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On April 23 2014 06:04 obesechicken13 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2014 02:07 EJK wrote:On April 22 2014 18:11 obesechicken13 wrote:On April 22 2014 12:43 EJK wrote: I say add a "gaming class" such as sc2, to increase logic and analysis skills..mandatory for EVERYONE.
Other then that, only time will tell how education is reformed, there is simply so much to fix and too many ideas to incorporate. Maybe the president after obama will base his career on educational reforms, but to be honest I d on't think it is that big of a deal not to get the best education (there are plenty of cheaper, more effective ways to learn) I think the problem with mandatory classes is that everyone thinks theirs are the best. There are people who believe mandatory religion classes would be best, but only for their particular sect of religion, and those who believe their feminist classes are best. Others think critical thinking classes are best. Why do you get to decide for others? i think you are mixing up passion for superiority. The reason why a teacher normally teaches aa class is because they are passionate about it (or should be), which does nto nesecarily mean they think their class is better than someone else's class No, you clearly said that a gaming class should be mandatory. This has nothing to do with teachers teaching subjects they like and understand. that was in a half joking term coz it's a gaming class (the idea itself is proposterous in the current curriculum). Regardless of my language, there is nothing to support your opinion that everyone thinks their class is the best besides the fact that it is "mandatory"
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On April 23 2014 08:25 EJK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2014 06:04 obesechicken13 wrote:On April 23 2014 02:07 EJK wrote:On April 22 2014 18:11 obesechicken13 wrote:On April 22 2014 12:43 EJK wrote: I say add a "gaming class" such as sc2, to increase logic and analysis skills..mandatory for EVERYONE.
Other then that, only time will tell how education is reformed, there is simply so much to fix and too many ideas to incorporate. Maybe the president after obama will base his career on educational reforms, but to be honest I d on't think it is that big of a deal not to get the best education (there are plenty of cheaper, more effective ways to learn) I think the problem with mandatory classes is that everyone thinks theirs are the best. There are people who believe mandatory religion classes would be best, but only for their particular sect of religion, and those who believe their feminist classes are best. Others think critical thinking classes are best. Why do you get to decide for others? i think you are mixing up passion for superiority. The reason why a teacher normally teaches aa class is because they are passionate about it (or should be), which does nto nesecarily mean they think their class is better than someone else's class No, you clearly said that a gaming class should be mandatory. This has nothing to do with teachers teaching subjects they like and understand. that was in a half joking term coz it's a gaming class (the idea itself is proposterous in the current curriculum). Regardless of my language, there is nothing to support your opinion that everyone thinks their class is the best besides the fact that it is "mandatory" Oh, I wasn't aware you were joking. It's hard to tell on the internets.
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On April 23 2014 08:58 obesechicken13 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2014 08:25 EJK wrote:On April 23 2014 06:04 obesechicken13 wrote:On April 23 2014 02:07 EJK wrote:On April 22 2014 18:11 obesechicken13 wrote:On April 22 2014 12:43 EJK wrote: I say add a "gaming class" such as sc2, to increase logic and analysis skills..mandatory for EVERYONE.
Other then that, only time will tell how education is reformed, there is simply so much to fix and too many ideas to incorporate. Maybe the president after obama will base his career on educational reforms, but to be honest I d on't think it is that big of a deal not to get the best education (there are plenty of cheaper, more effective ways to learn) I think the problem with mandatory classes is that everyone thinks theirs are the best. There are people who believe mandatory religion classes would be best, but only for their particular sect of religion, and those who believe their feminist classes are best. Others think critical thinking classes are best. Why do you get to decide for others? i think you are mixing up passion for superiority. The reason why a teacher normally teaches aa class is because they are passionate about it (or should be), which does nto nesecarily mean they think their class is better than someone else's class No, you clearly said that a gaming class should be mandatory. This has nothing to do with teachers teaching subjects they like and understand. that was in a half joking term coz it's a gaming class (the idea itself is proposterous in the current curriculum). Regardless of my language, there is nothing to support your opinion that everyone thinks their class is the best besides the fact that it is "mandatory" Oh, I wasn't aware you were joking. It's hard to tell on the internets. ye srry xD i shoulda put a "lol" "rofl" or "lmao"
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On April 22 2014 05:50 ahw wrote:
Alright, lets talk about your english classes. It sounds to me like you are not being taught properly. English at its core isn't just about mechanics -- about where the independent clauses go, about where the semi-colon belongs, all that junk. Like most of the arts, english is there to grow your critical thinking skills and help you learn how to formulate arguments and relate to the texts. If you are being taught Shakespeare in highschool and they are focusing on iambic pentameter, they are teaching you wrong. ... It sounds like you have had bad teachers.
I know I had some bad English classes, that's why I ranted about it (and why I said my experience may not reflect others). I don't quite see English class being supposed to grow critical thinking though, although that is somewhat of a vague/all-encompassing term. Virtually any class may grow some aspect of critical thinking to some degree or another. I agree that English shouldn't all be about mechanics, but how to make a point or understand someone else's point, word/phrase selection, and other stuff.
On April 22 2014 05:50 ahw wrote: The reason those plays are so important is because they are still so highly relevant and influential. Students can take an old piece of text, relate it to the world around them, and formulate opinions and arguments.
I also find it strange you list creative writing as being entirely useless. At its core, creative writing is your ability to take ideas from your head, put them to paper, and communicate. It isn't held to the rules of essay writing but being able to tell a story is certainly something society values very highly and always has. And if you think reading comprehension is irrelevant to modern society, you probably shouldn't be posting arguments on an online forum. I don't really see the necessity of reading or studying fiction, nor creative writing. You don't need creative writing to be able to take idea from your head and communicate with them. That can be done with virtually any form of writing, In fact I'd say there are far better-suited forms of writing for that purpose, such as letter/message writing, report writing, or even technical writing.
Reading comprehension certainly is important; I believe I used improper words (although I did say book comprehension, not reading). What I'm referring to is mandatory novel/play reading, and essentially quizzes checking that people actually read a book. Writing a short report bout what happened in a book practices writing, but in my opinion there are far more effective ways at practicing writing, such as writing a letter/message to a friend/relative, politician, store/business, or coworker, or even writing a report on a short story, or magazine/website article rather than a whole novel. Which reminds me, it was my PHYSICS class where we would write such papers. It wasn't necessarily as inappropriate as it sounded though, since the papers weren't really graded for English quality much (I think?), and mostly just had to talk about how it relates to physics/science. In summary (of this paragraph), the issue I have is with some of the details of what English class studies and works with, not necessarily with what it does in general.
I guess there is something to say for testing empathy in English class, but that's not actually teaching, that's testing, and I'd assert one cannot really teach someone else empathy. There's expressing emotions too, but not everyone expresses them in the same way, nor has the same feelings, nor necessarily any feeling at all to a given text, which doesn't really make it viable for teaching or testing.
That brings me to something I never specifically mentioned: schools seem sometimes a bit too focused on testing over teaching. Obviously testing is still an important component, and it's really hard to manage the best balance (I don't necessarily have a solution), but I think it is still a bit of an issue.
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On April 21 2014 18:33 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2014 16:23 Xapti wrote: I maybe somewhat agree with the overall point of this but not really based of the examples. I don't see how playing competitive sports could significantly encourage learning, nor do I see how reading fiction would do so either. It's not that the activities themselves encourage learning so much as they get kids thinking. They're realistic ways to get people interested in what they're doing, unlike what most schools do. They read the most mundane, pointless shit in school most of the time and nobody's interested in what they're doing. Even though they're not necessarily directly related to the educational problems concerning how kids do on tests, it's pretty obvious that there's at least some correlation between reading and how you do in school. It might have been different for your experience, but in mine I know most kids don't read anything outside of school and really don't even read the school books. Most of them just get the sparknotes and then just try to get above a 90. Obviously that scenario is not the best for anyone. If kids started reading from a younger age and learned to enjoy it (and think; thinking is an incredibly important part of reading that most high school aged kids just don't have at all), I think that performance across all grade levels would improve. I strongly believe personally that reading had no bearing on my grades at all, short of directly getting worse marks in English class specifically for not having read something (my reading and writing competence was fine). I had an interest in learning in-class and proving my knowledge, not an interest in reading nor doing any other forms of homework. Reading obviously isn't homework if you like the book and enjoy it, but in my opinion it's not significantly different from watching a movie in that respect.
Anyway, that said, I agree that assigned reading —particularly for fictional books/material which may be uninteresting to some or most students— is problematic (which I think is something you implied).
Also, regarding your last point I don't think games really help the problem. My point was to improve their learning potential OUTSIDE of the classroom, and most kids just don't play educational games outside of the classroom. Even though a lot of us SC2/DotA players like to imagine that we're getting smarter because we're playing them, it's not really true -- at least not in the sense that it will improve test scores and get people more interested in learning. My goal with the "intellectual activities" wouldn't be to just get kids to do things that help them learn, it's to get them to enjoy what they're doing in school and be more motivated to enjoy their classes.
There should really be a word for it (I think the closest thing is "pot calling the kettle black" although that has a negative connotation), but I'd say that your statement regarding games is not in congruence with your statement about sports; you talk about how sports can help educational growth, but that games don't. It's particularly strange consider just how similar the two things are — people call some video games e-sports, and a majority of sports are a type of game. I suppose that non-video educational games don't really occur outside the classroom though.
I would agree that many video games don't help much or at all, but many at the least can help with basic math (RPGs/dungeon crawlers, RTS/TBS, city builders), and/or English (reading text in specific games, like Baldur's Gate, Space Rangers, or even old text-based games like Zork, Eric the Unready, etc.). Other video games can be great; While many parents don't buy or know about the specifically designed educational games out there, I know from personal experience that I would have loved to have some of the educational games that were on school computers to be on my computer. In fact I did have numerous educational games (where in the world/Europe is Carmen Sandiego?, Mario is Missing, math blaster, some sort of math shooting game, Treasure Mountain). In fact "Island of Dr. Brain" was of particular note, which taught me so many things when I was 11-12 that most people don't learn until university/college, or even ever (logic gates is the only specific example I can think of), but also other things such as algebra and graphing (including quadratic equations) several years before it appeared in school. I remember as a kid who normally had to be in bed by 21:00 or something (maybe earlier?), and who was never up past like 21:30, I found myself playing this game past midnight without knowing it at all and freaking out thinking that I'd get in trouble. I remember I was programming a robot to go through a maze.
Even just puzzle [video] games have a beneficial effect I'd say, although maybe in more of an abstract/vague way than concrete/proven/practical — games like The Incredible Machine or puzzle adventure games (Myst, Fez).
"most kids just don't play educational games outside of the classroom."— maybe you mean specifically that they don't want to, but I think the reality is that they don't have the opportunity to, to which therein lies the problem.
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Most english classes are dung. Since Statistics/Logical Reasoning (short of the small amount that is learned in Math Classes), are not requirement before taking English, most "research papers" in English classes are just a task of compiling disparate quotes out of context and trying to obfuscate the lack of an argument with illogical reasoning. Instead of research journals/paper, which most students cannot understand because of the aforementioned lack of prerequisites, students are expected to use sensationalized sources such as online articles and newspapers to "support" an argument when no requirement for truth or scientific adherence is imposed on these sources. This is the reason that performing original research (most of the time in biology/medicine since physics and math require significantly longer preparation, and biology and medicine have lower expectations of adherence to arbitrarily low errors (since it is both less developed and more variegated than math and physics)) is a big hook for colleges. Most high school English papers probably deserve an F since they provide unspecific/vague arguments with unrelated sources presented poorly and with atrocious grammar. However, the inherently ambiguous nature of these english classes allows english teachers to give B's to anyone who completes the assignment (and also to prevent excessive flunking which would lower schools' ratings).
With regard to early education, Grammar and Math should take precedence since they are used almost ubiquitously. After sufficient math has been developed, Science should be introduced; physics, then chemistry, then biology, since each relies on its predecessor. History should be largely optional in comparison to other H&SS classes, such as econ/gov since history is mostly rote memorization.
With regard to undergraduate education: there is no reason not to offer lower-division-level courses to 1x-year old students for credit (since most of those who wish to take these courses will do it by themselves, only to repeat the course in college). Since credit at one institution is not necessarily credit at another, we should have some sort of standardized curriculum (at least for public institutions, privates can do whatever they want) so that students will not need to pay exorbitant amounts for the sake of earning a degree without learning anything.
Decades ago, any degree was valuable since college graduates were rare. However, the excessive number of graduates devalues the value of all degrees. Therefore, this forces companies to be more meritocratic, and in the age of increasing automation, those who are not highly educated will lose their jobs, which emphasizes the need for as much education as possible to be taught as soon as possible. The current requirements for high school graduation are very low and would not endear any minimally-passing student to prospective employers.
Most students spend entire high school completing homework assignments for a few hours a day, and spending rest of the day socializing or playing video games. The latter needs to be greatly reduced and the former must be made more efficient/productive.
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I dont know about the educational reform in usa so my question: I like to know how many people are done with university before 21? My cousine (has visited Highschool & university in usa) is getting next month her Bachelor certificate, one week before 21. edit: she didnt jump over a year or whatever, neither in usa nor in her homecountry.
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Typically, graduate high school @ 18, 4 years in undergrad so grad at 22. Somewhat more common now, grad high school @17/18, 3 years in undergrad from tons of AP, overloaded course load, and try to get job/grad school asap, so grad at 20/21. But 22 is still by far the most common age. And, some actually spend 5 years in UG, so 23 is also somewhat common.
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Fuck you, spambot. Now I have to comment on this.
College is useless. Anyone who goes there is wasting their time and money. Of course, if you're rich, you can waste all the money you want, because you're rich. College is for aristocracy to differentiate themselves from the peasants. If everyone goes to college, then college will be useless unless people develop actual skills that they can use that can't be attained anywhere else. You can learn everything you ever wanted to know for free by going to the library, or using the internet, or both. Once the bombs start to fall, our major cities will become wastelands and our infrastructure will collapse, leaving only those who are strong enough and smart enough to survive; I will definitely die.
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