Education

[MrPopo]

Now I know we have several people in the field on the forum (Dsh and SpaceBooger come to mind) but after coming back from a gaming session and seeing a conversation in the IRC channel about our education system, I felt it's a topic we could do with some discussion.

I was fortunate enough to be in a high school that the state had thrown a ton of resources behind and as a result I got the best education I've ever experienced (and that includes college). And it's been shown elsewhere that applying more money to the education system tends to get better results. So it makes me really sad to see so many schools and districts just totally getting the shaft by the taxpayers. The same taxpayers, mind you, who are complaining that their children don't have a real chance in the world. Why can't our country realize just how much education improves everyone's life?

[Flake]

Now I know we have several people in the field on the forum (Dsh and SpaceBooger come to mind) but after coming back from a gaming session and seeing a conversation in the IRC channel about our education system, I felt it's a topic we could do with some discussion.

I was fortunate enough to be in a high school that the state had thrown a ton of resources behind and as a result I got the best education I've ever experienced (and that includes college). And it's been shown elsewhere that applying more money to the education system tends to get better results. So it makes me really sad to see so many schools and districts just totally getting the shaft by the taxpayers. The same taxpayers, mind you, who are complaining that their children don't have a real chance in the world. Why can't our country realize just how much education improves everyone's life?

Because the benefits of education are long term ones - people are not terribly patient when it comes to tax dollars being spent. It also doesn't help that state budgets are put together either on an annual or biannual basis. It's easy for State comptrollers to hide the total short shrift that schools are dealing with over longer periods of time.

Of course, this is all ignoring the modern post-high school education system. Colleges have, for the most part, become a freaking mess. It's no secret that making money was always the name of the game but having experienced first hand these last few years how incompetent a school can be with its money, I'm kinda disgusted by the institution that will be issuing my degree to me in a week.

I honestly am not sure if this is a trend that will reverse itself anytime soon.

[J T]

Amen! We're shifting so much of the burden of our economic debt (particularly state, since Mr. Popo and I both live in Washington) onto our educators. The University of Washington is facing down HUGE budget cuts and they are threatening to freeze K-12 teacher salaries from increases. I don't know why education is getting the shaft as our politicians try to figure out the budget.

Meanwhile, giant corporations are finding ways to legally evade their taxes, and the laws keep changing to help them out.

[Bradtemple87]

Our government does not want spend a dime on any of it, and they wonder why our illiteracy spreads like the plague!!!

[AmishSamurai]

I know that especially in Florida, education is getting shafted over and over because our dear governor doesn't see the point and would prefer to blame every bad student on the teachers, not the system itself or lack of parent involvement. I actually heard a great analogy on the news yesterday- "you don't blame a soldier when a poorly planned operation goes bad, so why are teachers being blamed for a failed education system?"

[Flake]

It's getting us off track but just for the record, from experience, soldiers and sailors ALWAYS get blamed when operations go bad - even when they were stupid ideas to begin with.

Maybe this is draconian of me but I can't help but feel that in some ways it's good for less people to go to college. A lower number of degrees out there also means lower forecasts for wealth for most Americans and less competition for higher level jobs.

Not that I'm saying that education should be the domain of the well-to-do. Just that there could be some hidden benefits to a general 'dumbening' of the populace as the country loses its place as sole economic Hegemon. It could serve to lower the standard of living to sustainable levels and reintroduce manufacturing jobs into the country at some point down the road.

Of course, this could just be me looking for a silver lining that doesn't exist.

[J T]

It's better to have a well educated populace.

My only problem with having so many people in college is that degrees are less meaningful as requirements seem to have become less stringent. As someone that teaches at the college level, it's surprising to me to see each year how many students can barely write and to see how strongly they will argue for a grade that they don't deserve.

[Limewater]

There are a lot of problems with education in the United States, but I really don't think money is the answer. I think that there are a lot of factors going on, and money is a comparatively minor issue. I know I'll get jumped on for this, but know that I really do care a lot about education, and I come from a family of teachers. I had planned on going into academia myself until I examined the situation a lot more closely. The following will be terribly disorganized, and contain a lot of anecdotes because I feel like including them:

I really do believe that the biggest problem is the parents. I won't go into much detail, because this is a pretty well-known argument.

Anecdote: I went to a private school from first through eighth grade (except for fourth, because I lived in another state that year). The school spent far less per child than local public schools. At the time my parents were paying tuition for up to five children simultaneously, we could have qualified for reduced-price lunches at the local public school. They made sure I was making progress in school.

Another big issue is the quality of teacher education. I mean no disrespect when I say that education is widely considered to be a joke major. Criminal Justice may be the only major with lazier students. Anecdote: My wife taught a math class for gifted and talented seventh graders. Her T.A. was a math education major. The T.A. did not understand the material that she was teaching to seventh graders.

Another big issue of the quality of education research. I've actually read a decent bit of this, focusing on teaching the STEM fields. I've read Fink, Walvoord and Anderson,Blumberg, and others. I know about student-centered learning, active learning, et cetera. I hate to say it, but quite a bit of it is complete crap. Their methodology is terrible. Their quantitative evaluations are meaningless. To be fair, measuring the quality of an education is an exceedingly hard problem, but that doesn't change the fact that folks are out there advocating goofy methods that give no indication of working. I don't want to be down on everything, though. There are some good ideas there. Problem-based learning is very appropriate for some situations, for example. It's just surrounded by a whole lot of useless crap.

On the university level, many schools focus primarily on increasing enrollment numbers by enticing students to enroll. This leads to money being spent on luxurious dorms that are intended to be torn down and rebuilt ten years later when student taste changes.

I think another big problem is excessive expectations. Too many folks are expected to go to college. People expect good results to come too easily.

Another big problem is cultural. The U.S. has been a ridiculous economic power since WWII. Forty years ago, you could come out of high school and expect to be able to get a well-paying job. If you had a college degree in ANYTHING, you were that much better off. The economic realities today are very different. The value of a liberal-arts education is still talked up tremendously, but it's not nearly as valuable in the real world as it was a few decades ago. Folks don't realize that things have changed, and don't realize that they need to work harder. With luxury comes complacence.

We do still have the best grad schools in the world. That's nice.

[Limewater]

As someone that teaches at the college level, it's surprising to me to see each year how many students can barely write and to see how strongly they will argue for a grade that they don't deserve.

Very true. I haven't taught in six years, but I remember this well.

My advisor claims that it is getting worse every year.

[Flake]

That is in part a cultural problem - we have hammered it into kids that they cannot fail and that they are special snow flakes. Teachers at lower levels have no advocacy from their schools if they fail the little fuckers - who can honestly be surprised when they get to college and continue to pull that shit?