. If people get asked a question they don't know the answer to, the instinctive response for some reason is just to make something up rather then say "I don't know".
I mean, there was an interesting case where the Prius in the US had a recall to fix a switch related to the air conditioning called a "solar switch" (related to how it operates). When a guy called his dealership to setup the service and asked what the solar switch did, the operator - instead of admitting she didn't know - started to tell him it helped the car convert solar energy to charge the battery (it in no way does this).
Not surprised by the forementioned example, after I've read Nicholas Nassim Taleb's books regarding human being's propensity to fall for "Narrative Fallacy" & rationalise instead of admittance of ignorance.
What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
Personally I'd deem critical thinking and intellectual curiosity( in form of erudition) to be more important than just focusing upon a particular subject.
One of my professors put it in perspective when he said "Currently less than 1% of all American High Schools offer Calculus. Of those schools less than 1% of the students actually take the classes. This means that one one hundredth of a percent of high school graduates have taken Calculus. In Japan 100% of all high school graduates have taken Calculus. The night janitor at Toyota, he has taken Calculus."
Tell your professor that it's easier to hold intelligent discourse when he doesn't get all retarded with the false statistics.
edit: Basically, there's nothing fancy about calculus that means every last high school student should take it. Someone who hates math yet is gifted at language should not be required to take high-level math classes in high school, any more than he should be required to take a painting class or medieval french lit.
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One of my professors put it in perspective when he said "Currently less than 1% of all American High Schools offer Calculus. Of those schools less than 1% of the students actually take the classes. This means that one one hundredth of a percent of high school graduates have taken Calculus. In Japan 100% of all high school graduates have taken Calculus. The night janitor at Toyota, he has taken Calculus."
Tell your professor that it's easier to hold intelligent discourse when he doesn't get all retarded with the false statistics.
edit: Basically, there's nothing fancy about calculus that means every last high school student should take it. Someone who hates math yet is gifted at language should not be required to take high-level math classes in high school, any more than he should be required to take a painting class or medieval french lit.
Well, I guess Detharin can now argue that people know less on the basis of himself and a failing education system on the basis of his teacher.
It's not stupidity that scares me these days but the arrogance that comes with it. Look at this video for example, you can find similar on the other side but the arrogance in their beliefs is the same.
*snip*
Nobody in the video seems particularly arrogant to me, although they do appear to be ignorant. It is not surprising that people are going to pick up on news stories about Sarah Palin that are more widely publicised, nor is it surprising that they are more inclined to believe that the opposition candidates are guilty of past wrongdoings.
I'm certain that the people making that video made sure, as they claimed, to find the most knowledgeable Obama supporters they could. Clearly they wouldn't be cherry-picking people to prove a point.
Beyond that, I'm not sure why not knowing who Barney Frank is is some grave sin.
ElJeffe on
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there are people who think it isn't cool or worthwhile to be smart or ambitious.
This one I see a lot of.
Really? Maybe it's from the people I associate with or my own position in life but I see a lot of the opposite.
I think he's talking about high school aged people. I knew plenty of people who thought it was cool to refuse to go to college to piss off their teachers and parents and are now on the 6-years-of-community-college track. Nobody's fault but their own.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
there are people who think it isn't cool or worthwhile to be smart or ambitious.
This one I see a lot of.
Really? Maybe it's from the people I associate with or my own position in life but I see a lot of the opposite.
I think he's talking about high school aged people. I knew plenty of people who thought it was cool to refuse to go to college to piss off their teachers and parents and are now on the 6-years-of-community-college track. Nobody's fault but their own.
I think he's talking about high school aged people. I knew plenty of people who thought it was cool to refuse to go to college to piss off their teachers and parents and are now on the 6-years-of-community-college track. Nobody's fault but their own.
It can continue into college depending which school you go to.
I think he's talking about high school aged people. I knew plenty of people who thought it was cool to refuse to go to college to piss off their teachers and parents and are now on the 6-years-of-community-college track. Nobody's fault but their own.
It can continue into college depending which school you go to.
Yeah but it's more difficult to follow through with that when you're 24 years old, trying to support yourself with your crappy job that you thought was better than college back in 12th grade, and have a habit of being a moron. Some will make it, most will not.
It's not stupidity that scares me these days but the arrogance that comes with it. Look at this video for example, you can find similar on the other side but the arrogance in their beliefs is the same.
*snip*
Nobody in the video seems particularly arrogant to me, although they do appear to be ignorant. It is not surprising that people are going to pick up on news stories about Sarah Palin that are more widely publicised, nor is it surprising that they are more inclined to believe that the opposition candidates are guilty of past wrongdoings.
I'm certain that the people making that video made sure, as they claimed, to find the most knowledgeable Obama supporters they could. Clearly they wouldn't be cherry-picking people to prove a point.
Beyond that, I'm not sure why not knowing who Barney Frank is is some grave sin.
That video's from John Ziegler's website. It's a part of his big documentary which alleges that Obama won on the back of a mainstream media conspiracy to make him look good and make John McCain look bad.
If you read FiveThirtyEight, you'll probably also be aware that he commissioned a poll of Obama voters with Zogby, asking questions like, "Which of the four [candidates] started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground?" and "Which of the four [candidates] won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot?"
He then treated his "correct" answers to these questions as factually certain and argued that Obama supporters who responded "none of the candidates" or "not sure" to such questions were "uninformed" or "wrong."
Basically, this guy is a crackpot who's pushing an agenda. We shouldn't trust him on anything we can't independently verify (such as whether these supporters were cherry-picked, etc., etc.)
I think he's talking about high school aged people. I knew plenty of people who thought it was cool to refuse to go to college to piss off their teachers and parents and are now on the 6-years-of-community-college track. Nobody's fault but their own.
It can continue into college depending which school you go to.
Yeah but it's more difficult to follow through with that when you're 24 years old, trying to support yourself with your crappy job that you thought was better than college back in 12th grade, and have a habit of being a moron. Some will make it, most will not.
Why would they still have the crappy job they got out of high-school instead of going to college if they went to college instead of getting a crappy job right out of high school?
I think he's talking about high school aged people. I knew plenty of people who thought it was cool to refuse to go to college to piss off their teachers and parents and are now on the 6-years-of-community-college track. Nobody's fault but their own.
It can continue into college depending which school you go to.
Yeah but it's more difficult to follow through with that when you're 24 years old, trying to support yourself with your crappy job that you thought was better than college back in 12th grade, and have a habit of being a moron. Some will make it, most will not.
Why would they still have the crappy job they got out of high-school instead of going to college if they went to college instead of getting a crappy job right out of high school?
That is a really difficult sentence to parse.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
Personally I'd deem critical thinking and intellectual curiosity( in form of erudition) to be more important than just focusing upon a particular subject.
"critical thinking skills" can be taught but intellectual curiosity can only be fostered. if a student doesn't want to be curious you aren't going to make them.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
Personally I'd deem critical thinking and intellectual curiosity( in form of erudition) to be more important than just focusing upon a particular subject.
"critical thinking skills" can be taught but intellectual curiosity can only be fostered. if a student doesn't want to be curious you aren't going to make them.
I disagree. There's totally ways to trick kids into being curious. You just have to be able to outsmart a kindergartner.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
Personally I'd deem critical thinking and intellectual curiosity( in form of erudition) to be more important than just focusing upon a particular subject.
"critical thinking skills" can be taught but intellectual curiosity can only be fostered. if a student doesn't want to be curious you aren't going to make them.
I disagree. There's totally ways to trick kids into being curious. You just have to be able to outsmart a kindergartner.
Yes when they are young. Kids are interested in everything when they are young, it's not until they start learning something that they focus.
You can't control, at all, what a kid learns to be interested in out of school, and if they decide that's more interesting you aren't going to make them more curious about whatever you are teaching them.
Unfortuantly, critical thinking skills and such, while very useful to include in any educational program, are not an answer in and of themselves without examples from various fields of how to apply them.
I could tell you how to critically think about a random thing but then present you with a hobby or something of yours you don't think of as "education" and it's likely critical thinking goes out the window. Context is important. (Actually, using you in particular is probably a bad example.)
Ultimately the most important determiner for adult knowledge acquisition is previous knowledge similar to that field.
Education needs to be relevant to a variety of different popular current fields as well as general skills required like math and literacy from an early age but it's still stuck in the 1950's really as far as subject choice goes.
Or at least it was when I went through 7 years ago.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
Personally I'd deem critical thinking and intellectual curiosity( in form of erudition) to be more important than just focusing upon a particular subject.
"critical thinking skills" can be taught but intellectual curiosity can only be fostered. if a student doesn't want to be curious you aren't going to make them.
I disagree. There's totally ways to trick kids into being curious. You just have to be able to outsmart a kindergartner.
Yes when they are young. Kids are interested in everything when they are young, it's not until they start learning something that they focus.
You can't control, at all, what a kid learns to be interested in out of school, and if they decide that's more interesting you aren't going to make them more curious about whatever you are teaching them.
Unfortuantly, critical thinking skills and such, while very useful to include in any educational program, are not an answer in and of themselves without examples from various fields of how to apply them.
I could tell you how to critically think about a random thing but then present you with a hobby or something of yours you don't think of as "education" and it's likely critical thinking goes out the window. Context is important. (Actually, using you in particular is probably a bad example.)
Ultimately the most important determiner for adult knowledge acquisition is previous knowledge similar to that field.
Education needs to be relevant to a variety of different popular current fields as well as general skills required like math and literacy from an early age but it's still stuck in the 1950's really as far as subject choice goes.
Or at least it was when I went through 7 years ago.
Ah that's the thing though. Critical thinking is learned through practice, and kids will practice most the things that they most want to do. Through their hobbies you can get them to think critically. Once you learn how to do it you can apply it to anything. I don't think it's the whole solution either but it's certainly a possible thing to teach to kids (though I see it being a lot easier from a parent-role than a teacher-role) that will help them solve problems in everything they come upon in school. Sports, legos, videogames, cars, playing house, hell even some of the better drinking-games benefit from critical thinking.
Edit: Yes! That Calvin and Hobbes strip is exactly what I'm talking about. Except applied to research-skills instead of critical thinking. Kind of critical thinking leading up to research. It begins.
I'll go ahead and be an asshole and deride the parents of so-called "stupid" people.
For me, stupidity is defined as a particular affinity for self-ordained ignorance, so:
Jim-Bob's dumb-ass redneck father fosters a sense of knowledgeable arrogance in him by telling him that everything the Liberal-Jew media publishes is a lie by default; by telling him that white people are the end-all be-all of evolution; and by telling him that everything his heathen teacher is telling him about evolution is a lie.
This is an extreme case, but I hope you get my point. Ignorance of the truth isn't an inherent property of the Majority--it just happens that the majority of people had dumb-ass parents who early on constructed in them a sense of superiority (e.g. "Our religion is the only right one," "Mexicans and blacks are genetically defective").
For fuck's sake, when will the horseshit stop?
Edit: I just read this over. Damn. I hate white people. And I'm white.
Gravity and Punishment on
"I assure you, your distaste only reveals your ignorance."
If the statistics are wrong, they are wrong. No skin off my nose, i just thought it was interesting. Ill let my teacher known next time I chat with him.
Talking with teachers about such things as the no child left behind, and the amount of children they have that can barely read I find truly saddening. We have high school graduates who cannot read. Conditions have improved quite a bit in the last 50 years, however is anyone going to say our public schools are not under funded? Perhaps people are not getting dumber, perhaps we have always been this ignorant.
Personally what worries me the most is illiteracy. I think quite a bit of our problems stem from it, and will continue to do so. I found an interesting paper on the subject, which concludes "93 million adults out of the total population or approximately 221 million in the US struggle to read a bus schedule so they can travel across town, have difficulty using an ATM, or find it hard to fill out an average job application."
I'll go ahead and be an asshole and deride the parents of so-called "stupid" people.
For me, stupidity is defined as a particular affinity for self-ordained ignorance, so:
Jim-Bob's dumb-ass redneck father fosters a sense of knowledgeable arrogance in him by telling him that everything the Liberal-Jew media publishes is a lie by default; by telling him that white people are the end-all be-all of evolution; and by telling him that everything his heathen teacher is telling him about evolution is a lie.
This is an extreme case, but I hope you get my point. Ignorance of the truth isn't an inherent property of the Majority--it just happens that the majority of people had dumb-ass parents who early on constructed in them a sense of superiority (e.g. "Our religion is the only right one," "Mexicans and blacks are genetically defective").
For fuck's sake, when will the horseshit stop?
Edit: I just read this over. Damn. I hate white people. And I'm white.
I guess, in your own defense, that this argument is just as applicable to certain aspects of the black community, as well. I used to work at the hospital near the college the movie The Great Debaters was based on, in a town that's about 70% african-american. We only had two black doctors in the whole place, and one was foreign-born. There's such a sense of self-defeat about that part of the culture (as recently shown by CNN's post-election exit polls that showed 71% of black americans still thought it impossible to elect a black candidate, compared to 41% of whites), and while it's a understandable mind-set, that can't hardly mean it's justifiable.
When the only respected "educated" people in the community are preachers and athletes, incentive to g further is surely diminished.
Conditions have improved quite a bit in the last 50 years, however is anyone going to say our public schools are not under funded?
Depending on the school, yes.
And you may want to find a different example for illiteracy than bus schedules. I'm partway through Anna Karenina without any problems and yet I still have trouble figuring out Pace without google maps.
Conditions have improved quite a bit in the last 50 years, however is anyone going to say our public schools are not under funded?
Depending on the school, yes.
And you may want to find a different example for illiteracy than bus schedules. I'm partway through Anna Karenina without any problems and yet I still have trouble figuring out Pace without google maps.
Fucking Hell yes. When I went to SF, which has an outstanding mass transit downtown, the only reason I knew which buses and where to get on were because of Google.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
Personally I'd deem critical thinking and intellectual curiosity( in form of erudition) to be more important than just focusing upon a particular subject.
"critical thinking skills" can be taught but intellectual curiosity can only be fostered. if a student doesn't want to be curious you aren't going to make them.
I disagree. There's totally ways to trick kids into being curious. You just have to be able to outsmart a kindergartner.
Yes when they are young. Kids are interested in everything when they are young, it's not until they start learning something that they focus.
You can't control, at all, what a kid learns to be interested in out of school, and if they decide that's more interesting you aren't going to make them more curious about whatever you are teaching them.
Unfortuantly, critical thinking skills and such, while very useful to include in any educational program, are not an answer in and of themselves without examples from various fields of how to apply them.
I could tell you how to critically think about a random thing but then present you with a hobby or something of yours you don't think of as "education" and it's likely critical thinking goes out the window. Context is important. (Actually, using you in particular is probably a bad example.)
Ultimately the most important determiner for adult knowledge acquisition is previous knowledge similar to that field.
Education needs to be relevant to a variety of different popular current fields as well as general skills required like math and literacy from an early age but it's still stuck in the 1950's really as far as subject choice goes.
Or at least it was when I went through 7 years ago.
Ah that's the thing though. Critical thinking is learned through practice, and kids will practice most the things that they most want to do. Through their hobbies you can get them to think critically. Once you learn how to do it you can apply it to anything. I don't think it's the whole solution either but it's certainly a possible thing to teach to kids (though I see it being a lot easier from a parent-role than a teacher-role) that will help them solve problems in everything they come upon in school. Sports, legos, videogames, cars, playing house, hell even some of the better drinking-games benefit from critical thinking.
Edit: Yes! That Calvin and Hobbes strip is exactly what I'm talking about. Except applied to research-skills instead of critical thinking. Kind of critical thinking leading up to research. It begins.
Yes I can see the logic of that, but you have to have it happen for everything. I'm talking the kind of teacher who goes out into the playground and teaches kids how to think even when having fun, so that it just permeates their entire life.
That takes dedication from a teacher.
The smartest, most scientific people will do dumb shit in a completely different context. Then if you point out why didn't they use x skill from their discipline or whatever they'll gape at you as the lightbulb turns on, and it works from then on. It's an unfortunate side effect of the "automatic"* nature of how our cognition works: we learn "automatic" ways of dealing with every situation. Even critical thinking skills can become automatic, because you learn from experience how to think in a given situation then forget what it really means when you need to do it in a new one. Getting people to fluidly shift from one field, context or situation to another is really hard. Our cognition is kind of a slap together job.
In addition, as you get older, that type of mental ability tends to drop off. So it wont solve everything just to teach people this.
*I'm using automatic as a shortcut for an extremely complicated and large amount of theory+ research evidence that would turn this post into an essay so if you know this field don't jump on me alright.
Morninglord on
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Another reason people might seem to be getting dumber is that the amount that can be learned on a personal level is probably asymptotic, so that the amount by which we know more than our parents is less than they knew more than their parents. That means that where at one point we had scholars who could tell you everything English speakers knew about Sufism, we now have people who devote their lives to specific portions of the works of Ibn Arabi (like a couple paragraphs to a person. In their defense, he's like Sufism's version of James Joyce). Stephen Hawking promoted this idea in his Brief History of Time.
The rest of you, I fucking hate you for the fact that I now have a blue dot on this god awful thread.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2008
That is something being addressed by Ackerman in expertise research as well. Either cognition (intelligence/acheivement) or personality or interests, each of those specialised fields take a different approach to expertise and he presented a theory that combines them and is coming up with very interesting results.
Including some gender differences when it comes to domain knowledge.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
Personally I'd deem critical thinking and intellectual curiosity( in form of erudition) to be more important than just focusing upon a particular subject.
"critical thinking skills" can be taught but intellectual curiosity can only be fostered. if a student doesn't want to be curious you aren't going to make them.
I disagree. There's totally ways to trick kids into being curious. You just have to be able to outsmart a kindergartner.
Yes when they are young. Kids are interested in everything when they are young, it's not until they start learning something that they focus.
You can't control, at all, what a kid learns to be interested in out of school, and if they decide that's more interesting you aren't going to make them more curious about whatever you are teaching them.
Unfortuantly, critical thinking skills and such, while very useful to include in any educational program, are not an answer in and of themselves without examples from various fields of how to apply them.
I could tell you how to critically think about a random thing but then present you with a hobby or something of yours you don't think of as "education" and it's likely critical thinking goes out the window. Context is important. (Actually, using you in particular is probably a bad example.)
Ultimately the most important determiner for adult knowledge acquisition is previous knowledge similar to that field.
Education needs to be relevant to a variety of different popular current fields as well as general skills required like math and literacy from an early age but it's still stuck in the 1950's really as far as subject choice goes.
Or at least it was when I went through 7 years ago.
Ah that's the thing though. Critical thinking is learned through practice, and kids will practice most the things that they most want to do. Through their hobbies you can get them to think critically. Once you learn how to do it you can apply it to anything. I don't think it's the whole solution either but it's certainly a possible thing to teach to kids (though I see it being a lot easier from a parent-role than a teacher-role) that will help them solve problems in everything they come upon in school. Sports, legos, videogames, cars, playing house, hell even some of the better drinking-games benefit from critical thinking.
Edit: Yes! That Calvin and Hobbes strip is exactly what I'm talking about. Except applied to research-skills instead of critical thinking. Kind of critical thinking leading up to research. It begins.
Yes I can see the logic of that, but you have to have it happen for everything. I'm talking the kind of teacher who goes out into the playground and teaches kids how to think even when having fun, so that it just permeates their entire life.
That takes dedication from a teacher.
The smartest, most scientific people will do dumb shit in a completely different context. Then if you point out why didn't they use x skill from their discipline or whatever they'll gape at you as the lightbulb turns on, and it works from then on. It's an unfortunate side effect of the "automatic"* nature of how our cognition works: we learn "automatic" ways of dealing with every situation. Even critical thinking skills can become automatic, because you learn from experience how to think in a given situation then forget what it really means when you need to do it in a new one. Getting people to fluidly shift from one field, context or situation to another is really hard. Our cognition is kind of a slap together job.
In addition, as you get older, that type of mental ability tends to drop off. So it wont solve everything just to teach people this.
*I'm using automatic as a shortcut for an extremely complicated and large amount of theory+ research evidence that would turn this post into an essay so if you know this field don't jump on me alright.
That's the thing, I'm putting it on parents, not teachers, to teach critical analysis. It's a basic life-skill. You need it for everything.
The core of my argument is legos. Buy your kids Duplo and then Lego as soon as they figure out that toys are not a delicious snack. It solves everything.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2008
Who teaches the parents? Remember it's probably too late for a great deal of them to learn it easily, and the others are too busy working the long hours they have to work to keep a child alive and put it in the education system they were told will teach it what it needs to know.
Most modern legos aren't like the legos we used to have, unless you guys still get the old bricks. Most of the ones in the toys stores here now are more like model kits, the pieces can't be easily put together in different ways.
I was going to say something about the types of cognitive abilities legos build but then another part of my brain beat the first part up and held it down and screamed "You will never diss Legos again do you understand me." so I am conflicted.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Who teaches the parents? Remember it's probably too late for a great deal of them to learn it easily, and the others are too busy working the long hours they have to work to keep a child alive and put it in the education system they were told will teach it what it needs to know.
I teach the parents. With a stick.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2008
punishment is the least effective learning method...
nevermind.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Conditions have improved quite a bit in the last 50 years, however is anyone going to say our public schools are not under funded?
Depending on the school, yes.
And you may want to find a different example for illiteracy than bus schedules. I'm partway through Anna Karenina without any problems and yet I still have trouble figuring out Pace without google maps.
How about, according to the listed paper 24% of adults when given a 12 paragraph paper talking about a convention aimed at helping businesses target the mexican community. When, after reading this paper, they were asked what the convention was about they had no idea.
The problem is not you, or me, or really most of the posters on this forum. We are the minority. It is everyone else we really need to worry about. After doing call center work for 4 years my faith in humanity is pretty much eroded.
Conditions have improved quite a bit in the last 50 years, however is anyone going to say our public schools are not under funded?
Depending on the school, yes.
And you may want to find a different example for illiteracy than bus schedules. I'm partway through Anna Karenina without any problems and yet I still have trouble figuring out Pace without google maps.
How about, according to the listed paper 24% of adults when given a 12 paragraph paper talking about a convention aimed at helping businesses target the mexican community. When, after reading this paper, they were asked what the convention was about they had no idea.
The problem is not you, or me, or really most of the posters on this forum. We are the minority. It is everyone else we really need to worry about. After doing call center work for 4 years my faith in humanity is pretty much eroded.
How about you cite your statistics. You know, because according to 100% of women and 58% of adult males, my penis is both "large" and "in charge".
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I also agree that it has fuck all to do with people being intelligent. See: Ron Paul supporters.
Edit: Oh, hey, someone with numbers demonstrated the first part.
We just did this thread.
You don't want to tread down this road.
This way lies madness.
Personally I'd deem critical thinking and intellectual curiosity( in form of erudition) to be more important than just focusing upon a particular subject.
14% of US high school students take calculus.
In Japan, students choose between a humanities/social science track and a math/science track, and only the latter take calculus.
Tell your professor that it's easier to hold intelligent discourse when he doesn't get all retarded with the false statistics.
edit: Basically, there's nothing fancy about calculus that means every last high school student should take it. Someone who hates math yet is gifted at language should not be required to take high-level math classes in high school, any more than he should be required to take a painting class or medieval french lit.
Well, I guess Detharin can now argue that people know less on the basis of himself and a failing education system on the basis of his teacher.
I'm not really sure what to tell you?
This one I see a lot of.
Really? Maybe it's from the people I associate with or my own position in life but I see a lot of the opposite.
I'm certain that the people making that video made sure, as they claimed, to find the most knowledgeable Obama supporters they could. Clearly they wouldn't be cherry-picking people to prove a point.
Beyond that, I'm not sure why not knowing who Barney Frank is is some grave sin.
I think he's talking about high school aged people. I knew plenty of people who thought it was cool to refuse to go to college to piss off their teachers and parents and are now on the 6-years-of-community-college track. Nobody's fault but their own.
Those people are full of win!
It may only happen in school settings, because it's definitely just another symptom of the problem of cliques.
It can continue into college depending which school you go to.
Yeah but it's more difficult to follow through with that when you're 24 years old, trying to support yourself with your crappy job that you thought was better than college back in 12th grade, and have a habit of being a moron. Some will make it, most will not.
That video's from John Ziegler's website. It's a part of his big documentary which alleges that Obama won on the back of a mainstream media conspiracy to make him look good and make John McCain look bad.
If you read FiveThirtyEight, you'll probably also be aware that he commissioned a poll of Obama voters with Zogby, asking questions like, "Which of the four [candidates] started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground?" and "Which of the four [candidates] won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot?"
He then treated his "correct" answers to these questions as factually certain and argued that Obama supporters who responded "none of the candidates" or "not sure" to such questions were "uninformed" or "wrong."
Basically, this guy is a crackpot who's pushing an agenda. We shouldn't trust him on anything we can't independently verify (such as whether these supporters were cherry-picked, etc., etc.)
Why would they still have the crappy job they got out of high-school instead of going to college if they went to college instead of getting a crappy job right out of high school?
That is a really difficult sentence to parse.
"critical thinking skills" can be taught but intellectual curiosity can only be fostered. if a student doesn't want to be curious you aren't going to make them.
I disagree. There's totally ways to trick kids into being curious. You just have to be able to outsmart a kindergartner.
Yes when they are young. Kids are interested in everything when they are young, it's not until they start learning something that they focus.
You can't control, at all, what a kid learns to be interested in out of school, and if they decide that's more interesting you aren't going to make them more curious about whatever you are teaching them.
Unfortuantly, critical thinking skills and such, while very useful to include in any educational program, are not an answer in and of themselves without examples from various fields of how to apply them.
I could tell you how to critically think about a random thing but then present you with a hobby or something of yours you don't think of as "education" and it's likely critical thinking goes out the window. Context is important. (Actually, using you in particular is probably a bad example.)
Ultimately the most important determiner for adult knowledge acquisition is previous knowledge similar to that field.
Education needs to be relevant to a variety of different popular current fields as well as general skills required like math and literacy from an early age but it's still stuck in the 1950's really as far as subject choice goes.
Or at least it was when I went through 7 years ago.
Ah that's the thing though. Critical thinking is learned through practice, and kids will practice most the things that they most want to do. Through their hobbies you can get them to think critically. Once you learn how to do it you can apply it to anything. I don't think it's the whole solution either but it's certainly a possible thing to teach to kids (though I see it being a lot easier from a parent-role than a teacher-role) that will help them solve problems in everything they come upon in school. Sports, legos, videogames, cars, playing house, hell even some of the better drinking-games benefit from critical thinking.
Edit: Yes! That Calvin and Hobbes strip is exactly what I'm talking about. Except applied to research-skills instead of critical thinking. Kind of critical thinking leading up to research. It begins.
For me, stupidity is defined as a particular affinity for self-ordained ignorance, so:
Jim-Bob's dumb-ass redneck father fosters a sense of knowledgeable arrogance in him by telling him that everything the Liberal-Jew media publishes is a lie by default; by telling him that white people are the end-all be-all of evolution; and by telling him that everything his heathen teacher is telling him about evolution is a lie.
This is an extreme case, but I hope you get my point. Ignorance of the truth isn't an inherent property of the Majority--it just happens that the majority of people had dumb-ass parents who early on constructed in them a sense of superiority (e.g. "Our religion is the only right one," "Mexicans and blacks are genetically defective").
For fuck's sake, when will the horseshit stop?
Edit: I just read this over. Damn. I hate white people. And I'm white.
Talking with teachers about such things as the no child left behind, and the amount of children they have that can barely read I find truly saddening. We have high school graduates who cannot read. Conditions have improved quite a bit in the last 50 years, however is anyone going to say our public schools are not under funded? Perhaps people are not getting dumber, perhaps we have always been this ignorant.
Personally what worries me the most is illiteracy. I think quite a bit of our problems stem from it, and will continue to do so. I found an interesting paper on the subject, which concludes "93 million adults out of the total population or approximately 221 million in the US struggle to read a bus schedule so they can travel across town, have difficulty using an ATM, or find it hard to fill out an average job application."
http://www.proliteracy.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=14
I guess, in your own defense, that this argument is just as applicable to certain aspects of the black community, as well. I used to work at the hospital near the college the movie The Great Debaters was based on, in a town that's about 70% african-american. We only had two black doctors in the whole place, and one was foreign-born. There's such a sense of self-defeat about that part of the culture (as recently shown by CNN's post-election exit polls that showed 71% of black americans still thought it impossible to elect a black candidate, compared to 41% of whites), and while it's a understandable mind-set, that can't hardly mean it's justifiable.
When the only respected "educated" people in the community are preachers and athletes, incentive to g further is surely diminished.
Depending on the school, yes.
And you may want to find a different example for illiteracy than bus schedules. I'm partway through Anna Karenina without any problems and yet I still have trouble figuring out Pace without google maps.
Yes I can see the logic of that, but you have to have it happen for everything. I'm talking the kind of teacher who goes out into the playground and teaches kids how to think even when having fun, so that it just permeates their entire life.
That takes dedication from a teacher.
The smartest, most scientific people will do dumb shit in a completely different context. Then if you point out why didn't they use x skill from their discipline or whatever they'll gape at you as the lightbulb turns on, and it works from then on. It's an unfortunate side effect of the "automatic"* nature of how our cognition works: we learn "automatic" ways of dealing with every situation. Even critical thinking skills can become automatic, because you learn from experience how to think in a given situation then forget what it really means when you need to do it in a new one. Getting people to fluidly shift from one field, context or situation to another is really hard. Our cognition is kind of a slap together job.
In addition, as you get older, that type of mental ability tends to drop off. So it wont solve everything just to teach people this.
*I'm using automatic as a shortcut for an extremely complicated and large amount of theory+ research evidence that would turn this post into an essay so if you know this field don't jump on me alright.
Including some gender differences when it comes to domain knowledge.
That's the thing, I'm putting it on parents, not teachers, to teach critical analysis. It's a basic life-skill. You need it for everything.
Most modern legos aren't like the legos we used to have, unless you guys still get the old bricks. Most of the ones in the toys stores here now are more like model kits, the pieces can't be easily put together in different ways.
I was going to say something about the types of cognitive abilities legos build but then another part of my brain beat the first part up and held it down and screamed "You will never diss Legos again do you understand me." so I am conflicted.
I teach the parents. With a stick.
nevermind.
How about, according to the listed paper 24% of adults when given a 12 paragraph paper talking about a convention aimed at helping businesses target the mexican community. When, after reading this paper, they were asked what the convention was about they had no idea.
The problem is not you, or me, or really most of the posters on this forum. We are the minority. It is everyone else we really need to worry about. After doing call center work for 4 years my faith in humanity is pretty much eroded.
Actually this is why I want to make cartoons. Because most parents suck at their job. If they won't condition curiosity into their kids, Batman can.