Ulukai on 30/9/2009 at 21:00

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A man and a woman kiss in great detail.

Wait, no, probably not

CCCToad on 30/9/2009 at 23:00

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I'm too lazy to rant myself.

I was hoping someone else would come in and rant about how horrible our schools are or, alternately, how full of shit the guy at ABC is.

scarykitties on 30/9/2009 at 23:28

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I went to a public high school in South Dakota, on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. The school was in a crap little town of about a thousand; a filthy place where half the residents didn't own their homes, but instead had them government-given. Thus, people didn't mow their lawns or paint their houses or in any other way make an effort to maintain their property (basically because it wasn't theirs).

Thank you for sharing the link, it was very informative (and disturbing). My mother is a teacher by trade, while my father is a teacher by competence (that is to say, he wasn't educated as a teacher, but he's extremely knowledgeable and clever, so he makes a natural teacher), and all throughout high school, I heard them complain about the No Child Left Behind Act, and how it cheapened education. I'm not familiar with the particulars, but it has to do with, as the ABC mustache said, with making public schools into monopolies. There was only one public school in our little town, but as far as I'm aware, there isn't any rule in South Dakota stating that one must attend a particular school in one's area code. In the current town I am going to college in, I believe there are at least two high schools. I don't know how one is chosen to go to one or the other, but, as far as I know, it's not based on government say-so.

I'm familiar with some of the things discussed in the documentary, though I'd like to think that I rode just far enough ahead of the wave as to avoid it (mostly, anyway--any remaining ignorance on my part, and there is plenty, is due more to my own lack of initiative than to any on the part of my instructors). I remember how, in fifth grade, all students were part of the band, and how we all had to attend wood shop. Band was tedious and the wood shop teacher was a hard-ass, but they were good things. By the time I was in high school, I was literally the only band member out of twenty-one students, as well as the only choir member in my grade (one out of the quartet was home-schooled). Then, around my sophomore year, the wood shop teacher (who also offered metal shop, which I didn't take, and ExploreNet, a computer repair course, which I DID take) was let go and the shop was converted into a bigger gym. I suppose that gives you a hint as to where priorities lie.

My foster brother, a Native American my parents adopted while we lived on the reservation, took the wood and metal shop classes and is now educated and employed in construction and welding jobs, thanks to the opportunities that hard-ass shop teacher who looked like Gimli provided. As for me, I'm rather competent with computer hardware and general repair and troubleshooting thanks to the ExploreNet class he taught, even though the class only lasted two years at the most.

As for me, I was lucky in that most of my teachers were competent and tough. That is to say, they were smart and they knew that their students weren't stupid, just ignorant, and they just needed a push to awaken their own intellect. They required certain things to be taught that were tedious and boring, but I'm glad that they did (even for things I may not recall now, I'm glad that I expanded my mind to those regions at some point). My English/Spanish teacher always had high standards and knew how to teach and be fun and innovative (Spanish class didn't even have a textbook, and we learned Spanish fairly well--myself excluded due to ulterior reasons). My math teacher, ugly as sin, always was witty and competent, and I'm glad that I had so many classes with him in them. The only teachers I frown on are my science teachers after middle school. I'm sorry to say that I went into those classes excited to learn and left with that interest completely destroyed (beyond what Discover magazine can offer, anyway). My physics, biology, and chemistry teacher (all the same person) would let us spend days upon days basically doing nothing but playing around on the computers, only to one day slam down some work that we weren't prepared for (due to not having gone over it), and then lighten up when we didn't know what to do by assisting us to the point of practically giving us the answers. That is my biggest regret from high school; that I didn't have a better (read: more strict and involved) science teacher.

I was well aware that the school played favorites and that it was all a bureaucracy intent on claiming power and money. The ABC mustache has it right, unfortunately, though I had no idea it was so bad elsewhere.

I'm just glad that I've got university professors who are very clever and knowledgeable. With luck, some of that will rub off on me before I'm facing getting a job in a very competitive market.

PeeperStorm on 1/10/2009 at 01:59

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Thoughts about this:

I liked the part where the union rep says (paraphrasing) "We're doing great! Just look at the rising SAT scores!" Then, when the interviewer points out a problem with that, she says "I don't think SAT scores are a good indicator."

I don't much like 20/20's sensational style, but they do a good job of getting a discussion going. They don't just point out the elephant in the room, they saddle it up and sell rides on it.

I heard a lot of "the schools this" and "the schools that" in the report, but very little about the parents, other than that they're not happy. What have they done to help teach their kids? Are they doing any educating themselves, or just wishing that the schools did a better job?

scarykitties on 1/10/2009 at 03:27

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I'll certainly understand people wanting to feel above-average. It's easy when you have low standards. I know that I frequently have to face the reality that, as much as I consider myself specially clever and gifted, I'm really just, at the core, a stupid, blank sheet that barely has any scribblings in it. My own ignorance cannot be increased, but every second I'm not learning, my potential to decrease my ignorance is, in itself, decreased.

Every second I spend doing things such as chatting on this forum, I'm cheating myself of a little bit more learning and understanding. I'm giving up the neverending battle of fighting my own ignorance. And I do it willingly.

Although IQ scores may be going up, unless I'm mistaken (due to ignorance that I willingly accept I'm something of an unfortunate connoisseur in), humans, as a species, haven't gained brain capacity in hundreds of thousands of years. That means that the only thing that makes you smarter than the the stupid cavemen we smirk at is the genius of others and their willingness to tell us to stop being so stupid.