There's a good reason why people aren't going into sciences though, and part of that is their poor preparation and presentation in high school. If you want to drive people into the sciences from high school without preparing them then they'll spend the first year of their college paying for remedial classes to fix the deficit before ever getting to set foot in a real science class.

I mean, that's what I had to do. Before I could go into real math classes I had to spend a year taking pre-calculus and geometry, and that delayed me taking big boy physics which delayed me taking further science classes. I even went out of my way to try to learn calculus and higher math my senior year of high school but had zero resources. My math teacher gave me her old calculus book and I spent the year trying to study out of it on my own, but it wasn't something I could make meaningful progress on myself.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on May 6 2020 11:22am

my feeling is that if you massively increase science education in middle to high school you're still only going to get a fraction more scientists. people either are or arent naturally into sciences. sure there's STEM stigma for women that we can work on as a society, but still you'll increase sciences at a massive cost for only a nominal gain. is that gain worth it from a federally mandated curriculum standpoint at a massive cost when instead we could fund special programs specifically targetted at sciences? i'd say no. especially with something like common core that doesnt seek just to increase sciences, it aims to raise all subjects at the same rate.

this is the same issue of targeted versus general mandates, we could focus on math in alabama or even science generally at a fraction of the cost of fully mandating education nationwide.

Setting a minimum at all is detrimental. Do that and the smarter kids get lazy. The whole system we have is broken. Too many students for each teacher. Teaching degrees handed out like mints at a restaurant.
Teachers with ridiculously low salaries.

Kids learn all the time, and we set horrible examples for them. WE pay athletes and actors millions per year, and honestly they don't do much for the country. The kids see this.
So the kid has a choice between math and baseball... which do you think he will attempt to achieve.

Look at who our children see as heroes in our society. Not the math whiz. Not the person that speaks 7 languages. What the kids in the US see is those that make money, because that's who WE set up as heroes.



/e We need to start rewarding people that LEARN. We also need to reward those that do further our country's knowledge. These are the heroes we want the kids to aspire to become.

This post was edited by Ghot on May 6 2020 11:30am

Whats your degree in Glot? Since they're given out like mints and not a result of blood, sweat, and tears.

I think it is a calling and respect teachers. I couldn't do it.

This post was edited by Skinned on May 6 2020 11:30am

See. There's the kid running around screaming that learning is uncool.

This post was edited by Ghot on May 6 2020 11:33am

while i agree generally, doesnt the logic of "a low bar makes smart kids lazy" imply "a high bar inspires dumb kids to try harder"?

in any case kids arent very aware of what standards are until high school once ACT/SAT time rolls around.



he's pretty right tho. time investment into being a teacher is hard, but the system itself isnt difficult.

do you know how hard it is to fail your placements? like its almost "touch a kid on the peepee" hard. u can get certified even after proving you're a disaster at teaching.

that's not to say teaching itself is easy, it ranges from mildly difficult to very hard as a profession.

This post was edited by thesnipa on May 6 2020 11:34am

We need standards as to WHAT is taught, not necessary with high and low bars. We need one teacher for 10 kids, not one teacher for 50 kids. We need to make this country's heroes, the educated people, not the ones that... run the fastest.
Kids are born hungry for knowledge. Our very society, slowly destroys that yearning in our children. Or, at best, teaches our children to aspire to the wrong things.

that's literally what common core is. a list of subjects required to be taught, not a list of grades kids need to get in those topics.

As I understand common core, it's more like... you have to learn these subjects AND everyone in the class has to pass. Reminds me of those kittle league games where everyone has to get a trophy.



/e We need to fix society first... then the education system will fix itself. That's one of the ways Japan has it far ahead of us. I would look up salaries for different adult jobs in Japan. I bet you won't see the disparity that you do in the US.

This post was edited by Ghot on May 6 2020 11:51am

Teachers are always complaining about the program size, more specifically about the amount of different subjects to introduce.

Doesn't change the fact it's still a common core, which include biology, or even the very evil civic education.

At this point the responsible teachers have the privilege to define priorities...