[ExI] common core educations standards, was: RE: far future

[William Flynn Wallace]

Problems with Common Core, No Child Left Behind, and all the rest of the
fixes the education establishment gets into law:

Educators do poor research, and I speak as a person who has presented ed.
research at ed. conventions as well as psych. conventions.  Low standards
of research, too much jumping on a popular wagon, etc.

In many states, Louisiana, for example, children with Down's Syndrome
(trisomy 21 - average IQ = 25!) and other developmental disorders, are
actually in the classes with normal children and are expected to have the
same progress and teachers are punished when they don't perform.  This is
just nuts.  And legislators have bought into the idea of everyone
graduating from high school.  Even people with IQs of 70?  Just nuts.  Half
or more of the students should be in some kind of trade school beginning
9th or 10 grade.  They don't need American Literature or algebra or
advanced history classes.

How many people use algebra in their careers?  Very very few.  Are there
any people in science/technology with IQs below 100?  Very doubtful.  Why
try to educate those below 100 with stuff they can't understand or use?

Education (sociology is worse) believes in the "You can be anything you
want to be" myth.  Genetics, IQ, anything not totally environmental
is NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT!!  That just has to change.

One system in effect (if they haven't changed it) is the Russia one, where
you have to pass tests to get into junior high school, then another for
high school, then college, then grad school.  Effect?  They waste very few
able students and don't waste time and money on those who can't cut it.
Extreme?  Subject to false positives and false negatives?  Of course - any
time you test and select you have those.

I have no ideas on how things should be taught, just what, when and to whom.

bill wallace


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 5:51 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 21, 2014 2:20 PM, "Kelly Anderson" <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was offered a gifted placement, but it would have involved my parents
> driving me 12 miles to school every day because my school didn't have a
> program. The special education kids didn't have to do that. So perhaps this
> is just a personal rough spot with me.
>
> Like Spike said, a cheap "program" that works is to make sure the gifteds
> are doing the minimums everyone else is doing, then get out of their way as
> they go beyond.
>
> > I don't want to abandon them. I want to give them the best education we
> can. I just don't want to stop the truly gifted to do it, which is what
> common core and no child's behind left alone do, IMHO.
>
> I don't see how these stop the truly gifted...other than by not focusing
> more resources on them, at the expense of ("abandoning") everyone else.
> And again, the truly gifted don't need as much as the rest (though more
> would of course be nice).
>
> > It worked well for several thousand years in China. People were picked
> to be the top of government based on passing exams. Since this is the
> longest lasting civilization since Egypt, I would hardly call it a failure.
>
> For thousands of years, there was a group of kingdoms - sometimes more
> united than others - in that part of the world.  It is known as China.  But
> don't mistake for a moment that it was the same century to century, any
> more than the collection of kingdoms known as medieval Europe were.
>
> Also, the exams had a greater (by the numbers) effect on those who failed,
> by ensuring that most people at least studied a common culture.  Arguably
> the same is true of public education today for those who do not go for
> postgraduate degrees.  (It used to be "who do not go to college", but that
> has changed in recent years.)
>
> > I don't want AI to creep into this particular conversation. We could
> start a new thread though.
>
> Just noting one likely long term solution.
>
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