Shauk

well...

take like 15 minutes of your time and check this out


besides being one long gorillaz music video, its a great point and why I chose to disregard my "formal" education in pursuit of self education.

SecretMethod70

No doubt about it that our schools aren't doing their job very well, but that doesn't mean that "self education" is a valid substitute. In fact, I think a large part of the problem we face is increasing anti-intellectualism in America, which devalues and deemphasizes the importance of education. The reason less than half of Americans "believe" in evolution, for example, is not because it's not being taught, but because so many Americans reject the knowledge in schools in favor of "real life" knowledge, whether that comes from the bible, or from simply saying "I just feel that there's no way I'm related to monkeys."

Schools can absolutely be improved, but the sad state of our education is in large part a byproduct of the sad state of our culture with regards to the pursuit of knowledge.

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Willravel

Jesus Fucking Christ.

I mean I knew there were idiots when I went to high school. Did it get worse in the past 6 years?

Fotzlid

Its tough to judge if it did get worse. They only showed how many kids? How many others did they talk to that got the answers right bt didn't make the final edit?

Though I don't doubt the school standards are steadily decreasing because of standardized testing, I found that clip to be very one-sided.

Ustwo

I don't think that standardized testing is the main culprit.

A heavily political and protected teachers union.

A 'no one should fail' mentality.

Teaching to the lowest common denominator.

The fact that its easier to get out of class than sports practices.

Lots of blame to go around, parents, teachers, methodology.

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Fotzlid

All very true, sadly.
None of which were touched upon by that clip either.

Willravel

I must say that I find that this simply cannot be true. If the teacher's union had any power whatsoever, why, oh why, would they be making less than $24,000 a year for teaching our children? Why would "No Child Left Behind" have not been heavily protested?

While I do know that the teachers union can protect poor teachers, I cannot for the life of me remember ever reading anything about it in any media or in my experience with teachers. Fortunately, my uncle has been both a teacher and been in administration, which gives him a balanced understanding of the system. Even he is aware at the lack of power that teachers really have.

No, I would venture a guess that your post has a lot more to do with allegiance to administration and dismissal of the usefulness of unions, not facts.

Shauk

it's every man for himself.....

or every brain for itself.


the thing about education is... funding it seems almost pointless if it's going to be done badly. Seriously this is the product of running up the deficit for wars.

Maybe not a direct consequence of war but the pattern I'd like to re-enforce is just to say that our nation is at it's least intelligent point during war-time.

shakran

spot on, on all your points.

The sports bit is what really pisses me off. Any time there are budget cuts, theater, band, speech, all the academic extracurriculars, are the first on the chopping block. They never kill football, despite the fact that the average person is much more likely to need public speaking skills than he is to make it in the NFL.

loquitur

Actually, will, having once represented a teachers union, I can tell you that they do in fact have a lot of power, especially in states dominated by Democrats. One of the reasons for low salary is the deprofessionalization of the job due to unionization. And one piece of evidence of their power is the virtually total absence of effective competition to the public school system. If it wasn't for teachers unions there would be plenty of voucher systems in place, for instance.

I don't have much problem with private sector unions. Public employee unions are an ongoing cancer on democracy.

Jinn

Yes, public education is not terribly amazing in the US. But do we really need a shitty Youtube video for everything? This sounded like Loose Change all over again, some annoying whiny voice telling me a doomsday story about something that's really not as bad as they present it to be.

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Hain

I hated public school. High school was the worst. So many blooming idiots at that point in time when we were supposed to become mature adults. I had a few VERY good teachers that challenged me. It became fun as a game. They challenge me with an assignment at the edge of my capabilities and I challenge them with questions that plagued my mind. I was lucky. I remember the best teacher I ever had would constantly tell us he was disappointed in us... and I remember the day I graduated he told me I need to visit again to show new students how a real student ought to be.

Agreeing with Ustwo and Shakran... absolute bullshit.

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spindles

The comparison they did in the video is a bullshit one anyway. Firstly, the historical figures were all *old* (except Dick Cheney, whom most of the students knew), and quite frankly being able to know historical presidents/Ghandi/Thomas Edison is hardly compulsory learning.

The more modern figures are pretty hard to miss - you'd have to live under a rock to not know who Eminem/Paris Hilton/Jack Black are.

It may have made more sense to ask them who Frank Sinatra/Bette Davis or similar were - it is a more likely historical comparison - though I suspect they'd mostly stuff up old 'celebrities' as well.

This does not neccessarily take away from the message in the video, which, otherwise, is a good one (i.e. that education is crappy). Question is how else to go about it without 'compulsory' tests? When you are trying to compare 2 (or 2 thousand) people for entry into college/for job positions etc., what better way than with a standardised test?

I also think the comparison with Abraham Lincoln is also a bit of a falsehood too. If you compare him with his peers, did he have a similar/shorter/longer education? Even if his *was* shorter, that is not a good enough statistical set to prove that you'd be better off without education.

Just to add to this - I was watching the amazing Race last night and the two blonde girls (models or cheer leaders or something...) were trying to buy tickets to Mauritius (not sure how to spell it myself, but comically impossible for just about all the contestants to pronounce) and the most direct flight was via London. Girl one: "London - where is that?"

I suspect that there may be people who even if teaching was better, wouldn't really learn a lot

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ottopilot

I'll give 'em an "A" for effort.

...wait, scratch that.

Better give everyone in their school a "my child is an honor student" bumper sticker and show them "An Inconvenient Truth" in math class.

Regardless of how you feel about the message, the ones who made the video give me some hope.

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MSD

I'm typically a union supporter, but I also see the power of teachers' unions damaging our school systems. You can't get money from a budget that isn't there, but you can make sure teachers get every penny they can regardless of the quality of education that they provide. The other main concern I have is the lack of competition among schools depriving all but the rich of a chance for the highest quality education.

I'd recommend watching "Stupid in America" from 20/20,
reading this article that accompanies the show:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/stossel/story?id=1500338

Yes, there's a conservative, minimalist government bias, but that's to be expected from John Stossel. It's 40 minutes, but worth it.

filtherton

As far as unions go, teacher's unions and police unions go hand in hand as some of the most counterproductive organizations when considered in the context of their member's jobs.

In minneapolis at least, the amount of time you've been a teacher is much more important than your ability to teach as far as getting paid and teaching where you want. Our teacher's union is about teachers first, it seems like as an organization they couldn't care less about the students, except for when "caring" about the students is beneficial to whatever the teacher's union's union centric goals happen to be.

shakran

A teacher's job is low pay because they get 3 months of vacation in a row every year, a month off at Christmastime, and an extra week in the spring. If I only worked 7.75 months a year I'd expect lower pay too.

And yes, I know, teaching is hard, it's a lot of work, etc etc. You knew that going in but you did it anyway. Don't whine about it now as though we should pay you CEO salaries. I'd fully support increased pay if teachers worked the entire year. As it is we have teachers making between $50,000 and $80,000 a year, which is more than most journalists make, I should add, who also get to rest and relax for 4 months while the rest of us are still reporting to work every day. My sympathy level dips, slightly

Baraka_Guru

It's important to note that teachers work many hours outside of the classroom. This includes evenings and weekends. (Oh, and it's more like 2 weeks at Christmas; at least, where we live.)

Of note:

Teachers spend a mean time of 58 minutes a day pursuing employment activities at home, compared to only 37 minutes for managers/administrators. In a subsample of respondents whose time-use information was on a weekend day, teachers gave a mean of more than an hour (66.8 min.) to their work on the diary day, compared to 7.2 minutes for the managers/executives. Similarly, teachers devote more than twice the number of episodes to their work at home on a given weekday than do managers/administrators (0.67 to 0.3) and more than five times the number on a weekend day (0.55 to 0.10).

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reconmike

The county I live in, in NJ the teachers average $54,000 a year, with the highest tenured teachers in my town making over $75,000 a year.

New Jersey has a 180 day school year, at 7 hours per day, not removing lunch from the hourly total, assuming the teachers arrive a half hour early and leave a half hour after dismissal, they work 8 hours per day.

Doing the math, 1440 hours worked per school year the average teacher here makes $37.50 per hour, not to mention the best benifit package in the state which probably adds another 10k-12k per year.

Not a bad gig at all.

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Seaver

Um.. you must have never worked a Commercial Salary Job. Mine currently works me an average of 12hours a day, so I fail to have much sympathy if they work an extra hour.

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Baraka_Guru

And I'm sure certain cops, nurses, and oil rig workers would feel no sympathy for your day. But let's not stray too far from the main points.

You do bring up a good point, however. This isn't just about the number of work hours, it is also about stress level, and teaching is often documented as a highly stressful job. Stress in any situation can easily affect one's performance. I wonder what the system and the union do to address this issue. Forward-thinking organizations tend to acknowledge workplace stress and have programs in place to deal with it. This kind of thing will likely improve the effectiveness of any organization, education included.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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dc_dux

The mean annual salary for K-12 teachers in the US is under $50,000.

I hardly consider that overpaid....especially relative to many other professions.

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Rudel73

You get out of school what you put into it. You can go to the crappiest high school and get a better education than some private elite school. End of story period. Whats wrong with American education isnt really the teachers IMO (They could be better), but the kids ARE LAZY!!!

It's not 'cool' in America to be smart. The kids that study and get good grades get made fun of for being smart. Thats just fact. For some reason being 'dumb' and generally having nothing going for you is whats cool in our society.

Trust me, i've been on both sides of the spectrum. Going from dumb football player jock in high school and part of college, to working on my Graduate thesis in polymer chemistry there is a BIG difference on how others view you.

Its just not cool to be smart.

Ustwo

And the schools allow such behavior as there are no consequences to doing poorly.

The inmates should not be running the asylum, when they are, its the managements fault.

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Baraka_Guru

There was a feature on CBC Radio that covered this. It points out that in developing countries like India, the people cannot afford to act like this. In much of India, the really smart people are the cool ones, and in these people they place much of the hope.

Very much a contrast to, well, North America in general.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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SecretMethod70

I'd love to listen to this...got a link?

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Le temps détruit tout

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Willravel

*gets plane tickets to India...*

Baraka_Guru

I cannot for the life of me remember what day it was on last week. I think they were talking about how the perception of "geeks" has changed. I tried digging around the CBC website, but to no avail. They podcast most of their material after it airs, but there isn't a search for transcripts I don't think.

Sorry.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

SecretMethod70

Darn. I think the frequency of podcasts depends on the show too. I enjoy Ideas, but they don't podcast every show for some reason.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling