Schooling

[Ry]

In school you are taught useless academic minutia that wastes your time and talents. In life no one cares how smart you are, only that you will obey. In jobs, you learn on the fly, by practicing exactly what you are going to actually do. School has no relation to real learning or working. Every job I have had, I learned how to do by training on the job itself. Even my political radio show I prepared for by teaching myself things outside of school. In fact it is probably the antithesis of the propaganda I was told in school. From about 2nd or 3rd grade on school is pretty worthless. You could learn the few valuable things there are in math, history, and sciences in a few weeks with a tutor. The same way pretty much anyone learns how to drive a car, how to swim, or any other real world skill.

Imagine how much more a person would learn with hands on instruction and actually doing things, imagine the skill level of a person given experiences instead of memorizing answers about nothing to meaningless tests. Just imagine all the time a person would have without draining away their life in school. They could be learning real things, going places, and this could actually still be done in groups so as not to detract from the social potentials of school. This factory model of school is detrimental to the children forced into it and the society at large. We have kids that grow up not learning the minutia and yet still not learning anything else either because they've been trapped in school, so in short we are producing the most child like adults and ignorant people one can imagine.

College is glorified High School.
So what if I know about Ashoka in Ancient India, or what Eric Ericson thought about anger, how Descartes figured out he existed, how a milworm reproduces, useless equations you will forget one year after school is finished, and even worse some art-fart's opinion about a fictional story. Its utterly worthless despite the amount of brain power and time it takes to digest it all these are not practical things. It's just 4 more years of bullshit.

You're not going to know it unless you want to know it. Look at foreign languages? How many of you took one in school maybe for years? How many of you can speak that language? How many of you in the minority that can are able to basically because you studied on your own anyway the way anyone learns anything? What most people retain from foreign language classes even after years is basically what they learned in the first few days. Why? Because it was in the first few days that they actually got to practice speaking it. So after introductions and such there became just too many people to continue speaking later, and it all went back to conjugating verbs for tests and so on.

People learn by doing. They do not learn by abstract drills, or test taking. Do the thing you actually want to know. If it can't be done (like history) let's at least try to see it. There should be way more visual learning in history classes. This is the day of computers. No more VHS tapes on wheel in TV sets. Any class room can be projecting audio visuals on a screen for less than the cost of a chalk board. Why do we continue this horrible system of pushing useless junk at kids who often are just sitting quiet for hours except fr the few motivated kids in the front trying to raise their hands and ask questions. The majority of the room is just quiet, waiting to figure out what they have to know for the test later and that is it. It is a horrible horrible system.

[mdinno]

And after the kids are bored to death in class, which is the SCHOOLS fault not the kid. They get sent to a Dr. and get diagnosed with the BS ADD. Now guess what happens next....

[Phys]

People in the US can now go to an online schools.

Also in my town, Bill Gates has sponsored a New Tech High School and there are lots of hands on learning. No text books and the kids are assigned laptops. Kids do learn in all kinds of ways. I can tell you if you go into fields like physical sciences or math, you will have to be able to focus on not always interesting hands on topics and loads of abstractions.

[Karl Rove]

I'm a big fan of John Taylor Gatto

there are plenty of interviews in audio and video out there

[Ry]

Nonsense the physical science are full of hands on things and visual learning. That is why for the longest time they have always had Labs to accompany the lectures. Other courses are only lectures and most about bunk.

Pragmatic Math ought to be focused on economics not sending a rocket into space. The aim should be at statistics not calculus.

[Phys]

there are labs that go along with some physical science classes

Im talking about people going into the fields of physical science and math

you will have to have calculus if you want to go further in the science and math tho.

high school: stats are great

college and advance stats need calculus

[Ry]

<iframe src="http://embed.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_ma ... eover.html" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

How to use multimedia in math and focus on math reasoning.

Advanced stats do not need calculus in fact almost nothing does. You will need statistics though pretty much every day.
That's not what I'm even talking about. I am talking about how all of it is taught.

[Phys]

Multimedia in math is great and is used in this area. It is somewhat a mecca for education here just no so much fun.

Advance stats or advance any math course for that matter in college is proofs. You need calculus to do those proofs. You also wont go further than your first year as a Physics major. Newton invented calculus to make physics easier and the problems not so long and tedious. Instead of finding the area of infinite number of boxes under a curve now you can just integrate. Unless you want to take the slope of the tangent line every time you want to find the instantaneous rate of change of a function or you can just differentiate. People assume calculus is harder but its not. It make problems easier.

You wouldn't be able to go further in chemistry after your second year if you didnt have calculus. Engineering forget about it. Not sure what other physical science is left?

[Tim]

I never went to college (I'm 25) and I find it harder to get a job in positions that look at college graduates first. But like, for example, at my current job. I basically could run the place without a degree but the management feels the need to have a shiny certificate next to their name and a special name tag.

College to me is a scam.

[Phys]

That stinks about you work Tim. Not all companies work that way. Banks will let you move up without a college degree if you can produce and work computers. You can try online college or 2yr degree in a technical/trade school. Unfortunately college is the path to more money or promotions in most companies. At my business, I could careless if a tech has college or not just as long as he has real job knowledge. Most trade places are like this. My son on the other hand, wants to be a pediatrician. He has lots of years of school left. He just got accepted into the school of nursing and premed 2days ago with several academic scholarships for his ACT scores:) Maybe you can take the ACT or SAT and get money for school that way if you want to go.

Edit: Also Tim, look into Pell Grants. You dont have to pay those back. It is a grant from the govt based on your income.

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