Personally, I like the European system wherein you are able to be tested for aptitude in one of the two career paths at age 16. It'd sure eliminate this idea that college is for everyone.Right, although it's at 14, not 16. Basically, what's the point of torturing kids (and wasting everybody's money) through high school education if they don't cognitively have what it takes? Does a welder really need to know algebra and the history of the fall of the Roman Empire?
Personally, I like the European system wherein you are able to be tested for aptitude in one of the two career paths at age 16. It'd sure eliminate this idea that college is for everyone.Right, although it's at 14, not 16. Basically, what's the point of torturing kids (and wasting everybody's money) through high school education if they don't cognitively have what it takes? Does a welder really need to know algebra and the history of the fall of the Roman Empire? It would never work here. Most public school parents would be up in arms saying THEIR child is being denied higher education, that the test us unfair to begin with and doesnt take this or that factor into consideration (poverty, dyslexia, ADD, race, ethnicity, poorer schools, first language is not English, you name it, they will find it). Parents inthis country simply wouldn't stand for a system that cuts out THEIR child, no matter what the reason. They will take it as a personal affront, unfair tests or outright discrimination. And they will expect the educational system to make up for any difficulty their child demonstrates, no matter its source--because, of course, it is never attributable to the child). Few middle-class and wealthier parents will ever admit that THEIR child is not college material. LL.
Today's classrooms come complete with smartboards, computers, DVD players, much better lighting and better educated teachers who no must periodically update their certification by going back to college not to mention the state mandated workshops that are ongoing annually. And if you want to teach in the classroom today you had better be "good"at it as some states are tying student performance to merit pay. hell yes it's a job source for educators, elswise why would you spend all that time and money to get a degree? And it's not as easy now as it once was.Yeah, technology companies want the income stream from the education industry. How many 10th graders can explain what an electron is? Shouldn't nearly all of them be able to do it? To a reasonable degree. We don't need wave equations. Harvard graduates not being able to explain winter and summer. And that was 20 years ago. How do college graduates not notice economists saying nothing about the depreciation of hundreds of millions of cars decades after the Moon landing? Let's face it, in the 50s no one had a clue when the Moon landing would occur. Was the 50s standard of education acceptable? I have seen more than one article about tablets killing off smartboards. And why the emphasis on jobs over accounting? Are the schools indoctrinating kids to be workers even if white collar ones? What would the average Net Worth of Americans be if accounting had been mandatory since the 1950s? Nobody knows. Who in the educational system has been discussing such a thing in the last 50 years. A really curious thing is that in 1930 John Maynard Keynes was talking about a 15 hour work week by 2030. I guess he was smarter than most people say but that comment is not mentioned a lot. I think we should have been on a 3-day work week in the 80s but our college graduate economists can't notice Demand Side Depreciation since Keynes died. What about depreciation of computers? http://www.nber.org/chapters/c0876.pdf psik
I'm a firm believer in Thomas Edison's well worn maxim that "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".The man who invented the electric chair as a propaganda ploy to scare people away from AC current.
Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, who, more than a century ago, engaged in a nasty battle over alternating and direct current, known as the “War of Currents." Both men knew there was room for but one American electricity system, and Edison set out to ruin Westinghouse in “a great political, legal and marketing game" that saw the famous inventor stage publicity events where dogs, horses and even an elephant were killed using Westinghouse’s alternating current. The two men would play out their battle on the front pages of newspapers and in the Supreme Court, in the country’s first attempt to execute a human being with electricity.blogs.smithsonianmag(dot)com/history/2011/10/edison-vs-westinghouse-a-shocking-rivalry/ I went to college for electrical engineering and didn't hear about that. Who decides what "education" is? Want to know electronics: papers.xtremepapers(dot)com/Edexcel/Advanced Level/Electronics/Resources/Gibilisco - Teach Yourself Electricity And Electronics(dot)pdf www(dot)freebookspot.es/Comments.aspx?Element_ID=1313 A 7th grader could start with the first book. Maybe an 11th grader could begin on the second. Why shouldn't nearly every American kid know something about electricity? Is Shakespeare more important? But now we have these: youtube(dot)com/watch?v=3o8_EARoMtg youtube(dot)com/watch?v=7vHh1sfZ5KE youtube(dot)com/watch?v=ZrMw7P6P2Gw psik
I am a huge fan of college. I can honestly say that the reason I want to go to college is because this is going to be the last time before I enter the work force that I can be intellectually and academically challenged, there I can learn much about all the things I wanted to learn about, with friends who were as dedicated to learning and the pursuit of knowledge as I am.
You are quite the stealth spammer Kevin. You make comments that seem to come from your own thoughts, but you manage to sneak a link in there to something for sale. Try making some posts without those links. Link to an encyclopedia, a news item, a science article or paper. Otherwise, I’ll think you aren’t for real and mark your account as spam. That erases it from the forum.